Stowaway

by Pam Withers

  Port light? Seagulls? Where am I? On a boat, it seems.

  I sit up, shake my foggy head, and resist the temptation to collapse back into the pillows. I’m in a stateroom and it’s too small to be Archimedes. Of course! It’s the tugboat we found at the cabin. I remember falling asleep as we left in the morning. But the port light above me indicates it’s morning again. Have I really slept for twenty-four hours? My limbs feel heavy and my brain like cotton wool, almost as if I’ve been drugged.

  Tap tap tap. Screech! Tap tap tap. I peer upward. A seagull cocks its head and peers back. Chunks of bread form strange silhouettes on the Plexiglas. That’s what the birds are pecking at.

  I listen intently. No engine, no boys, nothing but lapping waves. So we’re anchored. Maybe at Powell River? Scrambling out of bed, I charge through the lower level and note that the boys’ duffle bags remain scattered. Up to the deck. Screeech! The seagulls lift off and flap away.

  I peer at the brightening sky and notice a reddish tone. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailor’s warning. Before I can process that thought, Danillo greets me from the deck of Archimedes a few feet away: “Look, he’s awake!”

  Huh? Sebastian is lying on his stomach with a camera aimed at otters in the bay. Danillo is playing chess with Sergio, and Gabriel appears in an oversized apron and oven mitts, holding a pan of slightly burned cookies.

  “I tossed some bread over there to see if I could get some bird photos,” Sebastian explains. “Was hoping for something more interesting than seagulls. Sorry if they woke you up.”

  I look around the isolated bay the two boats are in. There’s no landmark to indicate where in the Strait we are. Then I lean down and, with one angry sweep of my arm, send the bread slices flying into the drink.

  “Where are we and what’s going on?” I demand. I glimpse Pequeño dozing on Archimedes’s salon sofa and Arturo lifting the black metal frying pan from its rack and dropping in refried beans, cheese, and bananas.

  “Well, well, look who’s finally up,” says the captain, strolling out on Archimedes’s deck. “Welcome back to the world.”

  “Checkmate!” Danillo calls out, exhilarated, as Sergio’s shoulders sag.

  “Arturo, rustle up a late lunch for Sleeping Beauty here. What would you like, Owen? Two eggs over easy on toast, bacon, raspberry jam, orange juice, and coffee with cream and sugar, as usual? And Gabriel has been baking. I need to fatten you all up after that terrible experience, yes?”

  I look from Danillo to the twins to Gabriel. No hint of traitor’s guilt or unease. They look perfectly contented. Maybe I slept through some kind of time warp? I should have stayed awake, helped direct where we were going!

  The captain pulls on the rope that hitches Homeward Bound to Archimedes until the two boats’ rails are touching. Then he holds out his muscled, tattooed forearm to help me across.

  Do I have a choice? I take the leap.

  “Sit down, sit down, boy,” the captain says as the schoolboys resume their activities. I sit and turn to look at Arturo, but he’s still got his back turned to me as he bends over the stove.

  “So, you all put in five days of tree planting, just two days short of what was needed. I guess I understand your desire to quit early, given the conditions — assuming you aren’t all exaggerating.” He chuckles. “And Arturo did the right thing saving Pequeño, although there will be hell to pay with my friend who arranged everything, especially over the lock-up trick.”

  He coughs; Arturo’s body twitches.

  “In any case, each of the boys has phoned his parents, who’ve paid up the equivalent for those missed days of work. Therefore I’ll release everyone tomorrow. In Comox, where you, Owen, can catch your ferry.”

  “But what about Homeward Bound?” I demand, dumbfounded.

  The captain laughs. “Well, we’re not towing it to Comox, so I guess it’ll stay anchored here till someone finds it.”

  “How — how did the boys find you?” I ask, trying hard to get my head around everything and trying to stay alert despite a dark, sinking feeling.

  “By phone, of course,” the captain replies. “As soon as your cute little tugboat passed near a point with service, Danillo called me, and I directed him here.”

  “Called you? You mean from a public phone on a dock?”

  The captain laughs again. “No! From Arturo’s cellphone, which my first mate tells me didn’t work from the labour camp.”

