And the Sea Will Tell (5 page)

S
AN
D
IEGO

M
ARIE
J
AMIESON WAS AMAZED
by her friend.

After a hurried and somewhat confusing call in midmorning, Muff had appeared on the Jamiesons’ front porch as edgy and heavy-laden as a refugee. In her arms she held a box that pushed against her chin. Shopping bags hung from her wrists. As usual, she was trying to do too much at once, but the strain visible on her face was not, in Marie’s view, fully explained by the physical load she was carrying.

Half amused, half concerned, Marie helped her good friend bring in the rest of the accumulation of stuff that could not be taken to sea on the upcoming voyage. She was astonished that it covered the large utility table in the family room and the tiled counters that ringed the kitchen as well.

This kind of pack-rat behavior, as Muff’s friends knew, was indulged by Mac most of the time. He loved to tell people about the time he’d tried to change his wife’s ways. Because the bow of their sailboat was lower in the water than the stern, he had
ordered
her to throw out some of her hoard. Next time he looked, the stern was lower than the bow. Muff had simply shifted everything to the back. Mac would howl with laughter when he told the story, and Muff would smile shyly. Maybe she’d heard him retell it enough.

This morning, after making some coffee, Marie was touched to see Muff going through some of the odds and ends, as if she couldn’t bear to part with it all. Some boxes held old magazines, newspapers, and other junk that didn’t have obvious value or a personal connection. Others were filled with knickknacks from their cruise around the world. In one ratty old suitcase, there was nothing but a collection of rather ordinary seashells. Muff showed how she had painstakingly cleaned and polished each one; they all brought back a memory of her shared life with Mac.

Scattered throughout were authentic treasures of a comfortable, tasteful life—delicate bone china from England, signature lead crystal stemware and serving bowls, a complete dinner service of sterling silver, and a Tiffany platter.

Unable to resist, Marie picked up one of the brilliantly shining dinner knives and noticed an unusual design on the handle.

“That’s Mac’s family crest,” Muff said.

“Honey, I feel a little nervous keeping things this valuable. I mean, these are family heirlooms. Shouldn’t someone else have them?”

Marie and Muff loved making each other laugh, and Marie’s laugh—so big and so hearty for one so petite—would sometimes surprise even her best friends. But there was no way to work a laugh into what was now taking place.

“Don’t worry about it,” Muff said. “I’ve kept just enough nice things on board for our special dinners once a week. We do the whole formal bit when we’re cruising, you know, with white linen and silver candelabra. I even make Mac put on a white shirt, if you can believe it.” Her laugh was brittle. Her mind seemed to wander. “Of course, if anything
does
happen, all of this stuff should go to Mac’s family.” She paused. “I guess I could leave it with my mom, but she’s pretty well along in years.”

Marie knew Muff wasn’t looking forward to the trip, and she instinctively wanted to grab Muff in a big bear hug and tell her not to go on this crazy adventure. She felt protective of her kindhearted, unassuming, but quietly courageous friend, as she often did. The truth was, though, that Muff was in some ways less in need of protection than her self-confidently macho husband. Mac had a tendency to trust the wrong person, as he had done recently in a phony stock deal. Muff had told him to steer clear; that she didn’t trust the guy, who, sure enough, took him for several thousand dollars.

Marie wouldn’t say this to just anybody, but she was convinced that Muff had an unusual ability to receive “vibes” from people, maybe even sense something about to happen. It could be eerie, as if she had been born with invisible antennae on the lookout for trouble. Just for fun, Marie had occasionally tested Muff’s ability to guess what someone was thinking or anticipate a phone call. Muff was correct so often that Marie couldn’t scoff at the notion of ESP.

Swiftly but nervously, as if she’d been putting it off, Muff reached down into one of the boxes on the kitchen counter and pulled out a finely molded Italian religious figurine, evidently the Virgin Mary in her characteristic blue shawl. Her eyes were closed, in adoration or in secret pain. There was an ugly crack in the ceramic forehead.

Muff hesitated, gingerly holding the figurine. “Here, I want you to have this,” she said, thrusting it into Marie’s hands. “It’s…something we got in Italy on our honeymoon cruise.”

“Oh, Muff, I couldn’t. This must—”

“Please. Please!”

“But if it reminds you of—”

“Marie,” she said quietly, “you don’t understand. I never want it in my sight again. If you want to, just throw it out. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

Marie was flabbergasted. Muff was shaking, hardly able to catch her breath.

