Blue Moon (37 page)

T.J.’s eyes felt tired. He tried to fight back his fear. The timbers moaned and creaked with every wave; it seemed like the ocean had teeth and claws and was trying to tear their boat apart. T.J. pictured great white sharks following them, down below where everything was pitch-black and calm, their dead eyes and sonar tracking a boat full of shark bait.

“Do you get scared, John?” he asked before he could help himself.

“You get used to it, T.J.,” John said. “But this is a bad storm.”

T.J. couldn’t imagine getting used to this. He had to fight just to stay on his feet. The ocean was everywhere: waves battered the windows, and if T.J. hadn’t had the compass to refer to, he wouldn’t
have known which way was up. He glanced at the compass, a black globe illuminated in a brass binnacle. His eyes fell upon markings in the wood. Carved in the mahogany on which the binnacle was mounted was the name “Cass.” The letters were scored deep, blackened by salt.

His father had skippered this boat before John. T.J. imagined his dad on a boring night, when the sea was calm and he didn’t have to fight every wave, whipping out his pocketknife, carving his mom’s name. So that on nights like this, when he felt afraid, she would be right there with him. On the opposite side, someone had carved “Rachel.” The letters were just as deep, but white, as if they’d been carved recently.

“Rachel’s your wife,” T.J. said to John.

“Yeah,” John replied.

Staring at the names felt much better than thinking of his father in a raft trying to ride waves like this, with snow turning him into a white island. T.J. narrowed his eyes, watching through the eerie green glass for flares. But all he could see were waves.

“Nantucket waters are tricky,” John said. “Shallow where you’d expect no bottom at all.”

“Do you think he went aground?” T.J. asked.

“Nah. Your father can navigate anything. Something must’ve happened to his boat.”

“Like what?” T.J. asked.

“I don’t know.”

“How can the planes fly in this?”

“What planes?”

“The ones looking for my dad.”

“There aren’t any planes out here,” John said, not looking up. “Maybe there were before, but not now. They’re safe in a hangar somewhere.” He continued studying the chart.

The raft bucked the white waves. Up became down, and Billy was drowning in snow, clawing downward toward the sea. Every swell took them to the edge, promised to flip them over. A thousand times, every time a wave hit, they’d thought they would turn over. Tony couldn’t take it anymore. He cried through the night, until
the screaming wind and his sobs became the same. Billy and Paul actually watched him lose his mind. They tried to talk to him, but it seemed he didn’t know they were there. All of a sudden, he grasped the lifeline, crossed himself, and climbed over the side.

Billy lunged toward him, but Tony had disappeared into the sea. “Oh, my God,” Billy said.

“He’s gone,” Paul said, his teeth chattering.

The night suddenly seemed horribly quiet.

An hour went by. At first Billy thought about Tony’s wife and two sons, wondering what he was going to say to them. But after a while, the cold blocked out everything.

Billy didn’t think of the storm, the sea, the falling snow, the ice in his eyes. He’d stopped listening for engines, stopped thinking about the raft pitching over, stopped beating his arms against his chest to stay warm. He just lay in the bottom of the raft, curled on his side, looking at the back of Paul’s head. He had a hood on. Monk. Kid in a snowsuit. Billy blinked, staring at the stiff orange fabric.

The raft danced over the mountains. Some sharply peaked, craggy like the Rockies. Crevasses, ravines, ledges, jagged river valleys piercing the evil rocks. Some smoothed into hills, like the ancient mountains in Ireland, worn down by the storms of a million years, rounded as a woman’s breasts.

Cass’s breasts. Where did that come from? The thought stirred Billy so, he almost rose on his elbow. A hard object dug into his side. He did not recognize it as his family’s picture in its frame. Billy stopped thinking of the mountains he rode over, stopped feeling every descent in his throat. He stared at the back of Paul’s head. He tried to push himself up, but he couldn’t. He was a block of ice.

C
ass hadn’t slept or talked to anyone all night. As the sun rose her heart lurched, because the snow had stopped. She sat at the window, watching pink light spread across the pillowy drifts. The Coast Guard planes would be flying by now, crisscrossing the North Atlantic, searching the sea.

