Flotilla (32 page)

"Dad, wait..." I began. This was moving too quickly. Me? Boat? Take care? He was talking to the kid he just smashed into a wall, didn't he remember that? I was about to open my mouth to start screaming all of these things when he looked up at me.

There was so many things that we saw in each other's eyes at that moment. My dad probably wanted to apologize for what he'd done, how he brought us here and everything else after that, but he wasn't going to.

Dad was the kind of guy that would never apologize because it'd just open the door to all the other things in his life that he could never make up for. Leaving mom ... leaving us. Failed jobs. Prison. The mistakes he made on the colony. The thousand and one things we had no idea about that took place when he wasn't in prison and wasn't making any attempt to be in our lives. You can fill up forty-plus years with a lot of regret. He knew he couldn't fix it and somehow he didn't want to acknowledge it ... that would somehow cause the universe to cave in on him.

But the unstoppable force meets the immovable object. Were we supposed to chuck it all without talking about it? Does 'I'm your father' become the answer to every question? I haven't the slightest idea but the hole in the wall and my aching shoulder deserved something.

Someone should say something - maybe Dad could have at least said 'I didn't want this to happen.' I guess he had said that, but it felt more like he never wanted us around in the first place. You can't wrap a gold brick in a turd wrapping paper and expect everyone to want to clean it off. I wanted him to say he was sorry. I wanted him to apologize, just once, for all the messy stuff he put us through. What was the point? All of his plans, all of the scams and deals ... they weren't saving us from this.

I wanted him to do something to make up for it. The sad part was that I knew that he never would. He'd never admit he was wrong and an apology from him was something I'd never get. Because I would never get it there was going to be a wedge between us for the rest of our lives.

We weren't going to solve any of this right now. Dad looked back to the map, clearing his throat. "The worst part is getting away," he said. "You can probably cut loose but they'll be expecting that. If there's a storm or something, that'll keep them indoors. It's your best option to get clear."

Madison and I were doing our best not to burst into tears. Mom in terrible danger, Dad off to who knows where. I wanted very much to be back home so that I could find my bed and go hide under it. I'm almost a man here and I want to go hide under the bed. I would never admit that to anyone else but that's exactly how I felt. Dad pulled us close and hugged us fiercely. Then, he let go.

"Take care of each other," he said. "I'll be back soon." With that, Dad was walking through the salon door and down to the dock, joining the other men walking in that direction. We got more of a goodbye from Stacy.

He waved once, then turned his back and walked toward the launches. We watched from the front porch door along with a lot of other people. The energy of all of these frightened people was so sharp that you could almost hear it buzzing like an old fluorescent light. Madison felt for me and I put my arm around her - right now, we needed to count on each other. As the launches left, people from the colony lined the docks to watch them go off. It's been happening in the same sick way since humankind began. The men go off to uncertain fortunes while the wives and children watch helplessly from behind. I can see that now ... I just didn't know how it felt.

Madison began to cry as Dad disappeared from sight. The last I saw of him, he was walking stiffly toward the embarkation dock and then he was out of sight among dozens of other men. They all had the same walk almost as if they were all carrying a heavy load, and in a way, they were. It was the burden of the job that fell to them because they were here and because they were men. We were all safely left behind.

Tears began to roll down my cheeks, too - that whole end scene in
Empire Strikes Back
totally made sense to me at that moment. It's stupid how your mind works, sometimes.

The boats left harbor and disappeared into the horizon. Everyone was trying to find a way to get up onto the
Phoenix
, the
Dixie
or any other flying bridge to see our departing loved ones as long as possible. Madison and I climbed to the second deck of the
Horner
, looking for Dad. I looked for him but I didn't see him; the boats themselves looked like those troop carriers that have everyone all bunched up...you couldn't pick one person out if you tried. The sound of sobbing children and wives floated above everything else. I've never heard anything so depressing in my life.

Madison wouldn't stop crying and refused to let me get more than an arm's length away. I finally had to twist my shirt out of her fist just so I could use the bathroom.

Night fell cold and nasty that first night. We took all the blankets from the bed, twisted them up into a nest and slept in the lounge. The pilot for the gas went out sometime in the night and Dad never showed me how to relight it. It was dank and cold - the vague vibration of the motors keeping the colony in motion gave me some comfort but it did absolutely nothing to calm the raw pit in the middle of my stomach.

The next day, we made a half-hearted attempt at pen patrol. I swam the length of pens one and two but it became too exhausting to continue. I hauled myself out of the water repeatedly, gasping. Madison said nothing and helped me put my mask and hookah back on several times. After I caught my breath, I went back to it. I hated those fish and I hated pen patrol and I hated the colony but it was the only thing we could really do. Right then I felt like I had been cut loose from the planet to live out the rest of my life on a floating garbage dump. However alone or vulnerable I felt when I first arrived, it wasn't half of what I was feeling right now.

Stacy showed up around lunchtime. Her dad had left on the launch. Over cold sandwiches and warm soda, she told me that he didn't intend to stay with the organized group. She explained that if he could help, he would, but if it was obvious that he couldn't do anything then he would ditch the group and start finding his way north to Santa Barbara.

