The Hunger of Crows, page 10
He takes the chips inside the cabin, refills his glass, and sits reading the ingredients on the foil bag. What the hell is maltodextrin? It sounds like one of Trina’s worst nightmares. He pulls open the bag, pinches one of the tortilla chips between his thumb and forefinger, and sets it on his tongue. He’s half expecting to hear his arteries slam shut, to feel his blood pressure surge to his brain case and strike him dead with a massive hemorrhage. Instead, a sensation of joy begins to emanate from his mouth, spreading through his whole body, a dizzying feeling. He realizes he’s smiling. He chews and swallows the chip.
Whatever else the great philosophers and statesmen have said about freedom, however many ways they have defined it or described it, he, Scott Crockett, newly divorced carpenter and up-and-coming wild man, is perhaps the only person in the history of the world who knows for a fact what freedom actually tastes like.
It’s something like roasted corn, but wonderfully salty. With just a hint of lime.
He’s reaching for his second chip when he hears the frantic pounding on the hull.
CHAPTER
16
D’ANGELO PULLS INTO the scenic overlook parking area high above the choppy waters of Kachemak Bay. The wind is raging. A mass of angry black storm clouds roil and loom overhead. He parks the Camry near a sign declaring that the town nestled at the foot of the hill is the “Halibut Capital of the World.” He gets out and stretches. Five hours in the plane and nearly five more in the car have his lower back aching, legs stiff. He leans on the steel guardrail at the edge of the cliff, gripping the brim of his long-billed cap against the rising wind. Although it is nearly midnight, remnant Alaskan summer daylight lingers. Even from that height, he can see the white horses stampeding across the surface of the sea.
Jutting out from the base of the hill, a long, narrow spit of land reaches halfway across the mouth of the bay. Against the lucent gray water it looks like a black finger, crooked as though beckoning the incoming gale. Lights of small businesses dot the spit. A cluster of them marks something larger perching on the very tip of it—the End of the Road Hotel & Resort, where he has made a room reservation. The panorama is like a miniature version of Cape Cod but ringed with ragged, glacier-draped mountains right out of an Alaska visitors bureau brochure.
The wind hammers a copse of tall dark conifers on the edge of the cliff, and they bend in unison like rows of yoga junkies in a city park. When a smattering of rain sprays him, he pushes off the railing and crams himself back into the car. He flips the wipers on, checks his phone for the list of bars and restaurants in the town. The Homer Holiday Inn Express is the first drinking establishment on the only road in or out of this place.
Exhausted, he sighs, “The Holiday Inn it is,” and drives down the long, curving hill into the town.
* * *
The bar on the ground floor of the hotel has two small windows and is dimly lit. Maybe to mimic true nighttime darkness, a rarity in the Alaskan summer months. He sits at the bar and orders a Ketel. The aroma of frying food seeps from a doorway behind the bar. The kitchen apparently. That’s hopeful. To keep a low profile, he flew coach from Phoenix, and the dismal, foil-wrapped sandwich the airline offered is now just a memory of disappointment. On the long drive from Anchorage down the mostly unpopulated peninsula, there were few promising-looking restaurants. By the time his hunger really kicked in, nothing was open. Hopes up, he asks the bartender for a menu.
The bartender, a beefy guy with wavy red hair and a huge, also-red moustache hovering over his upper lip like a parade float, says, “Sorry, pal, kitchen just closed.”
“No problem.” D’Angelo flashes his friendliest smile. He’ll ask about Carla, in time. “Just the drink then.”
He takes the vodka and swivels on his stool, looking as best he can like another happy tourist in a bar full of people just like him. He keeps the ersatz smile glued on his face and scans the room.
Nothing surprising for a self-proclaimed fishing mecca. A couple graybeards in finger-smudged ballcaps hunch like gargoyles over the bar, nursing beers. D’Angelo pegs them as either commercial fishermen, boat mechanics, or carpenters. Maybe all three. It’s hard to tell in coastal towns. There are several sets of sunburned, late-middle-aged tourists wearing mall-walker sneakers, Costco jeans, sweat shirts announcing they’ve been to Denali National Park or Seward or Glacier Bay.
