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Even from his perch halfway up the cottonwood tree, Keith had a pretty good view of the whole marina, and he could get up even higher than that, high enough to see the Sauvie Island bridge at the southern edge of the island, and even the spires of the St. Johns bridge where his father worked on the renovation, scraping paint or loosening some massive bolt with a fifty-pound wrench, leaning back into the harness, out over the river, balancing himself by the toes of his boots on the thin edge of a steel beam. Even during the day, spotlights illuminated his father's work from above and below. "No shadows," he had heard his father say once. "When you're up there, you don't look into the lights, not even the sun, unless you want to screw up or fall." Keith went back to the book he was reading. He read the same paragraph again and then paused. The school bus would be coming in a while, down the road that snaked along the dike and followed the course of the river, marking the western edge of the island. Every weekday, he waited by the road or up in the tree for almost an hour before the headlights of the bus appeared in the distance and he would slide down the rope well before the bus rounded the last wide turn in the road. Once his feet were firmly planted again on the shoulder of the road, Keith tied the rope off to a root at the base of the tree, on the river side, where it couldn't be seen from the cars driving by. Keith read the paragraph again. From where he was perched, high above the island shore, he could see their sailboat amongst the hundreds of others, their home, just he and his dad's. His eyes followed the path they took every morning in the motorboat across the channel to the flat spot on the shore where his father dropped him off before heading upstream in the direction of the St Johns Bridge. Keith gazed again at their boat, its mast and standing rigging glistening faintly in the sun. No ropes. Only standing rigging. No, not ropes: lines. No lines. He could even see his faded-red canoe tied off to its starboard side. Port? No, starboard. No breakfast again today. If only his father would have let him take the canoe over by himself, he would still be on the boat, eating, watching TV. Food. Right over there on the boat. The boat with no running rigging. What used to be their main halyard was now the rope Keith used to climb the tree in the morning. No lines on the boat, no sailing. They hadn't taken the boat out for a sail since moving aboard last fall. Not even once, though they came close one Friday evening when his father climbed the mast to try running a new main halyard through the pulley at the masthead and down its hollow center. Without any explanation, his dad grabbed a tool belt and a plastic bag filled with unopened beer cans, and a bosun's chair, and strapped them all to himself, threw some lines over the spreaders, tied the chair to a come-along, and started ratcheting himself up. When he was standing on the spreaders, he worked his way up the shrouds and lashed himself to the masthead. He was up there for a long time. After a while, Keith yelled up to him several times, but he didn't seem to hear. Then an empty beer can clattered into the cockpit. Keith walked from the port side to the starboard for a better view of his father's face. The boat rocked under his feet. The top of the mast swayed from one cloud to another. "God dammit kid! You're flinging me around up here!" Keith froze. "Stand still and don't move your damn feet from that spot! If I drop anything, it'll be all your fault." His father was up there so long that the night began to settle in. Keith still hadn't moved from his spot. His neck hurt from looking up, and it didn't help that the back of his life jacket pressed his head forward. Another beer can bounced off the deck and fell with a splat onto the surface of the water. Keith could just make out the silvery shape bobbing along in the fading light. When it was dark enough, Keith quietly undid the clasps of the life jacket and set it softly on the deck. He moved slowly away from his spot. Since it was dark, he could ignore that crap about kids under twelve-years-old wearing life jackets at all times. It was a coast guard rule, and a marina rule. Inside the boat, Keith could take it off, but outside, he had to have it on. Another can clanked several times on the deck near his feet and then rolled into the cockpit. From where Keith stood on the deck, the sky was a deep blue and there were patches of stars up there. Then a flashlight clicked on amongst them. One of his father's hands, ghostlike in the beam of light, held a shimmering can. He heard a grunting sound and the can landed in the current with a light tap somewhere in the dark just downstream. Then Keith heard a nervous rustling and clanking. "Son of a bitch," his father said, and Keith looked up to see the flashlight spiraling down toward him. It seemed to spin through the air forever before he felt the sharp blow to his shoulder and heard it bounce from the deck into the water where the beam of light quickly faded on its way down. Keith dropped onto his side, his shoulder humming with pain, his back pressed against the shrouds that rose