‘I’m sorry, Pam, I -‘
She stopped his apology with a giggle. ‘Are you always this good?’
Long minutes later, Kelly’s arms were wrapped around her thin form, and so they stayed until the storm passed. Kelly was afraid to let go, afraid of the possibility that this was as unreal as it had to be. Then the wind acquired a chill, and they went below. Kelly got some towels and they dried each other off. He tried to smile at her, but the hurt was back, all the more powerful from the joy of the previous hour, and it was Pam’s turn to be surprised. She sat beside him on the deck of the salon, and when she pulled his face down to her chest, he was the one who wept, until her chest was wet again. She didn’t ask. She was smart enough for that. Instead she held him tightly until he was done and his breathing came back to normal.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a while. Kelly tried to move but she wouldn’t let him.
‘You don’t have to explain. But I’d like to help,’ she said, knowing that she already had. She’d seen it from almost the first moment in the car: a strong man, badly hurt. So different from the others she had known. When he finally spoke, she could feel his words on her breast.
‘It’s been nearly seven months. Down in Mississippi on a job. She was pregnant, we just found out. She went to the store, and – it was a truck, a big tractor-trailer rig. The linkage broke.’ He couldn’t make himself say more, and he didn’t have to.
‘What was her name?’
‘Tish – Patricia.’
‘How long were you -‘
‘Year and a half. Then she was just … gone. I never expected it. I mean, I put my time in, did some dangerous stuff, but that’s all over, and that was me, not her. I never thought -‘ His voice cracked again. Pam looked down at him in the muted light of the salon, seeing the scars she’d missed before and wondering what their story was. It didn’t matter. She brought her cheek down to the top of his head. He should have been a father right about now. Should have been a lot of things.
‘You never let it out, did you?’
‘No.’
‘And why now?’
‘I don’t know,’ he whispered.
‘Thank you.’ Kelly looked up in surprise. ‘That’s the nicest thing a man has ever done to me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Yes, you do,’ Pam replied. ‘And Tish understands, too. You let me take her place. Or maybe she did. She loved you, John. She must have loved you a lot. And she still does. Thank you for letting me help.’
He started crying again, and Pam brought his head back down, cradling him like a small child. It lasted ten minutes, though neither looked at a clock. When he was done, he kissed her in gratitude that rapidly turned to renewed passion. Pam lay back, letting him take charge as he needed to do now that he was again a man in spirit. Her reward was in keeping with the magnitude of what she had done for him, and this time it was her cries that canceled out the thunder. Later, he fell asleep at her side, and she kissed his unshaven cheek. That was when her own tears began at the wonder of what the day had brought after the terror with which it had begun.
CHAPTER 2
Encounters
Kelly awoke at his accustomed time, thirty minutes before sunrise, to the mewing of gulls and saw the first dull glow on the eastern horizon. At first he was confused to find a slender arm across his chest, but other feelings and memories explained things in a few seconds. He extricated himself from her side and moved the blanket to cover her from the morning chill. It was time for ship’s business.
Kelly got the drip coffee machine going, then he pulled on a pair of swim trunks and headed topside. He hadn’t forgotten to set the anchor light, he was gratified to see. The sky had cleared off, and the air was cool after the thunderstorms of the previous night. He went forward and was surprised to see that one of his anchors had dragged somewhat. Kelly reproached himself for that, even though nothing had actually gone wrong. The water was a flat, oily calm and the breeze gentle. The pink-orange glow of first light decorated the tree-spotted coastline to the east. All in all, it seemed as fine a morning as he could remember. Then he remembered that what had changed had nothing at all to do with the weather.
‘Damn,’ he whispered to the dawn not yet broken. Kelly was stiff, and did some stretching exercises to get the kinks out, slow to realize how fine he felt without the usual hangover. Slower still to recall how long it had been. Nine hours of sleep? he wondered. That much? No wonder he felt so good. The next part of the morning routine was to get a squeegee to dispose of the water that had pooled on the fiberglass deck.
