Just for convenience sake; a few minor typos addressed and a few tweaks here and there.

[Eric Clapton \\ Change the World]

The Silent Wake

Part I

C. Llewelyn Sumner sat at his drafting table, lost in thought.

The site was simple enough, just another sloping city lot, yet this lot was on the water and came with a sweeping view that took in both Shilshole Marina and the northern reaches of the Olympic Range across the Sound. The commission would be a visible one, too, not to mention lucrative, and the finished house would be seen by boaters transiting the Ballard locks and passengers coming into the city on The Empire Builder, so the design would have to be striking, not merely eye catching.

The work would, in other words, represent one last feather in his cap, and so it would be an important commission.

Yet the man asking him to design this new house presented whole new sets of complications, an inner landscape he’d never had to deal with before. Patrick Grey was a writer, but he had also been, apparently, a spy of some sort. Now this strange man was, allegedly, writing novels based on his many exploits and, strangely enough, these recollections had been interesting enough to sell quite well in airports and with suburban booksellers. And Grey wasn’t an American, either, and despite growing up in Cheltenham, his tastes seemed more in keeping with a Japanese way of life. The Grey House would have to reflect all these varied influences, even though they seemed mutually, and often – almost – contradictory.

Whenever C. Llewelyn Sumner contemplated taking on a new commission he first tried to examine the client’s life, looking for clues beyond the obvious that might guide his hand when he shaped the littlest details of the new house, at least as it took shape in his mind. And quite often he looked at other architects’ life and works, not looking for mere inspiration but for something deeper. Maybe a connection to something beyond words. And, like so many of his generation, Sumner turned to Frank Lloyd Wright for both gentle solace and soaring guidance.

So after walking over the sloping site with Patrick, and talking about the preconceived design ideas the spy had in mind, C. Llewelyn Sumner sketched out a preliminary set of plans. He’d at one point thought of Wright’s Walker House in Carmel, California, but soon discarded the idea when he realized this new site was simply incompatible. Next, his mind ranged over the fin de siècle exuberance of the Gamble House, Greene & Greene’s masterpiece in Pasadena, California, yet in their talks Grey seemed to express little interest in the Arts and Crafts Movement, and the more Grey talked about what he expected of this house the more C. Llewelyn Sumner understood that the spy rarely, if ever, looked back. What Grey really wanted was something that mirrored his life and work in the here and now, something cold and austere, something dangerous yet at peace with its surroundings.

But Grey also talked and talked about small Japanese gardens and the spirits that came to inhabit such gentle spaces. One weekend they boarded a Japan Air Lines 747 and flew to Tokyo, then they flew on to Hakodate, on the northernmost island of Hokkaido, and all the while Patrick talked and talked about these spirits. At first he talked in general terms of gardens and the kami that resided there, but then he talked about his father and growing up in England, and soon enough they came upon the more complicated histories of his mother and wife. And then, finally, to the stubborn history that surrounded his daughter, Akira, and her mother.

They walked the family’s ancestral home on the tiny peninsula off the western reaches of the ancient city, a sprawling feudal residence that at one time had been a low castle spread out among and between a series of interlinking gardens. They had walked beside a creek that seemed to split the house in two, into old and new, and C. Llewelyn Sumner marveled at the care taken to so carefully space cherry trees among the varied rows of spreading dwarf maples – and all the trees had names. Even the rocks within these gardens, he soon learned, had names. Everywhere he looked his eyes found seemingly irrelevant spaces that were home to various family members – long dead to this world but who nevertheless still resided somewhere within these walls. Or more precisely, in the gardens scattered along the winding pathway beside the stream that ran down to the sea.

C. Llewelyn Sumner had, once upon a time, been a stranger to chance encounters, but all that had come to a shattering end on the First of August, 1966. He had very nearly been killed that morning, when a suicidally deranged madman, Charles Whitman, began shooting people from the 27^th floor observation deck at the University of Texas. That morning, and its immediate aftermath, took shape as a crystalline shard of memory in Sumner’s mind, a shattered moment in time cast in cold, hard fear. If a motor backfired near Sumner he still ducked for cover and his hands would shake for hours, sometimes for days.

Then he would come home to Tracy and once there he could find his way back to the present.

And for a time the two had lived in pristine isolation, safely ensconced within a kind of manmade prism of the mind, a time of splintered light within the almost cocoon-like existence of urban nomads taken in by the sea. She had, as it happened, turned him on to living life on a sailboat, to living in a marina while they worked side by side drawing houses for a large architectural firm in Seattle.

Shattered by events in Austin and after growing up in near isolation, C. Llewelyn Sumner found it difficult to accept love – even when unconditional love was staring him in the face. As his career flourished in the light of his unquestioned talent, his relationship with Tracy withered in the icy echoes of Whitman’s morning rampage. In the end, Tracy had enough of his evasions and moved on, and he finally moved his business into a nondescript storefront on Seaview Avenue, not at all far from Ballard locks, and his drafting table looked out over the waters around Shilshole Marina, and when his mood was dark enough he would remember what it felt like to love another human being. He knew she had been the one and that he had failed them both – but as age came for him those remembrances grew fragile and vague.

Until Patrick Grey walked in his door.

Because things keep changing, even as memories take wing. How did Yeats put it? Things fall apart? The center cannot hold?

Walking along the cliffs above the castle in Hakodate with Patrick Grey had been his undoing. Listening to Patrick talk of his marriage and of its unravelling in Palo Alto, Sumner felt echoes of his own disintegrations, of his own failures in love. And when Sumner saw the violence that lay at the heart of Patrick’s miseries, and how they related, however peripherally, to his own state of denial, he knew he had stumbled upon something most precious. He knew that Patrick Grey would become a friend.

So from time to time, as the Grey House took shape on the shores along Shilshole Bay, C. Llewelyn Sumner took Patrick Grey Sailing on Puget Sound. Cherry picking only the best days, they roamed the waters off downtown and shadowed the various ferries a few times, until finally Grey became interested enough in sailing to try a longer sail. So one July afternoon they took off for a days long adventure up to Port Townsend, and when they arrived Grey could see Vancouver Island across the Straits.

“What’s that?” Grey had asked, pointing to a hazy patch along the far shore.

“Victoria is right about there,” Sumner said, as he pointed to a notch in the island.

“Victoria?” Grey said, his mood lifting. “How far away?”

“Oh, I don’t know, 35 – maybe 40 miles…something like that.”

“Could we go?”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Got your passport?”

“Always. All five of them,” the old spy added with a sly grin, snickering at his tired, ages-old cliché.

So Sumner had moved the waypoint cursor on the chartplotter’s main NAV screen and simply punched Execute, and off they went – with all the tides and currents neatly accounted for. Of course, it took somewhat longer to cross forty miles of open water in a sailboat than it casually did an automobile on a motorway, with around seven hours being a decent enough crossing for a boat like Sumner’s beamy old Nauticat 43, but soon enough they were berthed at the tiny marina in front of the old Victoria Empress Hotel, feeling quite satisfied with the fruits of their labors. Of course paying more for an overnight berth than a single night in one of the hotels better rooms, their stay lasted a week, and Grey simply paid for everything, no questions asked.

And Sumner thought it odd that what the old spy craved most was a bit of home. Afternoon tea with strawberry scones and clotted cream. A thick slab of roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and creamed spinach in a small dining roof off an even smaller library. And he even fished an old Meerschaum pipe out of a coat pocket after dinner one evening and lit up, and not one mindless chatterbot had come screeching by with senseless prohibitions, and it was plain for all to see that Mr Grey was nothing more or less than a British gentleman. In the truest, most ancient sense of the word.

And Grey proved to be an able student. Few people take to sailing after a trip like they’d just completed, but Patrick’s eyes seemed alive out there on the water. He was always scheming and planning but he seemed to love danger most of all, and Sumner could tell something was up when he drove Grey to the airport one morning a few weeks after their return. Patrick flew to Maine, and he was gone for a few weeks, but when he returned he seemed quite happy with himself.

Yet as Sumner watched the years fall away from Patrick’s life, at least when they were on the water, he also realized he’d have to redesign a few details inside the Grey House, and a few of these he managed to pull off without Patrick’s knowledge or approval. Little hidden details. Secret passageways and the like.

And when finally the Grey House was complete, the two friends walked around their creation admiring what they had cobbled together, and Patrick smiled at all the little hidden details Sumner had fashioned almost in plain sight, even if they were lost in oblique shadows. Things like two hidden stairways that led to a small basement. Auxiliary power supplies and battery backup systems, things of that nature that really didn’t seem logical. But then there was the small gym that folded into one basement wall, and a treadmill that disappeared inside another.

So Sumner was a little surprised when, the next time he visited, he found Patrick walking stiffly about the house with the aid of a walker. And Patrick had recently hired an assistant of some sort, and she pushed Patrick out to a modified van when she drove him to appointments or out for groceries, and then quite suddenly he was venturing out only with the aid of a wheelchair.

But in the end C. Llewelyn Sumner only smiled as he took in all these new comings and goings, because ever since that first day of August in 1966, he could smell trouble from a mile away.

part 2

The boat arrived one sunny May day not by sea, but rather on the deck of a massive freighter. A crane lifted the long, slender sailboat and placed her gently on the sea, and later that morning her cloud-piercing mast was lowered into place. Men swarmed her decks for days making her ready, and curiously enough by then the arrow-like dark gray hull had begun gathering attention. The massive yacht looked like something from a bygone era, like a creation that might have once belonged to this bygone era – but in the end the world had decided such machines represented people whose time had come and gone. Now, new faces stared at the yacht and wondered what living in that other time must have felt like, but then with their hands in their empty pockets the curious departed once again for the shadows.

Haiku was motored over to Shilshole Marina and her lines made fast at the end of a long pier, and once again small throngs came and stared at the massive sailboat, for they knew not what to make of this tethered beast. Who owned such a preposterous thing? Why build such a vast contraption in this day and age? Where was her owner, for surely he must be riddled with improprieties? 

Haiku posed more questions than she could answer just sitting there, yet once again the curious gave up and drifted away. Crews came by several times a week and made her whole, and as time passed workmen made fresh her brightwork and lubricated her vast systems, and soon enough the spy’s elegant anachronism simply faded away into the humming background of the city. And eventually, no one cared who or what was behind all of this ostentatiously irrelevant elegance. 

But C. Llewelyn Sumner still kept his old Nauticat at Shilshole, and that was behind the how and the why he first laid eyes on Haiku. And when he first saw the beast he walked out to the end of the pier and let his eyes roam over her lines, admiring her the way some might regard a particularly fast racehorse, or how others cast approving sidelong glances at sensuously gorgeous women.

At least until he heard a wheelchair rolling up from behind.

And without looking he knew Patrick Grey was there, watching and waiting to see his friend’s reaction to this latest revelation. Yet Sumner ignored his friend, instead continuing to walk along Haiku’s hull, sighting along the sweep of her sheer and sighing in silent awe at the utter perfection he beheld. Sumner was, after all, an architect, and his soul was drawn to such things. Perhaps, in some cases, as a moth is drawn to the flame.

“Who drew her?” Sumner finally asked the gathering silence. “Bruce King, or Herman Frers?”

“King,” Grey replied somewhat too casually. “What do you think? Did he succeed?”

C. Llewelyn Sumner turned to his friend and looked at the woman pushing the wheelchair, then down at Patrick Grey. “It isn’t often that something so obscure is resurrected, but I have to ask Patrick. Why? Why do such a thing?”

“Because I could.”

Sumner nodded before he turned and looked at the little ship once again. “Of course.”

“So, what brings you to the marina this fine morning?” Grey asked his friend.

“I’m meeting a broker here at ten. I’m selling the boat.”

“About time.”

Sumner turned and looked at Patrick again. “Oh, really?”

“If you’re going to bother with something so superfluous you really should get something more in keeping with your personality.”

C. Llewelyn Sumner smiled. “And this,” he said with an operatic sweep of the hand, “is in keeping with yours?”

So Patrick returned the smile. “Every dog has its day, Charles.”

“Ah, the famous writer. I forget.”

“I’m neither, Charles.”

“Oh? Well then, who are you really, Patrick?”

“Me? Charles. I thought you knew. I’m nobody. I was never even here, so of course you never really knew me.”

“Of course. The spy who came in from the…what?”

“Spy. What a horrible word – and to think that’s how I’ll be remembered. If, that is, anyone bothers to remember me at all.”

“Well, they’ll certainly remember this fucking boat.”

“Funny, Charles. You know, I never imagined you without that boat of yours. Have you given up on sailing?”

“Oh, no, it’s nothing like that. Something rather strange happened to me last week. I was informed I have two children.”

Patrick’s eyes sparkled with newfound mirth. “Indeed. Tell me more.”

“A girl I once loved. Loved, Patrick. Me? Can you imagine that?”

“No, not really.”

“Neither could she, apparently.”

“So, she kept them from you? Even their very existence?”

C. Llewelyn Sumner nodded, though he still struggled with her all-knowing contempt, even now. “One of them, my girl, will be staying with me next year.”

“Just a year?”

“Yes. I assume that’s all I am entitled to. They’ll both be off to college after that.”

“Twins, I take it?”

Sumner nodded. “Yes. So strange. I can almost see…no, that’s not quite right. I can feel Tracy in them, but then I recognize this other creature in them and I can’t seem to accept that it’s me. But I suppose that’s why things turned out as they did.”

“Oh? Well, yes, I suppose some truths are more difficult to accept than others. Yet there are times, don’t you think, when the most difficult thing to see is the path we chose to take, even as we turn our back to the sunset? But you said a year and then they are off to college? And so now, all of a sudden you’ve decided to sell the boat? But wasn’t she the last link you had to their mother?”

C. Llewelyn Sumner stared into the stark reality of Patrick’s appraisal, but then he slowly nodded before a long sigh slipped past his trembling lips. “I suppose I thought I should move on.”

“Move on? From your past? Charles, what the devil is wrong with you this morning?”

“She passed away recently, Patrick,” C. Llewelyn Sumner said, now trying his best not to cry. “She passed and I’ll never see her again.” But he heard someone walking out the pier and turned to see his yacht broker approaching so he quickly pulled himself back from the brink and cast away the years.

And as the broker came up he too stopped to admire Haiku, and to revel in the rumors and innuendo behind all her local mysteries.

“Charles?” the broker began. “Out looking for your next boat already? Don’t you think this one is a bit too large for you?”

Sumner looked at the broker, then at Patrick: “Ah. No. Not today,” he replied.

“You know,” the broker continued, “everyone loves a mystery, but I think after a few months we really ought to know who owns this creature. My God but she’s lovely,” the amiable broker said as he looked over Haiku. Then the nattily dressed middle-aged man turned to Patrick Grey. “So, do you know the owner?”

Patrick smiled. “I’ve heard it belongs to one of those MicroSoft millionaires.”

The broker nodded knowingly. “Yup. Heard that too. Makes sense, I suppose.”

Then Patrick turned to the broker and smiled. “I can’t imagine Charles without a sailboat. Can you?”

“No, no I can’t,” the broker said, grinning at the scent of fresh blood in the water.

“The Nauticat never really fit him, I think. Not really. I imagined him in something less utilitarian. Strong, elegant, capable. What do you think?”

“Actually, we have a new Hallberg Rassy coming in that would be perfect for him. A forty-three. And what did you say? Strong and capable…?”

“And let’s not forget elegant,” the spy added.

“Ah yes, elegant. Charles? Interested?”

“Of course he is,” the spy replied in his friend’s stead. “You say it’s not here yet?”

“It’s at our yard being made ready. We could look at her tomorrow if you like?”

“Of course we’d like to. Isn’t that right, Charles?”

And so it happened.

C. Llewelyn Sumner and his daughter Elizabeth, when she tired of her horses, began sailing his new boat a few weeks after that. At first as he had with Patrick, taking his new boat around Elliot Bay in the waters off the wharves that lined the downtown waterfront, often staying out late and taking in the Space Needle at sunset. And soon enough they were broad-reaching down the sound, coming back to Shilshole after a long weekend in Port Townsend, and these were the happiest of times for C. Llewelyn Sumner – even if they were but echoes of similar outings with Tracy, even if such memories were twenty years gone in a long silent wake. But just a few weeks later, he took Liz to look at colleges in California and Texas, places he had once called home, and it seemed like just a few short weeks after that he was packing her off to establish the contours of a new life at her first choice, UC Davis.

He grew depressed as that tumultuous year came to an end, so depressed he found time to do little else but sleep. He took care of Elizabeth’s horses until it became clear she wouldn’t be coming home as often as she’d hoped, and so then he gave them to friends who promised to take good care of them. He took on a few new residential commissions, yet those he did were trivial, almost meaningless tract homes for a developer in Portland, Oregon. The money was nice but really almost unnecessary now; he was comfortable and would remain so unless something dire befell the markets. Then he was approached about drawing a new civic center and that piqued his interest, pulled him out of his slump.

Yet from time to time Patrick Grey beckoned. One time he wanted to take Haiku out for a shakedown cruise up to Desolation Sound, and Sumner wasn’t at all surprised when Grey discarded his walkers and wheelchairs and ran about the decks, in effect sailing his 126 foot yacht all by himself. Sumner tried not to ask what this was all about – because in truth he didn’t want to know. Patrick was no longer a mystery; he was more like a minefield – a vast landscape dotted with lies and misdirections.

Though one night in Desolation Sound, the old spy did talk of things Charles found rather unsettling.

“Do you ever wonder what would happen if the walls of our little civilization came crumbling down?”

“What on earth are you going on about now, Patrick?”

“Oh, I don’t know, really, just a random thought or two. Yet it seems to me that everything is so out of sorts now, our politics have grown poisonous and I’ve recently had days when I felt like it’s becoming almost dangerous to head out to the grocery store. I see wild-eyed kids strung out on meth on every street corner and not one of them seems to know anything at all about the world. And I don’t know about you, but I resented being locked up for almost two years – because, mind you, that’s two years of our lives we’ll never get back – and yet now that we’ve crawled back out of our caves everyone seems to have grown stark-raving-bonkers. Everywhere you go you hear people saying how afraid they are to do this or that and every politician you hear seems to be pitching a new flavor of fear with each passing day, and yet now, after two years of lock downs it feels like things have been turned up a notch. And so, the thought occurred to me: How long can this possibly go on? How long can the fear and the anger build before this whole house of cards comes tumbling down?”

“I think,” C. Llewelyn Sumner sighed, his depression suddenly taking a darker turn, “what you’re describing is incipient paranoia. But the squeaky wheel always gets the grease.”

“I suppose, but let’s play What If for a moment. What if the markets collapsed? What if a meteor slammed into the South Atlantic? What if a new madman came to power, a madman with nuclear weapons – and he decided to use them? What would happen if all our paranoia gave way to the moment and the walls holding up all our notions of reality just suddenly collapsed. What would happen? How would you cope?”

“I have no idea,” C. Llewelyn Sumner said.

“And what – that’s it? You don’t care?”

“You can’t plan for things like that, Patrick. If it happens it happens. The survivors get on with living and all the rest become carrion. I rather think that’s the way it’s always been, don’t you?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve always tried to look ahead, to play What If at stop along the way, and I think I do because I don’t want to sit by passively and let life just happen to me. I want to shape the outcome – if I can, that is.”

“What are you saying, Patrick?”

“I’m saying that you might actually consider taking that new boat of yours and getting her ready for some unknown calamity. Think of her as a different kind of life insurance policy, if not for you then for your children.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“Okay. Say the unspeakable happens. Then what?”

“You go where things are less…unspeakable.”

“Such as?”

“South. Pick an island. But remember: Fortune favors the bold, my friend.”

And so C. Llewelyn Sumner had given the matter some thought. There was, after all, no harm in thinking.

+++++

It was only a few months later when Patrick let it be known that his own daughter had emerged from the shadows and come back into his life. This was an unexpected development, and one that had caught the old spy unprepared – which Sumner thought somewhat ironic. Yet when it turned out that she was sicker than Hell and in chemotherapy over at the UW Cancer Center, C. Llewelyn Sumner sensed a change had come over Patrick. And when he learned that Patrick’s daughter had moved into the Grey House and was now staying with Patrick, he realized his friend the spy was on the brink. This development had been, of course, unforeseen – but Patrick had gone on about his life as if all this wasn’t a problem.

Until it became a problem.

Patrick had been comfortable cultivating layers of secrecy throughout his life; even his father had taught him a few of the most basic skills he would need. Crafting alternate identities came as naturally to Patrick as picking up a drafting pencil came to C. Llewelyn Sumner. Being able to disappear within a crowd? Not a problem. Need to flee one country in the middle of the night, and then to appear two days later on the far side of nowhere all while being able to convincingly prove to the local authorities that you’d been there for years? Again, this was simply another skill Patrick had learned along the way. All that was needed were the resources and plans to put contingencies in place, and to secret them away where no one else could find them. But that too was simply another skill he’d picked up along the way.

But to Sumner, writing fiction had begun to chip away at Patrick’s skills, to dull the old spy’s senses. And then his daughter Akira turned up on his doorstep, and with her arrival he realized that another seismic shift was taking place, a whole new series of complications rising from the dead. Patrick couldn’t simply disappear so easily now, yet neither could he push his daughter out the door. What Patrick needed, he reasoned, was a means to keep an eye on his daughter while also preserving some rough semblance of his need for instant mobility. What he needed, then, was a means to a new, more immediate end.

Yet…after learning to sail with Sumner – and even long before Akira arrived – Haiku had begun to take shape in Patrick’s mind. But then again, Sumner had already learned that the old spy was always looking ahead. Always making plans – counting on the unexpected, and Akira had apparently been most unexpected. Only now Patrick had Akira’s needs foremost in mind, for the old spy could not presume to live forever and he obviously wanted to see to her needs after he was gone.

Akira would, therefore, and by virtue of her frailties, need someone to look after her. Someone Akira could count on – after the inevitable happened and Patrick passed. She would need someone with the two virtues Patrick cherished most, but had more often than not lacked himself: duty and honor.

Patrick apparently had friends everywhere, yet not one of these friends seemed close to Patrick. Most were often little more than academic or professional colleagues, and though they were on friendly terms with one another that was about the extent of these friendships. Yet Patrick never discarded such friends; he never let these relationships wither away into obscurity or fade away with the passage of time. Such friendships were, after all, quite useful to spies. And curiously enough, almost all of Patrick’s friends were in academia, and most had taught at Stanford at one time or another.

One of these old friends, a rather bright geologist who also happened to look somewhat like cross between a gecko and a mole, had called him recently as he’d just finished writing a rather alarming book and he wanted to know if Patrick knew a good publisher’s agent. They’d talked for a while about the subject, plate tectonics and volcanism, and about his friend’s growing concerns about the so-called Cascadia Subduction Zone, and how a sudden release of energy might cause one or more of the major volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest to literally blow their tops off – and quite soon, too – and Patrick began to listen because other plans might be affected. Patrick cautiously recommended his own agent and then made the appropriate call.

But now that Patrick had a clear picture in his mind about when such an event was to take place, he told C. Llewelyn Sumner what he had learned and what he needed his friend to help him do. Plans had developed a momentum of their own, after all.

Part 3

On the next dark of the moon, Sumner took his Zodiac off the davits and fired up the Yamaha outboard and took off towards Ballard Locks. The journey took, perhaps, ten minutes, and he pulled up next to the tiny beach under the railway trestle bridge and waited in shifting moonless shadows.

And a few minutes later Patrick Grey came jogging down the trail through the little park, and he picked his way carefully down the rocky pathway to the beach with practiced ease. And then, as if he’d done so a hundred times before, Patrick pushed the dingy back from the beach and hopped in, leaving Sumner to navigate to the north side of the entrance channel, doing his level best to get into the spirit of the moment and act like a spy on a secret mission into…where? Russia? Well, no, not exactly Russia – for it seemed Seattle would have to do that night.

Sumner steered the dingy along the shoreline and a few minutes later deposited Patrick on the dock beside Haiku, then he motored off and tied up the inflatable behind his Hallberg-Rassy. Not at all sure what he’d just taken part in, he felt a little queasy now that the affair was over and done with, so he poured about three fingers of a decent single malt and went up into the cockpit, not looking towards Haiku even once – because he felt somehow dirty. Used and dirty.

But tiring of Patrick’s nonsense, the next morning he cast off his lines and motored over to the Elliot Bay Marina, and he tied-off there for the time being, and once the paperwork for his new slip was out of the way he took a taxi to his car and then made his way back to the house above Port Townsend. As always, the little fox was waiting for him, ready to curl up on his lap and enjoy another afternoon lazing under the sun, but even she was soon caught up in the spirit of the new, unsettling dis-ease that had swept up Sumner.

But why, he remembered wondering sometime later that day – and maybe it was the first time he had, too – did this little fox suddenly remind him of Tracy? And why did she feel like she belonged to him? Had he spent so much time with Patrick and his wandering kami?

+++++

“I think the fault is going to cut loose soon,” Kurt, the spy’s friend continued, “and I think it will this summer. Maybe as soon as June, possibly July.”

“What’s got you scared, Kurt? The harmonic tremors?”

“Yes, precisely. The frequency and duration of events from two miles down to ten is increasing almost daily, and Pat, it’s following an exponential curve. At this rate, something just has to give. There’s just too much force building up down there in the earth.”

“Okay, okay, I believe you, Kurt. What are you going to do? Personally, I mean?”

“The school term ends here on May 10^th. I’m flying to Hawaii, going to lay in supplies once I get there. You?”

“Oh, I have a boat.”

“Capable of long distances?”

“Yes. I may head your way, but I was counting on more time.”

“Yes. I was too.”

“C’est la vie, Kurt. The story of our lives. Text me your contact information after you get settled in. I may need a favor or two from you.”

Then Patrick noted that Sumner’s new boat had pulled out sometime in the wee hours and he sighed at this latest complication. Perhaps his extraction had been overblown, but, well, that was just the way the spy did such things, but then he noticed that Neal was up and about in the cockpit of his new boat and he smiled. It was time to get some fresh salmon, wasn’t it?

Funny how things were working out, yet it had all been so much easier to put in place than he’d ever anticipated. Yet the most difficult still remained.

Neal’s father had been one of Patrick Grey’s best friends, but the relationship had swiftly moved to another level, and he had kept Neal in mind ever since. When Akira showed up it had been a simple matter of planting birdseeds along the path of least resistance and now, here he was. Now…there was the matter of his family to attend to…

+++++

 “Charles? What have you been up to?” the spy asked his absent friend over the phone.

“Absolutely nothing. You?”

“Yes, well, it seems that matter I talked to you about has taken on new urgency? I’d say you need to go shopping now as the window on the event seems to be opening around the first of June.”

“Are you serious?”

“I am. And it seems that several like minded coneheads at the USGS are as well. Did you get the solar panels installed?”

“Delivered. Iverson is doing the stainless and canvas for the enclosure. I’ll have 660 watts up there once everything is installed. And the ground plane for the SSB has been installed now, too.”

“So, you got the ICOM 802?”

“Yup. And I’m putting up a StarLink antenna.”

“You’d better pay your installers some more and get things moving along more briskly.”

“Your guy is that sure about all this?”

“He seems to be, yes. And I’ve checked his data. Something is brewing, and even FEMA seems to be gearing up.”

“Does he think the effects should be confined to the Seattle area?”

“More than likely, but there are no guarantees.”

“You do recall that Elizabeth is down in Davis. That’s just a stone’s throw from the Bay Area, geologically speaking.”

“I know. Tell her to pack some belongings for a sailing trip this summer.”

“She’s signed up to take classes down at Davis this summer.”

“Charles, tell her to get ready. Now. If she doesn’t you’ll just have to go and fetch her, won’t you? And that won’t be easy, will it?”

“Patrick, we’re talking three weeks! You can’t possibly be serious! There’s no way I do all that in three weeks!”

“Charles, listen to me. None of this is written in stone, but my friend advises me that waters around the subduction zone are boiling in three different locations. That means magma is close to the seafloor. Tremors are increasing along an exponential curve, and in both frequency and amplitude. Kurt thinks the threshold event will likely occur on or around June first. That’s all I can tell you, Charles. Believe me or don’t, the matter is for you to decide.”

“And you’re heading to Papeete?”

“Eventually, yes. I’ll go to Hawaii first.”

“If I have to go into San Francisco Bay…”

“Charles, if for some reason the San Andreas fault were to let go there might not be a safe way in to or out of the Bay, let alone any secure lines of communication to your daughter. And if a working sailboat entered the Bay there’s simply no telling how many people might try to take her away from you. You’d need Navy SEALs to protect you on that boat, so I beg you to consider what you and your daughter’s options truly are well before this happens.”

“My son. He’s back east. What do I do about Charles?”

“Do you have his number?” Sumner gave it to him. “Now, get busy. Get things taken care of in the next few days, and do that bank transfer I told you about.”

“Cash?”

“All you can carry – and some gold, too.”

And so Sumner got to work, but first he stretched out under the late morning sun and enjoyed the sounds of the forest around his hillside home; the wind through the pines, chipmunks scattering pebbles as they ran from blue jays staring down from wayward branches, and then his little fox came out and joined him while he napped and dreamt and considered his options.

And in the end he chose rank dishonesty, but this was a course of action, he felt sure, that Patrick Grey would heartily approve of.

+++++

“I think it will take me a week, perhaps eight or nine days, to make it to the Golden Gate,” C. Llewelyn Sumner told his daughter Elizabeth. “I’ve reserved a spot at Pier 39 stating on the 28^th, and I thought we could sail around the bay for a week or so, maybe head down to Monterrey or Carmel. Classes don’t resume until June tenth, right?”

“I think so, Dad, and you’re right, it sounds like fun. Would you mind if maybe a friend joined us?”

“No, no, of course not. The more the merrier!” This was something he hadn’t counted on. “Just be sure to pack for more than a few days, and don’t forget to bring along any medications you need. I’ll be leaving the day after tomorrow so if you have any questions let me know soon.”

And after he rang off he wondered about the nature of human duplicity. Was it really evil when you had someone’s best interests in mind?

He packed for warm weather because, after all, they would be heading for the tropics. Then he remembered something he’d read once about volcanic eruptions and unusually long winters and he decided to pack some cool weather gear. 

He loaded everything into an old beater he’d used to haul hay for the horses, a fifty year old Chevy pickup that seemed to have more rust than paint on it these days, and after Tracy the fox jumped in beside him he made the hours long drive into Seattle. He loaded bottles of water and mountains of canned goods down below, then made one last dash up to the Pike Place Market for fresh veggies and fish, and after all that was stowed he spent his last evening on Elliot Bay programming his chartplotter and recalibrating the forward-looking sonar before dropping off to sleep with his head on the chart table. Early the next morning he topped-off his water tanks and then motored over to fill both diesel tanks, and with that last chore out of the way he cast off his lines and said goodbye to the city he’d called home for decades.

Het set radar alarms and sonar guard zones and as the waters were dead calm he set the autopilot and then sat back and fed Tracy some salmon and yogurt before he made a small salad for himself, and as he motored away from his past he turned and looked back at the city. “Will I ever see you again?” he said to the gray silhouettes of skyscrapers poking up out of the mist, and for a while he wondered what the city would look like if Patrick’s calamity did indeed come to pass. He knew that most of the downtown area’s buildings pre-dated earthquake-proof advances in design and construction, and depending on the time of day an earthquake and tsunami hit, the loss of life would be massive.

And yet there was hardly any coordinated federal or state response to the warnings coming from the USGS. Was it really simply a matter of Chicken Little having cried ‘The sky is falling!’ one time too many? Or had scientific literacy fallen so low that few bothered to heed these warnings anymore?

Or did it really even matter? 

Wasn’t this just another example of the Darwinian struggle working itself out in real time? As it always had, only the fittest would survive to reproduce, and if scientific literacy loomed as a measure of the fitness to survive then there wasn’t a whole lot left to be said, was there? The pendulum swung back into deep mysticism time and time again, while the light of reason shone from the other extreme. This time the calamity would strike when reason was on the ebb, so the damage would be greater. Still, it was brutally difficult to look at the rows of suburban cottages that lined the Sound and realize there was a good possibility all these people might soon perish…

And then his phone chirped.

It was Patrick Grey calling.

He answered. “Good morning, Patrick! How are you?”

“I have you on AIS, Charles. You sly guy. Off to San Francisco, I assume?”

“Correct, as always, Patrick. I assume Papeete is still in the works?”

“Yes indeed. Assets are transferring and falling into place as we speak, but I doubt I’ll be arriving on Haiku, so don’t be too surprised if I’m not on hand when you arrive. Regardless, you are to proceed to the Papeete Marina just off the Place Jacques Chirac. You’ll find a slip there under your name and passport, and it has been pre-paid from July through the rest of the year. Haiku will be there around the same time.”

“And where will you be, Patrick?”

“Taking care of a few loose ends. If all goes according to plan, I should be along shortly.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“It will.”

“You’re that sure of yourself?”

“I am.”

“Must be nice.”

“It is.”

“You are a real prick, you know?”

“True, but it’s always nice to hear it from a true believer. Where will you be stopping for fuel?”

“Newport and Eureka.”

“Don’t forget about Bodega Bay, and once you get near the Bay Area keep your fuel topped off at all times. Do you have any jerry cans onboard?”

“Six for fuel, six for water.”

“Isn’t your water-maker working?”

“Things break, Patrick.”

“They do indeed. Good for you.” And with that the line went dead, leaving C. Llewelyn Sumner alone with his thoughts once again. After passing Whidbey Island the wind filled in and he made sail, reaching along at seven knots just a few hours later, until Port Angeles was off their port beam. He called the fuel dock at Neah Bay and let them know he was coming in, and they advised if he didn’t make it before they closed to just tie-off at the pumps.

Traffic was heavy in the main shipping lanes so he kept close to the coastline, and he made it in to Neah Bay just in time to see the lights go out at the fueling station, so he tied off for the night and settled in to sleep off the tensions of the day, only to wake up at four in the morning when a fishing boat came in to offload their catch. He purchased two huge salmon and had them cut up, then he put the chunks in baggies and slid them into the refrigerator, then he topped off his fuel and water tanks again before he left for Cape Flattery. 

Where he turned south, skirting the coast to stay well away from the northbound shipping lanes – only to find that now he had to keep a sharp eye out for felled timbers floating on or just beneath the rough surface. The sonar he’d installed did a fair job or warning him of the logs out to about 300 feet ahead of the boat, so enough time to take evasive action, but that morning was a nerve-wracking walk through a rolling minefield. Soon enough he gave up and turned to go further away from the coast – if nothing else to get away from all the floating logs.

And as this was, like it or not, his first time “outside” and the further he got from land the deeper the water became, and soon enough the long Pacific swell began to get to him. By late-morning he was leaning over the rail feeding the fish, and it took three Dramamine tabs to knock him out long enough to sleep off the nausea. When he woke in the middle of the afternoon he still had no appetite but did just manage to slice some salmon and feed Tracy, who as always had remained coiled on his lap while he slept.

And as evening came on he went topsides and was stunned by the technicolor sunset beyond the rolling slate gray seascape – and now the Olympic range was to his east, and for some reason he found that disconcerting. He powered up the radar and set the range to 48 miles and he spotted fishing boats and freighters here and there, but as soon as darkness came on his seasickness returned. The moon wouldn’t come up over the Olympics for a few more hours so he did his best to fight the rolling queasiness, and after a few hours the cramps and nausea abated just a little. When the moon finally came up he marveled at the scudding clouds overhead and how they looked like white-rimmed blackness drifting along on unseen currents in the sky, and even with a three-quarters moon out he was amazed by the number of stars he saw, and by how black and empty space looked.

He stayed up all through that first night out, mesmerized by the night sky and his place in the grand scheme of things, and he jumped when a flying fish flew up and landed in the cockpit. Tracy made a quick meal of it and seemed rather pleased with herself. Then, as the sky arced through shades of gray he jumped once again – this time when the Iridium SatPhone chirped in its cradle beside the chartplotter.

And he wasn’t exactly surprised to see Patrick’s ID pop up on the screen.

“Well, how did your night go?” the spy asked.

“What? You don’t know?”

“Now really, Charles! Do you think I’ve planted listening devices on your boat?”

“I don’t know. Have you?”

Patrick laughed and laughed at that. 

“No, well, to the point. Kurt has run another series of simulations, and he now seems rather confident that things will get interesting around the second, perhaps the third. Might I recommend that you and Elizabeth head out the Golden Gate on the first? Perhaps to visit Carmel or Monterrey?”

“If I stop feeling seasick, you mean?”

“Oh dear. Don’t tell me…”

“I think this was all a huge mistake, Patrick. There is no way in Hell I’ll survive a trip to Polynesia if this keeps up.”

“Do you have any over-the-counter GERD medications with you? Like maybe Nexium?”

“Yes?”

“Double up on the dose for two days and see if that doesn’t knock it back.”

“Okay. I’ll give it a try.”

“It’s the stomach acid, old boy. Your inner ear sends a signal when things get rough out and your stomach goes haywire with the stuff. Shut that down and away goes your mal-de-mer, just like magic. And no orange juice, nothing with heavy acid. That sets it off.”

“Okay. How are things on your end?”

“Oh, things are coming along nicely here.”

“I can’t believe the government isn’t taking this seriously, Patrick. It makes no sense.”

“Bureaucratic inertia, Charles. It killed Rome and it will be the death of us all.”

Sumner sighed. “You know, I’d recently been approached to work up preliminary plans for a new museum of science and technology with that civic center, and I think in a way I was actually excited about taking on a commission like that.”

“Oh, really? Why?”

“I’m not sure, but I think in the best possible circumstances such museums ought to be places where people can go for inspiration, to see how the people that came before confronted everyday life and how they went about finding solutions to their most vexing problems.”

“And what would you have designed, Charles? Something soaring to the heavens?”

Sumner chuckled. “You know, actually, I was thinking more along the lines of something that might survive a nuclear blast. A place where the people who were rebuilding civilization might go for both inspiration and ideas – and a sense of safety.”

“An underground bunker would do the trick, I suppose.”

“Not inspiring enough, Patrick. We need inspiration to excel; anything else is mere survival.”

“Did you ever stop to think that there might be times when mere survival is the best we can hope for?”

“No. Not since I realized what a horizontally opposed thumb is good for.”

“Oh, Charles. You are an artist, impractical to your core, but I’d hate to go through life without knowing you’re out there.”

“Why Patrick, is this a compliment?”

“No, Charles, it was a declaration of friendship.”

And with that the line once again went dead.

“I’ll be damned,” Sumner sighed – as he made his way to the box of Nexium he was sure he’d stored in the aft head.

+++++

Eight days later he sailed under the Golden Gate, and as soon as he was tied off at Pier 39 he fired up his iPhone and called Elizabeth.

“Well, I’ve made it,” he said to his daughter. “When can you come down?”

“Would tomorrow be too soon?”

“No, not at all! Perfect, as a matter of fact! You’ll be bringing your friend, I take it?”

So they set a time and Sumner set about scrubbing the boat with scented scrubbing compounds – anything that would rid the cockpit and cabins of any traces of his lingering bile. The next thing he did was head to a local pharmacy – where he bought every single box of Nexium they had on their shelves. He got up early the next morning and ran to a grocery store to replenish the larder, but he thought he’d wait another day before stocking up on fresh seafood and produce, then he sat up in the cockpit and waited.

And just before noon Elizabeth came bouncing up to his Hallberg-Rassy, The Silent Wake, and when Sumner looked down to find her vivacious smile he was stunned to see not just a friend from school but also her brother, his son. With their duffels in hand, he was standing by his sister’s side, and he appeared quite upset.

Part 4

But they just stood there staring at one another, wondering who would be the first to break the silence. 

Charles had never really accepted his father, not since their unforced reunion two years before. And then, after his father financially bailed out Forbes and kept him from losing his house, he’d felt a lingering unease between himself and the old architect – his father – and those unsettled feelings had remained an account that he’d never bothered to reconcile. His mother had rarely talked about Sumner, and when she had her comments had been constricted, almost remote generalizations, too abstract for the boy to glean any useful information about the man he’d never met. She’d never put him down, yet neither had she built him up; Tracy had been content to let Sumner’s memory wither away into nothingness – and that vacuum turned out to be fertile ground for the seeds of another fatherless teenager’s distrust.

Or, at least she had been content until she grew sick, because at some point she must’ve realized her brother wouldn’t succeed as a parent, and that sooner or later Forbes would have to come to Sumner for help. Yet in the end, she never relented, she never talked to her children about their father, but at least she’d given her brother Forbes the tools he’d need to make contact with Sumner.

Yet because Tracy had never paved the way for a reunion of any kind, this was, perhaps, her final abdication of responsibility to her children. She, in effect, left everything about their father to chance, in the end hoping that Sumner would accept them as his children, but she never let on that her last hope was that Sumner might take them in.

And it was here, in her final abdication, that her lack of trust had defined all their futures. To Charles, it was as if she had she been saying that Sumner was categorically untrustworthy. Or, the boy wondered now as he stared at the man on the boat, had she been tacitly admitting that she’d been wrong about Sumner all along, that she’d never even given him a chance to prove himself as a father, and that as her death approached she regretted her choice? Charles didn’t know, couldn’t know what had been his mother’s thinking, but his father seemed to be an honest, straight-forward guy.

So Charles remained locked inside his mother’s abdication, still suffocating under the weight of so many unknowns, yet among all the doubts swirling within the moment was that this was an unexpected chance at reconciliation. In a way, Charles craved the idea of having his father in his life, even if his desire was riddled with doubt.

Yet Sumner recognized something important in the moment when he saw his boy standing down there on the dock with his arms full of duffel bags, so he jumped down to the dock to help shoulder the load. Perhaps it was a small gesture, but even so it was an important one.

“Well, this is an unexpected pleasure,” Sumner said to his son as he plucked a duffel strap from the boy’s shoulder. “I had no idea you were coming out for a visit.”

“A friend of yours,” Charles said, “that writer, he called and insisted that I come.”

“Really? Did he tell you why?”

“No. He said you’d tell me when I got here.”

Sumner nodded, but he said nothing else about the matter. “Well, let’s get these things stowed…but Elizabeth? Won’t you introduce me to your friend?”

“Sure, Pops. Dad, this is Deni Elliot, she’s a third year. Deni, this is, well, Dad!”

He held out his hand. “Deni? Do call me Charles, if you please. But goodness me, won’t someone please tell me what a third year is?”

Deni Elliot stepped forward and took Sumner’s hand. “Nice to meet you, and I have to say I’ve been a fan of your work for years. And I just finished my third year of medical school at Davis. I met your daughter in a biochem seminar a few weeks ago and when I learned she was a sailor, well, we’ve been sailing a few times since then.”

“Really? Excellent. I was thinking of taking a quick trip down to Monterey, so I hope that will work out for you.”

After their duffels were hauled down below and their sleeping arrangements sorted out, the four walked over the Fisherman’s Wharf district and wandered around for what felt like hours, but before heading back to the boat for the evening they stopped off and bought crab and scallops and mountains of fresh shrimp. Once back aboard, Liz and Deni took the forward cabin, leaving Charles to manage in the aft cabin with his father. Sumner was in the galley and had just started rearranging the fridge when his iPhone chirped; when he saw it was Patrick he took the call.

“Hello?”

“It’s happening!” Patrick screamed. “Right now!”

And then the line went dead. 

Gripped by a sudden overwhelming panic, he slammed the galley fridge shut and went to the breaker board and began throwing switches, then he went to the aft cabin.

“Charles, come with me please,” Sumner said before he scrambled up the companionway. When they were both in the cockpit he turned to the boy and tried to remain calm: “There’s been a large earthquake up north and a large tsunami may be headed our way. As soon as I tell you, cast off that line, the one forward on the right side.”

“So, it’s happening?” his son asked.

“Ah, so Patrick did tell you?”

And when his son nodded they both just smiled. Grey always thought of everything, didn’t he?

But when he started the diesel both Liz and Deni came darting up the companionway.

“What’s up, Dad?”

“I’m afraid it’s time to leave. Deni? Would you stand by the aft dock lines? Hold her stern in until I tell you, please.” Once the engine was idling smoothly he toggled the bow thruster’s joystick and confirmed operation then he flipped on the spreader lights. “Charles? Cast off your lines and make sure all lines up there are safely aboard. Liz? Cast off the spring lines now, would you?” He toggled the thruster again and used prop-walk to push away from the dock, then he looked at Deni. “Okay, lines in now please, Deni,” he said gently.

“Dad,” Liz repeated, “what’s going on?”

“There’s just been a large earthquake off Vancouver Island…”

Then he was cut off by an intense, deep rumbling that seemed to come from every direction at once, and he threw the wheel hard to port and continued to use the thruster to push the bow around, but over the next several seconds the air filled with acrid dust, then the overpowering odor of ruptured gas lines fell over the wharf area. Once clear of the encircling breakwater, Sumner turned for the Golden Gate and ran the throttle up to 2300RPM, then he powered up the radar and sonar – just as a colossal screeching metal-on-metal sound began grinding away the silence; everyone turned and watched as skyscrapers trembled and then leaned drunkenly, and then a slender tower slammed into another and this was, Sumner knew, going to start a chain reaction – like dominoes falling one into the next and the next. Fires blossomed and then everyone looked up and saw that airliners were turning away from Oakland and San Francisco International, heading away from the heaving earth and the spreading fires. They left the marina breakwater to port and turned towards Alcatraz as explosions filled the air with more and more smoke, and sirens could be heard now coming from all over the city.

