The Banks of Certain Rivers

by Harrison, Jon

  “So, that puts us...maybe forty hours out? Which would give him a max range of, what, a hundred-and-eighty miles or so.” Alan traces a rough circle out over Lake Michigan on the map with Port Manitou at the center. “That’s a pretty huge area he could be in. He could be all the way over in Wisconsin.”

  Lauren shakes her head. “That’s assuming he went nonstop. Would he have stopped, Neil?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “He might have worried about getting caught or something. We’re also assuming he made perfect time. I don’t think he would have gone across the lake. He’d stay close to the coast. God, he’s got to be exhausted if he’s been underway the whole time.”

  Alan traces another circle, a little smaller this time. “Even if he wasn’t going as fast as he could, that’s still a huge area.”

  “My brother talked to him last night,” I say. “So even if he was under way, he had to be close enough to shore to get a signal on his phone. Wouldn’t that narrow it down?” Alan shrugs, and we all lean back, as if by some silent command, from crowding in over the map.

  “How are you going to find him in an area that size?” Kristin asks. “It’s big.”

  “I know a guy with a speedboat we could borrow,” I say. “We could head down the coast and try to catch up with him.”

  “I know a guy,” Alan says. “With a plane.”

  We scramble out to the Prius, Alan, Lauren and I, and tear off up the road toward Leland’s resort. Kristin has stayed behind, promising to make regular checks at my house to see if Christopher has returned. We find the resort office empty, so we jump back into the car and head back toward the town, where Leland lives.

  “So,” I ask, “do people really just loan their planes out like this?”

  “Oh, sure. It happens all the time. You need to get somewhere, you borrow your buddy’s plane if you—”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call you guys buddies.”

  “He’ll recognize the need.”

  “Does Leland even have a license to fly?”

  “I understand he’s working on getting his ticket. But,” Alan says, “Leland’s not going to fly the plane.”

  We tear into Leland’s drive, an incongruously funny maneuver considering the lack of noise made by the hybrid car. Lauren stays behind while Alan and I run up to the house. Sherry Dinks answers our knock at the door.

  “Neil Kazenzakis!” she says. “How are you? I’m so sorry, I heard what’s going on. But it sure is nice to see you.”

  “Hi, Sherry. Is Leland here?”

  “He’s working on something out back. Go right around. You’ll see him.”

  We run around the garage and find Leland bent over the open engine compartment of a riding mower. He’s holding a rag and a dipstick, and seems startled by our sudden appearance.

  “What in the world are you two doing here?”

  “Leland, my son ran away in a stolen boat. He’s sailing it to Chicago and we need your plane to go find him.”

  “He what?”

  “We need to borrow your plane, Leland,” Alan says.

  “Well…I…I mean, sure, you can use the plane, I don’t even know if Curtis is around to fly the thing…let me give him a call. He might be teaching a lesson this morning.”

  Alan shakes his head. “Don’t call him. I can fly the plane.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Please, Leland,” I say. “Anything, I mean it. Help us. We can talk about selling my place, whatever. Please just let us use the plane.”

  “Whoa, hold up here. Let me get this straight. Your son ran away, stole a boat, and now you’re going to borrow my plane so an epileptic man can fly it so you two can go look for the kid and the boat.”

  “That’s it,” Alan says. “That’s pretty much it. Oh, and his girlfriend is coming with us.”

  “Christopher’s girlfriend?”

  Alan shakes his head. “Neil’s girlfriend,” he says. “She’s pregnant with his child.” Leland stares at me, his mouth slightly agape.

  “It’s a long story,” I say.

  Leland blinks, regaining his composure. “Well,” he says, wiping his hands and tossing the rag onto the mower’s engine. “Let’s go, then.”

  I drive the four of us back up to the resort, back past the main guest areas and toward a less-finished area with heavy equipment parked about. Leland points for me to stop next to a trailer; his white and blue airplane is parked just beyond that. As Leland runs into the trailer, Alan goes to the plane and starts to undo a set of webbing straps stretching from the undersides of the wings to some concrete anchors in the ground.

