I could hear the son of a bitch, but it was hard to tell where the sound was coming from. We drifted in the gray dampness for about five minutes. Hobart looked at his watch and then peered out over the nose of the boat. "We gotta crank up here," he said. "We don't wanna run into them salmon pens back there. Now the question is, do we wanna make a run for home or do we wanna get where we're going? Yoah boy, he's got the speed on us, plus, we turn back, he knows wheyah we're headed. Probably got a fayah chance to cut us off before we get theyah. We go on like this, he might find us, and he might not. Or we might try to beach this thing, make a run for it. What do you wanna do?"
"I don't want to get either of us killed, but I'd love to get this over with. What are our chances of getting by him?"
"Well, let's see what we can do," Hobart said. "If we can sneak past him up to Indian Road there, we'll probably make it."
I saw square shapes in the water behind us, a symmetrical grid of lines in the water that marked off spaces that were about twenty by thirty feet, with nets rigged over the top, a couple of feet off the water. You couldn't see the cages, which were sunk below the surface. There were silvery shapes jumping inside, they looked to be about ten inches long. "Damn," I said. "If I was a seagull, I would sit right there and drool."
"Seagull is smahter than you," Hobart said. "He won't sit mooning about what he can't have. He knows he can't get his breakfast heah, so he'll go some-wheyahs else. Turn us to port, and crank her up. No, port, goddammit, left. Your other left. That's better. Now shove the throttle back up." The fading buzz of the outboard motor on Hopkins's boat changed tone and began getting louder.
"I think he hears us."
"Well, I didn't think he was deaf," Hobart said. We held course away from the salmon pens. I was beginning to lose my sense of direction, but Hobart seemed to know where he was going. We passed another one of those invisible dividers in the water, and suddenly we were caught in a current that was ripping in the opposite direction. "Shut her down," Hobart said. I pulled the throttle back and we drifted again.
"You're using the currents," I said. "You know where they are and where they're going, and he doesn't."
He gave me the ghost of a smile. "If you have to be slow, you better be smaht."
I listened to the sound of Hopkins's outboard as it gained strength, faded, then gained strength again as Rosario zigzagged over the water looking for us. We passed through a stretch of water where a cloud of seabirds sat on the surface, feeding. Even with a nutcase like Rosey flying around the bay after my ass, that old curiosity itched at me. "What are they eating?"
Hobart looked over the side. "Eyeballs," he said.
"Say what?"
"Eyeball herrings." He held a thumb and forefinger about an inch and a half apart. "'Bout so big. Usually, what we get up in here are bricks, seven or eight inches long."
I looked over and I could see them, just quick specks of moonlight in the cold water. "These ones are baby herrings."
"Yeah." He cocked his head, listened to the outboard. "Stand by that pistol, son." We didn't see the boat, thoughapparently Rosario changed direction just a little bit too soon, and the sound faded again.
"Pretty slick," I said to Hobart.
"Oh," he said, "this'll do for now. We get to Indian Road, though, we're gonna have to turn her back on. We don't lose him by then, might be a different story."
"What about finding a place to hole up, wait until he gets tired of this, or else has to go get gas?"
"Well," Hobart said, and he put a world of doubt into that short syllable. He peered up into the sky. "This fog here ain't sticky enough. She's gonna burn off soon."
"Oh, shit."
"'Oh, shit' is right. Looks like yoah boy means to have it out with us right now. Guess you ain't the only one tiyed of the suspense."
We drifted like that for another twenty minutes. Hobart had me start up the engine once to reposition us in the current, and we both sat and listened to Rosey's mad search. The sky overhead was beginning to get perceptibly lighter, with patches of sun reaching us now and then, and a breeze began to tear at the fog's subtle fabric. "Well," Hobart said. "We gotta turn heah to get up Indian Road. It's now or nevah."
Suddenly, just in front of us, I heard something unlike anything I'd ever heard before. I guess it was sort of like a cross between a waterfall and a cement mixer, a kind of watery grinding roar but with a timbre that you wouldn't associate with a fluid substance. "What the hell is that?"
