The Silver Boat (21 page)

Everyone needs a protector.

Inserting the key into the lock, he thought of how ancient the metal seemed. Had the same lock been here since the house was built? He let himself in, and was instantly surrounded by Scup and the cats.

“Hey, guys,” he said, petting them. “Good boy, Scup. Need to go out?” He opened the door and let the old Lab outside to do his business. Who was feeding the animals with Dar away? He saw almost-full bowls of kibble and water.

Pete smelled the salty, damp-dog mustiness that let him know he was home. Or was it his home anymore? He had fucked things up so badly he was now kicked out by his father. Pete had borrowed money from his parents one time too many. Dropping out of college—mid-semester, just past the limit for getting even a fraction of their money back—had been bad. Sleeping with a girl one night, her getting pregnant, never even meeting his own daughter, had sealed it.

Inside, he went to the refrigerator. He was starving, and found some smoked bluefish and horseradish cheese spread. A loaf of rye bread in the freezer made the meal, and he thawed the bread in the 1960s toaster oven, fixed a few sandwiches, and took them onto the porch to eat.

The temperature was about sixty, balmy compared to Alaska. Being here made him reflective, made him think about what had happened there. Staring past the pond out to sea, he scanned the horizon for a sailboat. He knew it was coming, he just didn't know when.

Up in Bristol Bay beginning of last summer, seining for salmon, he'd pulled a dumb move. First light, groggy, up in the bow and operating the hydraulic winch to haul anchor, he had slipped and fallen overboard.

The waves had swamped him, pulled him under the thirty-something-degree water. He was in particularly bad shape hangoverwise; his arms were too heavy and frozen to hold himself up. Trying to swim, he heard someone yell “
Man overboard!
” Someone had seen him go over, and the captain of the salmon boat,
Helena Marie
, drove in circles looking for him.

Pete sank. His boots were dead weight, filling fast. Eyes open, he saw the peace of the underworld. Shimmering sun in the euphotic zone, that part of the sea where light penetrates. Off the west coast, the upwelling—the wave force that causes detritus to rise from the sea bottom—made the water murky and shrank the sunny part from two hundred meters to fifty.

Pete was as one with the phytoplankton, first link in the food chain, moving down into serious darkness where he would encounter apex predators, large sharks prowling the depths. His waterlogged boots sped him downward, his lungs bursting with the last breath he'd ever take.

Then, and here's where it got weird, he felt arms surrounding him. Big strong arms lifting him up. Pete was not a religious man, and he wasn't on hallucinogens. He wasn't crazy. He didn't think it was God.

But glancing down as they rose back up through the hazy water's light, he saw big hands gripping his chest, dark hair on forearms, a Claddagh ring facing in toward his savior's heart. The man could swim as if with jet propulsion. As they rose, he gave Pete air. Not with a regulator, and not mouth-to-mouth, but somehow magically he transferred H
₂
O to Pete's bloodstream.

When they broke the surface, Pete heard his shipmates shouting. “There he is!” “Hang on, Petey, we're coming for you!” They threw the grappling hook, and although Pete was too weak to grab the line, his savior did, and he wrapped it once around Pete's chest, hooking the line to hold it steady.

When Pete turned around, no one was there. The crew hauled him over to the
Helena Marie
, and by the time they got Pete on board, he was puking up seawater, trying to see over the transom.

“What're you looking for?” Hank McDuff asked.

“Nothing,” Pete said, because it would have sounded insane.

Pete pulled himself up, stared into the bay. He saw a sailboat: small, pretty, white hull, gleaming brightwork. She shimmered like a mirage. He spit more seawater out of his lungs.

“You see her?” he asked, pointing.

“See what?” Catcher Langtry asked. “Come on, man, you gotta get off deck for a while.”

Sailors and fishermen were superstitious about ghosts and their ships, and the notion of the sloop his grandfather had built, the
Irish Darling
—a legend to Pete, having been possessed by boats his whole life—filled his mind. He didn't tell anyone, and he signed on for every trip the rest of the summer. Come winter, he worked in the cannery. He'd stand at the end of the wharf, watching for that sailboat.