from the deck to the top of the mast. His father cursed again somewhere in the darkness above him. A new can hissed and cracked open. Keith waited for his father to say something to him about the flashlight, waited for his father to ask him if he was OK, waited to feel something else fall and hit his arm or his foot, or his head. A wrench, maybe, or a hammer. Or maybe his father would fall. Keith reached for the life jacket sprawled on the deck beside him and pulled it over his head and neck. A metal tool clinked against the mast, the sound carrying down its length to the deck somewhere in front of him. Just three years earlier, when Keith had fallen and broken his leg, his father had rushed to his side, had scooped Keith into his arms, his face wrinkled in horror, tears in his father's eyes, even. But that was then -- a different time. He had been just a kid then. The man at the top of the mast shifted his weight and pounded hard several times on the masthead with something heavy, a wrench, maybe. "Son of a bitch," he kept saying, over and over. The shrouds shivered where they were pressed against Keith's back, vibrating against his ribs and spine through his clothing, until they grew still again. His father must have heard the flashlight when it hit him. Keith must have cried out or made some sound. He must have known. But he didn't say anything. The next day, the forward cabin where his father slept was quiet. The tools sat in a pile in the cockpit amongst half a dozen empty beer cans. There were still no lines going up or down the mast. The new main halyard hung from the boom in a tangled web of knots. Keith leaned back into the trunk of the cottonwood and read the paragraph again. He was hungry, and it would be some time before the lunchroom opened at school. He looked at the cottonwood leaves and wondered what they tasted like. He heard the bus before he saw it and when he looked down, the long, bright orange shape roared by below. Keith slammed his fist sideways against the trunk of the tree as the sound of the bus faded away. This wasn't going to sit well with his dad, missing the bus. It wasn't the first time. The school would call home. Or maybe his dad still wouldn't say anything, wouldn't do anything about it besides giving him that look that froze him for the rest of the evening. He started the paragraph again but only got to the end of the first sentence. Sometimes his father worked double shifts on the bridge and was gone late into the night. Alone on the boat, Keith picked up the phone and sometimes it was his teacher, calling again, asking for his parents. If the teacher left messages, Keith erased them. On those late nights, his father came back and closed the hatch behind him and Keith would get up to open it again slightly. Otherwise, the air grew thick and stale inside the boat, and sometimes the smell of beer hung in the air above his bunk, even several cabins away from where his father slept. Keith usually answered the phone. Even when his father was home. Sometimes his mother called from Salem, but not often, especially after he told her once over the line that she was a complete bitch. She had laughed then, and said that there was too much of his father in him. Their conversations grew shorter after that, just a little talk about what he wanted for Christmas or his birthday, questions about school or what he was eating. It wasn't much, but it was more than even he and his father usually spoke to each other in a day. Even during dinner on the boat, his dad rarely looked anywhere besides down at his plate, or at the TV. Once, Keith had held his middle finger out at his father during dinnertime, just above the tabletop, for several full minutes. His father never looked up once. Keith brought his hand down below the table when the news came on with a story about a worker on the St Johns Bridge who had fallen and drowned. Keith looked at his dad, who turned the channel and cleared his throat. "That was Shane. Worked on the east side. Stupid kid with long hair that got too close to a safe light and his hair caught fire. He threw his hard hat into the river and got the fire put out and he would have been fine if he hadn't looked into the damn safe light for so long. If it was going to happen to anybody on that bridge, it was going to happen to him." The bridge crew called them "safe lights." His father said they were only safe as long as you didn't look directly at them. Keith read the paragraph again. Then he climbed to a higher branch to get the blood flowing into his legs. The marina seemed to go on for miles. Directly across from his tree, Keith could see the end of the lower marina on the downstream side with the timeworn boat houses and fishing trawlers, most of them abandoned, and then a small home, the old guy's place, hanging on the very end of the marina. It was like a boat graveyard with an old caretaker. There were half a dozen rotting wood hulls and trawlers moldering away, most of them listing to one side. And then there was the Susan K. Keith had heard about the Susan K from the talk around the marina. It was the largest of the trawlers. It had been slightly renovated by an ambitious new owner who painted the topsides bright red and the trim