Sukkwan Island Part 11

In Haines, Jim called his brother Gary. Hey, he said, it's me, and then there was silence. He waited.

Well, Gary said. Some people are looking for you.

Looking for me?

You jumped bail, didn't you?

No.

Another pause. There might be a difference of opinion here, Gary said. And you might think about trying to make amends somehow, since I think the sheriff's opinion wins.

Why are we talking about this? Jim said. I called you to talk about other things. I wanted to talk to my brother. I've been thinking a lot about our time on the Osprey, Osprey, thinking that it's too bad that didn't work out. I wish we were still doing it. And I was thinking it would have been nice if Roy could have worked on the boat in the summers. thinking that it's too bad that didn't work out. I wish we were still doing it. And I was thinking it would have been nice if Roy could have worked on the boat in the summers.

Jim, where are you?

I'm in Haines.

Look, you have to turn yourself in. You can't run from them, and you're just going to make yourself look bad in front of a jury.

Are you listening to me? Jim asked. I wanted to talk about other things. Do you think about the Osprey, Osprey, or about living out there? or about living out there?

Jim waited then. He could hear his brother breathing.

Yeah, I do, Gary finally said. I think about those times. And though it was hard then, I'm glad we did it. It was an adventure. I wouldn't do it again, though.

No?

No.

That's too bad, Jim said. You know, I've been a little lonely in all this since I've been back. I haven't had anyone to talk to. No one's come to visit me or help me.

No one can now, Gary said. They'd be an accessory or something. Harboring a fugitive. I don't know what they'd call it, but they'd call it something.

I don't have any chance of beating this, do I? Jim said. He paused, and Gary didn't say anything, and Jim realized finally that this was true. He was just waiting around for his own fall. He realized also that he needed not to tell his brother anything more. I need to go now, he said.

Okay, Gary said. I wish I could help you. I really do. I should have come to see you while you were still in Ketchikan.

That's all right.

Jim walked straight into town looking for his bank. They had to have a branch here. He found several other banks and got toward what appeared to be the end of the small town and started panicking, but then he saw it. He walked in with his checkbook and ID in his hand, waited in line, and then was ushered to a side desk because of the amount of his withdrawal, almost $115,000 in cash. He intended to clean out what was left of this savings account completely, though the sheriff had probably already frozen it. Coos knew about it because he'd already taken over $200,000 for bail and fees and a few thousand for living expenses in Ketchikan.

The financial officer a.s.sisting him didn't really want to a.s.sist him. This is a very large and unusual withdrawal, she said. Especially in cash. I have to let you know that we'll have to report this. We have to report any large deposit or withdrawal such as this.

That's okay, Jim said.

May I ask what the withdrawal is for?

To buy a house, Jim said.

We can have a cas.h.i.+er's check made out for that.

Nope, it has to be cash.

A cas.h.i.+er's check is cash.

Cash cash.

The woman frowned.

Look, Jim said, is it my money or is it not?

It is, of course, the woman said. I'm not sure we have that much cash on hand, though. In fact, I'm sure we don't.

How much do you have?

What?

I'll take whatever you have.

Jim left with $27,500 in cash. He knew he had been ripped off, that they had more cash than that, but it was enough. He didn't need to buy his own boat. He could find some fis.h.i.+ng boat that had just finished the March opening and was waiting around. They'd need money.

Jim went to the bigger boats first. It was hard to find anyone around. He asked people, though, and got phone numbers and addresses of homes and bars. Then he found one guy cleaning up on one of the smaller gillnetters.

Howdy, Jim said, but the man only looked at him, then went back to work. He was so much what one would expect he was laughable. A beard and battered old cap, a pathetic alcoholic.

I'd like a ride down the coast to Mexico. I'm paying fifteen thousand. Interested?

The man looked at him then. Just kill somebody? he asked.

Only my own life, Jim said.

Let me just go down to the sheriff and ask around, then we can talk about it.

Is this your boat?

No. But I know the captain.

Why don't we skip the sheriff's office and make it twenty thousand.

The man took off his cap and scratched his head. Will we be skipping the Coast Guard, too? And maybe offering a crew list in Mexico that might be a name short?

That would be the deal.

Well, let me talk to Chuck. There obviously ain't much else going on for us.

The man went inside the cabin house then and was gone a long time. Jim couldn't hear voices or anything. The boat was a piece of c.r.a.p, rusted out and held together with wire. But it would get him down the coast. It was h.e.l.l coming up the coast, but going down was easy enough.

The man returned with Chuck, who was in his sixties and seemed to be the captain and owner. He was a fiercely ugly man, liver spots on the bald top of his head fringed by a dark and greasy mane. He stared at Jim with such hatred that Jim knew immediately not to trust him, and yet what choice did he have? He had nothing left. He needed to go and these were the only guys around.

What kind of trouble you in? Chuck asked.

Jim didn't answer but only waited. Finally Chuck said, All right. I suppose you'll be wanting to leave right away.

That's right.

We need to provision, get diesel, get some spare filters and such. The engine has a few problems. It's not going to be a fast or a glamorous ride. But the price is twenty-five.