“Dad! Look!” Liz screamed, pointing at the Golden Gate Bridge, and he turned to look at their escape route in time to see the north tower rise up out of the sea, just as the south tower fell away in a cloudy, grinding crash. And then everyone watched in horror as the central span simply gave way and fell in a coiling, serpentine heap, instantly disappearing beneath a confused jumble of spreading waves.

“How far away is that?” Charles asked.

Sumner adjusted the range circles on the radar and ran a bearing line: “Just under four miles. Call it a few minutes until the wave gets there.”

“How long for us to get there?” Charles cried. “And what’ll we do when we get there?”

“Use the sonar, pick our way through the rubble…”

“And what about survivors?” Charles cried. “What’ll we do about anyone in the water?”

Sumner just shook his head. “We’ll do what we can, son.”

And then tsunami sirens started wailing all around the bay. Sumner felt it then, the palpable anxiety his children felt, and he knew it was time to be their father.

Ignoring the roar of skyscrapers collapsing behind them, Sumner pulled up the tide tables on the chartplotter and noted it was slack water, a period of no tidal pull, but that the tides would soon turn and begin rushing out the constriction beyond the collapsed bridge. That, in turn, would collide with the inrushing tsunami, potentially adding to the height of the wave…

And without thinking he pushed the throttle forward a little more, increasing their speed through the water to a little over eight knots, then he looked at the tachometer and pulled the power back a little – to be on the careful side. But everyone turned again when the sounds of multiple explosions came rolling across the water, and Deni pointed at a growing wall of flames to the northeast, near Vallejo. “Fuel storage depots,” she said. “Chevron, I think.”

Then Sumner rubbed his eyes when it appeared that Sausalito had just jumped about twenty feet in the air, but then the city as quickly fell straight down – only to be replaced by the sea. Then they could see police helicopters flying over the ruins all around the little town, and for some reason, Sumner remembered he’d yet to turn on his VHF radio.

“Tsunami warning!” the computerized voice broadcasting on Weather 1 said pleasantly. “Take shelter on higher ground immediately. Tsunami warning, tsunami imminent, first wave now passing NOAA warning buoy 4-6-0-1-3 and approaching from the northwest at 3-3 knots, estimated wave height now 2-5 feet…”

Sumner looked at his depth gauge, noted that it had been holding steady at 59 feet, but now he wondered just how much all that bridge debris might foul their passage over the collapsed bridge. “Charles? In the compartment, there, under the aft deck, you’ll find a spotlight. Could I have that, please?” Once he had the light plugged in and turned on, he handed it to Charles again. His son gave a sweep ahead of the boat and already they could see dozens of bodies bobbing about on the surface. “Deni? Would you get ready to deploy the man-overboard gear? Charles? You might stand by on the swim platform in case we need to pull someone aboard?”

“What can I do, Dad?” Liz asked.

“Take the spotlight, check our way ahead. If you see anyone in distress shine the light on them and call them out, let me know.”

Soon they were passing the Presidio and the old base was swarming with helicopters loading up VIPs and carrying them somewhere up north, and now more than a few fishing boats were leaving the marinas along the north shoreline…

“Tsunami imminent,” the mechanical voice Weather 1 declared. “Tsunami now passing the Point Reyes Light, speed now 3-5 knots and wave height now 2-7 feet above tidal mean. Tsunami warning. Take shelter on higher ground immediately!”

“It’s coming in from the northwest,” Deni said, “and the depth holds at 60 feet until you hit the north side of the entrance channel; it drops to 29 really fast there. That wave is gonna hit the undersea ridge and my guess is it will probably get a lot taller, but it also sounds like it’s gonna hit around Point Lobos and Mile Rocks Light.”

“So the wave could lose energy?” Sumner asked.

And Elliott nodded. “Yeah. Maybe. What bothers me is what if part of the wave comes in the Golden Gate? It might start swirling around, you know, like make real big eddies as it squeezes in through the entrance.”

Sumner zoomed out and looked at the chart on his display. “I see what you mean,” he sighed. “Any suggestions? Any idea which side of the channel could be more dangerous?”

“No. None.”

He nodded, then a sonar alarm popped and he saw a large object a hundred yards ahead that appeared to be a car – only it was about ten feet beneath the surface – yet the sonar had enough resolution for him to identify the type of car it was. “Looks like a Toyota just ahead,” he said, “and I think it’s a Rav4, maybe ten feet down.”

“Can you see any movement with that thing?”

“I can see fish swimming, but nothing is moving inside the car. Okay, wait one. I think I’ve got a swimmer in the water,” Sumner said as he pointed off to the right a little.

Liz swung the spotlight and Charles got ready – just in case – and then they saw a girl swimming their way, with a dog swimming by her side…

So Sumner slipped the transmission into neutral and let the speed bleed off – just as he saw a vast line appear dead ahead on the radar screen. “Tsunami is on radar now, looks like six miles out – so we have a few minutes to get the girl onboard and then get stuff secured.”

The girl in the water stopped and screamed, then she waved her hands at Sumner.

“We’re coming for you,” Charles called out. “Keep swimming our way if you can.”

But Sumner could tell the girl was exhausted so he slipped back into gear and powered towards her once again, then he cut power and swung the stern around, putting Charles in a good position to reach out for her…

…and his son leaned out as best he could and just caught her hand, then he pulled the girl aboard; Deni hopped down to the swim platform and grabbed the dog, a very frightened retriever of some sort, and when he saw both were safely onboard Sumner pointed the bow towards the area where the huge red bridge had collapsed – concentrating on the jumbled mass of wreckage he saw on sonar just beneath the water’s surface. “This is going to be close,” he muttered to himself, concentrating one moment on the wreckage in the sonar image and the next looking at the wave on radar as it approached Point Lobos.

Then, as everyone looked on, the huge, breaking wave slammed into the cliffs and bluffs above Baker Beach and Lincoln Park, much of the water rushing inland towards Golden Gate Park, but a large wall of the crashing water came bouncing back towards the entrance to the bay, and so directly at The Silent Wake. Sumner watched the new wall take shape and rush their way, and at that point, he turned directly into the wave. “Everybody hang on…” he called out, his hands gripping the wheel.

But as he looked at the images onscreen he slammed the power to full ahead, accelerating the sailboat to hull speed…

“What are you doing?” Deni cried.

“It’s all a matter of timing now,” Sumner said. “As the wave crosses the remnants of the bridge it ought to increase the apparent depth as we cross over the wreckage, and that might be enough for us to clear all the debris,” he said, pointing at the jumbled debris field ahead and just beneath the water’s surface. “It is, however, going to be close.”

But while the tsunami was building again, it was now nowhere near as tall as it had been, and Sumner smiled as his boat climbed the wave, then gently began surfing down the backside – and so all the while the coiled remnants of the Golden Gate Bridge remained a few meters beneath the boat’s keel.

He turned and watched the tsunami roar into the bay, and he stared, aghast, as his eyes took in the mountains beyond Oakland and Berkeley. Everywhere he looked he saw forested hillsides completely ablaze, the east side of the bay now awash in a bright orange glow. The tsunami would, he knew, put out the fires ravaging Oakland and Vallejo, but he doubted anyone would survive a wave twenty feet tall moving at twenty miles per hour. When he could stand the sight no more he turned to the wheel and steered out to the hundred-foot line marked on the chart, and there he turned south towards Half Moon Bay.

There was wind enough to sail so he rolled out the genoa and then had Liz and Deni hoist the main, and when he went back to the helm he cut the engine and silence enveloped their little cocoon. “Liz? Think you could get some hot cocoa going for our guest?”

Still, what he remembered most about that night was looking at everyone gathered around him in the cockpit, and everything had been bathed in that same nether-worldly glow. The white deck, everyone’s pale, frightened face…everything bathed in orange, and he knew then that he was staring into the open gates of Hell, but that now a great new darkness beckoned.

+++++

The little girl’s name was Haley, and the dog, an idiotic Irish Setter with the intelligence of boiled cabbage, did not belong to her. And so of course the very first thing the soaking wet hound did was come up to Sumner and sit on his lap. Then it started licking Sumner’s chin and rubbing all over his chest, apparently staking out the old man as his new best friend. Sumner, for his part, started rubbing the pup behind the ears – cementing the deal.

Haley was, on the other hand, hovering somewhere between the states of denial, shock, and despair. She had just watched her parents and little brother drown and all she really understood was that the life she had known, the only things she understood, were now all gone. Her grandparents lived in Mill Valley and they were the only other family she had; no one answered the phone when Liz tried calling the number in Mill Valley, and an hour later all the power in the region went down, and with it went cell service not a half hour after that. There was no power in Half Moon Bay when they passed at midnight, and when they sailed past Monterey later the next morning not even the Coast Guard answered on Channel 16.

But as Liz made lunch at noon the SatPhone on the chart table chirped and Sumner answered the call from Patrick.

“AIS appears to be down everywhere,” Patrick stated without preamble. “Did you make it out of the city without issue?”

“We’re southbound, just passing Carmel. It was terrible, Patrick, just awful. Where are you?”

“We passed Tatoosh Rock a few hours ago. Was it that bad?”

“Bad?” Sumner sighed. “Yes, you could say that. We picked up a ten-year-old girl in the water, and also a dog. C’est la vie.”

“Do you have StarLink set up and running?”

“Damn. Yes, but I haven’t been on all night. Simply forgot it was there.”

“Understood. Uh, look, it appears that cities all along the coast have taken a massive hit, the damage is exceptionally bad anywhere near the San Andreas fault, and Los Angeles was as badly damaged as the Bay Area.”

“So, what you’re saying is we should think about heading directly to the Marquesas?”

“Yes. Get that watermaker up and running and set sail for Nuku-Hiva. You should be able to replenish stores there, especially with fruits and vegetables. How far away is that on your plotter?”

“Not quite 3300 miles.”

“Okay. So, call it 22 days. Have you enough food onboard?”

“It might be tight as far as fresh food, but we’ll do okay.”

“Okay. Get that watermaker operational, and check your email more often, will you?”

“Yes, will do.”

“Take care, Charles. In case we don’t see each other again, I want you to know how much I’ve appreciated your friendship.”

“Ditto, Patrick.”

And then, just like that the line went dead again. And Sumner didn’t like the sudden note of finality in Patrick’s voice either, but he went up to the helm and changed course – again – setting up the HydroVane and powering down the autopilot. “Okay, 202 degrees and straight on ’til morning, right Tracy?”

The little fox had kept an eye on the red-headed hound and now she jumped up on Sumner’s shoulder, then curled around his neck and promptly fell asleep. His eyes swept the far horizon – that loneliest of places where only blue meets blue – but he listened to the gurgling bow wave and to the heart beating so close to his own, and even after such a hideous night, he knew he was where he was supposed to be.

And a few minutes later Liz came up the companionway steps carrying a greek salad thick with Kalamata olives and feta and walnuts and he smiled – until he saw her staring at the animal curled up next to his own beating heart.

Her head was canted to the left a little and she squinted at the incongruity of the sight of a fox asleep around her father’s neck, so with one eyebrow arched inquisitively she faced them: “Dad? Is that a fox?”

But he smiled as he shook his head, then he turned his face to the sky and smiled at all the unknowns waiting for them just ahead. “No, no, this is Tracy. Why don’t you come and say hello.”

Part 5

C. Llewelyn Sumner made his way below after several hours wrestling the boat over mountainous waves; resting now – with his face in his hands at the chart table – he had a Pacific ‘route planning chart’ spread out before him, and he experienced a peculiar moment of lucid terror when he looked at the sheer immensity of the ocean ahead, of the nothingness beyond the horizon. What they were attempting finally hit home – and it left him feeling breathless and alone – a feeling most ship’s captains easily relate to. And for a moment he’d stopped breathing, literally just shut down when the sheer immensity of their situation hit him in the face like a cold slap on the face. 

The day before yesterday jet airliners had crossed this ocean in half a day, but listening to the BBC earlier that morning it now seemed that it could easily be a year or more before air travel returned to anything once again resembling “normal” – especially in the northern hemisphere. All air traffic in North America had been grounded yesterday – and then all air traffic, everywhere, ground to a stop as the peculiar grey ash encircled the planet. Trains were still running in Europe, at least a few still were, but highway travel in the US and Canada was now considered too dangerous, described by the few who had ventured out as being like driving through a hot fog while suffocating heat and drifting ash wiped out all visibility. Then tires started blowing out when the sharp particles in the drifting ash ate into their soft rubber compounds. At this rate, cities would collapse under the weight of their failing food distribution networks within a few days, and there were no fail-safe systems in place, no cavalry to ride to the rescue just in the knick of time.

But Sumner couldn’t think about all those things now. They no longer mattered to life on his little ship. Getting to Papeete was all that mattered now – because Patrick Grey thought their chances of survival might be better there.

He pulled out his logbook and noted the ship’s latitude and longitude, then he switched display panels and looked at the surrounding temperatures: sea water was 59 degrees Fahrenheit and the outside air temp was – 49 degrees? He looked at the breaker panel and noted the air conditioning was OFF, then he pulled up the NOAA hurricane forecast center’s map and his worst nightmare was confirmed. There were three depressions lining up in the Atlantic between Africa and the Windward Passage, and he saw a Category 3 storm taking aim at Panama today – which was unheard of. But if that monster crossed the isthmus and made it intact into the Pacific that storm would become a direct threat to his little boat, yet how would the cold air pouring into equatorial air masses effect storm formation?

Because the Hurricane Center noted that temperatures in the northern hemisphere were falling precipitously now, and with these falling temps they were seeing unprecedented drops in air pressure. Under less extreme circumstances this drop would result in steadily increasing rainfall, but the atmosphere was loaded with airborne ash and as the atmosphere condensed a mixture of rain and a peculiar slippery ash was falling, yet the silicates in such dense ash would smother crops and cause untold damage to urban infrastructure, with textiles and rubber compounds now particularly at risk, none more so than power lines.

Sumner shook his head and continued filling in the pre-printed entries on the page, noting everything from engine hours (184) to windspeed (12 knots), creating a day by day picture of their life afloat, and their journey through hell. Maybe someone, someday, would find all this interesting, but he doubted it.

“Hey, Pops,” Liz said as she came down the companionway steps, that inane red hound trailing at her feet, “anything new online?”

“The weather’s changing fast, and it’s getting colder.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I thought it felt cool up there.”

“Did you bring a jacket?” She shook her head and he sighed. “I’ve got your mom’s foul weather gear in my closet. You might try it on.”

“You have her stuff – still?”

He looked away and nodded gently. “I could never bring myself to throw it away.”

“Dad? She left you…”

“Well, you see, I happened to love her…”

She came to him and put her arms around his shoulders. “Oh Dad, what happened to you two?”

He took a deep breath and tried to think of how to say what he needed to say: “You know, I could design a building, I could supervise its construction, but no one ever taught me how to say I love you. They don’t, you know? It’s like we are all somehow expected to learn by osmosis, but you know what? That’s not the way the world works. We don’t learn from the mistakes our parents make, we repeat them over and over again, so nothing changes. My parents lived a loveless life together and I think your mother began to sense that was all I could offer her. I think she saw the truth of the matter and did what she had to do to save herself. And Liz, I think she did it to save you, and your brother, too.”

“But…you said you loved her, Dad. I don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do either, Liz. I’m not sure how well I understand the whole nature versus nurture thing either, but like I said, I think I learned to be reserved by watching my parents. We don’t recognize that as wrong, either, quite the opposite, in fact. It just is. We become what they were, and that’s our real inheritance. Even if every day of your life you work to repudiate the role they had in shaping you, your repudiation is shaped by the contours of your experience of them. We can’t escape our past, Liz, because we are the past. We carry our inheritance on our backs like a turtle carries its shell.”

Deni had been listening and she chimed in now. “So what about the orphan, the child who grows up in the arms of strangers?”

Sumner shrugged. “Perhaps what you end up with is a great discordance, an unnatural union of two states of being. Perhaps what you end up with is two dissimilar states of dissonance that are soon perpetually at war internally. How’s that for a definition of mental illness?”

Deni smiled. “Did you ever think of becoming a psychiatrist?”

Sumner looked away, looked back to an August morning in 1966, to the work of an angry assassin shooting innocent men and women, and even an unborn child, and how in the aftermath his world no longer made sense. “No. Never. Psychiatry is a pointless endeavor. By the time the psychiatrist gets to the scene of the crime the damage has already been done.”

“So, Humpty-Dumpty…?”

“Precisely. Just so. I chose to create beauty where beauty was asked for, and by those who could afford the price of admission. Selfish, I know, but there you have it.”

Deni nodded. “I’m glad that you did.”

He looked at her just then and smiled at her simple beauty: “Oh? Why’s that?”

“There’s inspiration in architectural beauty. And a kind of transcendence when you recognize it, when you breathe it in. When you walk into a space and you stand in awe, when you’re left staring in wonder at the audacity of the act of such a creation. A building isn’t like a painting or even a work of literature, I guess. There’s shelter in a building, something of the primitive in us that is attracted to shelter.”

“Speaking of shelter,” Sumner said, looking at his boat, “I need someone to help out with the chores. Checking the oil and the seacocks, as it were. Any volunteers?”

“I’d like to,” Charles said, now sitting in the companionway opening.

“Me too,” Deni said.

“Good thing I like to cook,” Liz sighed.

“Me too,” the little girl, Haley, said as she peeked out from behind Liz’s apron.

+++++

Two days later it was forty degrees Fahrenheit out on deck and the wind was howling now, the waves building to 12 feet and more, but at least the wind was coming from astern. The clouds were another matter.

They were pewter-green-gray at noon but by evensong they had turned to a coppery verdigris shade that reeked of a great wrong coming for them.

Liz cooked a chicken and shrimp gumbo with the last of their fresh seafood and everyone sat around the big table as the boat heaved over another big roller – before it hesitated on the crest then surfed down into the next hollow – but by that point no one felt much like eating anything. Charles picked the shrimp out of his bowl but Haley started crying and that was his cue to lean over and give her a hug. Sumner watched his son and realized how hollow his words on parenting really were, or maybe how prescient. His son was a natural father and he certainly hadn’t inherited that from his father, or his grandfather. He watched their interactions and thought of a flower: give it water and nourishment and it will blossom and grow. Was life really so simple?

The answer to that question just happened to be drooling in his lap just then. Those big brown eyes, that endless spirit looking up at him was almost too much, and suddenly he was wondering why he’d never had such a friend before. Then he found himself wondering what had held him back, what had kept him from giving this kind of simple love to Tracy.

Yet more than anything else he wanted to ask her why she had given up on him. Or had that been her inheritance?

But just then the boat stalled on the top of a wave and fell back as the wave passed under the keel, and he knew that there was a danger of the boat rounding up so he dashed up the companionway and took a quick look around…

…and he saw that the red paddle on top of the Hydrovane self-steering gear was literally covered in ash, so it had lost the ability to point accurately as the disrupted flow over the airfoil had stalled the blade. He went aft and knocked the ash off the blade and the gear resumed steering correctly, but now he realized they had one more item to add to their hourly watch list.

“Dad,” Charles said from the cockpit, “is that snow?”

He reached up and caught a few flakes in his fingers and rolled them around, wincing as silicate crystals bit into his skin, then he looked up at his sails and winced again – when he realized the shard-like crystals were now coating everything in sight. “No! It’s ash, and we’ve got to get it off the sails, now!”

“With what?”

“Come with me,” he said as he held onto the lifelines and shrouds, pulling himself up to the bow. He opened the anchor locker and pulled out a long nylon garden hose on a reel and handed the free end to his boy, then he passed over a high-pressure nozzle. “Screw that on and start spraying from the top of the sails down, and rise off the decks last.”

“Is this fresh water?”

“No. Seawater. When we get some sun we’ll need to rinse everything down with fresh.” He turned on the seawater pump and the hose pressurized, and he watched his son as he did his best to reach the uppermost parts of both sails, but even so he wondered how long those sails would last under such adverse conditions.

+++++

Watch after watch, day after day – four hours at a stretch. He and Deni would take turns steering in the cockpit, leaving the other to do chores and inspections while Liz and Charles slept, then they’d switch off and get some sleep while his kids took the next four hour watch. When Sumner was at the wheel the little fox would curl up around his neck or fall asleep in the hood of his foul-weather jacket, and when he went to his cabin the hound would curl up with them.

He had finally mastered the fine art of divining water from the watermaker, and after that he insisted that everyone shower at least every other day. When shower time rolled around he started the engine to heat the water and everyone did their thing in one of the two showers onboard. There simply wasn’t enough sun to get a good charge from the solar panels, but as he had both wind and water generators making enough electricity to keep the ship’s lithium batteries fully charged, they had refrigeration and the watermaker to help them along.

On their fifteenth day out and deep in the ITCZ, or the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone, the sun came out and the northerly winds abruptly fell away to at first a light breeze, then a few hours later to a dead calm. Then the temperature onboard went from the mid-40s and low-50s to the mid-80s, and with it an omnipresent and oppressive humidity that seemed to cling to their bodies. Charles and Sumner took down the sails and rinsed them thoroughly, then they let them air-dry while they looked for chafing and blown stitching. Deni and Haley washed the decks with scrub brushes and dish soap, and Charles asked about checking the underwater parts of the hull they couldn’t see – until he saw a couple of 12 foot hammerheads circling the boat.

And of course the hound started barking at the shark – which only piqued the beasts curiosity further.

“Hey, Doofus!” Charles shouted. “Why don’t you shut up!”

And that was how the dog got his name.

At least Doofus was smart enough to not jump in the water and go after the shark.

“Is that a shark?” Haley said when she came over to see what the commotion was all about.

“Yes,” Sumner said, “that’s a hammerhead. Think you can tell me why?”

She went to the rail and peered down at the thing: “The head. The shape of the head, but why is it like that?”

Deni came over and put her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “See how far apart the eyes are? It helps them see small prey when they get into a thick school of fish.”

“A school of fish?”

“That’s what you call a large group of fish.”

“A school?”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

“Gee, I don’t know. You want to look it up after lunch?”

And that was how it happened. Just like that.

Two weeks ago not a one of them had known Haley but now she was family. Deni and Liz taught her when they had free time, and both Charles and Sumner did when their time off watch came ‘round. And maybe, Sumner thought, that was the way it always had been, until recently anyway. For a few hundred years we had warehoused kids like Haley in orphanages or special “homes” – but right here, right now, that just wasn’t an option. And while Haley talked about her old family she had embraced her new one, and naturally she had gravitated to the oldest as her new father.

And Sumner hardly knew how to take all the changes that had surrounded him. He had his children, the children he had fathered, yet now he had Haley, too, and yet somehow everything worked. Everyone “clicked” and fell into this new groove. 

Charles took to fishing off the stern rail, catching a tuna one day and then something that fought like hell until it finally snapped the line.

Then one morning, while Sumner was sleeping with his Fox and Hound, Charles called out: “Dad! Better come up here!”

At first he thought the voice was in the dream he’d been having lately, but the third time he heard his name being called he sat up and rubbed his eyes as he slipped into a clean t-shirt. “On my way,” he said as he made for the companionway.

And by that time everyone was already up there waiting for him. And Deni had the binoculars up to her eyes. 

“What is it?” Sumner asked as he waded into the crowded cockpit.

“I ran the radar out to 24 miles and got a return,” he said. “Bearing about 205 degrees, and it’s not moving.”

“Deni? You see anything?”

She shook her head. “No, nothing,” she said as she handed the Steiner’s to him. 

He swung the binos while he looked at the internal compass but all he could see was a pale white mist. “How far away is it now?”

They’d been motoring at 1800RPM, just fast enough to optimize their range while making decent headway, so they were slowly closing on the return.

“Eighteen miles, so not quite four hours.”

“Okay, let’s steer that way – at least until we get a visual on them.”

Deni looked at Sumner and slowly shook her head. “You have a gun onboard?” she asked quietly.

He turned and looked at her, then winked. “I don’t have one onboard, Ma’am. I have four.”

She grinned. “I like it!”

“Alright Dad!” Charles said, fist-bumping his old man for the first time, a gesture which did not go unnoticed by anyone. “Where are they?”

“My mattress lifts up. There are blankets and sheet under there, also two rifles, a shotgun and a pistol.”

“Fuckin’-A, man!” Charles said, suddenly more than happy. “Have an AR?”

“Do bears shit in the woods?”

“Dad?” Liz sighed. “I’m surprised at you.”

Sumner shrugged. “They’re here if we need them,” he sighed in return. “There’s a Marlin Guide Gun down there, too. Lever action, 45-70. An 870 pump, 12 gauge slugs, and a Sig 226 9mm.”

Liz shook her head. “You got enough to start your own little war, don’t you?”

Again, Sumner just shrugged. “Don’t start what you can’t finish, and if you can’t finish you’d better not start. Now, if you’ll excuse me I was in the middle of a spectacular dream and I’d like to get back to it. Charles, wake me at eight miles. Liz, finish up your chores and then get supper ready.”

He ducked below and instead of going back to sleep he took out all his firearms and reloaded them with fresh ammunition, then he checked each piece for any signs of corrosion – inside and out.

“You don’t like to take chances, do you?” Deni said, standing in the doorway to his cabin.

“The purpose of this boat, from the first day I laid eyes on her, was to be an escape vehicle.”

“Funny…I never took you for a prepper.”

“I’m not.”

“Oh? Trying for some irony right now?”

Sumner shook his head. “Lots of people knew this was coming, Deni. News reports were on Fox and CNN, and even on MSNBC, but everyone laughed it off. The USGS knew, FEMA knew, the White House and the Congress knew, but what no one knew was an exact timeframe. And that part of the puzzle was relayed to me a few months ago…”

“You mean…”

“Yes, everyone knew this was coming, and all the data pointed to a one week window. A friend of mine cued me in and I decided to act on the information. I could have just as easily stuck my head back into the sand…”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” she said.

“I find the whole thing overwhelming. The way my kids showed up. You, and even Haley. And yes, Doofus, you too. All this happened because of my friend.”

“Is that the guy you talk to on the SatPhone?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“Patrick Grey. He writes spy novels.”

“Oh yeah. I read somewhere he was the real deal, like MI6 or something.”

“Or something.”

“Where is he?”

“Oh, he’s probably in Honolulu right now, waiting for a couple of boats to catch up to him. He’ll be coming to Papeete soon.”

“Mind if I ask you something personal?” Deni said.

Sumner sighed. “No.”

“Why are you alone?”

“Oh, the easy answer is that I had my chance, with their mother. And I blew it, big time, so the truth of the matter is I never really felt the need to try after that. I grew comfortable in my work, perhaps too comfortable, but time rolled right on by and now there’s this old man in the mirror…”

“You’re not that old,” she said playfully.

“Yes, I am. I’m coming up on 55, and in anyone’s book that makes me an old fart. Officially, as a matter of fact. I’ll be lining up to get my Social Security card…”

She laughed – a little.

“So, how old are you?” he asked.

“Thirty-five. I went to work for the LAFD as a paramedic after I got my Associate’s Degree, then I picked up a BS in Biochemistry and applied to med school. It took a couple of tries but I finally made it.”

“And then this happened.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she sighed, smiling. “I’ve had all the academics and most of the clinicals. I can take care of a gunshot wound or deliver a baby, but if you need open heart surgery you can count me out.”

“No boyfriend?”

“Once or twice. I made it clear my studies came first and that was all it took.”

“Ah. Failure of the imagination.”

“Now that sounds intentionally ironic,” she smiled.

“Oh?”

“You seemed as if you were surrendering to age just a moment ago.”

“Surrendering? No, not me. To surrender is to live your life looking back, to deny the future. When you look ahead all things are possible, yet if you turn around and focus on the past your spirit soon becomes old and brittle. There are no surprises, only the fear that comes with regret. If I had chosen to live in the past you and I would not be on this boat. Perhaps you and my daughter would be dead, this ungrateful hound, too. If there is but one trick to life, it is to keep looking ahead to tomorrow – to all of our tomorrows.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“It should. Jung said it.”

“The psychologist?”

Sumner smiled. “He was a physician and a psychoanalyst, but yes, you could say he was a psychologist, too. I take it you haven’t yet done your rotation through psychiatry?”

“No interest, but you’re correct. I haven’t yet.”

“On the bookshelf there behind you, yes, right there. Two books by Jung you must read. Man and His Symbols, and the other, right beside it, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. You need to read both, and sooner rather than later.”

“You surprise me, Charles. I suppose this answers the question ‘what books would you take with you to a desert island?’”

He smiled. “Maybe. and just FYI, but Patrick has an oncologist onboard. For his daughter.”

“Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”

“Dad!” Charles said from the cockpit. “Got ‘em on the binoculars. Sails in tatters and no one moving on deck. Range coming up on eight miles now – oops, no, my mistake, call it three miles.”

Sumner shook his head and grabbed the Marlin, then he headed up the companionway to the cockpit. “Liz? Check the portlights for movement. Charles, I want to come at them from bow on, head to head and starboard to starboard. Deni? Take Haley below, would you, and maybe make us some Kool-Aid? The red kind?”

“Sure. Come on, Haley. Let’s go make some drinks.”

“Liz, take the helm. Charles, there’s an AR-15 out on the bed with one magazine. Bring it up now, would you?”

“You bet.”

“He’s such a jock!” Liz said once her brother was out of earshot.

“More like John Rambo if you asked me. Has he done much shooting?”

“He told Mom he had gone out with friends and did some and she went ballistic on him.”

Sumner nodded. “I should have been there for the both of you.”

“If I’m reading between the lines correctly, Dad, it wasn’t exactly your fault.”

“Don’t let me off so easily, Liz.”

“Okay, Dad.”

“A little more to the right. That’s it…I want to come in wide, then right alongside their boarding gate.”

“Here’re the binos,” Liz said, just as Charles came bounding up the steps two-at-a-time. 

“Ah, there he is, ladies and gentlemen…I give you…John Rambo!”

Charles looked flummoxed. “Who’s that?”

“Never mind,” Sumner said behind a long sigh. “I assume you know how to use that thing?”

“Yeah, sure, but there’s no full-auto on the selector switch…”

Sumner just shook his head again. “I don’t even want to know,” he muttered. “Stay on the steps just out of sight until – you hear different.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Liz, go ahead and cut your power now, let’s just coast alongside and I’ll hop across. You circle around again with Charles up here with that gun showing. Charles, try not to shoot me, okay?”

“You got it, Pops.”

Sumner looked to the heavens for a moment, then they came up on the other boat, from the looks of her she appeared to be an old Baba 40, and she was in pretty rough shape. When the two boats were abeam he hopped across and went to the cockpit, and Liz saw her father put his rifle on the coachroof and disappear below. A minute later he came up and cupped his hands around his mouth: “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah!” Charles shouted in return.

“Tell Deni there’s an orange EMT bag under the port settee, forward-most compartment. I need her over here now! And bring a shitload of water!”

The next time Liz circled around Deni hopped over and went to the little boat’s companionway, and she saw two people, a man and a woman and both very old, laying on the settees in the main cabin – and she guessed both were badly dehydrated and suffering from heat exposure. “You have any IV’s in this bag?” she asked.

“I don’t know; you’ll have to look. A medical supply house packed it for me.”

She climbed down the old wooden steps and then laid the huge bag on the galley countertop and opened it up – and right there on top was exactly what she needed. Stethoscope, thermometer, pulse-oximeter and a sphygmomanometer, and below that IV sets and several bags of saline, D5W, and Ringer’s solution. “Charles, we should raft up and move them aboard. It must be a hundred degrees down here.”

He popped up and found that Liz was already setting out fenders, then she tossed docklines over and he made them fast. “Charles? Generator on, then the inverter then the forward air conditioner. Shut the door to the forward cabin to help it cool down faster; we’ve got two elderly people down here and it looks like heat stroke.”

“Got it!”

“Liz? Let’s find some of their fenders and rig them up, just in case the wind pipes up.”

“Got it!”

He looked skyward again and nodded thanks to the heavens. “Tracy, you did a fine job with our kids.” He went back to Deni in the galley and saw she was pouring cool water under both of the elderly people’s armpits, then she took a washcloth and wiped their foreheads. “How are they?” he asked.

“Her temp is 102, but his is more like 104.”

“So we should move him first?”

She shrugged. “She’s more likely to survive, Charles. The longer we wait the less likely.”

“So you’re saying he can’t be saved?”

“She’s stronger right now.”

He sighed. He didn’t like the decision and didn’t want to contradict her, but he didn’t like it.

But she saw his reaction – and she knew where he was coming from, too. “Okay, we’ll move him first, but let’s not dawdle, okay?”

But Sumner went below and shouldered the woman first, and he shuddered when he realized she couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. He easily carried her up the steps and handed her across to Charles, who turned and carried her below. The old man hardly weighed much more, and both were across in minutes, and Deni went about getting her IVs running in the air conditioned forward cabin.

And an hour or so later the old man opened his eyes and tried to sit up.

“Where am I?”

“You’re onboard our boat, a passing sailboat. We saw yours and came to investigate.”

“How’s Claire? Uh…that’s my wife?”

“Stable. Her temperature is coming down and her pulse is steady now.”

“May I have some water, please?”

“Do you feel nauseous or dizzy?”

“Dizzy. A little dizzy.”

“Okay. Here’s some cool water, but sip it down slowly for now, okay?”

The old man nodded as he drank down the glass, then he asked for more. “We ran out of water about a week after we hit the doldrums. Turned out we had a little leak in the water tank so our bilge pump was merrily pumping all our fresh water overboard…”

“Well, you’re both okay now, and we’re about 300 miles from the Marquesas. We’ll get you and your boat there then you can decide what to do.”

“You know, it got awful cold there for a while, then hot as a pistol. You hear about anything going on with the weather?”

“What have you heard about things recently? Like over the last two or so weeks?”

“Not a thing. I navigate with a sextant and a chronometer and about all I’ve picked up is the time hack from WWV.”

“I see. Well, there’ve been some bad developments along the Pacific coast. The Cascade fault cut loose and triggered at least four major volcanos as well as the San Andreas fault, and as a result the atmosphere is changing rapidly. It’s snowing in Honolulu right now and that weather is heading right for us, as we speak.”

The old woman sat up when she heard that. “Snow? In Hawaii…?” she moaned. “But it’s summertime, isn’t it?”

“I know,” Deni said. “It’s a lot to take in, but I want to get at least one more bag of fluids into you, then we’ll see about getting you back over to your boat…”

Deni came up to the cockpit an hour or so later and sighed. “Man,” she sighed, “I could use a pineapple smoothie right about now.”

Liz smiled. “I’ll get it, Dad. You two sit and talk.”

Deni saw that the Baba 40 was securely tied off and being towed now, and she was about thirty yards behind their boat now. Sumner looked at the tachometer and the fuel gauge and reckoned they’d be okay – as long as they could get enough fuel in the Marquesas to soldier on to Papeete.

But he hadn’t heard from Patrick in two days, which was not at all like him – so now he was a little worried about that, too. Actually, he was more than a little worried, but now he had the elderly couple to think about, as well.

“There’s only one physician listed in the islands,” Sumner told Deni when she asked about medical facilities in the Marquesas, “and as far as I can tell there’s only one pharmacy. They’re both in Atuona, on Hiva Oa. There’s a good harbor there, also a fuel dock, but it’s seventy miles further south.”

“So? What’s the problem?”

He turned and pointed to the northwest. “See those clouds?”

“Yes?” she said, suddenly sounding more than a little concerned.

“Yeah, well, they’re full of ash and the temperature is about 50 degrees cooler in there, so maybe freezing temps. We’re talking snow and ice, not rain, and while there’s no official word yet, it looks like there are fifty knot winds, which means fifteen to twenty foot waves will build quickly.”

“And there’s no way we can tow their boat under those conditions, right?”

“I doubt it. Liz and I are going to go over and see if we can rig an older set of sails they say they have stowed in the quarterberth, but I have no idea how well maintained that boat really is. If the water tanks leak, what else will go wrong?”

“You’re not thinking of putting them back on board, are you?”

He shook his head. “I’m thinking of scuttling her.”

“Charles. You can’t do that. It’s their home, everything they have is onboard.”

“Then we do what we can to make their boat ready and then let them decide what they want to do.”

She shook her head. “That’s not fair. You know what they’ll choose; it’s only natural to save your home and all your memories…”

“A lot of people have had to make unfair choices the last few weeks, Deni; we just haven’t had to watch all that play out.”

“God, you’re right. How many people died back there, Charles?”

“I don’t know, but FEMA’s estimate is in the ballpark of three to four million people just on the west coast. Ash and weather disruption have almost wiped out Idaho and Wyoming, and the wheat belt has been blanketed with several feet of ash, from Montana to Kansas. Only the New England states and the Canadian Maritimes are relatively untouched, but it’s snowing like mad all across the south right now. Same thing in Europe, and there were reports of three feet of snow in Tel Aviv yesterday.”

“So it’s going to be a new ice age?”

Sumner shrugged. “I don’t know, Deni. I don’t think anyone really knows anything right now. Every climate scientist is running computer simulations, but who knows how those predictions will turn out, let alone how accurate they’ll be. Right now my job is to get my family to safety, and that means I get you guys to Papeete.”

“Then what?”

“We start over. We claw our way back from the precipice. We’ll need medical facilities, but we may need to train nurses and physicians…so, you get my drift? People in different parts of the world may be cut off from one another for a long time, international trade may be difficult, so new regional centers of commerce may need to become more self reliant for a while, just to keep things going in the right direction and until we can start to rebuild globally.”

She shook her head. “I keep forgetting you’re an architect, so it was your job to think about cities as systems…”

“Interconnected systems, Deni. The history of our entire global civilization, from the early medieval period on, is the story of vast interconnected mercantile systems that literally, in just a few hundred years, spread out to every corner of the planet. And you know what? I doubt anyone ever planned it all out. It just happened. No one asked if it was the right or the wrong thing to do, because everyone’s survival was almost overnight wrapped up in the overall success of the system. Now we’re going to find out how resilient that system really is.”

“Charles? What if it isn’t as strong as we hoped?”

Sumner shrugged. “I guess we’ll be painting on cave walls and chasing bison for survival again.” He looked up and even in daylight the moon was just visible overhead, but he stared at it for the longest time before he spoke again. “We walked up there once, and we were about to again, but the thing is, Deni, we were all carried along on the shoulders of giants. We seemed to have lost sight of that recently. It’s like we got real good at tearing each other down, but along the way we forgot that before everything else came along – we were builders.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re here, Charles. To help put things back together again.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

+++++

The Silent Wake sailed past Point Teaehoa, and once they’d cleared the rocks Liz turned hard to port, making for the fuel docks at Atuona. Deni and her father were on MoonShadow, Claire and Roger Bartlett’s Baba 40, and they were now almost three miles behind The Silent Wake. 

No one on any VHF channel was answering their hails, and Sumner had been growing wary of approaching the islands, but last night they’d seen a small turboprop airliner take off from the tiny airport on the north shore of Nuku Hiva, and it had turned to the southwest, towards Papeete, before it disappeared. 

And the wall of clouds had – so far – remained mired on the far side of the ITCZ and – so far at least – the fair weather was holding.

Liz sailed into Ta’aoa Bay and circled about a mile off the breakwater, waiting for her father to catch up before entering the tiny harbor, but she swept the shoreline looking for activity through the binoculars. 

“See anything?” her brother asked.

“Oh yeah,” she muttered. “I’d say there’s a welcoming party forming up down on the wharf, and no one looks particularly happy to see us.”

“Smart. They don’t know when or even if they’ll see replenishments anytime soon. See anyone with a gun?”

She shook her head. “Nope.”

“You know, it’s funny. The guidebooks all say the islanders are as friendly as can be.”

“Yup. Things change.”

“Man-o-man,” Charles sighed, “you got that right.”

Liz turned around and looked at the Baba 40 sailing along, then Claire Bartlett came uneasily up the companionway steps and crawled into the cockpit. “Oh, heavens,” she said, “but doesn’t this sun feel good.”

Liz smiled. “How’s Roger? Holding down his food?”

Claire smiled. “He actually said he’s hungry, so I think he’ll make it,” she said with a wry grin. “Thank you for taking care of us.”

Liz smiled noncommittally and nodded. “Glad we could lend a hand.”

“Oh, you all did much more than lend a hand. We’re grateful.” Claire looked around and sniffed at the air. “This isn’t Nuku Hiva, is it?” she sighed. 

“No, Hiva Oa. There’s a clinic here, just in case.”

“Oh yes, Phillippe. He’s very sweet.”

“You know him?”

“Oh, we’ve been coming to the islands for years. Well, no, decades really. Roger delivered half the babies on the island.”

“Your husband is a physician?”

“Yes, but we retired fifteen years ago, then two years ago we sailed north to explore the Sea of Cortez, and yes, I know – for a year – but you know how that goes. We ended up staying two, then sailing down the coast to Costa Rica. We found a great marina in Quepos and the medical care there is better than in the states.”

“You said ‘we’ retired?”

“Roger practiced surgery, I was an anesthesiologist.”

“And you’ve worked here, on the island?”

“Oh yes, off and on over the years.”

Liz looked at Claire and grinned. “Mind if I do some name dropping?”

“Oh, heavens no. Drop away.”

Liz nodded and picked up the CommandMic on the binnacle. “Sailing Vessel Silent Wake calling HarborMaster Atuona. We have two physicians onboard, Roger and Claire Barrett. Permission to enter the harbor and tie up?”

There was a short pause, then the speaker blared. “Silent Wake, Silent Wake, I need to speak with Dr Barrett first.”

Claire took the mic, clearly amused now: “Kalani? Where are your manners?”

“Dr Claire? Is this truly you?”

“Yes it’s me!”

“But this is not your boat, Dr Claire…”

“We ran out of water and the crew of this boat rescued us. Our boat is a few miles behind.”

Another pause followed, this one much longer.

“Of course you are welcome, and so are your friends! Please, you may enter the harbor now!”

“Thank you, Kalani, and thank your grandmother, too.”

+++++

If the Barretts weren’t exactly feted as local heroes, they were at least greeted as friends, and Sumner soon realized that friendship was in short supply in French Polynesia right now. Papeete was turning away some yachts now, or so they’d heard two days ago, but one of the small turboprops had come from Papeete yesterday, carrying supplies, mail, and some good news. An Air France cargo flight had arrived at Papeete the day before, and though it had taken a southerly routing it looked like France would be able to maintain a tenuous air link to the islands – for the time being, anyway. That meant medicines and the vital machinery needed for power generation would remain accessible for a while longer, and that was the best news Sumner had heard in days.

So when Sumner had walked up to the fuel dock to enquire about filling their tanks he was a little surprised when his request was denied.

“I’m sorry,” Kalani advised, “but we have no way to process payments and as far as I know we are no longer taking Dollars, at least for now.”

So Sumner had nodded – then fished his wallet out of his vest pocket and produced a one ounce gold bar and put it on the counter. “The last spot price for gold I saw was three days ago, and gold was at 4700 Euros. I need a few hundred liters of diesel and a whole lot of fresh produce. That ought to sell for a thousand Euros, give or take, even at your current prices. How about you take care of that for me and then why don’t you keep the difference?”

Kalani looked at Sumner, then at the gold bar, before he spoke next. “I think we have some fresh fish and milk, and by tomorrow we might have some eggs. Would you be interested in those?”

“Yes, my friend, and I’d say we have ourselves a deal.”

+++++

“I hate to say this,” Liz sighed, “but I’ve never been happier, or felt more alive.”

The Silent Wake was five miles out of Atuona and heading a little south of the usual course to Papeete, trying to keep out of the encroaching ash-cloud as long as possible, and everyone was feeling a little down after leaving the island.

Last night the islanders had prepared a dinner for the four of them, and the Barretts had come along – just to grease the skids, if needed. But almost everyone on the island had shown up and soon everyone was sitting around campfires and torchlight and Sumner had felt the scene was almost primeval, yet there had been something about the way the islanders had taken them in that had felt deeply touching. Even so, he felt a deeper connection now – not simply to the islanders but to life itself, and yet it felt like a mystery beyond comprehension. Our cities, he realized, had robbed us of this birthright.

Two days ago he and Charles had pulled down all their sails in order to wash any volcanic residue out of the fabric – and dozens of islanders had simply come down to help – because that was what you did with friends, what you were supposed to do when a traveler passed through the islands. You helped them on their way because you had made the journey yourself so you understood the needs of the journey, and of the traveler. 

After all their tanks had been filled and the boat cleaned, Kalani took them on a tour of the island, and along the way he had shown them houses that were no longer used.The Barretts were, therefore, going to move into one of them – because they were family here and the villagers would take care of them when they could no longer take care of themselves. And then Kalani had turned to Sumner, then pointed at the house next to the Barrett’s. “This will be your home when you visit, and when it is your time,” he’d said.

“I’d be honored to call this my home, Kalani.”

And when Kalani bowed Sumner returned the gesture…cementing the union.

“And in a way, that was that,” Charles said to Liz as she made a minor course correction. “I think I understand, too. There was something magic about our time on that island.”

Liz nodded. “I think Charles fell in love, Dad.”

“He’d be a goddamn fool not to. That girl was gorgeous.”

“I’ve never seen him mope around like this – and never over a girl,” Liz said, grinning.