white, cleaning up the boat from the outside in. Eventually, as the guy worked his way inward, he found most of the bulkheads rotted out, and the engine was worthless. Then he ran out of money, and so the Susan K was abandoned for the second time, the bright red topsides betrayed only by the listing hull. From the island where Keith watched, the boat seemed to flare in the sun next to the brownish rot of the surrounding boats and houses. The name gleamed in black and white letters on the stern. The outward glory of the "Susan K" challenged the stories of its rotten center. Keith turned back to the book and read the paragraph again. He couldn't get past it. Didn't want to. There was something about it. He didn't want to know what was going to happen. He wanted to keep the book where it was, keep the mystery there where knowing couldn't touch it. The not knowing was so much better. Once you knew, you couldn't go back to the deliciousness of not knowing. Keith knew that. Even on boats you always ended up finding things, mere things, until eventually there were no things left to find. Keith scanned the horizon when he heard a low, rumbling sound. The grain barge was coming down the channel, massive and powerful. He could feel the hum of the engine vibrating the trunk of the cottonwood. The barge came by every Tuesday and Thursday. Sometimes it came by early enough that he was still in the tree, waiting for the bus. Usually, he was at school, but he could still hear its horn blowing on foggy mornings. In the late hours of the night, the barge would make the return trip empty, heading back upstream. Keith would startle awake, the sailboat rocking violently as the giant wake of the barge rolled by. Keith put the book in his pocket and stood up on the branch where he had been sitting, holding his body straight and still against the trunk. He peered out from behind the tree. The golden mounds of grain piled high above the water, but they seemed to pass far below him. The pilothouse rose high above the mountains of grain. It hovered by, just about level with the top of Keith's tree. The captain sat in a straight-back chair above a panel of controls. He had a CB mouthpiece in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other; their lenses scanned the trees on the island shore. They seemed to pause slightly when they came to face Keith, but then they moved on, stopping now and again to focus on something in the other trees along the shore. Searching for osprey nests, probably, or eagles. Keith didn't move until the barge had made the turn downstream on its way to Astoria. After it passed around the next bend in the river, the pilothouse hung above the island like a car floating along just above the road. Keith read the paragraph once more, all the way through. Then he slammed the book shut, and tossed it down toward the river. It landed on the surface with a distant thump and hung there for a moment until it finally began to dip under the water. The book wasn't his anyway. He'd taken it from the teacher's desk at school after she read a line or two from it to the class. Keith scanned the road below, grabbed the rope and rappelled down the trunk. Down the hill from the road on the island side, there were rows of newly sprouting vegetables. Maybe he could find something to eat there after all. Or there was the garage at the farm just down the road, its back doors always unlocked, and there were freezers inside packed with Popsicles and ice cream. Yeah. He'd go there. He was starving. And the sun was blazing hot above him. He gazed back once more at the river near the island shore. The book was gone.
After school, and again after dinner every weekday, Keith met Nick and Steve at the top of the ramp in the upper marina where the three of them left their life-jackets behind a rhododendron bush and then wandered into the forest between the channel and the highway just upstream from the upper parking lot. Nick and Steve had known each other all their lives. Nick had a picture of the two of them sitting on a lawn in their diapers. Nick was a thin boy with a mop of blond hair who always wore the same soccer jersey with the number eleven plastered across the chest and back. He said eleven was his lucky number, just two ones side by side, and when the number eleven was multiplied by one of those ones, you got eleven again. He said it was a good, solid number he could trust. Nick could talk for hours if left uninterrupted. Sometimes he went on, describing confrontations between people that didn't even exist. He once told about two older students (who probably didn't exist) at the high school across the street who were at each other's throats over their mutual love for a beautiful blond-haired teacher (who probably didn't exist) with large breasts (which seemed to exist everywhere in Nick's life) until the story really got out of hand, and he said that one of the students had shot the other which seemed to shake even Nick back to himself so that he stopped and reconsidered. "No, wait, that's not quite right, but you should have been there. It was amazing." Steve spoke out of his long, habitual silence: "Maybe you should have been there yourself, taking better notes." "Fuck that, Steve. You can't even remember