Come Alive Ch. 28

"Claire!" Edith's father called out, then he realized his mistake and called out Edith's name, but that mistake had played out hundreds of times before and it was a part of who the little girl was. "Come back here!"

She was on the swim team and the water didn't bother her in the least, at least not for a few minutes, but when she felt the first ragged waves of hypothermia settling in the muscles of her thighs she stopped swimming and turned around, looking at her parents waving at her from the shore.

She pushed up, tried to see any sign of Henry on the sparkling, moon-dappled water, but when she saw nothing out there she turned back to the comfort of all the knowns in her life...

+++++

The wetsuit provided all the buoyancy he needed, so the only real danger now was hypothermia, yet laying out there in the sea his core still felt reasonably warm. With his head half-submerged the cool water was lapping against his eardrums, but his eyes were commanding all his attention now.

Almost due south and now quite high in the sky, Orion was hanging around up there, drawing his bow and getting ready to let slip his arrow once again. He forgot who or what the archer was aiming at, then realized it really didn't matter anymore...

He had to be three miles out now and the current was pushing him with real force -- and he just didn't care anymore. He watched as a freighter, surrounded by a covey of tugs, began pushing back from a wharf and turned for the breakwater, and while he -- on one level, at least -- knew what was going on all that now felt like it belonged to another life, one he'd abandoned...

Then the water suddenly grew warm, startlingly warm, and he reached down with his feet half expecting to feel a sandbar or some other shallow formation when a shiny black face slipped from beneath the surface of the sea. It was an orca, he saw. A very young male -- they were looking at one another, each taking a measure of the other.

But when water splashed into his eyes just then, Henry saw Claire in the darkness and tears came to him once again.

Then the young male came close and brushed against him and instinct took hold.

Henry hugged the orca, his face against the side of the orca's face, and he cried and cried --

-- until he heard a gentle clicking coming from the sea --

-- then a moaning sound from deep within the orca --

-- and he felt the protective embrace of the orca's pectoral, almost as if the young male was shielding him from something...

"Thanks, buddy," Henry said, pushing back a little so he could look into the orca's eye, but now the clicking sound was a fierce presence now, coming from everywhere -- and he turned and was stunned to see several orcas staring at him, all of them very quiet as he floated there in the young male's embrace.

Then Claire's words from the priest came to him. "'My love will be there to protect you...'" he said to the young male, then he pointed to Honfleur. "Would you mind taking me over there?"

The male seemed to nod once and gently presented his dorsal fin, and when the two of them took off for the shoreline the rest of the pod followed...

+++++

March. Spring break. High school graduation less than three months off.

Friends from the football team are heading up to Mammoth for a week. Hotel rooms reserved, hot tubs and Boone's Farm Apple Wine all lined up, and they want me to go up with them. Two station wagons all lined up and packed, ready to go. Skis waxed, new boots fitted because, 'Hey mom, my feet are still growing, ya know?'

Through the smog to Claremont then up to the high desert before getting on 395, then the long slog to Lone Pone and Bishop before the final sprint into Mammoth Lakes and then to find the hotel. And while he's unpacking the Ford another wagon pulls into the lot and there are a bunch of girls from Newport Beach inside. And when he realizes one of them is Edith he feels like running into the forest behind the hotel...

His friends get him up early because there's been a dump overnight and everyone wants to make first tracks off the Cornice Run off the upper gondola. They dash to the base lodge and grab something hot for breakfast then pick up their lift tickets and head for the gondola. Edith gets into the gondola just ahead of his and he wonders how she's been managing to hide from him so well...

She waiting for him in the midway station and gets into the next gondola with him.

He turns away from her when she sits next to him.

"You can't hide from me forever, Hank."

"I can try," he snarled. "What are you doing here, Pest?"

"I just wanted to talk, you know?"

"Talk? About what?"

"Claire."

"What?"

"Mom and dad won't talk about her anymore, not even a little bit, but there are so many things I want to talk about, to know about, and so many things about her I feel are already slipping away, but Hank, you know all the answers. You're carrying all that stuff around inside your head and I need to talk with you about some things..."

