Adrift Chapters 2 and 3…..Dead of Winter Reading…..
2. Louise
Louise woke before dawn, furious. Larry slept beside her. He’d come in last night half lit, and said, “What the hell else is there to do? We don’t have any work.”
Louise had known what was going on for weeks, and she’d decided, thinking about it, that she was going to dump Larry’s ass as soon as she could. The trouble was, it wasn’t so easy. He owned half her share of the salvage tug business as her husband and right now they were on the edge of collapse anyway. If she threw him out, there’d be nothing left.
In the drawer on Louise’s side of the bed was a sharp jackknife, and she seriously considered sliding the drawer open, removing the knife, opening it silently, and cutting off his goddam cock. That’s what she wanted to do, though it had been at least a year since the two of them had had anything going in the bedroom. It had been all business all the time, that and being unable to have kids, then not wanting kids. The passion early on had faded with bills, breakdowns, and a lack of boat tows. But still, she had pride, and she was still a damn good-looking woman, if a little worn at the edges. Look at the way that cute kid Travis, the wire splicer, had lusted after her last year before he quit. He had the fire for her. Maybe she’d plan a revenge fuck with Travis, right on Larry’s desk above the workshop.
Louise liked the image. Then she imagined Larry all hot and sweaty with the puffy bimbo he’d met that Saturday in the casino. Hell, Louise had even been there that night, seen in an instant what was going to happen. She didn’t give a shit, not anymore, but still, it hurt. Now she smelled something in the air.
She got out of bed quietly so as not to wake her husband, padded over to the big window over the shop, and looked out at the harbor. The wind pushed billows of rain in a race across the water, stippling the surface. That’s what Louise had smelled, the wind. She always smelled the wind, had since she was a girl following her pop around. She had a nose for it, smelling the weather, knowing when the wind might bring them money.
The small radio on the counter sputtered faintly. Tuned to the Coast Guard distress signal, they’d hear any trouble at sea as it happened. Both she and Larry could sleep right through the radio chatter unless it was about trouble, then they woke right up.
Christ, they needed money. Louise had been here before, three times in the last six years. Each time the bank bridged them over. What choice did the bank have? No bank wanted an old wooden dock in the tiny harbor of Sol Duc, Washington, way out on the Olympic Peninsula. It wasn’t more than a tin shack with ancient cranes, and a barely floating salvage tug. Not only that, but it was on land next to an old lumberyard soon to be declared a Superfund cleanup site. Everyone knew the ground was filled with all sorts of bad stuff, and nobody wanted to open up that can of worms. They had three acres at the head of the small harbor, looking over at the Port dock, the one the mining company had leased. Their land might have been valuable if it wasn’t contaminated, but so long as they didn’t dig into it, they could carry on, at least for a while. But right now, the business felt more like a weight than an opportunity.
When Louise’s pop started the operation in the 1960s, they’d been closer than their rival salvage companies to the dangerous waters off British Columbia and Alaska. Even though old Warhorse, their tug, was slow, their strategic position along the Strait of Juan de Fuca meant she beat the bigger and faster tugs from Seattle and Vancouver rushing to meet foundering ships. In later years, the other tugs became faster and fewer ships foundered, and Louise and Larry were reduced to making difficult tows, sometimes cross-Pacific, babying Warhorse the whole way. Now even that had dried up. Still, Louise and Larry and her two brothers had been hanging on, keeping the business going, occasionally making some money. They’d been busy with a contract, scooping debris from the Elwha River as the dams were removed, but that work had ended when the rains began in October. And lately, there had been no work. Then Larry had the gall to start an affair. It was almost as if he didn’t really care whether she knew or not.
“We need a big claim,” Louise said to the black window, watching the wind. Once we earn some money I’ll throw Larry’s ass out.
“What?” Larry rolled over, half asleep. He’d brought Warhorse back from the repair yard at Lake Union the day before, accompanied by her two brothers, Leon and Vince. Leon served as engineer and Vince as assistant engineer. Warhorse was old, built in 1952, but built to last. The Seattle yard had billed them $23,000, money they absolutely didn’t have. But Bill from the bank rolled the charges and the loan payments another month, and he’d probably have to roll the charges until the cleanup work started the following spring.
The dark harbor gleamed beneath the rain and wind. Larry sat up, running his eyes.
“You smell something, darlin? Money?”