Now, finishing his lunch, he stared out at the calm blue sea off Squibnocket. After a few minutes he went inside, washed his dish, and headed upstairs. The house was rambling, with narrow hallways and unexpected wings and staircases. It unsettled him to see that most of the rooms were empty. Boxes were piled in corners, labeled
Dar, Rory,
and
Delia—
his mom.

Pete made his way down the long second-floor hall to the room that had been his grandmother's. She'd died last October; he hadn't made it to the funeral. Entering her room, he felt pangs of love and guilt. For some reason, this room was the last to be completely packed away. It still looked as he remembered it from childhood, coming out to the Vineyard every summer.

The white metal bed was no longer made up with her favorite linens from France. Her books had been taken down from the bookcase. But the brightly colored glass chandelier still hung overhead, catching the light. Her writing desk was still by the window. Beside it was the blue silk armchair he'd always loved because his grandmother would hold him on her lap while sitting in it, and they'd make up stories about the island, the sea, and a sailor who went wherever the wind took him.

Pete stood by the writing desk. His hands were trembling. He hadn't had a drink or drug in fourteen days, but he'd developed a real problem there, up in Alaska. After each trip, a lot of guys spent their shares in the bars. Pete had banked his for a while, but soon he found himself bellied up to the bar at the Cat's Catch, an old cathouse turned into a tavern, scoring crystal and drinking shots till the ups and downs flipped him over and he couldn't remember his own name.

Hand tremors took him back to drinking and drugging times, but right now he was filled with fear and emotion. Was his memory correct? Not about being rescued by a ghost, but about something his grandmother had shown him when he was six. She'd taken him into her room, locked the door behind her.

Pete remembered her short white hair and bright blue eyes. She always wore loose cotton dresses that went below her knees, bright colors she called coral, jade, periwinkle. The only jewelry she wore was a necklace with a silver knot pendant. She was strong, and she could walk fast, and she knew the batting averages of all the Red Sox. Smoking had given her a deep, gravelly voice, but to Pete it was also soft and full of love.

“You're my only grandson,” she said, long before Obadiah was born. “And I have only daughters, no sons.”

They stood before her ebony desk. She pulled down the slanted panel that provided the writing surface. Inside were several cubbyholes filled with her stationery, stamps, a letter opener. The center compartment looked empty, but she reached in, and all the way back was a green velvet box. She took it out and handed it to Pete.

“What is it?” he asked.

“A ring,” she said. “It was given to me by my only love. And when you find your only love, I shall give it to you to give her.”

She gestured for Pete to open the box. Inside was a gold ring with a strange symbol on it: two hands holding a heart. Pete liked it because it seemed like a story. Whose hands, and whose heart, and who would hold a heart anyway? He asked his grandmother these questions.

“The person holding the heart is you. Or me, or anyone. If you are alone, hoping for love, you wear it on your third finger with the heart facing out. But if you have found love, you wear the heart toward your own heart—facing in.”

“Why don't you wear it?” he had asked her.

Her silence lasted a long time, and was full of sadness. “Because your grandfather sailed away from me.”

Pete's hands stopped shaking. He stood by the writing desk, reached into the center compartment. It was empty. What would he have done if he'd found the ring?

His father was right; he was a druggie. He'd gotten into some bad stuff up in Dillingham, developed a meth habit, and sold his truck to pay for it. He'd asked his parents for money to repair a vehicle he no longer possessed—he'd sold it in Denver for booze and meth. Hitchhiked all the way home from Alaska, to cop along the way.

Fourteen days without drinking or drugs—a huge accomplishment for him—and right now staring into the compartment where that ring had been, he knew he'd half hoped he could take it into Oak Bluffs, find a guy, trade the ring, and get high. He wouldn't have done it, though. He swore to himself he wouldn't have thrown away his new sobriety to hock his grandmother's ring.

