Blackwater Sound (25 page)

“I guess I'm something of a cross to bear myself.”

Lawton nodded but was silent. It's what you did when they were ready to talk. You stepped back, let them ramble, didn't try to steer them or you might wake them from their daydream.

“My daughter, Morgan,” he said. “She dropped out of college and came home to work with me at the plant. And to help with Johnny. He was screwing up at school, flunking all his classes, in trouble with the law. Fights and drugs and drunkenness. I didn't know what to do. I was helpless. But when Morgan returned all that rowdiness stopped. She straightened him right out.”

“Well, if she did,” Lawton said, “I don't believe he's stayed that way.”

Braswell didn't seem to hear.

“I'd lost my eldest son, then my wife. I felt like my guts had been scooped out. I had no reason to go on. But then Morgan came home and took charge. To tell the truth, I guess she's been acting as something of a nurse to me, too.”

“Thank God for daughters,” Lawton said. “What would sick old men like us do without them?”

Lawton looked off at the small window, the foamy splash of the wake, the distant blue. They'd been under way for maybe an hour and now it felt like the engines were cutting back.

As Lawton was turning back to Braswell, the cabin door swung open and Morgan stepped into the room. She looked back and forth between the two men. A flush darkened her cheeks.

“We've arrived, Dad. We're right on top of the ping. It's time to fish.”

A. J. rose from the chair and gave Lawton another careful look.

“Will you join us, Lawton?”

From the doorway, Morgan said, “I need to have a word with him first. You go on, Dad, entertain your guests. Lines are in the water. We'll be right there, won't we, Lawton?”

About a mile to the west across the flat span of sea, Thorn watched another white fishing boat heading toward a distant flock of circling birds. It was what any fisherman in his right mind would be doing, following the birds to a school of bait-fish where the large predators were likely to be congregating.

But as far as Thorn could tell there was no one on the
ByteMe
in his right mind. Including his own damn self, or else he'd be back in Key Largo clipping the last thread of a bonefish fly, fluffing its bristles. Or out in the backcountry, poling across the shimmering flats.

Thorn and Farley were perched atop white fiberglass fish boxes on either side of the cabin door. Farley with his arms across his bulky chest. Through his black wraparounds he stared out at the boiling wake, every few seconds swiveling his head from side to side to scan the unvarying blue, its flat surface marked only by a few yellow drifts
of seaweed and waxy ambergris. Off to the south, the pillars of black smoke from the marina fire were breaking up, carried out to sea by the steady trade winds.

Johnny Braswell, running the boat from up on the flybridge, eased back on the throttle as they reached a seam in the coloration, passing from the faded cornflower blue to a shadowy rich sapphire.

“A drop-off?” Thorn said to Farley.

“Abaco Canyon.” He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Not the spot I would've picked, but what the hell.”

Johnny came down from the flybridge and lowered the outriggers and set the lines. He didn't look at either of them as he went about his work, doing it all with a cold, joyless efficiency. When the four lures were skipping nicely, he stood for a moment looking out at them, then climbed back to the controls.

Thorn slid down from the fish box. The salon door was shut and Johnny was up in the noisy breeze. Still, he lowered his voice.

“Well, here we go.”

“So what's the plan, Thorn?”

“Wish I knew.”

“Goddamn,” Farley said, “I was afraid of that.”

“You got something against improvising?”

“I say we throw the whole bunch of them overboard, then take all the time we want checking over the boat, find that old man if he's here.”

“It has a certain appeal.”

“Better than sneaking around.”

“I was thinking we'd wait a while. See what exactly we're up against.”

“I can tell you right now what we're up against,” Farley said. “Bunch of crazies.”

“Yeah, but we've got them outnumbered.”

“We do?”

“In the moral sense.”

Farley sniffed. He hadn't brought along his sense of humor.

“Never found being on the right side made a lot of difference.”

“What I was thinking,” Thorn said. “When we raise a fish, things'll get busy, that's when I'll disappear, go look for Lawton.”

“Assuming we find a fish.”

Farley stared out at the skipping baits and at the endless sweep of blue.

“So, do your thing, Farley. Tune up your radar, this is when we need it.”

He looked at Thorn, showed his teeth, but it wasn't anything you could call a smile.

“If it were as simple as that, Thorn, I'd own a fleet of marlin boats.”

A. J. Braswell opened the salon door and stepped out in the sunshine.

“Any sign of her, boys?”

Thorn shook his head. Farley drew a breath and resumed his watch.

“Johnny!” Braswell called up to the flybridge. “Anything on the screen?”

Young Braswell came to the lip of the bridge and leaned over the rail.

“We're sitting on the spot, Dad. Last ping came in two minutes ago. She's damn close.”