Louise turned around. The room was dark, but Larry’s big shoulders stood out against the headboard of the bed. He was still in damn decent shape for someone now 42. Had to be, horsing gear around on that big tug. Louise had liked it when she’d gone out on the boat with Larry—she had papers as a first mate– but then Larry’s mother had taken ill and needed care. His mother had been the bookkeeper and Louise had to take over that job, small as it was. And when she wasn’t in the office, she spent her time on the road around the Sound hustling work. She had to do a lot of hustling.
Dammit. Larry still looked good, and that was a problem.
“Something woke me up,” Louise said.
Now wasn’t the time to get into a fight, and besides, Louise felt something in her bones. A metal pulley rattled against a post on one of the boats in the small marina next to the port dock.
“Warhorse all tuned up, then?” she asked.
“Pushed us out of the yard before they really got into the shaft coupling repair, but I think we’re OK. They rebuilt the winches, the big towing bit. New wire, too.”
“Yeah, that’s where eight of the 23 grand went. Hell.”
“We need good wire, Louise, if we hope to snag anything.”
Louise was facing Larry. If I wasn’t so pissed at him, we could….
She heard something on the radio.
“Wait.”
She turned up the volume. It was a local channel. She’d set up the receiver to scan all the distress channels, plus a couple of others that companies used to send messages among themselves. Now she had picked up a transmission from Buckhorn headquarters to their big tugs down in Bremerton, west of Seattle. Louise prided herself on knowing what the competition did, and she knew the Buckhorn tugs had just hauled a decommissioned sub into the Bremerton Naval Yard where they were going to cut out the hot reactor core. The tugs were way down in the Sound, at least eight hours from Port Angeles, where they were usually based.
“Listen.”
“Sector Six. Open contract tow. Cast that sub after she’s moored and get going. Yes, abandoned. Fire.”
“There’s something out there and Buckhorn’s sending the big tugs for it.” Louise was grinning.
“Sector Six, that’s out in the Gulf of Alaska, west of the Charlottes,” said Larry, turning on a light and examining a chart in the wall of their bedroom.
“They said fire, right?”
“I heard abandoned.” Larry looked more closely at the chart.
“That’s a long ways, Larry.” It was 500 miles to Sector Six. “We’ll have to pass outside the island, it’s faster but more exposed.”
“It’ll be plenty exposed out in Sector Six.”
“What do you think it is?”
“Ship. Something big, for them to send their tugs like that. Maybe one of their ships.”
“Maybe the Express, Larry?”
“Could be.”
Larry pulled on his pants. “I’ll call your brothers, see if we can get their cousins, too. We’ll need 10, 12 guys, if we try this. I think you’re gonna have to come, too. I need another mate, someone who can help Nelson handle the tug when I take the gang aboard the ship.”
“That’s if you can get on the ship. It’s been a while, Larry.”
“What else is there to do? You going to sit here and wait? Get Leon’s wife to monitor the chatter. Have her find out where the ship was, where the Buckhorn tugs are. You don’t need to be here. Right now we got to load up on a ton of food and get going.”
“You have fuel? You’ll need a lot of fuel. We’ll need a lot of fuel.”
“She’s full. Been full too long, Louise.”
“Gonna be a rough trip, Larry.”
“Warhorse is built for it.”
“It’s not Warhorse I’m thinking about. It’s you, my brothers and cousins. It’s me.”
“We’ll be careful. I’ll make the calls. You and your brothers, get food. Is the Walmart open this early? I’ll call the rest of the gang, plus get some others. ”
“What? Who you going to get?”
“Dark Cloud’s crew. They’ll come, their tug’s in the yard. They have no work either.”
“They’re crazy.”
“Yeah, but they can work. Dark Cloud, too, he’s coming.”
Louise didn’t like Dark Cloud. He was sneaky, she thought. And what was it with his name, anyway? He was about as Native American as Louise was. But he knew what he was doing on a tug and they needed people who knew what they were doing. Larry went on, “I’ll even call Travis, bring him.”
“He’s reporter now, Larry, for the Peninsula News; has been for a year.”
“Best kid splicing wire I ever saw, Louise.”
“Lotta food, Larry. Ten, 12 people.”
Outside, the black night seemed lighter. Rain ran down the windows.
“Are we broke, Louise?” Larry asked, pulling on his boots.
“Broke as can be.”
“Well, then. We want to be there first, we gotta get outa here, fast. Every hour here those big tugs are closer, and they’re a little faster than Warhorse, but not by much.”
“What about the Canadian companies?” Louise knew Larry carefully watched what the Canadian salvors were doing.
