The Fog (6 page)

Nick slowed himself down and bit off his words. “You call the Coast Guard?” he asked casually. He hoped it sounded casual. It didn’t.

“Nick,” said Jones, unperturbed, stroking his leathery face, as if that would change anything. “They probably got drunk last night and are still out there sleeping it off.”

Nick cut him off. “Al wouldn’t do that.”

“He’d do anything, the crazy bastard.”

“Yeah, he’s crazy,” said Nick, “sometimes. And you, you know what you are? You’re ugly as a—”

“Nick,” said Elizabeth.

“No! Al’s not crazy all the time, not when the chips are down. Every time, we’d stop drinking before we got so plastered we couldn’t make it back.
Every time.
He’s too good a sailor to stay out all night and not let someone know. But you, Jones, you’ll stay as ugly as a scumbag for the rest of your life, and there’s nobody can do anything about that.”

Jones stood. “You sound like his wife,” he said tightly.

“I’m his friend.”

Nick turned on his heel and left the dock, so fast that Elizabeth had to run to keep up with him.

“Can I ask you one question?” she said.

His left hand was throbbing, his other shaking. He clamped his teeth together. His eyes were watering with rage.

A man lives a decent life, he told himself, a man like Al Williams, say, and everybody likes him, everybody asks him for favors and hangs around. But something happens and nobody says word one. Which makes it the same as if he had never been there, at least in their minds. That’s the part that tears it; it’s as if he had never been there at all. Well that’s not how it works, by God, and it never has been. That’s what I say. You don’t cut line and move on when your friend is on the other end. Not where I come from. That’s not the way Al was raised, either. He’d put his hand in the fire for me, if it came to that.

Elizabeth was right there. She seemed afraid to touch him.

“I said . . .”

“I heard you.”

“Well, isn’t there something we can do? About your friend?”

“You want to know what I’m going to do? I’m going to Ashcroft and I’m going to get him to take his boat out to look for the
Sea Grass,
that’s what I can do.”

“Who’s Ashcroft?”

“Someone who owes me a favor.” No, strike that, he thought. “Someone who owes
Al
a favor.”

“Can I do anything to help?”

“I thought you had to get to Vancouver.”

“I do. Eventually.”

Stevie Wayne lay on her back, her hands curled by her face. The morning light that was filtering through the curtains held her eyelids down with a palpable weight, but she knew she could not let that go on much longer. She had things to do. There was coffee to make for Marty, and formula for Andy, and the cat would have to be let out, and the car pool with Sara Micheler’s kids, and . . .

But was this a weekday? No, it was a Saturday. So Marty would still be asleep. She would have to be careful not to wake him. She hoped she hadn’t already. There had been something, something in the night, a terrible dream,
things
climbing up the landing under the house, sliding with an awful kind of sucking sound, so awful it—they—might even have been real. And then the pounding. She could hear it now if she allowed herself. Had it already awakened Marty? She reached out to the pillow next to hers. She’d ask him later, after he had his coffee and—

The pillow was empty and cold, like the rest of the bed.

For a heart-stopping instant panic seized her as the pictures returned. She opened her eyes with a pop and raised her head. And then she remembered. Other pictures took their place, the pictures of her life as it had been once melting seamlessly into pictures of her life as it was now. There was one by the half-empty glass of water on the dresser.

Herself in front of a microphone, her hair much shorter, shaking hands with a handsome, dark-haired man a bit older than she was. A bit but not much, not enough to matter. Already his face was becoming harder and harder for her to remember. She moved on to the next picture, a framed 5 x 7 of the two of them with their arms around each other, smiling into her brother’s camera. Then the baby pictures of Andy. And then the last one, a newspaper clipping from the
Antonio Bay Gazette:

KAB HAS NEW OWNER

Stevie Wayne Also to Serve as Disc Jockey

“Mom?”

She heard footsteps prancing through the kitchen. It’s all right, she thought; I don’t mind. He doesn’t know what time it is. And why should he? It’s Saturday, isn’t it? A day to play. A big, sloppy tear loosed itself from the corner of her eye and was absorbed into the pillowcase. She wiped it away and lifted herself to her elbows.

“Andy? It’s okay, honey, I’m not asleep.” Actually I died in my sleep last night and there’s no way to wake me up. There’s no reason to. But since I’m dead now, it doesn’t matter.

He burst through the door. “Mom!”

She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and mussed her hair. “Are you wet? Why are you so wet, honey? What have you been—?”

“Mom, c’mon, lookit! Look what I found.”

“Not until you change your clothes. My God, look at you. What have you been doing, diving for pearls?”

And then, involuntarily, she started to laugh, at his shriveled jacket and his pink cheeks and the way his hair was plastered to his forehead, his fat little hands out in front of him with a present of some sort. A cherub, she thought. A messenger boy in a harem, with a gift on a pillow for the queen mother. Thank God he’s not the cat, she thought, and laughed harder. If he were the cat, she thought, he would be bringing me the kind of treasure I can live without, thank you, like a gopher or a bird or a rat, and plopping it ceremoniously in front of me on the bed the way he used to. Then she remembered that the cat was dead, too, and the laughing wound down and stopped at last.

“What is it, sweetheart?” she said. “What have you got? Come here, damn your hide. I love you a lot, do you know that?”

“I kno-o-w,” he said dismally. “But lookit! First it was a gold coin, and then it turned into this neat piece of wood!”

“Andy, I’m so tired I can’t even see straight.” It’s not your fault, she thought. “I’m dead to the world. Will you pick some flowers for the funeral? You know I love carnations.”

“Sure, Mom, but look at it!”

She looked at it. It was a piece of driftwood. She kissed him lightly on the lips. He managed to endure it. Must be my morning breath. “Good morning, Andrew. Did you have a good time last night?”

