Precious Cargo

by Clyde W. Ford

  Kate smiled as she walked toward me. We fell into each other’s arms, and she had to pull up the brim of her hat so we could kiss. I arched back and lifted her off her feet. I let her down, and we each grabbed a bag. Then we walked back to the water taxi.

  “Great idea,” Kate said, “your taking the boat up here to Canada, and my joining you by ferry. It buys us at least one extra day.”

  “Wind’s blowing out of the north. Perfect conditions for anchoring in Tribune Bay. We’ll make Hornby Island well before dark,” I said.

  “I’m good to go the minute we get back to the Lady,” she said.

  On our way down the metal gangway, I took a deep breath of salt air laced with the smell of fish. Way in the distance, the snowcapped peaks of the British Columbia Coastal Range danced in a jagged line across a crystal blue sky. Closer in, the Noble Lady still held her own against the fleet of anchored boats in Mark Bay. Closer yet, in the inner harbor, sun glinted off the windows of a large police catamaran and a row of megayachts. Still closer, Kate walked ahead of me. Now that view excited me most. She swiveled around.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “I thought I heard someone call your name.”

  “Pretty common name.”

  She pointed. “There, isn’t someone waving at us from the flybridge of that boat?”

  I looked down and over the gangway and out past the gleaming white tops of a few rows of boats. A woman waved from her flybridge while calling out, “Charlie.”

  She patted down her wide-brimmed floppy straw hat to keep the wind from whisking it away. A man arose beside her wearing the same hat. He stared without waving, then took the hat off, revealing a shock of white hair that sparkled as bright as the finish on their boat’s hull.

  “It’s the Bayneses,” I said.

  “The people who—”

  “Uh huh. I thought they’d be further north by now.”

  “You don’t sound that excited to see them.”

  “I had other exciting things on my mind.”

  Kate raised her eyebrows. “Like?”

  I let my eyes run the length of her body.

  “Oh, I see.” Her voiced dropped to a whisper. “I can assure you, those exciting things will be waiting for you once we get back to the boat. I’m also sure the Bayneses would appreciate hearing from you.” She smiled.

  We strolled along the docks to Sarabande. Strains of a Bach cantata grew louder as we approached the boat. When I realized that I had a guitar transcription of the same piece, a hot flash of guilt shivered through me. I hadn’t practiced much in the last few weeks.

  Marvin stood on deck. He reached over the handrail for our bags. He tossed them inside the cabin, then reached down to help Kate aboard.

  “Up here,” Angela said. She peaked over the railing of the flybridge above us. Her voice quivered joyfully.

  I let Kate climb the ladder to the flybridge first.

  “Thought you’d be further north by now.”

  “I had an epiphany,” Marvin said. “Tell you about it in a moment.”

  We sat around a teak table underneath the green flybridge awning. In the short time it had taken us to walk to their boat, Angela had prepared a feast of smoked salmon, cheese, olives, carrots, and snap peas. She’d arranged all this in strips pointing out from the center of a clear glass plate like the spokes of a bicycle wheel.

  Marvin pulled a wine bottle from the shade beside him. He’d just begun to let the deep red liquid flow into Kate’s glass when her hand shot out as if to stop him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have asked if you drank wine. It’s quite good, you know. One of our favorites. A bottle of—”

  “Red Mountain Reserve,” Kate said.

  Marvin flinched. “Yes, Hedges. You know it?”

  “We do.”

  Kate glanced my way and smiled. I chuckled. Angela and Marvin raised their eyebrows.

  “And?” Marvin asked.

  He seemed steeled for the worst.

  “I bet you know Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde,” I said.

  “Know it? Why we’ve both performed it from the pit many times,” Angela said. “But I—”

  I held up a hand. “Then you remember when they are mistakenly given the love potion.”

  “The potion was meant for the king,” Marvin said, “so he would fall in love with Isolde, but instead Tristan did.”

  “But Tristan and Isolde already loved each other and that potion simply allowed them to realize it,” Angela said. She looked between Kate and me. “Oh, that’s so dear. This wine was your love potion.”

