Far From The Sea We Know (29 page)

The sound of a helicopter began chopping
into her thoughts, cutting in and out until finally shredding the
air like a hundred machetes hacking through a pillow factory. She
glanced at the aft deck just in time to see Emory, looking like
he’d rather be anywhere else, emerge from a hatchway carrying the
front handles of a stretcher. Ripler lay quietly, bound by straps
around his arms and legs. His eyes were almost closed, and a
soporific smile lay on his face as if molded by a skilled
mortician. Mary Sims, a scarf around her head, was at his side,
holding Jack’s hand and gazing down on him like a post-pubescent
cherub. Becka followed, holding the end of the stretcher, and
seemed to be having an easier time bearing the weight than Emory.
She looked happy again, which Penny found unsettling because she
was the only one on deck smiling.

The sight of Jack sent a noticeable wave of
tension through the crew. This was ironic, since he was obviously
pumped full of tranquilizers. Many were visibly upset, but no one
spoke. Malcolm was crying, something he would not have done before
the incident with the whales.

Penny didn’t feel like crying. On the
contrary, she found herself almost giddy, and fought an impulse to
sing him off. It would not be taken well, so she let it pass. Good
to see him go, though. Good luck and good riddance.

Mary had always seemed a kind soul at heart,
but there had been something too precious about her. What was she
getting out of this? Maybe she just desired to be acknowledged in
the most explicit way possible. Maybe she loved Jack and was joyous
that he finally needed her. Looking at them now, it was clear they
were perfect for each other. Creepy perfect.

The helicopter made its approach, easing in
against the wind. It touched down so gently it wouldn’t have
cracked an egg. The pilot, who looked like he’d served more than a
few years, watched the deck, ignoring the action of the medical
techs that opened the side door as they made their descent.

Emory and Becka moved as fast as they could,
but before they could reach the helicopter Jack lurched violently
forward against his restraints, and the veins on his neck looked
like they would burst. The straps snapped apart, and the momentum
threw him upright. His eyes rolled back, and one arm waved
listlessly back and forth as if beckoning them all to the depths of
his madness. Emory tried to bring Ripler’s arm back down,
one-handed, but Jack was too quick and caught him by the throat.
Mary stood still as stone. Penny glanced around. No one moved,
equal parts of horror and fascination frozen on their faces. Even
Becka seemed hypnotized. Andrew was up on the bridge, watching, but
made no move. He wouldn’t leave the wheel with the helicopter
balancing on the pad like an ungainly acrobat.

Crap!

Penny leapt forward and with her whole
weight and strength tried to Bellch Jack’s hand free, but it was as
tight as a C-clamp. Emory began to panic and looked like he was
weakening in his own attempts to break away. Ripler’s fingers were
like steel.

“Help me,” she yelled. “Help me, you
idiots!” But they still stood staring, as if mesmerized by a
passion play whose woeful ending, though infinitely regrettable,
was never in doubt.

“Let go, Jack!” Penny was about to bash his
face when another hand joined hers in trying to pull Ripler off. It
was Matthew. Ripler still did not budge, but when he saw Matthew he
began to speak as if possessed. The pupils of his eyes were little
dots in a sea of white. With his free hand, he jabbed a finger at
Matthew. “The sea, do you not hear? Warned you…But never mind,
never mind…” Ripler laughed then, the pupils of his eyes rolling
back to the front. “Jonah on board! Jonaaaaaaaaah! It’s you! It’s
youuuuu!” He spat in Matthew’s face, and laughed like a starving
hyena.

Matthew gave Ripler a blow to the shoulder,
and his grip loosened enough to pull his hand free from Emory’s
throat. Becka snapped out of her trance. She lowered her end of the
stretcher and bent over Emory who lay collapsed on the deck. A
paramedic appeared with heavy straps and together they got a lock
on Ripler’s arm and pinned it down. Jack kept laughing, the pitch
rising, louder and louder until it all but drowned out the
helicopter. All at once the superhuman strength he had acquired
from nowhere left his body, and his muscles had no more tone than a
dishtowel. The paramedics cinched Jack tightly to the stretcher,
and hustled him into the helicopter. He looked back at them,
laughing softly in some kind of delusional ecstasy of triumph.