what you had for lunch today much less who the hot teachers are." Steve was always on the lookout for the perfect skipping stone. He was quiet, but attentive. Even when he seemed to be lost in his rock collecting, he would suddenly interrupt and point out some contradiction in Nick's verbal wanderings. Steve wore the clothes passed down from his older brother, always a little too big or too small. He had recently learned to juggle; he could juggle three things: coins, or wads of paper, maybe, but usually he juggled three small stones. When Keith tried to convince him to juggle four things, Steve only frowned and shook his head and said, "No, three's plenty." Steve could skip stones all the way across the channel from the dock to the island shore when he wanted to. Neither Keith nor Nick could even come close. Steve would follow slightly behind the other two, head bent down at the base of his neck so that he seemed to be sleeping on his feet. Sometimes, when Keith found what seemed to him to be a perfectly round, flat stone, he handed it to Steve, who held it up to the light between two fingers and bounced it in his palm before passing it back saying, "Nope. It'll never make it." The others never doubted him when it came to rocks and he never offered them reason to. He could balance larger rocks on top of each other, until he had a stack towering above his head. He had several of these stacks in progress along the river and if they wandered near, he might stop and make it a little taller. Keith's life at the island school was a complete mystery to the others on the mainland. He could make up pretty much whatever he wanted about his life during the day – girlfriends, crop circles, cattle mutilations, dinosaur remains -- and the others could only listen or ask questions. Sometimes Steve would smirk and shake his head in disbelief or Nick would offer elaborations and guesses, but mostly they listened or tried (unsuccessfully) to express contempt for the "hay-seeders" over on the island. The other kids living at the marina went to school in Scappoose. He would have gone there too, if it weren't for his mom. She had done her research. The homely schoolhouse on the island might do him some good, and she knew it would piss his dad off to have to drive over to the island every day. She didn't know about their car breaking down. She didn't know about him waiting for the bus, either. Just before Keith's first summer at the marina, before school was out, Rich, the marina owner, contacted all the parents of kids twelve and under to make sure they were being supervised for the summer break. To avoid legal trouble and trouble with authorities, he said. So in June, Keith stayed out of sight on the sailboat. His dad told him that if anyone from the office gave him any trouble just to tell them he was thirteen, and that he had been held back a couple of years until he could pass sixth grade. Keith frowned at the part about being held back, but changed his mind when he realized he might be able to ditch his life jacket for good. At first, Keith stayed inside the boat, but then, he started taking the canoe out for quick paddles down to the fuel dock for candy. In the canoe, he strapped on the life jacket, just in case, but once he got back on the dock, he slid out of it and tossed it back into the boat. Most mornings, when he went by the fuel dock, there were several old men sitting and talking at a table out in front of the store. They usually paused when Keith pulled the canoe up to the dock. The first few times, Keith practically ran past them, their eyes burning through him. Then the oldest one, Norm, started asking him questions like: "How's the fishing today, captain?" and: "What did you say your line of trade was, young man?" But none of the men ever asked about his age. Norm's gaze was fierce, even when he seemed to be smiling, as if he knew everything Keith had ever done. Norm started inviting him over to sit down while the rest of them talked and Keith would listen. Then, when they seemed to have forgotten him, he stood up and walked back to the canoe, waving as he went. The men told jokes, and stories; stories from back before there were life jackets. Norm talked about how his parents had moved to the island a hundred years ago to farm and raise cattle. He talked about people and boats and whole marinas that had come and gone. He talked about Indians and steamboats in the old days, and he looked out over the river while he spoke, almost as if he could see it all more clearly when he watched the water flowing by. Once, Norm told about a large ketch that sank on the channel a number of years ago. It was a beautiful boat, he said, though it needed some work, but the owner wasn't interested in work. After the salvagers pulled the boat up, they found bullet holes in the hull near the engine room. The owner was trying to collect on insurance. Keith slipped away from the table and made his way over to the canoe. The sun glared off the surface of the river. A man had shot holes in his own boat? Sometimes the old men just didn't make any sense.