  Kate put her hand on my thigh. “I left a bottle of Red Mountain Reserve for him,” she said.

  “With a note not to drink it alone,” I said.

  “I didn’t tell him with whom.”

  “And I didn’t drink it alone.”

  She slapped my thigh playfully, then wrinkled her nose slightly. “But at least he made the right choice.”

  We all laughed.

  “Then let’s toast to magical potions,” Marvin said.

  “And to falling in love,” Angela said.

  Marvin finished pouring the wine. Our glasses clinked together. Sharon would have liked the Bayneses.

  “Perhaps you have some news of that poor girl we brought up from Eagle Harbor,” Angela said.

  “I do. But first I want to know why you’re not further north and what that has to do with Marvin’s epiphany.”

  Angela chuckled. She shook her head. “What epiphany? It has do with his mistress.”

  “Mistress?” Kate and I both said.

  “Through all the years we’ve been in love, Marvin’s always had his mistresses.”

  “And you have enjoyed them too, dear.”

  “That I have.”

  Kate and I now took our turns at raised eyebrows.

  “And Sarabande was to be our last,” Angela said.

  “This was to be our last summer aboard her,” Marvin said. “But anchored off that lovely white sand beach outside of Montague Harbor the other night, with dark seas shimmering under an almost full moon, I said to Angie, We’re not selling Sarabande. Even if we are a pair of old sailors. I’d rather go down with a boat than without one.” He reached for Angela’s hand.

  Kate smiled through moist eyes.

  “A toast, to old boaters,” Marvin said.

  We raised our glasses.

  “And to boaters who will someday be old,” I said.

  Our glasses clinked again.

  I told Angela and Marvin about the human-trafficking ring Raven and I ended; about the women drowned at Eagle Harbor; about the Kincaids, Frank Abadi, Eliana and her family, and Maria Delarosa; and about CJ.

  “You saved lives, Charlie, and prevented more suffering.”

  Images of Eliana Morales flashed through my mind. “I only wish I could have done more.”

  “You did do more,” Angela said. “Knowing this lifts a forty-year-old burden from my heart. I think I can finally say good-bye to our darling, Amy, knowing we helped other parents find out the truth about their daughters’ fate when we were never able to find out the truth about our own.”

  “What do we owe you?” Marvin asked.

  I took a deep breath and looked at Kate. “How about another bottle of Hedges?”

  “B . . . But,” Angela said.

  Marvin put an arm gently on her shoulder. “I’ve got another bottle down below, and we’d be glad for you two to have it.”

  After Kate and I stepped off Sarabande, Marvin swung Kate’s bags over the railing. “Be careful, wine’s in the large duffel.”

  twenty-nine

  Kate rested her head on my shoulder as we rode the water taxi back to Newcastle Island.

  “I like what you did back there.” She squeezed my arm. “Asking for a bottle of wine rather than for money.”

  “Janet would tell me that I’m a poor businessman.”

  “And I wou
ld tell you that money isn’t everything.”

  Once back at the Lady, Kate took the helm. I popped the engine hatch and checked the oil and water. She fired up the Lady’s engine while I went out on deck and washed down the anchor chain as it rose. We steamed out of Mark Bay and headed down Newcastle Channel. After dodging a ferry lumbering into Departure Bay, we threaded our way among the rocks lining Horswell Channel and finally entered the Strait of Georgia. The Noble Lady’s bow rose up, then slapped down in the three-foot seas. I sat on the bench behind the helm. Kate turned to me.

  “Sea’s nothing,” she said. “Last week we were out in near gale-force winds on the Sea Eagle in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in ten- to twelve-foot seas.”

  I nodded. “I know. I was out there too.”

  Kate smiled. She kept one hand on the wheel and reached her other hand back for me. We held hands. She turned around. “And I’m glad that you and the Noble Lady made it back safely.”

  The dark, smoky-blue silhouettes of Texada Island and the British Columbia mainland loomed across the strait. Ahead of us, the Ballenas Islands appeared as two bumps on the horizon.

