A Private Cathedral

Chapter Thirty-nine

Clete and I went into the passageway. The yacht pitched again, almost knocking both of us down. The only time I had been in seas this violent was during Hurricane Audrey in 1957, when I was on board a drilling rig. As then, I felt as though we were inside a maelstrom, one in which the physical laws of the universe had been suspended. I heard dishware crashing, furniture turning over. I felt a wave hit the gunwale and the side of a hull with the density and power of wet cement.

Behind me, someone opened the hatch on the cabin and stepped outside. It was Leslie.

“What is it?” I said.

She moved close to me so Clete couldn’t hear. “Maybe I’ll see you in another time.”

I looked up and down the passageway. We were totally vulnerable. “Leslie, this isn’t the time for it.”

“I know.” Paradoxically, she stood on the tops of my shoes and put her arms around me and pressed her chest and head against me. I could feel her heart beating and her breath on my skin.

“You’re a good man,” she said. “So is Clete. No evil can ever destroy you.”

Then she was gone. She didn’t walk away. She was just gone.

“Dave, don’t just stand there,” Clete said. “Haul ass.”

“I was talking to Leslie.”

“Leslie? There’s nobody else here. Come on, big mon. We’ve got to get out of Crazy Town.”

The electric lights began flittering as we worked our way forward. Then they went out altogether and came back on. Two popped, the glass tinkling on the deck. A tall figure came down the ladder from the main deck. He was wearing flip-flops, his face in shadow, his hands tanned, his midnight-blue silk shirt unbuttoned on his chest and stomach, his tight white bell-bottoms hanging below his navel. He looked high.

“What are you doing here, Johnny?” I said.

“Trying to save you from getting killed,” he replied. “I saw you on the surveillance camera.”

“Who else saw us?” Clete said.

“Nobody,” he said. “It’s chaos up there. Half of the electrical system is down. Uncle Mark is going apeshit.”

“You don’t look like you’re about to lose the love of your life,” I said.

“My uncle shot me up.”

“You let him?” Clete said.

“I was asleep. That tin box Adonis had, those were my works. I put a hotshot in there. I was gonna use it on myself if I didn’t get Isolde back.”

Clete looked at me. If Johnny was telling the truth, Clete had jabbed the hotshot into the neck of the man in the silver overalls and killed him. “What’s going on with the green monster out there?” Clete said.

“He wants to talk with you,” Johnny said.

“Don’t tell me that,” Clete said.

“He said it over our radio. Just before it went dead.”

“Can you get us some heavy firepower?” I said.

“Bell has all that stuff,” Johnny said.

“Where does he store it?” I said.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re not being helpful,” Clete said. “You’ve got to get out a Mayday.”

“There’s some kind of shield around the yacht,” Johnny said.

Clete looked at me again, then at Johnny. “Go back down the passageway to the cabin where Father Julian is and stay there.”

“No.”

“No?” I said.

“Isolde is on her way here,” Johnny said.

“From where?” I said.

“Another ship. I’m going now. I don’t like the way y’all are talking to me.”

“Then hoof it, kid,” Clete said.

Johnny went back up the ladder. He glanced back once, his face twisted with either hurt or anger, before disappearing.

“Think he’ll rat us out?” Clete said.

“Let’s get on the starboard side,” I said. “At least he won’t know our whereabouts.”

“I got to face this guy Gideon, Dave. That doesn’t sit easy.”

“Let him come to you.”

“My stomach is flopping,” he said. “Jesus Christ, we did it this time, didn’t we?”

We found a ladder to the top deck on the starboard side of the yacht. The air was cold, clouds of fog as white as cotton scudding across the water, the morning sun just breaking on the horizon, its rosy hue dissolving inside the fog. Flying fish skimmed the waves like bronze darts.

“Got any idea how far from shore we are?” I said.

“I don’t hear any buoys,” Clete said. “There’s no sand in the waves.”

“I wish I had a coat.”

“Dave, if I don’t come back from this, kill Shondell.”

“You’ll piss on his grave.”

He started to say something, then looked past me into the fog. “Oh, shit,” he said.