Halfway through the summer, Keith and his friends were up on land, throwing rocks into the small pools that made up what was left of Rock Creek. Steve's cousin, Jessica, was there, and one of her friends. Nick was rambling on about how he had climbed into his parents' car the night before and driven into Portland. The girls were whispering into each other's ears and rolling their eyes. Steve stood, hunched over, balancing rocks into a stack as tall as his chest. When Nick stopped to catch his breath, Keith suddenly blurted out: "Sometimes, late at night, I take my canoe downstream and climb aboard the Susan K." Everyone grew quiet. "You have to be careful of the old man that lives in the house nearby," he said, "but if you're quiet, you can get up inside of it. I've seen Playboy magazines on board, and guns and ammo and other stuff you wouldn't believe. Everyone was looking at him. The girls had stopped smiling. Steve picked up a stone and spoke into the silence. "You know, Keith, I think you're full of shit." "What are you talking about?" "If you've been on board the Susan K, and seen all those things, then you should go and bring something out." "Nick should be the one to show us how he drives a car around at night, that's what! He's the one that's full of shit." "Yeah, but we know he's full of shit. It's you we're not sure about. "Hey! Watch your fucking mouth," said Nick. Steve placed another rock on top of the stack and slowly pulled his hand away. "Let's find out, shall we, Keith? You can show us that bullshit gun you found." The girls were watching. "OK, whatever, but not right now in broad daylight. I'll go tonight after dark." Keith heard the sudden bravery in his own voice, the nonchalance, and spoke again just to hear it again. "Yeah, whatever. I'll do it. Like it matters." They talked it over. Nick and Steve would sneak out after midnight when their parents were asleep and watch from the shore to make sure Keith really did it. Jessica said she'd be there too. That night, Keith's father went to sleep early. He had worked several double shifts already that week. From inside the aft cabin, Keith could hear the wind howling overhead. The boat shifted underneath his feet. He chose his clothes carefully, black jacket, black pants and socks, his navy-blue shoes. He removed the white shoelaces and replaced them with black ones from his father's work boots. He filled in the gold snaps of his jacket with black ink to avoid reflecting any light he might come across. No flashlight. He would use his own eyes; let them adjust to the dark. When he was dressed, he sat waiting in his cabin, in the dark, breathing slowly, almost imperceptibly, eyes closing and opening until he could see all the light there was in the room. He would become a shadow, stepping lightly, his hands brushing softly on all they touched. He would be there, but not there. He would leave no trace. Keith glanced at the shoes on his feet. Bare feet would be quieter. He reached down and untied the laces. Keith made his way downstream, the current pushing him into the wind, the bow of the canoe slapping into the white-capped waves, the wind roaring in his ears. The moon cast dark shadows on the water. Watery shadows on water, dark streaks on the horizon. Twice, he turned to see the flashlights of his friends bouncing on the shore behind him as the river took him swiftly away. Twice, he lost his balance and almost tipped over. The canoe slid past the rows of darkened boats and houses, then the trawlers, Norm's house, and down around the back side of the marina between the dock and the shore. The sound of snoring came down wind from Norm's open window. The flashlights flickered through the leaves far upstream. Keith pulled up to the Susan K and tied the canoe to a ladder that hung from the transom between the large, white letter "N" and the letter "K." Then he placed both hands on the first rung of the ladder. The moon gave the stern letters a soft glow. He wanted to see everything. He wanted to be unseen, a breath on the wind. His hands seemed to glisten under the moon's gaze. He should have painted them too. He needed to be darker. He closed his eyes and felt the darkness descending upon him, imagining it covering him like a cloth. Keith held onto the rung of the ladder, eyes closed. When he opened them again, he felt he could see everything. He could see the leaves moving in the trees along the shore. He looked across to the island and could make out the leaves there too, shivering in the wind. He could see his reflection in the water against the stars and clouds above. He could see that he wasn't afraid. Upstream, the flashlights slowly approached, dancing sporadically across the walls of the first abandoned boathouses. Soon, they would be on the shore across from him. The rung of the ladder grew warm under his hands. If he climbed aboard now, he might find something, or nothing, and he wasn't sure which would be worse. The flashlights approached through the trees. That asshole Steve and his bitch-cousin. And Nick, the idiot. He could hear them rustling clumsily through the bushes. Keith reached for the next rung and pulled himself up, scrambling toward the small stern door that led into the ship. To his surprise, the door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open and slid sideways into the black doorway. As he made his way inside, he thought about his