“They’ll be nosing around, but this time of year they’re usually off in Asia working over there. Risk we must take. It’s those Buckhorn tugs I’m worried about. If that’s the Express caught fire and was abandoned, that’s a Buckhorn’s ship and they’ll want to grab her under their contract to avoid a big claim.”
“It’ll be a race, Larry.”
Louise knew the Buckhorn people. Their tug operation was big and they thought they were the best. The Buckhorn captains looked down their noses at Larry and his crew, and they thought Warhorse was an ancient, useless scow. They even called Louise “Tugboat Annie” behind her back, but she was actually proud of that. Over the years, Warhorse had brought in more prizes than any other two tugs in the United States, and her engines were still sound and her steel good.
As they talked, they dressed. Larry threw clothing into a bag for the tug and called the brothers, while Louise made coffee and then started the car just as Leon and Vince appeared.
“What is it?” Leon looked half asleep. He was rubbing his eyes.
“Don’t know. Maybe the Express. Up off the Charlottes.”
“Jesus.”
No money in the bank, broke, string nearly run out. If they steamed north 500 miles and missed the ship, or if it was taken by the Buckhorn tugs, or if it sank, Warhorse and crew would be out of fuel, out of money, and out of a future. If they somehow got a line on the ship first, claimed her, and brought her to a dock, they’d have a solid claim.
Louise knew she was going to get seasick from the incoming seas once they got into the middle of the Strait. She always got seasick after spending months ashore. This time it had been years. She hoped Larry had kept all the gear and equipment up to standard–they were going to need it all to corral a drifting ship. First they had to find her. Then they had to get aboard. That was going to be the trickiest part, finding a way to get aboard a derelict vessel, dead in the water, almost certainly without a gangway or rope ladder down the side. If the ship sank before they got there, they were shit out of luck. If the ship sank after they grabbed her, they were shit out of luck. If by some miracle they towed the ship to the port dock here, then maybe they’d get a claim.
“We sure about this?” Larry asked at the front door. “All we heard was that one transmission about the tugs, and the abandonment. If the captain’s still aboard her we can’t claim her by law.”
“Risk we gotta take, Larry,” said Louise. “If she is really abandoned and is still afloat when you get there, you’ll never have a head start like this one again, because those tugs are usually at Port Angeles.”
“Gonna be a nasty trip up there.”
“We’ll keep the stoves going. We’ll stay warm.”
Louise got into her van with the brothers to get groceries. Larry got in some oilskins and headed down to the dock and the tug after calling the others to make a full crew.
The rain fell. The day was brightening. The wind was blowing and it was cold.
Damn. She’d smelled the money again.
Now they had to close the deal. Then she’d make sure this cocksucker she was married to would suffer.
3. Travis
Travis, topside after stowing his shit in the cabin, stood quietly aft, in the shadows. When he’d heard the phone this morning, and then Leon’s voice, his heart leapt, and he hadn’t thought twice about joining them. He’d called Judy, his editor, and left her a message saying he was going with the Warhorse crew on a rescue mission and would have a good story when he returned.
He guessed that no matter what, he’d be fired when he got back. He’d made the mistake of dating Judy’s younger sister, Dale, on Judy’s insistence, and that hadn’t worked out well at all. Last night he’d met with Dale again, and explained to her, again, that they were not going to be a couple, in as nice a way as he could. But it wasn’t nice enough. Travis knew he’d hear about this from Judy when he returned to work.
He hadn’t liked Judy much anyway, let alone the paper, which seemed afraid to cover anything serious for fear of losing advertisers. Right now that meant Buckhorn, whose advertising was carrying the whole operation. Travis couldn’t convince Judy to let him do a deep background story on the whole Buckhorn mining operation. The paper wanted no such story, not right now. Now, standing at the back of the wheelhouse as they left the harbor, he felt right at home. It was as if the year hadn’t passed, as if he’d never gone ashore to work as a reporter.
Warhorse eased from the harbor. The morning was still dark, and the lights along the shore blurred against the rain-covered wheelhouse windows. Travis heard the fans, the clicking steering mechanism, the mutter of radios turned down low, and the deep throbbing of the engine below. The big tug leaned as they made their way from the narrow harbor among the buoys.
Larry steered. Nelson adjusted the sea return on the radar. He usually served as first mate, but was second mate on this trip because of Louise, who sat in the big chair to port, feet on the rail. Travis was a little surprised to see her aboard. She’d come ashore before Travis started with the company. The green scope glowed. Travis recognized the passing shore in the outline of the land. They were passing the Port of Sol Duc dock, where tribal fishing boats usually tied up, except they’d been kicked out to make way for the Buckhorn mining project. A long dark line of black tightly set wooden posts extended in the gloom, each covered with barnacles and seaweed.