Mary seemed to finally have thawed out,
perhaps at the sight a paramedic hauling out a large hypodermic,
and she picked up her knapsack and dove in after them. Penny could
just hear her yelling over the din of the engine, “Be careful. Jack
has already had five hundred…” She couldn’t hear the rest, but
likely Mary was warning them that he was already saturated with
tranquilizers. The paramedic nodded as if assuring her that
whatever they were going to give him would not kill him. She saw
Mary hugging Ripler as the helicopter rose up and swiftly banked
away. Yes, of course, hugs, that’s what the maniac needs, a little
tender loving care.

The chop, chop, chop gradually faded. The
Sea Stallion became a dot on the horizon and disappeared. Matthew
and Malcolm had helped Emory to his feet. His face was distorted,
an agonized gnarl of gray putty. Matthew nodded toward the hatch
and they took Emory into the infirmary. The others had come to
life, but many just fled the scene. Those who remained stole
glances at Penny, but none could take her glaring look for
long.

“Well,” Chiffrey said, coming up behind as
he liked to do, “that was downright weird, not to mention
stupendously inept. Great that you and Matthew jumped in like that,
but my chopper crew saved your ass.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I didn’t see you
pitching in.”

“Regret to say I was on the horn when
Ripler’s lift arrived. Thought it would go like grease in a hot
skillet, so I closed the hatch to better hear my call. By the time
I arrived, the situation was back in hand.”

“Yet, somehow you saw enough to make a
judgment.”

He smiled. “I’m pretty good at reading the
forensics of an aftermath. Certainly was strange seeing most
everyone just standing around like waxworks. Makes you wonder,
doesn’t it?”

“I’ll give you points on that as well.”

“Don’t bother.”

“You can dish it out…”

“You really are a prick. Don’t you ever get
tired of yourself?” It was a small shock to hear the same words
Becka had thrown at her now coming out of her own mouth. She smiled
and laughed in spite of herself.

“Oh, absolutely,” Chiffrey said, and
continued to ramble on. “That’s why I’m standing here now, just
hoping to bathe a little in your glorious illumination. Whoops,
here comes our hero.”

She swung around to see Matthew striding
toward her, a little quicker than usual. He wasn’t smiling and
looked only at her.

“I had been trying to lay low until Ripler
was gone,” he said. “Didn’t want to spook him.”

“Well, he sure didn’t require any help in
that department,” Chiffrey said, laughing again. “Our Jack managed
to get damn well spooked all on his own and, in the process, did a
good job on most of the crew. You don’t look well, Matthew.”

“I…I’m not feeling very…” He gave Penny a
look and said, “There’s something I got to do,” then turned and
almost ran away, hunched over a little as he went.

“Hmm,” Chiffrey said. “Looked like he
swallowed a bug. I wonder if—hey, where’re you going?”

“Got something to do.”

Penny lay in her bunk, Matthew beside her.
The summer sun had still been a long way from setting when they
retired to her cabin after the incident with Ripler. Matthew
wouldn’t talk, just told her he needed to sleep and, in a matter or
minutes, he was. She watched him for a while and after a little
reading, joined him on the bunk to rest. Now it was two in the
morning and she was awake again. The events of the last few days
had finally caught up with him. They certainly had with her. Yet
depleted as she was, she felt good as she gazed at him through
half-closed eyes.

He rolled onto his back and his eyes slowly
opened, as if he had read her mind, but he only stared up at the
low ceiling. She kept watch out of the corner of her eye. Wouldn’t
get her anywhere to prod, just wait him out.

“Penny?”

“I’m over here.”

“I’ve lost it.”

“Your mind again?”

He turned to her and raised himself up on
one elbow with a faint look of betrayal.

“Well, sorry for being alive,” she said,
“but you never really got around to explaining to me what ‘it’
was.”

“It was like…a sense of infinite
connectedness, and it’s gone, and I feel like I’ve just been
dumped.” He looked at her now, connecting finally. “As bad as if
I’d got dumped by you, which you probably should have.”

“Good, was it? What you believed you
had?”