feet, how softly they moved over the deck, and how they no longer felt cold. Keith stepped into a dark hallway, his hands brushing the soft wood walls on either side. The wind poured through the cracks with its warm breath. The sound of dropping water echoed down the hall. His feet moved swiftly over large cracks in the floorboards. In the first room he came to, his hands moved through cupboards and into closets, into drawers, as if they were searching for what they knew they would find, as if they were remembering. Then, there it was, high up on a shelf of rusted tools: the gun. It was small, made of thick plastic, but a gun. It rested lightly in his palm. A flare gun, but a gun. Here it was, onboard the Susan K, just like he had known it would be. Just like he had told the others. A gun. He would show them. Back down the hallway toward the stern, Keith found a ladder that ascended both up to another level above and down through a hole in the floor. He climbed. The ladder took him into the pilothouse. He passed through an opening and out onto the upper deck, into the wind, holding the gun by the handle, high above his head. The moonlight glistened in the trees along the shore. The gray faces of the others looked up at him through the leaves. He could see their eyes. Steve grinned coldly and shook his head. What the hell did he mean, "no"? What! Not a real enough gun? Keith, put his finger over the trigger, lowered the short barrel and aimed it at Steve's big, stupid grin. Nick turned and scrambled up the steep shoreline. Jessica grabbed Steve by the arm. Steve gazed up, shook his head once more and then turned and followed the others up the hill toward the parking lot. Keith cursed and threw the gun with all his strength up and into the wind and turned before it even hit the water, making his way back inside the pilothouse. Down, down, down the ladder, through the floor and into the dark belly of the boat. The air grew thick with the smell of dust and mildew. He could still see his hands, the dull glow of his feet. He needed to be darker. He breathed in the thick air and felt the darkness filling him, filling in the whites of his eyes, filling his arms and chest and legs and down to his feet. He breathed in dark air – and his breath came out in a thick, black cloud. The metal rungs were coarse under his fingers. At the bottom, the floorboards were moist and rotting under his feet. He stepped away from the foot of the ladder and waved his hands in the air before him. They bumped into something just above his head. A lantern, hanging from a rafter. Moonlight came through windows along the wall beside him. The air in the room was thick with the smell of mildew and rust and fuel. The dripping sounds he had heard earlier grew louder, and the boat groaned and shuddered below his feet, a deep, hollow sound. There must be yet another level below this one. The moonlight began to illuminate the room in front of him a little, enough for him to make out the edges of a table to one side and a counter to the other. He made his way forward, his hand sliding along the edge of the counter. On the counter top his hands found silverware, knives, a can opener, a small box of matches. He remembered the lantern behind him and put the box in his pocket. He might want some light later on. He could make a home of this place. The numbing smell filled his lungs and his head. He felt his way to a bench beside the small table and lay down, cradling his head in the crook of his arm. The boat groaned in the strain of the wind. The dripping continued, a sloshing, pouring sound. Strange, there was no rain outside, only wind. It must be the river moving under the hull. Or they were sinking. The river moved beneath him, pulling everything downstream, slowly saturating everything it touched, washing it all away like dirt from a wound. Keith closed his eyes. The Susan K held no secrets. It was only a rotted-out, old boat. His thoughts drifted lazily through his mind in a dizzying haze, as if they were not his own thoughts, but the boat speaking through him. Whatever would come, let it come. Let the boat rot away around him. Let the current pull it to pieces. Let it dissolve and let him sink with it to the bottom of the river. Let the whole marina, the whole world, decay and flow into the sea. Let his father and mother find his bones in the wreckage. Beyond their reach. Let them weep over their son. Keith could hear footsteps. He knew he was sleeping, but how deeply, he wasn't sure. An acrid smell filled his nose. A voice mumbled softly in the air around him. The dripping sounds continued, growing louder, and faster, like rain, like pouring water, sloshing and splashing. Another voice. And then a light flashed and Keith opened his eyes. More water spilling and splashing. The sharp scent of fuel or oil in the air. A beam of light passed over the room. Keith froze. Someone was there. His heart began beating wildly. He rolled quietly from the bench underneath the table, his forehead slamming into the edge of the tabletop on the way down. His head began to spin with the pain and the smell. The wood planks of the floor were soft and cold under his feet and hands. He remembered the knives in the drawer. The beam of light passed