Charles had met an islander at one of the fireside dinners they’d enjoyed on the beach with Kalani and his family, and probably because half the people on the island showed up, too. Phillippe, the Parisian who’d settled on the island decades ago to practice medicine, had been instrumental in talking the Barretts into sailing on to Papeete and trying to coordinate a medical training program, and that’s when Charles met Leilani. She had made the trip to France to study medicine years before and had returned to the island about a year ago, but Sumner picked up a vibe the islanders held towards her. Leilani was bright as hell and the chemistry between she and Charles was palpable, bright enough to light up the night, but Kalani told Sumner the girl no longer really considered herself an islander, and in fact she seemed to look down on the other islanders – after almost ten years in France. Sumner watched his son and the girl with mixed emotions after that, but it was impossible to ignore his son’s feelings towards the girl.

Claire and Roger, on the other hand, had decided to sail on to Papeete – but with Sumner on The Silent Wake. Their Baba 40 was a heavy displacement monster of a blue-water boat but her systems were old and in a blow she was becoming too much for the old couple to handle. They’d left her tied up to the main wharf, and Kalani knew enough about boats to take care of her while they were away, but the Barretts were unsure what they’d do with the boat now. Helping to set up a new medical school in Papeete would be a years-long endeavor – and though they were already 80 years young it was doubtful that making more long ocean crossings was in the cards for them.

Sumner had also agreed to carry two large sacks of outgoing mail so had, in effect, taken on a government contract – and though he hadn’t thought of it all that much at the time, the island’s administrator had given him a document stating he was carrying the island’s mail and that his office had licensed him to do so.

So what filled Sumner’s mind as he sailed away from Hiva Oa was a sense that he had – without any effort on his part – put down roots on the island. Had he been beguiled, or had he not been thinking clearly? Or with so much cataclysmic change dwarfing all other considerations, had the idea of belonging anywhere once again overwhelmed his ability to rationally process the cascading waterfall of recent events? Kalani didn’t know his background or what he had done to make a living, so why extend binding ties to a comparative stranger? But then again, so too had the island’s administrator. Had rescuing the Barretts done all that? Simple coincidence, or destiny? The age old question again.

But now Sumner had several, more immediate problems.

More ash was visible now, both in the air and on Silent Wake’s decks, so everyone pitched in to rinse the sails several times a day. And it was growing cold out, especially at night, and during their second night out it began snowing hard. But of even more immediate importance, their course would take them right through the middle of the Tuamotu Archipelago, the so-called Dangerous Archipelago. Even in the age of GPS and with vast libraries of cartographic information now easily accessible through even modest chart plotters, the Tuamotus remained poorly charted and were therefore still quite dangerous. This meant that it was still more than possible to chart a “safe” course through the islands and run into an uncharted coral head where only deep water was indicated on the most up-to-date marine cartography.

True, he had sonar to help but often human eyes were better at picking out the subtle color variations of the sea – where the lighter the observed water color the shallower the depth. But that maxim best applied to clear, sunny days, not gray, ash-filled blizzards full of blowing snow, so they would have to pick their way through two or three areas where poor chart coverage was the norm.

On their third day out Sumner found the decks glazed in gray ice, and holding onto handrails and lifelines he made his way forward to check on the standing rigging and he found these too were literally encased in ice. The bottom four feet of his current foresail, a 110 percent high cut ‘yankee’, was completely coated in a combination of frozen sea-spray and slimy ash-laden ice, and that’s when it hit him. Most of the islanders in the Tuamotu survived by catching rain in cisterns, but if they drank this rainwater, or attempted to melt snow and drink that, they would ingest almost instantly fatal amounts of razor sharp ash particles. Could he warn them? And even if he did, how long could people resist the temptation to drink when they were literally dying of thirst? And if they drank the tainted water – then what?

“Dad,” Liz said as they approached Rangiroa a day later, “there are almost 3000 people on this atoll. What are they going to do?”

“I know. I’ve been thinking about their water supply…”

“Their water? Hell, Dad, it’s 22 degrees out here! That’s ten degrees below freezing and these people are used to a year-round temperature in the high 70s! You think anyone on these islands has a ski parka?”

“Liz, they collect all their water in rooftop cisterns.”

“Oh sweet Jesus. Dad, they aren’t going to make it, are they?”

But Sumner only shrugged – because he didn’t know what to say. The islanders were powerless to affect the outcome, and with the coming of the ash cloud that meant that these islands’ air-links to Papeete were now cut. The only links in the foreseeable future would be by sea – assuming, he thought, these islanders lived long enough. What they would need, and soon, was a water desalinization plant and the power to run it, and as this was in the nature of his training he started thinking through the problem – because he was sure no one else would.

They picked their way through the low lying atolls using sonar and by virtue of the boat’s hot water system. Sumner and Roger rigged a fresh water deck wash-down system that pumped fresh hot water up onto the deck and allowed them to spray down the sails, knocking the ice off and allowing the sails to function properly.

Three days later they limped into Papeete, and Sumner was the first to admit that sailing through the ash was the most daunting experience of his life, and he’d only had to sail under those conditions for a week. How long would their equipment last under these conditions?

And how, he wondered, had Patrick fared on his voyage from Hawaii? He headed to the reserved slip and called the harbormaster on 16, and then he waited for a reply.

And he waited and waited…

Part 6

The problem with Patrick Grey, C. Llewelyn Sumner was beginning to realize, was that you couldn’t believe anything he said – or did, for that matter. He was too adept at subterfuge, too good at concealing his true motives and objectives. Sumner was now also realizing that Grey enjoyed fucking with people’s minds, and maybe for the shear fun of doing so, too. Was Grey a true psychopath, or merely a sociopathic narcissist – or had he misread the old spy completely?

Once in Papeete, The Silent Wake’s lines had been made fast at the tiny, semi-circular marina along the Place Jacques Chirac, and Sumner gathered his wits about him as he recognized and then stared at the SV Haiku – docked about a hundred yards away across a narrow fairway and looking about as regal as the day he’d first laid eyes on her in Seattle. He saw lights coming on belowdecks now that the sun was slipping beneath the far horizon, but he could also see that two men were loading pallets of cargo on Haiku’s deck. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, he also saw a group of what appeared to be passengers queuing up to board, and this he found more than a little unnerving.

So without bothering to clear-in with Customs, Sumner hopped down to the dock and jogged around the wharf until he came to Haiku’s boarding platform; without asking a soul he bounded up the stairs two at a time and then ducked into Haiku’s aft pilothouse – expecting to find Patrick. But – there was no Patrick onboard waiting for him – just a man about his age with a Golden Retriever by his side, and the man was hunched over the chart table busily filling out paperwork as he prepared Haiku for departure.

“Excuse me,” Sumner blurted out, “but where’s Patrick?”

And at that point the man looked up and finally acknowledged Sumner’s presence: “You’re Charles, right? Charles Sumner?” the stranger said with a smile as he extended his right hand.

Sumner nodded as he took the man’s hand in his own.

“You might as well call me Spud,” the man said as he opened a drawer and pulled out an envelope. “Everyone else does,” he added as he passed the envelope to Sumner. “Here. You need to read this here, and now, please, in case I can answer any questions for you before we leave.”

“Leave? Where are you off to?”

“Back to Honolulu. We’re carrying mail and a bunch of diplomats up there before the weather gets too bad, and once we finish there we’ll be turning right around and coming back with medicines and more patients. Like I said, you need to read that now. We’re leaving on the tide.”

Sumner sat and opened the large manila envelope, and as he started reading through Patrick’s instructions he almost wanted to laugh out loud. The plan’s audacious foresight was stunning, and the resources available to get the enterprise going were staggering, but at one point he looked up when he realized that ‘Spud’ was staring at him.

“You’re the architect, right?” Spud said. “You were working on the new civic center?”

“That’s right,” Sumner replied.

“You designed his house? The one by the locks?”

Sumner nodded. “Hard to imagine it’s gone now.”

Spud smiled, which seemed odd, yet there was understanding in the man’s eyes, too. “Both your kids make the trip in good shape?”

“Yes. They’re both here,” Sumner replied, now wondering how much this stranger knew about him.

“The other girl – what’s her name?”

“Deni Elliott, she’s a third year med student.”

Spud nodded: “So I hear.”

“I’ve two elderly physicians onboard, as well; she’s been taking care of them.”

“You read the third part of the contract yet?”

“No. Just the first two.”

“Better finish up,” Spud said as he looked at his watch.

Sumner took out the thick third part of the package and skimmed through it once, then reread several key passages before he looked up at Spud again. “So that’s why we have a mail contract to the Marquesas?”

Spud nodded. “You’ll need to stop at Rangiroa on your way back to Atuona, but, well, you need to make the drive before you go.”

“Assuming, that is, I opt to go along with this scheme.”

“Oh? I assumed you knew that your clearance into Tahiti was predicated on that.”

“You’re not serious?”

“Oh, that’s the way it was put to me when I arrived, so I assume the same applies to you: either sign-on or you can leave. The problem, as far as I can tell, anyway, is that Australia and New Zealand have closed their borders. That leaves Chile or Peru as available options, or maybe Sri Lanka, but with absolutely no guarantee of employment – or even entry. On the other hand, if you sign on with Patrick you’re home-free. You have a reserved spot in paradise with your name on it, and that means more than just survival. In fact, whether you know it or not, you’re now quite rich. All you have to do is help get this enterprise up and running, and look at it this way…you’re guaranteeing your kids get to have a life here, too.”

“What about this drive? What’s up with that?”

“Sorry. I can’t say a word about that. You can either go or get on your boat and leave, and I mean right now.”

“Okay.”

Spud opened another drawer and handed car keys over to Sumner. “Here are the keys, and, oh yes, assuming you stay the car is yours. The parking space, too. Blue Land Rover in space 7, almost right in front of where your boat is tied up.”

“My, my, he’s thought of everything, hasn’t he?”

Spud smiled, but still he didn’t say much. “We’ll be gone by the time you get back, and you’re to go up alone.”

“Up…where?”

“Directions are in the glove box. Nice to meet you, Charles, and I hope you’re here when I get back. We have a lot to talk about.”

Sumner took the keys and walked back along the same wharf over to the parking lot Spud had indicated and yes, he found the late model Land Rover in space 7, and once inside he found a map in another envelope on the passenger seat with a set of directions attached, but then, as he was setting his seat and adjusting the mirrors Liz and Charles ran up to the window and knocked on the glass.

“Dad? Where’re you going?” Liz asked as his window finished whirring down.

“Just an errand to attend to, and I should be back in a few hours. Still, well, stay onboard until I get back.”

“Some men came for Deni,” Liz said, her voice full of concern. “They helped her pack then took her over to that big gray sailboat.”

“Okay,” he managed to say, but everything about this day was beginning to feel surreal.

“Dad? What’s…?”

“Liz, I can’t tell you anymore than that right now because, well, because just I don’t know what’s going on myself. You both just stay on the boat, will you? That’s all I can say for now.”

“Dad? What about the Barretts?”

“They’ve been fine for a week, Liz, but if something happens before I get back you’ll just have to call for an ambulance.”

Charles spoke up now: “Dad, go do what you need to do. We’ll take care of things here.”

Sumner looked at his son anew, and maybe he felt a little pride in the moment, too, but he smiled as he started the Rover’s motor and turned up the heat. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said as he backed out of the parking space and pulled out into light traffic, now even more confused. Why…Deni? What was going on?

And he found that the truck’s GPS had already been programmed to guide him along the indicated route, so he followed the prompts until he was cruising southbound along the west coast of the island in the very last light of the day. Within a few minutes it was dark out and not even the craggy mountains off to his left remained visible. 

About ten miles outside of Papeete he turned inland on a very small paved lane, but within a few hundred yards the pavement gave way to red sand and crushed gravel, and soon enough the Rover began climbing a steep traverse through dense jungle-like foliage. Then, after about a quarter mile of crawling along slower than he could walk, the Rover emerged from the undergrowth – and C. Llewelyn Sumner, A.I.A., stared in frank, open-mouthed wonder at Patrick Grey’s pure, unadulterated audacity.

For there, tucked away nicely on the side of an unseen mountain was – the Grey House. In fact, it was an exact replica of the house he’d designed and built by the Ballard Locks in Seattle…and from a hundred yards away the house appeared the same in every detail, right down to the many well tended gardens tucked away almost out of sight.

And as he approached the house the front door opened, and who else but Patrick Grey stepped from the light and out into the night.

And Sumner was struck by the smile on the old man’s face, which all of a sudden felt strangely familiar, in a tragic, lonely sort of way.

+++++

“Patrick, there’s absolutely no conceivable way you earned enough money to do all this by selling those silly spy stories,” C. Llewelyn Sumner sighed as he took in the same living room he’d built once upon a long time ago beside Puget Sound. “That goddamn yacht must’ve set you back a king’s ransom, but this is preposterous! When did you have it built?”

“Oh, as soon as we broke ground up in Seattle. I built one here and another in New Zealand, on the South Island, just in case.”

“You…just in case of what?”

“You can never be too careful, Charles, especially where real estate is concerned.”

“Patrick? The money involved here…”

“Was significant. Yes, I know, but there were debts involved that I had to make good on.”

“Debts? What on earth are you talking about?”

Patrick looked at the ancient blades hanging over the fireplace and sighed. “You met Spud, I take it?”

“Spud? Oh yes, down on Haiku. What about him?”

“Oh, you asked about debts, so we might as well discuss his. First things first, I suppose.”

“His?”

“Well, you see, I knew his father, but then again I knew your father, too.”

“What?”

“We met at Stanford; the three of us were good friends before they each departed, both, as a matter of fact, to Santa Barbara. Odd, don’t you think, the three of us linked through one school, then both your father and Spud’s leaving at the same time and settling in the same city.”

C. Llewelyn Sumner felt an icy shiver run up his spine. “Patrick? What are you saying?”

“Not a word, Charles. Not a single word. Yet I hate to say it but I used Spud, and rather mercilessly on more than one occasion. The last time I did so very nearly cost him his life, so that represents one debt I needed to repay…”

“My father? You knew my father?”

Patrick nodded gently and with just the faintest hint of a smile almost showing on his remorseless face. “I did indeed. And I knew your mother too, Charles.”

It wasn’t what Patrick said that bothered him just then…it was the way he said those last few words. The smile, the intonation…both implied an intimacy that was completely out of place…given current circumstances. “What are you implying, Patrick?”

“Not a thing, Charles. Remember? Not one word.”

“Would you at least answer me this? Are you in any way capable of the truth, or are you a congenital liar?”

Patrick beamed and nodded maniacally. “Yes to both, Old Top!” he cried, slapping his knees as he skipped through the words like a stone flying across a pond.

“Patrick!” C. Llewelyn Sumner bellowed. “Enough! What the devil is going on?”

Grey nodded and gathered himself before he continued. “Ah yes, to the point. Well, you see, once upon a time I was involved in all manner of things concerning North Korea, and at one point I learned that a rather disagreeable fellow, his name was, I seem to recall, Kim Jong-il, and, well, he was using illegally acquired plates to print-up boat loads of one hundred dollar bills, and Charles, I mean to say he was printing up quite a few of them, okay? Now it turned out he had some difficulty distributing all this currency so he enlisted one of his friends from the old Soviet KGB, a certain chap named Putin, as it happened. Now, Kim called Vladimir when he had a large enough batch of currency ready to transship and Vladimir would dutifully send a small ship, usually a small Krivak-class frigate assigned to the KGBs Border Guards, and these ships usually came to a small naval base in North Korea, Mayang-Do I seem to recall was the name of the place. On the night in question I’d arranged for your Navy to fly one of their Cobra Ball missions along the Kamchatka Peninsula, but that night we also had a large number of Intruders and Prowlers enter Russian airspace. This of course made for a rather extensive and aggressive Russian response, and two things resulted – yet only one of these things I counted on happening. The first, the KGB frigate returned to base, and I had foreseen this development; the second I did not foresee, however, because Spud was shot down. Over the sea, thankfully, but the North Pacific in March is a somewhat inhospitable place, as I’m sure you can now imagine. Considerable resources were expended recovering those four men, by the way, but we had also dressed up a small Japanese frigate to look something like one of those old Soviet Krivaks…”

“You didn’t…”

“Oh, yes, I did. In all the confusion, what with everyone’s air defense radars going absolutely bonkers, we slipped our little ship into port and had all manner of Russian-speaking officers on hand to supervise loading the currency onto the helicopter deck, and before anyone was the wiser our ship departed North Korean waters and returned to Hokkaido. Unfortunately, several pallets of hundred dollar bills were misplaced during the transshipment…”

“You…what?”

“I think you heard me, Charles. And so I managed to squirrel away several hundred million dollars of this counterfeit currency, in due course deposited in smaller Asian banks, mind you.”

“You can’t be serious…”

“Oh, but I am. Or, should I say I was. And no one appeared to be any the wiser. Or to even care, for that matter.”

“So you…”

“Socked things away for a rainy day, Charles. And do you know what? It’s absolutely amazing what you can accomplish when you have almost nine hundred million in the bank.”

Charles smiled. “I wouldn’t know, Patrick. But what has all this to do with our parents and Santa Barbara?”

“Oh, Spud’s father was barren. As a matter of fact, so was yours.”

C. Llewelyn Sumner recoiled under the body blow hiding behind Patrick’s words, and he turned away from the pain. “You can’t know that, Patrick,” he hissed.

“As I said, Charles, we were all good friends.”

“You can stop now, Patrick.”

“Certainly. And as you said, I am a congenital liar, so think nothing of it.”

“I don’t know who or what you are,” C. Llewelyn Sumner sighed, “and I’m not sure I want to know, but why am I here?”

“You have the mail contract from the officials in Atuona?”

“Yes?”

“Good. We’ll be running cargo services to the islands for the time being,” he began…

“You want me to use my boat…”

“No, no, of course not. Your boat is far too small, so I’d imagine you just call her home for now. I’ve located two old schooners, did a few months back, before all the recent unpleasantness, and they’ve been updated and are ready to go. I understand Miss Elliott is on Haiku now, so I’d recommend you leave your daughter and that little girl, and those two physicians onboard while you and Charles make your first run back to Rangiroa and Atuona…”

“Excuse me, but how did you know about Deni or the Barretts?”

“What, didn’t you know? Miss Elliott is in my employ.”

“Of course she is,” C. Llewelyn Sumner sighed – as he shook his head in disbelief.

And Patrick smiled again, his triumph now complete.

Sumner looked away, not sure if he even wanted to know the answer to the next most obvious question, but then he just blurted it out: “So, are you telling me this…Spud…is my brother?”

But Patrick just shrugged. “Not a word, Charles. Remember?”

“Sure.”

“Now, how about something to drink. On the terrace, perhaps?”

Patrick led him out onto the patio behind the house, and Sumner was stunned into silence once again. Across a deep valley he saw an illuminated construction site, and he turned to face Patrick once again, this time in open-mouthed wonder. “What are you building now?”

“A small university, dedicated to the sciences.”

“A medical school, too, I assume?”

“There isn’t one in the islands,” Patrick said emphatically, “but that will change soon enough. Perhaps you’ll consider teaching architecture one day?”

“Perhaps,” C. Llewelyn Sumner said. “What else are you planning?”

“Me? Oh, I think I’ll sit up here in my house, and who knows, perhaps I’ll write another novel.”

Sumner almost laughed at that. “That seems a little out of character, even for you, Patrick.”

Patrick nodded. “Your new vessel is docked right where Haiku was. You’re to get underway the day after tomorrow. You’ll have passengers, and it probably wouldn’t hurt your son’s feelings to spend some more time with Leilani…”

“And oh, of course, you know about her, too.”

Patrick smiled. “If, in the course of things, your son was to marry Leilani, that would, oh, cement certain relationships with the island’s leadership. These might prove helpful to you, in the long run.”

“What on earth are you going on about, Patrick?”

“Well, I should think it’s rather obvious, Charles. France will soon be little more than a memory, and French Polynesia will no longer be the mere colonial outpost she once was. Not to make too much of the matter, but these islands, along with Australia and New Zealand, now hold a large percentage of the remaining population of what was once considered Western Civilization, and with what I’m hearing we should do everything in our power to preserve what we can, while we can. Get my drift?”

“If you don’t mind, what, exactly…are you hearing, Patrick?”

“Most of the northern hemisphere is now buried in ash and snow, and several short wave stations report that conditions in many parts of Europe and North America are now quite primitive. So, consider this, Charles, if you will. Europe, the United States, Russia and China – have all been, for all intents and purposes, well, let’s just say that life there has been severely disrupted.”

“Are there any long term weather forecasts?”

“Of course. And one of them might even be correct, too.”

Sumner understood the sarcasm. “So, no one knows what’s going to happen, right?”

“I’d say that’s more than likely, Charles, yet some trends appear obvious at this point. Oceania will become the principal zone of a new civilization, South America another. Northern India appears to be snowbound at this point, as is North Africa, so let’s call the rest of those areas part of the great unknown, at least for now. Yet here we are, located halfway between two known regions where the climate may not exert such cataclysmic consequences. And we’re further north so we might enjoy less severe variation in the weather, once things stabilize, anyway.”

“Patrick, what if this is the beginning of the next Ice Age?”

“Indeed. That is The Question, Charles. If it is, well then, it will be the revenge of the southern hemisphere, won’t it? If industry can relocate down here before conditions deteriorate, well, that could lessen the impact substantially. But assume they can’t get their act together in time to salvage much. In that case, being able to move goods and ideas between these regions will become very important. We’ll have to establish launch services, too, in order to maintain international communications and navigation services, won’t we? Can you imagine everything we’d need to undertake just that?”

“Don’t tell me…?”

“About 550 miles south of here, on Rurutu. SpaceX and ESA should be able to resume launch services within the year, perhaps sooner. Blue Origin and ULA have been building a huge facility near Darwin for some time, and a Japanese startup is attempting to join them. I think you might see recent events as just one more reason why we need to be a multi-planetary species?”

“How did you convince SpaceX?”

“Me? I simply purchased the appropriate land and then passed along the seeds of an idea. It has a logic all its own, of course, but the possibility of something like this happening has been increasing for some time, years in fact. Again, it was only logical to spread these services evenly around the planet…just in case.”

“And you’ve done all this…with counterfeit money?”

“Oh, yes, but that was the beauty of the idea all along, Charles. The stupendous irony of the entire plan, really. And all that bogus money printed up by a communist dictator, and then laundered through communist banks. Don’t you just love it! Look what I’ve managed to do with such nonsense! A university, a medical school, helping to build a spaceport and the transportation infrastructure to hold a large part of the world together. Not bad, eh? And all it took was a lot of fake paper. Truly strange, don’t you think?”

“Strange, yes, but at what cost, Patrick?”

“At what cost, indeed. I’ll leave you to think of all the consequences, Charles, from the comfort of the life I’ve provided you and your children.”

“I see.”

“Do you? I’m so glad,” Patrick said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “Before you leave, am I to take it that you’ll be an employee of Grey House?”

“Oh, sure thing, Dad,” Sumner said as he turned and walked through the house and out the front door. His stomach was now so upset he didn’t know if he’d make it out to the Rover, but once he was behind the wheel he drove back through the enveloping darkness to the docks in Papeete. Once in ‘his’ parking space he took the keys out of ‘his’ car and walked back to ‘his’ slip in the marina, then he looked across to where Haiku had been berthed. Now there was a rather elegant white hulled schooner lying-in-wait there, and he sucked in a deep breath then shook his head. This too was ‘his,’ wasn’t it? But how could all this be real when nothing was real anymore?

‘Is the old bastard really my father?’ he asked himself. ‘And this Spud? Is he my brother? If it’s true then I’m where I should be. Helping them, because they are my family. But what if they aren’t? But…does it make any difference now? Really? Where else could we go?’

Not really knowing what else to do, Sumner stepped out of the Land Rover and walked out to The Silent Wake. Liz and Haley were waiting for him in the cockpit, and Tracy was curled up on the little girl’s lap – waiting – while that red haired retriever was curled up on Haley’s feet. 

“Did you get something to eat while you were out?” Liz asked.

“No.”

“Well, sit down. I’ll fix you a plate.”

Sumner sat. “Could you grab my sweater, please? And where’s Charles?”

Liz pointed to the white-hulled schooner where Haiku had been. “Over there,” she said as she disappeared down the companionway.

Sumner shook his head as he looked at the schooner. It looked like her hull was steel, but there was a lot of teak showing topsides. Her masts were painted tan so he couldn’t tell what they were made of, yet all the sails he could see were on roller-furling rigs, and they looked out of place on her. He guessed she was over a hundred-twenty feet long so knew she’d be a handful, but about that time he saw several men working on her anchors up forward on a long bowsprit, so maybe there was already crew onboard. Charles, however, was nowhere to be seen.

Liz came up a few minutes later with one of her Thai coconut soups, this one loaded with all kinds of fresh seafood, so he looked at her again. “Where’d all the fresh stuff come from?”

Liz shrugged. “Someone from that ship came over and dropped it off. She looked like a cook, but don’t ask me…I’m a stranger here myself.”

“Tell me about Deni.”

“A doc came over from Haiku, and all he said was: ‘You ready to go?’ And Dad, it was like she knew the guy…”

“Because she did.”

“What?”

“She was planted onboard, Liz. By someone who wanted to make sure you made it to the boat in San Francisco.”

“Wait…but that means…”

“Your meeting wasn’t an accident. Yes, I know. It’s all a little disturbing.”

“Is that what your meeting was about?”

Sumner nodded. “Yeah, in a way. What do you think of this place?”

“What? Papeete? I don’t know, Dad. We didn’t exactly get a chance to wander around, ya know?”

He sighed. “Charles and I are taking that boat back to Atuona the day after tomorrow.”

“What? I’m not going?”

“Not this trip. I need you to stay here with the Barretts and Haley. We’ll check in with Customs in the morning, then you can head out and explore some if you want.”

“If I want? Dad, are you kidding? I’ve been holed up on this boat for a month…of course I want to get away…and I want to go home, too.”

Sumner shook his head. “There’s not much left to go back to, Liz. Apparently most of the country is, well, it’s buried under a lot of snow and ash, and it could take years before things get back to anything like normal…”

“Dad? What are you saying?”

“Well, it might be best to start thinking of this as home now, Liz, and about all I can tell you is we’re lucky, actually very lucky to be here.”

“Is it really that bad back home? I mean, I kinda guessed California was bad, but you’re saying the whole country…?”

“Yes, that’s right. As I understand it, given what little we actually do know, conditions are far worse than originally reported, and they’ll remain so for quite some time. Possibly several years.”

And while Liz seemed to struggle with the idea, ten year old Haley hardly seemed phased. Then again, the more Sumner had learned about her parents the more he realized she’d been a very unhappy little girl, so any change at all must’ve seemed like a positive development to her. And it sure hadn’t hurt matters when Liz jumped in and started carrying the load, stepping in to fill the role of big sister and mom, all in one. Right now the little girl was rubbing Tracy’s fur, completely in love with the idea that she now had a real fox to play with.

“Dad? What about school?”

“We’re working on that. I did read that there is a something like a pre-med program here, but most of the kids went back to France to complete med school. Maybe by the time you finish your undergrad coursework the new school will be ready to take students.”

“Don’t they speak French here?”

“Yup.”

“So…won’t I need to learn?”

He nodded. “Yup.”

“Dad, I was never good at languages…”

“Liz, maybe you never really had a good enough reason to apply yourself to learning a new language. Now you do.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right…”

“Liz, this kind of change used to be more common, but you grew up during a period of relative calm and stability, at least until recently. The thing is, Liz, change like this has always been inevitable, so people changed with the times. If you didn’t, or couldn’t, you, well, you went away, for want of a better way of thinking about it. People who managed change passed you by, left you behind. So, you accept change and deal with it or you don’t. The choice is yours, but let me give you a little piece of advice. That change is happening right now. Not tomorrow or the day after – but right now. You can’t put off doing what you need to be doing, you simply have to hit the ground running and stay focused on your goals.”

Liz smiled. “Mom used to talk to us like that.”

“I hope you listened.”

She nodded and smiled evasively – just like every other teenager he’d ever met. “I guess I understand, Dad. So, you and Charles are leaving and I’m supposed to stay here on the boat with Haley?”

“That’s right. I’ll get you set up with the bank before we leave, and we’d better go out and round up some food and get it stowed in the morning.”

“Dad, could I ask you something personal?”

Sumner nodded, but he noticed she suddenly seemed more than a little uneasy, too.

“You and Deni…after we left the Marquesas it felt like you two were getting close.”

He tried not to smile – yet he wasn’t quite successful: “And?” he just managed to say.

“It’s not exactly a big boat, Dad.”

“I’m sorry – what?”

“You two made a, well, you made a lot of noise one night.”

He nodded but looked away. “You sure it was us?”

“Dad? Really? She was screaming ‘harder–deeper’ and it wasn’t exactly subtle, you know.”

“I was a little out of practice, Liz. Clumsy doesn’t even begin to…”

“Dad? Do you love her?”

He looked away – if only because he’d been struggling with that very question for several days – but in the end he managed to look even more perplexed than he felt.

“Okay, Dad. Sorry I asked.”

“Liz, I don’t know the answer to that one myself, but in a way I almost felt like I was betraying your mother…”

“Oh, Dad! She left you, what? Twenty years ago?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“Are you saying you haven’t been with anyone since?”

He nodded, and suddenly he realized he felt a little ashamed by the admission.

“Dad! That’s not right! You need companionship…and I don’t mean that silly fox…”

“She’s not silly, Liz,” Sumner said – maybe a little too defensively. 

“Dad?”

“Hm-m?”

“Dad, you need to get out more. Get drunk and howl at the moon. Make a few good memories, ya know?”

He looked around at the little city and wondered what lay ahead. Deni would be back about the time he made it back from his run to Hiva Oa, and maybe he could better answer Liz’s question after a little more time with Deni, but then again she wasn’t really what she’d at first appeared to be. No, she was a spy.

Just like Patrick.

But in a way, wasn’t he becoming just one more cog in Patrick’s machinery? Wasn’t he becoming just another spy?

+++++

The Evening Star.

That was the white-hulled schooner’s name, and she was actually rather pretty, in a late 19^th- century sort of way. Just above the waterline round portlights extended from bow to stern, and there were twenty passenger cabins on that deck, ten to a side, with an engine room amidships. The next deck up, from amidships aft, were the living spaces – the galley and dining room, mainly – and a large cargo compartment took up the forward half of the ship. The expansive teak-planked decks were above that deck, and while she was a sailing ship most of her sails could be tended from the wheelhouse.

And Sumner had been surprised how much cargo she could carry. Several tons, anyway. Bottled water and a generator-run desalination rig for Rangiroa, medical supplies to be dropped off at three ports. And mail – tons of it – going to the islands.

Charles was working with the crew, learning how to load their cargo to best distribute the weight, while Sumner went over the passenger manifest, filling out the paperwork that would be signed-off on by Customs.

And once the officer from the Customs House came by, he officially had “cleared out” and at that point had to leave. He confirmed that all their passengers were aboard and accounted for, then his crew shipped their lines and he motored away from the wharf. And just like that he was back at sea, just like any other sailor.

Liz and Haley were on Silent Wake, up on deck when they passed, and they waved at him as The Evening Star passed on its way out the harbor, so he hit the air-horn twice and waved back, and it was hard to imagine life without them now. Another huge change… 

Then he looked at Moorea across the channel and, once they were clear of the island, he set his course for Rangiroa as he scanned the sea ahead through binoculars.

Change. Merciless, inevitable change. That was what waited out there. An endless sea of change.

Sitting at the wheel it was hard not to daydream, to not think about all the things that had been, once upon a time, so precious in that other life. Now all that past was gone and in a way it was like none of it had ever really happened, or like all that life existed only in a faraway dream slipping further from his grasp. Like time had never existed. Time was just a construct, a convenience we employed to measure out the bits and pieces of our existence, places along the way to drop the milestones of our lives…

He looked at the radar, noted a line squall ahead and decided to reef all sail well ahead of the storm – because, what was that old saying? If you have to think about shortening sail – it’s probably already too late? Taking in sail or measuring out the most important moments of our lives – was that the way it worked…or was it already too late?

Charles came in just then, his foul-weather gear smeared by the oily gray-green mix of rain and ash that coated everything these days, but he looked bright and happy this morning. Handling change wouldn’t be a problem for this boy, he knew. Charles was solid muscle, even between his ears, so he’d just keep on keeping on until the party was over. So unlike Liz – who was like her mother, a total empath and lost among all her cares.

“Waves are getting big,” his son sighed. “Gonna be a rough ride.”

Sumner looked at Charles, then at the building seas – but just then he felt her playing with his shoelaces so he bent down and picked up Tracy and held her close. They looked at one another for the longest time before she leaned in and kissed his chin, and all was right with C. Llewelyn Sumner’s little world again – because Tracy was still with him.

CODA

Patrick Grey watched The Evening Star as she pulled away from the commercial wharf and turned for the breakwater, and he switched video feeds to zoom in on the wheelhouse. Sumner was at the helm and his son Charles was standing by his side, and for a moment Grey wished he could hear what the two were saying.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Grey sighed as he watched The Evening Star round the breakwater and turn to the northeast; at that point he turned and looked at the little ship’s track on the dedicated AIS receiver he now kept on his desktop, and once he confirmed Sumner was indeed heading for Rangiroa he went back to the video feeds and checked to make sure that Sumner’s daughter Liz was onboard The Silent Wake. He smiled when he saw her and the little waif that Sumner had plucked from San Francisco Bay on their way out the Golden Gate, and as he sat looking at the little girl, he marveled at the role chance had played in her survival. She had been, for all intents and purposes, dead, and it sounded like she surely would have died had not the dog swimming beside her started barking just as Sumner approached.

Such a simple thing, really. A dog’s bark and the little girl lived. “How strange,” he sighed at the uncertainty she had overcome…

Then he heard the patio door open and close, then the unwelcome footsteps crossing the living room, coming his way once again.

“Ah, Patrick. I take it they are underway?”

“Good morning, Peter,” Grey replied, as always not wanting to tip his hand too early in the game, “I didn’t hear your helicopter come in.”

“I slept on the mountain last night. We’re going down to the island later today if you’d like to come along.”

Grey turned and looked at Peter Weyland, regarding him as one might regard a cobra, or perhaps a sated lion. “Thanks. I’ll check my calendar.”

Weyland’s smile was a dangerous thing; curiously attractive yet full of lurking venom. “Get word to Sumner. He’ll have to pick up Langston on Nuku Hiva; they can’t find anyone willing to take him over to Hiva Oa.”

“Do you know where, exactly?”

“Taiohae, at the town wharf on the east side of the bay. The village headman will bring him out to the boat, so as soon as he’s onboard have him come in and give me a call.”

“Anyone else with him?”

“Wife and two kids. Just reiterate to Sumner that Langston is precious cargo, and he’s to take care of him at all cost. Any word on the weather in the Tuamotus?”

“Rotten, and getting worse by the hour. The Marquesas aren’t much better. We loaded three sets of working sails onboard, but I’ll be surprised if they aren’t all ruined. Any word on how long this current storm is going to last?”

Weyland shrugged. “The tailored algae we injected into the volcanic plumes won’t really finish their work for six months, but early indications are that the albedo is lower than anticipated. We may go ahead and trigger those two volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula…”

“I thought that was considered an option of last resort?”

“It still is, Patrick. That algae needs at least six months to take care of the carbon dioxide, and five years of ice to lower temperatures to pre-industrial levels…”

“How many more people will we kill?”

“I don’t know, Patrick. Does it really matter? We acted now, to save the planet…”

“I know, I know, and humanity only had another fifty years before total extinction…”

“We did what we had to do, Patrick. We’ve been told for a hundred years this day was coming. We were told the planet could optimally sustain three-to-five hundred million people yet we were racing our way to ten billion and with no end in sight.”

Patrick nodded. “We did what we had to do, but did you ever stop to think that maybe those words will be our epitaph.”

“Its what you did your entire life, Patrick. What you had to do. We had to. You know it and I know it.”

Grey nodded. “So. You’re going up to the Gateway? And you’ll be staying this time?”

“No, I’ll come down on a Crew Dragon. The hyperbaric module docked last week and its being tested today or tomorrow, so we’ll finally be opening the Oncology module next week. It looks like we’ll also be carrying those passengers you brought down from Honolulu.”

“We’re picking up ten more this week, in case you’ve forgotten?”

“They’ll go up on the next launch. With the new gene editing lab in place we expect to have a one hundred percent survival rate within the year. Amazing when you think about it.”

Again Patrick sighed. “Yes, the best outcomes money can buy.”

“You really should think about coming up. Life extension should be on the order of twenty years, perhaps even longer.”

“I’ve heard rumors you bought the Tyrell Corporation.”

“True,” Weyland said with a shrug. “Integrating AI with synthetic lifeforms will offer tremendous capabilities going forward, Patrick, especially in more hazardous settings.”

“Like spaceflight?”

“Like spaceflight. And just imagine, would you? If Langston’s hypothesis is proven, Mars will be just the first step. Patrick, in a hundred years we’ll be out among the stars!”

“And we’ve just killed seven billion people, Peter. That makes us the…”

“We don’t have time for doubts now, Patrick. It was a difficult decision to make, but we made it – because someone had to. Inaction was no longer an option, and in the long run we acted to save the planet, and the species.”

Patrick blinked several times in rapid succession, his amber gray eyes sweeping everything in, taking in the man across the room, reading between the lines of his body language. “As soon as Sumner gets back I’ll have him start work on the master plan. I’d like to break ground as soon as possible.”

“Good. Meantime, I’ve got a place for Langston and his family set aside, and a security detail will cover him wherever he goes. You’ll let us know a few days before he arrives?”

“Of course.”

“Good. And I hope you’ll come down for the launch. These StarShips are really remarkable. Shake the earth like you wouldn’t believe.”

Patrick smiled at Weyland’s unintended irony. “I’m sure they do. Perhaps I’ll be able to get away for a day or two.”

He watched the young man leave the way he came…silently, and without a care in the world.

Then he looked at the AIS display on his desktop and for a moment he envied Charles. If all went according to plan, Charles would design the university’s main building and then he would begin work on Elon City. Then Charles would go up on a StarShip to supervise construction of the main living complex on Mars, and that, he thought, would truly be something to see – if he lived that long.

He walked to the large window overlooking the construction site and looked at the earth moving equipment clearing and leveling the proposed site, then he noticed a light snow falling and turned away from that overwhelming reality.

“My God. What have we done,” he just managed to say – then as more snow began falling he regarded his reflection in the window for several minutes. “What did you do, you miserable bastard?” he finally said to the emptiness he saw in the glass.

Then he watched as a snowy owl flew low over the meadow behind his house, following Peter Weyland into the trees, but then an icy chill gripped his chest when he recalled reading that Eldon Tyrell had created both owls and snakes before he directed the Tyrell Corporation to begin making human replicas. Had one of Tyrell’s owls been following him all along? What about the otter and the fox? Were they real? Was anything real anymore?

And then he stopped to consider…just where was the line between life and the replicas of the living we had started making? What kind of future did we owe the genetically manipulated organisms that would soon make their way into the mainstream of the living – by our sides. Would all life just become another utilitarian subset in this brave new world? A new kind of life – where tissues of lies masqueraded as the truth and where alternative facts displaced meaningful dialogue between people trying to solve life’s most pressing problems? Or would we get tired of all the lies and hit the reset button once again?

Because if people could no longer believe in something as basic as the truth, just what was left, really? If trading in lies was as valuable as leading a life grounded in truth, where were we headed if not darkness?

The means to terraform Mars by injecting tailored algae into a forced eruption of Olympus Mons had just been used on earth to eradicate a large swath of human life. To reset the clock. To allow the Earth to recover from eight billion people swarming over the surface of the planet, devouring everything in sight. Yet now it seemed that our appetites had been fueled by litanies of lies, and that in our endless rushing about we had grown weary of the truths we created.

But as we ran and ran just what had we lost? What divine spark in our eyes and in our souls had we extinguished, and could we ever get it back? Or had we simply given up on all that, too?

Patrick Grey went to his chair and sat there watching the diverging AIS signals of The Evening Star and of Haiku, and he smiled at the thought of his impossible children marching off into this new night. Had he participated in this madness for their sakes, for their futures? Or had he once again been looking after himself, and Akira?

But hadn’t that always been the question, whenever humankind marched off in folly?

Tracy, his little sea otter, came to him and she stood there beside him, waiting for him to lift her up to his embrace. Their eyes met and he was sure she was smiling at him, at his dilemma, but despite it all he reached down and helped her up. She stared into his eyes and for a moment it felt like she was reading his soul, like she understood every contour of his existence, then she curled up around his neck and once again all was right with their world.

© 2023 adrian leverkühn | abw | this was a work of fiction, plain and simple 

It’s Just Talk

Stand in judgement, look away

from the piss-stained man and his broken bottle

to the blue tarp where in silent grief

the broken man dares only dream in vacant screams.

+

Listen to the hate, on vacant aires of endless display

how dare the other and how we hobble

those who do not share in our disbelief

and where nothing, not even the most innocent scheme, is ever what it seems.

+

It is an endless torment, and always in dismay

we turn from the pitiless stares of our gathering jackals 

counting out rich man poor man beggar man thief

all humble now and cast in bronze on worn down knees.

+

Once their was truth, before words of decay

found out a hollowed land oh so craving her newer shackles

where even in dreams there was no relief

and so cast to the shadowlands once again, he waits with Diogenes.

+

© 2023 adrian leverkühn | abw | just a few ideas scattered here and there…

Okay, time to wrap this one up. Grab some tea and I hope you enjoy the moment.

[Yes \\ Turn of the Century]

The Last Part of the Tale

By our fourth day out we were getting a much better picture of the damage up and down the west coast. It had been, unfortunately, one more hot summer, and lava ejected from Mount Hood had set off forest fires that were spreading over central Oregon and southern Washington state. More troubling was the news that Mount Shasta, a long dormant cone volcano located in northern California, had been upgraded from Potential to Imminent Eruption status by the US Geological Survey, and while no one was saying why all these volcanoes were suddenly letting go, the obvious conclusion was that forces released by the Cascade fault was, somehow, forcing a huge increase in upwelling lava. No one had been able to get close enough to Mount Baker, north of Seattle, to check the status of that volcano, and there had been little contact with anyone in the Seattle region since Rainier’s massive eruption.

Ash was obscuring most of the Pacific Northwest from satellite observation, but that wasn’t the case in California. Imagery was being posted on NASA’s Earth Observatory website almost hourly now, and bit by bit the damage in California was becoming alarmingly clear. Fires were raging east of Oakland and south of San Francisco, and the first detailed high resolution images of downtown San Francisco revealed catastrophic damage. Los Angeles was a different story, however.

The west side of LA seemed relatively unscathed and LAX appeared largely intact, but the downtown area had been obliterated and fires appeared to be out of control, literally, as no emergency services could be detected in image after image. Both San Diego and Santa Barbara appeared untouched, though no one was getting through – with the lone exception being radio contact with the huge Navy base in San Diego.

Barnacle Bill and, for that matter, everyone on Haiku remained quiet as we digested the news. Carolyn had taken on six strangers from the flotilla which was probably a good thing, because a couple of them were experienced sailors. Haiku had been sailing under staysail and a deeply reefed main ever since, just so the much larger boat wouldn’t run away from the rest of us, but what I remember most about our fourth day out was waking up and finding that Haiku had left us. I could still just see her through binoculars, but she was under full sail when she sailed out of radar range later that afternoon. 

I picked up satellite imagery of the latest weather information that evening and the storm we’d feared had been pushed east by the North Pacific High, and when I woke at dawn on our fifth day out, I swore as I headed topsides, only to be greeted by a mirror smooth ocean that seemed to stretch out to infinity. Only now it was hotter than Hades on deck, and Max really, really didn’t like that. I put his large astro-turf mat up on the foredeck, which was where I wanted him to do his business when we were at sea, but he looked at me like I was crazy. I went out in my bare feet and soon found out why: one step on our teak decks was enough to fry my feet and his paws, so we dropped down to the swim platform and he dutifully did the deed down there after I soaked the teak with sea water.

Life onboard was of course like nothing I’d ever expected it to be. The first and most important reason was the Gutierrez family, all five of them. Jesus and Matilda were from Guatemala, and he’d been working as a security guard at a small boat builder’s yard north of the city that night. He’d been living with his family in a small trailer on the grounds, but when he heard the tsunami warning he’d gathered his family and hopped in the first boat he found, a little Boston Whaler skiff the boatyard used from time to time. He’d seen Haiku motoring by on the sound and raced out to join the flotilla, and now here they were, on their way to Hawaii with the rest of us. Fortune favors the bold, no?

Heidi Mathieson was the second reason I found for my unexpected new life, perhaps because she was the strangest creature I’d ever run across. She’d graduated from college just a few months before all this broke loose, and she had snagged a boat-sitting job when the owner took off for some kind of job assignment in Singapore or Malaysia, she wasn’t sure which. She walked around like she owned everything in sight yet she doted on the Gutierrez kids. Max looked at her like he couldn’t make up his mind about her, which was really kind of strange if you stopped to think about it. His tail didn’t swish when she called his name or fixed his dinner, and most of the time he simply kept away from her – as much as he could given the limited space we shared. I tended to follow his lead, too, as I found her bossy demeanor more than annoying.

Matilda, on the other hand, was pure joy. She inventoried the supplies we had on board to cook with then simply took over the galley. She loved to cook like most babies take to breathing, if you know what I mean. She’d been born to cook, and she lived to see smiles on the faces of those she fed. I managed to whip up some brownies the first morning the kids were onboard, but I otherwise tended to eat salads night and day; I even served Max’s dinners of chopped veggies and canned chicken on a bed of fresh chopped kale, so he was a salad fiend too.

