He leaned over the stern and felt the water. Cold as all anything. Jesus. Well, he’d need something tight around his ankles, else it wouldn’t work. He’d have something in the wheelhouse. Hell, he’d use one of his own traps if he had to. Wouldn’t that be a kicker.
He remembered Lucas Spaulding’s funeral, fishermen coming from as far away as Vinalhaven and Stonington. Charlie remembered the way Lucas’s mother was sedated so bad she could hardly sit up in the pew, had to be propped there by one of her sisters. There were plenty of Spauldings to go around, back then, generations of them, but after that the whole group of them up and moved to Augusta. Away from the water. Landlocked themselves. Charlie didn’t blame them a bit, he’d have done the same thing in their situation.
Now he hung over the stern even more, getting his arm wet all the way up to the elbow. It was practically numb already. How long would it take, to feel nothing?
And then, hell, his balance must have been off, everything was off, that goddamn dizziness. Because next thing he knew he’d flipped himself off the back of the stern, slamming his head on the transom on the way. And Jesus it was cold in that water, it was goddamn freezing.
He was expecting the cold. But the part he wasn’t expecting was what happened next. Because even though Charlie Sargent knew exactly what he wanted, even though he knew exactly what he had set out to do that day, even though he was already on his way to doing it, at some point instinct took over. Same instinct (he would think later) that makes the choking woman push against the hands around her neck, the burning man try to snuff himself out. The instinct to undo what was being done.
When that took over, that’s when Charlie brought his hands to the rail of the boat, found enough strength (from where? If he was a praying man he would have said it came from God himself) to pull himself up, up, then gracelessly back into the boat, where he lay on the deck, a heaving, shivering mass. Shaking so hard he thought his heart might stop from the force of it. One of his arms hurting like anything.
And a gash on his head—he felt for it with hands that were close to numb. Shit. Blood.
He pulled himself to his knees and the pain nearly blinded him, nearly knocked him right back down again. But he had to get to the VHF, all the way in the wheelhouse, so he forced himself to stumble there, where he took up the radio and switched it on. It defaulted to channel sixteen, same as always, dependable as the tides. He pressed the microphone button. He imagined for a second the kid getting the call in Southwest Harbor, some baby-faced twenty-year-old, barely out of training, uniform maybe a little too big on his skinny body.
More than fifty years on the water and Charlie Sargent had never needed to make a call like this. But now, the head. All that blood. No way he could drive like this. He choked out the words: “Mayday-mayday-mayday. This is Charlie Sargent, on the Joanie B.”
He’d never made the call, but he knew the protocol. State the nature of your distress was the next step.
Oh boy. Oh shit. The sun was now fully up, shining in his eyes like an insult. The nature of his distress? Too much distress to state, that was damn sure. “I have an injury to my head and I’m alone on the boat,” he said finally. “I’ll be listening on channel sixteen. This is Charlie Sargent on the Joanie B, over and out.”
And in the end his body overrode his mind—he clung, after all, to life.
33
LITTLE HARBOR, MAINE
Eliza
Well, of course Judith knew somebody from some-committee-or-other who was staying for three weeks out on the Point and had an extra bedroom for Judith. An extra bedroom! The house had something like twelve bedrooms. Or eight bedrooms and twelve bathrooms. Eliza could never remember: the house was legend. This was the woman Judith had mentioned to her earlier in the summer, Gail Byron, no relation.
Eliza didn’t even waste time being surprised about the coincidence; since she’d known Rob, she’d learned the basic tenet that money shrank the world and made it small and familiar. The opposite was also true: a lack of it made the world big and scary.
She was so excited to see the girls that she felt like somebody had blended her insides in a Vitamix. She sat on the front steps and waited until she saw Judith’s silver BMW pull around the bend in the road and into the driveway.
Did Judith’s BMW look natural pulling into Charlie Sargent’s driveway? No, not even a little bit. That car looked about as natural on this side of Little Harbor as a banded Gila monster might look spreading out a beach towel in Santa Monica.
“My goodness,” said Judith when she emerged from the driver’s seat. “Isn’t this just charming.” She smiled. “I never realized, Eliza, how picturesque your hometown is.”
Eliza squinted at Judith: Was she poking fun?
Judith smiled even more; she smiled so wide the lines around her eyes that had been dermatologically removed were almost visible.
No, Judith was trying. Judith was trying, and Eliza was a terrible daughter-in-law, trying to find fault where there was none.
Maybe this had been a bad idea, this visit. She was too shaken up and confused to be a good hostess or a good mother. She wouldn’t be able to hide her father’s deteriorating condition from her eagle-eyed girls. He’d exhaust himself, trying to pretend that everything was the same as it had always been.
Then Evie got out of the car and hugged Eliza so hard Eliza almost fell over, and Zoe got out of the car and gave Eliza an embrace that was about as enthusiastic and outwardly loving as Zoe’s embraces got. Zoe wasn’t looking at her phone—she wasn’t even holding her phone—and her girls looked both so much the same and so totally different than they had the last time Eliza had seen them that her eyes got damp.
This was not a bad idea, this visit. This was a wonderful idea.
“Thank you, Judith,” she said genuinely. “Thank you for doing this.”
Judith waved a hand, and Eliza supposed that was her way of saying You’re welcome.
“Where’s Grandpa?” asked Evie immediately.
“He’s upstairs, he’s lying down,” said Eliza.
Evie looked doubtful. “Grandpa doesn’t lie down during the day,” she said suspiciously.
Eliza’s heart lurched and galloped. The girls knew brain cancer, but they didn’t know the very worst, mostly highly aggressive form of brain cancer. “Sometimes he does,” she said. “He was up late last night, he just got a little tired.” They all knew Charlie Sargent was never up late. Nine o’clock was late, to Charlie!
“Well!” said Judith heartily. “Why don’t I get the girls’ stuff out of the car, and I’ll let you all visit while I head to my accommodation. If you can just point me in the right direction, Eliza.”