Riverman Ch. 03

"I think I'm going to go change my underwear," he said after a brief pause in his diatribe.

"Not a bad idea," I said, then looked up as two State Police patrol cars came tearing into the parking lot. The officers jumped out of their cars and jogged down to us on the pier."

"Y'all alright?" one of them asked.

"So, the fella shot at you?" the other asked. This one had taken the report earlier that morning.

"He did at that," I said.

"Did he hit the boat?" the first one asked.

"You know? I haven't looked?" I jumped aboard and leaned over the left side of the boat. Didn't see anything, though . . .

"Here it is," the second officer said, digging with a pencil at the teak coaming surrounding the cockpit. I looked at the impact point, guessed that the angle the man was standing relative to us when he fired. If the bullet had been a few inches higher he would have hit me. I felt dizzy, and sat down.

"Well, well," the officer said as he dug the radio out of the holster on his hip, "we got us an attempted homicide!"

"I think I need a fucking drink," I said to no one in particular. Fred was laughing again.

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Betty never left the inside of the boat that day. I think she was terrified her husband would show up at any moment, though I don't know what staying below would have done to help that. I began to put pieces together again, and began to understand that Liebestod and I must have come to represent safe refuge for Betty. I didn't know a lot about battered women back then.

But that would change over the next few days.

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Another Trooper came round the boat later that day and told us that Betty's husband was still at large. He didn't know what had happened, only that police had lost him in a crowd of people out on the Cape somewhere, and that they had recovered his car. It was assumed he was still armed. I heard Betty gasp down below, and walk back to the aft cabin.

I looked at a map. He could hitch a ride or steal a car, be here inside of two hours if he was resourceful enough. There was now no doubt the man was crazy enough to try anything, and I wondered just how the hell Betty had gotten involved with such malevolence. She seemed pretty intuitive and insightful about people. What had gone wrong?

Whatever, we couldn't stay here, couldn't stay linked to land whatever we did. I looked at charts of the surrounding area and saw a million places to hide, literally innumerable anchorages where we could hole up and wait for this thing to blow over, but I thought about Betty and her face, how I really should get her to a medical facility and get her jaw x-rayed.

We could go back to Elizabeth City, but that might not be comfortable for her. We could head to New Bern, where we had ridden-out the hurricane. Or we could return to Beaufort, which had a nice hospital nearby. That was my choice, and I went below to ask her what she wanted to do.

She was huddled up in the aft cabin, sitting in a corner with her knees pulled up tightly to her chest, and she was staring blankly into nothingness . . .

"Betty?" I said. Nothing. Not even a flicker of recognition.

I sat by her on the bunk and put my hand on her shoulder; she flinched, drew more deeply inward and began to shiver.

Alright, I said to myself. That's it. Time to move.

I went up and rousted Hank, and we got the boats warmed up, lines cast off, and we backed out into the channel again. We motored side by side at a sedate four knots until we cleared the tightly packed buoys marking the approach channel, then I yelled across for Hank to take the lead, that we'd retrace our route back to Beaufort and get Betty some help there.

It was mid-afternoon now, but we'd all had at least a little rest. Hank and I decided to keep moving together through the night. I had opened up the hatch in the aft cabin while down below - to let some fresh air in - and could just lean over the cockpit coaming and look down into the room; Betty was still balled-up on my bed, staring into the abyss.

"You need anything, Betty, just call out, OK?"

Nothing. Not a flicker.

Fred leaned over and looked down on her, too, then just nodded his head. He understood.

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We sailed downwind with a light norther at our back all through the night; Hank and I had separated a bit to avoid bumping into each other, but I kept him ahead of me all through the night so I wouldn't lose him again. At one point I set the autopilot and went below to help Betty go to the bathroom, and I brushed her teeth as best I could and helped her get under the covers. She closed her eyes and went right to sleep while I rubbed her head, and when her breathing grew deep I returned topsides and resumed steering by hand for a while.