  Kate let go of my hand. She brought up the course to Tribune Bay on the navigational computer. She flipped a switch and set the boat on autopilot. Then she stepped up and sat next to me on the bench. She rested a hand on my thigh.

  “You’re quiet,” she said.

  “I’m happy to be out on the water with you, heading off on an adventure.”

  “Raven drove me to catch the ferry,” Kate said. “He doesn’t talk much, but I like the feeling I get when I’m around him. He hummed softly as we drove.”

  “Chanting,” I said. “He’s constantly chanting. Prayers to the spirit world to aid those of us living and those who are dead, he says.”

  “Had you told him that my mother was part Inuit and part Kwakiutl?”

  “No.”

  “That’s strange because out of nowhere he encouraged me to reconnect with my Northwest Indian roots as though he knew. He offered me his help. What’s even stranger is that just a few days earlier I’d been thinking about making a trip north to learn more about my mother’s family. Raven seemed to have the words I needed to hear at just the right time.”

  “In Raven’s world everything happens at the right time, even if it seems wrong to others at the moment.”

  “Like the way he appeared on Cypress at the right time? I noticed you didn’t tell the Bayneses all of the details, like what really happened that night.”

  “I didn’t think they needed to know the full extent of the tragedy and the gore.” I took a deep breath. “Yes. Raven’d been on Cypress all along, hidden in the brush near Eagle Harbor. I couldn’t reach him on his cell phone. He followed RB from Eagle Harbor to Smuggler’s Cove. While RB waited for Bud to ferry another group of immigrants in from Longhorn, Raven slipped away with the first two that Bud had brought in. He took them to his boat, which he’d tied to a mooring buoy off Pelican Beach.

  “Then he hurried back to Smuggler’s Cove. He saw my dinghy there and figured I’d gone to Eagle Harbor after Bud and RB. Along the way, he even stopped to help RB, who’d fallen on his own knife. When Raven didn’t see me at Eagle Harbor, he walked up to the compound where CJ stayed. He’s still pondering why he didn’t realize that she had my gun in her sweatshirt.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Kate said.

  “I don’t think he feels it was his fault as much as he’s trying to fathom why he was called to be part of CJ’s tragic death.”

  “Called?”

  “Spirit Walkers,” I said. “In Raven’s world, there are people called to help others even if they do not hear their names. He calls these people Spirit Walkers. I believe he feels that he was called to Cypress to help the souls of CJ and the other women find their way home.”

  “Called to help others even if they do not hear their names? . . . Does that also make you a Spirit Walker?”

  “In Raven’s world it does.”

  Kate shook her head. “What happened to those young women, and then to CJ, really was tragic. A misdirected crime of passion,” she said. “Bud deserved CJ’s rage, not those young women, but she took it out on them anyway, and then she took it out on herself.” Kate sighed. “And in CJ’s troubled world it probably made sense. Beauty. Desirability. Those young women represented what she wanted but thought she didn’t have. It seems like she did have low self-esteem. She didn’t realize that her real beauty lay within.”

  “It was Raven’s observation that she traveled far in the outside world to escape traveling deep within herself.”

  “Adventure as a way of running from inner demons?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Kate patted my leg. “When I’m old, and my beauty has faded, will you still love me?”

  I placed my hand on top of hers. “You will then be my Sea Maiden.”

  “Your what?”

  “The Sea Maiden is an old wooden trawler that I fell in love with. She’s berthed near Raven’s boat.”

  “You’re comparing me to a boat again.”

  “I am.”

  Kate smiled. “I like old wooden boats.”

  “So do I.”

  She squeezed my leg. “I’m glad because someday we will both be living with one.”

  I laughed. “Ben’s chief prevailed on the Skagit County sheriff’s department to shut down Abadi’s club. Abadi must have known that something was coming. He had no young Mexican women in the club when the police arrived. Kincaid, his son, and Ray Bob are in jail for illegally transporting immigrants into the country. My hope is that the DA will get the Kincaids to testify against Abadi, shutting him down permanently and sending him to jail. Longhorn was confiscated.”

