The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (14 page)

It was noon, the fourth day out of Sanport. I was working out our position on the chart when an idea began to nudge me. We wouldn’t pass near enough to Scorpion Reef to sight it, so they had to take my word as to where we were. Barclay knew approximately, of course, because he checked the compass headings against each day’s position, but he had to accept my figures for the distance run.

I was thinking. It might work.

Twenty or twenty-five miles beyond the point where Macaulay was supposed to have crashed lay the beginnings of the Northern Shelves. If there were a shoal or reef in a hundred miles it would be out there. The chances were a thousand to one that it was somewhere in that vast shallow area that he had actually gone into the drink, even though they were about a hundred billion to one against our ever finding where. So if I put us out there when they thought we were on the location she had given them—

We might find a shoal. And any shoal would do.

I set the little cross down 15 miles to the westward and a little north of our actual position and tore up my work sheet. Take ten miles out tomorrow noon and I’d have it made without exciting Barclay’s suspicions. It was Wednesday. I told him we’d make it by Friday.

I didn’t say anything to Shannon. The object of the whole thing was to get her off the boat, and if she knew why I wanted her off she wouldn’t go. She’d have some foolish idea about not letting me face it alone, and I’d never convince her that alone was the only way I had a chance.

Barclay apparently suspected nothing as he checked positions with me the next day. In fact he seemed satisfied with the efforts I had been taking all that day. We kept looking for white water, listening for the sound of surf breaking; but no signs of shoal appeared.

Barclay had become more quiet, cold, and unapproachable as Friday wore on and we saw nothing.

Barfield’s face was ugly as he watched Shannon now, and several times I saw him glance questioningly at Barclay. We were all in the cockpit. I had the tiller.

“Listen,” I said harshly. “Both of you. Try to get it through your heads. We’re not looking for the corner of Third and Main. There are no street signs out here. We’re in the general area. But Macaulay could have been out ten miles in his reckoning. My figures could be from two to five miles out in any direction. Error adds up.”

He was listening, his face expressionless.

I went on. I had to make them see. “When Macaulay crashed, there was a heavy sea running. There’s not much now but a light groundswell. There could have been surf piled up that day high enough to see it five miles away, and now you might think it was just a tide-rip. We’ve got to criss-cross the whole area, back and forth. It may take two days, or even longer.”

He looked coldly at me. “Don’t take too long.”

Dawn came, the sea was empty and blue as far as the eye could see.

Barclay took the glasses and stood up, scanning the horizon all the way around. Then he said, “Make some coffee, George.”

Barfield grunted and went below. In a few minutes Barclay followed him. I could hear the low sound of their voices in the cabin. She sat across from me in the cockpit, her face stamped with weariness. When she saw me looking at her she tried to smile.

I turned and hurried back to her. “Go forward,” I said. “Lie down on deck, against the forward side of the cabin. Stay there. If anything happens to me, you can raise the jib alone. Just the jib. Keep running before the wind in a straight line and you’ll hit the coast of Mexico or Texas—”

“No,” she whispered fiercely.

I peeled her arms loose and pushed her. “
Hurry!
” She started to say something more, looked at my face, and turned, running forward. She stepped up from the cockpit and went along the starboard side of the cabin, stumbling once and almost falling.

I had to hurry. They’d be coming up any minute. I slipped forward and stood on the deck, looking down the hatch.

“
Surf!
” I yelled. “Surf, ho!”

Barclay came up fast, his head turning toward the direction of my arm. I hit him hard and he went sprawling over the side. I was falling too, on top of Barfield as he emerged from the hatch. He bulled his way up on deck, crashing us both down on the deck. A big fist beat at my face, as I groped for his throat. He got his gun out of his hip pocket. I chopped his hand hard enough, and it slid out of his hand along the grating.

He hit me on the temple and my head slammed back against the planks. He was coming to his knees, groping behind him for the gun. I tried to push myself up, and then beyond him I saw her. She ran along the deck and dropped into the cockpit. She picked up the gun and was swinging it at his head. He should have fallen, but it had no more effect on him than a dropped chocolate eclair. He heaved upward, lashing out behind him with one big arm. She fell, and her head struck the coaming at the forward end of the cockpit. I came to my feet and lunged at him and we fell over and beyond her onto the edge of the deck just as the sloop rolled again and we slid over the side into the water.