I kept thinking about one thing had Nietzsche said long ago: All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth comes only from the senses. I had, Fred was telling me now, to trust my senses on this one. I could see his scowling face sitting by me in the cockpit, hear a voice - his voice? - telling me to trust my senses. I could fill in the blanks later, he told me, but there wasn't anything devious about Betty that he could see or feel, and I had to trust him on that score. She had somehow gotten herself into a mess, he said, and had been looking for a way out when I'd come along. The question then became a simple one. Was I a victim of circumstance - Betty's circumstances, really - or had Betty indeed reached out to me out of a real sense of connection. If the former, then Betty was an opportunist, and I was her mark; in the latter case she was the victim, and I had come along when I had for a reason. She was reaching out for me, if that was the case. Reaching out for her very survival. I could feel Nietzsche in the air beside me - coaching me, reassuring me - I could feel it in the way Ruth had looked at me, feel it in the diametric collisions that our lives had represented. He was, really, an interesting old fart.

Life comes at you in moments of brief insight, and sometimes you're lucky enough to grasp them as they dance in the air in front of you. Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment - a little makes the way of the best happiness. A little makes the way of the best happiness . . .

So little . . .

It takes so little to see love for what it is. An asking, an offering, a sharing of souls . . .

It takes so little effort to hold onto someone who reaches out for you . . .

And hadn't it been easy to run from it, too? Fred said as he laughed out loud.

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After sailing through the night, we turned down Adams Creek once again as the sun rose through the trees and made our way south towards the final canal before entering Beaufort. It was all downhill now, I thought to myself. I poked my head down below, heard Betty bouncing around down there, then I saw her walking on her own into the head. A minute later she came out into the light of day.

"Howya doin', sport?" I said through the open hatchway.

She jumped at my voice, then looked up at me. She smiled, and I knew then that it would be alright.

"Thirsty," she said. "I've got cotton-mouth."

"Well, help yourself. I can't leave the wheel right now."

"You want anything?" she asked, nodding her head, understanding my needs.

"Oh, yeah, some cold water sounds good. Maybe an orange." She nodded and padded off in her bare feet toward the galley, and a moment later popped up and passed a glass up to me. Some more thumping down below and she came up with an orange and sat next to me in the cool morning air. She peeled the orange and handed me a slice, and I took it from her fingers with my mouth, and lingered a bit, kissed the tips of her proffered fingers.

She smiled, accepting my love for her. Not running, not running from love.

Oh! Is there hope? Fred said.

The channel was wide here, still maybe a few hundred yards wide, as it narrowed towards the canal, but once in the canal proper the waterway narrowed to a few hundred feet, and the way was lined with thick trees and intermittent rolling farmland. After an hour of motoring down the straight confines of the waterway, I made out the overpass that marked the end of the canal. It was sixty five feet up in the air, and an occasional car rumbled over. The canal was a hundred and twenty feet wide as it went under the bridge, and a grim industrial gravel pit lined the way there.

And then I saw him.

Standing at the crest of the bridge, looking down on us.

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"Hank! Hank" I yelled, and I saw Hank react to the form on the bridge by shutting down the throttle and turning hard about. I was too close behind him as he turned in front of me, and I evaded by turning toward the riverbank on the right side of the channel, and in a nauseating instant I felt the boat slice into thick, soft mud. The bow of my boat was then crunching up through thick grass and trees, and came to a rest hard on the gravel, and I started cussing as I saw Betty's husband take off at a dead run down the bridge toward our side of the canal. We had maybe a quarter mile between us - five minutes at most - before he would get to us here.

Betty looked at the running man on the bridge with detached dread registering on her face, and I dropped below to get my Walther from it's hiding place. I came up just in time for Hank's towing bridle to slam down in the cockpit; he was backing down on us, indicating I should tie us off and start to back out of the mud, and I jumped to secure the lines, dropping the Walther in the cockpit as I did.

I was tying the bridle on the port side aft mooring stanchion when I heard Betty moan, and I turned around to see him thrashing through the brush above us on the canal walls. His eyes were full of black hate, and I saw him looking right at me . . . He jumped the last few feet and landed on the bow of my boat, the gun in his right hand pointed right at me. He smiled at me.