But now that Matilda was in charge of the galley things had changed. I had stowed a bread maker away somewhere, but she found my supplies of flour and corn meal and went nuts making homemade tortillas, and soon we were putting away huevos rancheros for breakfast and enchilada tortes for lunch or dinner. Jesus caught a few fish so we had fish tacos and ceviche, and life fell into new routines of epicurean bliss.

Until the wind returned, anyway. And after sitting becalmed for two days the wind felt invigorating. Until it didn’t. On the second day of this new, much colder wind, it really piped up, blowing a solid 25 knots indicated out of the northwest, and then the wave height began increasing until we were surfing along the crests of eight footers for hours on end. Steering under these conditions was tiring, and even though Heidi had some offshore sailing experience, Tiki’s 43 feet of heavy displacement was often too much for her. Thankfully, Jesus proved to be an eager learner and an able helmsman, and he seemed grateful to have some purpose onboard other than caring for his children. Yet something was wrong, and we all felt the change now.

For even though it was mid-summer it was only 50 degrees out, but with the increased wind it was growing seriously cold. Tiki has a solid dodger, or a hard covering over the companionway, and while this provided effective cover when sailing into the wind it did nothing to obstruct wind coming from astern. The hydraulic autopilot installed on Tiki was of little use now, though the Hydrovane self-steering gear was managing well enough, but it was getting too cold to stay outside for very long.

Yet as I watched our position advance across the chart I kept waiting to feel a little more warmth in the air – but day after day our hoped for warmth simply wasn’t showing up to the dance. Five hundred miles out from Oahu the temperatures were continuing to fall, and we hadn’t seen the sun in almost two weeks. No one onboard was attuned enough to the sea to understand what that meant, but one morning Heidi came up into the cockpit and told me I needed to go watch CNN for a while.

And even though it was July and New York City should have been broiling, it was snowing there today. Chicago had been blanketed in volcanic ash, but now the ash had a nice, foot and a half deep layer of fresh snow on top. Duluth reported ice was forming on Lake Superior and the Detroit River was frozen solid, something that had rarely happened over recent winters.

And the BBC reported that all air traffic was still grounded worldwide, though National Guard units were arriving by rail in remote parts of southern California and in Reno, Nevada. Relief convoys were forming up to try and reach the Bay Area and Los Angeles, and railway repair crews would follow the troops in. 

And then, when we were still 200 miles off the northeast tip of Oahu, snow started falling on Tiki’s deck.

+++++

I didn’t know what to expect next. Nothing made sense.

But approaching Kailua at four in the morning I saw city lights burning through the fog and snow, yet even though Diamond Head was lost in the clouds Honolulu was still burning bright. Calling the harbor master at the Ala Wai Boat Harbor on 16 brought an immediate reply from the US Coast Guard to stay off 16 unless absolutely necessary, so I did the next best thing. I powered up my iPhone and saw I had five bars, so I called the after hours number, expecting to be told the marina was full.

But no, far from it. The harbor master advised that every boat capable of making the trip to Polynesia had either already departed or soon would, and that there were dozens of vacant slips ready and waiting.

“Has a large ketch made it in? Name is Haiku?”

“Sure has. You want me to put you right beside her?”

And that was one less worry to deal with, even though it was beyond surreal to motor into a yacht harbor in Hawaii in the middle of a full blown nor’easter, complete with driving snow and with ice forming on the rigging. The likelihood of finding a snow shovel on Oahu was suddenly weighing heavily on my mind.

But when I pulled into the slip indicated by the harbormaster, I saw Patrick standing in Haiku’s wheelhouse, staring at me as I jumped onto the dock to tie off our lines. And then, after three weeks at sea, it hit me. I was on land again. The world wasn’t heaving underfoot, and I felt queasy, almost seasick – because this place wasn’t rocking and rolling.

Heidi came up, with her backpack already packed, and she hopped off, gave me a brief hug then walked off into the snow. You know, like ho-hum and thanks for the lift. Well, hating her had come easily enough, but not so Jesus and Matilda, or even their kids. I could barely comprehend a world without Matilda in my galley, and Jesus was such a kind soul the thought of losing him too was unsettling. I’d come to rely on them both, I knew, perhaps as much as they were relying on me, but now that we were here they had absolutely no idea what to do, and they had almost no money to see them on their way.

But Patrick came out on deck and asked me to come over to Haiku as soon as I finished up with formalities at the harbormaster’s office, so I asked Jesus to just stay onboard for the time being, then I marched off through the snow to find the office.

Despite the harbormaster’s usual role of maintaining their marina, they are usually a good source of information about all kinds of things in the immediate area, notably jobs, and apparently the main commercial wharves in Honolulu were short-staffed and most local hotels were in need of cooks, so that was one problem down. Next on the list, if Jesus was willing to work security at the marina they’d have a roof over their head, so that was another problem solved, but did I really want them to leave? Well, he’d pass along the information and let them decide what was best for them.

So I walked back out to Haiku and was stunned when I saw the tracks in the snow I’d made a half hour before were now filled-in, while drifting snow was piling up against dock-boxes, and right then I really understood how rapidly the planet’s weather patterns were shifting. I was wearing my full foul weather suit and would freeze to death out here in an hour, but this was Hawaii, in July, and it almost felt like I was having some kind of out-of-body experience. And I guess that explained the expression on Barnacle Bill’s face when I climbed up on Haiku’s deck and walked into the pilothouse.

“Are you alright, or still in a state of shock?” he asked.

“Shock, I think,” I managed to say as I took the towel he offered and started to dry the ice from my unshaved face. “It feels kind of like the North Atlantic…in January.”

He smiled. “We’re at about the same latitude as Havana. Can you imagine snow in Cuba?”

“No, and I don’t want to, either. How long have you been here?”

“Two days. And don’t ask. We’ve both been to the local cathedral, which is what hospitals are called these days, I suppose. Akira is doing very well.”

“And you?”

“I’m here. I suppose that counts for something. How was…your crew?”

“Couldn’t have been better. Yours?”

“Grateful, and they graciously departed as soon as we docked. Carolyn is now an accomplished sailor, and quite proud of herself.”

“You look better, Patrick. Maybe getting out in the sea air agreed with you.”

“Maybe. We were growing alfalfa sprouts so I was eating my weight in the blessed things. Quite the thing with lime and fresh tuna.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Need anything while I’m here?”

“Have you thought anymore about our last conversation?”

I nodded. “Actually, I’ve thought of little else.”

“Oh?”

“I guess the reason…well, they’re still aboard. The family I took on, from that little skiff. Guatemalan refugees, lovely people, and I can hardly stand the idea of their leaving.”

“You don’t…hate them?”

“Don’t do this to me, Pat. Okay? Not now?”

He nodded, but his eyes were smiling again. “So? Tahiti?”

I shrugged. “What’s going on weather-wise?” I asked.

“Let me put it to you this way. Brad, the weather guru up in the harbormaster’s office, has a list of people willing to pay for passage to Tahiti. The going rate is a hundred thousand dollars.”

“What the fuck!” I shouted. “Are you shitting me?”

“You know, Neal, I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you swear.”

“A hundred grand? Seriously?”

Pat smiled again. “Seriously,” he replied. “We’re departing on Friday, with twelve guests onboard.”

“That’s…”

“Yes it is. Quite a tidy sum, you might say. And interesting what an enterprising pilot, one such as yourself, could earn over the course of a year, don’t you think?”

“What are you saying, Patrick?”

“Let me ask you again. Will you see to my daughter’s care after I’m gone?”

I nodded. “Of course I will, but you already knew that.”

He opened a drawer under his vast chart table and produced the same envelope – again. “Haiku passes to you and Akira on my passing, as a Delaware Corporation, wouldn’t you know. You’ll need to get your captain’s license to be legal, strictly speaking, but I’ll leave all that to you.”

I think a lot passed between us in those uncertain moments, too much for mere words to convey, anyway, but I did see a tear or two in his eyes, and maybe I felt a few of my own, but who knows, really?

“Patrick, I don’t know what to say…” I think I finally managed to say.

“Then don’t say a thing, Spud. Now, where’s that good boy, our little Max?”

+++++

Peel an onion and you’ll find many layers. 

I wonder if that’s always been the case with us, or did we evolve our thick layers of protective deceit to simply hide our true natures? If only from ourselves…?

Pat’s daughter, Akira, rarely ventured from her stateroom, and she never talked to anyone.

Carolyn’s boyfriend, I soon found out, was a physician. And an oncologist, and this Dr. Andrews was, in fact, Akira’s oncologist. And it turned out he already had everything he needed onboard, from bags of the latest chemotherapeutics to powerful anti-nausea compounds, and he even had a small, desktop-sized device that produced reasonably accurate lab profiles of blood draws. So, in effect, Haiku had been turned into a floating oncology clinic.

Which was why four patients from the University Medical Center were loaded onboard Thursday evening, and why those four were paying a quarter of a million dollars per person for the trip to Papeete. With eight other passengers paying a hundred grand a pop this little three week trip was going to generate almost two million in income. Five such trips would pay for Haiku, and everything after that would be gravy – or maybe enough to pay for her staggering upkeep.

Pat had a small cabin under the pilothouse, and I do mean small, and the first time I stuck my head in there I was stunned to find an otter curled up on a pillow in the middle of Pat’s sea-berth. It looked up at me and blinked once, then resumed its nap; Pat simply looked up at me and smiled, only now his eyes looked almost exactly like the huge snowy owl’s that I’d seen perched on my spreaders in the marina. Huge, amber, and studious – he looked at me over his Ben Franklin reading glasses, and it felt like he was daring me to question what I saw.

“Yes? What is it, Spud?”

“Everything’s loaded aboard. The tide turns at 0330.”

“Are all our provisions loaded in the galley?”

I nodded. “Matilda is getting everything squared away. Do you want something before going down for the night?”

He shook his head. “No. All the assets were transferred to the banks in Papeete this morning. Did that nurse get here yet?”

“Yes. She’ll stay in the little steward’s cabin off the treatment room.”

“Good.”

“Patrick? This boat just doesn’t make sense. How could you have possibly known?”

“What? That sooner or later the world would have to take a step back from the precipice? That sailing ships would once again be the most viable means of moving people across oceans? But Spud…it’s all a game, we live on a giant chess board. You just have to learn to see beyond the next move, but in truth I never expected to live to see this come about.”

“Patrick, you’re talking as if you’ve been expecting the collapse of civilization?”

“The collapse? Oh, no, far from it, Spud. This was just a momentary reset, a temporary change of course, but that’s the way it’s always happened. Nothing lasts forever, Spud. Whole industries will collapse – but new industries will emerge, and right now you and I are simply assisting in a brief, rapid relocation of assets, helping the next generation of change to emerge, to begin again.”

“So, we’re just cogs in some vast, cosmic machine?”

He laughed. “No, more like footnotes in a never-ending story. Maybe our names will be mentioned in an index somewhere, but I rather doubt that. So, this Matilda? She’ll stay here and her husband will come along in Tiki?”

“Yes, along with Heidi, the other girl that came over with us. She’s asked to rejoin the crew.”

“I dare say. Anything will be better than conditions here for the next few years. So, Matilda’s children will make the trip on Tiki?”

I nodded. “And we’re carrying four passengers.”

“She might be big enough to carry the mail to regional islands, assuming you can find crew for her.”

“That won’t be a problem in Papeete,” I added. “Assuming the weather doesn’t get too wild, anyway.”

“Oh, it will fluctuate as it destabilizes and seeks a new equilibrium. Hopefully we won’t lose satellite coverage anytime soon.”

“Any news from the States I need to know about?”

“Oh,” he sighed, “not much. Some talk of nationalizing the response to rebuild ports on the west coast, more blather about a new ship building program. And of course the usual suspects going on and on about the need to become a multi-planetary species, yada-yada-yada. I did hear something about the Gulf Stream cooling rapidly, so Europe may be in for a cold spell.”

“But that means fewer hurricanes in the Gulf, right?”

Pat nodded. “Complex systems only survive be maintaining equilibrium, Spud. You’ll want to concentrate on moving people from Hawaii this year, then moving many of these same people to Auckland or Sydney next year. By that time you’ll need to have started work on Haiku II, and with her you can link up to Singapore, then possibly even Japan. By the time you retire you should reestablish contact with North America, and who knows, maybe air transport will resume by then, as well.”

I looked at the otter, then at Patrick. “This an old friend?”

His amber eyes blinked slowly, but he then just looked away – trying to hide a growing smile. “We’ve been together for some time, you might say.”

“Like Max and me?”

“Precisely. What was the name of that television show you used to watch with your father? About a war veteran sailing the South Pacific, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Adventures in Paradise. James Michener wrote a few of the episodes, but it was his idea, when all was said and done.”

“Ah. Some Enchanted Evening. Did you ever see the musical? In person, I mean?”

I smiled too. “Mary Martin, yeah. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that night.”

“Yes. Funny what we choose to remember. And what we fail to forget. Do you think of him often?”

“My dad? Yeah, all the time.”

“Well, I suppose he’ll be with you then, on your next adventure?”

“I hope so.”

“You’ll take care of Max, won’t you?”

“Of course, but…”

“You’d better go topsides and check the rigging for ice. And be careful, Spud.”

His whole demeanor had been changing by the minute, wistful here, then playful, but I went topsides and walked the vast decks, shining a bright light up into the rigging, knocking some snow and ice off one of the headsail furling units as I thought about what he’d meant. Then I checked in with Matilda and found she was baking brownies, then I talked with Carolyn and her doctor friend before I went back to Patrick’s tiny cabin to say goodnight.

But he was gone. Simply gone, and it was as if he’d never been there. Or maybe he’d never really existed at all, yet Pat’s otter was standing on his pillow just then, playing with the pure white feathers from the wing of a snowy owl.

+++++

Coming south from Hawaii, you typically spot the craggy spires of Mou’a Roa on the island of Moorea before your eyes find the twin spires of Tahiti’s Mont Orohena, and that was the case on our seventeenth day out of Honolulu. Haiku of course handled the passage with ease, and her long waterline and voluminous sail-plan ensured our passage was a fast one. Doc Andrews had his hands full, however, as two of our passengers were oncology patients and one was on dialysis. Had Patrick installed a single, portable dialysis unit just for himself, or had he envisioned Haiku becoming some sort of inter-island hospital ship? I suppose I’ll never know the answer to that question, but with his God’s eye view of things, notably the prescience to build Haiku in the first place, I had been left in awe of his grasp of time. And our place in the stream.

And yes, I missed him terribly. So did Max. And of course, so did Charles, Pat’s infernal sea otter. From time to time I saw that great white owl, too. He stood watch from the second set of spreaders on the foremast, though occasionally he came down to the deck to take food from Akira, usually a few slivers of raw salmon. She would stroke the feathers on his head and often I could hear her speak in slow, soothing cadences to him, but eventually he’d head back up to his perch and resume his scans of the sea ahead.

Charles and Max, on the other hand, were soon best friends, and when I hit the bunk for some sleep Max would curl up beside me – and Charles would curl up on Max. I started, or should I say restarted, having those most peculiar dreams on that first passage, too. The medieval castle perched over the sea and the infinite bloom of cherry blossoms. I could feel Japan in those dreams, Japan – calling out to me. But hadn’t Patrick told me as much?

I spent what time I could with Akira, yet she remained cool, almost aloof, the entire voyage. She spoke gently when she talked of her father, yet it wasn’t a stretch to say that she was still very uncomfortable with his memory. Things had apparently remained unsettled since the night of sighs, which was what she called the night that Mount Rainier erupted, and I began to suspect that his memory would never be a pleasant one, at least for her.

Matilda was baking cinnamon scones our last morning out, and Haiku was alive with the scent. Our passengers came up on deck and pointed at Moorea’s craggy-spired majesty as they sipped jasmine tea, but few bothered to look aloft at the owl scanning the far horizons. He remained up there the two days we were in Papeete, coming down only to take a few slivers of salmon from Akira, and he remained on his perch even after Tiki arrived, and as cargo and provisions were reloaded aboard Haiku.

Indeed, the old owl remained on his perch as we departed the old quay and turned north, as we sailed free of civilization once again, bound for Honolulu under his patient, watchful eyes. I was walking the deck later that afternoon when I felt a fluttering of wings by my side, and I felt the owl land on my left shoulder. Perhaps I was too stunned to move, yet it was funny, too, in a way. You see, I was not at all surprised when he began to whisper in my ear.

(c) 2023 adrian leverkühn | abw | this was just fiction, plain and simple.

[Rodgers and Hammerstein (v1958) \\ Some Enchanted Evening]

…because that is the way some things happen in life…

…and another theme emerges…

[George Strait \\ Thoughts of a Fool]

barnacle bill and the night of sighs

the Third Part of the Tale

The jet stream, as far as I could tell, was carrying Mount Rainier’s ash cloud across the northern tier of the United States, as well as into southern Canada, and, so far at least, cities around the Great Lakes appeared hardest hit. The constellation of GPS satellites was completely unaffected so Tiki and Haiku, as well as the few dozen other sailboats from the marina, were making our way to the northwest during that first night after the eruption of Mount Rainier. Sailing past Whidbey Island, and the Naval Air Station on the northwest coast of the island, most of the trees and houses seemed to have been scoured from the land, and I could see no trace of the hangars and all the other, smaller buildings at the air base. I’d spent months there just twenty years ago and what had once seemed so permanent had simply been wiped away. I felt real pain as I looked at the scrubbed remnants of the island and wondered how many people had managed to make it to the mainland or to high ground. In the 45 minutes we had.

And every frequency we tried on the VHF radio replied with only static, even the automated weather frequencies were silent now, and that could only mean one of two things: either the antennas were all down – and this was unlikely – or the Coast Guard and NOAAs reporting facilities had been taken out. Next thing to try was the internet, so I fired up the inverter and powered up my StarLink antenna, and it took a few minutes to acquire signal but I had an active connection. Once my MacBook was connected and the browser launched, I went to CNN. 

Coverage was scanty at best, but astronauts on the ISS had imaged the area from Vancouver to Portland, Oregon, and that was when everyone learned that Mount St Helens and Mount Hood had also both erupted overnight. Now even a cursory examination revealed that everything on the Pacific coast north of Eureka, California had been shattered and then scrubbed from the surface of the planet by either tsunamis or lava flows. The largest of the Puget Sound tsunamis had put out the fires we’d seen in the city, but then the wave had marched inland and slammed into the Cascades, in the process running into the lava flows racing down Rainier’s northwest flank. Lava had somehow continued flowing down the valleys that emptied onto the flat coastal plains where Tacoma and Renton had once been, but those images had been taken an hour or more ago and it was likely the lava had reached Puget Sound by now.

I switched on the loud-hailer and called out to the boats within range and asked them to go to VHF 16, then I relayed what I had seen on CNN to the 20 or so boats in our ragged little flotilla.

“So what do we do now?” someone asked. “I mean, we can’t go back, can we?”

“Look,” I said, “I can’t tell what conditions are like north of here, but CNN says there’s been no word from either San Francisco or Los Angeles so they may have earthquake or tsunami damage there. Same for Hawaii, and that begins to narrow down our options. We could move north, towards Desolation Sound and Alaska, or we could try for Polynesia, Australia, or New Zealand.”

“No way I could make it that far,” a woman said, her voice sounding very small indeed. “I’ve got twenty gallons of diesel and maybe forty gallons of water, and I’ve never been outside.” The open waters of the Pacific were often referred to as ‘Outside’ by sailors around Puget Sound, primarily because the Sound offered protected waters while the waters ‘outside’ were exposed to all manner of weather-driven sea states. Making a trans-oceanic passage in a small sailboat was not something to be undertaken lightly, either. Such boats had to be designed to handle offshore conditions and at a minimum there also had to be enough fuel, food, and water to sustain life for a prolonged crossing. A water maker would help, but only if the boat in question had enough fuel onboard to power the system. 

“Okay,” I said. “Before we make any decisions we need more information. I’ll broadcast a news update as soon as I can, and if you have questions or concerns let’s tackle those soon.”

Haiku dropped power and Carolyn was waving at me, so I altered course and closed on her, and a few minutes later I pulled alongside – and then Patrick stepped out of the inside steering station.

“Are you sure you want to take on this kind of responsibility?” he asked – kind of sarcastically, I thought.

“The alternative is what, exactly, Patrick?”

“Let them make their own way to wherever it is they want.”

“I see. What are your plans?”

And then Patrick shrugged.

“I see,” I nodded, now understanding where I stood in his world.

“It’s nothing personal, Neal. I’d imagined you’d be heading south now, whereas we’ll be heading west.”

“Japan? My god, Patrick! Won’t you need medical intervention sooner than that?”

“Not my main concern. Besides, there aren’t exactly many options, Neal.”

“Try UC San Diego; I’d should think they’d still be intact. Why don’t you see if you can’t contact someone down there? With your speed you could be there in under two weeks.”

“Well, I have a bit of a problem in that regard, Neal. I’m the only person onboard with any sailing experience.”

“What?”

“There was no need to engage the services of a captain while Haiku was simply sitting there tied up in that marina.”

“Holy shit, Pat. Carolyn can’t sail? Or her friend?”

He shook his head.

“I’m sorry if this is none of my business, but who was the woman we picked up at that house?”

“Akira. My daughter.”

I tried to hide my reaction to this bit of news, but probably wasn’t real successful. “Where is she now?”

“Below,” he sighed. “She is quite angry with me, I’m afraid.”

“Angry?”

“Yes. In fact, I may need you to help me with that.” 

“Uh-huh,” I think I managed to say. Oh, how the worm turns.

+++++

It fast became apparent after my first broadcast that our little flotilla was breaking down along the usual lines: left and right, as in liberals and conservatives. Even now, even as mutually dependent as many of these sailors were, the usual walls started falling into place. Bigger boats didn’t want to share fuel or water, and heaven forbid if you were low on perishable food or canned goods. Patrick had the largest yacht out there and he’d already made it abundantly clear he wouldn’t share a damn thing, with anyone. Myself included.

Then again, he was dead set on setting out for Hokkaido, a 4,300 great circle route that would take him as far north as the Aleutians. Pointing out that this would be against wind and current, that left him with a more leisurely alternative jaunt via Hawaii, a six thousand mile trip that would strain the physical resources of any fully crewed yacht, let alone an octogenarian in full blown kidney failure trying to single-hand a 120 foot super yacht across one of the most challenging bodies of water on the planet. Whatever he tried, he’d need every bit of food and fuel he had stowed away, so at least I could understand his point of view.

Tiki could just conceivably make the 3800 mile trip to Papeete, Tahiti – with one stop in the Marquesas Islands to take on more food. Assuming I could find someone willing to sell food to me once I got there.  I had a watermaker on board so could turn sea water into fresh – as long as I had enough fuel to run the ship’s diesel. If we ran into the doldrums, or the Intertropical Convergence Zone, Max and I could conceivably sit there bobbing about like a cork for weeks on end, and while I had four solar panels making 800 watts on a sunny day, things could get real dicey, real fast. The more I thought about it the more San Diego made sense, and surely things would be getting sorted out after the two to three weeks it would take us to sail down the coast.

But as I listened to CNN the more unsettled and unrealistic that first rosy outlook now seemed. Preliminary damage estimates to the Pacific Northwest region appeared to be in the tens of trillions of dollars, and entire harvests in California and the mid-American agricultural heartland were now more than questionable – and would remain so for years – and some scientists were saying it was beginning to look more than possible that a prolonged period of extremely cold weather could encircle the globe for up to a decade – because it seemed that no one had foreseen three large volcanos cutting loose at the same time.

And now, suddenly and unexpectedly, it was looking like my little ocean going cocoon might just prove to be one of the most reliable ways to get through this calamity – at least assuming the weather didn’t go completely batshit crazy. Maybe that was why billionaires had been building mega yachts for the past ten years? 

And now all I had to do was get Barnacle Bill to start thinking clearly.

+++++

So, as I passed along events during my next radio session, I passed along what I’d just learned from CNN and the BBC, and that proved to be a peculiar moment. Peculiar – because it was as though we could all feel a collective sigh drifting among the little islands of humanity that was our little flotilla – and what happened in the aftermath of that moment was nothing short of miraculous.

That wall, and all those partisan divisions among us, began to fall away.

A social studies teacher on our net talked about the possibility of near total cloud-cover resulting from all the ash circling the planet, and how that might, just might, bring on something like that so-called ‘little ice-age’ that had happened a couple hundred years ago. The southern hemisphere might not experience these conditions, she added, or might not to the extent the northern hemisphere might.

“So,” another member of our net said, “you think we all need to head south too?”

And that forlorn, lost sounding voice came back on just then: “I’ll never make it,” we heard the woman on the small boat say again. “I wouldn’t make it to Oregon, let alone Hawaii.”

“Then come on over and join us on Silver Bear,” another member of our new group said. “We’ve got tons of food and a water-maker, and plenty of room, too.”

So we started to sort through the people out there; who was on too small a boat and who had room to spare. Who had a water-maker, but maybe not enough fuel, or food. We were westbound now, heading towards Tatoosh Island and the Cape Flattery lighthouse, but already the sky looked peculiar – like there was a pewter-green colored layer high up in the stratosphere, and the winds had died down to nothing – which produced another sort of foreboding.

“Barometric pressure is 30.15 and rising,” Pat said over the net, “but there’s something that looks like a typhoon between Guam and Honshu; at last report it was turning northeast, towards the Aleutians, and there’s another deep low in the Gulf of Alaska.”

“What direction is that storm headed?” someone asked.

“Southeast,” Pat replied. “It should be here in four days.”

It was my turn now. “So you think we’d better head south now? Any idea what the weather in the Caribbean is doing?”

“Something organizing west of the Cape Verde Islands,” Pat added, “but the NOAA sea surface temp map is showing 88 degrees in the central Gulf of Mexico, so it won’t take long before a storm gets organized there.”

“So a storm could form there and jump across to the Pacific and head towards Hawaii?” the voice on Silver Bear asked.

“That’s a possibility,” Pat said. “Your best bet may be to thread the needle, head to the Marquesas.”

And on hearing the words ‘Your best bet’ I knew that Barnacle Bill was giving up the ghost, quitting right then and there. Mind you, I had no idea who this son of a bitch really was but all of a sudden the idea of losing him didn’t sit too well with me. That said, I altered course once again and closed on Haiku. Pat had apparently been reading my mind, and he was out on the rail, waiting for me.

So I hung fenders off my port rail and made my lines ready, then tied off on Haiku’s starboard rail, and when we were rafted together I stepped across to Haiku, and of course so did Max.

“I’m thinking about what you said,” Pat said, “about heading for San Diego.”

“Why not Honolulu?” I said. 

“Which do you think it the more vulnerable location?”

“Pat, if the San Andreas fault let go I’m not sure anything in California makes sense.”

“I’ve been thinking of home,” he said wistfully. “In an ideal world, I think I’d rather pass there,” he said.

“And where would that be, Pat?”

“Britain. South of Oxford.”

“And your daughter? She doesn’t exactly look well, Pat.”

“She’s recovering from chemotherapy.”

“Oh? Will she need medical support?”

“Yes. She could for the foreseeable future.”

“So…where?”

“Tahiti,” he whispered, “might be the most appropriate choice.”

“I’m sorry. You’ve lost me, Pat.”

“I want you to take her with you.”

“Excuse me?”

“No man is an island, Spud. And you, you of all people, should know that by now.”

+++++

There was, I remembered thinking inside another such moment, no place like an aircraft carrier at night. Gliding along in the eastern Mediterranean at two in the morning, the seas looked like a black mirror stretching off into infinity. It looked to be, all in all, a good night to fly. Watching the intricately choreographed ballet of deck-apes and aircraft moving to the cats had, after almost twenty years, taken on the comfortable routine of the familiar, but there had been times when climbing up into the cockpit for a night cat-shot when the butterflies in my gut became unbearable. And so it was that night.

Spooks had identified an Isis command bunker near the Syrian-Lebanese border, and ground-pounders had choppered-in to put a laser on any moving targets that approached the bunker. An E-2 Hawkeye had already launched and was orbiting off the coast, at the time looking at Russian Su-24s flying strike packages against Kurds somewhere east of Damascus, and Navy F/A-18s were waiting for the spooks on the ground to give the Go call. Before they could launch, however, I would take my EA-6B to southern Syria and jam every radar in the region, clearing the way for the F/A-18s on their flight to the target.

Steam was hissing out of the catapult rail when I was given hand signals to taxi to Cat 1, and with the front canopy still wide open I watched as men and equipment scurried out of our way. The blast deflector retracted into the deck and I looked at the controller down to my left as he guided me out onto the foredeck, then I worked through my pre-launch checklist while men below hooked up the shuttle. When the launch director signaled the catapult was ready I closed the canopy and ran the power up to 60 percent and watched my pressures, then advanced power to 103 percent and saluted before pushing the back of my helmet into the headrest. I could see the director signal the launch and feel the catapult take over, slamming me back into my seat while I watched my airspeed and rate of climb indicators.

Launching at night with no moon is like stepping out into a black hole; there is no visual frame of reference, no horizon line or the lights of a distant city to orient yourself to – there are only six instruments in your field of view and every bit of concentration is centered on the information they provide. In the second and a half you are on the catapult you still feel the carrier beneath the aircraft, then there’s a slight dropping lurch before you are enveloped in pure darkness. Hand on stick, eyes on your instruments, you pull back slightly and watch your airspeed stabilize. Next you look for a positive rate of climb and when you see 145 indicated you retract the landing gear as you continue to watch your speed. Flaps and slats up next, then you check in with your controller in the E-2 and get your first vectors as you climb to your assigned cruising altitude. And that’s just the first thirty seconds.

But at that point in the game your job is almost over. The EA-6B is a chauffeur driven limo designed to haul three electronic warfare operators to the skies over the battlefield, and once near the target they do their thing until it’s time to go back to the ship, or to RTB – return to base – to either rearm and refuel, or to call it a night and head to the rack for some sleep. All you do while up there is fly the plane where the controller in the E-2 tells you, unless things get dicey, anyway.

On the night in question, the night Patrick was obliquely referring to, a Seal team had a small Isis command center about 30 miles west of Palmyra in their crosshairs; my part of the mission was to go in and orbit the area at very high altitude and provide cover for the F/A-18s that would bomb the target. The odd thing about Isis, however, was that they were at the time quite well-armed, and with US and Russian weaponry the group had taken with them when their members fled Iraq. In other words, they had Stingers and other small surface to air missiles they could deploy against us. Well, me.

And so, of course, that night the shit hit the fan. It always does.

One of the Blackhawk helicopters extracting the Seal team after the airstrike took heavy ground fire and went down, and within moments ground radars lit up at the Khmeimim Air Base on the coast. Then airborne radar-sets lit off as Russian Migs and Sukhois on ready alert took off and turned south towards Tartus – which was very bad news for all concerned. The Blackhawk was down somewhere east of Homs and I was flying a hundred mile racetrack with Homs my west-most anchor point, but when it was time to return to the carrier I’d need to fly just south of Tartus on my way back to the Lincoln. Only now I’d have a reception committee waiting – just for me and my Prowler. 

But now we also had a rescue mission underway. Several helicopters from a small carrier off Crete had already transited the coast and were heading towards Homs, but there was a big military radar just north of the city, at the air base in Hama, that would light them up momentarily. Then we got word from the strike commander via the E2 Hawkeye: Take out the Syrian radar on the ground at the Hamah Military airfield, then go low and set up high intensity jamming to provide cover for the inbound Blackhawks.

The Syrian radar was primitive, no frequency jumping, no phased-arrays, so as they were focusing their search to the southeast we looped around and came in from the northwest. One AGM-88 took of that radar but my right-seater called an ancient Mig-21 coming online as we returned to our racetrack over Homs. Even though the -21s were older than hell they were also very fast, and they carried two air-to-air missiles so we couldn’t ignore this new threat. Still, the pilot in the Mig relied on ground radar to provide targeting information, and he’d just lost that. 

Then our E-2 chimed in again: there were now four Sukhois south of Tartus and a Russian Mainstay AWACs aircraft was taking off from Khmeimim Air Base, and just then my EWO informed me that the fire control radar at the normally quiet Shayrat Air Base south of Homs had just painted our aircraft. One of my back-seaters then told me that an S-300 surface-to-air battery was concentrating on our racetrack and that they would soon have the Blackhawks.

I relayed this to the strike commander on the Lincoln and I was advised to take out the radar at Shayrat. And I had one -88 left. Normal Russian doctrine for the S-300 was to shut down their radar when they detected either an inbound Shrike or an AGM-88, but the -88 was smart – it would remember the location of the radar set even after the radar shut-down. The only danger with this feature was that the Russian engineers had wised up and soon put their S-300 radars on mobile mounts, so once we fired they could simply shut-down and move a quarter mile and wait for missile impact before reactivating their radar set.

So, just a quick recap here, but we had the Russian AWACs aircraft and four escorting Sukhoi-27s heading for our escape route over the coast, a Mig-21 coming up from behind and a Russian S-300 SAM battery dead ahead. Ho-hum…just another day at the office, dear.

So, priority 1: take out Shayrat. Burn up the spectrum the S-300 SAM used, take away their ability to detect or react to an AGM-88 launch. Their were Mig-23s located there, too, reportedly with a few Russian pilots on hand, as well as Mi-35 helicopter gunships – also with Russian pilots on hand – and killing Russians was still off the table, at least then it was. So it was the same drill; drop in low and come in from an unexpected axis, fire the AGM-88 to take out the radar at Shayrat then move out of range and begin to cover the Blackhawks.

And to the point that Barnacle Bill was making, I didn’t have to worry about the Mig-21 coming in from the north, or the Mig-23s that might come up from Shayrat, or even the Sukhois patrolling my exit lane south of Tartus – because two squadrons of F/A-18s were launching and forming up, getting ready to clear our exit. Kind of like the old Green Bay Packer’s power sweep, with Jerry Kramer and Fuzzy Thurston clearing the way for Jim Taylor around the strong side. First down every time.

Flying that night, or during any one of the seventy-plus missions I flew over Serbia, Iraq, or Afghanistan, I knew I was never alone up there. I was part of a team, that team deeply grounded in traditions of duty and loyalty, and yet here I was in the here and now – defiantly choosing to go it alone.

What had happened? Why had I changed?

So when Barnacle Bill told me he wanted me to look after his daughter, I think he was, in effect, telling me to get a life.

+++++

But standing there on Haiku’s broad teak decks, when I looked at Patrick I knew I was looking at a dead man. Whatever it was he had – well, it had him by the throat and wasn’t letting go. Britain was a pipe dream, and just watching him I wondered if he’d even make it to Hawaii. And his daughter? She had been doing chemo? What was her prognosis? How long could she be away from an oncologist without taking a turn for the worse?

“No man is an island? Isn’t that Milton?” I asked.

He shook his head and sighed. “I see another education was wasted. John Donne.”

“And that’s how you think I see myself? As an island?”

“That’s called a metaphor, Spud.”

I sighed. “And if I may? Why?”

“Your best friend is a dog, Spud.”

“Point taken, but then again Max is infinitely more trustworthy and caring than…”

“Oh, shut up, you imbecile,” he growled with sudden ferocity. “Have your experiences with women been so awful?”

I nodded. “Yup. Pretty much.”

“So…you’re a true misogynist, is that what you’re saying?”

“I think you’re missing the point. I don’t hate women, Pat. I hate people. All people. In fact, I’m an equal opportunity hater. I’ve never met another human being I could stand to be around for more than a few hours.”

“Truly?” Pat said, his eyes dancing behind cloudy strata of mirth. “A genuine misanthrope? I hardly knew any of you still existed! How utterly delightful!”

I, of course, found this reaction slightly perplexing. Indeed, almost confusing, which is of course one of the reasons I detest people. His words were laced with sarcasm, the double-meaning of his choice of words obscuring his derision, all of it a reflection of his need to slap a label on another human being.

“You asked to speak to me?” I said, our eyes locked on like dueling radars.

“I see that we’ll need to take on as many of these people as we can,” he said blithely, “and I suspect the best choice will be to make for Honolulu. There’s been no good news out of either San Francisco or Los Angeles, and whatever reasons there might be for heading that way, I doubt they’ll have the time or the resources to take care of an old fart like me.”

“Is there news about anything going on in Hawaii?”

“No, but I’m simply assuming that no news is good news – in this case. It does appear that both Tacoma and Olympia were hit by one of Rainier’s lahars, and that Portland has sustained major damage from two pyroclastic flows, but no one is sure whether these came from Mount Hood or St. Helen’s. Astoria, near the coast, was hit by the tsunami and apparently was severely damaged. The USGS in Oregon just confirmed that the San Andreas fault did let go just moments after Mount Rainier, so going to California represents a huge gamble, as at least two rather large population centers have probably been cut off from outside aid, and that means tens of thousands of people will be starving within a matter of days. And you must remember, Neal, that with all the volcanic ash circulating in the upper and lower atmosphere, it’s quite likely that all aviation will be grounded, and conceivably for a very long time.”

“So, you won’t be flying to London anytime soon, will you?”

“No, of course not, but with any luck at all I’ll find suitable medical facilities for Akira in Hawaii.”

“And for yourself?”

But then Patrick just smiled – as he took an envelope from his back pocket and handed it over to me. “In the event of my death, you are to open this and carry out my final instructions.”

“And your daughter? You said her name is Akira?”

Pat nodded. “That’s correct. Take care of her, Neal, at least until she’s well enough to make her way in the world on her own. Will you do that for me?”

“Why me, Patrick?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because it’s time.”

“Time? What on earth do you mean by that?”

“You can’t go through life with just a dog by your side, Neal. And if you don’t like people, you need to find out why. If you don’t trust them, you need to find someone you can trust. And if you can’t care for another person, then you need to tie an anchor around your feet and jump overboard,” he said – with a straight face, I might add.

“People are evil, Pat…”

“Yourself included, of course?”

“Of course. We’re evil, all of us, every single one of us.”

“But aren’t we also good?” Pat sighed. “I mean, surely you must concede that we are capable of acts of extreme goodness, so are you telling me that you’ve just discovered the dualities inherent in mankind?”

“Goodness is just another word for exercising self-interest, Pat.”

“Oh? So helping these stragglers out here by carrying them to Hawaii is in your self interest? And is keeping Max out here under the present circumstance in your best interest? Come on, Neal. Think it through. Think about what you’re really saying.”

“Well then,” I replied casually, “taking your daughter is certainly not in my best interests, right?”

“If you’re silly enough to think that way, then yes, give me the envelope. Go about your wretched life, and get on with your self obliteration, but don’t do it anywhere around me.” And as he said this he snatched the envelope from my hands and turned to leave, but first he turned knelt beside Max. 

“But isn’t that exactly what you’re doing, Pat?” I said to him as he knelt. “Getting on with your self-obliteration?”

Yet kneeling there as best he could, he rubbed Max’s chin and whispered in his ear, then he stood and looked at me. “You’ll forgive my predilection for falling back into the clutches of the classics, but I find that here I must, one last time: ‘Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.’” And with that said, Barnacle Bill turned away from us and walked back to Haiku’s cockpit, then he disappeared down below. And me, not quite knowing what else to do, well, I walked back to the rail and hopped aboard Tiki, and Max followed along, too – yet I sensed he did so reluctantly this time.

And so we set about getting all the people off the smaller boats that had gathered around Haiku, and of the small flotilla out there, only four of us were capable of the almost three thousand mile crossing to Hawaii. One guy said he’d try his luck and head up to Vancouver, and then a small motorboat came alongside Tiki. I saw a family of five huddled in the twenty foot Boston Whaler; two adults and three kids, dad at the wheel and his family huddled under a  blanket and some life jackets. They had been bailing water from their little boat with two plastic buckets, and the kids looked frozen and exhausted.

The man in the Whaler handed me their lines and I tied them off amidships, then I lifted the kids from their mother before I helped her climb aboard. After I helped the man up on deck I could see he was a wreck, his hands were shaking and his eyes as red as plums as we cast off his boat’s lines; the poor soul watched his last possession on earth drift off into the night – just as a tiny sailboat with a lone woman behind the tiller came up alongside. She appeared quite young and adventurous looking, and it seemed she’d already packed all the belongings into a large mountaineers backpack. Now she motored-up alongside then simply stepped across, and her frail little sailboat drifted away, carried along by Tiki’s spreading wake until it too disappeared in the night.

Within ten minutes everyone on smaller vessels had migrated to one of the four larger sailboats, and I set the autopilot to steer 232 magnetic then I went below to fire up the stove and make hot chocolate. Those kids sure looked they needed it, and I knew I had a box of brownie mix down there somewhere.

(c)2023 adrian leverkühn | abw | fiction, plain and simple…

[The Doobie Brothers \\ What a Fool Believes]

So, into the fire and into the fight we go.

Ho-ho-ho.

[Genesis \\ Dance on a Volcano]

Barnacle Bill and the Night of Sighs

The Second Part of the Tale

There’s hardly anything better than waking at first light in a marina, and by that I of course mean first light on a sailboat. With coffee in hand you stub a toe at least twice on your way up the companionway to sit in the cockpit, and when you finally manage to sit, after rubbing your bruised and contused toe for a minute, you realize you’ve forgotten to wipe the morning dew from your sopping wet cockpit seats. And just about then your dog comes traipsing up the companionway steps, farting all the way – because this is his way of letting you know that just because you’ve done your morning business he hasn’t, not yet, and he’s ready – now. This means you put your coffee on the cockpit table and find your shoes and his leash then you hop down to the dock and water ski along behind your dog as he pulls you like a horse pulls a plow up to a patch of grass where he can squat and drop.

And by the time you return to your boat and climb back up into the cockpit, you invariably find that your coffee is now either ice old or that a passing seagull has used your favorite mug for dive-bombing practice. So off come the shoes and it’s back down the companionway to the galley, stubbing the same toe along the way, to wash and refill your mug. By the time you finally manage to sit several toes are now bleeding stumps and the last thing on your mind is coffee, yet somehow you manage to sit and enjoy what’s left of the moment. The mongrel who sleeps beside you settles in and sighs contentedly and for a few seconds you remember why you fell for this dream in the first place. Oh well, shit happens. Right?

But wait! That ever-growing to-do list beckons and the first five items absolutely have to be knocked-out today, so it’s down to the shower and then into some clean clothes we go and hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work we go…up to the car and into the fight…

But Max came with me that morning. It was his day to be washed and dried and to get his hair cut, so we hopped down and had just started up to the parking lot when Barnacle Bill – aka Patrick – came dragging along behind, and one look told me all I needed to know. The man was in pain and he needed help.

“You okay, Pat?” I asked, and this was met with a grimace and the slightest shake of the head you could imagine.

“No,” he hissed through gritted teeth, “I may need a hand this morning.”

And Max’s response was priceless. He sauntered over and leaned into Pat, in effect giving the Old Man something to lean on, and I came up along his free side and offered my arm, and between us we helped him up to my car, an ancient Chevy Blazer almost as old as I was. Max hopped in back and I helped Pat up into the passenger seat, and when he asked me to drive him over to the ER I knew we were in for a long morning.

But the woman I’d seen walking to and from Haiku was there waiting for us, and she took Patrick from me and escorted him inside.

“Thanks,” he said as the two of them walked inside. “So sorry to trouble you.”

And that was that. 

Max and I weren’t even late for his day at the puppy spa, or whatever the hell you call such places. Once Max was inside all his attention went elsewhere, namely to the über cute girl with the clippers who was about to bathe him. Well hell, I’d have been smiling just like he was if that girl was about to give me a bath, but oh no, that’s not for us mere mortals, not these days, anyway. No, item two on the to-do list beckoned so I was off to another marine supply shop, this time in search of a hard plastic placard that had to be prominently posted in every head regarding the discharge of human waste into coastal waters. I shit you not. There’s a placard for every conceivable human activity these days, too. As I’m sure all methane emissions will soon become illegal I have to assume that farting while at sea will become a regulated activity requiring its very own placard, but where on earth will we post them? Over the crock pot in the galley, I have to assume? Before the kidney beans are so carelessly added?

After I picked up an oh-so-gorgeous Max we wound our way over to the gardens for his hours long walk, and he pranced about the park like a Viennese Lipizzaner, high-stepping his way from tree-to-tree, his golden plumage almost iridescent as he went about his business. Testosterone was in the air, too, and sure enough, soon the ladies came calling. Not canine, mind you. Human females. Each one prancing over to Max, their overt displays of affection no match for him, and soon he was rolling all over their feet as they rubbed his belly. And of course these interlopers would go back to their Chihuahuas and Dachshunds, leaving me to pick the grass off his fragrant back.

But when we finally made our way back to the marina, I was surprised to see the woman from the ER waiting for me in the parking lot. It must’ve looked as though I was expecting bad news, as she walked right up to me and said that everything was okay, and that Patrick would only be staying overnight, but he’d wanted her to make sure I knew how much our help that morning had been appreciated.

“So,” I asked, “do you work for Pat?”

“Occasionally, yes.”

“It’s just that I’ve seen you coming and going a few times?”

But she just smiled.

“Do I need to check on the boat while he’s away?”

“It’s not really necessary,” she replied. “Anyway, I think he’ll be discharged by midday tomorrow.”

“He seemed like he was in a good deal of pain. Is he alright?” I asked.

“You know as much as I do, I’m afraid. He doesn’t tell me about these things.”

“I’m sorry, but could I at least know your name?”

“Ah, sorry. Yes, I’m Carolyn. And you’re…the Spud?”

“Neal Harrington,” I said, trying to break the ice.

But no such luck. “Nice to meet you,” she said, taking my hand. Then: “Well, perhaps we’ll see you tomorrow,” she said as she turned and walked back to her car.

