by Luanne Rice
“He’s alive,” she said.
Her father tried to take her hand, but she pulled it back. She popped out of her seat, paced around the kitchen. Her father was watching her, pity knotting his brow.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, gulping air as she’d done in childbirth. She thought she might hyperventilate. “That I’m crazy, that I can’t accept this.”
“None of us …”
“I know he’s alive,” she said. “I know it. They have to keep looking.”
“They found his boat. The wreckage, I should say,” her father said, making the word sound unnecessarily harsh, as if he were trying to make her face a terrible fact.
“You know people in the Coast Guard,” Cass said. “You have to make them keep going.”
Her father stared at his hands, then looked up. “I’ve called everyone I can think of. Your mother’s been hounding me since six this morning to get on the phone.”
“How long have you known about this?” Cass exploded. “It’s ten now.”
“We didn’t know anything. Now just hold your horses,” he said gruffly. “I’ve been through this before, you know. Not with family, but I’ve lost boats. I watched the weather last night, and I knew the Coast Guard would be thinking they couldn’t have made it.”
“What do you think?” Cass asked, knowing that if her father gave the wrong answer, she’d kick him out of her house.
He sat silent. He looked everywhere but at Cass. “Say it,” she said.
“I think it’s unlikely,” he said, “that they are alive.”
Cass tried to breathe. She wanted to scream at him, tell him to leave her alone. She wanted to attack him with her fists and her fingernails. But she couldn’t move.
“All the captains have the news. Most of them are coming home.”
“The Mount Hope guys?” Cass asked, sitting down.
“Most.”
Cass stared at the flowers embroidered on her tablecloth. Her grandmother had made it herself, given it to Cass and Billy for their third anniversary. It was the kind of thing people set aside to pass on to their children. Tablecloths like this were usually found in trunks, perfectly pressed and white, wrapped in tissue paper. But this one had grape-jelly stains, coffee-cup rings, the ghostly remains of a ketchup spill.
“Who’s not coming home?” she asked.
“John Barnard,” her father said. “Al Sweet. David Griswold and Kelly Dellerba. Dave and his crew.”
“Did you talk to John yourself?”
“Yes. T.J. is fine.”
Cass nodded. No matter what the Coast Guard said, what her father believed, Billy had to be alive. She felt him so strongly, he couldn’t be gone. He must have been scared last night, frozen stiff, maybe delirious. But she thought of the sun rising, throwing what warmth it could, the hope it must have brought to Billy and his men.
“Dad,” Cass said, reaching for his hand. “Don’t believe Billy is dead. You can’t believe it yet.”
He didn’t reply.
“Call the Coast Guard. Do it for me. Please, Dad. Make them keep searching. Even for a few hours. Just for today. Please?”
He hesitated, tracing the embroidered flowers with his index finger. Without saying a word to Cass, he pushed himself up and lifted the telephone receiver. He dialed a number he knew by heart.
“Governor Malloy, please,” he said. “James Keating calling.”
Cass couldn’t look. She stared at the tablecloth, pictured her grandmother’s fingers pushing the needle.
“Mike, I need a favor,” her father said. He laid out the scenario, talking without interruption for three or four minutes. From the passion in his voice, you’d believe he knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that Billy was alive, that his survival depended on the Coast Guard finding him within the next few hours. When he hung up the phone, he walked around the table and grasped Cass’s shoulders with both hands. “They’ll keep at it till sunset tonight.”
The bright-red raft bobbed in the sparkling blue sea. The two men lay still, past shivering. Sunlight reflected off the flat ocean like a mirror. No mountains today, no caverns. A little to the north, a jet flew over. Ten minutes later, it flew over again. Ten minutes after that, it flew closer. A chart in the cockpit showed the pilot his pattern. A spotter with binoculars watched the water.
“After last night? No way,” the pilot said.
“I doubt it,” the spotter said. It was hard to keep the binoculars steady. He put them down, scanned with his bare eyes. Something dark flashed just below the surface. “What’s that?” the spotter asked, slapping the binoculars to his eyes.