over the cupboards across from him and two sets of feet stopped beside the table. Keith held his breath. Was it Nick and Steve? Playing some joke? Something heavy landed on the table above him with a thud. The voices spoke again, right above him, two men, speaking softly. "Spooky. She's talking to you, Doug." "Turn off the damn flashlight, will you? You want someone to see?" "Let's go. It reeks in here. Time to say goodbye." One of the men slid the object back off the table with a scrape, and the feet moved away. More splashing. "Watch your feet, dipshit! That's enough. Let's go." "Shouldn't you write something in the captain's log? You know, like, 'High winds today, three-hundred knots bearing south-east, and the boat is getting hot, really damn hot.'" There was the sound of stifled laughter. One of them made his way up the ladder. The other seemed to pause. A voice spoke out loudly. Keith's heart pounded in his ears. "Goodbye to you, Sue," said the voice loudly, "if you can hear me, if there's any life left in you." More dripping. The other voice from the ladder up above said to shut the hell up, and the sound of heavy shoes clanging up the ladder faded. Keith waited a moment until he was sure the two men were on the level above him, and then he crawled out from under the table. His feet sloshed through cool puddles in the wet floor. He felt at his forehead and licked the blood from his fingertips. The thick fumes in the air made his head spin. He pressed his temples between both his hands. All the light was gone from the room. The moonlight through the windows had faded. Behind a cloud, maybe. Voices mumbled faintly upstairs. Even the darkness seemed to spin around him. He stumbled into a wall and paused, leaning against it. He had to think! He remembered the matchbox in his pocket. Maybe just a little light to see by, to help him think. He pulled out a match, and stepped across the moist floor, hands waving in the air, searching for the lantern. If the men were still there, it would be safer to wait, unless there was someone else on board. Unless the guy had been talking to some woman named Sue. No, that was the name of the boat. The ceiling creaked above his head. Voices laughing. Drops raining down from the ceiling, splashing to the ground in front of him. His heart was pounding. The room was so dark. His hands found the lantern. Maybe he should wait until he knew the men were gone. How long had it been? Creaking upstairs. Maybe he could light the lantern and keep it on low. He pulled a match from the box and shut the lid. No, what was he thinking? Not with all that fuel smell. Not while they were still upstairs. As he slid the lid of the box back open, a bright flame flared to life somewhere in the dark before him and fell to the floor. The air all around him surged like a gust of blazing wind, and flames poured across the wood floor from the base of the ladder. Footsteps thumped loudly on the level above him and a door slammed shut with a bang. Keith stumbled backwards away from the approaching flames and fell into an open closet full of coats and rain gear. He pulled the coats tightly around himself. The smell of mildew filled his mouth and nose. The air was thick with the heat. He sunk deeper into the coats, his head pounding, his lungs dry. His hands passed over his arms and face. No burns. Just the blood on his forehead. His feet were dripping. With water? With some kind of fuel? He breathed deeply but couldn't get enough air. What had he done? Had he really lit that match? The flame had seemed to be falling from the ceiling. What had he done? The coats pressed in around him. He had to get out of here. The men were gone now. Or maybe they would see the fire, and would come back, and see what he had done. Maybe he should wait. Steve and Nick would probably see the flames and go get help. No, they were long gone. He couldn't breathe. He had to get out of here. The coats! Keith yanked a long, hooded raincoat from its hanger and hunched low, pulling his arms through the sleeves. He could see the orange light of the fire through the gaps in the other clothes around him. It was easier to breathe down by the floor. His hands searched the floor for shoes. Nothing. Still hunched low, Keith wiped at his feet with a shirt he found on the floor. He couldn't breathe. He had to get out of here, out into the wind, into the fresh air. Keith pulled the hood over his head and stepped out into the room. The brightness blinded him for a moment, and pain ripped through his feet and up his legs as he dashed toward the base of the ladder. He climbed, his feet slipping on the metal rungs. Keith pulled himself up to the next floor, and quickly dropped to his knees, removing the long coat and using it to pound out the flames. The skin of his feet screamed in pain wherever he touched them. Through the cracks in the wood floor, there was an orange glow coming from the level below. The air around him hung thick with the heat and smoke. Keith dashed down the hall and burst out the back door. He took in the fresh air in short, rapid breaths. His feet throbbed with pain as he crouched low, moving toward the stern. Smoke poured out of cracks in the topside cabin and billowed past him. His feet glistened