Run Before the Wind (40 page)

"Sweet, isn't she?" Pinbar said proudly.

We went out about six or seven miles and began patrolling up and down a five mile line at five knots. There wasn't much sea, and we were comfortable enough, with Connie and Annie making coffee and sandwiches. We called Wave repeatedly, but got no response. Darkness came, and we continued.

"Finbar," I said, about midnight, "maybe we should go in a bit closer to the harbor entrance. This far out, if he doesn't have the VHP on, he might get past us. Closer in, we'll be nearer the neck of the bottle."

Pinbar nodded and turned toward Roche's Point Light, flashing in the distance.

"We'll be nearer Red O'Mahoney, too, but I reckon he won't be expecting us, and anyway, we can outrun his trawler. He couldn't get more than eight knots out of her."

We resumed our patrolling closer in, calling Wave every ten minutes on channel 16 of the VHP. At nearly three in the morning, five minutes after I had tried calling, the radio came alive.

"Cork Harbour Radio, Cork Harbour Radio, Cork Harbour Radio, this is the yacht. Wave, do you read me?"

I grabbed the microphone.

"Wave, Wave, listen to me; switch to channel M, channel M." Channel M in the British Isles is reserved for marina and yacht club use. I knew a fishing boat wouldn't have the crystal in its VHP.

"Switching to channel M," Mark's voice came back.

"Mark, this is Will, do you read me?"

"Willie?" Mark came back, surprised.

"Where are you?"

"I'm with Finbar on a cabin cruiser about two miles south southwest of Roche's Point Light. Annie and Connie are with us.

Where are you?"

"I estimate three, maybe three and a half miles south of the light.

Wait a minute, I'll fire a white flare."

"No, No!" I shouted into the radio, but I was too late.

Pinbar pointed across the water.

"There! There he is!" He put the throttles down and turned toward the bright, white light.

A couple of minutes later the flare died, and Mark came on the radio again.

"Do you see me?"

I pressed the talk button.

"Listen to me. Mark. Red O'Mahoney and his crowd are out here on a trawler somewhere looking for you.

We saw you, and we're coming, but Red may have seen you, too.

Do you read that?"

"I read you. I'll heave to so you can come alongside."

Shortly, we saw a flashlight on Wave's mainsail.

"Douse the light. Mark!" I shouted into the radio. The flashlight went out. In another minute or two, we were alongside Wave. Mark already had fenders out to receive us. Annie tossed her gear to Mark and prepared to hop aboard the yacht, while Finbar cut his engines. As soon as he did, I heard another engine.

"Down there!" I pointed off into the darkness.

"I hear a boat!"

"Finbar, you keep Connie aboard and stand well off," Mark said quietly.

"But I want to help," Finbar came back.

"We'll call you on channel M if we need help, now just start your engines, turn off your nav lights, and keep well off unless I call you." Finbar did as he was told. Mark motioned Annie below, then followed and tossed up the Ithaca riot gun to me.

"It's loaded," he said.

"Twelv& shells." He came on deck with the Ingram machine pistol, slapping a clip into it and tossing two more onto a cockpit seat.

"Let's get sailing," he said.

We quickly pointed the yacht southeast and got her going, but the wind was light, and she was only making four or five knots.

The other boat's engine grew steadily louder. I stood, looking over the water, trying to locate it.

"Listen, Mark, let's don't start shooting, okay? That might be some perfectly ordinary fisherman, you know." On the other hand, I knew, it might not be a fisherman, in which case they might start shooting.

"I'm not out to kill anybody, Willie, but I'm going to defend if I have to. You can put down the shotgun and go below if you want."

"Well," I said, my voice not very steady, "if they start shooting, I'll shoot back." I was reeling very weak in the bowels.

The other boat was very near, now, and she wasn't wearing navigation lights, or we'd have seen her sooner than we did.

"Good man," Mark said.