I watched that malevolent smile form on his face even as I watched his finger tighten on his gun's trigger. I would be a close thing . . .

. . . I ducked as he fired; I heard the round sizzling through the air above my head, then heard Hank screaming that he'd been shot, and I heard him hit the water beside his boat.

The I heard another shot, then another, and another, and I heard a body falling on the deck in front of me. I stood and saw Betty standing in the cockpit, my pistol in her hand, and I saw her husband lying on the foredeck of my boat, a vast open wound in his forehead spilling blood all over my teak decks. Fred looked stunned.

I turned and looked for Hank; I could only see a red slick on the water and dove into it. I swam around under water for a moment, then felt him and pulled him to me and swam for the surface. We burst into the light and I dragged his inert form to the bank; I could see his eyes flinching in pain, and he gasped for breath in ragged bursts, and I jumped for my boat and ran to the radio and called for help.

I saw then that Betty was down below, too; she was bleeding from a gunshot wound in her belly, and was deathly pale - breathing in quick little gasps.

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The Coast Guard and State Police had roped off the crime scene, and had taken both Hank and Betty by helicopter away from the scene. I remained on-board Liebestod - stuck in the mud; we weren't going anywhere anyway, and the authorities hadn't let me leave the scene. They needed witness statements, and paperwork always takes precedence over human misery and suffering, doesn't it?

I recounted what I knew, even drew a little sketch for the police, and eventually a bright yellow tow-boat pulled us from the mud. A Coast Guardsman remained on Hank's boat and steered her in to Beaufort, and I took Liebestod on to the town docks and berthed her where she had been not so long ago. A State Policeman came by wanting even more information, and kindly drove me to the hospital where Hank and Betty had been taken, and we talked about the incident at length before - finding that both were in surgery and would be for hours - he drove me back to Beaufort.

I had heard rocks and stumps tearing into Liebestod's belly during her grounding, and called my trusty engine mechanic - Sven - to come down and assay possible engine damage before moving her to a shipyard for examination. He arrived a few hours later.

"So all that stuff up on the canal was you, huh?"

"Yeah. None other," I said.

"Been all over the news. Did you know she was married?"

"No. No idea. She told me - told me she never had been; didn't wear a ring, either."

"Whoa. Man, you sure got lucky."

Now that was an odd bit of irony, I thought as Sven said that. Just how, I wondered to myself, had anything about this situation been - lucky? That I'd lived? I'd flown jets all my life, walked away from a few landings that would have made most folks pee their pants, but I'd never even once considered calling that luck. Skill, training, not losing your cool; maybe all those things . . . but luck? What role had luck played here in this series of misadventures.

Was there really such a thing?

And if Luck was a real thing, if life was indeed shaped by something as ephemeral as Luck, after all was said and done, had I really been lucky?

And now that all was said and done; what was I going to do about Betty?

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Indeed, if Betty lived.

I called the hospital later that evening, wanted to get an update on both Hank and Betty's condition, and learned that both were out of surgery. Hank was stable and in 'guarded' condition, while Betty was in ICU and was listed in 'critical' condition. I gave the person my telephone number and ask that I be called if there was any change in condition and fell into bed.

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I dreamed that night.

I dreamed I was flying again, flying a 777 from O'Hare to Tokyo like I had a hundred times before, watching the sun set over the North Pacific like I had a thousand times before, and I felt nauseatingly bored out of my mind as waypoint after waypoint slid by beneath us as the miles reeled off behind us. Off the Russian coast warning lights flared, and unreal noises erupted from behind me. Fire warning lights, hydraulic systems failures, losing altitude, watching the cold sea reach up through the clouds for me . . .

And there was Ruth, sitting beside me in the cockpit, watching me as I hit switches and adjusted power, all to keep the airplane in the air where she belonged. I was losing control. Losing control.

And Ruth sat there, watching me, a soft smile on her face.

"I'm losing control," I said to her.

She smiled.

