The Last Run (23 page)

Bob Doyle looked over his shoulder. The ocean was so dark he could not tell the difference between a wave and a trough.

“Everybody ready?”

They could fall fifteen feet or a hundred.

“One!”

They could jump in front of a breaking wave and be smashed against the hull.

“Two!”

The ship was tipping, starting to roll.

“NOW!”

Into the abyss they leaped.

A
t first, all Bob Doyle felt was the cold. Cold, cold, cold like he never wanted to experience cold. It was a hurting cold, a vicious cold that had already begun deadening his toes, working its way up into the calves of his legs and setting in under his knees; a cold that ached in his ribs, that numbed his spine, that tightened on the temples of his forehead like a vise grip.

The cold squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and all the time there was only blackness and the sound of bubbles and the
bump-bump, bump-bump
of his heart. There had been a sharp pain in his elbow immediately after they had jumped off the gunwale, but now the cold had numbed it away and there was only the tightening cold on his feet and hands and eyelids and no sound at all, only blackness and the increasing pressure and then he felt his face sharply throbbing and then the throbbing passed and it was all right. He felt wrapped in darkness, twirling, falling without end, and then he felt the kick. It was a light kick, a soft kick, and then he felt it again and he thought to kick back and he was kicked again and he thought perhaps one of the others was trying to communicate with him. Then he felt a heavy weight on his chest and it occurred to him that he might drown. I’ve got to get air. I’ve got to get to the surface, he thought, and then he realized he did not know which way was up and suddenly he was very afraid. He began kicking his legs and thrashing and fighting the water in a heavy-footed panic and he soon felt hollow and sick from the kicking and he thought: Where in God’s name am I? It horrified him to think he could be swimming toward the bottom of the ocean and so he stopped kicking. The pressure on his head began to lessen, which made him wonder if he was still alive, or dying, and then he reasoned that he could not be dead yet if he was worrying about it, and then he felt pressure on his neck. Something was tugging sharply at his neck. It tugged and tugged and soon he could not fight it anymore and let himself go. In that instant he burst through the surface.

He knew it because of the noise. There was a high, moaning shriek all around, and through that noise a thundering, avalanching sound, as though several buildings were imploding around him at once. He threw his eyes open; they burned from salt. He tried to breathe; salt water flooded his mouth. He coughed, hacked, gagged.

And was under again.

Once more there was only the muffled sounds of bubbles and water being thrashed. It felt so calm and pleasant—except for the hot pain in his lungs and the pressure on his neck —and then he popped back into the world of shrieking blackness and swirling, stinging spray.

This time, he did not open his eyes. He gulped air, choked on salt water, gulped some more, coughed. All over his face he felt bites; he imagined he was looking straight into a sandstorm or standing in a field of famished locusts. Then he heard Mark Morley’s voice —faint, but clear.

“Sound off!”

He could not utter a sound, only gulp for air.

“Hey! Sound off! Giggy? Dave?”

“Here!”

“Mike?”

“Here!”

“Gig?”

“Here!”

“Bob?”

He tried to shout but his voice sounded tiny.
“I’m here! I’m here!”

A wave threw them together. He kept his eyes open for more than a second, and in the stabbing, blinding quick-flash of the strobe, he had seen Mark Morley’s face, contorted, lips quivering, skin a bluish white. His glasses were gone; he had lost them in the jump. Without them, his eyes were wide and staring like those of a frightened child in a dark closet.

“Bob,” Morley said, “how’s my zipper?”

“Why?”

“Just check my zipper.”

Bob Doyle took hold of him by his shoulder and patted his chest until he felt the metal tab. He could feel the skipper shaking.

“Your zipper’s up.”

“Shit,” Morley said, “then my suit is ripped. I feel water getting in.”

“Where?”

“In my legs,” Morley said. “My right leg. I can feel water getting in. God, it’s cold.”

Just then a wave buried them. It was as though a dump truck had unloaded a ton of soaked, frigid towels and they went down so fast that a hot, white pain tore through Bob Doyle’s head. He was going down, down and down and nothing but down, his legs and arms tangling in the ropes as he went, his arms flailing and his heart thumping wildly, and then he thought: Where’s the rope? I don’t want it around my neck. I don’t want the rope around my neck.

Spray like buckshot whipped his face. He’d come up again.

“Sound off!” It was the skipper’s voice. “Bob?
Bob!”

“Here!”

Then he felt the weight on his shoulder and turned and saw Mark Morley clinging to him.

Morley said, “When will the Coast Guard be here, Bob?”

Why do you keep asking me that? Bob Doyle thought. They probably
aren’t
coming. But he told Morley, “They’ll send somebody for us.”

“When?”

“Within the hour.”

“You said that before.”

Morley’s teeth were chattering. Bob Doyle could hear them. “Did I?”

“Yes, you did,” Morley said.

“Well, like I said, they’re probably on their way right now.”

“God, I can’t see anything.”

“None of us can. There’s nothing to see, anyways.”

It was true, too. Bob Doyle could barely see his hand before his face, except when the strobe flashed. And it was flashing only every twenty seconds or so.

Gig Mork began hollering.

“Look! Look!” He pointed behind Bob Doyle and kept yelling. “There! See what I see? Look!
There she goes!”

Between waves and flying froth and sleet they snatched glimpses of a long, thin silhouette —the last of the
La Conte’s
hull. She’s a wood boat, Bob Doyle thought, and when she goes under she’s going to groan something awful. But she went down without a sound. The deck lights and portals glowed as her great bulk slipped beneath the surface and hung there in the depth of the water like a huge purple bird, and then settled slowly. They all watched her go down, getting smaller and smaller, until her lights were out of sight.

