Ghost Sea: A Novel (Dugger/Nello Series) (5 page)

It took me a while. “Nothing wrong with China.”

The wind and current pushed us out, but we turned into it and fought our way back, tacking and beating, tacking, beating, against the wind and sea.

F
OR THE NEXT
four days we sailed; starting later each day to catch the strengthening sea breeze. She learned fast. We concentrated, as if we knew we hadn’t much time. It helped to keep my mind from wandering, my eyes from looking at her. I inundated her with sailing terms; clew, tack, luff, leach, spreader, snatch block, gooseneck, gudgeon, pintle, and when I wanted to make her laugh: baggywrinkle. She learned every one. When I couldn’t avoid it, my bare arm pressed against her naked shoulder. I felt her stiffen but she didn’t move away.

By the third day, she was able to sense the movement of the waves. When we tacked or gybed, we moved together well, in harmony, without speaking. It was like sharing a well-kept secret; an intimacy. By then I knew. Wasn’t sure how, but I felt it from her lingering smiles, and by a brief moment, a defenseless look in her eyes. I had been explaining the need for a captain. “Sometimes you have to obey on faith,” I said without chiding. “There will be rogue waves, gusts, when you’ll have to trust me blindly.”

“I know that,” she said softly, without her brashness, her humor—the armor that had kept her safe all her life.

The last day it blew hard. As soon as we passed the point and headed toward the sea we took constant spray over the bow. Little by little we were soaked. She wore her hair tied up to free her neck but loose tufts were now plastered across her face. She steered flawlessly. A rogue wave burst and surged toward us and, without time to explain, I grabbed the tiller, her hand with it, and yanked it hard toward me to head us into it. I had pulled her off balance and she slid toward me, grabbed my arm, and fell against me. In all that wind I felt her warm breath on my face. We stared, her eyes deeper than ever, a shadow of doubt around them. But her voice was tender, barely a sigh. “And then what?” she said.

I gybed the main, slacked the jib, and headed back into the bay. We didn’t speak. Where would we begin?

I had to sail to the Gulf Islands on the dawn tide.

W
HEN
I
CAME
back from the islands, I stayed aboard all day waiting for word from the yacht, or for her to sail up alone. But she was nowhere. By evening I hated her, hated her for not coming, hated her for not giving a sign, hated the hand she had put on mine while I held the tiller, hated her smile, her laughter that she must now be giving to someone else. She might be lying with him now, his hand on her, on her neck, in her hair, all the places where I had dreamt my hands to be. I rowed over.

It was past midnight, and the yacht was dark except for the anchor light dangling in the bow, the ports open in the warm night. I rowed along the portside, then back on the starboard, hoping to hear her. The next day I couldn’t stand it beyond ten. I rowed back to ask if she would like some more lessons, but was told by the cabin boy that Mr. and Mrs. Hay had gone inland for a few days.

That night I slept in peace.

The evening of the day she returned, there was a large gathering on the yacht. By sunset, the aft deck was crowded with well-dressed people. It had been so hot I had anchored out to catch a bit of breeze. I was close enough to them that I could see her clearly through the binoculars, her bare shoulders among the suits and gowns, smiling here, nodding there, laughing, reaching out and touching an arm fleetingly, but occasionally her smile faded and she glanced toward the ketch. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I rowed over to Hoffar’s to play cards with some fishermen on a crate on the docks. And lost. The yacht was dark and silent when I returned after midnight.

I slept restlessly in the cockpit until I was awoken by a thud. Stars filled the night; the mainmast loomed like a dark road among them. A sliver moon hovered near the horizon, with a fainter glow behind it where its darkness ended, and I watched, bewitched by that curve of light, when a pale, ghostlike shape swam suddenly before it. A sail. A small sail.

She moved awkwardly, trying to hold on to the caprail of the ketch with one hand, fending off the slowly weaving boom with the other. I could barely see her face until she looked up and the anchor lantern reached her with its glow. She looked thrilled having sailed in the dark, but it was mixed with a fragile, captivating fear.

I sat on the deck with my hand on the caprail barely touching hers. She stood there with her face close to mine. “I just came over to….” She fell silent and said softly, “I just came.”

