by Tyler Keevil
‘Funny but fitting,’ I said.
‘How do you figure?’
‘Chump change for a couple of chumps.’
Jake shrugged and took up his guitar (we’d stashed our things in the wheelhouse, well away from the horse) and collapsed behind me on what Albert called the Captain’s chair: a La-Z-Boy recliner we used for nights on watch during season. Propping the guitar on his knee, Jake stroked the strings once and resumed tuning them. He plucked repeatedly at his new B-string and made some adjustments that were indiscernible to me. But then, I’m pretty much tone-deaf so any adjustment would have been. Jake got the musical ability in our family, and Sandy got the physical coordination. I don’t know what I got.
Jake worked on the tuning for a time and I expected him to play a song, but he didn’t. He shook his head and made an overly exasperated sound and laid the guitar atop his suitcase. He fiddled with the footrest lever on the chair and reclined it.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ I said.
‘You need me to do anything?’
‘You’ve done enough for now.’
‘You ain’t still mad about that phone call?’
‘I ain’t mad about anything. Not about stealing a horse or stealing a boat or the phone call. Least of all the phone call.’
Jake yawned and stretched – deliberately, just to show how unconcerned he was.
‘So long as we’re good.’
‘We’ll pull up later to look at the charts and plan where we’ll dock. I want to put some miles behind us.’ I adjusted my course, angling a few degrees to port. ‘You might as well get some sleep.’
‘I’ll drive later.’
‘You don’t drive a boat. You steer it.’
‘I’ll steer it then.’
I didn’t bother to answer. I stood and gazed out the windshield, feeling the thrum of the engine. Ahead of us the inlet, which runs east–west, opened up into Georgia Strait, the body of water that divides Vancouver Island from the mainland. A morning haze veiled the island, but poking up above the layers of fog and cloud you could distinguish the mountains, like fragments of frosted glass. I made some comment on the scenery – some vague comment, meant to patch things up between us – but Jake didn’t answer and when I looked behind me I saw that he’d closed his eyes. His head was tilted back and his mouth hung half-open. With each breath his gap tooth whistled mournfully. Even in sleep, his hands clenched the armrests, holding on tight, as if he was in a plane coming in for a rough landing. His hands did not look like musician’s hands. They were grimy and the nails were rimmed with black and he’d skinned two knuckles on his left hand during the shenanigans of that night – loading the horse, probably. The blood had dried in dark flakes and started to peel.
His threats to Delaney weren’t merely a form of grandstanding, since he had tried to kill with those hands. I know this because I was there and I saw it, and possibly prevented the murder, though I can’t be sure about that and I suppose nobody really knows except Jake.
It happened at the Lynwood pub, which is closed now, but which used to be down on Barrow Street, at the base of the Second Narrows Bridge on the North Shore side, among the docks and warehouses. It felt a bit like a warehouse itself: one long room, dimly lit, with a low ceiling, and filled up with any old junk the owner thought to put there: motley table and chair sets, a battered jukebox, and a mix of sports paraphernalia, pin-up girls, and historic photos. Mostly it catered to a blue-collar crowd: longshoremen, labourers, and railyard workers. Jake and I went there to drink regularly, always alone or with Maria. After Sandy’s death we began to avoid the bars we used to frequent, and which were still frequented by our old high school friends. We’d been permanently cut off from them by the perennial nature of our grief, which did not dwindle or fade with time but instead seemed to grow and grow, relentless as ivy, slowly overwhelming and stifling us.
With Maria it was different because of her closeness to our family and the fact that she had been with Jake the night we lost Sandy. It had devastated her, too, a fact which should not be lost in all of this. She had always wanted to please and impress our sister, and – like everyone – had looked to her for guidance. Her own home life hadn’t been easy, to put it mildly, and I often felt that for Maria we represented a source of stability and normality.
So Maria was still one of us, and with us, the night this all happened.
We were sitting in a corner booth. They had a few of these booths with faux-leather benches, the vinyl all torn and sprouting stuffing. For a time Jake and I took turns dancing with Maria, and afterwards we settled down to share a pitcher of Pilsner. I remember very well the moment Maria reached over and touched Jake’s arm and said Jake’s name, and also the way his face changed when he turned to look at what she’d seen.
At the bar sat a guy in a pinstripe suit, the face and figure unmistakeable. The suit resembled the suit that he’d worn to the hearing, where he’d been charged with what they call impaired driving causing death. Since he lived in that area, once he got out on parole I knew that we would likely run into him at some point – though it still strikes me as unfortunate (or perhaps fated) that it happened so soon, and under such circumstances.
It was seven months after Sandy died.
His name doesn’t matter. He was just a guy. Maybe five ten, and overweight, with a bit of a beer-paunch and a jowelled face. He had thinning hair and was wealthy enough to own that kind of car, and to think he could drive it at that speed, while coked up and half-cut. I suppose there was more to him than that but it was as much as I needed or cared to know.
In the hearing, he said he’d been depressed, that he hadn’t known what he was doing.