She searched her mind for Billy and found him alive. Yes, she knew with certainty he was. She’d discovered during the night a thrilling ability to zoom in on him. She picked up messages from him. But she couldn’t rush them; she had to let her mind drift: the falling snow, Josie sucking her thumb, the recipe for cranberry bread. Then, pow!

She’d get a flash of Billy.

As long as they kept coming, she knew he was alive.

The day began. Josie awakened, asking for Daddy. Cass told her he was on his boat, still waiting for help. Josie seemed cranky. She sat at the kitchen table, dressed in her yellow flannel nightgown, whimpering because her hearing aids itched. Cass made pancakes to keep busy and tried to cajole Josie with blueberry jam instead of the usual maple syrup. But Josie wouldn’t eat.

Cass dressed herself and Josie in jeans and turtlenecks. Josie wanted to play in the snow. But Cass couldn’t leave the phone. She scooped snow off the top step, made a big pile on the back porch. She buckled on Josie’s snow boots, zipped up Josie’s ski jacket. Then she hooked the porch door and let Josie pretend she was outside.

She heard a car drive up, and Josie squealed with pleasure.

Cass’s heart pounded; she ran through the house. Would he really surprise her like this, just show up without calling? For one second she felt angry, that he would have let her worry all these hours, when he could have called her ship-to-shore, from the Coast Guard station, from a hundred points along the way. But then Josie called, “Gampy!”

Cass caught her breath. She met her father, with Josie riding his boot like a pony, in the back hall. He gave Cass a hug, and Josie scampered back to her snow pile.

“Want some coffee?” she asked. “It’ll just take me a minute.”

“No thanks,” her father said, and Cass realized he was pushing her into a chair.

“What?”

“The Coast Guard has called off the search,” her father said.

“No,” Cass said stupidly.

“Yes.”

“They can’t. Look at the day! The planes can fly today.”

“They don’t believe he could have survived the storm.”

Her father watched her gravely, letting his words hang in the air. But Cass wouldn’t accept them.

“He’s alive,” she said.

Her father tried to take her hand, but she pulled it back. She popped out of her seat, paced around the kitchen. Her father was watching her, pity knotting his brow.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, gulping air as she’d done in childbirth. She thought she might hyperventilate. “That I’m crazy, that I can’t accept this.”

“None of us …”

“I know he’s alive,” she said. “I know it. They have to keep looking.”

“They found his boat. The wreckage, I should say,” her father said, making the word sound unnecessarily harsh, as if he were trying to make her face a terrible fact.

“You know people in the Coast Guard,” Cass said. “You have to make them keep going.”

Her father stared at his hands, then looked up. “I’ve called everyone I can think of. Your mother’s been hounding me since six this morning to get on the phone.”

“How long have you known about this?” Cass exploded. “It’s ten now.”

“We didn’t know anything. Now just hold your horses,” he said gruffly. “I’ve been through this before, you know. Not with family, but I’ve lost boats. I watched the weather last night, and I knew the Coast Guard would be thinking they couldn’t have made it.”

“What do
you
think?” Cass asked, knowing that if her father gave the wrong answer, she’d kick him out of her house.

He sat silent. He looked everywhere but at Cass. “Say it,” she said.

“I think it’s unlikely,” he said, “that they are alive.”

Cass tried to breathe. She wanted to scream at him, tell him to leave her alone. She wanted to attack him with her fists and her fingernails. But she couldn’t move.

“All the captains have the news. Most of them are coming home.”

“The Mount Hope guys?” Cass asked, sitting down.

“Most.”

Cass stared at the flowers embroidered on her tablecloth. Her grandmother had made it herself, given it to Cass and Billy for their third anniversary. It was the kind of thing people set aside to pass on to their children. Tablecloths like this were usually found in trunks, perfectly pressed and white, wrapped in tissue paper. But this one had grape-jelly stains, coffee-cup rings, the ghostly remains of a ketchup spill.

“Who’s not coming home?” she asked.

“John Barnard,” her father said. “Al Sweet. David Griswold and Kelly Dellerba. Dave and his crew.”

“Did you talk to John yourself?”

“Yes. T.J. is fine.”

Cass nodded. No matter what the Coast Guard said, what her father believed, Billy had to be alive. She felt him so strongly, he couldn’t be gone. He must have been scared last night, frozen stiff, maybe delirious. But she thought of the sun rising, throwing
what warmth it could, the hope it must have brought to Billy and his men.