His head turned at the low, muted rumble of marine diesels. Kelly looked west to spot it, but there was a little mist that way, being pushed his way by the breeze, and he couldn’t make anything out. He went to the control station on the flying bridge and got out his glasses, just in time to have a twelve-inch spotlight blaze through the marine 7 x 50s. Kelly was dazzled by the lights, which just as suddenly switched off, and a loud-hailer called across die water.
‘Sorry, Kelly. Didn’t know it was you,’ Two minutes later the familiar shape of a Coast Guard forty-one-foot patrol boat eased alongside Springer. Kelly scrambled along the port side to deploy his rubber fenders.
‘You trying to kill me or something?’ Kelly said in a conversational voice.
‘Sorry.’ Quartermaster First Class Manuel ‘Portagee’ Oreza stepped from one gun’l to the other with practiced ease. He gestured to the fenders. ‘Wanna hurt my feelings?’
‘Bad sea manners, too,’ Kelly went on as he walked towards his visitor.
‘I spoke to the young lad about that already, ‘ Oreza assured him. He held out his hand. ‘Morning, Kelly.’
The outstretched hand had a Styrofoam cup filled with coffee. Kelly took it and laughed.
‘Apology accepted, sir.’ Oreza was famous for his coffee.
‘Long night. We’re all tired, and it’s a young crew,’ the coastguardsman explained wearily. Oreza was nearly twenty-eight himself, and by far the oldest man of his boat crew.
‘Trouble?’ Kelly asked.
Oreza nodded, looking around at the water. ‘Kinda. Some damned fool in a little day-sailer turned up missing after that little rainstorm we had last night, and we’ve been looking all over bejazzus for him.’
‘Forty knots of wind. Fair blow, Portagee,’ Kelly pointed out. ‘Came in right fast, too.’
‘Yeah, well, we rescued six boats already, just this one still missing. You see anything unusual last night?’
‘No. Came outa Baltimore around … oh, sixteen hundred, I suppose. Two and a half hours to get here. Anchored right after the storm hit. Visibility was ptetty bad, didn’t see much of anything before we went below.’
‘We,’ Oreza observed, stretching. He walked over to the wheel, picked up the rain-soaked halter, and tossed it to Kelly. The look on his face was neutral, but there was interest behind the eyes. He hoped his friend had found someone; Life hadn’t been especially fair to the man.
Kelly handed the cup back with a similarly neutral expression.
‘There was one freighter coming out behind us,’ he went on. ‘Italian flag, container boat about half full, must have been knocking down fifteen knots. Anybody else clear the harbor?’
‘Yeah.’ Oreza nodded and spoke with professional irritation. ‘I’m worried about that. Fuckin’ merchies plowing out at full speed, not paying attention.’
‘Well, hell, you stand outside the wheelhouse, you might get wet. Besides, sea-and-anchor detail might violate some union rule, right? Maybe your guy got run down,’ Kelly noted darkly. It wouldn’t have been the first time, even on a body of water as civilized as the Chesapeake:
‘Maybe,’ Oreza said, surveying the horizon. He frowned, not believing the suggestion and too tired to hide it. ‘Anyway, you see a little day-sailer with an orange-and-white candystripe sail, you want to give me a call?’
‘No problem.’
Oreza looked forward and turned back. ‘Two anchors for that little puff o’ wind we had? They’re not far enough apart. Thought you knew better.’
‘Chief Bosun’s Mate,’ Kelly reminded him. ‘Since when does a bookkeeper get that snotty with a real seaman?’ It was only a joke. Kelly knew Portagee was the better man in a small boat. Though not by much of a margin, and both knew that, too.
Oreza grinned on his way back to the cutter. After jumping back aboard, he pointed to the halter in Kelly’s hand. ‘Dont forget to put your shirt on, Boats! Looks like it oughta fit just fine.’ A laughing Oreza disappeared inside the wheelhouse before Kelly could come up with a rejoinder. There appeared to be someone inside who was not in uniform, which surprised Kelly. A moment later, the cutter’s engines tumbled anew and the fotty-one-boat moved northwest.