In the bar, he had a lady friend with him – a brunette in a red dress – and the two of them were drinking, drunk, leaning towards each other to shout over the music. Jake watched them for a while. I repeatedly said that we ought to get out of there, and forget we ever saw him. Jake put his drink aside and ignored me, and ignored Maria too. She’d offered to go get our coats. Jake said he wanted to sit tight. Jake said he wanted to see what the guy did.
I thought I knew what he meant, and in any event he would brook no argument. We pushed aside our drinks and watched, and waited. The guy knocked back two more highballs and then he and his date hit the dance floor, grinding away in a drunken daze. This went on for some time. I felt as if the three of us were on surveillance: clear, focused, professional.
After about half an hour they got their coats, and went outside.
Jake stood up and followed, bulldozing towards the door in a straight line, forcing people out of his way. This part, since I’ve thought about it so much, plays out dreamily in my memory. Maria was behind him, and then me. Outside, in the parking lot, the guy had his arm around his date and his keys in his other hand, jangling them. When Jake saw that he started to trot. Maria called out to him, and he looked back over his shoulder, and even though his answer was in response to her, in my head I see it as him talking past her, to me. He said something oddly innocuous, about needing to take care of this.
He was smiling. He looked almost exultant, relieved. I ran after him, overtaking Maria, but I was about twenty yards back, and Jake reached the guy before I caught up to them. The guy had just opened his car door. It was another fancy car – not a Mercedes, like the one he’d hit Sandy with, but in that league.
From ten yards back, I heard Jake say, ‘Let me just give you a hand, here.’ And he shoved the guy down, half in and half out, and started shutting the door on him repeatedly.
The guy screamed, and his girlfriend started shrieking. She was shrieking over and over, piercing as an alarm. I ran the last few steps and caught Jake with a tackle. We both went down together and I had to hold him and he fought back against me – really bucking and raging. At the trial the guy’s date said Jake shouted out that he wanted to kill him. I actually don’t remember that, but even if he didn’t say it I think it was true. Jake had talked often about kill
ing him, though of course I never mentioned that to anybody else. Jake didn’t succeed, anyway. The guy had four cracked ribs, a shattered ulna, and a concussion. But I got there in time. Jake was still charged and found guilty of attempted murder.
The guy had gotten two years for killing our sister, and served six months. Jake got seven years, and served five and half. Partly that was due to the fact that he never showed remorse – not during the trial or at any of his parole hearings. There was no real reason to think he wouldn’t do the same thing again, given half a chance.
So there it is. That’s what Jake was in for. It’s no great mystery. Anybody could read most of that in the papers. On the one hand, it has nothing to do with this story, and what happened. On the other, it has everything to do with it.
Chapter Nineteen
Sooner or later the horse had to figure out she was on a boat, and when she did something outrageously destructive was bound to happen. It occurred at about nine o’clock, three hours after we set out. We’d passed the headland of the Pacific Spirit Regional Park – by the university – and Wreck Beach, which is a nudist beach, though of course at that hour and that time of year there were no nudists on it. The morning clouds had begun to thin and crack apart, revealing lines of blue, like turquoise veins in a cavern of quartz. As we approached Steveston, I heard a terrible and thunderous racket from below deck.
I shouted at Jake, who was still dozing in the recliner. I often think how bewildering it must have been for him – that moment when he awoke. He sat straight up, so the recliner seemed to rocket him forward. His bandana half-covered his eyes and a strand of spit clung to his mouth and he looked like a patient who had been given a jolt of electro-shock therapy: terrified and completely bamboozled. Then, in whatever order, he must have remembered that we had stolen a racehorse, and a boat, and that we were now on our way south towards the United States – a chain of happenings that wasn’t just unbelievable, but unthinkable.
Considering all that, he took it surprisingly well.
He adjusted his bandana and said, ‘What the goddamn fuck?’
‘The horse is going batshit,’ I said, and dropped the throttle into neutral. ‘That horse of yours is going absolutely ballistic.’
We went out onto the upper deck – the sea spray catching us cold – and slid, one at a time, down the ladder to the lower deck, like a pair of firemen roused by the alarm. Just as I touched down, Jake said something I didn’t hear, and the aft window of the galley exploded: bursting outwards as if it had been shot. Pebbles of glass rained down on us, tinkling across the deck. It was safety glass, which was lucky for us and the horse as well.
‘Ah, hell,’ I said.
We had a clear view of Shenzao through the window. She had either freed or broken her reins and as such was no longer restricted in her movements. She stamped and snorted and kicked. I could see her hind legs flicking out in white flashes, quick as lightning, and where they struck woodwork cracked.
‘Albert,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Albert.’
I said it as if he was there, standing with us.
‘Christ,’ Jake said, ‘I hope she doesn’t hurt herself.’
That hadn’t even occurred to me. Up until then, I had been thinking of her as invincible, which I suppose is what we’re prone to do with powerful animals.
‘Stop her, man,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to stop her.’
‘I don’t got to do anything.’
‘You’re the goddamn groomsman.’
‘Groomsmen are the guys at weddings.’
‘You’re the expert – you’re supposed to know about this.’
‘I know not to go near her in that state.’
‘Goddammit, Jake.’