She didn't leave his side after that, and one day he saw a picture someone had taken of the two of them over at the Bay Club and he'd had a hard time understanding the picture was taken with Edith, not Claire. Even some of his best friends told him it was hard to tell the sisters apart, and though it was a little spooky everyone seemed to understand. Maybe, they said, this was the way things were supposed to be now, ya know?

+++++

Berkeley. He was in the jocks dorm because he was on a half-ride scholarship, playing middle linebacker, and even though he was a freshman he was varsity so the older guys left him pretty much alone and didn't beat him up too often.

His dad called, wanted to know about Christmas this year.

"I don't think I can do it, Dad."

"I understand, but I had to ask."

"You and mom should go. Don't let me stop you guys from having fun."

"You going to do something with Edith?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I was thinking about Park City."

"Yeah? Look, I've done some work for the Bass brothers, so why don't you let me see if I can swing a deal up at Snowbird..."

+++++

She flew up to SFO and they drove across to Salt Lake City together -- and just like that a family tradition disappeared, never to be rekindled. But the Cliff Lodge was something else...a modest skyscraper hewn of concrete, glass, and steel perched on a small rise at the bottom of the mountain. And everything about the place was magnificent.

She was a good skier, too. Better than Claire, not quite as good as he was but good enough to be fun. She loved him and reminded him of that several times a day, and while nights together had been tough at first they were really great now.

And then...Christmas Eve.

His first-ever away from his parents. His first with Edith, with Claire's shadow.

Sitting in the elegant dining room at the Cliff Lodge, the fireplace roaring and a heavy snow falling beyond curtains of tinted glass. A roast goose with all the trimmings, holding hands, and all kinds of talk about the life they planned to share stretching out ahead. All of a sudden everything was serious and yet she felt so right. Echoes are like that, right?

Yet when they made love now they were creating something all their own. Claire wasn't a part of this new thing.

Was she? Or was she?

+++++

He flew down for a weekend in late January. Something was different. She was distant. Aloof. He took her to The Crab Cooker for lunch on Saturday and she wouldn't even look him in the eye. Walking back to her car after lunch he reached for her hand and she pulled away.

He didn't push. He didn't ask any questions. And when she stopped calling he stopped caring because it hurt too much when he thought about it. The funny thing about it? He was losing Claire all over again and he didn't even know what the fuck was going down.

He dated a few girls later that year but when those fizzled his studies seemed to take precedence and that was that. He began to hate Berkeley, thought about transferring to SC or Stanford then spring training came around and some kid put a helmet to his knee and then football became a sort of memory, too.

His knee was still in a brace when the Mazatlan race started, but his dad surrendered the wheel and let him take it. He steered almost the whole trip and Bandit did pretty good, taking third in class -- which wasn't bad for a heavy boat like a Swan. The crew, a bunch of his father's friends who made up the same ragtag crew every summer, went out busting down bottles of tequila their first night down there and it was the first time he'd ever seen his father get seriously drunk. Then his father got even drunker the next night and fucked some kind of Mexican hooker, and Henry looked away and looked away until he couldn't look his father's way again...

+++++

He'd been working for a startup that was developing a so-called digital darkroom, mainly taking slides and negatives and scanning them so deeper manipulations could take place. The owner of the company had a sailboat he usually kept on Lake Union and one day he asked if Henry could help bring the boat from Vancouver, BC back down to the lake.

"I hear you've done some real sailing," Dean Collins said.

"Real sailing? What's that?"

"Overnight, stuff like that. You know, real stuff."

Henry had scowled at that bit of obtuse circumlocution and hoped the guy would just move on.

"Thing is, I got a new boat and I think it's too big for me."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You ever heard of Swans?"

Henry had nodded, curious now because if there was one thing he knew it was that newbies shouldn't try to cut their teeth on boats like Swans. "Yeah, I've heard of 'em. What did you pick up?"

"A sixty-five," Collins said, now intently watching Henry for some kind of reaction.

"You bought a Swan 65? And you don't know how to sail?"