Funny, but what I remember most about Carolyn was her hands. They were like ice, her skin cold and almost hard, like she lived in air conditioning and the temperature was set very low indeed. And as she’d failed to lavish either attention or praise on Max, he wasn’t exactly sorry to see her go. Yet what was funny, but no, odd would be a much better word to use here, was my immediate reaction to her leaving. I realized it had been months since I’d touched another human being. Even the times I could remember shaking someone’s hand seemed like a far distant memory, like something from another era, because maybe it was. Once the virus hit, all that stuff seemed to be one of the first casualties of this new war, and yet now that mask mandates and social distancing had been consigned to some vast collective unconscious I was beginning to realize that we’d all gotten a little too used to a new kind of distancing. We weren’t coming together to celebrate surviving a pandemic; no, here in America we were shooting one another in record numbers. And even in the moribund old world people were going around killing each other like it was some new form of sport. 

The net result of all this was a sudden and instant realization that I had grown far too used to a profound lack of human touch in my life, and that I really didn’t like the feeling. I was in my fifties now, though just barely, but I still ran five miles three times a week and still had the same waist size I’d had in college. I had most of my hair, too. And while no one would mistake me for Robert Redford, women had told me I wasn’t ugly. 

And I had another problem, a fairly big one. Recruiters.

Someone at Delta Airlines had found out I had retired and had more than eight thousand hours of flight time. I’d received a letter from them while still in Santa Barbara, and I’d even read through it once, scoffing at the starting salary they’d quoted, and I never replied or answered the calls that followed. Now, even though I’d only been in Seattle a month, I’d received another letter from them, and the salary quoted was nothing to laugh at or about. Pilot shortage was mentioned more than once for their change of position, and in just a few months I could living the dream and getting paid real money, too.

And I wondered. Was that what had happened to dad? Had someone dangled enough money in front of him to make it impossible to follow his dreams? Because isn’t that what always happens?

But I actually didn’t need the money. Sure, working for a few more years would just be, literally more money in the bank, but what else could happen during those “few more years?” Get sick? How about a car accident? Either could certainly ruin your rainy day and all those dreams would get flushed down the very same storm drain that had swallowed my father’s dreams.

There comes a point where you have to decide what kind of importance you attach to your dreams. Were your dreams ever worth anything in the first place, or were they really, really important to your conception of yourself? Were your dreams worth living right now, or were they worth so little that they could be pushed aside with ease – for what? For a few more years? Ten? Even more?

As far as I could tell, my father had spent the last few years of his non-working life on his knees tending tulips and nurturing blue hasta plants. His lawn had been the stuff of every gardener’s dreams, until drought and water restrictions brought all that to a screeching halt. Then he’d bought a recliner and parked it in front of a 65 inch screen and watched other peoples’ dreams until Alzheimer’s came calling, and all those dreams faded right alongside all his dwindling horizons. What would I be like in ten years? Ready to cross the Pacific? Was I willing to put up or shut up, to get back in the saddle again and go to work for 12 more years, or cast off my lines and head south tomorrow? 

Funny, too, how odd moments come together in our lives. I think of synergy when I manage to think about such things. The synergy of souls.

Max was sitting there beside me in the cockpit later that evening and he put his muzzle on my thigh again, just as he had countless times over the last year or so, and he sighed contentedly while I rubbed his head and I could feel all the cares of our world slip away from us both.

And if I gave up this life, this dream, I’d have been throwing all these precious moments right out into a rubbish heap of broken promises, not to mention that all our broken dreams reside in the very same landfill. I’d be gone days at a time, and who would take care of Max while I was away? More to the point, what kind of life would Max enjoy if I was home two nights a week? Would it even be worth it, to put him through that kind of emotional abuse. He’d known no one else for the first two years of his life, and wasn’t abandoning him now no different than abandoning a child? Sure, I’ve heard people respond to that line of reasoning…as in: “get a life, it’s just a goddamn dog…” But when you get to know a pup like I knew Max, you begin to realize just how hollow some people really are, and how mean. Duty is duty, and I’ll make no apologies here – love is love. When you love someone you don’t abandon them, and so yeah, I loved Max and I wasn’t about to put him through that.

So there I was sitting somewhere on the edge of forever wondering what to do while I’d already, when you got right down to it, made up my mind. I was casting off my lines, casting my fate to the wind – or so the song goes – and so it was going to be me and Max, off to see the world, together. 

There’s another funny thought I have about dogs from time to time. Do we choose them, or do they somehow choose us? And don’t answer that one, okay? Just think about it, especially the next time you run across a starving stray somewhere along your beaten path. Just look that soul in the eyes and think about the choices you make.

Running my fingers through his fur, feeling the pure simplicity of love and trust, movement once again caught my eye and I saw the very same snowy white owl land on Tiki’s lower mast spreaders, and it hooted once as our eyes met. Completely unafraid, too. Huge amber eyes, and the only word that came to mind was penetrating. Maybe kinda sorta like he was not simply looking at me; no, he seemed to be staring right inside me, to a place I rarely go and seldom think about. A gray place between night and day, a hidden space halfway between fear and hope. And he was right there, taking a slow walk around my deepest, darkest secrets, taking a casual look – at me.

Looking back on the encounter I feel pretty sure the owl was looking at my hands running through Max’s golden fur, and yet he wasn’t simply watching me, he was looking for the true measure of my feelings. And sure, I get it, it’s easy to say I was projecting, that I was anthropomorphizing out of misplaced emotions brought about by too many years in relative isolation. Sure. Understood. I get it. But, then again, you weren’t there. You weren’t staring into a wild raptor’s eyes. You weren’t feeling exactly what I felt, were you?

And after a minute or so of this the white owl jumped off the spreaders and took wing into the night; he flew off across the black water perhaps a foot or so over the mirror smooth surface – and then he was gone.

Max and I walked down the companionway into the aft cabin and curled up on the bed, and we fell into the deepest sleep as the boat rocked ever so gently, and as little wavelets slapped against the side of the hull the dream began. Gently, like the coming of a sigh…

+++++

A medieval castle in snow, then the coming of spring and with it the endless pink blossomings of cherry trees, yet in the distance the same castle. A tree just above, low hanging branches brushing a small, meandering brook. The castle is nestled into the side of a hill, and the castle’s structure is long and low – the antithesis of the European form. The castle’s wings spread out like the roots of a vast tree, and manicured gardens are spread out among the various wings like emeralds cast about carelessly on snow.

And the man in the dream sees a girl, her black hair pulled up tight, and yet her back is to him. 

He knows this is a dream but he’s never experienced anything like it before. He can feel a cool breeze running through his hair, and as he turns into the breeze he is aware of the sea and pines and he thinks that strange. He’d never caught the scent of things in a dream, not once, so why now? He looks around and realizes he is on a sailing ship, not a yacht or a boat but a ship, something like a cargo carrying sailing vessel. He sees cannons and barrels lashed on deck and the ship is sailing purposefully towards the castle just ahead and finally he realizes that he is the only soul onboard and that there is no helmsman and no one tending the trim of the sails and he runs to the bow and looks ahead. The ship is sailing fast and there are rows and rows of amber-rust colored rocks dead ahead and he looks down into the sea and he can see more rocks as the ship closes on the rocky shore under the craggy cliffs just ahead.

And at the top of the cliffs he can still just make out the castle, and the woman standing there, as the ship’s keel begins grinding into the sloping seabed below. She turns to the noise and he sees that she has the face of the white owl, her amber eyes ablaze in orange light as the ship begins disintegrating under his feet…

+++++

Barnacle Bill, or Patrick, didn’t return the next day, or even the day after that, but when he did come shuffling out the dock towards Haiku the woman was with him. Carolyn, he remembered, and there was a man with her carrying a bag of clothes and all the ancillary garbage the discharge nurse typically sends home with you from the hospital.

And Patrick seemed at once revived and yet a little more frail than he had been before the episode. His skin tones were healthier, a little more pinkish, a little less waxy, and he seemed a bit more clear-eyed, maybe even more alert than he had that morning. 

And Max was happy to see his friend again, too. Pat was in a wheelchair now, and he had no salmon to give Max, but that didn’t seem to matter in the least. Max came up beside the wheelchair and when Carolyn stopped Max gently jumped up and put his hands on Pat’s and then Max licked his chin and the Old Man smiled – and all was once again right in our little world. A boarding ramp had been put in place and Carolyn pushed his wheelchair out to Haiku and up the gently inclined ramp, and after a few twists and bumps they disappeared down below and Max looked up at me, perhaps a little confused. Pat looked different now, after all, and he wasn’t walking, so Max’s confusion was, I think, only natural. 

I had been programming the VHF radio all morning, and was planning on tackling the Single Sideband radio later that afternoon, but now it was time for our walk so Max was leashed-up and off we went, heading to the doggie park above the marina. Clouds were rolling in off Puget Sound and it was getting cool out, too cool for shirtsleeves and cargo shorts, so I ran with Max through the parking lot past the boat ramp, but today we sprinted out onto the sand, running down the beach and out to the pond at the north end of the park. We were winded so I sat on a log that had drifted ashore and Max roamed around, fresh on a new scent, then he turned and bonded down to the water’s edge and started barking.

He does that from time to time, usually when an orca or a dolphin cruises by, so I scanned the water – looking – but after a moment he came back to me and we walked back to the marina and, after I brushed the sand from our lower legs, we boarded Tiki. I freshened the water in Max’s bowl and I ate a few cherries just in from the eastern slopes of the Cascades, and just when I was about to tear into the Single Sideband I heard a knock on the side of the hull. I left the chart table and went topsides, halfway expecting to find Pat or even Carolyn waiting there, but no, I found nothing. And then I heard the knock again and jumped down to the dock to look at Tiki’s waterline. And again, nothing, not even a random bit of driftwood.

Another mystery, I thought as I returned to the chart table. 

A few hours later, with my days as a radio technician now behind me, I showered and was dressing again when the knocking resumed, this time more urgently. Max sat up and growled, so I knew then that these weren’t simply the imaginary knockings of a delusional mind, and he led the way up the companionway and out onto deck. Once again I hopped down onto the dock and made my circuit around the hull and again I saw nothing, as in not one thing. I did catch a slight swirling in the water aft, under the Zodiac, something like the minor disturbance a fish near the surface might make. And then Max looked over at me and sneezed in consternation, and he tossed in a low growl just for good measure.

So, mystery still unresolved.

Carolyn and her man-friend came down the ramp and walked past us without so much as a word, and I shrugged away the slight as I ducked below for shoes and a leash. After that chore was done I made a salad for us both, though I’m careful to avoid onions on Max’s, and he sneers at my salad dressings, and we ate in the cockpit while the last of the midday clouds dissipated and a vast crimson sunset beyond the Olympics burst into view. I read for a while, until it became too chilly for us both, and as I was gathering my book and blanket we heard a thrashing in the water just aft of the stern and I rushed over just in time to see a sea otter land on the swim platform. The creature looked up at me for a while, and even Max stood transfixed as he eyed the creature, though the hair on the top of his neck was now standing on end, and then the furry thing simply turned away and slid noiselessly into the inky black water.

“Well, Max,” I recall saying, “that’s not something you see every day.”

But he stepped close and then leaned into me, and I’m still not sure who was holding whom up at that point; I think we were both in a mild state of shock…

“Next time he comes,” Barnacle Bill said, his disjointed voice drifting over us from nearby shadows, “have a few slices of salmon ready. He loves his salmon.”

“Don’t we all,” I sighed. “So, you’re up and about?”

“Well, I’m not dead yet.” When I turned I saw he was dressed all in black. Like a running suit, with black sneakers tossed into the mix just for consistency’s sake.

“Going on a mission tonight?” I asked, admiring his choice of clothes – though I wondered where he was hiding his Uzi.

“No, just dinner. You two care to join me?”

Max was all-in. He hopped down to the dock and sat at Pat’s feet, his tail swishing in mad love; his hopes for more fresh salmon apparently knew no bounds, and then Pat rubbed his ears and Max drifted into that place he goes when just the right spot gets the attention it deserves. “Let me grab a few things,” I said as went below for car keys and shoes, and a few minutes later we were sitting on the narrowest of patios overlooking the water at Ray’s Boathouse. Slices of salmon magically appeared as soon as we were seated and so Max was on his best behavior; Pat, on the other hand, produced a pair of binoculars and trained them on a house down closer to Ballard locks. He fiddled with the focus and then put them away when our dinner appeared.

“Know someone down there,” I asked, “or are you just a run-of-the-mill peeping Tom?”

“You could say I know someone, yes,” Pat said as he carved a razor thin slice of salmon for himself – and a two ounce slab for Max. Pat actually managed to take in a few leafy sprigs of arugula and kale, too, before he pushed the plate away. Max eyed the remaining salmon dolefully, until Pat relented and started carving several slices for him, leaving me to shake my head in wonder. He kept a few slices in reserve, however, placing them in a zip-loc baggie and then in a jacket pocket.

“How was your stay in the hospital?” I asked, hoping beyond all reason to get him talking.

“All things considered, it could have been worse.”

“I assume you don’t really want to talk about it?”

“You assume correctly.”

“Humor me.”

Pat looked away, then down at the remains on his plate. “It seems that I am a fine candidate for dialysis, Spud. Yet let me be the first to tell you that I have no intention of subjecting myself to such torture.”

“Isn’t that a fatal course of action, Patrick?”

“So they tell me.”

“I see. Well, Max will certainly miss you.”

“He’s a remarkable fellow, you know? Especially his eyes. He seems to see things I can’t.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“I think he can see into my soul, Spud. But isn’t that silly?”

I shook my head. “No, not at all. I’ve felt that too. More than once, too.”

“Do you think it’s just him? Or are all dogs like this?”

“I’m not altogether sure, but I’d like to think they all can.”

“Terrible if that’s true. So many of them are treated so cruelly.”

“Oh, well,” I sighed, “we tend to treat everything and everyone with casual cruelty, at least when the situation warrants.”

“The situation warrants?”

“When the mood strikes,” I added.

“Ah, yes. We are such noble creatures.”

“We can be.”

“When the situation warrants?” he replied, smiling. “‘Oh, what a piece of work is man?’ Are we as simple as that?”

“‘And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?’ Is that what you’re saying?”

“And the pilot quotes Shakespeare!” Barnacle Bill cried. “What have we here?”

“I don’t buy it, Pat. Dialysis can’t be as bad as the big sleep.”

He looked at me cautiously, yet almost sardonically: “And I pray you never have to confront the choice. The two look equally bad to me, at least from where I sit.”

“Are they telling you how long you’ve got? Before your kidneys fail completely?”

“No, of course not. Vague rumblings of a month or two, that’s all.”

“A lot can happen in a month or two, Pat. Can you think of anything you’d like to do?”

“No, not especially, but thanks for the thought. I am enjoying my time with Max, however.”

Our waitress came and despite my protests he picked up the tab, then we moseyed through the restaurant and back out into the night – and then it was as if every bird in Seattle took flight all at once. The air above us was, in an instant, full of birds flying out over the sound, and the hair on the top of Max’s neck stood on end again…

“What the…” I had just started to say when the earth beneath our feet fell out from underfoot and then started sliding sideways, and it all happened so fast that the three of us were quite literally almost suspended in the air above the sidewalk for a split second – and then gravity reasserted itself and we tumbled roughly to the pavement…just as Puget Sound came rushing in, covering us completely. Now, instead of standing up and brushing ourselves off we were treading in water too deep to stand in.

And then the sirens started wailing.

“What the hell is that?” I wondered aloud.

“Tsunami warning,” Pat sighed, just as the restaurant behind us began creaking and moaning as twisting lumber gave way.

“We’ve got to get to the boats!” I said, grabbing a clearly terrified Max and an equally mortified Barnacle Bill and pulling them into shallower water. When I found solid footing I picked up Max and put him around my neck, then I helped Pat climb out of the water. 

And when he was free and standing on a tilted slab of sundered asphalt he turned and looked towards Ballard locks, then to me. “Can you get your Zodiac in the water – fast?”

“My Zodiac? Why?”

“I’ve got to get over there,” he said, pointing to the house he’d been looking at through his binoculars.

And then the earth heaved again, only this time in earnest. We turned to the southeast as a vast rending of the earth unfolded in a sharp series of wrenching, grinding shrieks, this followed by a terrifying blast that once again knocked us off our feet. We couldn’t see the horizon now, just immense reddish-orange plumes of lava arcing into the sky, coming from the general direction of Mt Rainier, and now it appeared as though dozens of houses and businesses in the immediate neighborhood were on fire.

Once again I picked up Max, and after I helped Pat back to his feet we took off through the maze of jumbled asphalt back to the marina. I lowered my Zodiac RIB then my outboard, and after securing it to the little transom and hooking up the fuel line, I pulled the starter lanyard and the Yamaha sputtered to life. I tossed the lines to Pat on the dock and Max jumped in, and I helped Pat step in and sit.

“Where to?” I shouted over the sound of sirens going off all over the city.

“Towards the locks, right before the railway bridge, a house, a grey house, just on the south side…”

And as we spoke all the lights in the area simply went dark.

I twisted the throttle and off we went, and for a split second I could see Rainier. Lava was boiling down her flanks into the forests below and now everywhere we looked we saw two and three story condominium buildings that had been flattened under the concussive hammer blows of the Cascadia subduction zone giving way.

I had a small handheld ICOM radio in pouch near the fuel tank and turned on the WX band, and the warnings now were loud and clear. “Expect a large tsunami within 45 minutes. Seek higher ground now. All air traffic grounded.”

“Can you handle Haiku by yourself?” I asked Patrick as the meaning of the words sunk in.

And he nodded. “As long as I don’t have to set sail, yes.”

“If you’ve got a countdown timer on that watch, set it now.”

“Right. Good idea.”

Then he pointed to an area in the darkness. “Head there,” he said, pointing to a row of houses that lined the entrance channel to Ballard locks. The water level appeared to be six, maybe eight feet higher than normal, and as we drew near it was apparent that some of these homes were now awash, but not the house Patrick was pointing to.

I pulled the Zodiac up onto a small patch of green lawn and then both Patrick and Max jumped out and dashed inside the house. A small house down the hill towards the locks then burst into flames and I guessed that gas lines were venting and sparking off now, finishing the job that nature had just set in motion, but then the entire area was suffused in a garishly bright orange glow.

I saw Carolyn run out of the house, then her friend came out with Patrick, and between them they were helping another woman out of the house. Max sprinted out just before a gas line in the kitchen let go, and in the next instant the house went up in flames. The water level was receding fast now, and I pushed the Zodiac into deeper water to keep her prop clear, then I helped everyone get aboard and seated.

As we motored away, now grossly overloaded, houses started popping off like bursting kernels of popcorn, and the sulfurous odor of rotting eggs floated in the air above Elliot Bay. 

“How much time?” I asked Patrick, and he checked his wrist.

“Call it 20 minutes,” he sighed, because he was doing the same math in his head that I was. Five minutes to the docks, perhaps ten to cast off lines and warm up engines, then the balance to get out into the bay and to get our bows pointed into the tsunami. My only real concern was that the tsunami’s wave might prove too tall, but it would take a mighty wave indeed to take out Haiku.

When we made the docks I didn’t need to tell Patrick what he needed to do; he was, as was I, in the middle of a monumental adrenaline rush, and I think even poor Max was as well, and as Patrick and his group ran for Haiku I secured the Zodiac to the davits then went aboard to start the diesel. About a quarter of the boats in the marina were liveaboards and these were streaming out the breakwaters as fast as their motors would carry them, and after I cast off our lines I slipped the transmission into reverse and began backing out of my slip, trying to keep an eye on all the boats cascading towards the south breakwater while I also looked at Haiku. Her engines were running, lines were being cast off, then her bow-thruster kicked in and her bow began to swing away from the dock…

And I turned on my main VHF and selected the WX channel, and the computer generated voice came through loud and clear once again: “Tsunami imminent, seek shelter on higher ground,” was repeating over and over again. More sirens began wailing and as Haiku and Tiki rounded the breakwater I turned, hoping to see Mount Rainier in all her tortured glory.

But the main axis of her pyroclastic flow had been directed at Renton, and now the southeast horizon was a wall of blackish grey cloud that seemed to be alive with flickering arcs of lightning. The Space Needle was leaning drunkenly, and it must’ve been equipped with emergency generators or batteries as red lights still flashed on her uppermost rooftop, but everywhere else I looked all I could see was a darkened city dotted with spreading islands of fire. Helicopters were in the air, but that was about the only other activity I could see from my vantage point.

Then I heard a chorus of horns, yacht horns and small boat horns playing a shrill symphony of terror and I turned to face the music.

The tsunami must’ve dissipated some of it’s energy on it’s way past Whidbey Island, but now all that spreading energy was meeting the three-mile constriction between Edmonds and Kingston, and the tsunami’s wave was building again – but critically, for us anyway – it wasn’t breaking, yet.

Haiku was ahead and to our left, and I could see Patrick at her helm – steering not by hand but by autopilot inputs – and despite myself I had to laugh. 

As the onrushing wave came at us, it’s speed surreal, everyone out there on the sound pointed their bows directly into the wave, but not Patrick. He was approaching about twenty degrees off axis, correctly, so he could control his ship’s speed on the backside of the wave. Boats behind us began to alter their course as well…

…and then the tsunami was on us…

…and it was then that I saw the woman we had rescued from the house by the locks, and at first I didn’t recognize her. But now I was staring at her from behind, her kimono aglow in the orange light coming from the city burning in our wake…

…she was the woman from my dream. The woman with eyes of amber standing among the trees and the castle, and I followed her up the face of the wave – and then into the unknown on the far side of the night.

(c) adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, plain and simple

[Yes \\ I’ve Seen All Good People]

Taking a break from the Memory Warehouse this week, doing some recreational writing.

[Delius \\ On Hearing the First Cuckoo of Spring]

Barnacle Bill and the Night of Sighs

The First Part of the Tale

Life on the water comes to some people as naturally as breathing, yet to others, a life afloat comes upon them suddenly, rather like a fish pulled violently from the sea. Some are born into the life, pulled along in the undertow of a parent’s passage through life. Still others happen upon a new way of life – perhaps a chance encounter with the sea at one of life’s critical junctures and a sudden tide turns within.

I think, or perhaps I’d just like to think, that I followed in the wake of my father’s best intentions. He wanted, more than anything else in life, to be a sea captain, to sail a copra schooner between the islands of French Polynesia, running the mail and provisions to scattered European settlements among those far-flung islands. At least he told me as much when we sat in front of the television, watching reruns of an old show called Adventures in Paradise. Yet it was hard to reconcile his life, his life as it really happened, with that other life, a far distant life that came to reside only in his dreams.

After doing hard time at a small college in California, small of course being a relative term when anything in California is discussed, I ‘worked’ in Cherry Point, North Carolina for a while, then in places like Bosnia and Afghanistan, and yes, even Iraq, before finally cashing out and moving back home, to Santa Barbara. I guess I’d had dreams of my own once upon a time, even if they were little more than the distant echoes of my father’s, yet after he passed those dreams took on a peculiar note of urgency. So, a year later, after my mother passed, I had a decision to make: keep their house and inherit all his miseries, or sell out and try to find a new path forward. Perhaps one my Old Man would have taken – under the weight of other circumstances.

Which was how, not quite a year later, I found myself tied up at a slip on Seattle’s north side, wondering why I had just done what I’d done.

+++++

Marinas are, of course, full of boats. Some people call these things yachts, but such people are often misinformed, you might even say that they are misguided souls. Yachts are toys that rich people pick up to amuse themselves, while boats are anything but. Boats are expressions of the soul, and as stupid as this may seem, you can look at someone’s boat and tell a lot about their dreams. And aren’t dreams just expressions of the soul?

Stroll the periphery of any marina anywhere in the States and you’ll find a breathtaking cross-section of the people who live here. In slips closer to shore you’ll find small powerboats good for an afternoon on the water, sometimes laying next to small sailboats – the owners of which often dream of fitting out their little boats to cross oceans and explore different shores. I’ll leave it to your imagination to decide who owns which, but it isn’t hard to make out the two types. 

As you walk out the pier you run across larger boats in the fractionally deeper water; larger motorboats designed for fishing and the occasional overnight trip, and these reside next to real blue-water passage-makers, sailboats purpose built to cross vast oceans in relative comfort. The people on these boats have moved beyond the dutiful dreamer stage, too; they have decided to make the leap and are preparing to follow their dreams.

Walk even further out this imaginary pier of the mind and into the really deep water and you might run across a real yacht or two, but out here the old maxim still applies: if you have to ask how much these dreams costs you can’t afford them. Among the yachts out here you’ll also find the playthings of the idle rich, racy looking boats that for all the world remind you of penile implants. These toys change hands regularly, and yacht brokers salivate when these people walk in the door. Yet strange yachts appear out here from time to time, and strange things come to pass where dreams meet the full light of day.

I was tied off in this middle section, and wondering just how the hell I could justify my new, uprooted and disjointed way of life. I had been retired not even two years, and ‘confirmed bachelor’ fit my worldview to a T; I’d never been married and, as I thought bringing one more child into the world nothing less than a grievous felony, you could say that I was more than content to live out the rest of my life alone.

Well, not quite alone.

At the time I lived with Max. Max was then a not quite two year old Golden Retriever, and I think you could safely say that he liked people a good deal more than I did. He trusted people, even strangers, whereas I had never been able to make that leap of faith, and Max positively doted on women. I mean he loved them beyond all reason, and there were times I thought he simply couldn’t get enough of them.

We all have our failings, I guess.

When a new woman appeared on our pier Max would sit bolt upright, his nose pointed into the wind, scanning the walkway that passed in front of our new home. When this new woman appeared his tail would start swishing away, then he would look at me – willing me to get down on all fours and assume the position: nose forward, tail straight out, and to get ready to pounce and retrieve.

But a few minutes later he would slink back into the cockpit and slump down beside me in utter despair. Resting his muzzle on my thigh, he would do his level best to ignore me after that – for at least five minutes, anyway – then all was forgiven and it was time to move on again. And that was why I had chosen to live with Max, and those of his kind, whenever I could. 

But into every marina a little rain must fall, and in our marina this rain took on the form of an eccentric old soul who most referred to as Barnacle Bill. I assume his name might have been William, or even just plain Bill, but that would be an unwarranted assumption. Barnacle Bill appeared to be in his 70s, but given this lifestyle he might have been forty. Or eighty. You just couldn’t tell, even when he spoke – which is to say he spoke gently, if at all, and he sounded British. Not English, mind you, but very British. 

He was white-haired and as thin as a reed, with skinny legs and knobby knees that had been operated on, and he usually walked – with great difficulty, I might add – to and from his yacht in bare feet.

And yes. I did say yacht.

For Barnacle Bill lived on one. A big one. A seriously big fucker, as a matter of fact. Whether he owned the thing or resided somewhere down in the bilge was a matter of some debate around the marina, but one thing was certain. No matter the time of day, be it seven in the morning or coming up on midnight, Barnacle Bill smelled like he’d just finished a bottle of rum. 

Or perhaps it was just his after shave. I never figured that one out.

He wore old khaki shorts and always had on a worn out polo shirt, but his shirts were always white. If the sun was out he had on Wayfarers, and while there was a stainless steel Rolex Submariner on his wrist I never saw him look at the thing. When he walked by in shoes you would invariably see grey felt Stedmann clogs that looked disreputably old, and on those rare occasions when he walked up to a large, white tricycle that had baskets front and rear, he would pedal off to a nearby market in search of fresh vegetables and salmon fresh off the boat.

His yacht, for, as I have said, it was indeed a yacht, was tied off at the end of my pier, and the thing looked like something out of time, a huge thing from a bygone era, and again, I assumed, like we all did, that the yacht couldn’t possibly belong to him. Dark grey hull, varnished mahogany superstructure and acres and acres of teak everywhere else you looked, the yacht also had two hideously tall masts that stood taller than the tallest pines in the nearby forest. The name of the yacht, Haiku, seemed to fit the man perfectly, though I’d be hard-pressed to tell you why.

Every now and then a woman visited, but she rarely remained onboard for more than an hour, and what transpired while she was there was anyone’s guess.

When I bought my boat, which I dutifully named the Tiki IV, the brokerage helped secure my slip in this particular marina, and the location was a good fit for my immediate needs. Though she was new, Tiki IV needed a few odds and ends to let her be handled by me, myself, and I, and it was thought the additions would only take a few weeks to complete. 

And yes, I actually believed that.

But when you’ve been around boats long enough you soon realize that “a few weeks” can mean anywhere from a month to a year, but usually somewhere in between. You need to be, in other words, flexible. Or not ‘time challenged’ – in the current vernacular. You also need to understand that when you are quoted a price for a project, the final cost will be twice what was originally quoted. 

At a minimum. 

If you’re lucky.

Yet that did not appear to be the case where Haiku was concerned. If something wasn’t running ‘just so’ the appropriate tradesmen were mysteriously summoned and their work invariably completed in record time, and the old man in his khaki shorts and white polo shirt would shuffle by in his felt clogs as if all was right in the world. Because in his world things most certainly were. You could count on that.

And then one day there he was. Barnacle Bill, standing beside my cockpit looking up at me. There was an odd twinkle in his eye, and it was the damndest thing I’d ever seen in my life, but then again, so was his smile.

+++++

“You’re the pilot, right?” he asked, his eyes smiling.

“That depends,” I replied.

“Oh? On what, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“If you want me to fly down to Mexico to pick up drugs, then fuck off. All other inquiries cheerfully accepted.”

His head bobbed back fractionally, quizzically, then his smile deepened just a tad. “I see,” he said – as his eyes settled on Max. “No, no drugs involved. Does he bite?”

“The dog? Or me?”

“You’re a rather stand-offish prick, aren’t you?”

“That’s the rumor,” I replied. Our eyes were locked-on now, as if we had suddenly engaged in a duel to the death. “Is there something I could do for you?” I added, reluctantly, and certainly not out of an abundance of caution, or even guilt.

“I am going to Chinook’s tomorrow for lunch, and wanted to know if you’d care to join me.”

Not at all knowing what to say, let alone how to say it, of course I smiled and said something polite like “Of course,” but to tell you the truth I can’t remember what I said – because by that point Max had stood and hopped down to the dock. And this Max had never done before. But worse still, Max stood on his legs and stretched his hands out and placed them on the Old Man’s chest. “I’m so sorry,” I said, hopping out of the cockpit and down onto the dock. “Max? What’s gotten into you?”

But the Old Man leaned over, and Max tentatively scented him before he licked his chin.

“Now that’s a good fella,” the Old Man cooed soothingly as he rubbed the sides of Max’s face, and just under the ears where he loved it most. And then he looked up at me and smiled again. “How does eleven-thirty suit you? I like to get there early, before the crowds.”

And I seem to recall saying that would be fine – but really, I just don’t remember. The moment is lost now, gone in the shuffling of dreams.

+++++

He came by at exactly eleven-thirty. Very prompt, and quite jolly, too – given the circumstances. Max hopped down and joined us as we walked up to the parking lot and over to a little car hiding under a tan protective cover, and the Old Man unwrapped an ancient Porsche Targa, then he folded the cover and tossed it behind his seat before asking Max to hop in and take a seat.

And here I have to back-up a little. 

Max was usually confined to quarters when I left the boat, but the Old Man assured me it would be fine if Max joined us – yet I had my doubts. Max was just two and hardly what most people would considered trained, and let’s not even mention that he lived to chase seagulls – and females of any breed. Getting him on a leash was usually a two handed chore as that usually meant we were headed up to the Golden Gardens dog park for one of our hours long walks – but not when the Old Man showed up that morning. Max was docile yet smiled all the way to the restaurant’s parking lot, and he walked between us through the restaurant and out to their patio.

And the Old Man had apparently called ahead as there was a plate of thinly sliced salmon ready and waiting on the table. An adorable young thing came by and kissed him on the cheek before she handed me a menu and, I wondered, what other surprises might be lying in wait this morning? He never ordered yet a plate of salmon sashimi appeared out of nowhere, along with a vanishingly small Caesar salad, and whenever Max asked the Old Man slipped him a thick slice of the fatty salmon. 

“So, you flew the EA-6B?” he said at one point, his eyes fixed on mine as he gauged my reaction. “Before you retired?”

“And you know this how?” I asked.

But he shrugged, and I’d like to say he did so playfully but you could never be sure with that guy. Nothing, I soon learned, was ever what it seemed where he was concerned. “Oh, I guess I heard someone talking on the dock,” he finally said.

Which was a meaningless diversion – as I’d never mentioned flying, and hadn’t since my retirement – and I told him exactly that.

And the old bastard had simply shrugged and smiled again, then turned and given Max another slice of salmon. “You were with VMAQ-4, weren’t you? In February of ’13?”

“And you’re beginning to piss me off,” I think I said.

“I was responsible for sending you to Kamchatka. I thought you should know.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I might have said, but by that point I think I actually wanted to kill the bastard.

But he shrugged one more time, then he looked away: “Everyone that moves into the marina, well, I’ve made my share of enemies over the years and you can never be too careful.”

“I see.”

“Do you? Splendid.” He reached out and rubbed Max’s chin, a move that was guaranteed to send him into barrel rolls of bliss, then he looked at me once again. “I was married to a Japanese girl, you see, yet I was British Intelligence. I lived a complicated life.”

“And now here you are, living on a boat in Seattle.”

“Some circumstances are beyond our control.”

“Circumstances? What the hell does that mean…?”

“How is your crab? I hear it’s good here?”

“You’ve never tried it?”

“No. I’m on a rather strict diet. Low carbohydrates, no sugars.”

“Diabetes?”

He nodded. “Vicious stuff, but with effort you can stay one step ahead of the curve.”

“I see. So, Haiku. Are you going out, or just living aboard?”

“I’m not quite sure yet. Time will tell.”

“No dog of your own?” I asked.

And he shook his head. “Seems unfair to me. Some days I can barely walk up to the parking lot, and I think such a life would be cruel for a pup.”

“Go to a shelter. Find an older pup with arthritis.”

“Brilliant idea.”

“My mom volunteered at a shelter in Santa Barbara. Dad insisted, because she kept bringing strays home.”

“So you’ve always had dogs in your life?”

“Within the obvious limitations, yes.”

“Yes, always on the move. He seems a good friend.”

“Max? Oh, he’s the best.”

“Where are you headed?” he asked.

“I think we’ll do the coconut run, but nothing’s set in stone.”

“Oh?”

“My dad and I always dreamt of going to Polynesia, sailing the islands.”

“Just you and Max?”

“Yup.”

He smiled. “Romantic, even though it’s illegal.”

“What do you mean, illegal?”

“Single-handing by definition means you can’t stand a proper watch, so you’ll not be able to secure insurance for the longer, offshore passages. No insurance means you can’t clear into France, which the islands belong to, of course.”

“I see.”

“Haven’t done your homework yet, I take it?”

“I guess not.”

“Bureaucrats rule the entire world these days, but I guess you know that. I hear there are a few companies that will underwrite single-handers, but their policies are quite expensive and very limited in scope. You’d do far better, I think, to run down to a shelter and pick up a wife. Perhaps one without arthritis?”

He was of course enjoying himself immensely; if eyes could laugh his were rolling on the floor. “Point taken,” I remember muttering – just under my breath.

“Ah, well, just one more thing to add to the list. Funny how our lists grow and grow.” He passed another slab of salmon to Max, then rubbed his chin again. Max was, of course, not taking his eyes off the Old Man now – not even for a second.

“How’s your salad,” I asked.

“Marie makes a special Caesar dressing for me. No sugar means no lemon, and of course I crave lemon now. I could bathe in the stuff and not be happier.”

“So, what’s stopping you?”

“Indeed. That is the question. Fear of death, I think, more than anything else. But that’s hardly original, I suppose.”

“Doesn’t have to be original to hurt…say, I hate to ask, but I don’t know your name.”

“No, you don’t. And technically, I suppose, I don’t know yours.”

I nodded. “And I reckon you want to keep it that way, don’t you?”

Oh, how those eyes laughed.

+++++

The next day, more out of curiosity than anything else, Max and I walked out the pier to the Old Man’s yacht. To look it over, you might say. To say the design was austere was an understatement, yet her lines were defiantly elegant. The antithesis of almost all modern sailboats – with their fat sterns and plumb bows, Haiku reminded me of an old J boat from the ‘20s – the 1920s. Low freeboard and gallant overhangs, her decks were teak and her coachroofs were varnished mahogany, and all the deck hardware, every bit of it, was bronze polished to a golden sheen. As Max and I walked along admiring her, I couldn’t help but wonder how much this beast had cost. 

But just then the Old Man appeared, walking out the pier from the parking lot, and he had a small package wrapped in white paper in his hand. Salmon, no doubt. And he didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see us, either.

“And how is Max today,” the Old Man said as he walked up.

And yes, Max stood and licked the Old man’s chin again.

“That’s such a good boy,” he cooed. “Such a good boy.”

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “He’s usually not like this.”

“Of course he isn’t. But then again, if you walked up to him with two pounds of fresh salmon in hand you might be surprised what he might do.”

“I see your point.”

“So, what brings you out today?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, but I just had to take a look,” I said, my eyes lingering on Haiku’s bow.

“Bruce King drew her; she was built in Spain a few years ago.”

“What? She looks like something straight out of The Great Gatsby…”

“Thanks. I think that was his intent.”

“Again, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For the intrusion.”

“The intrusion. Oh, my. Do I really seem so forbidding?”

I don’t know why, but in a way our being out there felt like an intrusion on his privacy – and this despite the fact that people were forever walking the docks looking at other sailor’s boats. At times it almost felt like an evening ritual, but there was something about the man and his yacht that seemed to scream out for privacy. Like it was a palpably physical need of his. So of course I apologized again and turned to leave.

But Max wasn’t buying it. He sat at the Old Man’s feet and wouldn’t budge.

And then the rascal just looked at me and smiled. “Is this what you call a Mexican standoff?” he said, his eyes smiling again. 

If it was, perhaps that explained what came next. The Old Man walked back down the pier to Tiki IV – with my sorry-ass turncoat hound at his heels – and then he pointed to Tiki’s cockpit and told Max to sit up there and wait for his treat.

God damn dog!

Because of course Max hopped right up into the cockpit – something he had resolutely refused to do for me – and then he just sat there, grinning while he waited for his next slice of nirvana. And the Old Man opened his carefully wrapped package and picked up a rather large slice of salmon and gently passed it over to Max.

Who looked at me as if asking for my permission.

But then Max took the slice so gently I could scarcely believe he was my dog.

And so the Old Man gave him another slice, and another.

“If you keep this up,” I sighed, “I’ll never be able to afford to feed this dog again.”

“If he keeps this up,” he replied, “I won’t be having my supper tonight.”

We laughed and Max smiled, and when the Old Man saw that smile his resolve seemed to melt away. And so, there went the rest of his supper.

“Let me take you down to the Boathouse,” I said. “I don’t want your death from starvation hanging over my head…”

But he shook his head at my suggestion. “I’m beyond tired. Perhaps another time.”

“Assuming you survive the night, you mean.”

“Yes. Quite so. Now Max, you stay there with – oh, that’s right – I forgot, we’re on a no-name basis, aren’t we?”

“Call me Spud,” I offered.

“Ah, that’s right. That was your handle, wasn’t it? In the squadron, I mean.”

“Yes,” I sighed, still aggravated by the depth of his knowledge.

“And I’m just Pat, to my friends, anyway,” he tossed-in, as a kind of consolation prize. “Now Max, I’ve got to go now, but I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And as I watched him walk off, obviously without a care in the world, it struck me that he looked rather sad, and I’d say almost even lonely – but that would have been just a guess on my part. He seemed indecipherable, not merely enigmatic – like an obsidian wall lost in shadow. There was no way to tell what was inside the Old Man, or where the shadows and the black-hearted wall met.

But as we, Max and I, watched him walk out to Haiku we saw the strangest thing.

A great white bird circled overhead and at first I thought it was just another gull, but then the raptor spread it’s wings and slowed before it settled on one of Haiku’s mast’s spreaders, and then I could see that the bird was a large white owl. Rather enigmatic looking, too.

And as the creature settled-in up there on his perch the creature seemed to watch the Old Man for a while, but then it’s amber eyes turned to me, and to Max, and it would be difficult for me even now to describe what I felt in that moment. Whatever it was I felt, I was aware of a deep shiver running up my spine and into that part of the brain that commands you to run.

(c)2023 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, plain and simple

Yes, I am still here. Still writing. As mentioned before, writing priorities have turned to The Great American Cop Story, and progress has been slow but steady. I’d even say I’m fairly happy with the progress made so far.

A peripheral tangent of this Cop Story takes place within the soul-scape of The Dividing Line, which was first posted more than ten years ago. The original cop story, begun and discarded several times now, predates The Dividing Line by years, yet when I first penned TDL I imagined it forming one of the core questions within the Cop Story. As such, TDL has been revised once again, and what I’m posting here comes from Part I of the original tale (posted on this site and elsewhere). It’s just different enough to warrant a fresh read – or re-read, but it’s still recognizable as framed by and within the original story.

Pat Patterson is the central character of the Cop Story, and you will find a brief mention of his character here. This story takes place in Dallas, Texas, in the summer of 1982. Like most of the material in the Cop Story, The Dividing Line is grounded in personal experience.

[ ELP \\ The Endless Enigma, Part I]

The Dividing Line – Point A

Sara Wood lived in the shadowlands, and she kept to the darkest shadows – that is to say she lived by blending into the shadows, by knowing how to disappear in the blink of an eye. If caught out in the grim light of day, Sara understood that in order to survive she needed to be able to fade away into the deepest, darkest warrens of the city, for instance into the darker recesses behind huge industrial dumpsters, or by ducking into abandoned warehouses down by the tracks on the far edges of downtown. By the time Sara was ten years old she had become an expert in the fine art of disappearing from view, and of a style of urban camouflage grounded in the sudden appearance of underwhelming innocence. She was also, perhaps inadvertently – or perhaps not – a master at falling through all of the cracks in the few systems left to deal with girls of her sort: homeless and therefore nameless, faceless girls, girls who had grown accustomed to life in the darkness. Or ‘souls beyond redemption,’ as more than a few politicians liked to say. Yet there was ‘no place like home’ for Sara Wood, and there never had been. No Auntie Em, no Toto, and never even a kindly old Wizard behind a green curtain watching and waiting in her dreams to carry her all the way back to Kansas. To the home Dorothy Gale longed for as she followed the yellow brick road.

No house in Kansas, and certainly no family waiting in the wings. Yet there had been a series of “homes” run by various Godly institutions, homes that were really anything but. Homes where bespectacled, fat-thumbed men introduced Sara Wood to the deeper rituals of oral amusement – when she was not yet ten years old. And finally there had been the shelters. Shelters from the storms where wide-eyed women pushed her to the floor – and with Bibles in hand forced her to repent for sins she never knew she had committed. 

There had never been, in Sara Wood’s life, a fridge in the kitchen to feed her empty belly. There was not a television in the den to fill empty time, there had never been a telephone to carry on late night conversations in darkened bedrooms, safe spaces where she could learn about the carefree, almost empty lives of teenagers spread all over the late-20th-century American landscape – lives spread like a thin coat of lily white paint over the variegated walls of Patrician Denial.

So, Sara Wood did indeed keep to the shadows, although there were times when it felt like the city did it’s very best to keep her there. Out of sight was, she understood better than any social worker ever could, truly out of mind. What little comfort in this world she could afford to purchase she paid for in the only currency available to her, in the currency of her soul. This money Sara earned on her knees in dark alleys behind downtown office buildings, or with her legs spread in the backs of furtively parked suburban station wagons. She was paid for doing things other women wouldn’t do, because that was all that was left for girls trapped in the shadows. Curiously enough, she didn’t use drugs, for the thought had never occurred to her. Perhaps because such things were more than she could afford, for dealers and pimps who trafficked in such things had rarely turned a profit on girls like Sara. They had little obvious need to use her body, as it happened, because the market was already glutted with dapper boys and cleaner girls. 

Sara earned just enough money to, from time to time, buy a burger and a coke – and the implicit nature of her social contract stated that she couldn’t rock this boat – because, after all, there really wasn’t a boat to rock anymore. She couldn’t beat the system, or even game the system – because by 1982 the system to care for people like Sara had been systematically dismantled. What might have been never really came to pass…perhaps because, in the end, such things as safety nets tended by caring social workers had always been a cruel illusion. Or perhaps distraction is a better word than illusion, but then again sometimes words have two meanings.

So, in the terra firma where Sara lived, she knelt and prayed on the altar of poverty, and justice for all only applied to people who understood the hidden meanings behind even the simplest sounding words. Yet Sara spent a lot of time on her knees, selling her soul time after greasy time in a story as old as humankind, a story that is anything but an illusion for people lost in shadows.

On any given day, perhaps just like on the day in question, Sara’s face was poised before the unwashed, urine tinged khaki trousers – now gathered around edematous ankles of a fat, smelly man named Bob – sucking his glans. Bob had a dirty red name tag on his shirt, a once shiny plastic thing that identified him as an employee of the New Resurrection Christian Family Bookstore, and, at least so far, he had been enjoying his time with Sara. At about the time in question, Bob had Sara Wood’s hair grasped tightly in his hands, and he was pulling on it roughly, calling her a dirty little whore, telling her to to do the things his so-called girlfriend had told him she would never do. His half-hard penis, Sara Wood thought, was about the size of her little finger and she had been sucking on it for what felt like an hour. Bob would not – or could not – cum, and the more apparent this became to Bob the harder he pulled on Sara Wood’s hair. Bob looked down at Sara Wood’s face and noticed tears in her eyes when he pulled her hair especially hard, and for some reason Bob liked this reaction. He liked it a lot.

