No Good Brother

by Tyler Keevil

  ‘Sure. Call the boss.’

  ‘She knows the area, wingnut.’

  Like before, he went out on deck to talk to her. This time he ducked behind the base of the crane, so I couldn’t keep an eye on him, and gauge his body language. I was left in suspense and uncertainty until he clambered back up the ladder, a quarter hour later. By then we had passed Blake Island, and closed in on the entrance to Vashon Channel.

  He came in looking worryingly cheerful, with a bounce to his step, and announced that the plan had changed, in a casual way that he damn well knew would irk me.

  ‘Who changed it?’

  ‘Maria said Henderson Inlet is better.’

  ‘Better how?’

  ‘There’s an old abandoned pier, there.’

  ‘What about my plan, and Eld?’

  ‘Apparently fishermen use that public dock in Eld.’

  ‘Eld looks less built up on the map.’

  ‘She said it isn’t, and she’s the one who lives there.’

  ‘Sure. She’s in charge.’

  ‘What are you all het up about?’

  ‘We haven’t even seen her, and she’s already calling the shots, changing our plan.’

  ‘It wasn’t much of a plan.’

  ‘It don’t matter.’

  ‘I’ll call her back, if it means that much to you.’

  ‘Like hell.’

  We steamed on, ignoring each other for a time while we entered the mouth of Vashon Channel. On both sides the land rose up sharply from the water: a glacial gorge lined with endless rows of spiky ponderosa pines. It was like steering into a giant iron maiden.

  Jake asked, ‘How much further?’

  ‘A few hours. But I don’t want to dock while it’s light.’

  ‘Maria said the sooner the better.’

  ‘And I say dusk. I’m the captain, okay?’

  Jake started laughing and – after a moment of trying to act superior – I did too. I was the captain, all right. The captain of a stolen boat, transporting a stolen horse, and an ex-con who had snuck across the border, claiming to be outlaws doing it for noble reasons: and the whole lot of us soon to be wanted by authorities in two countries.

  ‘Tell Maria we’ll call when we arrive,’ I said.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Maria had chosen a place called Chapman Bay, five miles down Henderson Inlet on the western side. We arrived at ten past four, just as dusk settled over the water, staining it dark. During the approach I’d slowed down our speed by a few knots to delay our arrival, and if Jake had noticed this deliberate trick he didn’t hassle me about it.

  In the glassy water you could see the ripples pushed just ahead of our bow. A cold front had settled on southern Washington and brought along with it some dark, lead-bellied snow clouds. A nature reserve surrounded the entire bay, and copses of hemlock and alder stood out all along the shore. The south side of the bay curved out further than the north, and from that point a long wooden pier extended into Henderson Inlet, running northwest, parallel to the mainland. You could see it from miles away. I had no clue what it had been used for but it looked like it might have been a railway bridge at one time. As it turned out, a year after all this happened the US government tore up much of the pier, since it was coated with creosote (a wood preservative that’s harmful to waterfowl) and had become toxic as it deteriorated. But at that time, though abandoned and out of use, the pier was still fit for purpose. For our purpose, anyways. I had to grant Maria that.

  The landspit from which the pier extended had a small cabin on it. Next to the cabin I thought I could see somebody waiting, but we were still a mile offshore, and in the twilight the figure could have been a stump or a tree or a shadow.

  ‘You better call,’ I told Jake.

  He got out his cellphone and redialled Maria. This time he didn’t step outside to talk to her, so I was actually privy to their conversation for a change.

  ‘We’re all ready to dock,’ he told her. ‘Are you here?’

  Apparently she was, since he said, ‘Yeah. And bring a light if you got one. We might need it for the horse.’

  The pier rested on wooden pilings, which held it a foot or two above the water at the current tide. As we drew near it, I steered alongside the pier and cruised parallel to it, with the throttle low. I saw no need to dock this far out; the charts showed that the bay was deep and docking closer in would save a long walk down the pier with the horse. A few bats circled and flitted low over the water, skimming for bugs, and from one of the pilings I saw the long, elegant shadow of a heron take flight, startled by our presence and the intrusion.