Pete was tired, skinny, covered with sores, jonesing for something to get him right. But thinking about that ring, he remembered how he'd nearly drowned. The arms around him, the hand wearing a ring to match the one he'd been looking for: heart facing inward. He wished his grandmother were alive so he could tell her about it.

He was sure his grandfather had saved his life.

Pete was tired. He lay down on his grandmother's bed. He must have fallen asleep in the sun pouring through her window. Too exhausted for dreams, he just crashed.

However much time passed, he suddenly heard footsteps. Heavy boots on the stairs.

“Hello?” came the deep voice. “Who's there?”

Pete struggled out of sleep. He tried to sit up, act as if he just happened to be sitting on the bed. A man stepped into the room, tall and rugged like the fishermen in Alaska. But Pete recognized him—one of his aunt's friends.

“Hey,” Pete said.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Pete Monaghan. I'm Dar's nephew.”

“Pete! Holy shit, I didn't recognize you. I'm Andy Mayhew, remember me?”

“Sure do, man,” Pete said.

Andy crossed the room to shake Pete's hand. His gaze took in Pete's sallow coloring, the open sores on his face, his cheeks sunken from missing back teeth. Pete felt tense, standing by his grandmother's open desk.

“It's not what you think,” Pete said.

“It better not be,” Andy said.

“My grandmother showed me something once,” Pete said. “She said it would be mine when I fell in love.”

“Are you in love?”

“No.”

“That's because no one but another meth head would want to hook up with you. What are you doing here?”

“I needed to come home,” Pete said, his voice shaking. “To get clean. It's fourteen days now.”

“Okay,” Andy said. “That's a good start. But you can't stay here.”

“Man,” Pete said, his eyes flooding, “I've got nowhere else to go.”

“Yes, you do,” Andy said. “I'll take you there. And listen. You can't just let Scup out and leave him. I found him halfway down South Road.”

“Sorry, Andy.”

“It's okay, Pete. Close the desk now.”

Pete went to the writing desk. In spite of the fact that Andy seemed to be in charge here, Pete felt protective of the place his grandmother had kept her ring. He turned to check; Andy was watching him like a hawk. Then he closed the slanted wood front.

“Did you ever know my grandfather?” Pete asked.

“I sure did,” Andy said.

“Just wondered,” Pete said, still staring at his grandmother's desk.

 

 

Andy checked on the cats, then locked up the house. He let Scup ride in the back of his truck and Pete in the passenger seat. Pete asked to run back inside to get his backpack, but Andy said no. No telling what Pete might have hiding in there. Driving past the cemetery, he saw Pete straining his neck to see.

“Your grandmother's buried back there, on the hillside.”

“I should have been here for the funeral.”

Andy didn't reply.

They drove to Alley's Store, and Andy bought two coffees. He drank his black, but he guessed Pete would take his with milk and sugar. Returning to the truck, he caught Pete's glance of appreciation. They drove out of the parking lot, and Andy checked his watch.

“Am I holding you up?” Pete asked. “I don't want to. If it's too much trouble . . .”

“It's not too much trouble.”

“But you have somewhere you have to be.”

“Work, Pete. I'm my own boss, so I can take an hour to get you settled.”

“What does ‘settled' mean?” Pete asked, sounding nervous.

Andy didn't answer him right away. He knew that fourteen days clean and sober would keep Pete out of detox, but it didn't mean he was ready for the world. They drove down the pine-lined road, and Andy opened the window so Pete could smell the island. They passed Andy's small house and Harrison's storage park.

“Why are you doing this?” Pete said.

“I'm doing it for Dar, and for your mother,” Andy said. “And because I remember the first day you surfed, really surfed, one April vacation when you were up here visiting your grandmother—I let you have my old wetsuit, and you got up on your board with hardly any help from Dar and me and rode the wave straight in to Lucy Vincent Beach.”

Pete turned toward the open window, let the wind blow his hair straight back. Andy knew Pete was remembering what it felt like to go into the water in spring, wearing a wetsuit, paddle out past the break, and wait for the right wave.