His statement was suddenly punctuated by a roar and a flash from about thirty yards away. Simultaneously, there was a loud crack, and a large hole appeared in the mainsail, about two feet above my head.

"Shotgun!" Mark shouted, pulling me down into the cockpit.

"Pump a couple over their heads, Willie! I don't want to use the Ingram unless we have to!"

I took a deep breath, popped up from the cockpit and, blindly, but high, fired two quick shots. I ducked, then peeped over the cockpit coaming to see what was happening. The trawler was closer and broadside on to us, now, running a parallel course. I wished the wind would come up so we'd have more of a chance to outrun her. Then I saw a flame on her foredeck.

"Jesus!" shouted Mark.

"Molotov cocktail!"

The flame arched high into the air toward us, and I reflexively did the only thing I'd ever really done with a shotgun. It was easier than shooting skeet, really, it seemed to come so slowly. I led it just a bit and fired. The bottle burst like a Roman candle, showering down burning gasoline, which hissed when it hit the water, short of Wave. I saw another flame on the foredeck and pumped the shotgun, ready to fire again, but Mark was ahead of me. He had unscrewed the silencer on the Ingram and was firing noisily at the trawler. I was relieved to see splashes along her waterline as the big .45 caliber bullets pounded into her hull. There was shouting from aboard her, and the flame fell to the foredeck.

There was a splash of fire, and the whole forward end of the trawler seemed to burst into flames.

"Look at that!" Mark shouted gleefully.

"I couldn't have hit anybody, they must have just dropped the bloody cocktail!"

We watched, transfixed, as the trawler suddenly fell away from us, flaming like a giant torch in the night. Just for a moment, I thought I saw the outline of a woman against the flames, but then it was gone.

"I think she's listing a bit," Mark said as the trawler motored away from us.

"The Ingram must have done some damage at the waterline."

Annie stuck her head up from below.

"Is it all right up here, now? Is anybody hurt?"

"We've got a nice hole in the mainsail, but that seems to be it," Mark replied, looking around.

"Well done, Willie, that was a nice shot!"

"Excuse me, I have to go below," I said, and scrambled down the companionway ladder. Five minutes later, with a better grip on myself, I came back into the cockpit as Mark was heaving to.

Finbar stood just off in the cruiser, shouting.

"Bloody marvelous. Mark!" he yelled, as he came alongside.

"They've got their tails between their legs, now!" The trawler was now only a speck of flame in the distance.

"Willie, we'll head for England, I think," Mark said.

"Want to come along?"

"I think I'll go back with Finbar," I replied, taking deep breaths.

"But thanks for a lovely evening."

"I don't think there'll be any more trouble with that lot," Mark said, looking off toward the disappearing trawler, then turning to me.

"Willie, I can't thank you enough for coming out here and helping. You've saved my bacon again. She'd be on fire if it weren't for you." He stuck out his hand.

"Better go quickly. The wind's coming up, now. We'll be out of here like a shot."

I grabbed his hand and held it for a minute.

"Well, anyway, you're in good shape, now. The boat's wonderful, the leg's on the mend, and you're qualified for the transatlantic."

"We'll see you in the spring, then."

I avoided answering; instead, I clambered aboard the cruiser and shoved us off. I didn't say goodbye to Annie. As Finbar pulled away from Wave and turned toward Cork, I saw Mark wear the boat around and start her sailing, then wave from the cockpit. Annie was nowhere in sight. I stumbled down into the cruiser's saloon, ignoring an outstretched coffee cup from Connie, and threw myself onto a settee. I was asleep before we had gone another hundred yards.

Later, Finbar dropped me at the cottage. I said only a perfunctory goodbye to Connie. I didn't want to think about women for a long time.

Finally, after dialing lots of digits and wading through two operators and a secretary, I heard his voice on the line, unchanged, dry, skeptical.

"Yessss?"

"Dean Henry? This is Will Lee. How are you, sir?"

"I'm very well, thank you. To what do I owe the honor?"