  The figure I’d seen by the cabin moved down the beach. It had to be Maria, though from that distance she was still just a shadow in a raincoat. A hundred yards from shore, I cut the throttle and told Jake to put out the fenders. As soon as he had, I used the stern thrusters to push us against the pier. Jake hopped over the gunnel with a line to tie us up (still not doing it like I’d showed him) and when that was secure I cut the engine and the pervasive silence sounded unnerving: it signalled the end of our time at sea, and a return to land.

  I joined Jake on the pier and we walked down it together, side-by-side. In places dry rot had eaten away the planks, but those that remained felt solid. Even so I crept along cautious as a cat. My body had adjusted to the rhythms of the water and the pier seemed too stable and unforgiving in comparison. The figure in the raincoat started out from shore to meet us, and something about the walk, the gait, struck me as familiar: it was her, all right. A light came on – she’d brought the flashlight Jake had mentioned, and shone the beam over the pier to light her way. Every so often she’d tilt it up and the glare would catch us full-on, and in those moments I had the impression of a train coming right at us, ready to mow us down.

  I didn’t get a clear look at her until we met up, halfway down the pier. Her light created a circular pool on the pier at our feet, and lit up our faces from below. I hadn’t seen Maria in years – not since Jake’s final parole hearing – but in the harsh winter twilight she didn’t look all that different. In my ignorance I had expected her life and habits to have taken a toll, and for her to be some hag-like version of her younger self. But she was still Maria, and that was disorientating, and also oddly stirring, heartening. I can’t say whether Maria is beautiful by any normal standards. She doesn’t have a face that would launch a thousand ships (as the saying goes) but she’s always had something else. And it was enough to launch one ship, at least: ours.

  She said, ‘The notorious Harding Brothers.’

  ‘Poncho and Lefty,’ Jake said. ‘At your service, ma’am.’

  She hugged Jake, folding her arms behind his neck, and after she did the same to me. Beneath her coat she felt as she always had: both strong and fragile, like a glass statue. I’d intended to keep her at arm’s length but of course that was impossible. Already, holding her on that dock, I felt my animosity towards her dissipating like wisps of smoke.

  ‘I can’t believe he roped you into this,’ she said to me.

  Jake said, ‘He came of his own volition.’

  ‘Is that how you got the boat?’

  ‘We stole the boat,’ Jake said.

  ‘We borrowed the boat,’ I said.

  ‘You’re both crazy.’

  ‘Since we couldn’t cross the border, we had to think of something – or we wouldn’t have been able to make our delivery.’

  She looked at him. It was almost as if she’d forgotten about the horse.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘She’s in the galley.’

  ‘I’ve got the trailer hitched to my truck.’

  ‘Well – we better hop to it.’

  Jake and I led Shenzao out onto deck, and she came amicably enough. In the evening cold she stood still and alert, her tail twitching, her breath steaming. She looked travel-weary and bedraggled, but as ever the wan glow of her coat had a mesmeric quality, standing out so starkly against the shadows a
nd the dark. Maria coolly scrutinized the horse from the pier, from afar. She made no move to help and didn’t look particularly impressed.

  ‘So this is what all the fuss is about,’ she said. ‘Another horse.’

  ‘She’s one of a kind.’

  ‘That’s what he said about the last one.’

  ‘The last horse he stole?’

  ‘Normally he buys them. He’s got a bunch of them.’

  I said, ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘It’s a fad,’ Jake said. ‘A gangland fad.’

  Maria shone her flashlight across Shenzao, panning the beam from her head to her haunch. She said, ‘They breed them and race them and show them off to each other.’

  Jake added, ‘Or steal them from each other to ransom them back, apparently.’