  “He had a cellphone the entire time?” I can’t help blurting out. My friend betrayed me while I slept? Maybe even drugged me to make me sleep?

  “Yes. I believe you loaned it to him?” As the captain fishes a cellphone out of his pocket, I grab it from his hands. It’s mine. It disappeared the night of the storm, the first time Arturo visited me. So he stole it and has had it all this time? Angrily, I start to punch in my parents’ number, only to realize it’s dead. I flip it over and tear off the back panel. The battery has been removed.

  “Calm yourself, little stowaway. I confiscated the battery this morning, when Danillo turned it over to me. But it’ll be easy enough to buy new batteries in Comox. Anyway, I have to get back to the bridge to plot our course. Eat heartily, boy, and the clients will keep an eye on you if you get bored.”

  That sounds like a threat. He slaps me lightly on my shoulders; my body tenses like an iron rod.

  I stare at Arturo’s back again; this time I see bloodstains that have leached through. Like he’s had a fall. Or a lashing. He turns to serve me my breakfast and backs away quickly. But not before I see purple bruises around both eyes. His punishment, or the first phase of it, for being part of our early departure from the tree-planting camp and the lock-up escapade, I figure, regardless of what the captain just said.

  I look at my plate. Sure enough, two eggs over easy on toast, bacon, raspberry jam, and coffee with cream and sugar. The smell wafts up to my nostrils. My still-shrunken stomach growls noisily. But I stand, carry it over to the sink, and dump it all in, pouring the steaming coffee on top.

  Arturo’s jaw loosens a little.

  “Could be poisoned for all I know,” I say, and stride out to the deck.

  “It wasn’t me,” Arturo hisses, but I ignore him.

  “Game of chess?” I ask Danillo, trying to keep my voice calm and even.

  “If you dare,” he responds. The other boys drift back into the salon.

  “Why?” I ask in a low voice as we position our pawns.

  “Easy,” he replies in barely a whisper. “If we had disappeared, he would have hurt our families.”

  My jaw goes slack. My heart pauses. Nothing like that had ever occurred to me.

  “He knows where our families live in Guatemala City. A deal’s a deal. Now it’s all settled and good. I slipped some crushed-up sleeping pills from the cabin into your and Arturo’s coffees, because I didn’t trust the two of you to take us back.”

  I resist upending the chessboard in his face. Instead, I grit my teeth and play chess while contemplating matters well beyond the game in front of me.

  • • •

  ARTURO

  I do my best to look calm, but I can hear my heart ticking like a time bomb. Beatings? I’ve had enough of them for a lifetime. Next time he raises those fists … And good luck to Danillo if he dares to cross me again, either.

  I push the stowaway’s breakfast into the garbage, squirt dish soap forcefully into the sink, finish the dishes, and limp toward the bridge.

  “Arturo,” Gabriel calls out.

  I swing around, way too tired to fill another order. Unlike Owen, I have not slept off all the drugs Danillo put into my coffee at the cabin. I forced my eyelids to stay open for more than an hour while piloting the tug, but eventually turned things over to Danillo and tumbled into bed. How was I supposed to know he would point Homeward Bound to Archimedes’s cove before my first snore?

  “I saw you once back at the camp using that cellphone. Stole it from your bag while you we
re asleep on Homeward Bound,” Danillo explained when we arrived. “Lucky for me it still worked. Sorry about doping you, but wasn’t sure whose side you’d be on about turning Homeward Bound back toward where Captain was waiting.”

  I lean over the stern railing and spit just to see how far it will fly.

  “Arturo, play Battleship with me?” comes Gabriel’s voice now.

  The smile comes to my swollen lips slowly. On the surface, everything looks the same. But nothing’s the same. Not the way the boys are treating me. And not me, ever since the Homeward Bound all-nighter.

  “Later, Gabriel,” I say. “Good cookies, by the way.” Well, edible this time.

  “Arturo?”

  “Yes, Pequeño?” I move to the sofa and brush the boy’s hair out of his eyes, pleased to see colour returning to the cheeks. Pequeño smiles. “I got to talk to my mom and dad.”