I came out into sunlight and sparkling blue, and sobbed for air. Seconds went by, and I knew he wasn’t coming up. He’d had the breath knocked out of him when we hit the deck, just before we slid overboard, and he’d drowned down there. I looked around again. There was no trace of Barclay.

I could hear the boat’s engine behind me, fainter now, and I turned to see which way it was circling. I stared. It wasn’t turning. It was two hundred yards away, going straight ahead for Yucatan with nobody at the helm. I didn’t see her anywhere. She’d been knocked out when she fell. And I had lashed the tiller.

I reached down mechanically and started taking off my dungarees and slippers.

Even when you don’t have anywhere to go, you keep swimming. I swam toward the boat, disappearing now, and toward the coast of Yucatan a hundred and twenty miles away. The sun was on my left. It climbed higher.

I didn’t panic, but I had to be careful about letting the loneliness and immensity of it get hold of me or thinking too much about how near we had been to winning at last. I wondered if she had been killed, or badly hurt, and saw in a moment that wasn’t safe either. I concentrated on swimming. One stroke, and then another stroke. Don’t think. Don’t think about anything.

It could have been an hour, or two hours. I looked off to the right and saw the mast. It was at least a mile away and wouldn’t see me, but I gave a sob of relief that almost strangled me because it meant she was all right. She’d only been knocked out. She’d probably never find me, but she could make it.

But the time I’d spent showing Shannon navigational and boat-handling points paid off. She had no idea where I’d gone overboard, but she was cutting the whole area into a big grid, searching.

Each time the groundswell lifted me, I kicked myself as high as I could and waved. Those binoculars paid off. I could see the boat headed toward me, and I knew that Goddess had her ancestral Viking fates working for us at last.

We didn’t have to do much talking about the way we felt. About all I could say for the next few days was “You Swede, you big, lovely, magnificent Swede.” She seemed equally happy. I tried to brush aside the cloud that haunted her. Her last months with Macaulay; the strain of the chase had cut into her more deeply than I realized. I repeated the plans I had for changing the name of the boat and its port of registry; for cruising the small ports where we’d be safe from any pursuit for the eighty thousand dollars which would take care of us both for a long time. She smiled agreement each time, but her eyes gave her away. Several times she awoke at night shivering and I knew it wasn’t the tropical breezes. Something continued to haunt her, to keep her from the full paradise that should have been ours.

Time stood still for us. I spent the next few days painting the name,
Freya
, and San Juan as our port of registry on the stern. My living Freya – she liked that better than Swede – helped. She was a natural at anything you taught her. She learned to use the aqualung and we spent hours at it, diving down to look at the myriad wonders of marine life. She became fascinated with it as if it were another world.

And then it happened. We were far off the Northern Shelves working toward the Yucatan straits. The chart told me we were right on the hundred-fathom curve. It was a very hot sunny day and Shannon suggested we go in for a swim. She was beautiful as she adjusted her mask and dived over the side. I fixed my mask and went under the hull to see if we’d begun to collect any marine growth. It was cool and pleasant, and I paused to watch the silvery flow of hair about her head as she swam beneath me.

A few minutes later I noticed a small shovel-nosed shark off to one side and below. I swam down to watch him. It was quite small and not dangerous. When I looked for Shannon she was gone. I swam to the surface but she was nowhere in sight. I began to be uneasy. But maybe she had gone back aboard for some reason. I was turning to look behind me again when a flash of silver caught the corners of my eyes at the edge of the mask. I froze with horror. She was at least a hundred feet below me, going straight down.

Why had she done it? It had been an accident. It must have been. She was deliriously happy with me. She had no reason for throwing her life away. The pressure must have twisted her sense of direction. She’d been confused, and I’d been too far away to help.