Bob gave Sara Wood’s hair a vicious tug, and she cried out, tried to pull away. Bob liked that even more, and he could feel his dick get hard and twitch in response to the sudden pain. But then she attempted to flee, but he forced her down, told her to hold still and that he was going to cum. He held her head forcefully to his groin and tried to pump away, but Sara Wood was now in a fair amount of pain and growing more fearful by the moment, and she was in fact trying to pull away from Bob with a fair amount of effort. Bob both liked and disliked her struggling; he liked the fact that he could frighten and hurt someone so obviously beneath him – and this was something very rare in his experience. Bob disliked the fact that he was probably not going to be able to cum in this girl’s mouth, which, too was a very rare experience in Bob’s life, one that he had paid good money – five bucks and change – for. Determined to prevent her spoiling the moment, Bob decided to shut her up, and with his right fist he swung down with his not very considerable strength – and hit her smartly on the top of her head.

Yet Bob’s penis was, at just that moment, seated rather deeply – and deeply for a three inch penis is of course a relative term – in Sara Wood’s mouth. At that moment, as well, Bob still had a hold of Sara Wood’s hair and he was holding her tightly in place with the grasping fingers of his left hand, holding her tight against his right knee, which he had lifted to brace Sara Wood against, to keep her from pulling away. As Bob’s hammer blow connected – driving Sara Wood’s head down as a result – her lower jaw, now supported against Bob’s right knee, was in effect driven up. Unfortunately for Bob, Sara Wood still had all of her teeth, and they were in decent shape, all things considered.

Bob screamed and reached for his groin as he fell back in agony, his groin now on fire. He fell in a thrashing heap, and as he tried to come to grips with what had just happened he reached for his groin, felt the bloody stump of his cock, and brought his hands to his face. Bob’s ensuing scream was reportedly heard five blocks away, and over city-traffic at that. Bob tossed and twisted on the grimy asphalt, but unfortunately for Bob he was losing a lot of blood at the moment, and as his gyrations slowed to a fetal crawl shock began to set in. 

Sara Wood had, at the time Bob dropped to the grimy asphalt alleyway, fallen to the ground under the impact of his clutched fist, fallen in a completely unconscious pile of ragged disarray. There was now, in fact, a large raw patch on the side of her head where a substantial handful of hair had been pulled out – when Bob’s penis had come into full contact with Sara Wood’s teeth. The remnant of Bob’s penis was, by the way, now lodged under Sara Wood’s tongue. The only visible evidence of this was a small trickle of blood that leaked out of the corner of her mouth, down into the watery, broken asphalt of a large pothole.

In due course an ambulance arrived, and a squad car from the police department was not far behind. Bob was stabilized by the fire department’s paramedics, while a half dozen firemen who had responded with the paramedics began searching the area around alley, even the nearby garbage cans and potholes, for the remnants of Bob’s penis. Of course the street-waif had been ignored by the medics as just another piece of garbage that had been blown out of the shadows, and so they had quite naturally concentrated their attentions on the man who was bleeding profusely from the wound in his groin. This man, his name Bob they learned from the name tag, was now, in fact, in very serious condition. 

The first patrol officer on the scene was J Eddie McCarran. McCarran’s semi-glacial exterior stood in stark contrast to his open, friendly face; these often slow movements obscured a quick, darting scans of his eyes. Yet it was his inherent slowness that allowed for such careful observations, and he’d been told more than once that he would’ve made a good shrink, and perhaps it was his scrupulously analytical observations of people at crime scenes that led people to such a peculiar conclusion. 

But on this hot spring day Ed was also the first public official to move to Sara Wood’s side, and the first to check on her condition. He was the first to see the trickle of blood sliding out of the corner of her mouth, and the first to notice a raw patch of exposed scalp on the side of her head. He looked across at the man on the ground and saw twisted red hair in his hands, and in a way that fit the scene, but he hadn’t quite pieced together events just yet. He bent closer to the girl and felt inside her pant’s pockets, found a grimy, sweat-soaked five dollar bill inside, and he shook his head knowingly as one more piece of the puzzle slid into place. But he saw something else in the girl’s open mouth and he felt a deep twisting churn in his stomach as he took his silver Cross pen out of a shirt pocket and gently pried open her mouth. 

“Get me some saline and a four by four – and an evidence baggie; I’ve found the penis,” McCarran said quietly. A couple of firemen came over, and of course these firemen all had something quick and clever to say about the penis in the young girl’s mouth. McCarran just grimaced as he put on his latex crime scene gloves and pried open the girl’s little mouth, but he swept the penis clear of the girl’s mouth with his gloved finger while he tried to not think about what had happened out here. 

An ammonia stick was produced and cracked open, waved under the girls nose. She stirred, her eyes fluttered, then she sat up in startled confusion. She looked around – at first wildly confused, then she coughed and wretched when she recognized the taste of blood in her mouth. She pulled herself suddenly into something like a fetal ball, holding her knees to her chest, breathing in shallow fear – because she was no longer in the shadows where she belonged. Then, as Sara Wood regained awareness of her surroundings, the first thing she noticed, and this was a very dangerous thing in Sara Wood’s world, was a police officer kneeling by her side. It didn’t matter that this man was speaking gently to her, holding her shoulder with kind, steadying hands. What Sara Wood saw was a navy blue uniform, a badge, a black leather belt, a holster, a gun, a nightstick and radio, and most dangerous of all, handcuffs. She saw a system that could hurt her, all the people who had ignored her over the years, and now here was a man in the uniform that represented this system – and he was beginning to question her.

The policeman asked for her name, and where she lived. He wanted to know what had happened in this alley, yet she was non-responsive, just another deaf-mute shadow-girl. She didn’t exist – how could she? She understood that on some basic level the man knew this one simple fact of her life, and better than anyone else in this alley. 

But then he told her he didn’t want to take her to jail, that he thought he knew what had happened. If he guessed right, he asked gently, would she tell him if he was right? He talked to her, told her what he thought had happened, told her about her missing hair, why her head hurt, what the taste in her mouth was – where that bloody taste had come from. 

Sara Wood turned away from the man in the uniform and vomited bile tinged with curling streamers of deep red blood, and she would have passed all her stomach held but for the simple fact her stomach was empty – she didn’t even have what little nourishment there might have been in Bob’s semen. She fell back to the earth and felt her world spinning out of control, and she lay on her side and drew her knees up to her chest again and cried like a baby, cried like the baby she had never had a chance to be.

+++++

Ed McCarran sat in his squad car writing yet another police report on his battered aluminum clipboard while he listened to calls on the car’s radio. There were two Flying Magazines on the passenger seat, and a letter from Patterson was tucked inside one of them. He’d told Pat that he had recently moved back to Oak Cliff, but not just to be closer to work; the rents were cheaper over here and he needed the extra money to pay for his flying lessons with Jim Horton. True to form, Patterson had then arranged for Horton’s time to be covered by Cardevac, and while thankful for the gesture Ed hated being in debt to anyone.

But he paid attention to the radio just now – to respond if anyone needed back-up – but then he checked his watch. Just a few minutes to go until he was supposed to check out for lunch, so he turned his attention back to the report on his clipboard, hoping to finish it before lunch in case calls got backed up later in the afternoon.

“Hey there!” he heard a girl say – and it was like a bolt out of the blue.

Lost in his paperwork – a rookie’s mistake – Ed McCarran jumped in his seat. His head jerked around to the left, quickly assessing his surroundings, analyzing threats as he reached for his holster. Then he saw the girl, a destitute looking waif that seemed more like the ghosts he’d read about in books detailing the lives of people freed from Nazi concentration camps. 

But as he looked up at her, looked into her eyes for a moment – he recognized her from a recent call, something near Union Station maybe a month ago. He had seen something in the girl’s eyes that day, something lost and alone about her, but then his memory kicked in.

“Sara Wood, right?” he said gently, as the details of that encounter came back to him.

“Yup. How are you?”

“Good,” he said as he scanned her body, habitually looking for any threat she might present. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothin’ much,” she said, looking away for a moment. “I just wanted to thank you for what you said to those D.A. people. They told me if you hadn’t done your job right I’d ended up spending a lotta time in jail.”

Ed McCarran looked down and nodded; he never knew how to take a compliment, or even a simple expression of gratitude. He shrugged it away, like most modest men do out of habit.

Yet the girl took his silence as yet another rejection – so she stepped away and started for the safety of the nearest shadows.

“So,” Ed McCarran asked, “how have you been doing since?”

She stopped. Something in his voice spoke to her, told her there was something different about him. “Oh, you know. Same ole this and that…”

All Ed McCarran had to do was look at this girl to know how she was doing. “Hey, I’m about to check out for lunch. Care to join me?” He could see the conflict roil across her face in an ages old calculation: Trust versus Fear. Hunger versus Fear. He could tell she was afraid of his uniform by the way she held herself obliquely to him, and he already knew the outcome of her simple calculation, and for a split second he wondered why he even bothered anymore.

Yet she shrugged – carelessly, ambivalently – as she looked at McCarran. “I guess,” she finally said.

And he thought he could see her salivating as he picked up the microphone hanging from the side of the squad car’s radio. “2141, 25 code Bob King 114” – and in that stream of jargon he checked out for lunch at one of the Burger Kings in his division, which that day was Southwest, near the Marsalis Zoo in Oak Cliff. He rolled up the window and stepped out of his patrol car and locked the door. “Okay then, let’s do this!” he said with gentle enthusiasm.

Once inside he ordered a Whopper combo meal and then he asked her what she wanted.

“Could I get a glass of water?” she said, looking down somewhere around her shoes.

“Sara, I’m buying. What’ll it be? Come on, sky’s the limit!” 

So Sara Wood ordered two Whoppers with cheese, a large order of fries, a large Coke – and then a small chocolate shake, because – why not? The girl behind the counter repeated the order, called it out over the system and shook her head. Ed found a table and waited for the order to be called, and then he carried it back to the table after the surly girl shoved it at him.

Then Ed McCarran sat back and watched the show as Sara Wood tore into the food. It was almost painful to watch, too, and he was sure that, as shrunken as her belly was, it would be very painful to see in an hour or two. He didn’t say a word, didn’t want to interrupt Sara Wood as she piled down the food – which took about three minutes flat. 

“Still hungry?” he asked.

Sara Wood made a laughing noise that came out her nose – as her mouth was still full of food. She nodded her head and just managed to say, “a Double Whopper?” 

“Comin’ right up.” Ed said as he walked up to the counter again and placed the additional order. He waited until Miss Surly-face slid it over to him, then he carried it back to Sara Wood, and as he put it on the table in front of her he smiled and said “Well, bottoms-up!” as he sat again. He sipped his iced tea while looking at Sara Wood’s contented face – looking at her as if for the very first time – and as he did he flinched. As he looked at her blue-green eyes, at the weathered skin and the scabs on her shoulders, he recognized something within and yet beyond the lost eyes, and the forsaken ambivalence. He saw someone unloved – yet lovable – and he thought for a moment she had been hoping against hope that someone might find her. Whatever else that something might have been, the wave of unexpected feelings tore at his sense of humanity and left him wondering about the rest of her story. 

‘Damn, I’m getting old,’ he thought as he watched her eat. 

“So, filling up?” he said, forcing another smile in the face of her need.

Her mouth full of food, she nodded and just managed to say, “Yeah, this is really good!”

He smiled again. “Alright!” he replied, looking away for a moment, trying not to cry.

After they finished eating, she asked him where he worked, and he told her he was usually at Southwest Division, but then he gave her one of his cards. “You can call me at the station if you need me; if I’m not there someone will know how to get in touch with me.” he said, his smile genuine. And what was that? Did she see concern on the man’s face? 

‘Now just why the hell did I do that?’ he thought – in a moment of regret.

Yet Sara Wood handled his card as if someone had just handed her a stick of dynamite with a burning fuse, but maybe it was more like a one pound bar of gold? The conflict she felt was instant, as was the extremity of her need. She looked at the card intently for a moment, wondering what it said, but she tucked it carefully into a pocket on the rear of her jeans.

The radio on Ed McCarran’s belt came to life: “2141.” He slipped the radio free of the holster on his belt and brought it to the side of his face. “2141, go ahead.”

“2141. 36B K, Clarendon and Tyler, two possible fatalities reported.”

“2141, 10/4 show me Code 5 at this time,” he said into the radio, and he hastily turned to Sara Wood: “Sorry, but I gotta go.” Then he looked into her eyes again. “Really, Sara, if you need me just call the number…” 

And with that he was gone, trotting out the door. 

She watched him as he got into the car, and she almost winced in pain as the red and blue lights turned on, then she watched as his car pulled out into traffic and the siren came on. She jumped back from the sudden noise, then she watched the car speed away, even as she went to a window and watched the red and blue as they disappeared around a curve. She didn’t realize it just then, but she had been standing on her tip-toes, biting her lip as if she was afraid for him – not of him – and maybe she was even then. 

Yet Sara was afraid of all the unknowns waiting out there, whether on the street or in the shadows, unknowns waiting for the kind man, just as they were always waiting for her – but just then the surly-faced girl came over and pushed her out a side door and back into the shadows – right where she belonged. 

Because some things in her life never changed.

+++++

It was the very next Friday afternoon, and Sara Wood looked down Illinois Street at the Southwest Division sub-station, and as always she was standing in the shadows. She had been hiding there all day, hiding in plain sight, watching and waiting for the kind man’s police car. She finally saw him late in the afternoon, and she watched as he turned into a parking lot that was almost completely hidden from view by tall fences, and so she assumed he had walked into the station. Yet she remained where she was – as if rooted to this spot – waiting to see if he would somehow reappear. 

Or perhaps she really wanted to see the man’s face again, know that he was alright. But now she was hoping that, against all odds, maybe he’d come over and talk to her. 

About twenty minutes later the kind-faced man came out of the station, only now he was wearing jeans and a white shirt, but he was wearing white sneakers and she thought those looked out of place on him. He was carrying a small bag, too, and she wondered what was in it. Hiding in deep shadows cast by dozens of oak trees near the brick wall that surrounded the station, she watched the man as he walked along the sidewalk that led away from the station, and for a moment she wondered where his car was parked – but then he stopped to talk with a couple of other – she guessed – cops. A minute or so passed before he started walking along Illinois Avenue, then he turned and walked down Cockrell Hill Road. After a block or so he veered left and walked towards a cluster of two-story apartment buildings – and still she followed him, but from a distance. She stayed well behind him, still keeping to the shadows when she could, and after a couple more blocks he left the sidewalk and started into a grey shingled apartment building, his retreating form suddenly hidden by wooden fences and thick stands of bushy live oak trees. Afraid she might lose sight of him, she also wanted to see which apartment was his – so she ran up to the first fence and flew around the corner – but then she ran into – him. He caught her with strong hands yet brought her gently to a stop. 

“Whoa, there, kiddo,” he said as gently as ever, “didn’t anyone ever tell you not to follow a cop?” 

But Sara Wood just stood in Ed McCarran’s hands, now afraid and being careful to remain still. Suddenly she grew too fearful to speak, and besides – she didn’t know what to say. 

A couple of awkward moments passed, his face awash in a befuddled grin as he scanned his surroundings for other potential threats, then he looked into her eyes, looking for the truth of the moment. She seemed guileless, almost childlike, so he shrugged and smiled at the innocence of the encounter. “Well, I don’t know about you but it’s hot out here, and I’m tired. Could I get you a Coke?” he said as he turned and walked off towards another apartment building one block closer to the police station. Sara Wood figured it out right then and there. He’d known she was waiting there all along, known he was being followed, probably from the time he pulled into of the station, so he’d led her into a diversion, then into the trap he set.

Once at the place he really lived, the man walked up one flight of stairs, took out a key and opened the door to one of the apartments, then she followed him into a room full of half-empty boxes and thoughtlessly arranged furniture. He walked over and turned the thermostat on the air conditioner down, way down, then he put his gym bag on the table by the door before he went into the apartment’s tiny kitchen. He got glasses then opened the ‘fridge and poured two Cokes over ice before he came back out to the entry, where she still stood, waiting. McCarran was still in the process of moving into the new apartment, but when he saw the look on Sara’s face it seemed as though she was gawking at the insides of an elaborate mansion. 

He walked over and handed her a Coke, but immediately he noticed something was seriously wrong; the girl smelled, indeed, the stench was awful. She exuded pure, unadulterated stink, the stink of seriously neglected personal hygiene. He looked at her skin around the worn collar of her shirt just then and he could see the dirt there was actually inside the pores of her skin. Her hair was beyond greasy, while the fabric of her Salvation Army jeans and t-shirt was thin and foul with the grimy smell of the street. He thought the worst would be the shoes, but just then he had no intention of finding out. One thing was for sure, he had to get her cleaned up before the neighbors complained! Cleaned up first, then maybe he could get her to a shelter.

‘Shelter…? Why do I remember that about her?’ He thought and thought, then remembered…a mouth full of hamburger!

“I remember you,” he said as he looked at her eyes again. “It’s Sara, isn’t it? Sara Wood?”

She nodded and looked away, then she took a long, slow sip of the drink before she looked at him again. “Yes,” she said shyly.

“Well, sit you down, Miss Sara Wood,” he said, his voice still soft and gentle, “and tell me a story.”

She looked at him quizzically – as she still didn’t know what to say. “What kind of story?” she finally asked.

“Well, let’s start with your story, Sara. Then maybe you could tell me why you were following me home.”

She looked away again, afraid of the truth, fearful of his reaction. “I’m sorry, I was just scared for you and I wanted to see you was O.K.”

“What were you afraid of, Sara?”

“Afraid of you gettin’ hurt.”

“Do you have any family, or even some friends?” 

But Sara Wood just shook her head. 

“Well, Sara, how old are you?”

She shrugged her shoulders a little, then shook her head. “I ain’t sure, but I think maybe twenty – but nobody’s ever been real sure. Maybe twenty-two, but I guess I don’t know, really. ”

“Do you know what year you were born?”

She nodded. “I heard someone say once, something like 1960?”

“Where did you go to school?”

She smiled and turned away. “I ain’t been to no school. None I remember, anyway.”

“Where do you live?” he asked, immediately regretting he’d asked her that and not really wanting to hear the answer. 

But she just shrugged his question away, like she always did when someone asked her that.

“Well, okay, do you have any other clothes?” 

She shook her head. 

“When’s the last time you got cleaned up?”

“At that place where you took me.” He remembered it all now, Bob and the case of the missing dick! That’s where he knew her from. Street girl, trading sex for food money. His stomach turned as he remembered the scene – then the severed penis in her mouth. 

“Excuse me, but do I stink bad?” she asked, suddenly ashamed.

“Well honey, maybe just a little,” McCarran said, immediately regretting he’d used such an intimate word.

“You can call me honey if you want. I like it when you say it.” 

Ed McCarran looked down at the carpet, embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t…”

“It’s okay, it makes me feel like you ain’t gonna hurt me.” 

McCarran looked away, hurting inside for this discarded human being. When he looked up at her again he wanted to cry. “Well, okay then. Let’s get you cleaned up.” He stood and took her Coke into the kitchen, and she followed him like a puppy, with almost thoughtless devotion, but he saw her behavior was like that of a small child. He felt intensely uncomfortable as he went into the apartment’s only bathroom and turned on the shower in the bathtub, and he adjusted the water. “Alright, Sara, you come on in here and get cleaned up. There’s soap and shampoo in the shower, and clean towels over there. You take your clothes off and put them in that hamper,” he said, pointing at the white plastic basket next to the sink. “I might have something to fit you in my kids’ room.”

“You got kids?”

“Yeah, well, they live with their mother in Oregon, but I have some of their stuff here; I bet I can find something you can wear. Now come on in and get yourself cleaned up.”

He closed the door behind her, went to his kid’s room and found some generic sweat-pants and a couple of t-shirts. Socks wouldn’t be a problem, though shoes might be. He pulled out a couple pairs of sneakers from the closet that looked like a ‘maybe’ and gathered them up and put them just outside the bathroom door. He called out to her, told her where to find the clothes and she answered “Okay!” from inside the shower. He looked at his watch, phoned the D.A.s office, got shuffled around, then asked a clerk to look up some information on a Sara Wood, unknown DOB possibly 20 to 22 years old, brought into County as a Welfare Concern back in early May, at least he seemed to remember that much. When he was informed she was twenty-two he breathed a little easier. Not much, but a little. He asked if they had done any blood work, wanted to know if he might have been exposed to anything during his contact with her, then rang off after the clerk told him she’d not tested positive for anything.

He sat in the living room, turned on the evening news which was, as always, full of stuff about Iran-Contra and budget cuts. He heard the water cut off, then the shower curtain sliding open; a few minutes later he heard the bathroom door open and close as Sara grabbed the clothes he’d set out. “Can I use your brush?” she called out once.

“Of course, go ahead. And oh, before I forget. There are some new toothbrushes in the medicine cabinet over the sink. Help yourself.”

About five minutes later she came out. There must have been a pair of gym shorts stuck between the t-shirts, because she came out wearing navy colored shorts, a yellow t-shirt emblazoned with an L.A. Laker’s logo, some white gym socks and an almost new pair of black suede Pumas. 

But by then Ed McCarran’s blood pressure had shot through the roof – because the girl that walked out of the bathroom that afternoon looked hotter than any firecracker on the Fourth of July. Her hair was actually reddish-blond once all the dirt and grime had been rinsed away, and it struck him in that moment that she looked like a very thin Sissy Spacek. And now, suddenly, his voice was shaking – but he looked away – now quite ashamed of the onrushing feelings he was experiencing. 

“Well, how’d that hot water feel?” he finally said. But then he felt his face flush with red heat of a different kind – and now he felt very uneasy that this unexpected stranger was now hanging out in his apartment.

Sara Wood walked into the living room and sat on the couch next to Ed McCarran; she obviously knew enough about the world, and the baser instincts of men, to understand the effect she was having on him. “That felt really nice,” she said with a minty-fresh smile, leaving him adrift in another new silence. She found herself looking at his forehead, then the wrinkles around his eyes. She looked up at his receding hairline, and then she saw his left eyebrow was twitching!

But just then Ed McCarran stood and walked away, headed toward the bathroom. “If you don’t mind, I’m gonna take a quick shower, then I’ll take you out to dinner. How’s that sound?”  ‘And it’s gonna be a cold fuckin’ shower, too,’ Ed McCarran told himself as he peeled off his jeans in the bathroom.

Sara Wood sat on he sofa, smiling. ‘So, he isn’t like the rest of them,’ she told herself. ‘And he blushed! I hope he loves me as much as I love him!’ 

In Sara Wood’s world people either used you or used you and then killed you, but there was no such thing as love in the shadowlands. While Sara Wood knew what it felt like to be used, she was pretty certain she had no idea what love was supposed to feel like, because she was certain that in her entire life not one soul had ever loved her. And while she had never loved anyone, she was pretty sure she knew that love existed. 

But something deep in her belly was connecting to a primal need that crawled through her being inside that moment, a distant, faraway need seeking connection. A connection grounded in desire and release, and maybe Sara Wood thought that this was what love was supposed to feel like. When she saw him, that’s what she felt – connection and desire – and it felt good to her as she sat there in his room because this new feeling didn’t make her want to run back into the shadows.

She got up from the sofa after Ed closed the bathroom door. She heard the water turn on and walked around the apartment, curious what he was like. She poked inside the half-empty boxes, saw framed diplomas and strange looking books. Then she walked into his bedroom, around the far side of the bed, and once there she looked out the lone window – and she could see the police station through the trees. She turned to go back to the living room and saw some magazines under the bed so she bent down to look at one of them. She couldn’t read the words on the covers, but there were women on them, women with very few clothes on. She picked another one up and opened it; there were men sticking their things into women, women sucking on men’s things, women kissing women – which she thought looked really funny, and laughed a little at that – and all of the women were wearing really weird stuff. She had never seen anything like what these women had on; not anywhere, not anytime. She picked up another magazine, and another, and they were all filled with pictures just like the first one, and all the women were dressed up in these silly looking things.

Ed McCarran finished drying himself off and cursed when he realized he’d left his change of clothes in the bedroom, so he wrapped the towel around his waist and prepared to dash across the hall into his bedroom. This he adroitly did, only to screech to a halt as he saw Sara Wood sitting on his bed giggling at the pictures in his secret stash of magazines. And just like a deer caught in the headlights of an onrushing car, Ed McCarran froze.

But Ed McCarran had failed to appreciate the innocence harbored within this girl; she turned another page, completely focused on the next set of new images, giving an appreciative ooh here and a stifled giggle there. Then, at some point she became aware of Ed McCarran so she turned around to face him and said, “Look at this!”

Ed McCarran, rarely at a loss for words, was now utterly speechless. He shook his head to clear his mind after a few more awkward moments in the headlights, and as nonchalantly as he possibly could, he asked Sara Wood if he could have some privacy while he got dressed. She grabbed a handful of the magazines and headed out of his bedroom with them toward the sofa – only now with a contented look of happily sated curiosity on her face! 

‘Oh, man, what have I gotten myself into?’ McCarran said as he closed the bedroom door behind her, wiping away beading lines of perspiration that had suddenly formed on his forehead and upper lip. While he dressed he heard her giggle a few more times, and he wondered how he might get those magazines hidden away again without looking like too big an ass. Yet when he went out she had neatly stacked the magazines and she watched him carefully – and again he was struck by how puppy-like she seemed.

“Think you could eat something tonight?”

She smiled. He turned bright red.

“For dinner, I mean,” he stammered.

She shrugged.

“When’s the last time you has something to eat?”

Again she just shrugged.

“Does anything sound good? A burger? Pizza or spaghetti? Anything?”

“I don’t know.”

At a complete loss now,  he led her outside and back down the steps then out to the parking lot behind his building. He walked over to a car covered with a heavy tan cloth and pulled the fabric away from the vehicle, revealing a tangerine colored Triumph TR6 convertible; Sara Wood squealed and clapped her hands as she looked at the car, jumping up and down a few times along the way.

“C’mon, help me get the top down,” McCarran said, pointing to hooks and levers at the top of the windshield, giving her directions. They got the top down and then he pulled a vinyl-canvas cover out of the space behind the seats and snapped it into place. He opened her door and showed her how to put on the rather complicated manual seatbelt, then he shut the door behind her – at this point on autopilot and not having the slightest idea what he was doing. 

“Oh, this is so fun,” she said as he sat down next to her, happily drumming the dashboard in front of her; McCarran turned the ignition and the Weber carburetors feeding the little six cylinder engine kicked the beast awake, and now it was his turn to smile. He studied the gauges while the engine warmed, doing his level best to ignore the pale thighs next to his.

“Nothin’ like an old British roadster,” McCarran said as the car sputtered and burbled to life. “So,” he added, “you want dinner and a movie, or dinner and shopping at the mall?”

Sara Wood’s eyes went round as saucers. “The mall?” she cried. “Could we…I never bought stuff at the mall before.” 

When McCarran simply said, “Answers that question!” she just squealed again, and bounced around in her seat like a little kid.

Ed McCarran backed the little roadster up and pulled out onto the street, heading toward a gathering of restaurants clustered around Red Bird Mall. 

“Whatcha feel like eating?” he asked as they motored along, and he looked at Sara from time to time, at her long red hair dancing in the slipstream, errant curls whipping around her face as she laughed and laughed. This was her first experience bouncing down an urban street in an English roadster, and Ed was entranced by her pure joy.

“I don’t know – you choose…”

So they had dinner at a local steakhouse, and he delighted in watching her fiddle with a ‘bloomin’ onion,’ and he ordered her – again at her request – a filet mignon, a fully dressed baked potato, and a heaping bowl of creamed spinach. She wolfed everything down and McCarran was certain he could see a little color return to her face, and he felt happier than he had in months. After they finished he told her they would get dessert at the mall, and she again clapped her hands and bounced around in the Triumph’s little seat.

He took her to The Gap, and she picked out some – to Ed McCarran’s practiced eye – low-cut bell bottomed jeans and a couple of shirts to go with them. He also got her some khaki shorts and a white cotton polo shirt, just because. They went to one of the athletic shoe stores, and she picked out some Adidas tennis shoes and some hot pink Converse All Stars, which she found especially “cool” and asked to wear from the store. They made their way down to the food court, where she ordered some pineapple sherbet in a small sugar cone, and Ed ordered the same thing. They gathered her packages from the counter and went to sit by a fountain under a huge skylight in the center of the food court, and Ed watched Sara’s pure joy as she nibbled on the ice cream cone. 

But all the while, during dinner and now after, he looked at her and he could feel the weight of the abuse and neglect heaped on her soul, the tacit neglect of people who all too easily turned away from all people like Sara Wood. More troubling still, he had seen and often heard how many took a perverse pleasure in the pain and suffering such endemic homelessness caused. Yet watching her now, looking at her enjoying the simplest pleasure imaginable – eating an ice cream cone on a warm summer evening – he saw a cute girl who suddenly had not a care in the world. And what had it been? Six weeks from those awful moments in the alley? He’d first seen her six weeks ago on her side, unconscious and with the severed remnants of a penis in her bloody mouth.

He struggled while he tried to reconcile these two visions of her, and with the society that allowed such extremes to go unchecked. He’d seen too many Sunday school hypocrites, enough to understand one part of the equation, as usually the richest of these ‘religious’ people were the first to complain about the tax burdens of helping the poor. He hadn’t been the only person to see these same wealthy people drive past starving people on their way from church to a fancy restaurant. And he wasn’t the only cop to understand how starving people simply disappeared from view – day after day.

Yet he was all too often at a loss to understand why these things happened.

And after almost fifteen years on the force, he’d seen it too many times to count. The incremental soul-murders that suburban ‘Johns’ inflicted on downtown runaways, the despair of an elderly woman starving to death just yards away from a restaurant selling fifty dollar steaks. But just then McCarran realized that he too had worked around these same starving, nameless people, and that he too had grown obliviously numb to their everyday reality. 

Why? What had caused that? When had such people become things, and no longer human beings?

His mind drifted, and for a moment he imagined having sex with this girl – yet almost instantly the thought made him feel sick to his stomach. Not that she was ugly or a turn-off, because that was surely not the case. No, it was more like he could see her now for the human being she had always been, and not some thing consigned to the shadows. Her guileless – and very cute face – left him breathless one moment and then he thought of the endless, senseless violations she had endured and those thoughts left him feeling dried-up and feeling lonely inside. If ever there had been a poster child of this society’s manifest hypocrisy and overt neglect, here she was, sitting right next to him. Sitting right here in this mall, one of America’s new cathedrals of conspicuous consumption. Here sat Sara Wood – poster child of an all new and enduring American nightmare.

And yet he couldn’t help himself. He was enjoying the moment. Enjoying the evening. Enjoying her happiness, her joy at experiencing a few of the things that had always remained beyond her reach, and the things he’d always taken for granted. Then she looked at him and said: “Can we go look at more stuff?” 

And he experienced anew the childlike trill of her voice in full bloom, and it was as if the prospect of having something to call her own could erase all the dry, hard facts of her existence. As if “stuff” could somehow erase the last twenty-two years of a life spent without – like she could somehow hit the rewind button and start recording over all the misery. Could “stuff,” he wondered, really let her start life all over again? 

Given the morality-free void that she had obviously grown up in, he thought it remarkable she had the capacity to feel good about herself on any level. But, and this was more to the point, she now had a huge grin on her face, and she was happy in a way very much like his own children once had been in this very same mall, yet her’s was an innocent happiness, a ‘for the first time in my life I’m happy’ expression of wonder, where to his children this place had always seemed almost dull and boring.

Like his marriage had, he assumed, once a certain kind of loved faded from view.

So they took off together in search of more stuff, and soon they walked down a wing of the mall they hadn’t been to yet, and she saw things she had never even heard of – yet everything she saw was all an infinitely bewildering array of ‘stuff’ that most kids in this mall had long taken for granted. 

But soon he realized she didn’t know how to ask for even the simplest things; she had no experience asking anyone for anything. She’d never had anyone in her life to simply give her things; she had never been spoiled by a doting father or a caring mother; there had been no birthday parties with face painting and pony rides, no leaving cookies and a glass of milk left on the hearth for Santa. He soon understood it just wasn’t that things had always been out of her reach; no, it was that she had never known anyone who would simply be there for her, let alone there was no one there to show her how to ask for things. Things, perhaps, as simple as a helping hand. 

She saw shiny stereo and had no idea what it was; she looked at a color television set and was mystified by the images she saw inside the box. She saw posters of popular teen idols, yet she had no idea who they were, or why they were on a poster – even the concept of fame seemed like an abstraction beyond her grasp. The corridors of wealth weren’t a mystery to her, simply because she had no experience of either wealth or power.  

But as they walked along they came upon a store that had scantily clad mannequins in the windows, forms dressed just like the women in the magazines she’d found under the kind man’s bed. She stopped and looked at them, and an embarrassed Ed McCarran looked away as he stopped beside her, as he shrank away from the locus of her attention. When she ran inside he looked up to the heavens and groaned at the forces of destiny that had brought him to this place.

Once inside he watched as she ran up to a figure that was outfitted all in white, kind of like what McCarran thought might be Hugh Hefner’s idea of a bridal lingerie-slut outfit. “Can I get this?” she whispered, and just then a jaded salesgirl came over and looked at Sara Wood, then at Ed McCarran – and the salesgirl passed along a knowing wink to go along with her condescending smirk. Ed nodded at the salesgirl then sent Sara Wood off to be measured, and when she came back to him she looked at another outfit that was lacy and black with jade colored insets here and there and she cooed as she picked it off a rack, “Oooh, ain’t this pretty?” Ed again nodded to the salesgirl, who nodded solicitously, then added, “Would you like to see some shoes, too?” When Ed McCarran walked out of the trashy lingerie store she was outfitted with the whole regalia; garters, stockings, pumps, bras, panties; ‘You name it,’ Ed thought, ‘I just bought it.’ He shouldered the load and carried her loot out to the car, and they stashed her new stuff in the trunk before heading back to Ed’s apartment. The sun was setting and Ed was simply beyond exhausted, yet he didn’t have the slightest clue what to do with the girl.

Simple inertia took over and he carried her packages up the stairs and into his apartment. He paused, thinking about what had been bothering him all evening, and then he made a decision. He took her packages to his kid’s room and put them on the top bunk, then he went back out to Sara, who was standing in the doorway. “You don’t have anywhere to stay, do you?” he asked.

She shrugged as another uneasy realization dawned on her  – because she knew what came next. The shadows sang their siren’s song again and she turned to leave.

“Listen to me, Sara,” Ed McCarran said, catching her eye as she turned away. “If it’s none of my business just say so, or if you feel I should just shut-up, well, you just – tell me, Okay? My kid’s only come here for Christmas and Easter; their room is empty the rest of the time. If you want to stay here, with me – in their room – for awhile, until you can figure out what you want to do, well, it’s yours if you want it. You won’t have to worry about eating, or about getting new clothes, or having a place to sleep, okay? I just have a couple of rules.”

Sara Wood was looking at the floor, because she didn’t have the words for what was running through her mind.

“No drugs, no booze, no friends hanging out in here when I’m not around. Clear? You keep yourself clean, and you keep your room picked up, and I’m going to figure out how to get you into school…” 

Yet Ed McCarran was cut off when Sara Wood ran into his arms at full speed, and as he put his arms around her she started trembling, then crying – at first just a little but then uncontrollably. He kept his arms around her and then stroked her hair, saying meaningless little things like: “Alright, it’s going to be okay now,” and “It’s okay, it’s all going to be okay now.’ In fact, he held her until she was spent, until he could feel her relaxing in his arms. She looked up at him, he looked down into her very tear-streaked face and kissed her on her forehead. “It’s okay now, Sara, you’re safe here,” he whispered. “You don’t ever have to worry about falling down again, because I’m gonna be here to catch you. Okay?” Then he held her face in his hands and wiped away a few of her tears with his thumbs. 

“Can I ask you something?” she finally said, her little voice a faraway whisper.

“Yes, of course.”

“What’s your name?”

A blank look came over Ed McCarran’s face as he thought back to that day. ‘I gave her my business card – but oh no, God why didn’t I think, of course, she can’t read…’ He shook his head and laughed. “Yeah, I guess you should probably know my name. Ed, but call me Eddie, okay?”

“Okay, Eddie.”

“Now, let’s get those teeth brushed, and then get you off to bed.”

After he had her tucked away in the bottom bunk – in his kids’ bedroom, he flipped out the light and closed the door. He went into the kitchen and made a rum and coke and walked out to the sofa to sit – then he put his feet up on the coffee table as he tried to make sense of the evening. He reviewed the decisions he had just made in his mind, which was a problem because he had already made the big one with his heart. He thought about the Sunday School hypocrites he knew, then he thought about Sara Wood lying curled up and unconscious in an alley with the bloody stump of a penis caught in her mouth. 

And then he thought about the dividing line between right and wrong, that cold, grey area where most people feel so uncomfortable they turn away from the mention of it. Yet he lived and worked along that line, didn’t he? He lived and worked in a no man’s land where the absolutes of good and evil defined his every action – yet his feelings for this girl lay far, far away from the contours of that line. She didn’t exist, not really, yet he was presuming he could carry her across that line, carry her far away from the thoughtless eyes that governed her insane existence.

He leaned forward and put his head into his hands, and then Officer J Eddie McCarran cried for a very, very long time. 

‘She’s a child,’ he heard the gnawing voice in the back of his mind say.

‘No, she’s not. In the eyes of the law she’s an adult woman.’ 

‘You’re just taking advantage of that, you’ll be using her like all the rest.’

‘Did you ever think that maybe she’s taking advantage of me?’

‘Hah! Hypocrite! You’re no better than all the rest!’

‘How will she grow if I continue to treat her like a child. She needs to be treated like an adult, not a child…’ 

He was lying in bed a couple hours later – on his back with his eyes wide shut, afraid of sleep and the dreams he knew would be waiting for him there. There was no way he was going to find sleep, not tonight, so he was glad at least that he had three day weekend. He tossed and turned, struggled with his emotions, until… 

Suddenly, quietly, he heard the door to his room opening, then he saw Sara silhouetted in the doorway, her long straight hair falling over the t-shirt she had worn to bed. She walked in slowly, then sat on the edge of his bed, and soon she was looking at Ed McCarran’s face.

“Eddie?” she whispered.

“Yes, Sara.”

“I don’t want to be like one of your kids,” she said, a vast, cool tremor under her words. “Know what I mean, Eddie?” When he was silent for a moment, she went on. “I want to be in here with you. You said you wanted to take care of me, but I want to take care of you, too.”

He didn’t know what to say, but he felt hot and cold running fear lurking in his mind.

“Eddie, say something, please?”

He sat up in bed, pushed himself up on his arms and flinched as an old shoulder wound pulled him back to the line and into the present, and he cried out as the pain hit home.

“What is it, Eddie?” she said, plainly scared by his reaction.

“It’s nothing. I got shot once, and some nights it hurts more than others.”

“Can I see?” she asked. She slid forward on the bed until she was close to McCarran at the head of the bed. She reached out to touch his shoulder and he flinched, pulled away from her. 

“Please,” she pleaded, “don’t run away from me, Eddie.” She reached out again, touched his shoulder. She put her fingers on his skin, softly probing and stroking his fear. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she continued. “I promise, okay?”

Ed McCarran felt an electric tremor pass from her fingers through his skin as she touched him; at first he felt this tremor in his shoulder, then he felt it boiling up from his groin and up into the small of his back, then it moved further up his spine. He tried to look away, to close his eyes as he was carried along the line, but he felt that the worst thing he could do right now, do to the very fragile world Sara Wood lived in, was reject her, hurt her again in some new and unexpected way. But he also knew he had to take charge of the moment – for all his training commanded that he control each and every situation. 

Because that was what allowed him to live and work along the line.

Sara Wood felt the fragility of her own sense of control, too. Yet from the moment she ran her fingernails over Ed McCarran’s shoulder, then across to the back of his neck, she knew she could control the music of his heart. “Turn over, Eddie, turn over and lay on your stomach.” 

Ed McCarran slipped down into the safety of his bed, then he turned over onto his stomach. 

‘This is a good, even a safe position,’ he said to the gnawing voice. 

‘You miserable hypocrite!’ came the sharp reply.

She continued to rub the old wound on his shoulder lightly, every now and then running her fingernails in tight little circles, moving over his neck for a while, then running her fingers through his hair, scratching his head gently. He felt her moving, felt her move to sit on top of him, and then she was sitting on the backs of his thighs. He felt her pubic hair on his skin and realized she only had on a t-shirt, then he felt that other warmth spreading around his soul. Soon she was leaning forward, putting her hands on his back between his shoulder blades, and she began to rub his back with the open palms of her hands. She put real strength into her movements, rubbing from the middle of his back up with both hands, then moving slowly up to his neck and finally out along his shoulders, and after a few minutes of this he let slip a sigh from the deepest reaches of his fear. She retreated down the same slope with her fingernails, those strange electric currents still flowing through him in sync with her movements, and as he drifted along he saw a feeling taking shape in his mind: she was a brook meandering through rich, sun-warmed fields – then she was the hot blood running through his veins.

But Sara Wood kept rubbing his back, his shoulders and neck, and for what felt like hours. Every now and then Ed McCarran sighed, and words like “Oh, God, this is heaven,” and “That feels great,” passed his lips, until at one point he said, “Oh Sara, you feel so good to me.” And with that said, with that opening, Sara Wood leaned forward and slid her arms under Ed McCarran’s arms and cradled his soul in what was left of hers, she put the side of her face on his back, just below his head, and she nuzzled her face on his back. She then kissed his back, moving her tongue to his spine as she ran her hands over his outstretched arms, once gain tracing little eddies in the flow of her currents. 

She then sat up, slid down until she was sitting on the backs of his thighs again. She scratched his back as she slid, scratched where she had been sitting, scratched the warm-moist slick where her vagina had rubbed against his back. She lightly ran her fingernails over his buttocks, felt him tense in the ticklishness of these unfamiliar, silvery motions, then she rubbed his butt coarsely, soothing the currents out and away into the charged atmosphere of her other intentions.

Ed McCarran felt Sara Wood as she moved down his back, felt the weight of her need, and he felt the weight of his desire for her growing with each stroke of her hand, each warm breath of her’s on his back. With the tension that melted from his knotted muscles, with each pulse of her beating desire, he felt his resistance to her withering within the ever-slowing heartbeats of time. He was moving from the world of his training, of his profession, into the dim gray light of the dividing line.

And that was when she asked him to turn over. 

Ed McCarran felt the conflict between his head and his heart. He saw his ex-wife looking at him, fellow officers in the department shaming him, store clerks and fast food cashiers casting dark, sidelong glances his way; all of them looking at him as he fell into the shadowlands, judging him for his transgressions. 

Yet she lifted from his thighs as she felt him beginning to turn under her.

And he turned his body under hers, struggling to make sense of this new world.

She straddled his belly now, just below his chest. She reached behind, reached for Ed McCarran’s groin, ran her fingers through his pubic hair, moved her hand purposely towards his need. 

Ed McCarran’s entire body stiffened as her hand made contact with his belly. He felt her hand as it moved down, as she encircled him.

Sara Wood held him and stroked away his fear, only now she looked intently into his eyes. She saw the passive smile on his face as an echo of her own, and perhaps nothing more or less than that.

Ed McCarran felt her sliding away from his face, away from his chest. She was sliding through time now, away and beyond the infinite. He felt her pubic hairs as they traced faint electric contours on the charged surface of their need.

She still had him in hand as her vagina hovered, wraith-like, pulsing, above his groin. She lowered herself slowly, gently, until she felt the head just grazing the petals of her lips. She reached with her fingers and spread them apart, leaving a faint pink opening that seemed to reach of it’s own volition for the straining loneliness waiting just below.

Ed McCarran felt the heat of her folds radiating throughout his body, and he arced to meet her vast oceanic pull. He felt his skin on her lips, felt her lips parting in supplication, conforming to the shape of this new world. He moaned as her warmth penetrated the darkness, as the flooding tide of the moment flowed through the fabric of time.

The arc of time stands still in such moments, as sometimes happens when Time looks upon new lovers. Yet Time does not judge, does not weigh motive or intent. If in the infinity of Time’s travels such things as love and need can be measured by the arc created between two beating hearts – that moment when two lost souls collide and dance in molecular fury – then surely this comes at a moment of Time’s choosing. Time fuses in the heat of love’s first release and seems to begin anew, but all too often Time is bathed in the light of uncertain wisdom. Yet even then Time laughs with new lovers, not at them – if only for a little while.

This fragment (c) 2023 adrian leverkühn | abw | and it’s simply fiction, plain and simple.

[ELP \\ Tarkus]

So, just a word or two before I go…

The next week or so will be somewhat trying on this end. I typically handle surgery well enough but I’ve had a bad feeling about this one for a week or two, so…we’ll see. Oh, I made good progress on this story back in November, before the proverbial shit hit the fan, but progress has been sporadic at best ever since. It feels rushed, particularly on the back nine – so in other words ripe for a revision or two. And yes, there is a loose affiliation here to that earlier story, The Otter and the Fox. The plan, such as it is, is to round out the tale with a third part somewhere in the future. So again, we’ll see. Hang in there, okay?

Life grows peculiar when you begin to see yourself as something resembling an indefinite article.