I listened to her story, thinking of my Dad. "If he leaves, will he take my Dad with him?" I asked.

"I don't know," Stacy said. "We didn't even talk about it." I thought my Dad a little bit more streetwise and smart than Stacy's dad. The problem was that, deep down, he was trying to be a decent guy. That might make him do something stupid to prove a point and that rarely worked out well for Dad. I was afraid he'd end up just another casualty of this holocaust in progress. Stacy left after turning on the sat-feed for us again and promising to come back later. She said her mom was really freaking out and needed to keep Stacy in sight at all times. Sure enough, as she left our boat to walk back to hers, we saw her mom standing with her arms crossed tight across her chest and pacing a tight little circle on the dock.

The news wasn't getting any better...we could see that. They weren't even trying to get live reports from the downtown area - the closest they would get were endless reports from high above the ground in choppers. Madison kept watching for any news about Mom, any news about people we knew or about our town. I tried to ignore it and get back to the business of the boat. It kept me calm to stay busy.

Pen Patrol took ten times as long as usual - I'm glad Dad wasn't here or he would be going insane with how long everything was taking me
. Not like any of it matters now
, I thought. I kept rerunning the argument we had before he left, thinking about how what I might have said different. It sounds weird but having arguments in my head with Dad was vaguely comforting. I thought that if I found the right way to say something that he might listen to me and agree with me once in a while.

I had just come inside from Pen Patrol to make myself some coffee when Madison came running down from the top deck.

"The Security guys are going go door to door on every boat in the Colony," she said quickly.

I snuck a peek out of the side window to see guys in their official yellow windbreakers with SECURITY stenciled across their back. "That's never a good sign," I muttered. When was the last time we'd seen them around here ... Steeplechase? If you saw them, it only meant Pacific Fisheries business. But what did they want? It took me only seconds to figure it out.
They were checking for stragglers.
They might take me if they found out how old I was.

What should I do? Slip overboard and hide among the fish? This wouldn't be the only time they would check. I would be discovered eventually. But still ... I need to hide, right? I couldn't ignore that there was something very basic about
not wanting to be found.

I grabbed Madison and slapped the
OFF
switch on the flatscreen. She screeched a protest but I clamped my hand firmly over her mouth and marched her to her room. I slammed the door and we huddled inside while I kept listening for the team to knock on the door. They had to be less than two or three boats away.

"What do we-" she asked and I shushed her violently. All of a sudden, we could hear the screams and the crying. The Security team was shoving an old Asian guy - an illegal probably - in the direction of the
Phoenix
. I'm pretty sure they weren't inviting him back to the ship for the hamburgers and crappy second-run movies.

It was terrifying. I peeked out of the small porthole in Madison's stateroom to see the team holding a group of women and kids back while they hustled off dad, uncle or grandpa. If a group of people couldn't stop them ... a pipsqueak like me didn't stand a chance.

While all of this was happening, a loud knock made us both jump. I told Madison, "Go answer it - don't tell them you're alone or they'll make you go up to the
Phoenix
. Tell them you're staying with Stacy and her mom." She nodded shakily and disappeared out to the salon to deliver the message. I slipped out of her room and went over to the Junk Room to find a place to hide.

The Junk Room was full of the stuff Dad inherited when he bought the boat from the old coot who lived there before. Old boat parts, books, and crap ... Dad had been trying to sell it or dump it ever since he moved in. The old parts and books had some value but at least half the room was pure trash. I found an open spot to lie in and pulled a heap of old moldy clothes down over myself. Big mistake.

This stuff was old in the last century, doused with either mothballs or old lady perfume and then left in wet cardboard boxes for a decade or two. It was making me gag and choke back some puke while I strained to listen to whatever was happening outside to Madison. I could hear Madison's muffled voice and one of the goons. I think his name was Ralph or something. Seconds turned into minutes and eventually I heard her slide the glass door shut. Was Ralph still here? Did he come inside for a peek around? I wanted desperately to look but I didn't dare ... I didn't have a chance to guess wrong.

All at once, I heard Madison's voice in the Junk Room with me. "Jim?" she called. I jumped out of my hiding place, making the clothes to kind of geyser up and freaking Madison out. I didn't want to scare her but the disgusting smell of putrid clothing was making me retch. I gagged and gasped for air for a few seconds before she could say anything.

"They were looking for you," she said when my stomach finally settled down.

"What?"

"Looking. For you."

"Looking for me? Why?" I asked.

She gave me a withering Little Sister look, the one that said:
you're the big brother, how can you be so stupid?
"I don't know but I'm sure you don't want to find out," was what she finally said.

"They got that old guy on the other boat," I said glumly, knowing full well what would have happened to me if Madison hadn't been up there to see them. Why were these guys looking for me? Dad told me that they would give me a pass! As per usual, Dad thought he had things covered but overlooked one or four major pieces. I was too scared to be angry, though.
How
were we going to get out of this?

We spent the rest of day watching the deck outside the
Horner
. I fixed up a nice little hidey-hole in the Junk Room and I hoped that it would be enough. Since I shut off the TV, we lost access to the satellite feed and Nancy would have to check in with the boats next door to see if they had heard anything.