  “Give me a hand here, Neil.”

  I go over and help him with the tie-downs, and as I coil up the last one, Leland joins us with five big headsets looped over his arm.

  “Are you coming with us?” Alan asks, nodding to the headsets.

  “Of course I am. You think I’m going to let you trash this plane?”

  “What’s the fifth headset for?” I ask.

  “We’ll keep this one onboard,” Leland says, matter-of-factly. “Chris will need one for the ride home, won’t he?”

  Alan, I can tell, is trying not to grin as he taxis the plane out to the end of the mowed strip. He and Leland sit up front, Alan in the left seat, Leland in the right. I’m sitting behind Leland with Lauren next to me clutching my hand. Her eyes are wide with apprehension as we bounce over the field to the end of the runway, but she doesn’t say a word.

  “You’re really okay to fly this thing?” Leland asks over the headset.

  “Sure am. I know this machine inside and out. I actually got my instrument rating in a Two-Ten, you know? Love this plane—”

  “No, I am talking about your health! You’re not going to slump over in mid-air, are you?”

  “I’m fine,” he says as he gathers a book of charts and a notepad from between the front seats and places them in his lap. “I mean it. All right, gang, here we go.” He pulls at a knob in the panel and the engine revs up; I feel the brakes release with a jolt and the plane starts to gently lurch as it rolls forward and gathers speed down the grass airstrip. Al pulls back on the control yoke and the plane takes one last bounce before lifting smoothly into the air; the ground seems to drop away.

  “And we’re up,” Alan says.

  We rise over the dunes to see Lake Michigan, the vast landlocked sea stretching blue to a hazy line at the edge of the earth. Alan climbs straight until the trees seem small below us, and banks the plane to turn us out over the shimmering water. We’re all craning forward to scan out the windows. I look back as we turn and see the orchard, the rows of trees, the farmhouse and my own home.

  “There’s a sailboat,” Lauren says, pointing off to the north. Her voice is small and clipped over the headset. “It’s quite a ways out there.”

  “I don’t think that’s him,” I say. “Too close, wrong direction, and the boat doesn’t look right.”

  “We’ll check it out,” Alan says. He levels out in the direction of the boat, and dips down as we approach it. The boat is small, a little sailing dory, and the man and woman down in the cockpit shield their eyes to watch us as we fly by.

  “That’s not him,” I say. Alan banks the plane as we buzz over the boat, and the man in the boat gives us a slow wave. “Head south. I don’t think he’s gone north.”

  “Heading south,” Alan says. He turns back and flies along the sandy shoreline, and I get a good view of the beach house as we pass the orchard again. It doesn’t look too bad from up here.

  “So why exactly did Christopher steal a boat, Neil?” Leland asks. I start to answer, but my voice sounds choppy in my own ears, and Alan looks back over his shoulder at me.

  “Put the microphone closer to your mouth,” he says, pointing to his own mic. “So it’s almost touching your lips.”

  I push it close to my mouth. “Like this?” Lauren does the same.

  “There you go.”

  “Okay, so,” I go on, �
��Chris is running away to Chicago to go to culinary school.”

  Leland shakes his head. “Does Chris realize there’s a series of paved roads to Chicago that would have got him there in a few hours?”

  “He likes sailing, too.”

  “This doesn’t make too much sense to me,” Leland says.

  “There’s more to it than just that. He’s very angry with me right now too.”

  Alan points to the water. “There’s another sailboat.”

  We dip down again, and I know it’s not Tabby well before we’re there.

  “Not him,” I say, but Alan makes a close pass just to be sure.

  We check out two more boats, and still no luck. As we rise back up into the air after our last pass, I’m struck by the horrifying thought of us finding Tabby empty, listlessly bobbing with no Chris aboard.

  How would I react to that? Could I bear such a loss?

  I put it out of my head.

  After a while of flying, droning on and on, Alan says, “We’re at about a hundred and ten miles out of Port Manitou.”