‘She’ll calm down in a few minutes.’
‘We won’t have a galley in a few minutes.’
Jake threw up his hands and went off to the stern to have a smoke. I stood and watched the horse. She turned around on the spot – somehow manoeuvring that great muscular bulk of hers in a tight circle, like a dog chasing its own tail. Then she seemed to notice me and stuck her head out the broken window, her eyes wild with wrath.
‘Hey girl,’ I said.
I cooed to her and coaxed her and held out a hand, acting like I was some damned horse whisperer. She bared her teeth and snorted at me. Then she turned in a circle again and kicked in the two cupboards above the sink. They crumpled like cardboard.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Go right ahead.’
I sank down on one of the fenders and held my head with my hands. I couldn’t bear to watch. But I heard. I heard her raging and rampaging and rumbling. She sounded like a thunderstorm trapped in a bottle. It went on for a while – long enough for Jake to have his smoke, anyway. When it finally petered out he came back and I stood up and without saying anything we went inside together to assess the damage. I saw the sink first: spouting water straight upwards, like a damned geyser. She had kicked the tap off. Then there was the broken window and the smashed cupboards and the gaping holes in the walls. You could see right through to the bunks. The galley table had been uprooted from its stanchion on the floor and overturned (this was how she’d freed herself) and the vinyl bench seats had tears and teeth marks in them. The tarps I’d laid down were now soaked in urine and dotted with dollops of horse crap. The destruction was complete and total and, in its way, astonishing.
Jake said, ‘I’m sorry, man.’
I didn’t answer. I just made a feeble, frustrated sound. I was close to sobbing right there in the galley. The thought of Albert and Evelyn and Tracy seeing that, and knowing it was me who had done it, was enough to make my heart shrivel up like a goddamned prune.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said.
‘You can fix it when we get paid.’
‘This’ll take a lot of fixing.’
‘We’ll have a lot of money.’
‘I don’t want to talk about the money.’
I slumped onto the remains of the bench seat. Jake hunkered down in front of the horse, who had her snout buried in a box of Cheerios. As far as I knew the box was empty, but maybe she could smell the remnants. Jake looked her over.
‘I don’t think she’s hurt.’
‘I wouldn’t care if she was.’
‘Don’t talk like that. None of this is her fault.’ When I didn’t answer, he spoke to her: ‘Is it, girl? You’re just angry and scared. Tell him, Shenzao.’
At her name, she lifted her head up, and when she did the cereal box came up too – stuck on her snout. Jake chuckled, and swatted my shoulder, as if to say, ‘Come on now – let’s look at the light side of this.’ Shenzao irritably shook the box loose, stepped on it with her forehoof, and set to gnawing at one of the cardboard flaps.
‘She’s hungry, too,’ Jake said. ‘She needs food. No wonder she’s all agitated. A hungry horse, trapped on a boat. You’d be mad, too.’
‘Well give her some oats or whatever.’
Jake looked at me. I could read it all in that look.
‘You don’t have any food for her.’
‘It was supposed to be a border run – four hours tops.’
The broken tap was still spraying water everywhere.
I filled one of Evelyn’s pots from the leaky tap before shutting off the water supply in the engine room. We hadn’t had much water when we’d set out, on account of it being the end of the season, and now we were down to a few litres, according to the gauge. Then there was the issue of food – for the horse and for us – and also diesel fuel. Albert always topped up the tank at the end of season, but that wouldn’t be enough for a round trip. So there were serious implications to consider.
‘We’ll have to stop anyway,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to stop when we cross into US waters. We can get food then.’
We were still standing there in the destroyed galley. Shenzao lapped lustily at her water. The storm had run through her and she seemed calm and serene as a rainbow now.
Jake asked, ‘Why
do we have to stop?’
‘To declare ourselves. You got to do that.’
Jake stood with his hands on his hips.
‘Where would we stop?’
I got out the charts, which we kept under the bench seats in the galley. We didn’t actually use them much in the wheelhouse, since the boat had Satnav and a built-in digital map display, which was far easier to navigate by. But Albert was traditional and still liked to sit down here in the evenings, plotting our courses, and he’d taught me how to do it. He said any seaman worth his salt could plot by a chart and a compass, and even the stars. He said Satnavs and fancy tech could fail, in a storm or for no reason at all, so you had to prepare.
‘Should we take these up top?’ I asked.
We looked at the horse. She was still slurping at the water.
Jake said, ‘Don’t reckon she’s going to freak again.’
We lifted the table and set it aright: the stanchion had a bit of wobble to it now but held. I found the chart we needed and unrolled it. Jake and I stood over it, looking down. It depicted the northwest seaboard, showing the coastline from Alert Bay, near the northern tip of Vancouver Island, down to Astoria, Washington.
‘This is us,’ I said to Jake, tapping a point on the map, ‘near Steveston, here.’
‘I know that much. I know where Steveston is.’
I slid my finger south, over the ferry terminal at Tsawwassen; beyond it was the red dotted line representing the border, which hooked south around the tip of Vancouver Island. On the other side lay a cluster of green patches: the San Juan Islands. I pointed to them.