"Crank up, son, crank up. Turn us hard to starboard. That's the Old Sow, Manny, and we've got just about close enough." We began to make some progress against the current, but I could feel the English imparted by the whirlpool, unseen in the water behind us. Up ahead, I could see Hop's boat cutting through the diminishing gray smoke. He was farther up Indian Road than we were. Rosario, behind the wheel, turned and looked in our direction. It was probably my imagination, he was probably too far off for me to say for sure, but I swear I saw him grinning. I think he loved this kind of shit, I think he loved shoving all of his chips up to the line and going for it. Hop's boat heeled sharply and headed back in our direction.
"Stay down, now. He shoots you, I'll never find my way back." I veered off just a touch, cocked the revolver, took aim, and fired. The recoil pushed the barrel upward. The boom the gun made seemed loud enough, but the sound was swallowed up in that vast space. I reaimed and fired again. I doubt if I hit anything, but he turned away briefly. Wanted to think it over, I guess.
Hobart had me throttle his engine back until we were just holding our own against the current. He looked at the pistol in my hand, evaluating. "You any good with that thing?"
I shook my head. "If I hit anything, it'll be by accident."
"Hmm." He looked out at Hop's boat again. "Well," he said. "You feeling lucky?"
"What do you mean?"
Hobart looked at me, shook his head. "Well, they tell me I'm a rash old bahstid," he said dryly. "How about you? How's your luck been running lately?"
I realized then what he meant, and I looked out at the swirling currents behind us. "Flood tide, am I right? You wanna play chicken? Sure. Let's find out how bad he wants it."
"Better let me take the wheel, son." He clambered to his feet, and I stood directly behind him so that Rosario could not hit him without hitting me. Hobart grinned.
"You are a rash old bastard. You love this shit, don't you?"
"Don't it make you feel just a little bit more alive than you was?" he said.
"No." I still had Nicky to worry about, and I was finding that I didn't like taking chances as much as I had in the past. Rosey fired again, we heard the round go by overhead. Hobart spun the boat around again, but he didn't point us exactly in the direction of the current, he headed about ten minutes on a clock face across the flow, farther out into the bay. The discrepancy cost us some headway, and Rosey gained ground on us quickly. Two more rounds went buzzing past. I was careful to stay between Hobart and Rosey.
"Give him another one," Hobart said. "Give him something to think about." I aimed as best I could and fired off another round, but Hobart's boat had taken on an odd, sideslipping kind of motion, sort of like a car losing traction on an icy road. Rosario changed direction, though. I guess he intended to pull up on a parallel course. I had no doubt that he would kill Hobart and Franklin, but he couldn't kill me until he got his money. That was the theory, anyhow, but Rosario could be irrational at times. "Save the last couple rounds," Hobart said.
"You want to try?"
He shook his head. "No need. Just give her a few minutes here."
"All right." Rosario was much closer now, maybe eighty feet to our right and roughly beside us, heading west. Behind him I could see Deer Island, cool and green, now with just a hint of gray in the air over the treetops. Rosey cut his speed down to almost nothing. Where he was, the current was running up the river, and where we were, it ran the opposite direction. Hobart had the boat nose into the current, and we were fighting to make progress. There was a streak of foam in the water going past Hop's boat, marking the division between the two opposing currents. I looked at Hobart. "Looks like he's using your trick against you."
Hobart smiled again. "Maybe," he said. "We were nevah gonna outrun him anyhow. I told you, when yoah slow, you have to be smaht."
Rosey was bellowing across the space between us. "Mohammed," he yelled. "I just want whass mine. You come with me, and he can go pick up that retard and take him home."
I looked at Hobart. "We been smart enough?"