  “I heard you.”

  “I can make cookies, too, you know. I’ll make you some later.”

  “Sounds good, kid. Can I put a movie on for you?”

  “Nope, I can do it myself.”

  This is the only boatload of clients I’ll ever miss.

  “Need some more ointment on your wounds?” Danillo asks, holding the first-aid kit he brought to my bed soon after the Captain was finished with me.

  “I’m okay,” I say, a lump in my throat. “Thanks anyway.”

  I heave a big sigh and haul myself up the companionway to the bridge. “May I sleep now, Captain?” I ask, certain my body will collapse soon if I do not get serious rest.

  “Soon, Arturo,” comes the deep-voiced reply, laced with slightly less venom than when the group of us arrived hours earlier. “First we meet in my stateroom for a brief conference.”

  The word makes me shiver.

  “Okay.” I hesitate, wanting to ask for my pay, but decide to wait until Comox. I turn and make my way down the companionway.

  Captain will buck up after the clients are gone, I tell myself. It’ll be just the two of us down the coast again, heading home. Nicer weather will hit; heading back south is always easier than battling northwesterlies on the way up. If I work hard all the way, Captain will give me that raise. I deserve a gazillion dollars.

  It was foolish of me to imagine escaping from Captain. Leaving the tree-planting camp was wrong, and I deserved to be punished, but I did it for Pequeño. No regrets.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  OWEN

  The flag on Archimedes’s bow flaps in a wind gust that draws me out of my worry over where I just moved my king. I shiver and study the sky.

  “The wind has just changed direction and the temperature’s dropping,” I say to Danillo.

  “So?”

  “And the sky has a weird feeling to it, don’t you think?”

  “You’re just trying to distract me ’cause I’m winning. But yeah, the clouds are a little pea-green over there,” he says.

  “Means a storm is coming,” I say.

  “Oh, you’re an expert weather forecaster, are you? Well I just took your queen, so boo hoo.”

  “Congratulations.” My voice is a little icy, since I haven’t forgiven him for drugging Arturo and me and hijacking the tug back to the captain. But something tells me I have to play along for now until I can determine if the captain really will deliver me to Comox, or I see an opportunity to escape.

  I smile distractedly. “I’m going to ask the captain when we’re leaving.”

  “Suit yourself,” he says as I rise and wander up to the bridge.

  “Captain, can I help with anything?” I ask.

  “You stay off the bridge. That’s an order!” he snaps.

  Whoa, grumpy today or what? “Okay. May I ask when we’re leaving?”

  “Soon.”

  “Good. ’Cause I think a storm’s coming.”

  I turn and start down the companionway when he addresses me in an entirely different tone. “Actually, gather the boys, Owen. We need to transfer their gear from Homeward Bound to Archimedes, and I wouldn’t mind a look at the tug while we’re over there.”

  “Sure.” I get the boys’ attention and we make our way along the deck.

  “The tug’s older and less flashy than Archimedes, but strong as a bull,” I tell the captain.

  Danillo and Arturo, the first mate avoiding my eyes, draw Homeward Bound and Archimedes together by pulling on the ropes like a tug-of-war. One by one, the boys clamber over the rails. Danillo even does a show-off cartwheel without managing to fall into the water. The twins, still coughing but less than before, coordinate pulling Pequeño over like he’s a ragdoll. Gabriel leaps and laughs. Finally, the captain, Arturo, and I climb soberly from the yacht to the tug. As Arturo releases the ropes, the boats move apart like untethered horses tossing their manes, wary of one another.

  Arturo heads for the pilothouse and slumps into the captain’s seat. His jaw set, one fist clenched. His eyes have a haunted look as he rests his other hand on the tug’s tool box and stares into the Strait. Like he’s not with us, not one of us.

  The guy has hardly slept in the last thirty-six hours, I calculate, if you add together our last tree-planting day, the escape, the drive, the all-night tug-repair session, the navigation of Homeward Bound till he slept briefly, and the time he has spent being drugged, beaten up, and ordered around since.

  “Hope you get some sleep soon,” I say.

  “Get out of here,” he grumbles as he slips something from his fist into the small drawer under the chart table and slams it shut.