“Look at her,” Muff said finally. “Look at what’s happened to her…. Don’t you see?
The hole in her head
,” Muff said, referring to a deep gash. She covered her face with her hands and began crying uncontrollably.

Marie put down the statuette and grabbed her friend tightly around the shoulders. The hysteria was catching. Marie found herself crying, too, completely overwhelmed with a sense of dread and loss.

“I’m…not coming back,” Muff moaned.

“Oh, Muff, you can’t—”

“Mac and I—we’ll never see you again.”

“Honey, if you feel that way, you can’t go! Stay here. Mac will understand. He wouldn’t want to put you through this kind of misery.”

Muff stiffened immediately and stepped back from Marie’s embrace. Trying to force a brave smile, she snatched a paper towel from the kitchen rack and awkwardly dabbed at her eyes. She laughed, and Marie joined in. They shared a sense of the ridiculous, and the tension broke.

“No,” Muff said. “My place is with Mac. He wants to go. He has to go. So do I. Right?”

Marie felt cold chills.

“Look, Muff, no one
has
to do anything. Mac, of all people, should understand that.” Muff just smiled at her. “Come stay with us while he’s gone. He can find a crew, take his big trip and explore his dumb island, and come home and tell us all about it. I promise, we’ll look at every one of his damn slides.”

Setting her lips grimly, Muff shook her head slowly. “Just one more cruise. That’s what he…we promised each other.”

Marie tried to object, but Muff stopped her with a quick peck on the cheek and a casual hug.

“Got to run,” she said. “Thanks for keeping this stuff for us. Love you.”

Later that night, Marie burst into tears while she was telling her husband about the incident.

Jamie always tried to see the rational side of things. It was his nature. “She’s just upset. You know how she hates long cruises. Muff is a homebody.”

“No, it was more than that.” Marie gestured toward the bags and boxes, which were still lying around the kitchen, untouched. “She was terrified.”

“That’s awfully strong—”

“Jamie, I know Muff. She was saying goodbye.”

“Well, of course—”

“No, Jamie,” Marie said haltingly. “Muff was telling me goodbye for…forever.”

N
OT EVERYONE
took Muff’s foreboding so seriously.

Her best friend, Billy Bunch, rendezvoused with Muff one evening in front of the San Diego May Company for a last window-shopping excursion before the sail.

Billy and Muff had known each other since 1952, when they met at the Y pool, where each swam laps after work. It turned out that both worked at General Dynamics, one of Southern California’s giant aerospace employers. In fact, they were assigned to the very same project: the T-29 jet trainer line. Muff worked in the blueprint department; Billy was an electrician. They hit it off right away, even though Billy, twenty-eight, was married, and Muff, twenty, was still single. Muff was the responsible, serious one, while Billy tended to be more carefree and happy-go-lucky.

After wearing themselves out dashing in and out of stores along the well-lit boulevard and gasping at the prices, they treated themselves to cookies and coffee.

It was then Muff confided her fears to Billy.

“Been to your fortune-teller?” Billy chided gently.

She knew Muff went occasionally to a spiritualist and took seriously the old Gypsy lady’s predictions. Billy didn’t put stock in such prophecies, but she tried not to be
too
judgmental. She and Muff had the kind of frank and open friendship where each could say anything without fearing a putdown.

“I went to her last week because I’ve had these strange feelings, and I wanted to see what she had to say. Before I’d even told her how I really felt, she got this worried look and told me something terrible will happen to us if we go.”

“Oh, go on and have a good time. She’s been wrong before, hasn’t she?”

“Yeah. But I just don’t want to leave. I really don’t.”

Billy knew there was more to Muff’s desire not to make the trip. Several times, she’d expressed concern about leaving her mother for so long.

Twice-widowed Rose King, in her early eighties, lived in San Diego, as did Muff’s older sister, Peggy Faulkner, also a widow. The oldest sister, Dorothy Young, was married and lived in nearby La Mesa. Her mother wasn’t really sickly, just elderly, but Muff feared something might happen to her before she and Mac returned.

Billy knew Muff had never forgiven herself for being at sea with Mac on their world cruise when her stepfather died of cancer and her mother needed her so desperately. (Muff’s father, a mechanic, died when the family lived in Pueblo, Colorado. Still a schoolgirl at the time, Muff, with her two sisters and mother, moved to San Diego. Her stepfather, George King, hadn’t entered the picture until after she was grown and living on her own.) For Muff, blue-water sailing meant not only being away from home, but also being apart from her loved ones and friends when they needed her, and she them.