"Ayuh," Hobart said. I noticed then what he had been waiting for. The water between the two boats was churning insanely, and a big mound of water boiled up behind Hop's boat, swelling up about the height of a man above the surface of the bay, and about ten or twelve feet across. Rosey, startled, gunned his boat away from it, closer to us, and it was suddenly plain that that had been the wrong thing to do. The current seized him, spun him around, and pushed him into a long arc that would bring him within about twenty feet of us. In the center of that arc, the water disappeared, I mean it just fell away, there was suddenly a hole in the water. In the space of ten seconds, the hole grew to be thirty-five or forty feet across. I could hear that grinding roar, too damn close this time, and the insectile whine of Hop's outboard was barely audible over it. By the time Rosey got the nose of the boat pointed outward, he was sliding down over the lip. "Holy shit," Hobart said.
The thing was pulling at us, too. Hobart had changed direction while I was watching Hop's boat, he had his throttle jammed forward, but we seemed to be going backward in the water. Rosario passed close by us once, close enough, anyhow, for me to see his face, white with fear. He was gaining ground, though, the Old Sow looked like she might let him go. "He might make it," Hobart said. "He gets clear of that, we're in trouble."
"Maybe so." When he passed us again, he was pointing the gun straight at me. I guess he wanted my company on the way to hell. He fired, but the Old Sow was pulling at Hop's boat, spoiling his aim, and I heard the bullet whisper past my head. I pointed the .45, cursing myself for not ever having learned how to shoot. I fired off two more rounds. I don't know if I hit the outboard or not, it was what I was aiming at, but I didn't see pieces fly off it the way they would have in the movies. I must have gotten lucky after all, though, because Hop's engine coughed and died, and the boat slid slowly backward over the lip.
The Old Sow was drifting lazily downriver. I saw Rosey pitch off the front of Hop's boat, I saw his face, contorted, his mouth open wide, but I couldn't hear him screaming, all I could hear was the Old Sow grinding. A minute passed, and Hobart's boat began to move away toward the far shore. The sound tapered off as the whirlpool moved downstream, and then the hole in the water seemed to shrink, and it was gone. The noise started up again, though, as the Old Sow re-formed about a hundred feet behind us. Rosario and the boat were both gone, swallowed up as if they had never been there. The bay went on doing what she'd done for millennia.
"She ain't done yet," Hobart said. "Jesus. That was the biggest one I ever seen. Let's get the hell away from here."
"Good idea." I wiped the Russian's gun off with my shirt and pitched it over the back.
Fourteen
I GUESS EVERYTHING LOOKS BEAUTIFUL after the bullet with your name on it has gone past your ear without hitting you. The sun came out and burned off the rest of the fog as Hobart piloted his boat up Indian Road. I didn't know what I was looking at, islands, mainland, river, bay, ocean, whatever, it didn't matter. I even quit trying to identify birds, I just watched. The noise of my breath echoed inside my empty skull, I had no words for questions or opinions. There were a few small houses, cabins really, on the shore of whatever land-masses we were passing. Each one looked more painfully beautiful than the last. How could anybody who lived in a place like this ever be unhappy? For that moment, the land, trees, rocks, water, birds, fish, even Hobart's lobster boat with the hole in its windshield, seemed like a painting in a museum or maybe like something out of a dream. How could anything in real life be so perfect?
Hobart steered us up into a narrow rock-lined finger of ocean. An A-frame cottage sat high on a ledge, up near the tree line. A short wooden pier stood on what looked like a collection of old telephone poles, rotted black and covered with seaweed and barnacles. A herring gull sat on top of one of the poles. I think he was a herring gull, I wasn't really sure, but he pointed his head at the sky and called when he saw us coming. "Go away," I guess he was saying. "Go away and leave us alone." We kept coming, though. The gull spread his wings, lifted his feet, and the wind raised him up. He wheeled and soared away without ever once flapping his wings.
Hobart tied up next to a wooden ladder nailed into one of the poles. "You think you need a hand?" he said. Bullets and whirlpools didn't scare him, but he didn't look like he wanted to climb up onto that pier.
