Skeletons (45 page)

"The night before I found Claire and the Colonel," Sullivan said, `when I was sleeping in the back of my car, I woke up and it was like she was standing right in front of me."

Bertie nodded. “That was the way I felt last night. Like she was standing in front of me." Again she looked at me. "And now here she is."

Sullivan said, "Yep."

"I think it means somebody's on our side," Bertie said. She nodded her head with finality.

Sullivan said, "I don't know what it means. But it felt like the right thing, picking her up and bringing her here."

"Bringing her up north," Bertie said. "That's what I had to do in the dream, bring her up north."

Sullivan nodded.

My father said, "All the time we were fighting, I felt that the most important thing was to get Claire to a certain place. Even when I dreamed about her before I found her, I knew that I had to move her west across the country, then north."

Bertie and Sullivan were looking at me, waiting. I had nothing to give them. I knew inside that what had happened was what was meant to happen. But they looked at me as if waiting for a sign. I had none to give them.

"It's a mystery," Bertie said. She slapped her knees, getting up. "Well, it's time to get Chub his dinner." She looked at me. "Want to come along?"

My father said, "Well . . ."

Sully said, "Oh, let her go." He laughed. "I think they thought we were going to throw them over the side, sell them as white slaves."

Bertie laughed. "Still might do that! Come on," she said to me, "come and see Chub. You'll get a kick out of him. He likes youngsters."

She looked at Sully, who laughed, got up, and walked back around the bar. He uncapped two more
Carta
Blancas
, came back, and put one in my father's hand. He leaned over, whispered something in my father's ear.

"Chub is
what
?"

Sully whispered some more.

My father said, "You can go along, Claire. But be careful!" He laughed along with Sully and Bertie.

Bertie led the way up the steps. Out into the fog we went again.

"Stay close, the deck's slippery," Bertie said.

We walked forward, amid the sounds of cackling and animal cries and chirps and growls, passing the tall cold metal walls of the wheelhouse. I nearly tripped over a coil of rope. Bertie grabbed and steadied me.

"Got to get your sea legs, Claire," she said.

There were more sounds around us,
chitterings
and squawks and cheeps. We passed very close to a crate with small holes in it and I heard what sounded like a pig's snort.

"Shut up, you guys!" Bertie shouted. "
Chub'll
take care of you tomorrow morning!"

The animal sounds increased, and Bertie laughed. "Ate an hour ago and they're hungry again already," she said.

Near the bow of the ship was another hold. Bertie lifted and threw it back.

"Be careful climbing down," Bertie said, descending first into the darkness. `These steps are steep." From below, came rumbling sounds.

"Pipe down, Chub, we're
comin
'!"

At the bottom of the steps Bertie stopped me. "Stand there."

In the darkness came the sound of a television set; I saw its low purple flicker at the far side of the room. It was angled so that I could just see part of the picture: one of the Star Wars movies. In front of the television, shadowed in its glow, was a tall, wide chair with its back to me.

From the chair came a grumbling complaint.

"All right, Chub, we're coming! Hold tight!"

Bertie found a light switch, threw it on. The hold was bathed in light.

The figure in the chair turned around to look at us. "Chub! I brought a friend!" Bertie said.

A huge, African ape stood out of the chair, regarded me with its massive, intelligent dark eyes, then smiled from ear to ear.

"He likes you!" Bertie cried.

She rushed forward, took the ape in a hug, and danced him around. Chub followed her playful lead, but kept turning his head to look at me.

"So what you watching?" Bertie asked, stopping in front of the TV. “That space junk again?"

Chub looked away from me, made excited grunts at the screen.

"I know, I know." Bertie turned to me. "He loves that Princess Leia. Thinks he's Hans Solo or
somethin
'." She turned back to the ape, nuzzled his head. "Ain't that right, Chub?"

Chub made excited sounds, nudged Bertie out of the way as Princess Leia came onto the television screen, leading Skywalker and the
Wookie
down a corridor. Chub eased himself back into his chair and continued to watch.