“Look, I know you’re worried about your mother,” Billy said, still trying to deflect her friend’s concerns on the eve of their departure. “But she has Peggy and Dorothy. And anyway, she’s pretty darn healthy. Don’t worry about her. You have your own life to live.”

Muff nodded distractedly.

Billy laughed and playfully poked her friend’s arm. “Hey, worry about me. With you gone, who the heck am I gonna find to beat at tennis?”

Muff cracked up.

There’s that sweet smile
, Billy thought with satisfaction. Sometimes, her friend was just too nice for her own good.

A
T SUNRISE ON
J
UNE
1, 1974, the
Iola
departed Port Allen on the southern shore of Kauai, the first island of the Hawaiian chain to rise from the smoking seas millions of years ago.

Long before Jennifer and Buck lost sight of the cloud-draped peak of mile-high Mount Kawaikini, they picked up the northeast trades and were heading southward at a good clip.

The sense of being alone on the sea with the man she loved, feeling young and healthy and free, soaking in the brilliant sun and cooled by ocean spray, was exhilarating to Jennifer. Their future was now in their hands, not the law’s, and they were heading for a faraway adventure that held new and thrilling possibilities.

Her pleasant reverie came to an end in a few hours when the wind fell and they were dead in the water, just bobbing on the waves. They discussed starting the outboard engine attached to the stern, but decided not to. What fuel they’d brought had to last. They’d just wait it out.

Experienced sailors would have been shocked to see three dogs traveling aboard the
Iola
. Sailboats rarely carry even one dog. Jennifer owned a small ball-of-fluff mutt, Puffer, named because of the way she panted happily after playing. When she’d decided to bring Puffer along on the voyage, Buck had countered that he was going to bring his two dogs; Sista, a brindle-colored part-Lab bitch, and Popolo (“black” in Hawaiian), a male pit bull. Buck’s dogs were big, clumsy, and hopelessly dumb, and Popolo had a mean streak. Jennifer had tried to talk Buck out of bringing them. “Sure, I’ll leave them if you leave Puffer,” he had said stubbornly. There was no way she could leave her little Puffer, who was as responsive to her moods as a confidante, so all three dogs and 150 pounds of dog food were along for the ride. To keep the dogs from being washed overboard, Buck had picked up eighty feet of netting at a fishing supply house and secured it to the lifelines from bow to stern.

The wind picked up again early that first afternoon, and Buck hoisted the mainsail. But at nightfall, when the wind tapered off, he lowered the main and put up the smaller jib, which gave the
Iola
about two knots.

The slow-moving boat’s rolling motion became more uncomfortable, causing Buck to feel queasy, but they didn’t know how to respond. Neither realized that they were “under-canvasing,” a common mistake of novices, who tend not to put up enough sail. Experienced sailors would have stayed with more sail in an effort to squeeze out more speed, which would have diminished the wallowing effect. Buck went below to nap. In the close quarters, he became even more nauseated.

Jennifer, less affected, remained at the helm alone. The night was soundless except for the uneasy creaking of the booms and gaffs. Her biggest fear was colliding with another ship in the inky blackness. A big ship would have radar, though.
Wouldn’t it?
But suppose it wasn’t working or the operator was snoozing? She kept a sharp lookout for lights or looming shadows in the night.

Buck unsteadily came up on deck and relieved her for a couple of hours, manning the helm until one in the morning, when he called for Jennifer to take over. At sunrise, they switched places again, and she promptly fell exhausted into the bunk. She wondered, before going to sleep, if every day of the voyage would seem as long as the first one.

Buck had often fantasized about sailing around the world. But he found the reality of being on a small boat at sea much more enervating than his dream. His seasickness worsened the second day, and he ended up spending most of the first week in bed.

Alone at the helm, Jennifer elected not to struggle with the mainsail—it took more brute strength than she could summon—but to stay with the jib. That kept them going slowly, bobbing laboriously through the waves.

Buck was depressed even before they started, and now he was the grumpiest she’d ever seen him. She knew it wasn’t just the nausea from the undulating sea or his fugitive status (
that
curiously never fazed him), but the recent death of his father in a construction accident. She tried to respond to Buck’s emotional needs. When he wanted to talk about his father, they talked. When Buck wanted to be alone—which was most of the time—she respected his silence.