  We check another boat, the occupants of which seem irritated by our close pass. They may be irritated, but I’m shaken; Alan seemed to zip uncomfortably close to the wave tops on this last dip down. His flying has grabbed Leland’s attention as well.

  “Hey, uh, do you need to get so close to them to tell? Neil, you can tell if it’s him from higher up, right?”

  “Come on, you guys,” Alan says. “Don’t be pansies. We’re fine. You think I want to stack us in? I like living too.” Lauren clutches my hand more tightly, and her complexion seems to have paled. I catch her eyes and force a smile, but it doesn’t seem to reassure her any.

  We fly along, further south, and see nothing more than powerboats dotting the water here and there, and a regatta of small sailboats in a race just offshore from the port town of Manistee. I shake my head as we pass over the little boats, and we continue on, all of us knowing that we’re at about the limit of Christopher’s possible range.

  “Is that a sailboat?” Leland asks, almost pressing his face to the glass of his window. “Way out there?”

  “Way out where?” Alan asks, craning his neck to scan the horizon. “Give me a bearing.”

  “Two o’clock.”

  “I see it,” I say, leaning forward. A sail shows white against the glimmer of the horizon, and as I keep looking I think I can see the telltale stripes of Tabby’s foresail. As we approach, I feel a lump in my throat.

  “I think that’s him,” I say. “Yes, I think that’s Peggy Mackie’s boat.”

  Alan descends, not so severely this time. He flies so the boat passes us on the right side, my side of the plane. To my great relief I see Christopher in the cockpit, alone, wearing a ball cap and sunglasses, and when he turns his head up toward us I can tell by the way his shoulders fall that he realizes his adventure is over. I wave to him, but I don’t think he can see me.

  “It’s him,” I say. “It’s him! Can you, is there any way you can call him?”

  “We can do marine radio,” Leland says. He turns a knob in the cockpit, and I hear him speaking over the headset.

  “Christopher K., Christopher K., this is Leland Dinks in the plane passing over you, I’m here with your father….”

  Chris just stares up at the plane.

  “Christopher K., Christopher K., please respond….”

  “Either he’s ignoring us,” Alan says, “or he doesn’t have his radio on.”

  “Get a waypoint,” Leland says. “Mark where he is, then take us back to Manistee. There’s a little airport northeast of the city.”

  Alan writes something on the notepad in his lap, and circles Tabby in one last pass.

  “What are you thinking, Leland?”

  “Just hang on. I’m pretty sure I can get us out to Chris.”

  Alan completes his circle and starts back toward the mainland, and I twist to watch Chris and Tabby recede in the distance behind us.

  We land at a paved airstrip, and taxi to a building at the end. Lauren, looking positively green, has her hand to her forehead. A kid in a blue polo shirt dashes out from the building to meet us.

  “Mr. Dinks!” he says. “I’m sorry, we didn’t realize you were coming.”

  “No problem, Jimbo, it was kind of a last minute thing. Can we grab the crew car? We’ll only be a couple hours, tops.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Dinks. I’ll bring it right over.”

  The kid sprints off, returning a few moments later in a black Lincoln Navigator. He hops out and runs around the big car, opening the doors for us.

  “Here you go, Mr. Dinks.”

  We climb into the car, Leland taking the driver’s seat, me up front and Alan and Lauren in back. Leland accelerates off across the taxiway, only slowing to let a security gate open to let us through.

  “Oh, man,” Alan says, raising his arms to lace his fingers behind his head. “I forgot how plush the world of private aviation can be.”

  Leland has his cell phone to his ear. “Hey, Mark, yeah, been good, you? Listen…huh? No, I came to town last minute with some clients, you mind if I grab the boat? Just going to take them out for a quick joyride, nothing too long. You sure? Great, great, I owe you one!”

  Leland snaps the phone shut and throws it into the center console.

  “I’ve been working on a development down here for the past eighteen months,” he says. “One of the investors lets me use his boat. Nice boat. Fishing boat. I don’t really like to fish.” We pass a speed limit sign reading forty-five; Leland is going close to eighty. Alan leans forward between the front seats while Lauren leans back and clutches the armrest on the door. We skirt past town and into a marina parking lot, and Leland doesn’t even bother to park in any sort of designated space, simply skidding to a stop diagonally in the middle of the lot. He leaves the door open after he runs out.