The pilot flew down for a closer look. The dark spot rose to the surface and a fountain spouted.
“A whale,” the spotter said, laughing. “Boy, they’re pretty.”
“They sure are,” the pilot said.
“There!” the spotter said sharply. “That’s no whale.”
The pilot peered down. “No, it isn’t.” He radioed to shore.
“Go ahead,” the operator said.
“I believe we’ve spotted one of them,” the pilot said. “We’ll guide the cutter out.”
“One of the men?” the operator asked.
“A body,” the pilot said.
In the bright-red raft, just half a mile from what the plane had spotted, one of the men stirred. He licked his lips, which were cracked and swollen. He heard something far off that throbbed like an engine. He tried to lift his head, but he couldn’t seem to move. Then the sound faded, and his dreams took him back.
Or maybe it was the other way around.
The hours went by so fast. Sitting in her kitchen, Cass couldn’t stop watching the clock. Eleven, noon, one. Time for Josie’s nap. Two, two-thirty. She pictured the planes, buzzing like bees across a clover patch, doing their work. She pictured T.J. watching the horizon, John driving them closer to Billy. They still had hours of daylight left, but, in a way, Cass was waiting for dark.
Flares.
Last night the visibility had been too poor, the snow driving in sheets, the waves so big. No one could have seen Billy’s flares. But tonight the sky would be clear. A flare in this wintry sky would blaze like a rocket, like fireworks on the Fourth.
How did you define sunset, anyway? The planes were supposed to fly till sunset, but did anyone expect the pilots to check the almanac, to land at the exact published moment? No. They would fly until it was too dark to see. And just before they turned for home, they’d see Billy’s flares.
Three o’clock, three-thirty. Cass sat still, keeping track of Billy in her mind. There he is. Yes, there. Still alive. Billy.
She stayed in the same place, in her chair at the kitchen table. When Josie woke up from her nap, she was in a better mood. She wanted to play in the snow again. The sun had melted the snow closest to the house, so Cass had to venture farther into the yard to rebuild Josie’s pile. She made sure to leave the door open, so she could hear the phone.
Belinda called.
“I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t call you. Any news?”
“No,” Cass said. “They’re still looking.”
“Mommy, I’m so scared,” she said, her voice thin and high.
“I know, honey.”
They hung up. Three-forty-five, four o’clock, four-thirty; getting dark.
Belinda walked through the door. “I had to come home,” she said, burying her face in Cass’s shoulder. Bonnie walked through the door, her face blank.
“Is it okay that I’m here?” Bonnie asked.
Cass nodded.
“Where’s Josie?” Belinda asked. “I want to see her.”
“On the porch,” Cass said, realizing she’d lost track for a moment. Josie would be freezing, she’d been so intent playing in her snow pile. “Will you get her to come in, honey?”
“Sure,” Belinda said.
Bonnie just stared at Cass, as if she were waiting for something. She had the most terrible expression of fear in h
er eyes. “What’s wrong?” Cass asked.
“The time,” Bonnie said gently, stepping closer. “It’s getting dark out. It’s sunset.”
Cass went to the window. Do it, Billy, she said to herself. You went down on the boat you named after me. I can’t live with that. I need you back so I can tell you I love you. Cass clenched her fists, closed her eyes, concentrated with all her might. Do it, she thought. Send a flare. Send it now. Now. Now.
“It’s over,” Sid said. The sun’s last rays lit the western sky, settling across the water in silvery lilac ripples. “They’re quitting.”
The plane’s engine chopped overhead, louder and louder, as it beat a path homeward. T.J. watched it come, its lights unbelievably bright. He’d been watching the plane all day. First he’d hear it, then it would appear, then it would be gone. But it always came back. It had comforted and excited T.J., both at the same time. Once it had flown in circles, and all the boats had driven over.
All the boats but John’s. John knew where he was going.
“Whatever they’re spotting, it isn’t Billy,” John had said. “Billy’s in the current by now.”
“The current?” T.J. had asked.
“The Gulf Stream. Good thing we have such a big motherfucking diesel, because he’s drifting fast.”