"Oh, I can sail. Lasers, Hobie Cats, that stuff."

"Uh-huh."

"So, you think you can handle a Swan?"

"Let's see, is this an S&S version, new or used?"

"New, the latest and greatest, the 651."

"You gonna campaign it, or what?" Henry asked, now seriously considering the idea that the owner of this company was a total airhead.

"No, no. I just wanted something to watch fireworks from. You know, something that grabs peoples' attention and keeps it."

"Oh? Well, I reckon a 651 ought to do that reasonably well. I guess you're talking about the fireworks on Lake Union, right?"

"Yeah, right."

"So...probably not taking it out on the Sound very much?"

"Man, I don't know about that. Not yet, anyway. Say, have you done any racing?"

"A little."

"Like what?"

"Five PORCs and three transpacs."

"PORCs? What's that?"

"Pacific Ocean Racing Conference. Races from the Pacific coast down to Mexico, things like that."

"No shit? How many of those have you done?"

Taggart shrugged. "I don't know. Thirty I guess, maybe a few more than that."

"And three transpacs, you said?"

"Yup."

"So...you're coming with me, right?"

"Yeah, I reckon I probably better. If I don't you'll probably sink a reef or something. Anyone else coming?"

"Yeah, my dad."

"Oh, I take it he's a sailor?"

"Nope. Never been."

"Uh-huh. What's he do?"

"Retired air force, but he works for Boeing these days, in some kind of special projects division."

+++++

The Swan was tied off at a broker's dock near the airport, and Dean introduced Henry to General Rupert Collins in the broker's office before they went down to check out the boat. The Swan had been ordered by a banker from Hong Kong who wanted to keep it here in Vancouver, but the banker had vapor locked and dropped dead a month before delivery. The Swan had just been delivered, riding on the deck of a large ocean-going freighter all the way from Finland, and Dean had negotiated a better than good price and now owned one of the best ocean racing sailboats in the world. That he wanted to use for watching fireworks on a lake in the middle of downtown Seattle, presumably so he could impress a few girls, or boys, or whatever it was that floated his boat. So to speak.

Henry and the General walked down to the dock admiring the gleaming navy blue hull as they approached her.

"Dean tells me you've done some sailing?"

"A little, yes. Mainly racing."

"Did that broker say this is a racing boat. Is that about the size of things?"

"Yessir. These are among the best, and by that, I mean the toughest long-distance racing boats in the world. Two of 'em have won the Whitbread."

"Whitbread? What's that?"

"A race around the world. Lots of national teams with crews drawn from special forces."

"You mean, like Rangers and SEALs?"

"British SAS is more to the point, but yeah. The race is grueling, and yes, people die."

"And these boats win that race?"

"Yessir."

"And my boy wants to use this thing as a goddam party barge?"

"Yessir."

"Isn't there a race from around here to Hawaii?"

"Yessir, the Vic-Maui, and then there's the Swiftsure Series."

What's that, the Vic-Maui?"

"Victoria, BC to Lahaina, Maui. It's a little longer than the LA-Diamond Head Transpac and the routing is notoriously fickle because of shifting weather patterns, but I hear it's a fun race."

"Okay. What about this boat? Would it be competitive?"

"Uh, if you don't mind me asking, sir, what are you driving at?"

"Well, to my mind this is kind of like buying a Kentucky Derby racehorse and then using it to plow fields, and that ain't gonna happen on my watch, Mr. Taggart. So my question for you is this? You want to help me campaign this tub, or do I go back up to that office and tell that suede-shoe hot-shot 'no-deal.'

"Sir? I thought this was supposed to be Dean's boat."

"Piffle. That boy ain't earned a dime in his life. And by the way, this will end up being my purchase, just like that company you're working for was my purchase. I'm just hoping that jackass doesn't fuck things up again and maybe makes some money this time."

"I see."

"So? What'll it be?"

+++++

Two nights later. Tied off along the outer mole at the port in Friday Harbor, a de Havilland Beaver on floats idling nearby, probably getting ready to leave for Seattle, but who knew, right?