Travis watched Louise hitch herself in the chair and lean back. The chairs were bolted to the deck. The wheelhouse was one two deck above the main weather deck. Warhorse was a low, old-style, deep-sea tug, wide and squat, with a mostly open rear deck and huge winches. She carried enormous amounts of fuel and was able to pull entire ships with her huge brass propeller below, now throbbing turn by turn as they headed for the Strait. Forward, below the curving windows overlooking the bow, Travis saw the worn brass handrails, nearly white with the years, and beyond them the wide shelf running just beneath the windows. Warhorse still carried a traditional compass on that shelf, but these days they used an electronic charting system and autopilot. The helm was no longer the huge five-foot diameter spoke wheel Warhorse had come with when new in 1952. Instead, a small dial the size of a dinner plate stood against a console behind which sat or stood the steersman, now Jules, who had taken over from Larry. Travis thought Jules might be Leon’s cousin.
Nelson straightened up from adjusting the radar scope and peered forward. Ahead stood two can buoys and then the Strait of Juan de Fuca, dark in the rain and gloom. Even from here in the channel, they could see the swells. Sol Duc lay 40 miles east of the entrance to the strait, but even in here the big Pacific rollers marched.
“Is this wise?” said Nelson, half smiling. “I mean, it’s two days to get up there.“
Travis, back in the gloom, knew Nelson had sailed first and second mate on big ships for years. After a divorce, he moved to Sol Duc and began to serve as relief crew on the tug. He’d taught Travis how to navigate during one long tow across the Pacific, and for a few weeks, Travis had dreamed of going to school and becoming a mate.
“Wind’s behind us once we get outside. It won’t be so bad,” said Larry.
Even in the dark wheelhouse, Travis realized Louise was staring at her husband with cold eyes. Larry and Louise always spat like cats while together. She was way too old for Travis, but still, he thought, Louise was a good-looking woman. He braced his feet as the tug rose into the first swell passing the buoys.
Larry had been writing in a small notebook. Now he looked up, saw his wife staring, and looked away. He saw Travis in the corner.
“You find your bunk?” he asked.
“Yeah, we’re all settled.”
Travis had taken the upper bunk in the port cabin just ahead of the engine room. It was noisy but warm. He was in with Dark Cloud and Billie and Stretch. Dark Cloud had grabbed the lower bunk furthest from the door, pulled out a small flask, drank, and then lay down, pulling a blanket over himself.
They really weren’t all settled. Billie and Stretch were obviously hung over, and Travis had a small headache from drinking the night before. Dark Cloud was on a tear, and probably had been for who knows how many days. The upper bunk on the port side was the only one left when Travis came aboard. The tug was full; there must be over 10 people aboard.
In the galley, Gary and Peter frantically tried to stow all the groceries before the tug began rolling. It seemed an enormous amount of food when Travis had come below and seen the endless bags and boxes, but all these people and a week or more at sea required a lot of food, and Travis now wondered if they had enough for the whole job, assuming they snagged the abandoned ship.
“Well, we better get done what we can before we leave the Strait.”
Larry folded the notebook and shoved it in a pocket. “Make sure the new wire’s on right, all the fittings and seals good. When was the last time we checked the hydraulics?”
“Leon did it already,” Nelson said. “First thing when he got aboard.”
“We have enough survival suits?” asked Louise, staring forward.
“A dozen.”
“Checked?”
“At the yard this time. We oughta be OK.” Larry stretched. He pulled out his notebook, opened it, and peered inside. Then he grabbed a sheet of paper from the chart table and wrote names and watches, taping it to the console beside the helm. “We’ll do a drill, check all the suits, today at four. Okay?”
Travis scratched his neck. The day was brightening and the rain was heavy. The big rollers in the Strait rose and fell and the tug began to wallow. There was nothing else out on the water. The radar scope was empty.
The water outside was dark gray, streaked with foam. Forward, the bow pushed huge walls of water aside as it rose into coming seas. The big tug shuddered as it plowed ahead.
“Damn.” Louise stood from the chair, went to the leeward door, opened it and threw up over the wing. Larry chuckled, but he didn’t look too good himself. He held on to the brass rail.
“Travis, if you’re settled, we’re gonna need three big wire loops, a couple double ended loops with plenty of feet between ‘em. There’s wire down in the workshop. You get a couple guys to help you, try to splice ‘em up, okay?”
The workshop was located just forward of the engine room, below decks. It was loud but warm, and reasonably dry.