“Yeah. Old Mr. Machen . . .”

“What about him? Andy, you’re not still going up there at night to listen to his crazy ghost stories, are you? Look at me.”

“Naw, Mom. Jeremy asked me to go with him, only I didn’t.”

I wonder, she thought. She had never seen the man, but the children seemed to go for him in a big way. I should call him. Except that I tried that already. His number isn’t listed, and no one seems to know where he lives. I guess I could try talking to the other parents again.

“Did you thank Mrs. Kobritz for staying?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did she say she was coming over again tonight?”

“Uh-huh. Mom, can I go get a Stomach Pounder and a Coke?”

How quickly they change gears, she thought. Exit the wood to the junk pile, enter the Golden Arches. “After lunch. Did you eat your breakfast?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna go look for another one. Maybe this time I can get the gold coin!”

He jumped off the bed and raced out of the bedroom.

She sat for a moment, scratching her arms and yawning, thinking about nothing. She crawled across the bed and watched Andy kicking up sand on his way back up the beach.
You keep me going, kid.
she thought.
You and no one else.

She got up and walked flat-footed toward the bathroom. On the way, she paused and took a closer look at the driftwood.

There was something written on it.

She picked it up. She smoothed her hand over the surface, pushing back layers of dirt and marm. The feel of it made her shudder. But she was curious.

Underneath, in black, burned letters, was a single word:

DANE.

CHAPTER FOUR

“. . . Moving westerly at five knots. The temperature for the Antonio Bay area will be in the high sixties. High tide at three forty-six, low tide at nine-thirteen.”

“Is it always like this?” asked Elizabeth over the mechanical voice of the Coast Guard broadcast.

“Like what?” At least he had heard her this time.

“I don’t know. Like glass. I always thought the ocean was supposed to be dangerous looking. At least out here this far.”

“That’s what worries me,” said Nick, and went to join Ashcroft at the helm.

Fisherman’s logic, she thought. Whatever it means.

“. . . Bulletin to all vessels and crafts. Be on the lookout for the
Sea Grass,
a thirty-foot trawler last seen approximately twenty-five miles east of Spivey Point. As of one fifty-seven today the
Sea Grass
has not responded to radio communication . . .”

She hunkered away from the spray and touched up her latest drawing. The paper was damp, but at least she didn’t have to spit to shade in the dark areas. She had the seascape down pat, the waxy skin of the wavelets cutting the page into two halves, which was not the way you were supposed to compose a picture, but what the hell? Nick liked her work.

She didn’t know what to do about the sky. It was clear now, not a cloud in sight, but she wanted somehow to stick a few wisps in there somewhere, right above the horizon. She could only show white properly if she made it a night scene. Well, why not? A few stars, an old hunk of moon. How do you draw a moon? Incredible, she thought. I never have. Green cheese, she remembered. No, Swiss cheese. No . . .

“There!”

Ashcroft handed Nick the binoculars.

It was a spider on the water. Then an oil well, one of those short pumps like they had in Long Beach, bobbing their prehistoric heads day and night. Then it was a boat. Ship. Which one was it, now?

She joined Nick.

“It’s her,” said Ashcroft.

“I knew it,” she said.

Nick plunked the glasses against her chest without turning.

“Ow,” she said. He didn’t mean it. She hefted the binoculars.

Yep. The paint was peeling in spots, but she could make it out:

SEA GRASS.

She offered to help with the ropes, but knew she would only get in the way. When they had tied up securely, she waited until Nick jumped over to the
Sea Grass
before she tried. She studied the way he did it. Nick gave her a hand, his bad one. He didn’t even wince. The bandage wasn’t that thick, either.

She followed Nick aft.

“Al!” he yelled. “Tommy!”

“You say Dick was with ’em?” said Ashcroft.

“Yeah.”

“Cabin and steering house are empty. Maybe somebody picked ’em up.”

Nick wasn’t convinced, she could tell. She started to say something about sea piracy, dope dealers boarding at gunpoint and forcing everybody overboard, but Nick was kneeling before the generator hold with that angry expression on his face again. The way his lips were set as he lifted it open, she knew he almost didn’t want to know what was there.

“There’s water in the generator.”

“Deck’s dry as a bone,” said Ashcroft, stamping his foot.

She heard a creaking directly behind her, and an icy finger scuttered up her spine.

It was the sound of the door to the steering house swinging open. Nick was already climbing inside. She saw that the window was ragged with upstanding shards of broken glass.

“Every single God damned gauge is broken,” said Nick.

“Remind you of anything?” she said.

“What?”

“Last night.”

“Yeah. The thermometer’s broken. The mercury’s stuck at twenty degrees. Ash, look at this.”

She trailed her fingertips over the varnished plywood and the carefully-kept shelves. There was a plastic jar of honey in back. It had crystalized.

“What’s in here?” she asked, tapping on an undersized door.

“Storage compartment.”

“No water got in here,” said Ashcroft.

“Something awfully cold did,” said Nick.

She tugged at the compartment. It did not want to open. She placed her shoe against the molding and yanked with both hands. The warped wood groaned. Just as she was about to let go, it opened.

A pole sprang out at her, and then a rope, rolled charts and the biggest reel she had ever seen. It dropped by her foot and started to move, the line unwinding. They were both looking at her. She felt herself shrinking in front of them.

“Well,” she said, “I have a thing about doors that won’t open.”

She sighed and bent to clear up the debris. She heard something move over her, but it was probably another chart or the ropes uncoiling now that the pressure had been relieved.

Then something cold did in fact touch her back, at the base of her spine, above her jeans, where her sweater was hiked up.

She straightened so fast she practically knocked her brains out on the door.

It was water,
water
coming from up high, seeping in a trickle out of the compartment.