Buck idolized his father, describing him at various times as “the most dominant figure in my life” and “the most fascinating man I ever knew. I was like a wart on his nose, never tiring of watching him.” Buck would say that in his father’s approval he soared, while his disapproval “was bone-crushing.” In Buck’s eyes, there simply was no positive human characteristic his father did not possess. He was “handsome, intelligent, had extraordinary logical ability, and no one could possibly resist his charm.”

Jennifer had met Wesley Walker on several occasions. Her perception of him was markedly different from Buck’s. To Jennifer, Buck’s father was a wanderer, a dreamer, a loser. (He was also a rigid disciplinarian, quite the opposite of Buck’s complaisant, overly protective mother, Ginger.) He also had an insensitive streak that she’d found disturbing. When Buck was in the fifth grade, a bully had chased him home from school. He complained to his father, but was told to figure out a
physical
way to deal with the threat by himself. Buck’s solution was to hide a length of two-by-four in the bushes halfway between school and home. When the bully chased him the next day, Buck stopped for the board and clubbed the surprised bully into submission. That evening, when the other kid’s parents appeared at the Walker house to complain about their son’s injuries, Wesley Walker ordered them off his property. Then he put his arm around his son and congratulated him. “Dad taught me two lessons that time,” Buck explained to Jennifer. “To think for myself, and it never hurts to carry a big club.” Another maxim he told his son to live by? “Try always to be straight with yourself, however much you may con the world.”

Ailing in the
Iola
’s cabin, Buck tried to suppress his nausea with food. An experienced sailor had advised him that keeping something in his stomach when seasick would prevent the dry heaves. So he started every morning with a pot of tea, biscuits with honey, and generous helpings of oatmeal. He dumped spoonful after spoonful of sugar in the hot cereal, hoping it would give him energy. After eating, however, he promptly went out to the railing and—as old salts say—fed the fish. Then he’d go back to bed for an hour or so before wobbling back into the galley to make another meal for himself from their precious hoard.

Jennifer had spent more than a thousand dollars—virtually all of their money—stocking up on supplies for the trip. She had concentrated on the basics, like rice and soybeans and flour and sugar, shopping for bargains and making purchases in large enough quantities to get discount prices—such as a fifty-pound sack of red beans, which she knew to be a good source of protein. They had packed away a lot of canned goods, too—peaches, applesauce, pineapples, plums, green beans, carrots, creamed corn, and meat products like Spam and chili. Also, dried goods like fruits and nuts and grain for baking, all kept in plastic bags to keep out the moisture. And six dozen eggs, each one covered with Vaseline and turned periodically so they wouldn’t go bad. They’d brought along thirty gallons of fresh water, a few cans of powdered orange drink, and two half-gallon jugs of vegetable oil for cooking.

Every available storage space in the
Iola
’s cramped cabin was full of goods, making it difficult to move around. In fact, when Jennifer and Buck were below at the same time, one of them had to turn sideways to allow the other to pass.

The
Iola
’s companionway steps into the cabin landed right in the center of the boat. The galley had a two-burner stove on gimbals (designed to remain level even when the boat was not), atop which sat a stained tin coffeepot, a single cabinet, and a tiny metal sink where the dishes were washed sparingly with bottled water. On the port side was a narrow bunk with a foam-rubber cushion covered in black Naugahyde. When Jennifer and Buck slept together, they did so on their sides, spoon-in-spoon style, as there was no room for assuming other positions. The hub of activity for Buck and Jennifer centered around the circular drop-leaf table in the cabin’s galley, on each side of which were built-in benches. It was here that they not only ate their meals, but spent virtually all their time below unless they were working in the galley or sleeping. The burled table served as chess table and navigation station, too.

The boat’s quarters were tight, but homey. Jennifer had sewn magnolia-print curtains, which covered the portholes and several of the open storage bins. There were other touches that revealed a woman’s hand. Two miniature cattleya orchids, potted. A hanging macramé. A tattered Raggedy Ann doll. The scent of peppermint soap.

Buck and Jennifer were planning to rendezvous on Palmyra with their friend Richard “Dickie” Taylor and his brother, Carlos, at the end of August. They’d all become acquainted at Maalaea Bay when Dickie was outfitting his thirty-two-foot sailboat beside the dry-docked
Iola
.