As gently as I could, I held her head in my hand; felt her cheekbone, her hair, the bone around her eyes, the hollow of her temple, her heart beating there. With the heel of my palm I touched the corner of her lips, and she closed her eyes and tilted her head, let it weigh in my hand.

We stayed unmoving for a long time. When she raised her eyes, they sparkled with tears.

A
FTER A WHILE
she said, “I’d better go. Someone might notice that the sail has stopped moving.”

I swung my legs out over the gunwale.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m coming with you. Move over.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“As long as the sail is moving, no one will see me in the dark.”

She remained silent.

“I’ll sit on the floorboards if you’re afraid.”

“It isn’t just that,” she said.

“What, then?”

Instead of answering, she looked away.

A sudden anger filled me. “Then why did you come?”

She turned back to me, her face confused. “I don’t have to justify everything,” she said. “It’s my boat.”

“But I’m its captain. Now shut up and move over. And why don’t you learn to button your blouse.” She had miss-buttoned at the bottom and skipped another at the top.

She gave a nervous laugh, and moved toward the stern. “I almost came in my pajamas,” she said.

I pushed us away from the ketch.

“Sit down before you tip us,” I said.

“Yes, Captain.”

The breeze filled the sail and the dinghy heeled so I had to crouch quickly onto the floorboards at her feet.

“Spread your legs.”

“What does—”

“I have to sit somewhere; just shut up and spread your legs.”

She spread her knees but only enough to give me room to sit and lean back barely past them. I put my hand over hers on the tiller to head us up into the puff of wind.

“I like it when you tell me to shut up,” she said softly.

“Good. Then do it. And watch where you’re steering.”

We were beating away from the ketch and the yacht—tacked twice unnecessarily to give whoever might be watching a good show—and headed toward the far tip of the bay, where the great firs blocked the moonlight, darkening the sea. In their lee, the wind softened and we ghosted in the dark. The sail shook; the wind was on the bow—we were in irons.

She slowly eased the muscles of her thighs and let me lean back. I felt her breath on the side of my face; then her lips touched my cheek—hesitant, like a child stealing a kiss. Then she drew back. I took her hand from the tiller and kissed the delicate skin of her wrist. I pushed up her skirt and kissed the long hollow on the inside of her knee. She ran her hand across my neck, wrapped her fingers around my throat, and pressed. “I could kill you.”

I bit her thigh. She cried out softly. Her mouth ran across my neck, kissing and biting hard into the muscle of my shoulder, higher in the back, into the nape, where the Kwakiutl say the soul resides.

I turned. She leaned away but kept her arms around me. I could only see her teeth, the whites of her eyes, and her white blouse. I unbuttoned it. She lowered her forehead onto mine.

I kissed the sweat from the bone between her breasts, kissed her breasts, her stomach, then pulled her skirt up to her hips. She was naked under it.

“You…” I said.

“Me,” she whispered.

I pushed her back against the transom, raised her knee, and kissed and bit the topmost part of her thigh.

“Damn you,” she murmured.

“Damn
you
.”

“Oh, shut up.”

T
HE MOON HAD
already set when I sailed us back toward the ketch. She was down on the floorboards, with her head in my lap, her legs curled up like a cat, her skirt hiked high, and her white breast and naked shoulders pale in the darkness. She slept with long, even breaths. I pulled down her skirt and covered her with her blouse to keep her warm.

I could have stayed in that dinghy all my life.

I
SATON
the caprail of the ketch and held the dinghy’s shroud. She stood in the dinghy, did up her buttons, then tried to press the creases in her skirt with her hands. “Look at me,” she said. “I look like I’ve been run over by a train.” Then she slowly and patiently combed her hair with her fingers. “May I have a glass of water?” she said.

I reached down to help her aboard but she shook her head; her eyes seemed to be looking far away.

“I better not,” she said.

She drank, holding on to the shroud for balance, then handed me back the glass. She took my hand from the shroud, kissed it, and then put it against her face just as it had been when the night began. Then she lowered it and, as I turned to put the glass on the deck, she let it go. By the time I turned back, she had pushed the dinghy off. She sat and filled the sail, eased the sheets to get up some speed, then hauled in and accelerated as she sailed around my stern.

“What time for the lesson tomorrow?” I said in a loud whisper.

A block squeaked as she let out her sheet and began a dead run toward the yacht before her reply came out of the darkness. “He doesn’t want me to see you again.”