[America \\ Here]

The Otter and The Owl

Chapter One

Seattle | Today

A gray day, windy and with rain threatening to kill the sun, again. Rain, rain, and nothing but more gray rain for days. Or had it been weeks?

The old man lived in a striking gray house perched above the gray Pacific, and so intent was he to live in gray anonymity he had even had the original shake roof pulled up and replaced with a gray standing seam metal roof. At least, he thought, the new roof sounded nice in the rain.

His foppish gray hair had long since turned white and with the change, like the inevitable change of seasons and the falling leaves of autumn, his legs had begun a falling of their own. Quite normal, he realized, in the usual seasons of man. It was a day to day thing these days, this sustained autumn of his, but he took all this too in his stride. He was anything but bitter and was in fact rather satisfied with the remnants of his life.

His name, of course, was Grey. Patrick Grey. And for most of his life he had been a spy. MI6 and all that. But all that had been in another life, a life he had tried to forget for a time – before he realized the pointlessness of the exercise. He’d been retired for a few weeks when he’d run over the bright idea of writing his memoirs – only to be reminded of the dour vicissitudes of his office, re: The Official Secrets Act – so he’d taken the easy way out. Taking a road more or less well traveled, he’d started writing novels. Trashy spy novels. Airport novels of no real import, however his publisher had inflated his involvement in that other world into the balloon-sized, ego-feeding nom de plume of Patrick Whats-his-name. Oh yes, Grey. And very much not Gray, thank you so very much.

But then he’d penned a book of some – import. He’d ruffled a few feathers, so many that he realized his time had come and gone. And come again.

He’d grown up very much his father’s son, on a rather large estate south of Cheltenham, on lands of neatly rolling hills and narrow country lanes lined with stout English oaks and low rock walls. And speaking of rocks, his family estate had been located quite near a formation known locally as the Devil’s Chimney, a smallish spire that stood above the village of Leckhampton Hill. Old spies, the young boy learned soon enough, were quite often put out to pasture along these very same narrow lanes. His father chief among them, as it happened, when his own season came.

Now he lived in Seattle just south of Ballard Locks, hard by the railroad tracks. On weekend mornings sailboats motored by as if lost in the ironies of their dependence, while he sat watching from his wheelchair hoping the painkillers might actually kick in and work again that day. But on this Monday morning no motoring sailboats were to be found plying the waters off his deck, though a somewhat large fishing boat had just transited the locks and was even now headed out into Puget Sound, trailing a whirling stream of white birds screaming for a handout. Screaming, like the homeless children by the freeway caught up in another wayward gyre.

He looked at his watch, a beat up old Submariner that had come along for most of the ride, and he winced at the pain in his hips and knees before he turned in his chair and stared at his nemesis. His piano, an iterative variation of the same creature that had defeated him his entire life. This one a Yamaha, a smallish grand with a sumptuously mellow way with words, and he hated her. Positively. The way Odysseus hated the Sirens.

Was that because of the way she called out to him? Seductively, and with glowing words full of promise and praise. Yet she was the last accursed bitch in his life, the last one standing, the one who just didn’t know how or when to let go. A trait not shared by all the other women he had known. No, this last had triumphed by attrition and most certainly not by wit and wisdom.

The walls were white inside his gray house. The cabinetry in his kitchen was white, the countertops too. Bookcases in the living room were white, the leather upholstery around the room too was purest white. The original Douglas fir flooring was varnished to a high sheen and lay there in stark contrast to almost everything else in the room, for even the brick fireplace had been painted white. Only the bricks inside are black, but that was another story.

But hanging there on the chimney above the hearth was the one blast of color in this otherwise unremittingly white room. An ornately framed piece waiting to been seen and admired waited there, a kimono of deepest red silk flanked by a samurai’s two swords; the long killing sword and the shorter, much sharper blade used to commit ritual suicide. Seppuku, right? Wasn’t that the word? All three pieces, the kimono and the two swords, were ancient, and yet they each had a story of their own to tell. A lone recessed light in the ceiling shone down brightly on them, imploring them to speak, to tell their story to all who passed by, but the gilt frame contained them all. Or, perhaps restrain is the more apt choice, as we shall see.

But for now their only voice resides inside the man in his wheelchair, and to this day he still resolutely refuses to utter even one word about their former lives. 

Oh, how they cried out, begging to be heard – even if just one more time.

+++++

A knock on the door – so easily ignored. Pointlessly so, of course.

Then the sound of a key in the lock and the tall varnished fir was easing open once again, slowly, surreptitiously, as if letting fresh air inside this mausoleum was a sin beyond redemption.

He winced as he looked at his watch, again. ‘Oh hell, is it Monday already?’ he sighed. Inevitable Mondays, again and again.

“Patrick? Are you ready to go?”

It is Carolyn, his agent. His last friend on this Earth, the last one standing who no doubt will discover his lifeless body one day, and perhaps in this very room. “I think I might need help with my shoes this morning,” Patrick replied, the words poised to cut, perhaps like the short blade over the fireplace might – if given half a chance.

She walked-in and saw him sitting there in his chair, looking out over the water – and for the life of her she still thought he looked like some kind of peregrine man-beast, perched on the edge of forever and waiting to take flight to God only knew where. She looked down and saw his bare feet, the forlorn hammer-toe on his right foot, the yellowing toenails so out of place, in character almost simian. She went to his bedroom and saw the clothes she had laid out two days ago – still and untouched. 

“Did you shower this morning?”

“No. Did you?”

“Patrick! It’s a book fair, not a trip to the zoo! Actual people will be there, they are coming to hear you speak. To listen – to you!” She came and sat on the coffee table and smiled into the gales of his obstinance, meeting his stoicism in her own headstrong way, which was of course the only way he would tolerate her. “Can you lift your leg?” she added.

He tried once then shook his head. “Not today.”

“Is it much worse?”

He looked away, looked at the white seabirds swirling behind the fishing boat and he wanted to be with them out there, screaming.

She lifted his leg until he winced – but she quit there. “I think today we’ll go with the clogs? Does that sound alright to you?”

He shook his head. “No, that doesn’t sound ‘alright.’ Not at all, as a matter of fact.” 

“What are your sugars?”

He shrugged.

She picked up his phone and entered the code, looked at the readout from his glucometer and sighed. “Patrick, if you stop taking your insulin you’re going to die. Do you hear me? That means you close your eyes and you stop breathing. Understand? It’s a fact of life even you should be aware of, okay?”

“Not your life.”

She sighed, if only because they’d had this conversation before. Too many times.

She went to his closet and found a pair of old gray Stegmann clogs neatly tucked away in their original box; like all his shoes they were boxed and put away clean after each wearing. The felt had been, she saw, recently brushed, and the cork footbed neatly oiled…but that was just Patrick being Patrick. He had turned neatness into a fetish, and though he had a housekeeper that came by twice a week he ended up cleaning the floors after the old woman left, pushing her lingering dust out the door from the comfort of his wheelchair.

She slipped the clogs on his feet then wheeled him to the door.

“Has it rained yet?” he asked.

“No, not until noon – at least that’s the forecast,” she said as she wheeled him out to his van. Modified to allow some semblance of mobility, the door slid open at the push of a button and the ramp inside began a long, tortured process of unfolding itself, making ready to haul him up into the belly of the beast. He rolled onto the ramp and turned just so, allowing the clamps to engage the wheels and so to hold him securely in place while Carolyn drove him downtown.

“What have you got me doing today?” he asked. “Not another reading, for heaven’s sake?”

“No, no, just anecdotes and then a brief Q and A, followed by a signing.”

“Oh…joy…” he sighed. “And if I should, per chance, soil myself again?”

“Please don’t, Patrick.”

He looked out the window as his van turned into a vapidly huge downtown parking garage. “Why do you keep doing this to me, Carolyn? I mean, besides the obvious commercial exploitation of a helpless old man – what’s in it for you?”

“Another book, dear Patrick. Like your fans, I absolutely yearn for your next book.”

“Bosh. You are so full of it it makes my head spin.”

“Hey, hope springs eternal.”

“Does it, indeed? How sweet for the both of you.”

She parked then wheeled him into the book fair and people pointed at him as he wheeled by, all the way to the conference room where his pithy anecdotes and all his answers from on high were supposed to come down as received wisdom. The room, he noted, was full, and there were two tables stacked high with new books waiting to be purchased and signed. What Carolyn called ‘money in the bank’ but which was, in the end, anything but. He looked at the stacks and shuddered at all the blood spent on those pages.

When he wheeled out in front of the assemblage he looked over the crowd, meeting a polite smile here and there with one of his own, until his eyes came to rest on a rather tall, willowy woman standing against the back wall. Black dress, the same black hair and yes, he saw she was older now, older than the last time they’d danced this dance, but now she was staring at him, an old scowl played in a minor key – until pale recognition registered in his eyes and on her face. Then she smiled and walked away, her apparent triumph complete. For the time being.

+++++

“What happened out there?” Carolyn asked. “It’s not like you to get nervous in front of an audience like that…”

“I thought I saw a ghost.”

“A ghost?”

“Yes. A ghost of my very own, let’s call it my Ghost of Christmas Past.”

She shook her head and grinned into the rearview mirror. “Well, you did good today. Lots of positive feedback.”

“So, does that mean you sold a few books.”

“Well yes, we did, as a matter of fact.”

“And do tell, but how many people complained about my shoes? Or my lack thereof?”

“Everyone, Patrick! Why, just think about it, would you? Everyone there, absolutely everyone –  wanted to know all about your feet!”

He crossed his arms and grumbled at her reflection in the little mirror. “And to think, I didn’t even shit myself. What a wasted opportunity. Don’t you find that ever so thoughtful of me?”

And that purchased a few minutes of silence.

“Do you need to stop at the market before I drop you off?”

He sniffed once, wanted to sigh at the indignity of his existence but thought better of it. “If you can spare the time, yes. I need a few things,” he said as he – reflexively – reached inside his jacket, hoping to feel the reassuring cold steel of his little Walther. But no, not this time, for time had erased even that most primal level of reassurance.

“Trader Joe’s?” she asked.

“Please,” he said, feeling chastened. “If you don’t mind.”

She helped him out of the van and watched him roll off into the little market, pulling out her cell phone to catch up on all her missed texts and emails as she got behind the wheel to wait for him, yet for a moment she thought she spotted the woman in the black dress that had so rattled Patrick at the fair. Getting out of a taxi, and now she was following him – at a discrete distance – into the store.

“Now just what the hell is this all about?” she muttered, lifting her phone and firing off several images of the woman. Big black sunglasses, black heels and stockings and a bright white handbag. Incongruous, just like Patrick. And out of place – again, just like Patrick. She saw the taxi pull away and thought to snap a few pictures of it, too. Not sure why. Call it instinct. Or maybe she’d read too many of his books?

+++++

He spent a good deal of time in those days looking over freshly picked mushrooms. He’d recently read that several key varieties stop the spread of vascularization around new tumors, in effect killing them before they could grow dangerously large, so now he added copious quantities of the things to almost everything he cooked, but especially his omelets. There was a new shipment of good looking shiitakes being put out on the shelves, and he waited until the stocker finished up then moved in to grab a couple of quart-sized containers.

And that was when he felt her hand on his shoulder, and he felt the same electric feeling he always had – almost from the beginning of time. He took a deep breath and relaxed, leaned back in his wheelchair…

“I can still feel you, you know. Like a summer breeze chasing away the last chill of winter.”

She moved to his side, so he could just see her. “Some things never change.” Her English was still flawless, her voice the same immeasurably soft cocoon, yet her hand stayed on his shoulder.

“So? Have you come to kill me this time?”

Her hand lifted, but then she leaned over and kissed the top of his head. “No,” she said once she was standing again, “I have come to say goodbye. To you.”

He wheeled around and looked up at her, sudden fear now in his eyes. “Akari? Tell me everything?”

She looked around the crowded market. “Surely not here, Jeremy.” 

He reached up and took her hands in his. “You are not well?”

“I am not well. Now, may I help you shop for mushrooms, or do you have enough?”

“Fresh fish is the only other item on my list.”

“You are finally taking better care of yourself?” she asked.

“Me? Oh, no, the fish is for a friend of mine.”

“Truly? You finally have a friend?”

“Truly. I have a friend.”

“Jere, this is a most unexpected development…”

“Oh, wait ‘til you meet her. You’ll fall in love, just as I did.”

He wheeled over to the fish counter and, Akari noted, the man there had a package ready and waiting, and she smiled – because that was so like the Jere she had known all her life. Patient routines, and yet never an unplanned for intercession, never the unexpected. But now, with his shopping out of the way, Jere turned and wheeled his way to the registers. “Do you need anything?” he said once there, and he smiled at her reluctance when she gently shook her head and said “No.”

Like everything where ‘Patrick Grey’ was concerned, Carolyn was not at all surprised when he came out of the market with the elegant woman in tow, and now walking almost by his side. Yet how odd they looked together, she thought. She walking one step behind and to his right, like she was playing her part in an ancient, ritualized dance of some sort – yet even so she sensed one belonging to the other. The stranger’s massive sunglasses were gone now, too, and she could see the woman was part Asian, possibly Japanese-American, but whatever else she was – quietly refined elegance defined her perfectly. Precisely so, in fact. So of course Carolyn was instantly on-guard and also a little jealous, for she had been the spy’s agent and his sole care-taker, and for almost five years. At least ever since he had moved to Seattle, right after the wild success of his last book.

But watching him now with this strange woman by his side, she realized he was still an enigma – and that he would probably always remain so. Or maybe, she thought, he was more like a series of interlocking riddles – and that like icebergs on a flat sea in the middle of an April night, the most dangerous parts of the man seemed to remain perpetually just out of sight, lurking beneath an inky surface of swirling complexities. Like waiting to inflict his next fatal wound, no doubt…

Chapter Two

Whitehall | Yesterday

The assignment was simple enough. 

Someone in MOD had decided that solar panels were soon going to be the next Big New Thing and that some of the most interesting, cutting edge research – in something called stochastic chemistry, for God’s sake – was taking place in Japan, at the Nagoya Institute of Technology. Soon enough, word was coming in via Hong Kong that agents, in other words – spies – notably from the PRC, were mounting several penetration efforts to learn more about the manufacturing processes these new developments would require. Also, there were some in both London and Washington that thought these efforts might somehow be directed at sabotaging this research.

Yet all this was just an elaborate ruse. A legend. A cover story.

And Jeremy Fontaine was uniquely suited to such an assignment. Of impeccable pedigree – being an Old Wykehamist of the Consanguineus Fundatoris variety, Fontaine was not simply Trusted. That was a given, a matter of pedigree and to an extent a question of political inheritance, his unsullied birthright. Fontaine’s background in physical chemistry, it was said, as well as the many years he’d spent in both Hong Kong and Japan, were a necessity – given current circumstances – so now all that stood in the way of his being assigned was his total lack of interest in working for MI6 ever again. Or so the story went.

Fontaine was not now and had not ever been a field agent of the usual sort; indeed, he possessed neither the physical properties nor the survival instincts of that peculiar species. No, Fontaine was an analyst of the most esoteric information imaginable, so an analyst of the most unusual sort. He was an academic and perhaps would have lived a more or less contented life in the classroom, had he chosen, perhaps, to remain at the little school on College Street, but his life had been governed more or less by an inertia that circulated in the bloodstream of all the various Fontaines. Growing up in Cheltenham’s shadow, his was a brew long steeped in the life and lore of The Service. On long walks with his father among the many wooded trails that encircled the Chimney he’d heard of little else, and in this manner his upbringing was but an echo of an echo. Yet Jere, as his mother called him, also possessed more feminine inclinations, notably for poetry and playing the piano. And perhaps it was this dichotomy that, more than anything else, formed the young man. It had always been the boy’s innermost desire to study Letters at Cambridge, yet time and paternal disinclination dictated he take his first doctorate in Biochemistry from Oxford. Young Jeremy was, you see, a product not simply of unchecked desire. The times he lived in, perhaps more than anything else he was willing to admit, shaped the man he would become.

Born during the closing moments of the war, he experienced the great upheavals of the 50s and 60s firsthand, and yet you could also say these tectonic shifts also fed his more feminine side. He read Lawrence Ferlinghetti on his holidays away from school, and when no one was in the old house he played music as disparate as Jerry Lee Lewis and Glenn Gould – until he fell head first into his Japanese phase. When Jere turned up at Oxford in 1963, he was among the first students to take classes in the new East Asian Studies department, but that year was also marred by many other pivotal personal and political events. 

First among them – his father passed. Control of the family’s fortunes fell to his mother Claire, then it seemed that within weeks of his beginning his studies that John Kennedy was murdered. He had been taking an introductory class in Japanese literature that first term, and about the time news of the event rattled around the globe he had been sitting by a fireplace lost in his explorations of The Tale of the Heike, and as it happened, and as these things so often do, he had just finished a key passage when the news fell on his ears. To Jere, this was a moment cast away by time, an orphan without explanation – a lonely boy waiting to be embraced:

The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sāla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.

And so, in a way, 1963 became his year of passage. The year both Kennedy and his father passed from this life to the next. A year of remembrance, and of tears.

And in this confluence of events, perhaps like two streams coming together, it wasn’t long before he found his way to Shinto, and as a result he came upon an unforeseen way of experiencing the world, a new way of understanding death: to be conscious of kannagara no michi.

And as this was the path that had chosen him, he cared not even a little that this was perhaps the one path his father would have mightily disapproved of.

Chapter Three

Seattle | Today

“Is this what you eat? Omelets…and mushrooms?” Akari said, looking up at him as he reduced a skillet full of mushrooms, adding a little white wine and a few impossibly thin slices of shallot after the mushrooms had browned just so.

He nodded, slowly, a sly grin spreading like cold treacle across his face. “If I require more than what I have,” he shrugged, “well then, the entire world has come to this little city, Akari. It’s a fantastic time to be alive. Nothing but unappreciated choice, and everywhere you turn hardly anyone notices. Or even cares, really.”

“But,” she added, not buying his latest dodge, “what of the fish you purchased? Where is this secret woman of yours?”

“Oh, my dear. Did I say I had a woman?” Jeremy Fontaine sighed, shrugging playfully with a coy roll of the eye. “But Akari, I do have some saké on hand, should the desire arise. A decent selection, I might add.”

“Of course you do. You always do.”

He smiled. “Yes, of course. Always the stranger in a strange land, but of course I remain very much afraid that, as such, I will never find my way home.”

“Were you ever at home, Jere? I mean really, in-your-skin at home?”

His smile broadened. “No, of course not. How could something so impossibly real suit the likes of me?”

“So, are you not at home? In this here and now?”

The smile vanished, his bushy white eyebrows curled in deep furrows. “Do you know, Akari, I’m not at all sure that I’m not. Isn’t that strange? Almost like a strange — what? A twist of fate?”

She turned away and walked to the fireplace and studied the ancient red kimono, then the two swords, each in their turn. They still called out to her, even after she had turned away from then — once upon another time now very far away. They had, after all, when what was known about their past came undone, belonged to her father. Then, for the briefest moment, to her mother. But, she now knew, that was when they passed to Jeremy Fontaine. And so here they were, hanging over an Englishman’s mantle – held by no hand now and so far from the distant fires of their creation. So, she wondered why she saw absolution hanging there in the bright, grim light…

“Would you mind helping me with these things?” he called out from the kitchen.

She went to his voice – hadn’t she always? – and she took in his artistry. Mushrooms and shallots over roasted artichoke hearts and an omelet, but then another plate, this one loaded with thin slivers of king salmon sashimi. He gently tossed a small salad of butter lettuce topped with walnuts, apples, and a sprinkling of Stilton bleu. Riesling, too, because he was, after all, still an Englishman. She carried the plates to a varnished redwood table on the deck overlooking the sea and he rolled along after her, now admiring the golden sky and the sun setting carelessly beyond the Olympics.

“I like the house,” she said after a first tentative sip of his wine. “It fits you.”

He nodded. “A local architect drew it for me. Llewelyn Sumner, very radical for his time. Probably a Welshman – but one can never quite tell these days.”

“You still enjoy working in the kitchen, I see.”

“No, I don’t. Normally I can’t be bothered with such foolishness, but then again…this hasn’t been a normal day, has it?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“The salmon? Do try a piece?”

She nodded, then turned and looked out to sea. “I think I always saw you living in the mountains. Why did you come here? To the sea?”

He turned and looked at a passing boat, then like an old conductor turning to face his orchestra he spread his arms wide. “Why Akari, just look around, will you? We are surrounded by mountains here, though they hide away in their clouds all too often…”

“Are you hiding, Jere? Here, in your clouds and rain?”

He smiled. “There is no hiding for me now, Akari. Not from the things I have done.” Or that I must do, he reminded himself as he turned to look at her. “So? You must be dying? I can’t imagine you coming otherwise.”

She took beautifully lacquered chopsticks, and with those glowing obsidian lances she picked a piece of salmon and held it up in the fading light, regarding it thoughtfully as she gathered her thoughts. “You were never so direct, Jere? So devoid of tact? What has happened to you?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Perhaps I’ve eaten at Burger King one time too many, learned that eating is a pointless exercise in…”

“Stop!” Akari cried. “Enough with your evasions! I asked you a question. What has happened to you?”

He seemed to deflate for a moment, to slump a bit in his wheelchair – as if the truth of the moment was a burden he could no longer shoulder. His head fell, his face dropped away, but then he caught a deep breath and lifted his eyes to the setting sun, smiling again as he found the last of the warmth…then he caught sight of something in the sea and smiled. He then pushed his chair back from the table and turned to face the sea and his little dock – that pointed like an accusing finger at the sprawling blight along the far shore.

“Here she comes,” he said, his voice now reverent, a prayer to and of the unknown.

“What?” Akari said, confused by his sudden change in demeanor. “Who is coming?”

“My spirit friend. The kami that have aroused all your anger will flee now.”

She turned and looked at the sea, watched a faint disturbance heading toward his dock and she thought the change she saw in the sea most odd – for a moment. A steady, purposeful motion came to them, and she was puzzled. A…kami? A spirit? Here? Visiting him?

Then a small head appeared, the first glimpse of an unseen creature as it continued its careful approach, an undeniable cadence that seemed to announce both purpose and a gentle homecoming.

Then a small sea otter flew out of the water, landing on the dock but then stopping to surveil an unforeseen development in this place. A stranger was there beside the man, her man, and her small black eyes appeared confused for a moment – before the power of their reunion became too much for her to resist. She ran to him, pulled herself up the blanket that covered his legs before she circled his neck once, then again – his smile now deep enough to warm them both. She dropped to his lap and waited, watching the stranger warily for a moment before simply ignoring the interloper. 

He gave her pieces of fish and bits of raw carrot he kept in a pocket just for her and she ate and ate and the more she consumed the happier he became, and when there was no more to give he wrapped her in some of the blanket that covered his legs. She rolled a bit, exposing her belly and he knew what she wanted now so he rubbed her cold fur, drying her with the warmth in his hands until she grew sated and soft. And then she fell asleep, giving in to this quiet place in his arms.

And Akari watched, fascinated by the transformation within this man she thought she knew so well – and she watched the little sea creature too. Until she realized with a start that she had never really known anything about this man…anything at all…but by then the unexpected contours of her realization had left her feeling breathlessly alone and unsure how to proceed. But hadn’t that always been the way where his secrets were concerned?

Yet as she watched the man she thought she knew, she began to see and understand how utterly alone he was. But hadn’t that always been the way life came to spies? Especially the old ones? With nothing left to keep them warm but the deep secrets still buried in their hearts?

Chapter Four

Tokyo | Yesterday

The matter was never in doubt. Jeremy Fontaine joined The Service when he finished his studies, and he was forthwith dispatched to No 1 Ichiban-cho, Tokyo, nominally posted as one of the many commercial attachés attached to Her Majesty’s Embassy, and once there he began to develop ties to industry and within academia. He spoke the jargon-laden lingua franca of local commerce flawlessly, and he easily mingled with elements of the PSIA when the need arose. He was, to be blunt, everything a good spy was not. Which, oddly enough, made him the perfect spy.

If spies were otherwise known to lurk about in dark shadows, Fontaine thrived in broad daylight. When he visited large industrial concerns, where his peers more typically met with layers of silence, Fontaine disarmed the subjects of his inquiries with dusty bottles of the rarest scotch whiskey. He took CEOs golfing and soon enough the privilege was reciprocated; when he let it be known that he had been playing golf since he was seven years old his stature only grew. Soon he had sponsored memberships at two of his favorite courses, the more exclusive Hirono course and then the even more spectacular Kawana Fuji course. And of course Fontaine was an active listener who never failed to pick up the rarest insight, and it was said his knowledge of nightlife in Tokyo was second to none. So yes, he was a perfect spy, even if everyone knew exactly who and what he was.

Superiors in the embassy praised the depth of insight Fontaine provided in his timely reports, which were in due course handed over to the Americans. Within a year MI6 sent him to the CIAs Field Officer’s Training Course outside of Yorktown, Virginia, thence to a language institute in Monterrey, California to study Korean. When he returned to Tokyo he was soon immersed in the day to day activities of the PSIAs Third Division of the Second Intelligence Department, in other words he was soon “monitoring” developments in North Korea.

And the perfect spy began to better understand the currency of secrecy. He became a practitioner of the art, too.

But all the real action was happening just north of the Korean peninsula, in the Tartarsky Straits, with all the various naval attachés keeping their keen eyes on developments in the latest classes of Soviet submarines, so in effect Fontaine’s efforts were usually shunted aside, put on the back burner, and though only in his late twenties he was quietly, and rather suddenly, burning out.

But then the unimaginable happened. 

He chanced to meet a girl, a Japanese girl just a few years younger than himself, and as it happened she was not a spy. Rather far from it, as luck would have it. Her name was Aki, and she was the daughter and only child of Japan’s long-term economic advisor to Japan’s current Ambassador, then posted to the United Kingdom. Without laboring the point too finely, having lived in neighborhoods around the Thames almost all her life, Aki had spent more time in and around London than Jeremy ever had, and the case could be made that she spoke the Queen’s English far better than he, as well. She attended Prior’s Field where she took high honors in chemistry and he noted she played a mean ragtime on the piano. Aki was, in short, tailor made for Jeremy Fontaine, yet even so, oddly enough, it was his mother who first thought of arranging a first meeting of the two.

After her husband, Jeremy’s father, passed, Claire Fontaine resumed her career at the Foreign Office, soon preferring to spend only infrequent weekends in Cheltenham, and in the course of her duties she routinely “interfaced” with Aki’s father, and it was during one of her meetings with Kaito-san that she first met Aki, his daughter. Currently in town for a long weekend, she was studying biochemistry at St John’s College, Cambridge, working under Frederick Sanger refining the partition chromatography method of sequencing amino acids. And, it turned out that when not so engaged she played jazz bars not all that far from Bodley’s Court. Upon learning this, Claire Fontaine knew Aki was the perfect match for her one and only.

And so it happened, only not in the manner Kaito-san and Claire Fontaine had so artfully and dutifully arranged. Yet soon enough they spent all their free time together – talking chemistry. They fell in love – discussing chemistry. They continued to see one another on a regular basis, yet before all the ensuing madness Aki’s father and Jeremy’s mother had wed. And while most of these things happened long before Aki and Jeremy ever laid adoring eyes on one another, the first most important result of this new union was Kaito-san’s summary dismissal from the diplomatic corp and his immediate return to Japan. And his new wife dutifully followed, the happy couple moving into Kaito’s family’s ancestral estate in the mountains just west of Hakodate, on the island of Hokkaido.

Yet his mother’s actions caused Jeremy no little amount of distress. She left the estate south of Cheltenham in his care, necessitating frequent trips home to manage affairs he had long taken for granted. Also, as it happened the FO, or the Foreign Office, had taken a dim view of his mother’s actions and it seemed to Jeremy that they had decided to take all their recent unhappiness out on him. So, on one of his many trips home and after being absurdly abused one time too many, Jeremy simply resigned from government. He thought about moving out to Cheltenham and might have, too, had it not been for his meeting – finally – Kaito-san’s daughter Aki.

And yes, as predicted they were indeed a perfect match. But now, with their parents out of the picture they talked long into many a night about – pursuing post-doctoral degrees, together, of course. So marriage seemed a decent way to proceed, at least until it dawned on them that pursuing such a course of action would be plainly peculiar – as technically they were now step-brother and step-sister. Hardly a relationship conducive to cultural approval, they both knew.

Ah, yes…but what about America? America – the land of constant reinvention, where those disinclined to more restrictive norms often went in search of the road less traveled? 

They talked more about the idea. They planned, then they schemed. She applied to Berkeley, he to Stanford, and upon acceptance he leased the ancient familial lands astride the Devil’s Chimney and they planned their escape to California. And yet all the while keenly knowing eyes followed him down this new, undiscovered way, for there is an old saying just as appropriate now as it ever has been, to wit: once a spy, always a spy. Which, as he was reminded just a few years later, choices always have consequences – some more deadly than others.

Chapter Five

Seattle | Today

He knew people. Human interactions had, of course, always been his medium of exchange, the currency of survival he had long collected in service of an empire that had long depended on obscure, often deliberately hidden knowledge, for its very survival. Sometimes it was the merest scrap that made all the difference, and that remained a maxim Fontaine held to even now.

He called Carolyn, as she was the one he called first when he needed specific knowledge of hidden treasures in and around Puget Sound. Because she too knew people, she maintained her own intelligence network, and when she knew what there was to know she drove over to Patrick’s impossibly gray house. Once there she stopped and looked at Sumner’s masterpiece from the street, marveled at the incongruous angularity of the architect’s secret way with hidden walls, and each time she drove up the driveway she rediscovered all the hidden gardens under their mitered glass windows and only then could she make out all the odd little statues scattered about these hidden glades – and that each seemed to mean something quite special to the man lurking within. 

What had Patrick said about all his little statues? That they were the houses of the kami that resided around the house? The ‘Spirits’ of his journey, hadn’t he told her as much? And yet even to this day, even in her white Mercedes outside the gray house surrounded by towering green pines, she saw the little statues in their hiding places and her mind drifted to other times, to the odd moments here and there when she’d asked him to explain what he meant by ‘spirits’. And yet with this strangely quiet man his reaction was, as ever, unchanging and obscure: the same odd little smile that creased the face, the clear gray eyes under gently furrowed brow darting this way and that. The same dismissive, wayward shrug of yet more secrets to be kept. 

For now. 

Almost as if he was waiting for just the right moment to set all his spirits free.

And when she rang the bell that morning – not a doorbell, mind you, but an ancient bronze bell  atop a cedar post gray with age – the slate gray door opened and the same elegant woman in black appeared. Then there was Patrick in his wheelchair, only this morning he was rolling along with the weight of the world on his straining shoulders. Into the van and across the water to Aloha Street, to the university’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, to where a confirmation of diagnosis awaited the elegant woman. 

A first meeting with the recommended oncologist Carolyn uncovered, the documents the stranger dressed in black carried by her side – on her recent journey from Hokkaido. 

Documents detailing a diagnosis of fibrillary, or diffuse, astrocytoma. 

The stranger’s documents soon reviewed by the physician Carolyn uncovered, one Scott Andrews, MD. An MRI scheduled and her first treatments organized. Within a few days Akari’s future, the oncologist told Patrick, would be mapped out – in what felt like nauseating detail. ‘Treatment will not be easy,’ the calm voice of Dr. Andrews advised the spy, ‘or pleasant, but we have had recent success with agents that might offer a meaningful extension of life.’

‘Ah,’ the spy thought, his brooding cynicism waking up, ‘so now the oncologist is selling Hope.’

He looked around the physician’s world, a world he was once more than familiar with, and he felt faint tendrils of nostalgia wrapping around the core of his soul.

‘So, when did I become such a cynic?’ 

Chapter Six

Hakodate | Yesterday

He is walking with his mother on a chilly September morning. Along a narrow trail that skims along the side of a cliff, with the sea a few hundred feet below them as they talk. A thundering surf crashes into huge rust colored rocks down there in the mist, and yet he feels fresh salt spray falling from above, coating the way ahead, turning the trail into a slippery mess of oozing mud. 

How can this be so?

“A storm is coming, Jere,” she has just said to him, her voice hiding the same subtle tremor that has over the years filled him with both fear and longing. It is the same crenelated voice he heard when she first spoke of his father’s illness, yet it is the very same as when she spoke of going to play golf – “Just the three of us…” as she would say, meaning that for once her husband was home for the weekend and they could pretend to be a family – for a while, anyway. How he longed for that feeling, even now. To be together again, the three of them. Again, forever.

He was following her along that trail, but then again, hadn’t he always been following her? Her gait was still as strong and as steady as it ever had been, yet he could – feel – something different in the air apparent, something of her tremor lingering in the mist around the trail. He watched the placement of her trekking polls, watched her boots sliding in the ooze as a particularly heavy wave slammed into the rocks below – then he pulled up short as she stopped just ahead.

She turned and looked at him. “Can you feel it?”

“The storm? Yes, I think so.”

“What else are you feeling?”

“I’m wondering when you’re going to tell me why you asked me to come?”

“Are you going to marry her?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

She turned and resumed walking, picking her way with great care now. Parts of the trail had recently washed away, leaving little chasms to be crossed, slate gray troughs lined with gravel and rock, little rivulets of clear water running back to the waiting embrace of the sea.

After several minutes more of this they came to a rocky outcrop; it first appeared to him as a great creature in the mist, almost like a huge preening falcon that has been sunning itself on the cliff, waiting to leave the safety of the rocks, perhaps to soar once again on hidden currents above these hidden seas. Then it hit home – his mother was the falconer, and she always has been. That’s why she had brought him here. She is going to let slip the falcon’s hood – so that perhaps he can see the way ahead is not without danger.

But now she pulls off her little backpack and sits on another sun-drenched rock, pulling out sandwiches and bottles of cold, still water.

“Aki’s father has Huntington’s, Jere.” She speaks the words calmly, her delivery practiced, her manner still quietly a matter of fact, like the falconer’s wrist is offered, as always, as neutral ground. She is safe. Isn’t she?

He swallows hard, tries to take a deep breath but his throat feels constricted. “Huntington’s Chorea?” he manages to say. “Is he symptomatic?”

She nods. “Yes. Just.” Her voice is clear of the tremor now, the falconer’s strength is regained.

“Oh, Mom,” the dutiful falcon says, the vice around his chest constricting tightly, rockbound in anguish as yet another secret falls away, “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

“And neither does Aki, Jere. He’s wants to keep it that way, too, though I think now he understands how unfair that is of him.”

“Doesn’t it skip a generation? I mean…is it a certainty that Aki will inherit?”

His mother turned away from the sea, looked away from the shadow of his doubt and then cast it aside with an errant shrug. “There’s no…no one, Jere…nothing really definitive when such things are brought up. Everything seems so very circumstantial. And, well, I’m sorry to say, but I rather think the odds are she too will be affected.”

“Mother,” says the voice with the tremor now all his own, “Aki is pregnant.”

“How pregnant?” asks the falconer.

Five months, it turned out, so far too along to even consider the usual alternatives. But then…the hammer blow, the reason for his sudden trip: “Jere. You mustn’t tell her.”

“What? Mother? How could either of you ask such a thing?”

“Because it is still her father’s wish. Please don’t put me in that position, Jere…”

“What? Just what, exactly, is the position you will be in?”

She had looked out over the sea after that, only taking time to finish her sandwich – before the falcon cried out in pain again, still waiting for release.

Chapter Seven

Seattle | Today

Akari is in radiology. Today is her MRI.

He has asked to speak with her oncologist, Dr. Andrews, in his office. The physician seems slightly put out by this intrusion but is otherwise observant and attentive, in that oblique way physicians sometimes have around relatives and the great unwashed they must so often endure. The physician’s eyes are red, his eyeglasses quiet and thick, but he smells of expensive cologne and too much red wine at lunch.

“So…Mr. Grey? Patrick Grey, you said? Say, are you the writer?”

Fontaine/Grey shrugged. “I am Akari’s father.”

The physician nodded before a sated yawn appeared. “So, what can I do for you?”

“Akari’s grandfather and mother passed from Huntington’s Chorea. She doesn’t know that. In the rather unlikely event you stumble upon markers for that disease, assuming you sequence her genes at some point, you will not tell her anything concerning this – should the subject arise. And I just wanted to be clear about that.”

And it soon became apparent that Dr. Andrews didn’t care for being told what he could and could not tell a patient in his care. His face turned scarlet, he sputtered words like ‘paternalistic crap’ and ‘disgraceful’ and peppered them with spit-covered and rather abusive epithets that sounded an awful lot like four letter words – before finishing up with a couple of spicy ‘How dare yous!’ thrown in for good measure.

“And I suppose you learned about gene sequencing on YouTube?” Andrews snarled as he stood and pointed to the door. “You! Out! Now!”

But the old spy ignored the physician. 

“Get out of my office!” Andrews thundered once again. “Now!”

So the old spy simply extended his right hand.

And the physician ignored the spy’s hand, still pointing at the door to his office.

And so then the spy spoke.

“Thank you for your time,” Fontaine/Grey said as he made to leave.

But there was something in the spy’s eyes that gave the physician a moment of pause. Something akin to flashing red lights and blaring klaxons. 

“Tell me something, Mr. Grey. Are you the writer of those spy stories?”

The spy looked at the physician, his eyes now brooding and dark. “They aren’t stories, Doctor. They are more like…recollections…of events,” he said, his voice low and clear, and perhaps even a little menacing, “though of course some events had to be cleared by the agencies involved.”

“I see. I enjoyed the last one very much. Did you study chemistry?”

“I did, yes,” the spy said, his voice now – like his eyes – slipping into façades still too readily deployed.

“Akari’s mother, I assume, was a carrier?”

“She was, yes.”

“I’m so sorry. Was it her wish that you not tell Akari?”

The pain is as inescapable now as it ever was on that day. Yet even now, so caught up is he in the suffocating web of secrecy that has defined his life, the falcon still cannot fly. He can only nod before he turns and leaves the room.

Chapter Eight

Palo Alto | Yesterday

Akari is nursing contentedly on her mother’s breast; a soft, warm breeze caressing mother and daughter through open windows, a soft lullaby of redwood and eucalyptus drifting slowly through another lavender afternoon. Aki is asleep, lost in dreams of Cambridge, of the long walks she used to take beside the river. Maybe it’s the lacework of lavender on the arbor, or the gentle way of the sun-kissed warmth carried on the languid breezes, but these dreams feel so real to her, so real she wants to reach out and hold on to each new lucid moment before they fade away in wakefulness.

Jeremy is ‘at work,’ at Stanford, or whatever that means. He is supposed to be working in a doctoral program there, yet it is, apparently, a program people around campus don’t talk about. It is, she heard once, a Dark Program, a course of study concerning Very Dark Things. She suspects he is working on some kind of biological warfare project, yet she just isn’t sure, not really. And though the possible nature of his work bothers her, it is the careless evasions he hurls indiscriminately that hurt the most.

He seems to live in a world of secrets, where lies and deceit are intertwining strands of the sacred rituals he lives by. When she asks what he’s working on at school he mumbles and shrugs as he helps get dinner ready, muttering incoherently about recombinant this and bivalent that and in the end he really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. And yet that lack of meaning feels deliberate, and thoughtlessly so, as evasions tend to be. Because she has driven him to campus, usually to the Gilbert Building but more often to the Beckman Center facility at the Medical School, and she has seen other teachers and students there greet him knowingly, so at least she knows he isn’t lying to her – about working there, anyway. But even so – the feeling persists: there is something inherently wrong, almost evil, in his evasions.

And now her father has grown silent. He used to call every Saturday morning, but not recently. She has taken to calling him instead, yet Claire always answers the phone – and she wonders why this is so. “He is napping,” Claire says. Or: “He is out on the golf course.” And now her father is always just beyond her reach, and she is grasping for reasons, reaching out in the darkness, her hands enmeshed in more spiders’ webs. Why has he turned away? From her. From his granddaughter? Why? Always—why?

And then the call she has been waiting for comes just as Akari finishes feeding at her mother’s breast. The telephone is close by so she doesn’t even have to disturb her daughter, and then in an instant her father is on the line. He is coming to San Francisco later that week. He would like to see her, and of course he wants to spend time with his granddaughter.

Aki is ecstatic. It is as if her dreams are coming to life, and all Jeremy’s evasions are summarily forgotten, discarded, thrown out with yesterday’s trash. In a manic race against time she sets about cleaning their little bungalow, sprucing up the garden and the backyard where Akari and her grandfather will play.

Jeremy takes note of the change as soon as he gets in from school. Suddenly surrounded by her boundless energy, at first he is amused by the change that has come over Aki. But then the ragged contours of mania, of another manic episode, take shape in the rooms around the little house. He gropes in the dark for explanations, paying no mind at all to his own role in the looming collision; all he sees is his wife – coming undone in the grips of another unexpected hysteria. 

His first impulse has been to regard these manic tirades as some sort of hormonal thing – “because she is, after all, female.” But no, that isn’t quite right, nor is it fair – because he knows how invested she is in all her father’s comings and goings. This feels, to him, more like a fault slipping deep within the earth, unseen and barely remembered until the plates let go – in that first surreal moment when the rolling tremor begins. But then the inherent dichotomies of his own life take charge and he falls into the search for a mystical explanation rooted in thoughts of karma: he is soon left to consider that this outburst might be an awakening of the ancestral spirits that surround her. And if this is so, have these spirits come to guide her, or to warn him?

Chapter Nine

Seattle | Today

Akari is standing on the deck – alone with her thoughts. With her fears.

The spy is in his wheelchair. In his white living room, with a small fire set on iron grates now a fading glow above bricks blackened by time. He is watching Akari, thinking about the little bungalow in Palo Alto and the life together that almost was. Before their life turned to silence and everything fell into the sea. Yet even now his thoughts roam through time to those last precious moments together. To Aki, his wife. Akari’s mother. To all the things that vanished in the heat of sudden release.

Akari had, like her mother, grown up away from Japan, yet never was she fully removed from Japanese life and customs. Indeed, she always carried little pieces of Japan with her everywhere she went. Rocks large and small, but always either black rocks or white, and always from the sea beneath her grandfather’s houses. Pinecones and pine-needles too, yet only from the forests around her family’s ancient estate. And an arrow, at least for a while, that had once been split by another incoming arrow. But that was a secret she never talked about.

And that secret, like all the rest, began to unravel one day in Palo Alto. The day her grandfather came to visit. The last time, as it happened.

But the spy’s mind snapped back to the present, to Akari standing on the pier, staring into the water. He watched her watching the sea, unsure in that moment where her mind roamed. Would the otter come, he wondered? Could Akari possibly understand something so obvious?

Try as she might, Carolyn had not once seen the otter – despite many attempts. She had heard of Patrick’s encounters with the creature often enough; word of these strange communions was common knowledge down here along the water by the locks. Patrick’s house, despite all his intentions to the contrary, had become a very public place – no secrets allowed. Boats, from yachts to fishing trawlers coming in after weeks at sea, passed by the striking gray house, the one with the old man in his wheelchair often seen out on the tidy little private pier. Because not long after the old man moved into the gray house an otter appeared, and now it seemed that the little creature came to the old man almost every evening, and that, from a distance, it appeared as if the otter and the man in the wheelchair were speaking to one another. Soon enough photos of the encounters popped up on Instagram and Facebook, and some weekend evenings small crowds of boats gathered in the waters off the striking gray house and the gathered people waited to see what would happen.

And there were nights the old spy rolled down the pier right to the water’s edge and he waited there for the otter, seemingly willing her to appear. Yet there were evenings, usually when the largest crowds appeared, when she never came to him. And then the people saw that the old man was worried – even as all the disappointed boaters went back through the locks to Lake Union. 

Yet then, but only after all the noisome crowds dissipated, she came to him. And those who watched from a distance began to understand.

Yet after more than a year of hearing about all this, Carolyn had still not seen even one of these encounters. Like everyone else she wondered what they were all about, but like all the rest she found herself caught up in the deeper mysteries surrounding these encounters. She began to search for something that might explain the man, the creature, and the Spirit Gardens around the strange gray house. But once she started down that path the next most obvious question came to her quite naturally: what was the relationship between the statues in Patrick’s little gardens and this otter? 

Because for some reason Carolyn was sure there was a connection, and an important one at that.

“Why are such statues placed in these little gardens?” she asked him once, after she’d returned him from another doctor’s appointment. 

“They are homes, homes for the spirits that follow me from time to time,” he explained.

“What?” she barked, suddenly thinking her best-selling author might just be a nut case.

“In Shinto, spirits roam both the heavens and the earth, yet when they are here among us they need places to stay.”

“Spirits? You mean…like ghosts?”

The spy smiled. “Not always, but then again, yes, a kami might reside in the spirit world, for a time. But it is important to remember that kami are like us in many ways; they are not simply good or evil – they are often a little bit of both. Precocious, you could say. Even more difficult to grasp, these spirits are not separate from the natural world, but they are, rather, of that world. A kami, or what you call a spirit, might not reside in a rock – rather than simply be of the rock. So kami will not, in that sense, be like a breeze, rather they are quite literally the breeze, so when you look at one of my little gardens focus on what your eye is led to, then let your thoughts stay there for a while. Focus. Drift inward. It is said that in time, when your thoughts become one with the kami, that you can watch a rock grow, or see the breeze as it moves through its sky.”

“So, you’re saying that these spirits, these kami…they live…in your gardens…?”