  The captain is opening cupboards, examining the pilothouse engine gauges and controls, and fiddling with the radio.

  “Boys!” he calls cheerily, and we gather around him. “How did you like the ride on this?”

  “Okay, but not as comfy as Archimedes,” Pequeño says.

  “Smells bad, like rot,” Gabriel offers.

  “Arturo and Owen worked all night on it,” Danillo states while doing chin-ups on the companionway hatch.

  “Yeah?” the captain responds, turning his gaze to me. “I don’t see any keys. How did you get it started?”

  “We put jumper cables on the starter solenoid and it turned over, first time,” I boast.

  “Well done,” he says. “Show me.”

  Within minutes, I have the jumper cables positioned again. Er-er-er-rrrum! Arturo, still sitting in the pilothouse, adjusts the idle. We jump as he suddenly blows his whistle hard, three times.

  “Boat approaching,” he calls down in a worried voice.

  Like a well-programmed squadron, we take one look at the captain’s panicked face and look around for somewhere to hide.

  “Quick, down there,” the captain suggests, pointing to the engine compartment. We tumble down into it, knowing it’s the only refuge Homeward Bound offers.

  I find myself squashed up in the dark between Danillo and Pequeño, just feet from the diesel stench of the engine. Another robbery or the Coast Guard? I wonder. We hear the captain’s heavy footfalls; he’s sprinting to the pilothouse.

  There are shouts, I hear the captain bellow, “Back off!” and then two reports of a firearm. My heart pounds louder than the engine beside us and sweat snakes down my neck. Vibrations of footfalls in every direction confuse us. Who’s aboard and who’s going where? What if they find us?

  From beside us, Homeward Bound’s engine suddenly revs up. We place our hands over our ears; the boys closest to the whirling prop shaft lean into the rest of us. The fumes pour like toxic waste into our lungs. Our throats tighten to gasping. Then there’s a creak and some pitching as the tug moves forward. Slowly, then faster. Soon, it seems to be hurtling at breakneck speed. Well, breakneck speed for a tug. Why? Who’s at the controls?

  Pequeño is shaking beside me; I’m straining my ears toward the hatch. No voices, just the stomp of boots running around the boat. Maybe stealing things?

  Smash! I start at the sound of glass breaking, as if dozens of drinking glasses are falling from a shelf. Then an
ear-splitting pounding of steel on steel that seems to reverberate through our very nerves. I’m so clenched up that I almost forget to breathe. What is going on? It’s like our vessel is being taken apart at the seams in an iron scrapyard.

  Just as I’m thinking of bursting out and grabbing something for a weapon, the thunder of footfalls funnels immediately over our heads and to the rear. Dust filters through the hatch cracks in their wake. Now a thud and a splash — something or someone heavy hitting the water. More shouts, an outboard motor starting and then roaring away.

  Definitely not the Coast Guard. I wipe sweat from where it’s trickling down my forehead.

  We wait for the captain or Arturo to blow the all-clear whistle. We wait and wait, ears peeled. An agony of moments passes. Nothing. No voices, no sounds but the din of the engine and the crash of bow waves.

  Finally I rise and pull on the latch of the hatch door. It doesn’t click open. Danillo jumps up to help me. We push and all but assault it. The twins rise and strain like they’re lifting barbells at a competition. It won’t budge.

  “Someone has locked us in,” Sebastian rules.

  • • •

  ARTURO

  Captain and I are the last to climb from the yacht to the tug. We’re pretending it’s all about the clients transferring their gear and letting Captain have a look at Homeward Bound.

  I have my orders, and Captain has a gun. Captain and I are about to pull off Operation Destruction.

  “They’ll make it to shore or get rescued by the Coast Guard,” Captain assured me during our whispered conference on Archimedes. “They’ll be free in no time at all.” Then he laughed. “We’ll be long gone, the real homeward-bounders.”

  I head for Homeward Bound’s pilothouse and plop down into the captain’s seat. The very place where Owen and I had our all-night repair and reveal session. Must not think of that now. I clench my fist around something Captain doesn’t know I have. It’s my own personal Operation Defiance.