“I mean, Travis, you’re the wire man, right?” Larry started to laugh. “Your hands are gonna bleed, though, after a year off scribbling stories about garden parties and weddings.”
Travis’s decision to leave the tug and work as a reporter had been supported by Larry, but now Travis knew Larry had missed him. Larry was no good splicing wire; not many were. For some reason Travis had the gift. But he knew his hands were going to suffer.
“Two double loops?”
“Yeah. We have one short one aboard but we need more, made with three-eighths wire, 50 feet between loops. We’ll need ‘em to pass things to the ship, once we get aboard her.”
“What’s the plan?” Nelson lit a cigarette. Travis knew Larry and Louise didn’t care if people smoked.
“Same as ever: a blind grab.” Larry leaned back, reviewing his watch list. “If we get the prize, the boat gets half and we share up the rest, just like always. Plus once we reach the dock it could be some of us on the clock watching the ship pending the Coast Guard hearing. Could be weeks of pay.”
“Not if we go to Sol Duc,” said Nelson. “We’ll need another tug to make the channel and that’s Buckhorn’s dock anyway. They’ll watch the ship.”
“Still, we get her to the channel there, hand her over, it’s our claim, and a big one,” said Larry. “Was she in danger? No question. She was burning. Was it unsafe and dangerous to take her? Absolutely. If we hadn’t grabbed her, would she be a total loss? Probably.”
“Buckhorn will argue their tugs coulda gotten the ship if we didn’t.”
“They’ll try, but we’ll have a good claim.”
“Our guys gotta help bring her to the dock.” said Nelson
Louise laughed.
“Little ahead of yourself, don’t you think? Who knows if we’ll be first? We don’t even know if the ship’s still gonna be afloat when we reach her. Lotta wood to cut before we start arguing about the claim, and how to hand the ship off down in Sol Duc.
“Could be months, waiting for the claim,” Jules muttered. He was a short man with a huge head and eyes so far apart he looked like a cow.
“Years,” Nelson said.
“You guys knew the risks. I didn’t shanghai you.”
“No, Larry,” said Nelson. “What I meant is…what’s the plan for taking the ship? Assuming we find it.”
“We’ll find it.”
Travis had noticed, when driving by the docks, how Warhorse needed paint. For the last year, she looked shabby, and always seemed to be tied at the dock instead of working. He figured Louise and Larry were out of money and desperate. What the hell was wrong with him? The reporter job was decent, even if the pay sucked. At least it was pay, and besides, he worked in an office and got to watch the occasional beautiful woman come in for an interview or to try to sell them something. Yet he’d chucked it all to head out on this wild goose chase. Jesus. Even if they found the ship and snagged it, they had to get it to shore, and then wait for the hearing, deal with the lawyers. It would be months and months. Travis knew the market for stories about old tugs and burnt-out ships wasn’t very large, if it existed at all.
Louise came back in the wheelhouse, shivering and wiping her jaw. She looked better. Larry ignored her and kept talking.
“First we got to get aboard her. Maybe the crew threw over a Jacobs’s ladder before they abandoned ship, but I doubt it. Probably have to get aboard over the stern; that’ll be the lowest place.”
Louise retook her chair.
“We’ll put five or six people on her, see if we can get one of her engines running for power, hydraulics, the winches. Probably can’t, but it’s worth a try. We’ll run a line from the tug up through the chocks, back down to the tug, then use that to pull the big wire aboard and attach it. We’ll need the pieces you’re making, Travis, in case there isn’t wire on the ship. Then we tow her back here.”
“Who’s gonna go aboard?” Louise asked.
“Me, Travis here, Vince, Dark Cloud and Billie and Stretch. Rest of you guys will stay here. Nelson will be in charge. You help, Louise.”
Louise said nothing. Travis knew it had been years since she’d been offshore.
“We better rig up some nets then, to ferry over survival suits and food and such,” said Jules, wiping off the compass forward. “You could be on that dead ship a few days and the food over there will have probably gone bad.”
“Just so long as there’s water, we’ll be OK.”
“And what about those Buckhorn tugs? If they left from the bottom of the Sound the same time we did, we only have eight hours on them, and in two days of steaming we might lose most of our lead.” Nelson was looking through the windows at the water. “They’ll really want that ship, Larry. If there’s two of them they might try to cut off our tow, claim it’s an accident.”
“All the more reason to get up there and grab that ship and tie in good.”
Travis looked at his soft, pale hands. He sighed.
“Well, I better get started on that wire, then,” he said, and started below.