The seas would not stop jumping up and down. They clawed their way up one watery hill after another. Sometimes the wave would break down on top of them. Other times they would reach the crest and then go skidding and tumbling down the back side of the swell into a cauldron of spray and foam.

I got to stay afloat, Bob Doyle kept thinking as he slugged and kicked his way through the water. I got to stay afloat. God, I wish it was daylight. But what good would light do? You can’t see shit anyway with all this wind and water. And we got a light. We got the strobe. And what else do you need to see out here other than a helicopter?

Just keep your eyes closed, he told himself. As much as you can, anyway. Too much salt water in them and they’ll swell up and never close.

“Bob!”

Morley had been dragging behind and swallowing water. Bob Doyle spun, grabbed him by the waist and lifted the skipper up on his chest. He put a hand over Morley’s mouth to shield it from the sleet and spray.

“Breathe,” he said. “That’s the way. Breathe, man. Good. I’m here, Mark. I’m here.”

Morley coughed and hacked.

“You all right?”

“I’m cold, man. I’m so cold. Are the Coasties coming, Bob?”

“Sure,” Bob Doyle told him. “On their way.”

“I’m so cold.”

“How are your legs?”

“Heavy. Pulling me down. I can’t hardly feel them.”

So, Bob Doyle said to himself, it has already started. And how long have we been in the water? Ten minutes? He put his arm around Morley’s broad back, pulled him up a bit and leaned back on an angle so that they floated together.

“Bob?”

“Yeah?”

“I hope those Coasties get here soon.”

“They will.”

“I hope they’re coming, Bob. I’m freezing, man.”

“A chopper’s coming.”

“I got to get on it. I got to get on that chopper.”

His teeth were chattering so hard Bob Doyle wondered if they would chip.

“We’ll get you on it.”

“I got to get on it.”

“We’ll get you on it.”

A wave swept over them and they lost each other. Bob Doyle counted to twenty before he popped through the foam. Morley came up beside him.

“Help!”

“I’m right here, Mark. I got you.”

“Where are the guys?”

Bob Doyle pulled the skipper back up on his chest. The hood of Morley’s sweatshirt was down over his face. Bob Doyle pulled it up a bit. When the strobe flashed, he saw that Mork had Hanlon by the shoulders and was supporting him the same way he was helping Morley. Hanlon was retching seawater.

He heard Mork say, “Just stay up here on my chest. I got you good.”

“I can’t keep my head up.”

“Giggy, what’s wrong with Dave?”

“His pillow didn’t inflate right,” Mork yelled. “He’s puking all over like a son of a bitch.”

“Mike!
Can you see me?”

DeCapua yelled back:
“I can’t see shit!”

“Okay,” Bob Doyle said. “We got Mike.”

DeCapua’s face was covered in hair. It looked as though someone had stuck a pile of seaweed to his face. All Bob Doyle could see was DeCapua’s nose poking through a mane of hair.

“Hey, Mike,” he said, “I like what you did with your face!”

“Wiseass!”

Morley said, “Bob?”

“Yeah, Mark?”

“Don’t let me go.”

“I’m not.”

“I don’t think I can swim anymore.”

Out of nowhere a landslide of water buried them, then another, and countless others, sending them tumbling as if they were inside a washing machine. The water was very cold. They could hear the waves coming and sense when they were going to break but they never saw what hit them. As soon as they came up they took breaths and went down again. It was quiet underwater but each time they went down it was as though the ocean had peeled another layer of heat off their bodies. The ropes tying them together began to slip.

T
he house sat back from the road at the end of Verstovia Street. It was a two-story Cape Cod, quite big by Sitka standards, and had gabled roofs over each of the upstairs bedrooms that gave the house a quaint, New England look. It had steel gray shingles with white trims and gutters and a white picket fence that closed in a big front yard. There was also a wraparound porch with a spoked, white-painted banister and white posts. Window boxes hung in a row along the banister. In the spring and summer the boxes always had cheerful pansies in them and, in the winter, after a storm, the bunting of freshly fallen snow.

It was a roomy and fine house for any couple, though it could easily accommodate a family of four. There was a master bedroom upstairs and two ample bedrooms at the other end of a hall, three bathrooms, a spacious kitchen with an island counter for entertaining, an ample dining room, a utility room, a smokehouse off the two-car garage, a greenhouse out back and, his favorite room, a carpeted den with large windows decorated with lemon yellow cornices and drapes that looked out on the front porch. From the den on winter nights you could hear the wind coming in from the sound and whispering in the tops of the spruce trees outside, and if you went to the window you could see the moving shadows their branches made on the white, frosted lawn from the light of the moon.

A man named Ted LeFeuvre, who was a captain in the Coast Guard, had rented that house and lived in it since his transfer to Sitka in June 1997, the month he had taken over command of the air station. After one has lived many happy years in large, family dwellings it is not always easy to make the transition to a bachelor’s apartment, and Ted LeFeuvre, who had always taken great pleasure in homemaking and entertaining company, did not want to give up having friends over for a meal or having out-of-towners stay a few nights in a spare bedroom.

Sometimes he would invite guest speakers at the air station to stay over, or the boys from high schools around Alaska who were in town for a swim meet or a basketball game, or on rare occasions even his parents, who had already made the trip once from Los Angeles. On Wednesday nights he led a Bible study group and sometimes he would cook dinner for as many as fifteen of his fellow parishioners. He liked to prepare Cajun food for his guests, seafood jambalaya, red beans and rice being his preferred dishes, and he always derived a certain pleasure when his guests commented that his cheese nachos were bordering on being a bit too spicy even for the average Mexican palate.