He closed his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Everything made sense, everything was
connected in this just perfect way. Everything
meant
something. It was my real life. I thought it was mine forever, but
it was never mine, and when I believed it was, that’s when I ruined
it, like I ruin everything.”

“You haven’t ruined me yet. Not that you
ever could.”

“I hope that’s true.”

“Why not find out?”

Something cautiously approaching a smile
appeared on his sad face. He leaned over to kiss her, but as he
did, a strand of saliva slipped out of his mouth and onto her
cheek.

“Yug,” she said. “You spit in my face.”

“That was going to be a kiss.”

“I thought you were an expert.” She yawned
like a dog and smiled up at him. “This is what it’s come to, now
that the first blush has faded? Will it all soon be nagging at you
to put the toilet seat down from here on in? Hey, are you really
back? You’re glazing over.”

“No, gazing. At you. Let me try again.”

“Forget it, sailor. You had your chance, and
now I’m going to go sell myself out on the street corner to someone
more appreciative.”

“We’re at sea.”

“She sighs. Then I guess you’ll just have to
do.”

A sad, sweet look came over his face as he
gazed down at her. “I know I haven’t been easy lately.”

“Don’t say anything.”

He started to anyway, so she lunged up and
pulled him down, deep into the pillow, kissing him softly and long,
descending through the sweet and tender darkness into that perfect
place she could never remember.

Afterward, she slept until a shaft of
sunlight through the porthole woke her. She was alone. Matthew had
the six-to-ten watch at the wheel, and despite how he had felt, she
knew he had reported for duty.

Her clock told her she had slept another
eight hours. Tapping the timepiece on the bedrail a few times
didn’t change anything. The sun had long broken free of the horizon
and was up high, hard and bright as a diamond. She quickly dressed,
gave her hair a few quick brushes, and grabbed her sneakers as she
ran out the hatchway.

In the galley, she found Matthew slowly
eating a small breakfast and cradling a cup of black coffee. He
looked her way and she could tell right away that he was definitely
more like his old self. Sadder, but hopefully wiser in the only way
that mattered.

“I didn’t want to wake you when I got off,”
he said. “Mateo wasn’t around, not sure why. No one else around.
Made up some eggs—here, have some. There’s still some coffee,
though it’s not fresh.”

“You look like hell.”

“Feels like jet lag. Like the wrong time of
day. How about you? Ready to eat?”

“I’m great,” she said with a smile. “Yeah, a
little coffee and a piece of toast and maybe that last egg? Then
I’m fueled.”

“The rest of the eggs are yours. Why don’t
you sit here, and I’ll get you a plate.”

“Don’t bother, I’ll eat off yours, but some
of that coffee would be great. Black…and bitter.”

“A hot mug, coming right up.”

He smiled, but she could see pain reflected
in his face. He walked to the counter and drew coffee from a
carafe, stared at it for a while, then returned to set it slowly in
front of her. He sat down at her hip but looked straight ahead. She
took a few bites, and a swallow of the coffee, which wasn’t quite
as bad as expected, but almost.

“Did you boil an egg in this?”

“A few shells and whites to settle it.”

“You really once were a cabin rat up North,
weren’t you?”

When he just kept gazing at the opposite
bulkhead, as if trying to decipher its meaning, she was afraid he
was about to issue forth with more profundities, but instead he
said, “Last night with you…sorry for forgetting that you are the
best thing to ever happen to me.”

That was all she needed to hear. She put her
fork down and looked at him. He finally turned, and she felt as if
he saw her, all of her, while adding nothing and taking nothing
away.

“Don’t mind me the way I seem now,” he said.
“It’ll pass. Passing now, even as I look at you.”

She laughed and was giving him a hug when,
through a porthole, she caught a glimpse of a boat approaching.
“Someone’s pulling up to the dive deck. Not Navy, must be from the
coast. Want to check it out?”

“No. If trouble’s coming, it’ll find us soon
enough.”

“Wait!” She held up her hand for quiet and
listened to a voice that rose above the others. “Dad!”

She bolted out of the galley and took the
stairs three at a time. “How did you get here?” she yelled as she
raced across the deck and into her father’s arms.

“Same way as you, of course. A floatplane,
then chartered out here on that coastal fisher.” He waved at the
departing vessel.