a little in the moonlight, smoke rising from them. No, the smoke was rising from the floor of the deck. He ran toward the stern ladder. Smoke began pouring around him in a black cloud, filling his lungs, stinging his eyes. Keith dropped into the canoe, untied the line and pushed off. The windows on the stern of the Susan K glowed and flickered with a yellow light as he turned the canoe into the wind and paddled hard, making his way downstream. The trawler disappeared into a cloud of black smoke, the popping sounds of the fire within her barely audible above the wind. Around the back of Norm's house, Keith thought he could still hear snoring coming from inside. The canoe buckled when it hit the force of the main current and Keith tried to backstroke in order to move the bow upstream. The current and the wind pushed from opposite sides, holding the boat fast on its course toward the opposite shore. Keith moved to the center of the canoe to keep his balance. He dug the paddle into the water and fought to pull the boat around. His arms shook with the cold. His feet throbbed in the small pool of water at the bottom of the canoe. The life jacket rubbed against them and he winced. It was no use. The paddling was getting him nowhere. He was in the hands of the wind and the river now. The marina was receding behind him, smoke filling the air, the windows of the Susan K glowing with golden light. Halfway across the channel, he saw there was no fighting wind and the river, and he paddled toward the island shore. The cottonwood trees towered overhead along the shore. By the time the canoe hit the sand along the shore, flames were pouring from the windows of the Susan K. Maybe the fire would stop. Maybe it would rain. Keith left the canoe in the water and rushed up the slope wildly, his arms waving ahead, grabbing at roots and the grass as he scrambled up to the road. He found his way to the tree and pulled himself up the rope. The wind pressed him into the trunk. The tree swayed back and forth. He looked down across the water from his perch. The flames had spread to several other trawlers. Keith watched the fire move along the dock like a massive arm reaching, crawling upstream. The wind carried the smoke through the lower marina and up into the trees along the mainland. Light flickered on the wall and roof of Norm's house upwind of the smoke and flames. Norm. He could almost hear the old man still snoring. Sparks and flames swirled closer and closer to the small house. Several trees along the shore smoked and burst into flame. The fire was not going to stop. He had to do something. He looked down at the island shore, looking for the canoe, but it was gone. He had forgotten to tie it down. Keith shut his eyes and sobbed into the arm of the coat. His feet cried out whenever he moved. His arms grew stiff and numb. The wind rushed into his ears. Minutes went by, or hours, he couldn't tell. He thought he heard an explosion somewhere down at the marina. His tree swayed -- the movements strangely soothing given how far he might fall before he landed in the water, or among the rocks along the shore. The spires of the St Johns Bridge glowed in the distance. When Keith turned back to face the marina, Norm's house was gone. But not into the flames. It had broken free from the rest of the dock. He could just make out the shape of the house fading into the dark on its way downstream, and he thought he saw a man on the front deck, facing away from the marina. From downstream, a black shape, massive, swallowed up the river like a dark shadow. Keith closed his eyes. A horn sounded in the night -- five short blasts, echoing off the hills to the west. Keith opened his eyes when he recognized the sound. The piles of grain slowed to a stop below him. The beam of a spotlight from the pilothouse illuminated the burning dock. Under the sharp gaze of the light, the color of the flames faded. Norm's house was tethered to the pilot ship, drifting behind it in the current. Lights came on in the houses along the marina.
Keith lowered his head and closed his eyes, his chest shaking with sobs. His feet, his arms, his legs, felt numb and swollen. The wind held him against the trunk of the tree. With his eyes still closed, the world suddenly lit up around him, as if he were waking from a dream into the light of day. When Keith moved his hands away from his face, the light brew brighter, burning against his closed eyelids, filling his head with a new kind of pain. He held tightly to the tree, turned to face the island, and slowly opened his eyes. The leaves beside him glowed a brilliant white.
Don't look into the light! The thought echoed in Keith's mind. Don't look into the light! He wouldn't do it, he told himself, and he would tell his father later, about how the spotlight had been there, and how he had turned and looked the other way.
©2007 by Brian Friesen Brian Friesen has an MA in English from the University of Alberta, where he was the recipient of the James Patrick Folinsbee Award for Creative Writing. Brian has published stories in a handful of literary publications. He is currently living in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and two children.
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