More interesting is a gang of athletic-looking women in their late twenties or early thirties wearing T-shirts with boat names—Nauti Mermaid Charters, Two Gals Fishing—dancing to some nondescript alt rock, appletinis waiting for them at their table. From their windburned cheeks, firm biceps, and several bandaged fingers, D’Angelo guesses deckhands. One of the older-looking girls gives him a game eyeballing. He resists the urge to reciprocate. He’s working. He offers his hopelessly-married look instead.
He checks out the waitress working the room. She’s all wrong. Older. Heavier. Androgynous. Nobody would use that last word regarding Carla Merino.
A burst of sudden laughter turns his attention back to the dancing deckhands. They’re hanging on each other, bent double with hilarity. He feels himself sag. Jennifer didn’t make it to their age. It hasn’t even been two whole months, he tells himself. Most days now he can go without thinking about her for hours at a time. Progress. Still, the sight of young people having a good time always impales him. Conventional wisdom is that, in time, he’ll get over it. Someday he’ll be able to picture her in every group of dancing young people he sees. Healthy. Strong. Swaying to the music. Laughing. Alive.
The bartender drifts his way, asks him if he needs another.
D’Angelo declines. He doesn’t know how many more places he’ll have to cross off the list before he finds her. He needs to keep the booze down to one per venue.
He puts on his cheery traveler face. “Hey, did you have a waitress named Carla working here a couple weeks ago? I thought maybe this is where I met her. Now I’m not sure.” He laughs as if embarrassed. “It was my first trip to Homer, and I’ll admit I hit more than one watering hole that night. Honestly, I don’t even remember the names of half the places.”
The bartender shakes his head, definite. “No one but Jeanie there. Been with us for years. A room this small? It’s a one-woman job.”
“Sure,” D’Angelo says. He pushes back from the bar. “Thanks.”
“Good-looking gal?” the bartender asks. “This Carla?” His moustache darts side to side obscenely. He looks like he might twirl the ends with his fingertips.
D’Angelo leers back at him. “A keeper.”
“You might try the Orca Grill. The owner’s got some kind of radar that picks up the cuties when they cross into the town limits or something.”
“Ha! That right? Lucky guy.” D’Angelo is still doing the hail-fellow-well-met routine. “The Orca, huh? Sure, I might’ve been there. Where’s that again?”
The bartender tells him how to get to the road leading out onto the spit. D’Angelo gives the dancing deckhands one last appreciative glance and turns to leave. He turns back and calls out to the bartender, “Any chance the kitchen will still be open out there?”
CHAPTER
17
THE THUDDING ON the hull of the “C” Lady continues. For a second, Scott thinks the tortilla chip has already destroyed his brain. Then, out of the darkness surrounding the boat, a voice shrieks, “Help!”
He grabs a flashlight off the console and darts out onto the aft deck. The wind through the trees on the bluff seems to have tapered off, but swells are still rolling into the sheltered cove. Off the port corner of the transom, a body encased in a bright-orange survival suit bobs spread-eagle, belly-up. The one-piece heavy neoprene suit, with its hood and sewn-in gloves and feet, has a zipper up the front like a rubber onesie for a giant baby.
Scott falters, his mind turning to that night on the Polar Huntress, the big boat listing sharply starboard, about to roll over as he frantically zipped Donny Chesterson, the youngest crew member, into the last suit they had on board.
The voice from the water jolts him back. “Help me, for Christ’s sake!”
He trains his flashlight on a pale face peering up at him. A woman’s face, framed by the tight neoprene hood, like a nun in a hot-orange wimple. Only she doesn’t talk like a nun.
“Hey, asshole! Can you get that fucking light out of my eyes?” She paws the smooth fiberglass hull at the waterline with the awkward neoprene gloves. “Help, goddammit!”
“Wait!” He pushes the fly rod off the hatch cover, rips the hatch open, and yanks out the swim ladder. He hooks it over the transom. “Can you climb it?”
She manages to grab the ladder but can’t pull herself up with the weight of the survival suit dragging her down. “Son of a bitch!”