"Sir, I'd like to come back to law school this fall."

There was a short silence.

"I assume you've done some thinking about this."

"Yes, sir, I have; a lot of it. I know it's what I want to do, now, and I know I can do it well."

"Well .. . registration begins on the twenty-fifth of this month, you know. I suppose you can find your way here from wherever on earth you are?"

"Yes, sir!" I said.

"I'll be there with bells on!"

"A non tinkling presence will do nicely, Mr. Lee. Until registration day, then."

I hung up, vastly relieved. Still bone-tired from the exploits of the previous wee hours, I stepped among the packed boxes of Mark's and Annie's things, gathered my remaining belongings, put the recharged battery back into my car, locked the cottage, and drove away. I left the key in Lord Coolmore's mailbox, with a note saying that a removals company would pick up the Robinsons' possessions, then drove to my grandfather's. I had a glass of sherry with him, then said my goodbye and left my car with him to be sold. His groom drove me to Shannon airport to catch the Aer Lingus flight to New York, where I would change for Atlanta, there to be met by my parents. I would have some time with them before school started.

As the jet lifted over the green fields of County Limerick and turned toward the Atlantic, I thought about the callow youth who had landed here fifteen months before and what had happened to him since. In the washroom I splashed water on my face and looked into the mirror. The fellow who looked back at me was leaner, older, and quite definitely sadder than his predecessor. I wondered if he were wiser, too. More confident of himself he was, surely;

more self-possessed, a better opinion of himself and what he was made of. But wiser? It would take some time to figure that one out.

I settled back into my seat with a groan and, gratefully, closed a chapter of my life in which women betrayed me and people shot at me. I didn't know it then, but the place was well-marked; the book waited to be reopened.

I TOLD MY PARENTS EVERYTHING, except about our IRA problems and my personal difficulties, and then I lost myself in mindless drudgery on the home farm. I replaced fence posts strung wire, sowed winter pasture, and helped paint a barn. I used work the way some people use sleep; instead of sleeping on it I toiled on it. I was angry at Mark for getting me shot at, angry with Connie for holding me at bay, angry with Annie for using me as a diversion. As I labored at my tasks, the barbs of my anger grew duller. There was still pain, but it was not as sharp.

I presented myself at the University of Georgia Law School on time and, with no fences to mend nor barns to paint, I plunged into the study of the law as if I were a terminally ill man who had been told that in those lectures and books lay a cure for my ailment and, if that failed, the key to the hereafter. I began the term as a student, and by Thanksgiving, I was becoming a scholar. Dean Henry began to nod at me when we passed in the hallways.

Mark wrote to me; the letter was postmarked St. Tropez. He and Annie had taken a job as paid skipper and cook on a ninety-foot ketch belonging to a friend of Derek Thrasher, wandering the Mediterranean. The owner was rarely aboard, and they had it mostly to themselves. Wave was safely laid up in a quiet, little yard in Falmouth, in case friends of Red O'Mahoney still had any interest. With continuing therapeutic exercise. Mark's leg was coming along nicely; the steel brace had been replaced by an elastic bandage. They would return to England in mid-May to get the yacht launched and ready for the Transatlantic, the first week in June. He wanted me there as soon as I had graduated. I didn't write back to him.

Derek Thrasher also wrote to me, saying he had seen the completed yacht and thanking me for my work. The letter was postmarked Paris, but there was no return address.

North Georgia had a particularly beautiful autumn that year, I kept hearing, but I hardly noticed. I had a single room in the law dorm, and it might as well have been a cell. I seemed to divide all my time between that room and the law library. I had bought a used Chevrolet, but it sat in the dorm parking lot while I walked the short distance to and from school. When I was ready to leave for home for the Thanksgiving holiday, I discovered the battery was dead, had been, probably, for some time. My old classmates had graduated, and I resisted new friendships. I got a very short haircut, mostly because everybody else was wearing his fashionably long.