  We led Shenzao towards the ramp, in our now customary way, with Jake holding the reins and me gripping the halter. On first try, she became reluctant and resisted, much to Maria’s amusement. Then Jake tried a trick – something he’d seen at the track. Rather than tug and haul and pull, and get engaged in the kind of tug-o-war we’d so often partaken in, he backed the horse up, walked her in a brief circle and then led her towards the ramp at a trot. He stepped up first and Shenzao hot-footed it behind him. Since the gunnel was on a level with the pier, they could simply walk off the other side, and the whole process looked very simple and elegant.

  ‘That’s how it’s done,’ he said.

  ‘Bravo,’ Maria told him.

  She’d taken a step back to give him and the horse room.

  ‘Maria, meet our girl Shenzao,’ he said.

  ‘Me and horses don’t get on so well.’

  ‘You live on a damn ranch.’

  ‘I’ve never been one for animals. You know that.’

  ‘I figured that might have changed.’

  Shenzao huffed – as if she sensed a certain lack of hospitality on Maria’s part.

  Maria said, ‘Sam will love her, though.’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Samantha. My daughter. She’s a regular cowgirl.’

  ‘Sounds like my kind of kid.’

  She laughed, and shook her head, and then started walking away down the pier.

  ‘Come on,’ she called back. ‘I’m freezing my ass off.’

  Jake watched her go for a moment.

  ‘How do you like that?’ he asked. ‘I bring her a goddamned stolen racehorse, on a stolen boat, all the way across the sea, from another country, and this is the thanks I get.’

  ‘So much for your hero’s welcome.’

  We followed Maria down the pier, walking on either side of the horse to keep her hemmed in. Maria waited for us to catch up to her, then used her light to guide us the rest of the way. Shenzao’s hooves resounded on the deck, echoing out across the water, and the old planks creaked and groaned beneath us. We formed this odd procession, with Maria in front like the lantern-bearer. It all felt solemn and ritualistic and significant.

  Halfway to shore, something cracked and I stumbled, crying out in terror and surprise. The commotion startled the horse, who cross-stepped sideways and whinnied. Jake struggled to control her. Nobody really knew what had happened, including me.

  Once he’d settled Shenzao, Jake said, ‘What the hell?’

  Maria shone the light on me. A plank had given way beneath me and my leg had plunged through to the knee. I tried to pull it up, and set off a stinging pain in my calf. I blinked into the light, sheepish and helpless.

  ‘Damned plank gave way,’ I said.

  And of course instead of sympathy I got only laughter.

  ‘Good old Poncho,’ Jake said.

  ‘It hurts like hell.’

  ‘Let me help.’

  ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘Go on and load her in the trailer first.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘She’s skittish. You got to hold onto her anyway.’

  They turned and continued leading her. I watched the beam of light and Shenzao’s shape recede from me, then turned to the task of freeing myself. The splintered plank had folded down, pincering my leg between the broken halves. I pried at the wood, pulling it apart, so I could ease my leg up and out. The back of my calf burned and when I stood up it hurt like a son of a gun. I figured the wood had scraped up the skin some. I hobbled back towards the boat, limping in this lame and lopsided way. I had the notion of cleaning up the galley, before heading over to a local marina to pay for moorage. In addition, I was feeling foolish of course, and preferred to nurse my foolishness in private for a time.

  On board I cleared the tarps from the galley and got out the mop and bucket. I didn’t fill the bucket, though. I just stood holding the mop like a hockey stick. I could swab the veneer of piss and manure one last time but I couldn’t do anything about the buckled linoleum, the splintered cupboards, the holes in the wall, the broken window, the hoof marks on deck. The boat was more than Albert’s pride and joy: it was his sanctuary, and what I’d done amounted to a kind of sacrilege. All that hadn’t fully registered while we were at sea, and the boat had felt like mine, but of course I’d only been playing at being captain.

  I heard footsteps and through the galley window saw the flashlight coming back down the dock. I went outside. Jake directed the light at me and I shielded my eyes from the glare.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘What I can.’

  ‘We need to get going.’

  ‘I have to moor the boat.’