Scott leans over the rail. With the weight of the suit, she’s a lot heavier than he thought she’d be. He grabs with his other hand too and, with both arms straining, hauls her over the transom. They fall together on the deck, water sloshing. His shirt and pants wet.
Scott stands, slapping water from his pant leg.
She sits back against the gunwale, gasping. “I thought I was going to fucking die.”
The deck lights shine on her face. It’s the waitress. And he knows her name. There really is a benevolent God in the universe. “You’re Carla, right? From the Orca? Are you okay?”
“I’m freezing. There’s water inside this thing.”
The suit is zipped up only halfway to her chin. Her coat is soaked.
“Well, you don’t have it zipped up all the way.”
“It stuck!” she says, gasping, yanking at the zipper tongue without success.
“Take it easy.” Scott reaches to help her. “How’d you get out here?”
“Shire’s boat.” She keeps yanking on the zipper. “Goddamn this thing!”
“Shire?” Involuntarily, he looks out across the water. “Is she out there?”
“No. She loaned me the skiff.”
“Where the hell were you going in that storm?”
“To her cabin!” she snaps at him, and frees her head from the hood. “Get me out of this fucking thing!”
“All right, all right.” He pulls her to her feet, yanks the zipper down. Her jeans and jacket are drenched. “What happened to the boat?”
“Filled with water; motor’s drowned or something. Goddamn waves.”
He holds one sleeve as she pulls her arm out, then the other. The suit slumps around her ankles. She extricates her feet and stands, water oozing from her sodden sneakers. A blue bandanna sags across her forehead. She shivers violently and falls back against the transom, almost pitches overboard.
He holds her by one arm. “Hang on. Let’s get you inside.” He hustles her into the cabin, past the galley and down the three stairs to the sleeping bunks under the foredeck. “You may be hypothermic. How long were you in the water?”
She’s trembling, her jaw clenched. “I don’t know,” she says through her teeth. “It felt like a year.”
“Okay, get those wet clothes off. Climb into that sleeping bag.” He points to the bedroll on his bunk. “I’ll get you some dry things.”
She nods and unzips her jacket.
Scott goes into the head to find a towel. When he comes back out, her jacket, sweater, and blouse are on the floor. She’s wearing a lacy, deep-red bra. He throws her the towel. “Dry your hair; get in the bag.” He busies himself picking up her clothes. It’s the closest he’s been to a nearly naked woman in months. The closest he’s been to a woman, period. He stands with the pile of wet clothes. He’s about to put them in the head when she says, “Help.”
She’s sitting on the edge of the bunk. Her bra is off now, but she hasn’t taken her sneakers off, and her jeans are tangled around her ankles. She looks dazed. Her eyes seem unfocused.
“Hang on.” He drops the wet clothes and kneels to pull her sneakers off. That close to her, the smell of her wet body makes him inhale raggedly. Jesus. He yanks her jeans the rest of the way off.
She’s wearing read underpants that match the bra. Unselfconsciously, she hooks her thumbs into the elastic and slides them down.
Scott almost leaps to his feet, turning away again as she kicks them off and scrambles into the sleeping bag. She pulls the bag up to her chin, wraps the towel around her hair. “Thanks.”
Crazy feelings barely in check, he looks at her now lying there in his bunk, wet hair clinging to her cheeks and neck. “My clothes are going to be way big on you. Just stay in the bag for now. Maybe we should get you over by the stove, get some direct heat on your hair. I’ll cook up some soup or coffee. You okay?”
“I’m half drowned, half frozen. Do I look okay?”
It’s all he can do not to blurt, You look great. He says, “Let’s get you by the fire.” He throws her soaked things on the deck in the head, then comes back and slides his arms under the sleeping bag and lifts her off the bunk, blood rushing to every corner of his body. He has to keep talking. “How the hell did you get into the immersion suit in an open skiff?”
“Shire made me practice doing it. We’re supposed to go commercial fishing with her brother in a few weeks somewhere.”
“Sure. Elrond. I think he’s got a permit for the Chignik district.”
“Those waves,” she says, mostly to herself, and shudders. “God.”