No! She’d known exactly what she was doing. There had been hints. She’d known the violence and the terror of being hunted and had said there’s no escape. That’s why she’d looked at me as if I were an innocent child when I ranted about those little ports. She knew we’d never get away with it.

Alone, I found myself sighting again for 23.50 north, 88.45 west, the spot where she’d gone down. Macaulay could be right. It could be possible to find a pinpoint in the Gulf. There was the exact spot! See, where that seagull is on that driftwood. Looking down into the water I could see a silvery shape.

It was beckoning up at me. I heard her voice say, “Come with me, we’ll live in rapture.”

Something heavy was on my shoulders. I felt straps across my chest. I was wearing the aqualung.

I screamed.

I can still close my eyes and see the whole thing – the blue, and that last, haunting flash of silver, gesturing as it died. It was beckoning. Toward the rapture. The rapture . . .

It was after 2 a.m. when the master of the
Joseph H. Hallock
closed the journal. The poor devil, he thought. The poor, tortured devil. Four o’clock – and we raised the sloop a little after five.

Changing the name of the sloop didn’t alter the identity of any kind of seagoing craft. There were papers. And more papers. It was as futile as writing your own name on a borrowed passport. Manning should have known, too, that it took about ten pounds of paperwork and red tape to dock at any foreign port – including fishing villages. They all had port authorities, and they all demanded consular clearances and bills of health from the last port of call; registry certificate, Customs lists, crew lists, and so on, ad infinitum, and in the case of pleasure craft they probably required passports and visas for everybody aboard. Manning should have known they didn’t have a prayer of a chance.

He was in his bunk puzzling over it. Suddenly he sat upright. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “I’ll just be damned. It would be perfect.”

It was sunset again, two days later. The tanker was waddling, full-bellied, up the coast of Florida just south of Fowey Rocks. She was well inshore from the main axis of the Stream, since they had made arrangements by radio to have a Coast Guard boat meet them off Miami and take the
Freya
off their hands. Or at least that was the master’s excuse to Mr Davidson, the mate.

When you resolved the contradiction and acknowledged that Manning couldn’t possibly have believed any of that moonlit dream about escape to the tropics in a boat, he mused, what did you have left? You had left the twin facts that Manning was a writer, and that he was trying to save himself and that girl he was so much in love with.

They had nowhere to go, the girl had said. Nowhere to go, that is, as long as they were being sought by a gang of criminals and also by the police. But if they weren’t being actively sought by anyone, they could come back to their own country, where they would attract less attention than anywhere else on earth. And they would no longer be sought if everyone believed them dead.

But I don’t know any of this, he thought. I’m only theorizing. I don’t really want to know, absolutely and finally, because I’d be obligated to report it. They hadn’t committed any real crime, unless it was a crime to defend oneself, and he hoped they got away with it.

Then he saw what he had been watching for, astern and slightly inshore from the
Freya
. It could be driftwood, or it could be a head, or two heads. He peered aft in the gathering twilight, and almost raised the glasses.

No, he thought reluctantly; if I
know
I have to report it. But nobody is interested in the unverified vaporings of a sentimental old man.

They would make it ashore without any trouble, with the lifebelts. And they probably had enough money to buy some clothes to replace their bathing suits. Not that they would be likely to attract any attention in Florida, however, if they went around in their bathing attire for years.

But they were drifting back rapidly. Would he have to lift the glasses to satisfy himself? The objects separated momentarily for an instant before they merged again as one. And one of them had been definitely lighter in color than the other. The master sighed.

“Bon voyage,” he said softly. He turned and went into the chartroom with the glasses still swinging from his neck.

In fine weather, of which there was a spate that summer, it was the whim of M. Etienne de Rocoque to emerge from his restaurant in East Sixty-first Street at exactly six-thirteen of an evening and stroll west to Fifth Avenue, south to Sixtieth, east to Park Avenue, north to Sixty-first, and so back to the restaurant and home. It had been discovered by long and diligent experiment that the time he now habitually chose for these somewhat circumscribed excursions was the approximate sixteen minutes between the last home-hurrying stragglers of the commercial day and the first diversion-bent explorers of the night: the streets were comparatively deserted.