“Hey,” he said as Russell squinted down the length of his pool cue. Eddie was leaning against the wall nursing a beer. Harley wondered if Angie had noticed him yet.
“Hey,” they both replied, but Russell, the quiet one, started methodically putting away the balls, while Eddie went off on one of his typical tears. “You see that California is going to legalize pot? You see where it’s going to be on the ballot and everything? Shit, I don’t know whether to go down there and plant a hundred acres of the shit, or get one of those medical dispensary licenses—they’ve got those in a lot of states now—where you’re allowed to sell the stuff and use it with no hassles. I mean, you tell me why the government gets to tell me what I can, and cannot, put in my own body. Where is that in the Constitution?”
With Eddie, most things eventually came back to the Constitution, which Harley was one hundred percent certain he had never read. Neither had Harley, of course, so for all he knew, it really did include a whole long list of things you could and could not put in your body. But right now, it seemed like a very good idea to put a beer in.
Angie was still handing out bottles and glasses. Her blond hair was all frizzed out, too, but it just made her look hot. She had a silver ring through her lower lip and a tattoo on her shoulder that said mick—the name of a guy she’d had a baby with when she was sixteen. Sometimes Harley would see the kid around town with his grandmother, who was raising him.
“You get in any more newspapers?” Eddie asked. “I swear, you should call up some of those TV shows, like Deadliest Catch.”
“Yeah,” Russell said, having just scratched on the cue ball, “you could reenact the shipwreck—”
“And maybe you could even get somebody to make a movie of it. You could buy yourself a new boat with the money.”
“And a new crew,” Russell said, “while you’re at it.”
Eddie laughed and clapped his hands together. “Yeah, man, and good luck with that!” He bent over double, laughing, and that’s when Harley realized how drunk he was. “They’ll be fighting for that gig.” Then he tried to line up his own shot and missed it altogether.
But this was exactly what Harley meant about the weird new vibe he got in town. At first it was all like, thank God the sea had spared even one, but then it started to be something else. People who knew him—and who didn’t in a town the size of Port Orlov?—looked at him sideways. Harley started to think that they didn’t believe him—at least not entirely. And when Lucas Muller’s dad had bumped into him at the lumberyard, he’d stared him down. Harley figured it was because he’d laid the blame on Lucas for the shipwreck. Harley had tried to stare back just as hard, but he lost. Then Muller handed him a leaflet that said there would be a memorial service for all the lost crewmen on the coming Sunday, at the town church.
“I expect they’ll want you to say a few words,” Muller said. “You think you can do that?”
He sounded like he didn’t think so, which was why Harley said, “Sure. No problem.”
The only reason the service had been put off so long was they were waiting to see how many bodies they could recover first. They’d found three—Lucas, Farrell, and that Samoan. Two others, Kubelik and Old Man Richter, were still missing.
Harley spotted Angie coming their way. She had a bowl of unshelled peanuts and three beers on the tray.
“Bring ’em on!” Eddie said, snaring two bottles and putting one of them aside for Russell, who was now back to shooting.
Angie handed the last one to Harley and said, “I hear you’re talking at the church next Sunday.”
“Yeah,” Harley said, “everybody’s been asking me to.” He threw ten bucks onto her tray.
“I’m getting off tonight at nine.”
“That right?” he stammered.
“Uh-huh. And my mom’s got little Mick.”
Why she’d named the baby after that creep, who hadn’t even stuck around long enough to see it get born, never failed to baffle Harley.
“I could come over,” she said.
“Sure,” Harley said, trying not to sound too eager. “I think I’ll be around.”
“Hey, Angie!” one of her customers called, waving an empty bottle. “We’re dry over here!” It was Geordie Ayakuk, who worked at the Inuit Community Affairs Center. Harley had never liked him, and liked him even less for breaking up his moment.