Bertie waved a hand at the ape. "Keep an eye on him, will you? I'll get his dinner."

She crossed the room, unlocked a bolted door, and went into a far room.

Chub looked at me, then looked at Princess Leia on the television screen. He looked back at me and smiled, taking my hand.

The room was similar to Bertie's stateroom, and nearly as neat: carpeting on the floor, some prints, mostly movie posters, including one huge one of Darth Vader's masked head, on the paneled walls, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf stuffed with children's books and videocassettes, some toys, a sleeping pallet, a small tray table.

When Princess Leia disappeared from the scene, Chub excitedly rummaged around his chair, produced a VCR remote, and rewound the tape until the previous scene was repeated.

"Found the big goon in Hawaii, on one of the smaller islands," Bettie said, returning with an armful of food—potato chips, a small canned ham, pickles. She locked the storage room door behind her, put the food down on the tray table, began to prepare it. "He was just a baby. Some jackass movie producer had left him alone in a beach house for a week. He wrecked the place. When I was passing a mile offshore, I saw the bum beating Chub with a stick out on the beach. I almost shot the guy.

"Anyway," she continued, "I took a dinghy to shore, bartered Chub away, and he's been with me nearly fifteen years. Smart as a whip. He could even pilot the boat if he had to. And he's cleaner than any mate I ever had on ship." She pointed to a door on the far side of the room with a cutout sickle moon on it. "That's his bathroom. He does all his business in there, just like you and me. Watches movies when he's not working."

She finished with the food on the table, which Chub eyed with interest, and carried the entire tray over to the ape, putting it down in front of him.

He lost interest in me and the television and began to eat.

"He'll be busy for a while," Bertie said. "Almost his bedtime, anyway. Tomorrow I'll let him up on deck, you can see him do his thing."

We went to the stairs, mounted them. I took a last look at Chub. He had stopped eating to give me a close look.

Up on deck Bertie closed the hatch and secured it. The fog was even thicker. When we reached
midships
, Bertie began to climb the steps to the wheelhouse.

"Come on up," she said. "Got to check the instruments."

I followed her into a snug, warm, half-circle-shaped room bathed in green-and-red instrument light. I watched while Bertie checked over her instruments, made an adjustment.

"She's on autopilot. We shouldn't pass near anything tonight. Got enough alarm bells rigged around this bucket to go off if anyone comes within five miles."

Suddenly tired, I yawned.

"Somebody needs a good night's sleep. We'll get you into a bunk below, little gal."

She put her arm around my shoulder, led me out of the wheelhouse, back into the fog, down the steps. At the hold door aft she paused.

"I imagine they're on the way to being good and drunk down there by now. Good for 'em. I'll get their stories later. I bet the two of 'em have had a hard time. Bet you have, too."

Sleepily, I nodded.

"I just want to tell you one thing, between you and me. Can you keep a secret?"

I looked at her, felt a sudden warm trust. I smiled and nodded.

"Good. Just wanted to tell you about those dreams of mine."

She paused.

"Damnedest thing, but I didn't want to worry anyone else. In the dream it was you and me and your father and Sully. 'Course at the time Sully was the only one I knew. But now we're all here. We were on this boat, and you looked at me, and I knew I was going to die.

"Funny thing is," Bertie went on, "the way it happened, it was all right. It wasn't scary or anything. Like it was supposed to be that way. You looked at me, and I knew that Sully and me and your father were just about the last humans on earth. And the three of us were going to die. And when I saw you get on the ship, it was like the dream came true. You looked at me, and I knew I was going to die. Somehow that didn't bother me."

She shook her head. "Just thought I'd tell you that. I'm not scared, and I have no intention of going down without a fight, but for some reason all of this just seems right. As long as you're safe, everything's gonna be just fine."

She put her hand on my shoulder, then opened the hold, with fog swirling around us like dreams.

"Time to get you some sleep, little gal."

The next morning the fog lifted, and Chub came up on deck.

"How do you like my little bucket of bolts?" Bertie asked jovially. "She's slow but who's in a hurry? Named her the
Arc
because I always seem to be carrying two of everything, including electrical equipment. Get it?"