The eastern sky had a thin blush of dawn. The yacht, dark except for the anchor light, stood black and immobile against it. On its aft deck, a small flame flashed then ebbed and flashed again, as a match does when someone is trying to light a pipe.

KATE

The Wilderness

I feel myself less than a beast, without dreams or aspirations. I don’t need sleep and I don’t care if I never eat again, all I want is to be warm once more in life. I sit in the canoe and shudder. I feel colder inside than out. I can’t help but wonder if it is really only the cold. I should be afraid of what they might do to me, especially the young one with the icy eyes, but I’m too cold to care. I believe in fate, or God, or whatever it is that does these things to you. I longed for you but I got him instead. I wonder if it’s too late to make amends; if I promise to be good forever, would the world let me go home and just stay by the fire? The sun is coming up; at least it will warm my face. What wilderness and silence all around me. It is as quiet as a graveyard.

B
y the time I woke up, the stove had gone cold and the fog hung dark over the skylight. I counted the bills from the envelope Hopkins had left—I hadn’t seen that much money in a long time. There was also a note about a passenger: Katherine Hay’s husband was coming along.

I went to look for Nello.

In the gloomy alley, the smitty’s fire glowed, and lantern light came from the cobbler’s shack. The door to the shop of the frail Welsh beauty was ajar, and she sat by the fire knitting sweaters as thick as armor. And the Gypsy woman, who patched and darned, came out and hung a lantern on her sign, and beckoned to read my palm, always the same: I would live and be in love forever.

In the street, the gaslights burnt yellow through the fog, and the drizzle dripped from wires overhead. Horse carts and rickshaws popped up like apparitions, then just as quickly disappeared again. My head still swam from the rum; I sucked in cold air but it did no good.

I kept along the docks. Smokestacks of steamers jutted from the fog, and the rigging of the last clipper ship, which, hogbacked from weariness, still managed to sail the coast. More than a thousand of them were built on the west coast in fifty years—clippers, schooners, brigantines—but less than a hundred still survived; the rest had been wrecked, burnt, abandoned or sunk, or run on rock, or were simply and forever “lost at sea.”

The
Sunshine
, a three-masted schooner, was found bottom-up off Cape Disappointment in 1875—the year she was built.
Aida
, a four-master, “vanished” out of Shanghai in ‘96.
Rosario
, a schooner, was crushed by ice in ‘98;
Parallel
blew up in San Francisco a year later; and
D. H. Talbot
, whose skipper fell ill, and his sixteen-year-old daughter steered her, broke up on the Chinese coast—only two of the crew survived. Oceans of dead ships. God rest them all.

I asked after Nello but no one had seen him for a while. Someone heard he’d gone on a Jap fish boat, but fishing was tough now, the fish all gone, didn’t sound to me like a place he’d hang his hat.

Water Street swarmed with the drunk and nearly dead. Stevedores jostled in the road, hungry immigrants cowered in doorways, Indians from up coast, with heads down, lumbered on; and the dead drunk curled up like curs beside the boardwalk or splayed out devil-may-care where they fell. But some were resurrected when coins spilled on the boards, slipping through the cracks, and they dove and clawed about in the gloom below.

I found a lodged penny, and from a stall with mounds of sauerkraut bought myself a pickle.

I turned uphill to ask Mr. Chow. He supplied Chinamen to everyone in town—had a cousin or nephew in every sawmill, cannery, beer parlor, and hotel—no one sneezed without Mr. Chow hearing about it, so if he didn’t know where Nello was, Nello had left the planet.

I left the wood-blocks of the road and turned down an alley into Chinatown. Planks formed haphazard bridges in the mud, and the air was a stench of fermenting things, smoke, spices, burnt meat, and sweat. Lanterns dangled in the steam of noodle carts whose owners called or whistled, weaving among people lugging nets, pots, children, bamboo cages, or sacks of coal, all searching for a small space in the mud among the vegetable stalls, and butcher stalls, and stalls where fish hung, still alive, cut clear in half, their head on one hook the rest on another. A goat head with dangling tongue hung on a hook and one with lonely eyes sat in a bowl—and I wondered who they got: the captain or the cabin boy. In a wicker cage, puppies whined. A cleaver thudded and a hammer beat a rivet in a pot.