Dean shut-in down below in his 'owner's cabin' -- lost inside a never-ending pout. And because daddy had taken over everything to do with his new toy he'd decided the first thing he was going to do when he got back to Seattle was fire Taggart.

The General and Henry were in town picking up an inflatable boat and an outboard, because it would be a pain to have to rely on marinas for overnight stops and inflatables were like station wagons for boats. You couldn't have one without the other, Henry said -- and by this point, after two days of Dean's nonstop bullshit, when Henry spoke the General listened.

They picked up an Avon and a British Seagull motor and the store told them they'd deliver it dockside later that afternoon, so Henry and Rupert went off in search of breakfast because, naturally enough, there still wasn't any real food on board. After Dean went off in search of groceries in Vancouver he returned with a few bags of potato chips and a case of Coke, so their trip south had been a quest to find restaurants with docks -- and enough draft to accommodate the Swans deep racing keel. Hence...the inflatable boat had become an overnight priority.

"Henry, I don't know what I'm going to do with that boy of mine..."

"He seems like a challenge."

"You shoulda gone to work for State. Don't you ever say what you feel?"

Henry shook his head. "It's a bad habit. I'm trying to quit."

That was good for a chuckle. "So, this whole digital darkroom shit? Is there anything to it, or am I sinking his mother's money in a bottomless pit?"

So Taggart had given the General a rundown on the transformation about to transform the photographic industry, and the role software would play in the shift. Henry had to backtrack more than once, too, and get Rupert up to speed on the whole special effects revolution shaking up the motion picture biz down in LA, and by the time he wrapped up his lecture the General was a fascinated convert.

"I've read your CV, by the way. What are you doing working for someone like my son?"

"He's actually kind of a good kid, sir, he just never grew up and now he's paying the price. People like him because he's been easy to take advantage of, at least so far he has been..."

"And then you came along. Yeah, I saw that too."

"Yeah? Well, when we were at Stanford I got to know him, and probably better than most people ever will. He's actually kind of brilliant, but he's a misfit too. Anyway, when I heard what he was running up against I wanted to get involved before he lost his shirt."

"Why's that?"

"Well, the reason was simple enough really. Greed. There's going to be a shitload of money made in this area and I wouldn't mind being in on the haul. The best way for me to do that right now is to see to it that Dean gets this thing off the ground and then running at full speed..."

"And then what, Henry?"

"In this biz the best thing that can happen to someone in Dean's position is to build up your company and make the operation so attractive that one of the big fish just has to swim by and snap you up, buy you out..."

"And that's your aim with Dean?"

"Kind of, sir. Like I said, I really don't want to see him get hurt, but at the same time, it's a good opportunity for me. This is my area, and I have some ideas I want to work with. I have the freedom to do that where I am right now...then...who knows. I'd like to move back to LA at some point, but I'm not in a rush."

They made it back to the Swan in time to meet the delivery crew, and after they got the Avon inflated and the motor mounted Henry took Dean and the General out for a spin around the little harbor. Dean was still pouting but the fresh air appeared to help some...

The next night they anchored out not far from Oak Harbor, and now fully provisioned Henry whipped up a spicy clam chowder and served it up in little bowls made from sourdough bread. After that Dean and the General retired for the evening, leaving Henry to clean up his mess and generally tidy up the deck before hitting the sack himself...

And a few hours later the general sat up in bed, confused. He'd heard splashing nearby and some other noises that just made no sense to him, so he got up and walked forward to fetch Henry...

...but Henry wasn't in his cabin, so he went aft to his son's...

...but no, he was asleep...then he heard more splashing...coming from outside...

He went back to his cabin and dressed then went topsides, but Henry wasn't out here either.

Then more splashing, and laughter too.

He turned and looked behind the boat and finally saw that Henry was out there -- but with several killer whales -- and when he realized that they all appeared to be playing with each other he stiffened a little until he noticed the gathering of little gold spheres hovering about a hundred feet above the water...then he dashed below to grab his Nikon...where he ran into something even more outrageous...

© 2021 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next element will drop as soon as the muse cooperates.