The
Arc
, which proved to be brightly painted in red and green, and not the dull, dirty scow I had expected, was even more laden than I had thought, with cages, wooden crates, huge coils of rope and chains. Every free space on deck was covered with caged animals. Chub cavorted around, checking ropes, tugging them to make sure they were tight. When he found one that had loosened, he called out in a loud, excited growl and Bertie carne to tighten it.

"All right!" Bertie shouted. "Time to eat!"

At once every animal on deck began to chatter and cry. Some of the cages rocked with excitement. Chub, who had already eaten his breakfast below, ran to the open storage hold while Bertie climbed down, handing food up to him.

"All right, Chub, do your thing!"

Chub sorted and distributed the food. "They love '
im
!" Bertie cried. The noise level was overwhelming. Gradually it diminished, as each cage and crate was dealt the appropriate meal. Soon the
Arc
was almost quiet.

"Ah, peace," Bertie said. "It won't last five minutes, but it's something to look forward to."

In less than five minutes it was over, but Bertie's expression of bliss didn't evaporate. I helped her and Chub clean some of the cages. I admired the happy, sleek birds and foxes and all the other animals within. There were even two lions. By then it was time for the humans to eat lunch. We went below decks, Chub back to his own quarters to watch a movie.

"You blowhards drinking again?" Bertie yelled good-naturedly at my father and Sully, who were sitting on the couch with open bottles of beer.

"Saving you a seat, gal," Sully said, getting up to get Bertie her own beer. Bertie sat in Sully's vacated spot, sighing contentedly.

`"This is the life."

"Yes, it is," Sully said.

"Don't know about the rest of you, but I could stay on this ship forever," my father said.

"If you could stand the smell!" Sully said.

"Hah!" Bertie said. "Smell indeed! Never mind the animals, you three could use a change of clothing yourselves. We'll have to go through the forward hold later, see if we can't find some of those Hawaiian tourist outfits I was bringing to San Francisco."

These words cast a pall over the party. Sully said, "Wonder what San Francisco is like now?"

Bertie said, "I skirted it about a week into this mess.

The Transamerica Pyramid was shot up, but
Ghiardelli
Square looked pretty intact. They . . . seemed to be going about business as usual."

Sully gave a weak grin. "You always said it was a dead town, Bertie!"

"Hal"

"Actually, it was a great town," Sully said.

Bertie got up, took her beer to the bookcase, and turned on the radio there. "Might as well see what the world is up to."

The radio came on, a voice advertising chewing gum.

"What the hell they do with chewing gum?" Bertie said.

"Chew it," Sully said. "The bastards seem to have everything under control, don't they?"

"Different world . . ." Bertie said.

The commercial ended. A broadcaster's voice said, "And now a wrap-up of the top stories: The White House announced today that after consultation with foreign leaders, it can be stated with certainty that no more than a handful of humans are left. The United Nations Security Council, which began meeting again two weeks ago, concurs in this statement. President Lincoln, meanwhile, has been in closed-door meetings with NASA and top scientists, discussing an upcoming space shot. We have learned that a manned mission, termed 'very hazardous,' is being mounted. NASA insiders say a launch date will be set soon. In other news Mark Twain has caused something of a stir in book circles by calling the accidental drowning death of Ernest Hemingway last week 'a fortuitous day for American Literature,' and 'no monumental loss.' Twain, whose comments were made from his Connecticut home where he lives with his wife and daughters, and where he is reportedly working on a sequel to Huckleberry Finn, went on to say, 'The dumb fellow took care of himself the first time around, and this time Providence was kind enough to lend a hand.' Hemingway was yanked from the rear deck chair of his boat last Tuesday when a giant
pliosaur
took the marlin bait from his trolling fishing line. Hemingway had boasted to friends on board that he didn't need to strap himself into the chair. In the world of sports the World Series will be played this year, albeit a little late. Baseball Commissioner Mountain Landis has announced that the series will start on November fourteenth—"