I swung a door open. At a long table strewn with dishes sat a mob of Chinamen of every age, size, and description, all chop-sticking noodles as fast as they could. Old Mr. Chow, tiny and gaunt at the head of the table, waved me over and the others slid along the bench to make me room. I sat and was handed a bowl of soup with a chicken foot and a seahorse bobbing in it. “Good for cold night,” Mr. Chow said in greeting.

I slurped down the soup and tore the chicken foot with my teeth. It all tasted just right after the rum.

“You look tired.”

“It’s just the fog,” I said.

“Fog good,” Mr. Chow said. “Indian say fog breath of rain. Rain wash you outside, fog wash you inside.”

“I could use a good wash inside,” I said.

Mr. Chow laughed, held his bowl to his lips, shoveled and sucked in some noodles. “Sorry about Missis Hay. She nice lady.”

Chow was running way ahead of me but I wasn’t surprised; that’s why I was here.

“Me too,” I said.

“No worry; you find.”

“First I have to find Nello.”

He said something to the old woman beside him, and she to the kid beside her, and so it went down the line.

“You’re a lucky man, Mr. Chow,” I said. “Nice big family, like happy tree in forest.”

“
You
are lucky man, Captain Dugger,” he retorted. “Alone, like bird in sky. Question is”—he smiled coyly—“which mo’ happy?” He laughed and chased his last noodle, “Me old man. Dream many night go home. To village. Big sky. Fish. Old man need quiet. Need peace.”

“Maybe we’re all old men.”

He gave a gap-toothed grin. “You be good old man, Captain Dugger.”

“I’ve always been old man.”

A plate of sliced-up roast duck came with a bottle of plum brandy, and we chewed a piece—all skin and grease—and washed it down with long slugs.

“Mr. Chow,” I began politely. “Kwakiutl men escaped from jail.”

“Nephew take picture. You want see?”

I wanted see. He spoke to the old woman again.

“And that night on the yacht?”

Poking, whispering. The place quieted; I could hear the old lady gum her greens. Someone laughed out nervously and I looked up. It was a fleshy girl beside me clearing the table: pretty, flushed from the stove, sweat on her face and naked arms, smelling of ginger. People started to leave. A young man came in with photographs, bowed to Mr. Chow, and slipped them before me. The first was a group of Indians, mostly men, all ages, all short-legged, broad-shouldered water people who seldom used their legs but had paddled all their lives. Some wore pants, some blankets, one a polka-dot shirt, and all wore caps or bowlers or straw skimmers.

“Which one?” I asked.

The young man pulled out a photograph taken closer, all broad-faced, fleshy, thick foreheads, staring in cold defiance, or anger, or bitterness, and an older man as calm as a stone. One—young, bare-headed, big eyed, and hollow-cheeked—could have passed for a European with that cleft chin and slight smile.

“Which you think?” Mr. Chow asked.

I pointed at the European.

Something passed between the boy and Mr. Chow, something private, then Mr. Chow politely laughed and the boy poked his finger at a face I hadn’t noticed, but now that I saw him I couldn’t look away. I held the picture closer to the lightbulb. Straggly hair framed his face; he wasn’t old—the forehead was lined not horizontally from age, but with lines curving downward from the center to the outer corners of his eyes. His eyes were fixed, unyielding and shiny as ball bearings. A thick, graying mustache and haggard beard rimmed the tight-set mouth, around which, from the flare of his nose to where the mustache ended, ran deep furrows—as if from smiles.

I didn’t remember ever having felt such a strange unease.

“And the other?” I asked, surprised by the tightness of my voice.

He pointed at a man who seemed about to die. The huge-hooded eyes were nearly shut, just dark slits, but it was his parchment skin that held my gaze. Between the eyebrows were deep creases that could have been gashed with a claw; and below the jutting cheekbones and the mouth, the dark skin hung in folds and pleats, as if the muscles that held them had surrendered long ago.

“You sure?”

The young man seemed offended. “Cousin cook on Mr. Hay yacht. He see Indian men come. See cabin boy with knife. Big fight. Lady hear noise so she come. Men take her. Cousin see. He hide, he see.”

The kitchen noises ended, the place fell quiet. We sipped the plum brandy without the duck to absorb it. It was hot in there, and when I got up to leave, my head swam. “Could I keep this?” I asked. They both said yes at once. I thanked them for everything and was pushing down the door handle when Mr. Chow called after me.