“Try circling.”

“Hey, Dad.” Johnny took off his sunglasses and let them dangle from the cord around his neck. “What the hell we need these guys for?”

“They're our guests, Johnny.”

Johnny's grip on the chrome rail tightened.

“Be nice,” Thorn said. “We're here to help you land this fish you can't seem to catch.”

“You don't think I know what you're doing here?”

Johnny settled his sunglasses back on his nose and jabbed them into place with his middle finger.

“I'm sorry,” A. J. said. “I invited you along without consulting my children. It wasn't really fair of me.”

“It's your boat, right? You're the daddy. I'd say that puts you in charge.”

“If it were only that simple.”

“Why isn't it?”

“We've always fished as a team. That's why Johnny's upset.”

Farley grunted and stared out at the blue distance.

“Either you're boss or you're not,” he said, the sinews in his neck flexing as he spoke. “Isn't no middle ground.”

Before he could answer, Morgan came out of the cabin. Her sunglasses were propped up in her hair. She glanced at Farley, then trained her eyes on Thorn.

Braswell said, “These are my guests, Morgan. I believe you already know Farley Boissont. Jelly's son.”

Her eyes were an intense blue and had a silver shine as if they were backed by tin foil. They seemed independent of the rest of her, more volatile, more severe, powered by some dangerous fuel that throbbed inside them. She wore a white T-shirt that hugged her body tightly, showed the pleasant swell of her breasts. The T-shirt was tucked into a pair of black bicycle tights that molded firmly over her narrow hips. The sum of her parts should have added up to a remarkable beauty, but those harsh, indifferent eyes undercut it all.

“Name's Thorn.”

“Yes, we meet again.”

Braswell stepped forward and laid a hand on his daughter's shoulder.

“You know this man?”

“We had a brief encounter last week. At the airplane crash.”

“The crash? You were there, Morgan? The one in the Everglades?”

“Oh, did I forget to tell you, Dad? Sorry. Yes, Johnny and I were out there fishing when the plane came down. Isn't that right, Mr. Thorn?”

“That's one version.”

Braswell looked back and forth between his daughter and Thorn.

“Well, Thorn and Farley have had a couple of encounters with Big Mother. They're going to help us find her. They had her up to the boat twice.”

“Oh, really? And you believed that?”

Braswell gave Thorn an apologetic shrug.

Farley slid down from the fish box and stepped around Morgan and climbed up the ladder to the flybridge.

“Where do you think you're going?”

Farley stopped halfway up the ladder and looked down at her.

“Sooner we find that goddamn fish, sooner I can get the hell away from you people.”

They circled for an hour and got no more pings on the GPS screen.

Thorn joined Farley on the flybridge and they planted themselves on either side of Johnny at the control console. Before them on the long, sleek bow, a dinghy was lashed to the deck. An overpowered Zodiac with a fiberglass transom and stand-up steering console. Beyond the point of the bow, the featureless blue sea spread in all directions. No other boats, no birds, just a gentle two-foot swell.

Johnny steered the boat and mumbled to himself. Down in the cockpit, Braswell stared back at the skittering lures. He was slumped forward in the fighting chair, elbows on his knees like a ballplayer sulking on the bench. Morgan had stationed herself beside him, and every few seconds she turned and cut a look at Thorn.

As they passed again across the line between the light blue sea to the dark, bottomless depths, Thorn pressed his shoulder against Johnny and used his best conspiratorial voice.

“Hey, Johnny. Shot down any planes lately?”

The kid twisted back and gave Thorn an ugly sneer.

“I'm not talking to you, jingle-brain. I'm not talking to either of you. You don't belong here. You can just shut your yap, smart guy.”

“You and sis, you're quite a pair. Gunsel and Gretel, lost in the woods.”

“Fuck you, cheeseball.”

Thorn tapped a finger on the back of Johnny's bandaged hand.

“What happened to your thumb, kid? Been sucking on it too hard?”

Johnny jerked his shoulder away, but Farley was tight on his other side and the young man had nowhere to go.

“ ‘Not only don't you have any scruples,' ” Thorn said. “ ‘You don't have any brains.'
Detour
, 1945.”

Johnny turned and peered at him.

“What's wrong, pork rind?” Thorn said. “You think you're the only person in the world ever saw a movie?”

“Okay, Johnny boy,” Farley said. “Take it up to eleven knots.”

“What!”

“You heard me, boy. Bump it to eleven.”

“Eight's what we do. We were doing eight when we caught her last time; that's what we do, eight knots.”

“That's ten years ago,” Farley said. “She's bigger now, faster. Likes a faster target. Take it to eleven.”

“Hey, who the fuck do you think you are?”