“Not exactly, Carolyn. It is a more direct relationship than that. The garden, or I should say the individual elements within the garden, like that rock by the lantern, may be kami. The garden is simply a part of their journey, perhaps a place of rest along their way. Of more importance, these gardens are a place to reflect on my own journey.”

She looked at him carefully now, unsure how to proceed before deciding to go for broke. “So, tell me about the otter?”

“Tell you what, exactly, Carolyn?” the spy replied.

“Is this otter, well, some kind of kami?”

But the spy relaxed just a bit, then he smiled – even as he shrugged – and a little playfully, too, or so she remembered thinking at the time. “Sometimes, Carolyn,” he finally sighed, “an otter is just an otter.”

And yet there are times when everything falls apart, even the idea of kami, under the weight of just one more secret. Some call this bad karma, though it must be said that this is usually whispered with a gently knowing smile.

Chapter Ten

Palo Alto | Yesterday

Aki had been scrubbing the bungalow, making the old house ready for her father’s visit. Jere had mown the grass twice this week, and he dropped a sack of nitrogen rich fertilizer on the lawn two days before D-Day, watering everything until the grass looks like it belonged on a travel poster extolling the virtues of Irish dairy products. There wasn’t a single weed to be found in any one of the half dozen flower beds around the pristine little yard, and he’d even touched up some peeling paint on the garage door. The place, he thought, was spotless – so clean it might easily pass a cadet inspection at Sandhurst.

A black limousine pulled up out front and a driver exited and removed a wheelchair from the Cadillac’s boot, and now Aki stands quite still, almost like an English Setter on point. She watched as Claire helped her father from the back seat, and she was mortified when she realized her father could hardly stand on his own. Claire wheeled Kaito-san to the front porch, but there were four steps here and no ramp for Kaito-san’s wheelchair. He stood and Jere helped him up the stairs, and Jere could see now with his own eyes Kaito-san’s rapid decline, and he was stunned speechless. Once Akari’s grandfather was wheeled into the living room the little girl turned away from the sight of the crippled old man, and everyone in the room was devastated – Aki most of all.

Though everyone there is fluent in Japanese, English is the chosen language, yet one moment Kaito-san can hardly speak coherently, then he speaks clearly – until his head jerks sideways and his eyes roll upwards. He reaches for Claire’s hand, obviously an agreed upon signal that she will break the news and lead all further discussion.

“Aki,” Claire began, “your father loves you. He wants you to know that now, and he wants you to remember that in the years ahead.”

But Aki is a biochemist. She teaches biochemistry. She understands the chemistry of neurodegenerative disorders, and even the classifications of such disorders, so when she observes her fathers rolling shoulder movements and his twitching hands she understands what has befallen him.

“How far along is he, symptomatically?” she asked, her voice a cool, gray monotone.

“More than a year,” Claire said.

Aki turns to her father. “How long have you known?” she asked him.

“He’s known all his life,” Claire stated.

Aki turned to her husband. The spy. The expert at keeping secrets. “And how long have you known?”

But the spy turned away from her words and walked from the room.

“I see,” Aki says, her mind taking flight in this suddenly altered reality.

Now quite alarmed by the sorrow consuming the people in the room, Claire tries to intercede. “Aki, Jere didn’t find out until it was too late to stop the pregnancy. Your father asked that we keep this from you, at least until he knew more about…”

“Keep this,” Aki whispered, clearly stunned as Claire’s words crushed inward, “from me?”

And then, as her mind ran into the future – and, in effect, now that she knew what form Death would assume when It came for her – her eyes turned to her daughter, her future too suddenly inescapable and vulnerable – and like herself, so innocent of the crimes that had just been revealed. Then confusion began to distort reality… 

…and Aki reached for the rage suddenly consuming her being, turning first on her father – and then she pointed at the front door. “Please, leave!” she screamed, her voice scraping along the ragged edge of despair. Then she turned to Claire, and her husband: “Now! Get out of my house, all of you!”

And Claire watched helplessly as, a few minutes later, her son too came out of the house and down the walkway, two suitcases in hand. She was about to say something to him but he walked right past the limousine and to an old olive brown XKE in the driveway. There was, she knew, no room left for words between them now. His wounds were too deep, because words cut deeper than the sharpest sword. 

“Go to him,” Kaito-san advised, his sodden voice a crushed monotone. “Go, while you still have time.”

But Claire rolled up the window and turned to the driver. “Take us to the airport, please.”

And yet Jeremy was hardly aware of his mother’s departure, so vicious were Aki’s words, so deep were the wounds she left him with. He started the car but could not move, could not force his hands to operate the controls. He looked up in time to see the door to his life slam shut, and suddenly it was so hot inside the little interior he could hardly breathe.

Chapter Eleven

Seattle | Today

Akari is resting, wrapped in a blanket on a brown vinyl recliner, laying almost flat with her feet up. An IV line is hooked-up to a port under her left clavicle, and though she is sleeping, sweat has formed on her brow. The spy sits in his wheelchair by her side; he looks up from time to time and makes sure the blanket she has pulled up to her chin is still where she wants it – before turning back to the book in his hand. The book is a lavishly illustrated volume from the Cornell Ornithology Center titled The Owls of North America, and he has, apparently, finished reading about half of the book.

The room is about the size of a basketball court and there are sixty recliners here, and this morning every recliner has a patient, each with an IV running. One or two family members attend each patient, and a low-grade fear permeates everything in the giant room. A nurse comes by and changes Akari’s IV to a potent anti-nausea medication that they finish up each chemotherapy session with, and she smiles at Patrick Grey then looks at the book in his hand. “Are you interested in birds?” she asks, her voice barely more than a whisper.

The spy nods, and he tries – without much success – to smile. 

The nurse has seen this old man at every single chemo session – yet he almost never speaks – and in the nurse’s experience this is quite unusual. When most family members enter the room they are beyond scared – at least for the first few sessions – then the fear begins to subside, little by little, session by session. The room is filled with parents and their children, husbands with their wives, even a few of the forlorn and forsaken. The room is a war zone; the room a purgatory where winners and losers wait to be sorted out. Everyone in the room, absolutely everyone, is all too aware of the consequences that awaits the loser – yet this old man seems unfazed by all that. He doesn’t chatter on and on about how many people are getting chemo or the weather outside or even the latest football standings.

No. He seems untouched by the fear in the room.

And yet she understands. Or at least she thinks she does.

So when she leaves she reaches out and puts her hand on his shoulder as she passes. It is a friendly gesture. Innocent in the extreme.

And she is finally surprised – when he stiffens and pulls away.

“Are you alright?” the nurse asks – reflexively.

But now it is like the old man has donned a new mask; he is all smiles and suddenly very polite.  “Yes. So sorry…” he seems to say, then he thanks her for her empathy. Her empathy? And in all her years of nursing no one has ever spoken so obliquely, or in a voice so paternalistically manipulative. She nods and walks away, suddenly wary of the old man – because now she realizes he is anything but nice. Indeed, she is now more than a little scared of this old soul.

Chapter Twelve

Cheltenham | Yesterday

Jeremy Fontaine can’t think anymore. He is beyond tired.

Working once again at his father’s beloved GCHQ, he now finds himself putting in fourteen hour days at JTLS, the Joint Technical Language Service; he is translating SIGINT – Signals Intelligence – emanating from North Korea. Most of the intercepts come directly to Cheltenham from Royal Navy submarines operating covertly out of Japan, snapping up chatter between the Mayang Do Naval Base and the smaller naval station at Osang-Dong. The reason for all the excitement is simple enough: a Soviet Grisha III Class anti-submarine corvette had made an unscheduled port call at Osang-Dong and was now docked along the concrete quay on the south side of the small, deep water harbor. An American KH-11 Kennen 1010 satellite imaged the base a few hours after the ship’s arrival and just minutes later the first images were downloaded; telephones started ringing in Langley and Whitehall after that, and had been ever since.

And as Jeremy Fontaine was the only TS-cleared linguist on duty, and because he was fluent in Korean, Russian, and Japanese, he was now knee deep inside a clandestine weapons operation – which was a far cry from sorting through the biochemical warfare intel he was usually tasked to. Before he knew what was happening he was on the A40 bound for RAF Brize Norton, and once there he was shuttled out onto the apron to a waiting RAF L-1011 bound for Yokohama.

When the dust had settled some ten days later, the illegally delivered Russian SA-9 SAM launchers had been reloaded onto the Reshitelny and the corvette soon departed for her home port of Khabarovsk, leaving Fontaine conveniently stranded in Japan. Once cleared to leave, he hopped on an ANA YS-11 bound for Sapporo’s Okadama airport, then he found a seat on the afternoon Hakodate line railway service.

On the platform in Hakodate he called the number his mother had given him, only to find she was in town at the main hospital, Hakodate National. He set off to find a taxi, then rode across town in dense, late afternoon traffic – and by now he was completely exhausted. He found her outside of Kaito-san’s room, speaking to his step-father’s physician, and she appeared miserable – at least until her son walked up unannounced and so quite literally out of the blue.

Wide-eyed and stunned into grateful silence, she fell into his arms.

Kaito-san, it now appeared, had lost all almost cognitive function. He could no longer speak. He no longer understood the basics of day-to-day life – such as telling time and the necessity of eating food or drinking fluids. The physician, a neurologist, was trying to convey the available options, notably inserting a gastric feeding tube to keep her husband alive, but the physician had an open sheaf of papers in hand and he had been waving them about until Jere walked up. They were copies of Kaito-san’s Advance Directive, papers drawn up by lawyers detailing what was to be done once this state of dissolution was reached.

“There is very little I can do for your husband now,” the physician sighed, shrugging helplessly. “It is time to move him to hospice.”

And Jere looked at the physician. “Is there any mention of his daughter in those papers? Did he want her to come home to say goodbye?”

Yes, that was exactly what Aki’s father had expressed, only now that it was too late for her to have a meaningful conversation with her father, would she even come?

“Jere? Could you call her?” his mother asked. “I’m not sure I’d know what to say…”

So he went to the house and waited for the time zones to catch up to him, then he called her. She told him that she would come, but only if he was nowhere to be seen.

“Do you really hate me so much?” he asked.

“You have no idea,” she started to say, but her voice trailed off in lingering defeat.

“How is Akari?” he whispered, afraid of her next words.

“She is none of your concern.”

“Aki, I am her father; of course she is my concern.”

“You will have your time with her,” she snarled, her words sharp and cruel.

“I didn’t do this to you.”

“You kept it from me—you and your secrets! How dare you imply innocence.”

“I wonder, Aki. What would you have done if our roles had been reversed?”

There followed a long pause, then a hard swallowing sound over the long-distance connection. “I do not know,” she finally answered, her voice little more than an echo of the hollow life she had created for herself and her daughter.

“When you figure it out, would you let me know?”

“No. Never.”

“Did you ever love me?” he whispered.

“No. Never. I despised you from the moment I first laid eyes on you?”

He laughed at that, remembering their first few days together. “Yes, I felt exactly the same way,” he said, adding a thoughtful chuckle. “As a matter of fact, I’ve never had lips so chapped.”

“Don’t do this to me, Jere. Leave me to my hate, it is better than the house of secrets you made for us.”

“It makes no sense to do this, Aki. We had so much love to give our little girl, for each…”

But then the line went dead.

“So,” his mother said, “she hung up on you?”

He nodded. “I pushed her too hard.”

“Is she coming?”

Again he nodded. “As long as I’m not here—yes.”

“Then she can rot in Hell,” Claire sighed, her anger pushing aside all else. “I need you here with me, and so here you will stay.”

He turned and looked at his mother, not at all sure what he felt or even what to say, but he was angry – and he knew it was never a good idea to speak when anger was building – so he simply went to his room and packed his suitcase.

And she said not a word to her son as he left her husband’s ancient estate. 

He returned to Yokohama and then returned to Cheltenham, to the inherent sanity of his father’s ancient estate…and to the cold warmth of the many secrets he had surrounded himself with.

Chapter Thirteen

Seattle | Today

Akari was in the hospital again, her white count perilously low – again. She was in isolation, receiving platelets and now even more powerful anti-nausea meds. All her hair had long since fallen away, every bit of it, everywhere. The eyebrows had been hardest of all, and he’d heard that those – sometimes – didn’t ever grow back. How odd, he thought at the time. So many of our first impressions come to us by way of eyebrows, and now his daughter looked almost like a stranger without them. How odd. Yes, very odd. She was the same person, after all.

Or…was she. Cancer changes people. Cancers in the brain often produce stunning changes, but so far Akari seemed exactly as she had been – before. Would she emerge on the other side of this ordeal as the same person she had been? Would she emerge – at all? Or…was it time to act?

Carolyn was in the kitchen tossing a salad and he was in his chair, rolled up hard by the large windows that looked out over the sound, and the sun was already behind the Olympic Range – the lingering sky purple streaked with ambers and orange. He focused on the sky now, if only because when he closed his eyes he saw Akari in that dreadful hospital bed, leaning over the rail on her side while she retched into a blue plastic pail. 

He saw Carolyn’s reflection in the window, saw that she was staring at him now, her inert hands still on the salad tongs. She looked down at the salad then carried the bowl to the table, then she moved to scramble an egg for him – and he watched her, covertly, as she moved about his kitchen.

‘Isn’t that strange? She’s my agent and yet she’s the only friend I have left in the world.’

Kaito-san had been a friend, in a way, yet there had always been an uncomfortable distance between them. He’d had so-called friends at GCHQ, even a few kind souls at the Wheatsheaf Pub down the way that were good for a talk – but where were they now? ‘Gone, just like all those other lives that drifted in and out over the years.’

Yet right now there was the lone reflection in the glass, the friend who collected her percentage – yet even so here she was, despite having nothing to gain.

‘Is that friendship?’ the voice beside the thought wanted to know.

She finished his scramble and called him to the table. Everything was just as if he had made it himself. “Have you watched me so well?” he asked. 

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“You’ve made eggs just as I do. Spinach, mushrooms, and no fat at all. And the salad, just as I make mine. Amazing…!”

She grimaced – a good-natured, self-deprecating thing. “I guess I’ve watched you a few times too many, huh?”

He rolled closer to the table and took a bite of egg. “Perfect!” he shouted. “It’s bloody-well perfect!”

She grinned again, and an unexpected, contented warmth spread across her face. “You’ll have to show me how to do the artichoke hearts someday,” she blushed.

“My word, but I am surprised. Do go ahead and dig in.”

“I know I’ve never asked, but are you a vegan?”

“Me? Good God, no. If my blood pressure could stand it, I’d love nothing more than a pound of bacon on my next cheeseburger.”

“Really?”

“Yes, yes, but don’t go on about will power because its nothing of the sort. Good old fear of death has worked for me, and very well, too.”

“That’s funny. I can’t picture you afraid of anything.”

He looked up from his plate and studied her for a moment. “Why haven’t you remarried?”

“Scared, I guess. Too many bad memories.”

“Oh? How so?”

“He turned out to be abusive. More verbally than anything else, but he was intimidating, too. Physically, I mean. Kind of like a bully – but there was an anger in him he just couldn’t shake…and when he started to take things out on me? Well, living with someone who’s scaring you when they’re supposed to be the one you trust?”

“Did I hear once that he was stalking you?” he asked.

“No, not really. And about six months after the ink was dry on the divorce papers he up and moved to Boston, got married and had a whole bunch of kids…”

“So, you think that was it? Just bad chemistry between the two of you?”

“I don’t know, Patrick, I really don’t. Sometimes I think there was just something about me that punched all the wrong buttons, or maybe I was punching his and didn’t know it…”

“I’m not so sure I’d blame myself for someone else’s issues, Carolyn, but that doesn’t really answer my question. You’re what? Not even fifty and still living alone?”

“Patrick? I could ask you the same thing, you know? Problem is…I’m just like everyone else in the world. I don’t know the slightest thing about you, and I don’t even know who that girl is and I’ve been driving you two up to the cancer center for weeks now…”

He smiled. The same warm smile he always used to deflect questions he didn’t want to answer. “Fair enough,” he just managed to say, putting his fork down on the white plate. “She’s my daughter, Carolyn.”

Carolyn leaned back in her chair and smiled. “Your daughter? And here I thought she was, oh, I don’t know, like some kind of exotic old flame – you know…like the one who got away?”

He looked down, crossed his hands on his lap. “The one who got away,” he mumbled at his fingers. “My, but isn’t that rich.”

Chapter Fourteen

Hakodate | Yesterday

Kaito-san’s family lineage stretched back at least a thousand years – at least Kaito-san had stated so on more than one occasion – and if the size and grandeur of the estate was any measure of the claim Jeremy had no cause to doubt it.  In winter the grounds were rather bleak, yet spring and summer brought on magical explosions of color, but it was autumn when the place seemed to come into its own.

The main house was now almost three hundred years old, and as a registered Special Historic Site it was open to both visiting scholars and – twice a year – to the public, and as such, the old house was used more for special ceremonies and had no longer been a daily residence for almost a hundred years. The new residence was architecturally similar to the old, but it had been built in the 1950s and renovated once since. While the new house would never have been mistaken for a western residence, the rooms were climate controlled and there was even a modern bathroom or two. When Claire moved into the new house, however, Kaito-san took note of her obvious discomfort and he had plans drawn up for a new wing, with rooms fitted-out to western sensibilities.

Now, with Kaito-san near death, Jeremy was alone in one of the large visitor suites in the new wing, and he was staring at the gardens on the other side of a huge plate glass window that seemed purpose built to make the landscape feel part of the interior. Maples were ablaze in all their autumnal glory, and red leaves were falling onto the gently rolling stream that meandered through the gardens on its way to the sea. Across the garden, lost among stands of towering pines, was the old residence; huge timbers now gray with the passage of time, amber shoji screens leading to candlelit rooms, the scene quiet, almost austere – yet elegant.

Aki was on the other side of the garden now; she was staying in the old house, keeping to the formal rigidity of other times. And as they remained – technically, at least – married, she remained Jeremy’s wife – and she was, therefore, duty-bound to treat her husband with respect. As he too was required to treat her. There was, of course, an ancient teahouse on the grounds, up the gently sloping hill behind the old house. It too was designed and built in another era, a slower time paced to allow life to unfold along the more or less predetermined lines of feudal society.

But then the thought comes to him unasked: Has so much changed? Are our problems really so different? 

So…why not a tea ceremony. And – perhaps – the formal reconciliation that such ceremonies enshrine in tradition?

So far Aki had eluded him; only Claire had been allowed to visit her – and Akari – in the old house. And only after that meeting had Claire been permitted to take Akari to see her father, to talk as grandfather to granddaughter might – under better circumstances. And as Aki had allowed no further contact between them, and as her Will seemed unshakeable, the spy seemed at a loss. 

So he asked his mother about a formal tea ceremony, and how she thought Aki might respond to such a formalized request. He knew that, per ancient custom, such a request could not be denied without grounds – and as such it might be the only way he could break down the wall Aki had erected between them. Still, his participation could backfire spectacularly. He had no training in how to conduct himself during such a highly ritualized, intimately choreographed ceremony, and in the end all he might accomplish was a staggering embarrassment that would kill off the last tattered remnants of their marriage.

And would such an invitation even be appropriate – at a time like this? The family was gathered here in the shadow of Kaito-san’s looming death, so how could a reconciliation between them take place without Death casting long shadows over everything he said or tried to do?

Yet his mother was uncharacteristically sanguine about the idea. “Well, you certainly have nothing to lose,” she said later that afternoon while on a slow walk through the old garden. “And who knows? Perhaps an appeal to tradition might be just what she needs right now. But Jere, you must understand that such an invitation must come from your hand, not mine.”

“Of course,” the spy said.

But then he received an invitation from Kaito-san. One last meeting between them was requested, in the hospital, and early the next morning. Auspicious timing or not, he would ask her father what he thought of the idea. Could the tea ceremony bring them back together?

And then how strange that last night had become.

Sleep without rest, quiet rain falling on reddened leaves – everything waiting on a response from the too quiet earth. And then something deep within gave way and he was left to stand inside some kind of new silence, trapped now outside the space between the sun and the moon. What was happening to him?

He felt translucent, lifeless. Like a ghost might feel.

Like he was standing on the precipice between light and dark, between life and spirit.

A sudden movement – caught his eye – and he walked to the huge plate glass window that overlooked the garden, his mind searching for movement in the dark rain. What had the spies in Virginia taught him? Stand still – become as one with the darkness and let movement come to you, use averted vision to focus on the threat – then move decisively.

Yet this new place was without light and sound; black clouds hung so low and thick that not even the lights of the city made it to this place. 

He remembered thinking how impossibly dark that night became – until he heard the cries of two women split the night.

And while the cries still pierced the night he saw, on a low-slung branch hanging out over the garden, his first signs of movement. Pale and gray, up in a tree. Dark and so very still. Patient, like a predator. Like death. 

Then a jolt of recognition. An owl, huge and white, was up there, searching eyes full of amber as they found their way to him. And in another jarring instant he realized it was Kaito-san out there on the low lying branches of the tree, and in the next instant he understood why he had heard two birds sing their song of sorrow to the waiting earth.

Chapter Fifteen

Seattle | Today

Kaito-san’s swords still waited over the fireplace, their song unfinished.

Carolyn was in the kitchen, finishing the dishes. Waiting to hear the rest of the story.

He turned and stared at the short sword until he could no longer stand the sight of it, then he turned away and looked off into the darkness.

“You have some Drambuie in the cabinet,” she called out. “Should I pour one glass, or two?”

“Two,” he replied as he pushed the door aside and rolled out onto the deck, his eyes adjusting to the darkness beyond the night. He threw a couple of cedar logs onto the fire pit and just managed to get them going, their warmth pulling him in and holding him close, and he watched the flickering line between shadow and night playing out on the deck, a dance caught out of time – as always with no resolution but time.

He felt a blanket and closed his eyes, tried to remember his mother protecting him from other chills, then he saw Carolyn sitting across from him in the firelight. She was such an unambiguous creature, even now, after almost five years.

He saw the glasses she had carried out and nodded. “Thanks. I may need a little liquid courage tonight.”

“Is that so? Because Akari is your daughter?”

“Yes. Yes she was, once upon a time.”

“Once upon a time? Divorce, you mean?”

He shook his head as he took a sip of liqueur. “No, not really. She was my daughter, you see – right up to the moment…” But he stopped talking, looked out into the night – until he saw her swimming his way – and then his heart leapt with joy. ‘Oh, Aki,’ he sighed, ‘please don’t leave me again.’

“What did you say?”

But the spy simply shook away the intrusive question, kept his eye on the otter approaching the pier – until she burst free of the water and scurried across the sanded redwood planks to his chair. And in the next instant the otter was a writhing mass of fur spinning in and out of his grasp – until she finally settled inside the blanket bundled around his neck.

“You know,” Carolyn whispered, “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to watching this…”

The otter slid down onto his chest and so throned she stared into the old spy’s eyes, and perhaps she too was mesmerized by the flames playing within the infinite reflections she experienced again and again.

Chapter Sixteen

Hakodate | Yesterday

Kaito-san’s lineage was samurai, and ancient. That his line of the family had ended up on Hokkaido was no accident of birth, either. His great-great grandfather had been given a large fiefdom near Hakodate almost two hundred years ago, the bestowal presumably a just reward for decades of faithful service to the Emperor, yet the real reason came down to brute-force politics. A years long struggle for the shogunate ended with the ascension of the older brother and the forced exile of the younger – so the trick had been to make exile somehow feel like victory. And yet some had wondered if the Shogun had not been too generous with this huge bestowal.

Kaito-san’s grandfather had set about developing deep ties with the military liaisons from both France and Britain and soon enough it seemed to many in Edo that as military power shifted away from medieval methods, real power began to shift towards those with the strongest network of alliances with western governments. While this mad rush got underway, Kaito-san’s grandfather further consolidated power by developing the means to keep Russia away from the home islands, at least until he could build a strong enough navy to take out Russia’s Imperial Navy, and by the time this consolidation was complete the younger brother’s political dynasty was assured.

Yet something unexpected happened to the heirs of this dynasty. They traveled to Europe and then to the Americas, they went to schools in Britain and Switzerland and eventually, God forbid, in California, and they in time began to view themselves as not simply citizens of the Japanese Empire but rather more as citizens of the world. They loved Japan, especially the cooler northern islands of their home, but the more they traveled and the more they experienced other points of view the more tolerant they became, so by the time war seemed inevitable, in the late-1930s, the more a deep despair filled their hearts.

After the war ended, and after Kaito-san’s father returned to Hokkaido, it did not take long for the boy to craft his return to Britain; before too many years passed Kaito-san was studying in Oxford, and not long after graduation he was working at the embassy in London. He married the woman that suited his family and they had a daughter – Aki – yet it was this young woman’s misfortune to be raised between two cultures while never really belonging to either. She was, she always felt, on the outside – looking in. Never British, yet rarely did she consider herself Japanese – especially after one of her infrequent trips home – when she began to feel like she was living at one of life’s more oblique margins. Soon she pursued academic interests – if only because it was in the less restrictive yet somehow more confining classroom that she felt a more secure sense of belonging.

Yet as a Japanese national in Britain she was frequently the target of real racial animus, though by the 1960s the worst of these influences were on the wane. When one professor at Cambridge dug into her radical background a little too disparagingly she ran home for a time, only to be hit by another wave self-recrimination when ‘friends’ in Hakodate characterized her as a dedicated anglophile. And then her mother passed away, reopening old wounds once again – for her mother had never once felt any comfort when residing in London. 

After her return to England she met Jeremy, and he seemed to dote of Aki’s Japanese heritage – which only confused her more. Yet it was his intention to run away to California – to reinvent themselves, or so he claimed – that seemed to carry the day. By that point Aki was as culturally confused as she could possibly have been, and California offered a kind of anonymity that at first appeared comfortably attractive, so she leapt at the chance to escape this first trap she had constructed for herself. Settling into suburban life in Palo Alto and going to school in Berkeley, surrounded as it was by one of the most liberal academic communities in the United States, might have freed her from this trap…at least had it not been for the secrecy surrounding her father’s Huntington’s diagnosis. As it was, all her walls fell at once, leaving her wounded and exposed once again – and feeling more that a little self-destructive. Ridding herself of Jeremy was perhaps her last, most desperate act of self annihilation, yet not even he saw that for what it truly was.

With Jeremy now expelled from their lives, Aki and Akira drifted on unseen currents. Aki recognized the precariousness of their existence and sought help; her first attempts to speak to traditional psychotherapists proved uninteresting, so she latched onto the more radical approach to dealing with emotional interventions afforded by Linus Pauling’s Orthomolecular Medicine Institute. As a biochemist herself she was perhaps more inclined to accept the extreme nutritional guidelines the institute prescribed, yet within months she began to feel not just better, but almost reborn.

When she heard the latest rumors that Jeremy was working on some kind of advanced biological warfare program she secured Akira and herself behind increasingly opaque layers of anonymity, and in time she grew revolted with the idea that she had ever allowed herself be seduced by such a two-faced monster… 

Chapter Seventeen

Seattle | Today

The spy was sitting in his study on the telephone, listening to the oncologist’s report while sitting at his desk. Akira’s white counts were still perilously low and there was still no sign chemotherapy had had any measurable impact on the tumor in her brain. The spy asked questions, surprisingly informed questions that rattled the oncologist, then the spy hung up the phone and turned to look out the window. High in one of the pines along the water’s edge he saw the owl, and then he saw the owl was staring – at him.

“I know, Kaito-san,” the spy said. “I know what I must do. I will not fail in my duty to you again.”

He made two calls, the second to Carolyn. He asked her to pick him up later that afternoon and drive him to the airport, and though surprised she dutifully agreed. Jeremy never traveled by air these days, and he never, ever went anywhere alone.

Something, she realized, must be terribly wrong.

Chapter Eighteen

Hakodate | Yesterday

The spy followed all the prescribed rules of the tea ceremony; what to say, how to write what he needed to convey, everything he could imagine. He was, ensconced as he was inside Kaito-san’s sprawling residence, surrounded by experts who all seemed most eager to help. The best calligrapher was summoned and an impossibly simple – yet profoundly elegant – invitation was crafted, and accompanied by his mother he delivered it to Aki. She dutifully accepted the scroll and retired to consider the entreaty. 

The tea house would be prepared and made ready for the ceremony two nights hence, and Aki sent word to Jeremy that as it was her duty to attend she would of course be there. Yet almost from the moment she had first read the invitation, Aki had felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Could they finally reconcile their differences – not just their personal differences but the lingering cultural differences that had suddenly loomed so large? Or were the differences between their worlds simply too great? 

At least, she told herself, he was trying. Couldn’t she meet him halfway?

Word spread throughout the vast residence of the reunion, and there was a freshening in the air, something almost like an early spring. Jeremy was fitted for a proper kimono – deepest red with a single white cherry blossom – and he was also directed to include Kaito-san’s swords in his ensemble. Because they were his now. 

His? 

Surely not. He wasn’t samurai, so how could this be?

And when the anointed hour came Aki waited for him. And she waited. Until word came to her, of some kind of emergency – some kind of biochemical emergency – in Tokyo. Terrorists were reportedly involved, thousands were allegedly at risk.

And she knew then that he had made his choice.

The gulf between them had been too great after all.

Chapter Nineteen

Seattle | Today

The spy sat on his deck overlooking Puget Sound, a small Yeti cooler by his feet and two large manila envelopes resting under his hand on the varnished redwood table. It was late afternoon and two gardeners lingered not far away, cleaning away a few weeds growing along the periphery of the rock-faced sea wall, and an arborist has just finished clearing away branches that had been closing in on the house. A large ‘bird house’ had been placed in the tallest pine two days ago, and he looked up and smiled at it.

The spy heard the patio door slide open and then two people walking towards the table – yet his concentration remained fixed on the bird house in the tree. Did he see eyes in the darkness? So soon?

“Patrick?” Carolyn asked cheerfully as she walked up. “Could I get you something to drink?”

“I’ve put a pitcher of blackcurrant tea in the ‘fridge,” the spy replied. “I think there’s some mango juice, as well.”

“So,” she sighed, “you’d like iced-tea?”

“If you don’t mind. Dr. Andrews? You?”

“Tea sounds good,” Akira’s oncologist said as he sat next to Patrick Grey, the writer.

Carolyn returned to the house and the spy turned in his wheelchair to face the physician: “Thanks for coming. I know this was rather short notice.”

The physician was in his forties, perhaps fifty years old, and he seemed very put out, almost angry. Yet the head of the medical school had, in effect, ordered him to attend this impromptu meeting.

Wheels were rolling. Wheels the spy had set in motion.

“So, Mr. Grey, I’m told you wanted to speak to me about something important?”

The spy nodded. “Important…yes. But you see, first I think I need to tell you a story.”

“A story?”

“Hm-m, yes,” Grey sighed – just before he turned and looked up into the pines – again.

Now the oncologist seemed peeved, like this whole affair was turning into the colossal waste of time he knew it would be – but Carolyn returned with drinks as well as a platter of crab claws and remoulade, which the spy had only recently learned was a weakness the oncologist simply could not resist.

So the spy turned to his assistant and nodded. She produced a fountain pen, a fat old Mont Blanc, and put it squarely on the two envelopes before she returned to the house. 

Patrick took a sip of tea and nodded. “There’s something about this blend, I think. Perfection in a glass. And, oh yes, the Dungeness are from City Fish Market. Your favorites, are they not?”

Andrews turned to the spy and smiled. “So, you’ve done your homework. Now, care to tell me what this is all about?”

Patrick set aside his glass of tea, his hand passing over the fountain pen and for a split second he thought he felt a change in gravity…like something was pulling his hand to the envelopes. So he smiled at his own discomfort as he turned to look at Andrews again.

“Once upon a time,” the old spy said – as if out of the blue, “there were labs all around the world that had but one purpose, and that purpose was to fight the next war. The men and women working in many of these labs focused their attentions on developing new weapons…”

“Excuse me, but are you talking about CBW?” Andrews asked, referring to the usual acronym employed when discussing chemical and biological warfare.

And the old spy nodded. “I am.”

“And what has this to do with me?”

Now the old spy simply held up a hand, and his meaning was clear enough. “Many of us, on the other hand, were charged with coming up with so-called antidotes to possible agents the Soviets were developing…”

“Us?” Andrews said, his eyes narrowing a bit. “Are you saying that you…?”

The old spy nodded, ignoring the interruption.

“What’s your background?” Andrews barked, now more than a little perturbed by the direction this meeting was headed, but again the writer simply held up a hand, a scolding admonishment a parent might wave at an offending child.

“During the course of our duties it was often necessary to penetrate Soviet research facilities and acquire samples,” the spy said, his eyes sparkling with memories both fond and fearful, “and after one such excursion we found ourselves in possession of the most evil creation imaginable. An aerosol agent, quite easily dispensed, that once inhaled led to the almost spontaneous formation of mutations within certain classes of glial cells, notably fibrous astrocytes.”

Andrews was paying attention now.

“Curiously, this agent was, or is, rather persistent.”

“How persistent?” the oncologist sighed.

“Oh, at first we determined it was almost flu-like. It could hang around for ten minutes with no loss of potency. When we hit a half hour we knew they had hit the proverbial jackpot, and all we had to do was determine its rate of uptake.”

“Which was?”

“Ninety percent at fifteen minutes, then only a modest falloff all the way out to the thirty minute mark.”

“Shit.”

“Yes, just so, and I think I used that very word. Then word began to percolate that Andropov wanted to test the weapon. And then a few months later hundreds of cases of glioblastoma presented at two hospitals in central Siberia, numbers as you might suspect way beyond any reasonable standard deviation, and so we had our answer. The most potent biological weapon ever created in the laboratory had been test deployed over two penal colonies, and so of course a few weeks later Reagan announced the whole star wars thing and it was off to the races we went once again.”

“Is it contagious?”

The old spy looked away, but then he nodded his head. “It behaves, all in all, rather like any other garden variety influenza particle. Absent transcription errors it happily goes about it’s job with little regard for UV or other photo-chemical intervention…”

“Then why the hell hasn’t there been a pandemic? I mean, the pathogen you’re describing would have been beyond lethal…”

The old spy nodded. “True. Too true. I think the developers understood these implications, and thankfully they took appropriate precautions. I think they were quite terrified of the global implications. Also, you should understand that most of these researchers disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Dead men tell no tales, Dr. Andrews.”

“So…are you saying it’s just dumb luck we haven’t had a major incident involving this stuff?”

“Oh, there’ve been a couple of incidents.”

“What? Are you serious?”

But the old spy was no longer paying attention. No, he had quietly turned away and was now staring at the kimono over the fireplace, lost in the impenetrable sorrow that had chased him since that night of fast passing storms. 

Chapter Twenty

Osaka | Yesterday

He walked out the gate to a waiting Land Rover; a half hour later he was airborne and headed for Osaka. Once onboard the US Air Force Gulfstream he quickly read through the briefing paper that had just been forwarded to Washington and London; a “red” terror cell now had the neurotoxin and was preparing to disperse the agent – and word was the cell planned to release the agent either in or around a major transportation hub or onboard a crowded train. Infrared scanners and dedicated “sniffers” had already been installed in railway and subway stations in both Tokyo and Osaka; dozens more units would go active in the days ahead. These surveillance nodes could detect people with high temperatures as well as – theoretically – airborne viral particles, and both would be key to any successful response.

Chapter Twenty-One

Hakodate | Yesterday

Aki walked to Jeremy’s room and found that, yes, he had indeed left the house.

She walked through the house in a daze, lost in shame and suddenly all too aware that through her actions she had dishonored her family and filled her father’s last years with great sorrow. She felt buffeted by gales of uncertainty as she came to her room – until she remembered. She was samurai. She had dishonored her family. There was only one way out.

She went to find her father’s swords.

 Chapter Twenty-Two

Seattle | Today

The spy looked at the crimson kimono even as his mind drifted to the swords that attended the silken garment. They were his now – and he could not deny them…  

“Patrick?”

Light from a recessed fixture in the ceiling danced along the Masamune’s perfect edge, entrancing him, as always drawing him inward to that other light… 

“Patrick? Are you still with us?”

He recognized Carolyn’s voice and felt his way back to her, his mind struggling to break free. “Yes…yes…so sorry. I’ve still a bit of jet-lag, I think. Please, pardon me.”

Carolyn refilled their glasses, pulled him back into the moment. “Should I make you an espresso?”

The spy pushed himself up in his chair, then he smiled at Dr. Andrews. “How is the crab? Palatable, I hope?”

“Delicious. Won’t you help me out here? There’s too much for me alone.”

“Perhaps.” The spy looked at Carolyn again and she retreated to the warmer confines of the kitchen. “Where was I? Oh yes…incidents.”

“Yes, and frankly, I hope you don’t mind me saying that I find all this a little hard to swallow – Mister Grey.”

The spy smiled. “I understand,” he sighed, before taking a long pull from his glass of tea. “My PhD, the first, anyway, was in biochemistry. Oxford, in case anyone is wondering. My second was in neuropharmacology. Stanford. I also finished my MD there, by the by.”

“You…you’re a physician?”

The spy shrugged. 

“That’s a simple question, Grey. Are you a physician, or aren’t you?”

“It really doesn’t matter now, does it, Andrews?” the spy sighed, suddenly growing tired of the other man’s preening paternalism.

“What has this story got to do with me, Dr. Grey?”

The spy looked down at his hands crossed on his lap and he nodded slowly. “Once we knew of the existence of the virus we began to model possible threat vectors, and these crude estimates were alarming enough. Then we received the purloined sample and the first thing we did was send it to Goldstein at Southwestern. Once we had the sequence it didn’t take long to figure out how they’d made the agent. Essentially they weaponized a potently malignant cancer, so the job at hand was to come up with a readily deployable countermeasure.”

“A…countermeasure? You mean…like a vaccine?”

The spy shook his head. “A vaccine was deemed too slow. Vaccines take time to reach a significant percentage of any given population, and with this agent the time involved was simply too great. No, the problem we faced was twofold: detection and direct intervention.”

“Direct intervention? How so?”

“We devised a cure, Dr. Andrews.”

A cold, heavy pressure settled over the oncologist as the real import of those words sunk in.

“A cure? For neuroblastoma?”

The spy nodded. “Yes, including all known forms of astrocytoma and glioblastoma.”

“That’s preposterous! Fucking preposterous…and you know it!”

“I am the wisest man alive,” the spy whispered, “for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing at all.”

“What?” Andrews snarled.

“Oh, nothing,” Fontaine/Grey/the spy replied. “Nothing at all.”

Andrews pushed his chair back and he had just started to stand…

…when a large white owl flew down from the pine and settled on table.

The physician, now quite startled, fell back into his seat. “What the devil…” he just managed to say, his voice now little more than a dry, barren place in a land of confusion.

“I don’t think he’s quite ready for you to leave, Dr. Andrews. Do sit and let me wrap this up.”

The owl was not quite two feet tall and he was purest white – aside from his all-seeing amber eyes – and once he’d settled on the table his head turned slightly – until his unblinking eyes were trained on Andrews’.

“In the cooler,” the spy said, pointing at the Yeti by his feet, “you’ll find twenty-one vials; Akira will need three of these.” The spy took one of the envelopes and bent the little brass clasps to open it. “These documents release the patent and assign it to the University of Washington. I’ve already signed, and note my signature was duly notarized by our embassy in Japan. Carolyn will notarize yours when you’re ready, at which point you may begin synthesis and production. The second envelope details the necessary steps.”

“Look, if this is true, if you’re not pulling some kind of…”

The owl’s head bobbed twice, then he spread his wings wide.

“Oh, it’s quite real, Dr. Andrews. And there are no strings attached – other than my request for absolute anonymity.” 

Andrews now stared at the owl, quite unable to avoid the creatures haunted eyes. “Anonymity?” he asked.

“My absolute anonymity. It’s spelled out in the release, but everything is rescinded the moment absolute anonymity is vacated. Understood?”

Andrews nodded – but he was startled by a wet, thrashing sound out on the pier…and then he spotted a sea otter trundling up the planks towards Grey…who was now smiling and spreading open a large towel on his lap. The otter leapt up into the all-embracing towel and Grey wrapped himself around the creature and began drying her fur. Andrews shook his head in disbelief, his hands beginning to tremble. “What did you put in that goddam tea?” he asked serenely. “Acid?” The otter turned and began licking the spy’s nose and chin, then the owl hopped over and assumed his place on Grey’s shoulder, leaving Andrews to drift along inside a self-induced semi-hallucinatory stare.

“Stevia, I think,” the spy sighed, the owl rubbing against his ear. “But just a pinch.”

Coda

Seattle | One year later

The spy’s daughter sat on the deck watching the sunset, her mind focused on the otter in her lap. Carolyn slid open the patio door and came out with dinner, Dr. Andrews following along a moment later with four glasses and a bottle of chilled riesling.

Akira’s hair was growing again – though her eyebrows were still sparse – and her color was better, but she was free of the malignancies that had been coursing through her body. She was settling into her new life in America, still very weak after treatments ended but improving day by day. There were times when she – almost – believed as her father had, that the otter was really her mother and the owl her grandfather, but as far as she was concerned the jury was still out on all that nonsense. The gardens were, however, still immaculate.

“Is Patrick still napping?” Andrews asked – though he directed his question to no one in particular.

Carolyn smiled and nodded. “Yes. He had another rough night, I’m afraid.”

The physician nodded. “I guess that’s to be expected – at his age. Is he using the walker?”

“No,” Carolyn replied – with a little scowl showing. “I think he’s too proud.”

“Is he in the living room?”

Carolyn nodded and Andrews put down the glasses and the bottle then turned to go inside and check on the old man. If nothing else it seemed like the right thing to do.

As he walked up to the sofa in front of the simmering fireplace he pulled up short, surprised to find a tiny fox curled on Patrick’s chest – though he saw both were sleeping fitfully. He moved closer to look over the little creature, but as he bent over to inspect the fox a shadow passed over Patrick and Andrews jumped back as the white owl landed on the sofa’s back. The owl stared at him so Andrews shook his head and walked back out onto the patio, not quite knowing what else to do – or even to think. “This isn’t a house,” he muttered to himself, “it’s a menagerie.”

He walked over to the table and sat down, found his glass was full and that condensation was already forming on the glass. “When did the fox show up?” he asked Carolyn.

“Fox? What fox?”

“What fox? The one in there, the one asleep on Patrick.”

“What?” Akira and Carolyn cried as they stood, both making their way into the house.

Yet Patrick wasn’t on the sofa now. In fact, he was nowhere to be found.

Carolyn ran into Patrick’s bedroom – but he wasn’t there. She checked his bathroom, then ran outside through each one of his little gardens – and still she found not a trace of him. She heard Andrews in the garage and went to check, but nothing came of that, either.

Then they heard singing. A low, almost sonorous lament, the words Japanese. Was it – coming from the living room?

They ran from the garage back into the house and found Akira standing before the lone television, and she was openly weeping now.

“I was just standing here,” she sobbed, “and then this started playing…”

Andrews recognized the scene immediately, the words incisive, grounded in the heart of the moment:

life is brief
fall in love, maidens
before the crimson bloom
fades from your lips
before the tides of passion
cool within you,
for there is no such thing
as tomorrow, after all

A chill ran down the physician’s spine as he tried to remember the first time he’d seen Kurosawa’s Ikiru, and how he’d openly wept as Takashi Shimura sang The Gondola Song. The poetic imagery of those last scenes had never left him, and he halfway expected to look up and see Patrick out in his garden on a swing set in a gently falling snow, but no, that was not to be.

“Wait a minute,” he muttered. “Where’s the fox…and the owl?”

And after a quick look around the house they found that all of Patrick’s animals were now gone, even the otter. Gone without a trace. As if they had never been there at all.

And then Akira gasped, and pointed at the framed kimono hanging above the dying fire.

Andrews walked up to the frame and inspected the wood, then the paper backing that sealed the rear of the piece, yet both were intact, undisturbed.

Which was, under the circumstances, quite odd.

For the short sword, the tantō, was no longer mounted there.

But just below, on the black slate hearth gleaming in the last glowing embers, was a spreading pool of deepest red blood – disturbed only by the paw prints of a passing fox.

© 2023 adrian leverkühn | abw | all rights reserved. This was a work of fiction – pure and simple – and all characters and events presented herein are fictitious constructs not to be taken literally, or even seriously. Quoted passages from The Tale of the Heike (c.1330), as well as the first stanza of The Gondola Song (1915) are now in the public domain. By the by, I highly recommend the Criterion Collection’s restoration of Ikiru, available on BluRay/DVD.

Adios, and keep warm.

Been rather quiet around here, or at least it might seem so after such a long time without new work posting. The truth is rather less pleasant and far too bothersome to go into, but pardon me for not going down that road.

I had started a new story before everything hit the fan and it’s almost complete. Hopefully it will post soon so if interested keep your eyes open.

Hard to imagine that a year ago the status quo ante still appeared solid; Putin was still all crazy bluster but at least the center was still holding. My, what a difference a year makes. Eastern Ukraine is a medieval no-man’s land and we are all perched on the knife edge of another paranoid fascist’s dream. I remember Kennedy on the TV talking about Cuba and Russian missiles so the sense of deja vu is all a little too uncomfortable right now, but in truth there’s little we can do but fill our lives with love and understanding.

Speaking of music, this popped a few months back and is a fresh voice…the next generation, I reckon. It feels rather 1950s to me, almost like Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee running on the beach, but it hits all the right spots.

I wanted to wish all of you the peace to enjoy the people around you, and to reach out and share what you might with a stranger to two. One thing seems certain, however:

Later.