“Young Indian, dangerous warrior. But old Indian, he from other side. Have much power; from other side.” And he indicated somewhere over his right shoulder.

I tried to smile. “You believe those tales, Mr. Chow?”

“Captain Dugger,” he said, “land is land, sky is sky; other side is other side.”

A shaft of light fell through the doorway into the fog. Something scurried out of a barrel and under a plank and when I stepped down, it gave a gurgling squeal. With the door shut, the alley was dark; only the coals of a noodle cart lit the face of the noodle man.

I was at the top of the alley when I heard steps hurrying after me. I stopped. The steps stopped. I turned into another alley, then another. The steps followed. I pulled out my knife, crouched down between two crates, almost losing my drunken balance, reached out, and, with the heel of my hand, thudded softly on the plank, softer and softer, like fading steps. A small figure came slowly up the planks. It stopped right before me. I lunged against the side of his knee and he staggered but grabbed my wrist as he fell and pulled me with him into the mud. I thrashed, grabbed his arm, and held the knife against his throat. The flesh was soft, and smelled of ginger; I held the arm of the plump girl from Mr. Chow’s.

“Jeezus,” I burst out angrily. “You fight good for a girl.”

“Fight good for boy too,” she said. “Chinagirl no get work; Chinaboy do.”

I pulled her up. We were drenched in mud. “What the hell did you follow me for?”

“Uncle send message. Mr. Nello in cannery in river.”

“You had to sneak up to tell me that?”

“Uncle say to be sure you get home okay.”

I felt bad; dug around in my pocket counting my change.

“Come on,” I said. “I’ll buy you a bath.”

T
HE
L
OTUS
G
ARDEN
was full of the sound of splashing water and the smell of wet cedar. An old bent woman finished wiping down the shower walls in our room and turned on the tap in the soak tub in the floor. I asked to have our clothes washed and pressed dry. The steam rose.

The girl took off her coat, went and hung it on a peg, then stood there—an honest face. She undressed. Didn’t hurry, didn’t tease. Such pretty breasts. She unbraided her hair; smiled at my watching, then went to the shower. So young. So pretty. She soaped her hair, scrubbed her head with spread fingers, and the bubbles ran down her shoulders. She soaped herself all over, then rinsed off, turning to one side, then the other and, seeing me undressing very slowly, she smiled; an old smile for her age. She wrung the water from her hair, then, covering herself with her hands, went to the soak tub in the floor, felt the water with her foot, and waded slowly down the steps into the steamy water.

When I came out of the shower wrapped in a towel, she was sitting deep in the tub, her breasts floating on the surface. Damn life. Damn stupid life—everything at the wrong time. If only this had been yesterday. Or better still, before I even met Katherine Hay. I sat on the bench against the wall. I was so drunk I could barely sit straight.

“You’re very pretty,” I finally said.

She blushed. Cupped her hands and poured water on her face to hide it. Then looked up into my eyes. “Uncle say you much in love,” she said softly. “No have to say; I see your face in house.”

It was my turn to blush.

“Is she very beautiful?” she asked.

“No more than you.”

She leaned back, her face full of confident warmth.

“Does she love you?”

Her directness was a shock. “I don’t know,” I said. “Wish I did.”

“Always same,” she said a bit sadly. “One love much; other not sure.” Then she cheered up. “Uncle say you go save her. When you save her, she will love you.”

W
E SAT ON
the bench wrapped in towels, waiting for our clothes to come.

“Uncle say old Indian have power of other side.”

“Yes.”

“Cousin say her husband have much power this side.”

“So it seems.”

Slowly she sorted the tangles from her hair. “You not afraid they kill you?”

“No,” I said.

“Not afraid to die?”

“No. Too busy being afraid of everything else.”

She stared at me with motherly concern. Then she moved close, leaned her head on my shoulder. In a few minutes her breathing was even. She slept. It felt comforting having her against me. I closed my eyes. When I awoke it was dawn.

T
HE STREETS WERE
empty; only a milk wagon came slowly up the hill, the horse snorting steam, the bottles clanging softly. I went to find the horse cart that hauled new cans to the canneries. The tide was so low that mussels crackled on pilings and the air smelled as if everything had died.