“Dad,” Cass said, reaching for his hand. “Don’t believe Billy is dead. You can’t believe it yet.”

He didn’t reply.

“Call the Coast Guard. Do it for me. Please, Dad. Make them keep searching. Even for a few hours. Just for today. Please?”

He hesitated, tracing the embroidered flowers with his index finger. Without saying a word to Cass, he pushed himself up and lifted the telephone receiver. He dialed a number he knew by heart.

“Governor Malloy, please,” he said. “James Keating calling.”

Cass couldn’t look. She stared at the tablecloth, pictured her grandmother’s fingers pushing the needle.

“Mike, I need a favor,” her father said. He laid out the scenario, talking without interruption for three or four minutes. From the passion in his voice, you’d believe he knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that Billy was alive, that his survival depended on the Coast Guard finding him within the next few hours. When he hung up the phone, he walked around the table and grasped Cass’s shoulders with both hands. “They’ll keep at it till sunset tonight.”

The bright-red raft bobbed in the sparkling blue sea. The two men lay still, past shivering. Sunlight reflected off the flat ocean like a mirror. No mountains today, no caverns. A little to the north, a jet flew over. Ten minutes later, it flew over again. Ten minutes after that, it flew closer. A chart in the cockpit showed the pilot his pattern. A spotter with binoculars watched the water.

“After last night? No way,” the pilot said.

“I doubt it,” the spotter said. It was hard to keep the binoculars steady. He put them down, scanned with his bare eyes. Something dark flashed just below the surface. “What’s that?” the spotter asked, slapping the binoculars to his eyes.

The pilot flew down for a closer look. The dark spot rose to the surface and a fountain spouted.

“A whale,” the spotter said, laughing. “Boy, they’re pretty.”

“They sure are,” the pilot said.

“There!” the spotter said sharply. “That’s no whale.”

The pilot peered down. “No, it isn’t.” He radioed to shore.

“Go ahead,” the operator said.

“I believe we’ve spotted one of them,” the pilot said. “We’ll guide the cutter out.”

“One of the men?” the operator asked.

“A body,” the pilot said.

In the bright-red raft, just half a mile from what the plane had spotted, one of the men stirred. He licked his lips, which were cracked and swollen. He heard something far off that throbbed like an engine. He tried to lift his head, but he couldn’t seem to move. Then the sound faded, and his dreams took him back.

Or maybe it was the other way around.

The hours went by so fast. Sitting in her kitchen, Cass couldn’t stop watching the clock. Eleven, noon, one. Time for Josie’s nap. Two, two-thirty. She pictured the planes, buzzing like bees across a clover patch, doing their work. She pictured T.J. watching the horizon, John driving them closer to Billy. They still had hours of daylight left, but, in a way, Cass was waiting for dark.

Flares.

Last night the visibility had been too poor, the snow driving in sheets, the waves so big. No one could have seen Billy’s flares. But tonight the sky would be clear. A flare in this wintry sky would blaze like a rocket, like fireworks on the Fourth.

How did you define sunset, anyway? The planes were supposed to fly till sunset, but did anyone expect the pilots to check the almanac, to land at the exact published moment? No. They would fly until it was too dark to see. And just before they turned for home, they’d see Billy’s flares.

Three o’clock, three-thirty. Cass sat still, keeping track of Billy in her mind. There he is. Yes, there. Still alive. Billy.

She stayed in the same place, in her chair at the kitchen table. When Josie woke up from her nap, she was in a better mood. She wanted to play in the snow again. The sun had melted the snow closest to the house, so Cass had to venture farther into the yard
to rebuild Josie’s pile. She made sure to leave the door open, so she could hear the phone.

Belinda called.

“I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t call you. Any news?”

“No,” Cass said. “They’re still looking.”

“Mommy, I’m so scared,” she said, her voice thin and high.

“I know, honey.”

They hung up. Three-forty-five, four o’clock, four-thirty; getting dark.

Belinda walked through the door. “I had to come home,” she said, burying her face in Cass’s shoulder. Bonnie walked through the door, her face blank.

“Is it okay that I’m here?” Bonnie asked.

Cass nodded.

“Where’s Josie?” Belinda asked. “I want to see her.”