  “I need to sit still for a little bit,” Lauren says weakly. I point after Leland and Alan, running down to the docks.

  “You don’t want to come?” I ask, and she shakes her head. I give her a kiss. “I’ll be back,” I say. “With Chris.”

  “Come on, come on!” Leland calls. Just as I catch up to them another earnest kid, this time in a buttoned-up polo shirt, greets us.

  “Hello, Mr. Dinks!” he says as we run past. Leland ignores him as he leads us onward. “Mr. Reeves called to say you were coming, the boat’s almost all set,” the kid calls after us. “She’s over at the gas dock.”

  We stand and wait for the marina crew to finish fueling the fly-bridged fishing boat with a pair of massive engines mounted on the stern. Leland, surprisingly, seems to be chafing at the hold-up more than I am. When they finally withdraw the fuel line from the fitting on the deck, Leland springs aboard and starts working at the boat’s wheel.

  “Cast us off, guys,” he says, turning a key to start the motors rumbling. Alan unties a line at the front and I do the same in the back, and we toss them aboard and follow them in. Leland pulls us away from the dock and out into the marina channel, waving at some men outside a bait and tackle shop as we pass.

  “So you take this boat out a lot?” I ask.

  “Here and there. Hang on.” We pass the “No Wake” sign at the harbor wall into the swell of the lake, and Leland presses the throttles forward to send the engines into a roar. The boat lunges forward over the waves, and I keep myself up, barely, against the sudden acceleration. Alan tumbles backward onto his ass, and I am suddenly very glad Lauren opted to stay behind.

  “Wow!” Alan shouts, clawing his way back up next to me. “Wow!” My eyes tear up at the wind in my face; I wish I had, as Alan and Leland do, a pair of sunglasses. I duck behind Leland to shelter myself behind the Plexiglas windscreen over the steering console.

  “You got those coordinates?” Leland shouts to Alan over the din of our very fast motion. The boat slams onward, bashing wave after wave after wave in knee-jarring jolts. “Keep an eye on the GPS, okay?” He point
s to a screen in front of the steering wheel, and Alan nods. Leland bends down to pull a pair of binoculars from a well under his seat, and hands them to me.

  “You look for him,” he says. “Tell me when you see him.”

  It takes a little more than thirty minutes for us to reach Tabby. I see the boat first, and watch through the binoculars as we close in on it. At first it seems like Chris doesn’t respond to us; we’re just another fishing boat blasting out into the lake on a Sunday afternoon. But he starts paying more attention to us as we approach him, glancing in our direction from time to time until he’s finally watching us exclusively. When he realizes we’re coming for him, he tries to steer Tabby away.

  “Sorry kid,” Leland mutters as he pulls back on the fishing boat’s throttles. “I think we’re a little faster.”

  Our vessel slows and settles down into the waves, and Leland eases us alongside the sailboat. Christopher continues to turn the wheel to steer away, and the mainsail and boom swing wildly above him. He won’t look at me as we ease up next to him. He won’t look at any of us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The two boats come together in the waves, and I move to the gunwale of the fishing boat, looping my arm around a chromed awning post to keep myself steady. Aboard Tabby, Chris has his back to us and continues trying to steer away, even as the sailboat is no longer driven by its crazily flapping sails.

  “Hold on, Neil,” Leland says as we approach. “Wait up, wait up.” The vessels move out of sync with each other, we rise up on the waves as Chris falls, and vise versa. Leland gives the throttle a little surge, and the two boats line up perfectly.

  “Now, Neil,” Leland says. “It’s good, go!”

  I jump over Tabby’s lifeline and land sprawled over the cabintop, bashing my knee so hard against a cleat that it makes me gasp. I get back to my feet, helping myself up with a hand on one of the mast shrouds, and wave at the fishing boat to let them know I’m okay. Leland backs away to give us some space.