I don't have twenty-five. I'm not trying to bargain or save up. I just don't have it.

All right, Chuck said. We'll need about three or four hours, and ten up front. And I want to see the other ten, too, just to see that you have it.

So Jim went aboard, handed over ten thousand and showed the other ten. And he stayed right there while they went out and provisioned. He wasn't going to let them slip out without him. Nine hours later, in the evening, they were on their way.

The wind was up and cold, the chop enough to put a little spray over the bow. It was clear out, though. Standing on the stern, Jim could see all the lights in Haines and a few scattered lights along the sh.o.r.eline beyond and fis.h.i.+ng boats out on the water rafted together, waiting. Beyond them, abandoned land and waters among the land, the boundary between them dark and changing. Boating in a strange place at night you could believe almost anything, he knew, any direction, any depth, so sure of innate fears you could distrust your compa.s.s and depth finder right up until you hit the rocks. He hoped Chuck and Ned were competent.

They motored through the rest of the night toward Juneau, slipping past darkened land barely perceptible against the darkened sky. He felt a stranger. He had lived in this land much of his life, but the land had not softened or become familiar in that time. It felt as hostile as when he had first entered it. He felt that if he were to let himself sleep, he would be destroyed. Chuck would be drunk at the wheel, currents would carry them, slip them sideways until the bottom rose to meet the hull and they would tip and fill with seawater and drown. It was just a fact that this was always waiting in close. They would be much safer far from land. He was thinking of this as a way of thinking about Roy. Roy had been hostile to him also. They had never known one another, never softened. He had not been wary enough of Roy. He had lost himself in his own problems and not seen Roy for the threat he was. He had let himself sleep.

The next day came slowly. A thin line of gray, or perhaps a blue less dark, and then the peaks outlined as if by their own emanation, and then a faster lightening above them until their edges curled in fire and suddenly everywhere was white and the orange sun ticked upward in thin, segmented lines between two peaks to grow heavy and yellow and merge into the world too hot to look at. All became blind. The water and mountains and air all the same brightness, glaring. Jim couldn't make out boats or waves or land, could not see a thing for nearly half an hour until the day filled out and land became land again, waves had distance, and he could see boats upon them everywhere. The surface still opaque, gray-white, a solid membrane. The boat wallowing slowly through at eight or nine knots, Haines in the distance now or gone, too far to see.

By eight o'clock, as Ned relieved Chuck and dug into an entire box of jelly doughnuts, they pa.s.sed what Jim at first had thought was Juneau but was only Point Bridget State Park, he saw on the chart, connected to Juneau by a small highway.

If you know how to read a chart, you can take a turn at the helm, Ned said.

Fair enough, Jim said. I'll be next.

Soon after, Jim had his best chance of seeing Juneau down Favorite Channel. Then, a little later, down Saginaw Channel, but he really didn't see anything. They weren't very close and it didn't look like much. By noon Jim was at the wheel, exhausted, and they were around Couverden Island, heading west out Icy Strait.

He grinned when he hit Icy Strait because it was indeed suddenly a lot colder. It was a kind of joke. You could tell even from inside the pilot house, through the small cracks and vents.

The channel was huge-at least five miles across-but there was a lot of traffic. A few cabin cruisers and two sailboats but many other commercial salmon and halibut boats and some tugs with loads far behind them. Those were the ones he had to antic.i.p.ate. He wasn't used to being so slow. He just couldn't get out of the way quickly in this thing. And he didn't turn on the VHF, because he didn't want attention.

They pa.s.sed Pleasant Island around three o'clock, then Point Gustavus, and the wind howled down from Glacier Bay to the north, down through the Sitakaday Narrows.

As they pa.s.sed the next small bay, Dundas Bay, a bit later, he saw a Coast Guard cruiser, one of the big ones, pa.s.sing on the other side of the Inian Islands, and he felt panicked. If they came over to board him, to inspect for safety equipment and drugs, as they routinely did, he would be caught. He had no faith in Chuck or Ned to stand by him. He was afraid even to sleep, although he could hardly keep awake at this point. But the cutter pa.s.sed far on the other side of the northernmost island and went into the next bay. Jim stayed as far out of the way as possible, ducking slightly into Taylor Bay as he pa.s.sed. Brady Glacier looked enormous, a thing from another time, on a different scale that denied anything now, as if Jim could not possibly be Jim because the thought was too small, instantaneous as the glare. The glacier dwarfed mountains.

The wind tore down off the glacier in gusts that set the boat rocking, but this was good because it kept him alert.

And then he was out. He pa.s.sed Cape Spencer by eight o'clock and was heading out to sea, free of the coast, free of the islands and southeast Alaska. On the chart, he was out of U.S. waters in less than an hour. He would cross them again because of the way the lines were drawn, but only briefly. Within another night and day, he'd be far enough offsh.o.r.e that no one would know to find him or care. He would be entering another life.