"It's not funny, goddamn it! I'm losing her, losing her, I'm losing control!"

"You can't control everything, Marty," I heard Ruth say. "All you can do is keep trying, keep doing what you know how to do, then trust in . . . Fate, Martin, believe in destiny and fate . . . only your belief in that will see you through this."

"I don't believe in that horseshit!" I yelled over the screaming engines. I could see the water below now, could see the waves cresting clearly as they reached out for me . . . I turned to her as the jet slammed into those black waters, and the last thing I remembered seeing was her smile, and I heard her as she said "Oh!" once again, and my world turned black again, too, as I slid beneath those black waters.

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I rented a car the next morning and drove to the hospital, managed to find my way to Hank's room. He was up, staring wide-eyed at the television, and his wife was there, too. Why was that not surprising, I thought. I said hello to her, asked how Hank was doing, but she seemed coarse and ugly, didn't want to talk to me. I looked at Hank and he just shrugged his shoulders and winced.

He winked at me when I said I'd look in on him later.

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Betty was up, and conscious, when I came to the ICU and asked the nurse to see her. She gowned me up and put a mask over my face and led me into the suite. Betty was indeed awake, and she looked at me knowingly as I came over to her.

"Is he . . . did I . . . is he dead?" she asked.

I nodded my head. She began to cry, softly at first but then more forcefully. Tears ran down her face, her nose was running . . .

. . . "Oh, Martin . . ." she said inside a long, breath-like sob . . .

"It's over, Baby. Over." I held her hand. I knew inside, however, that things like this never go away, they never just leave us in peace.

. . . "Oh why, God! Why? Why? Why? . . ."

'She hasn't heard, yet, has she?' Fred said to the room as he stood by my side. 'God is dead.'

"God is dead?" I asked the room, and Betty looked up at me, the question in her eyes plain to see.

"Why would you say that?" Betty said between gasps.

I didn't have an answer to that question, but somehow, I knew it was true.

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Hank's wife left again a few days later, and Hank said he thought they'd ticketed her broomstick out front. Turned out she wanted him well enough to sign a divorce agreement that gave her everything; Betty looked it over while recouping in her room and told Hank to tell the bitch to go to hell, and told him she'd represent him if he wanted - for free.

I got Liebestod straightened up, and worked on Hank's boat some when I could. I was surprised at how messy I found his boat, then realized he had spent the past week running after Betty and I, trying to save our collective asses from death and mayhem, so I asked Sven to come down and give me a hand getting her cleaned up and get some long overdue maintenance done on the little ship's systems. I even dropped in a new chartplotter and weatherfax; now Hank could at least keep himself away from danger a little easier while out on the ocean. He'd have to keep away from me to avoid getting shot!

Sven and I picked him up at the hospital on a chilly November morning and drove him down to the dock, and we helped him get aboard. Of course he saw all the improvements we'd made, and Sven gave him a run down on all the new toys he had at his disposal, and I could see that Hank was touched by the gift.

It was December before Betty was cut loose from the hospital, and she asked if she could move aboard with me. She put her shop up for sale, and took care of Hank's legal troubles in short order. She spend her days in town at the library, the evenings with me, and as she got better we tried to do some sailing now and then.

Hank took off after Christmas. Haven't seen him since.

Somehow I know Turtle-man will keep at it - slow and steady - while life will fly by for me. Maybe God died for me when Ruth died. I don't know. Maybe I've been given a second chance - by God - to make true the dreams Ruth and I had about exploring the world.

Maybe this is the way she'd want things.

As winter's chill moved into the coastal Carolinas, Betty and I talked long about where we might go. She'd never dreamed these dreams before, so it was all kinda new to her. Turns out that was how she spent her days - up in the library. She looked through old books about faraway places told by long gone dreamers, and she saw my world as hers.

She was ready to let go. Ready to let go of her past.

Hard as I tried, I couldn't forget Ruth. Maybe I wasn't supposed to.

Fred, that cranky old bastard, wouldn't dare let me do that.

He'd been having way too much fun, he told me, to ever let me do that.