“You want to catch that fish, Johnny? Or spend the rest of your life chasing it? Do what Farley tells you.”

“I'm the captain of this goddamn vessel. I decide how fast we go.”

“Just because your hands are on the wheel, John boy, doesn't mean you're running the show.”

“Over there.” Farley was peering to the right. “Hundred and twenty yards, that riffle.”

Farley's posture was straighter, eyes locked to water.

“I don't see anything,” Johnny said.

“Two o'clock,” Farley said. “Eleven knots. Unless there's some reason you don't want this fucking fish.”

“I don't see what you're looking at.”

“Just do it,” Thorn said.

“Man, I don't know what you're seeing out there.” Johnny turned the wheel and nudged the throttle forward. “I must have the wrong sunglasses.”

“Kid,” Farley said, “you got the wrong eyes.”

Thorn turned and looked back at their wake, watched the big lures flitting across the surface, then diving a few inches below, leaving a trail of bubbles, then resurfacing for another brief ride across the sweet polished surface of the sea.

He was watching the back starboard lure when the dorsal fin rose and the long narrow bill knifed into view. It came so fast and the shadow was so large Thorn thought for a moment it was just a wishful mirage, a phantom rising from the depths of his reverie.

Then the outrigger popped and the slack belly in the line vanished.

“Fish on!” Braswell yelled. “That's her, that's her.”

Johnny eased the throttle till the boat was almost dead in the water.

“It's big,” Farley said.

Thorn rubbed the sweat sting out of his eyes.

“Hell, it looks like a goddamn limousine.”

Down on deck, Braswell wrenched the rod out of the holder and fit the butt into the socket on his waist belt. Morgan reeled in the other lines and settled the rods back in their holders, then turned to her father, lowered his chair back and clipped the harness to the reel and eased it around her father's back. She cocked the chair back into place and both of them watched as the line whirled off the reel. Braswell fumbled with the drag, almost lost the rod as he braked down on the fish. Even from twenty feet away, Thorn saw the tremble in his hands.

Johnny had them in neutral, then slipped it into reverse, facing astern, his butt pressed to the console, steering by feel, trying to keep the fish directly behind them, but the slanting line moved from starboard to port and back again with amazing speed. Though the fish was already down in the heavy depths, it zigzagged so quickly it might have been gliding across the airy surface.

“Get down to the cockpit, Johnny,” Farley said. “Make yourself useful.”

“Fuck that. I'm running the boat.”

“Maybe if we were catching a minnow, boy. But not this fish. Get down there, give your daddy water, rub his shoulders. Going to be a long afternoon.”

 

Face in the wind, Alexandra drew down breath after breath of fresh salt air, reviving slowly. By the time Sugarman had Thorn's old Chris-Craft a mile offshore, Alexandra's wooziness had mostly cleared. She could feel the puffiness growing around her left eye and a three-inch spike driving deeper and deeper into her temple with every breath. She was wearing a new set of Thorn's clothes. A black-and-white checked cowboy shirt with pearl snap buttons. A pair of old blue jeans shorts with frayed cutoff legs. She didn't remember selecting them or putting them on. A missing hour or two.

“You all right?” Sugarman gave her a quick look, then resumed his watch out the blurry windshield.

She told him she was going to be fine. It was nothing, she'd taken worse knocks playing with a litter of kittens. She said he should just keep steering the boat, keep his eyes sharp for the
ByteMe
.

“It's a big goddamn ocean,” he said.

And that's what echoed in her ears as the blood emptied from her head and she stumbled backwards, it's a big goddamn ocean, and bumped against the wooden side panel, a big goddamn ocean, and went down on the deck. Sprawling there, squinting up into the sun, watching the handsome black man bend down and scoop her up and carry her into the shadowy cabin and lay her out on the cot where Thorn slept the night before. Thorn's smell in the pillow. It's a big goddamn ocean. Breathing his earthy scent of sweat and suntan oil and fish and the musky undertone of sex. A smell she recalled only vaguely from her distant past. It's a big goddamn ocean, Sugarman
said. Like they might never find the boat. Might never see her father alive again. Or Thorn. Whose smell she inhaled, like hay, or dry summer grasses, a pungent spice that filled her lungs and filled them again.

The boat was still grumbling along when she woke. Mouth dry, spike still hammering at her temple. She sat up slowly. A bolt of pain shutting her eyes for a moment. But she pressed her feet to the deck and pushed herself up and steadied herself against the bunk. She breathed in and out with great care, tried to keep herself erect. She was twelve feet tall and her head was full of helium. She was one of those giant balloons in the Macy's parade, unwieldy, anchored to the earth by a dozen cords handled by a band of drunks.