  Kate chuckled. “Yeah, it’s sitting at Station Bellingham’s dock. Everyone’s joking about the ‘gin palace ’ boat, and when can they take it out on patrol.” She sighed. “What’ll happen to the Mexicans that Kincaid had on his boat?”

  “I brought the immigrants I found on Longhorn around to Raven’s boat, where I gathered the others. Then I carried them all back to Bellingham while Raven stayed with CJ’s body, and with Bud. I called Maria Delarosa the moment I got into port. Now there’s a bulldog. She swept the immigrants away and hid them. Then, through a lawyer, she made the Skagit County DA an offer he couldn’t refuse: If he wanted their testimony in convicting the Kincaids, he’d have to come up with a plan for them to stay in this country legally. I haven’t heard the outcome, but Maria’s nothing if she’s not persuasive. She’ll find a way to make it happen. I only wish she’d been able to persuade Eliana to seek treatment.”

  “And you didn’t want to take a few days to see if you could find her?”

  I stared straight ahead. Hornby Island now appeared, like a tiny swelling of the horizon. I sighed. “I wanted to go after her, but Maria said it wouldn’t work. Even if I found her, it would be a struggle to pry her away from the streets. Maria said the chances were that, given the choice between treatment and the streets, she’d choose the streets again.”

  Kate squeezed my leg again. “You did what you could. You heard Angela. You accomplished even more than you know.”

  “Still, it wasn’t enough for Eliana.”

  “But maybe it’ll prove to be enough for the people you rescued from Kincaid and his smuggling ring. Maybe it’ll also help the Bayneses finally move on from the loss of their daughter.”

  “It feels like a tiny drop in an ocean of need.”

  “You know how to start filling an ocean of need?”

  I put my arm around Kate and pulled her closer. “One drop at a time,” I said.

  Kate leaned her head on my shoulder. “You also made a new friend,” she said.

  “Raven?”

  “Yes. Something tells me that this friendship will be significant for you both.”

  “I look forward to knowing Raven, and his world, better.”

  Kate raised her head and turned to kiss me, but she
yawned in the middle of the kiss.

  “Is that a message that my kissing’s boring you?”

  “It’s a message from my body to me that I’ve gotten little sleep since being on the Sea Eagle. During the training mission, the CO made me his exec.”

  “Good experience,” I said.

  “But not good sleep.”

  I stood up and gently guided Kate down to the bench. She folded her legs up. I grabbed a blanket and a pillow from a shelf above and tucked her in.

  “I wish you could join me,” she said.

  “Someone has to stand watch.”

  “But the boat’s on autopilot.”

  “Lieutenant. You know the rules.”

  “A vessel under way must have a watch-stander at all times.” She yawned.

  “I’ll join you when we get to Tribune Bay,” I said.

  “I’ll dream about it until we get there,” she said.

  I stepped up to the helm and took the boat off autopilot. I swung the Noble Lady around so her bow cut the wave fronts at an angle, which made for a smoother ride.

  Four hours later, the wind had died as we approached Tribune Bay. The sunset backlit the mountains to the west in shades of deep orange and blue.

  With the Lady on autopilot, I climbed downstairs to pull the anchor bridle from a rear lazarette so I’d have it ready once we anchored. Kate’s bags sat atop the starboard lazarette. I almost flung them inside the cabin when I remembered the wine. So I carefully placed the larger duffel on the galley table and pulled out the bottle of wine.

  Marvin had duct-taped a check onto the neck of the bottle—a check for more money than I made in a month’s service in the Coast Guard. A note on the check read, “A peaceful heart is priceless.”

  BACK BEHIND THE WHEEL, I saw a throng of people dotting the white sands of Tribune Bay’s sweeping, mile-wide beach. I thought about waking Kate to help me anchor, but decided against it. The bottom at Tribune Bay is sandy for at least half a mile out. I slowed down and nudged up to my favorite spot. I dropped the anchor, then threw the gearshift into reverse and backed down on it. The anchor bit hard. Though it felt good to be back in Tribune Bay, heaviness now weighed on my heart.