Before leaving for Palmyra, Buck had worked out a business deal with the Taylor brothers that they hoped would make them all rich. From seeds they would take with them, Buck and Jennifer would grow a large crop of marijuana on Palmyra, far away from cops and rip-off artists. Dickie and Carlos were to handle the distribution end of the business, smuggling the dope into Hawaii and selling it for big profits. As part of the deal, they would bring supplies with them to Palmyra in late August.

Since that first day out of Port Allen, the
Iola
’s mainsail had not been raised. Jennifer had managed with only the jib up. On deck, she vigilantly kept the boat headed due south, while Buck stayed below in the bunk reading spy novels, and eating. She told Buck he might feel better if he came up on deck for some fresh air, but he claimed he was too tired. She began to wonder how much of his alleged seasickness was a cover for laziness. He was out of his element, okay, but so was she. Why wouldn’t he at least try to help?

One night, when Jennifer could no longer keep her eyes open at the helm, she tried tying the wheel in place so it wouldn’t turn. It seemed to work. She took a final look in all directions. There were no lights. Still, she knew it would be chancy. But maybe she could go down and close her eyes for a few minutes.

When she went below, Buck was awake, sitting on the bunk cleaning his handgun—a .22-caliber revolver—while smoking a thin marijuana cigarette.

The sight of the gun made her uneasy. It brought back memories of their biggest argument at Mountain View. When she had put her foot down and told him she did not want him bringing guns into their cabin, he’d ordered her to shut up. She ended up running outside and jumping in her van, an old bread truck with pink butterflies painted over the grille. He’d peppered rocks at the van as she pulled away. When she returned a few days later, Buck was ready to promise not to bring guns into the house again, but he did not apologize. Not for yelling, not for telling her to shut up, not for the rock throwing. In fact, Jennifer had never to this day heard Buck ever say to her, or to anyone else for that matter, “I’m sorry.” Not once. There were people like that.

“I still don’t like having guns aboard,” she said resignedly, taking a hit off the joint. Before leaving Hawaii, Buck had made a persuasive argument for bringing weapons on the trip, explaining that they needed protection from pirates and other bad types they might be unlucky enough to encounter on the open seas. She had reluctantly agreed, and had even acquiesced when Buck insisted she take target practice. (She had surprised herself by hitting the tree on both her attempts.)

He smiled, but mechanically, without humor or warmth. The scraggly beard he’d been growing made him look surly. He seemed to savor the weight of the gun in his hand. “Remember what I said, Jen. A person would be crazy to sail the high seas these days without protection.”

The .22 was his two-by-four in the bushes.

“I was sitting here thinking about Jake,” Buck went on, dabbing a spot of oil on a soft cloth.

Jennifer, exhausted, collapsed at the galley table. She felt resentment rising. Buck had goofed off below all day, eating, resting, reading. And now he was primed to talk, while she hungered for sleep.

“You remember Jake?”

“Yeah.”

Jake, as she’d heard often, had been Buck’s favorite teacher at San Quentin.

Although Buck had dropped out of school in the seventh grade, he had taken various courses in prison and become a serious reader of a wide range of books, from detective novels to more challenging works like Will Durant’s
The World of Philosophy
and Ayn Rand’s
Atlas Shrugged
, a novel that portrayed a world in which his father, Buck believed, would have succeeded. Buck’s favorite biblical book was the story of Job, with which he identified strongly, given his interpretation of the circumstances of his life. In prison, Buck once met notorious “Red Light Bandit” Caryl Chessman, the convicted kidnapper and rapist. Buck, who dreamed of being a published writer, had read Chessman’s well-received book,
Cell 2455, Death Row
, and admired his fellow prisoner’s gift for compelling narrative. In their only conversation, the two cons discussed books they found important and provocative. About the time Chessman went to his death in San Quentin’s gas chamber, Buck received his high school diploma by mail.

Buck was pushing the rag down the barrel of the revolver with a rod. “In World War Two, Jake was an Army major. One time he was ordered to reconnoiter around an enemy-held Pacific island with a squad of men.”

Jennifer was so tired she had to fight to keep her eyes open, and here was Buck telling her some war story.

“Early in the mission, they captured a Japanese sentry. They couldn’t spare men to return him to their own lines, and they obviously couldn’t take the prisoner with them on their mission.”