John had said the planes were looking in the wrong place, but T.J. didn’t care. At least they were looking.
“Shit,” Sid said, watching the plane.
“Now’s when they’d do some good,” John said, peering up through the wheelhouse window. “Now’s when they’d spot a flare.”
“They can’t quit,” T.J. said. They needed the planes: John, Sid, and T.J., the other guys on the other boats, and the pilots were part of a team, out to save his father.
“They have orders to quit,” John said.
“So what? They can keep looking if they want to,” T.J. said, positive they would want to.
Sid made a gross laughing snort. “Son, the name of the game is moola. Costs a fortune to run a rescue operation. Fifty, a hundred grand, who the hell knows?” Now he made a disgusted snort. “Men’s lives are at stake, and the Coast Guard worries about its bottom line.”
T.J. couldn’t believe it. The plane flew overhead and didn’t turn around. It just kept flying.
“He can’t quit!” T.J. yelled.
“Come on, Billy,” John said. “Come on, man.”
“What?” Sid asked.
“One flare, Billy,” John said. “It’s dark now.”
T.J. ran out of the wheelhouse. “Poor kid,” he heard Sid say softly. T.J. tore across the deck, to the life raft. John had shown it to him the day before, when it looked as if the weather was getting really bad. “Just in case,” John had said. At the time, all T.J. had been able to do was stare, thinking, My dad’s in this storm in one of those?
He dove into the raft, rummaged around, found the flare gun. It weighed a ton, much more than the pistol Josie had thrown in the suds hole. What an asshole he’d been, pointing it at his own head. Alison seemed like a million years ago.
He lifted the flare gun, pointed it straight up. Except for Venus and the plane’s lights, moving away fast, the sky was totally dark. T.J. shot off the flare.
It zipped through the sky, a red dot. Then it exploded into a fireball, red sparkles flying everywhere. He shot again.
“What the fuck?” John yelled, racing across the deck. He yanked the flare gun out of T.J.’s hand. T.J. glanced at the wheelhouse, saw Sid frowning at the helm. He felt the engines slow.
“If they see flares they have to keep searching,” T.J. said, shoving John back.
“You little shit, you don’t know anything. It’s already gone, T.J. The plane is gone. Messing with my flares, you could have set my fucking boat on fire.”
But T.J. had his eyes on the sky. Here it came. The plane had turned around, was coming this way.
“I’ll be damned,” John said.
T.J. just watched the lights getting bigger, drawing nearer.
“This is the wrong place,” John said. “They’re going to be searching the wrong place.”
“At least they’re still searching,” T.J. said, watching the horizon.
With the sun gone, the cold came back. The man arched his back. He tried to touch the other man, but he couldn’t reach. He knew there was something he should remember. He knew there was something he should do. Shoot, he told himself. Shoot. He heard himself laugh, and he wondered what was so funny. Then it came to him: how was he supposed to shoot when he couldn’t even move? But the word locked in his mind, so he could hear the sound, like a whistle, and see the letters. Shoot. Then it was gone.
After the sun had been down for an hour and the phone hadn’t rung, Cass lowered her head to the table and started to cry. Belinda, Josie, and Bonnie stood there watching her, but Cass felt she was alone. She heard her own sobs ringing in her ears, and she couldn’t stop.
“They’re going to stop looking now, aren’t they?” Belinda asked, her voice high and thin. “They said they’d look till the sun set, and now it’s set. Are they going to stop?”
“Yes, dear,” Bonnie said.
Belinda burst into tears.
“Bob?” Josie asked, her voice anxious, tapping Cass’s hand. “Bob?”
When Cass didn’t look up, Josie began to fret. “Eh, eh, eh,” she started. But Cass no longer heard her own daughters. She no longer heard Bonnie, trying to calm Josie, trying to comfort Belinda. She didn’t hear Bonnie, her own sister, whisper in her ear, “Cass, don’t give up. John’s still looking. Other boats are, too.”
