Runaways on the Inside Passage by Joe Upton

Author:Joe Upton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: West Margin Press
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

In God’s Pocket

* * *

Sometime after midnight, the clanking of metal against metal woke David, and he went up into the wheelhouse rubbing his eyes, and slipping into his sweater. It was the tug, half hidden by swirling snow. The Wedell Foss was leaving, and David’s heart sank.

As the tug moved into the channel and the snow grew thicker, a whiteness washed over their lights. At first he thought it was snow, but then he could see the bow slowly rising and falling in the seas, and he knew it was spray, which would freeze quickly on the exposed metal in the bitter night. A snow squall came and swallowed up the lights as if they had never been. In the blackness, David shivered involuntarily and admired the men for going out on such a night, and he felt very alone again.

Annie woke when the light came and, without looking, she already knew that there wasn’t a chance of leaving. She could distinctly hear the low roar of the surf, the foghorn, and another big wind working on the hillsides and ridge tops. Finally she got up to look around, to see if perhaps the night had brought company, like it had before.

But there were only the bent and twisted trees on the hills, the wind-darkened water, and low, snow-thick clouds. She snapped on the little AM/FM radio, turned it way down so as not to wake the others, and tried to find a station. At first she thought there was something wrong with the radio, but only after she’d scanned both AM and FM, getting only one faint and faraway station, did she grasp the truth: there weren’t any stations within range. She snapped it off and slumped back in the seat; even when they’d lived in the cove with Mom and Dad, there’d been stations on the radio.

They were subdued at breakfast. While Annie made pancakes, first David and then Lars went up into the pilothouse to have a look, only to return and sit wordlessly.

Once there was the sound of another tree falling in the forest—a sharp crack followed by a rustling thump, and they all flinched.

“Geez,” David said, “after a while you’d think there wouldn’t be anything left to blow down up there.”

Just then the boat settled slightly to starboard. There was a sharp rap at the door and a hoarse voice cried out, “Lars Hansen, you old criminal, are you in there?”

David got up slowly, totally stunned. When he stepped up into the pilothouse, he could see the outline of a person peering in through the glass, and he slid the door partway open.

“What’s this, by gum, a kid?” A strange-looking man stood in the doorway, clad in dirty, snow-blasted rain gear. Runny eyes peered out from a bearded and winter-reddened face. David just stood there a moment, speechless, for he could see past the strange figure to the cove beyond, and there were no other boats but theirs.

“Ain’t this Lars Hansen’s boat?” David recoiled from the man’s bad breath.

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