Again he thought of Roy. He couldn't seem not to. He would be thinking along and not expecting the s.h.i.+ft, and then he'd see the pistol, handing it to Roy, or he'd come in after and find him there on the floor, or what was left of him. And then he was thinking of the sleeping bag and wondered what had happened to it. They had taken it away in the clear plastic bag with Roy's body, and they had not wanted to try to pour him out. It was too much to think of him that way, but then what could they have done? They must have done that at some point before they had buried him. But who? Who had poured him out? And what had Elizabeth seen? What had his daughter Tracy seen? He might not see her again. He had lost her, too.

The Gulf of Alaska was very cold. The wind blew hard and the waves were large now and confused, wind waves and swells, breaking around him and soaking the foredeck, occasionally coming over the side. Chuck came up to relieve him at four. Get some sleep, he said.

How far out are we going? Jim asked. I'd like to be at least a hundred out all the way down.

We can do that, Chuck said. Though we're gonna have to stop for fuel somewhere. Oregon, probably.

Jim went below and sacked out in a tiny bunk that smelled terribly of Chuck's old sweat and alcohol. He was hungry, but he was too tired, so he tried just to sleep.

A boat under way is a noisy thing. He had known that. But this boat's walls creaked and popped in a way that couldn't be good. And her diesel was extremely uneven, dropping low in revs and then racing, not only because of the swells and cavitation. Jim lay curled up in fear and exhaustion and waited for it to pa.s.s, waited for sleep, but waiting and fearing like that he thought too much about everything. He thought about the IRS, the sheriff, the Coast Guard, his brother, Elizabeth, Tracy, Rhoda, Roy. He imagined a long conversation with Rhoda trying to convince her he hadn't killed Roy. He pointed out that Roy was thirteen, that he had a mind of his own, that he could do things that were his own choice.

His own choice? Rhoda asked.

It wasn't my doing, Jim said. It was never my idea that he kill himself.

Never your idea, Jim?

No, he'd tell Rhoda. But then he confessed one more detail. He told about the time shooting up into the ceiling.

And what was that about?

I don't know. I was just shooting.

Just shooting?

Shut up, Jim said aloud in the dark, but he could hardly hear himself, it was so d.a.m.n loud. And then he worried about what course they were on. How would he know if the boat swung around, if Chuck decided to head back? And what about islands? It was an old, irrational fear of his when under way. He was always afraid of hitting islands that weren't on the chart, even in mid-ocean.

He couldn't keep his head still. That was why he wasn't sleeping. No matter how he wedged it in between a few s.h.i.+rts and the lee cloth, he couldn't get it not to rock when the boat rocked. He couldn't relax his neck. And the whiskers along his jaw sc.r.a.ped against the s.h.i.+rts every time his head moved. Roy hadn't gotten to the point where he'd had whiskers. He was starting to get peach fuzz. They talked about shaving one day, Roy worried about cutting himself, not realizing the blade head swiveled. Jim grinned. Then he was crying again and hating how weak he was. He saw himself in Mexico and maybe someday in the South Pacific, down there in all the nice weather with warm, beautiful blue water and the green mountains, and he saw that he would still be alone. Roy would never catch up to him. And he wondered what Roy's grave looked like. He realized he'd never get to see it now.

Jim looked across to the other side to see if Ned was awake, too, but apparently he wasn't.

Jim lay there against the lee cloth with his eyes closed and couldn't find anything. It was just windblown s.p.a.ce inside him, a vacuum. He didn't care about anything, and it would have been better just to kill himself, but Roy had done that, and now he couldn't. Roy had killed himself instead, in a clear trade, and this was why Jim was responsible for killing Roy. It was not the way things were supposed to have been, but because Jim had been cowardly, because he hadn't had the courage just to kill himself before Roy returned, he had missed that moment, the one moment he had to make things right, and he forfeited that moment forever and handed over the pistol to Roy and asked that he fix things in the way that he could, even though it was not the right way.

And Roy had done it. Roy wasn't cowardly and didn't flinch, and he put the barrel up and pulled the trigger and blew off half his head. And Jim did not recognize what had happened when he heard the shot. He didn't know enough to recognize the sacrifice at the time it was made.

Jim still hadn't believed what had happened even after he saw Roy's body lying there in the doorway with his blood and brain and bone everywhere. He still had not believed or seen anything, even as the proof lay before him. And now here he was escaping, thinking he could run off and evade the law and his punishment and have his perfect life somewhere eating mangoes and coconuts like Robinson Crusoe, as if nothing had happened, as if his son had done nothing and he had played no part in it. But that was not the way things could be, he knew now, and he knew also what he had to do.

Jim got up out of his lee cloth and went into the pilot house. Chuck was tilted back in his captain's chair, looking at a p.o.r.no magazine. He raised his eyes from the page for a minute and said, What do you want?

We have to go back, Jim said. I can't run from this. I'm turning myself in.

Chuck looked at him steadily, and Jim had no idea what he was thinking. You're gonna turn yourself in, Chuck finally said.

Yeah.

And where does that leave us? We helped you get out of town, remember?

Jim wasn't sure what to do. Okay, you're right, he said. You'll get your full payment and I'll wait a few days until you're gone before I do anything.

Chuck went back to his p.o.r.no. All right, he said. Go ahead and wake Ned up for the next watch before you sack out again.