Cass didn’t hear, and she didn’t care that the Coast Guard had stopped looking. She didn’t care whether the planes had flown home. She wouldn’t have cared if someone had told her John and T.J. had turned around, abandoning the search.
Cass didn’t hear her own daughters crying, and she didn’t care that the search had been called off. She only cared about one thing, and it wasn’t there. Cass could no longer feel Billy.
Sheila held on tight to her locket. She sensed Eddie’s presence as strongly as she had on their wedding day. The sun had gone down, and streetlights smoothed all the room’s edges into gentle shadows. The grandfather clock ticked along, its pendulum flashing as it caught the light. She could hear Mary and Jimmy talking in their bedroom, their low tones interrupted by Mary’s sudden sobs. A cold wind knifed past a loose windowpane, moving the white curtain. Sheila’s pulse raced with alarm and excitement.
“Eddie, are you there?” she asked.
One of the shadows stirred. “I’m here,” he said.
“I’m so scared for Cass,” Sheila said. “When I lost you, I thought I’d lost everything. Cass and Billy have every bit as much as we did. I can’t bear to think of her.”
Sheila sat still, her heart pounding, waiting for Eddie to come toward her. She peered at every shadow. Her room held an army of shadows, crouched by her night table, the armchair, the tall clock, her bureau.
“Eddie,” she pleaded, “are you there? I need to know you’re waiting for me.”
But all Sheila heard was a branch scraping her window.
The morning after he’d shot the flares, the third day of the search, T.J. heard John call his name. T.J. had been asleep for two hours, and he felt good. The sun was just coming up, but the air felt warm, like springtime. He grabbed his jacket, from habit, but he didn’t need it. When he stepped outside, his mouth dropped open. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
T.J. stepped into a cloud of parrots. Thousands of bright-green parrots, the kind you’d see in a pet store, fluttered overhead, landing on every surface. They perched in John’s rigging, on the cabin top, on Sid’s head. They crapped all over. First thing T.J. did was yank his Red Sox cap out of his pocket, jam it on his head. He wondered if he was still dreaming.
“What the hell’s going on?” he asked John.
“We’re in the Gulf Stream,” John said, his shirt unbuttoned. “And we ha
ve company.”
“Uh, does this happen all the time out here?” T.J. asked, watching the parrots.
“Not to me,” John said.
It felt unbelievably warm. John had an even more serious air about him than T.J. had seen so far on this trip. He squinted right into the sun, unsmiling, like a gunfighter.
“Are the planes still searching?” T.J. asked.
John gestured over his shoulder. “They’re back there. We left them behind a while ago.”
“Oh,” T.J. said, wondering if they should stay with the planes.
“Start looking,” John said, “and don’t even blink. This is where we’ll find your father.”
“How do you know?” T.J. asked, already scanning.
“Like I said, I know where your dad fishes, and I know how tides and currents work. They’re not magical. You just need to factor in the wind. You use your math.” John craned his neck, looking overhead. “I need you up high. You can scope out a bigger field that way. Can you shinny up the mast?”
“Yeah, I can,” T.J. said.
“Get yourself secure in the rigging.” He handed T.J. a pair of massive binoculars and a red web strap to hold them around his neck.
T.J. waved his arms to scatter the parrots. They didn’t scare easy; they hopped along the yardarm, shifted their claw holds, flapped their wings. T.J. climbed the mast, hanging tight with his left arm. He braced his feet against the nylon lines John had coiled on hooks.
T.J. felt like a whaler in a crow’s-nest. You could see forever from up here, twice as far as from the deck. He wasn’t more than twelve feet up; he imagined how far the planes could see, and he wished one would fly over. That would make him more secure about John’s determination to search the Gulf Stream. It felt so warm, he thought they could be in Florida by now.
The parrots were squawking. T.J. tried to shoo them, but they only moved closer to him. He didn’t want to be distracted from his lookout. Mainly he roved with his naked eyes, from nine o’clock to twelve o’clock, from twelve o’clock to three o’clock, then back again. Tick, tock. He felt like the black-cat clock in Dr. Malone’s office, whose eyes and tail clicked back and forth every second.