  We’d passed a marina near the mouth of Henderson Inlet, and I told him my plan was to go back there and pay for a few nights’ moorage, so the boat would be ready to pick up on my return.

  Jake said, ‘We don’t have time for that. I don’t want to hang around here with the horse in the damned trailer.’

  I took a step towards him, all worked up and ready to argue, but the flare of pain made me wince and he must have seen that: he directed the light towards my feet.

  ‘You’re walking wounded.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Your jeans are bloody.’

  I looked. The back of my pant leg was torn and through that you could see that the skin was torn, too. A three-inch gash showed in the fat of my calf, the skin all blood-slick and gleaming.

  ‘Ah, hell,’ I said. ‘I’m bleeding like a stuck pig, here.’

  Jake hopped aboard and crouched down to take a look.

  ‘That don’t look good.’

  ‘I couldn’t tell, in the dark.’

  ‘We need to get that seen to.’

  ‘No way. No doctors.’

  I said it very dramatically, like I’d been gutshot.

  ‘I just mean disinfect it, zippernuts.’

  ‘After I take care of the boat.’

  ‘You can’t moor up and pay fees looking like that.’

  ‘If we leave it here, it’ll be found and reported.’

  Jake stood still for a time. I couldn’t see his face. I guess he was trying to think of a way to say it. ‘It don’t matter now, man. In a few days those ladies will be posting footage of it, if they haven’t already, and it’ll be found and reported whether it’s docked or left here.’

  ‘Goddamn this to hell.’

  ‘If we had any sense, we’d scupper it.’

  ‘Scuttle it.’

  ‘You know what I mean – then it wouldn’t be found. Not for a while at least.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen.’

  I told him I still had to take it back. I had to take it back to the Westco plant and clean it up properly and get some repairs done, and somehow I had to do all that before Albert and Evelyn and Tracy returned from the cabin next weekend. Jake let me go on like that for a time until I tapered off, sputtering like a candle.

  Jake said, ‘Even if you did all that, he’d see the difference.’

  ‘I’ll be dead to him. He won’t ever forgive me.’

  ‘If that’s the truth, then he ain’t what you thought. He ain’t family.’


  I took a step, and winced from the snakebite of pain. Seeing that, Jake took my arm and I allowed him to help me up the ramp to the pier. We walked like that, with me leaning on him, as if we were taking part in a three-legged race. He made some joke about my little accident but I didn’t laugh. My bitterness was only partly to do with betraying Albert. It was also connected to all that had occurred on the water, and the sense I’d had out there that I had been for a time the kind of older brother Jake wanted, and the kind he’d needed after Sandy’s death. But as soon as we stepped off the boat, and joined Maria, I’d reverted to my old ways: clumsy and useless as a landlubber, as Albert would have said.

  Chapter Thirty

  Maria had a first aid kit in the truck. They set me on the ground in front of the headlights and she used the scissors to cut away my jeans around the wound. The kit included a bottle of iodine and she splashed that over my calf, which stung like a son of a gun and stained the skin ochre-yellow. After patting it dry, she slapped a butterfly bandage on it, wrapped the whole area in gauze, and held it all in place with strips of surgical tape.

  ‘That’ll do as a field dressing,’ Maria said, standing up.

  ‘You’re quite the nurse, these days,’ Jake said.

  ‘I’ve had to patch a few wounds.’

  ‘Guess that comes with the territory, dating a gangster.’

  ‘Don’t start, Jake.’ To me, she said, ‘You need a hand getting in?’

  They helped me around the side of the truck: a big GMC Sierra, burgundy red, with a chrome grill and running boards. Attached to the back was a battered aluminium tow-trailer – the kind designed for transporting livestock. Maria and Jake had already loaded Shenzao in there and she seemed to have settled well. She wasn’t kicking or bucking or causing a ruckus, at least.

  Maria flipped the front seat forward and with Jake’s help I crawled sideways into the back. The truck had those small rear seats that face each other across the cab. I pulled myself into a sitting position, and Jake hoisted my bad leg to rest on the seat opposite.