Scott carries her, still wrapped in the bag, to the dining nook. He tucks her in at the table on the banquette seat nearest the stove. She still looks a little dazed, though her eyes are brighter now. “Give me a wrist.” He feels her pulse, then lays his palm across her forehead. Her skin feels cool but not dangerously cold. Touching her makes his heart race, and he has to swallow before talking. “Your pulse is strong, you’re fairly warm. You don’t seem too hypothermic. Still, you should maybe get some warm food inside you.”
He crouches at the little refrigerator under the counter in the galley and pulls out a Tupperware container of leftover rockfish chowder he brought from home—easy to heat up and gobble while trolling. He empties the container into a pan, sets it on the stovetop. He has to resist the urge to wash out the Tupperware. He sets it in the sink and runs water into it.
“I’d take a shot of that Maker’s.” She points at the bourbon bottle, still on the table next to the tortilla chips. “Hey, is that my bag of chips?”
He laughs, relieved to have the pressure in his chest, in his groin, off his mind for a moment. “I didn’t find any guacamole.” He sets a clean glass on the table in front of Carla. “I’m going to radio the Coast Guard, tell them Shire’s Lund is out there somewhere, swamped. I’ll tell them your condition and see if they think you sound hypothermic. They can send a fast boat with a medic, or even a helicopter if they think it’s that bad. Or I could pull anchor and motor back to town. But you seem okay.”
“Sure,” she says. But she doesn’t look sure. She’s quiet, her face troubled. What is she thinking? He’s survived a sinking boat. Maybe he knows a little about how she feels.
He hands her his cell phone. “You should call Shire and tell her about the skiff. Maybe let Volker know you’re okay?” He picks up the radio handset. “I’ll radio the Coasties.”
“Wait. Don’t do that,” she says, softly. She hasn’t touched the phone, the glass, or the bourbon bottle.
Scott stops. “Wait?” The heat from the galley stove is suddenly stifling.
She bites her lip and nods.
“You don’t want me to call the Coast Guard?”
“No. I mean, yes, that’s what I’m saying. No Coast Guard.” The sleeping bag slides down and one small breast comes uncovered, the nipple as rigid and pointy as a roofing nail. It should whip him into a frenzy of longing again. It doesn’t. Casually, she pulls the sleeping bag up to cover herself. “Sit down, er …”
“Scott,” he says.
“Scott. Yeah. I know you from the bar. You’re a carpenter. Glacier IPA, right?”
He’s more than a little pleased. “Yes, a contractor,” he says. He feels himself blush with embarrassment. She doesn’t seem to notice. She’s not all there. Drifting. Her mind on something else. “Carla?”
“Sit down a minute, Scott.”
“That look on your face tells me we’re both going to need a drink.” He sits across from her, pours bourbon into her glass, refills his own.
Carla throws the whiskey at the back of her throat, swallows. “I need to tell you something.”
Scott would say he has a sinking feeling. But that’s not a term he ever uses.
“Yeah?” Scott says. “You want to start with telling me how come I’m not talking to the Coast Guard? Because Shire’s skiff is not going to sink with all its floatation compartments. It’s just going to wallow under the surface. And if I don’t report this and some boater runs into it, people could get hurt.” He looks at his watch. “It’s one o’clock now. The first fishermen of the day will be on the water by five. Even if nobody crashes into the skiff, someone’s going to find it and report it. Shire’s your friend. You want her to think you’re at the bottom of the bay?”
“Just for a while.” She picks his phone up off the tabletop but sets it down again. “Just until we get somewhere safe. Then I can get word to her. Shire can keep a secret.”
“Whoa. ‘Until we get somewhere safe’? Who says we’re going anywhere? And safe from what?”
“I don’t want anyone to come looking for me. So if they think I’m drowned …”
Incredulous, Scott scoffs, “Are you telling me you scuttled Shire’s skiff to get away from George Volker?”
“No, that was an accident. We were breaking up, and I just didn’t want to spend the night with him hassling me about it. I didn’t have anywhere to go. Thought I’d spend a couple days at Shire’s cabin on the island. Then maybe move my camper to the RV park up on the river for the summer until I found a new place to live.” She swallows the last of her bourbon and pushes her glass across the table toward him. “I didn’t know about a storm coming up, those monster waves and all …”