The prison galleon was no more than forty feet away, rising with the swells, the planks in the hull and gunwales and the quarterdeck bright with spray. Then it drifted closer, perhaps ten feet from the railing on the yacht, the oars receding inside the loopholes. Gideon Richetti descended from the quarterdeck. I didn’t say “walked,” he descended. He was wearing a long overcoat made of leather, the collar up, a floppy hat on his head. But he was not the same creature I had seen before. His scales were hardly visible, his face lean rather than triangular in shape. I wondered if I was looking at the same man.

“I want to speak to you, Mr. Purcel,” he said.

The voice, however, was the same; it echoed, or rumbled, as though trapped in a stone cistern.

“You’ll speak to us both, Mr. Richetti,” I said.

“Stay out of it, Dave,” Clete said.

“That’s a very good suggestion,” Gideon said.

“Say what you got to say,” Clete said. “Yeah, I’m talking to you. You hung me upside down and were going to boil my brains in my skull. You were a loser four hundred years ago, and you’re a loser now.”

“I wish to ask your forgiveness.”

“FTS on that, Jack,” Clete replied.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Fuck. That. Shit. You burned Leslie Rosenberg to death. You know where that puts you? With the Nazis. I’ve got a picture in my wallet I’d like to show you. A Jewish mother and her kids going to the ovens. Were you there?”

“I’m sorry for all the suffering I imposed on other people, Mr. Purcel. If you can’t forgive me, then don’t. But I had to try.”

“Clete?” I said.

“Shut up, Dave.”

“You forgave LeBlanc.”

“Hey,” Clete said to Gideon. “Why’d you tie a dead guy to the mast and tear out his guts?”

“I was angry. He was going to torture you and your friends to death. Sometimes I lose control.”

“Sometimes?” Clete said.

Gideon was silent. I could hear waves hitting against both vessels, and feel the deck rising and falling under my feet. “Do it, Clete,” I said.

“I don’t usually listen to Dave’s advice, but I owe him a solid or two,” he said. “You reading me on this? Look at me. I’m talking to you, asshole.”

“There’s a sailboat in the distance,” Gideon said.

“Screw the sailboat,” Clete said. “I forgive you. That means get out of our lives. Freshen up, take a shower, get yourself some breath mints and industrial-strength deodorant, haunt a house, find a girlfriend who’s not choosy, get your ashes hauled, but leave us the fuck alone.”

“You have to stop Mark Shondell,” Gideon said. “He is about to bring a great evil upon the earth.”

The clouds of fog billowed across the deck, as cold as ice water, so white and thick I could not see my hands. I clenched Clete’s upper arm to make sure he was there. It was as hard as a chunk of curb stone. “Can you see anything?” I said.

“No, nothing,” he replied.

I wiped my face with my hand. It was as slick as rainwater. “Where’s the sun?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

The fog broke into dirty wisps, like smoke from a garbage incinerator. I could see the water now. It was dark green and streaked with froth and lapping against the hull. As the fog thinned, I thought I saw baitfish in the waves or perhaps seaweed or flotsam from a wreck. Then I saw pieces of cloth, what looked like sweaters and stocking caps and primitive tunics made of coarse wool, shoes that were hardly more than leather wrapped around the foot, glimpses of bone and a hank of hair, faces that were as gray as soaked parchment, arms and naked legs and bloated stomachs roiling with a wave, then sinking into the depths.

“What happened to the galleon?” I said.

Clete shook his head. “I need a drink. I’d settle for a quart of gasoline.” Then he looked at me blankly, as though reviewing a video in his head.

“What is it?” I said.

“The storage compartment down below. One of them had emergency flares and two gasoline cans in it.”

I heard footsteps approaching us. Clete took the .25 semi-auto from his pocket.

“It’s me. Johnny,” a voice said. “Everything is down. The whole electrical system. Even the batteries are dead. Did you guys see anything?”

Neither of us answered, because neither of us trusted Johnny anymore. I had also lost faith in Penelope. Perhaps they were simply people who represented an idea or a cause that was greater than themselves, and as for all surrogates, the burden was greater than they could bear. I wanted also to believe that Penelope was not married to Adonis, and I wanted to believe this namely because, even with all my faults, I had never slept with another man’s wife.

What was the shorter truth? The woman I wanted with me was Leslie Rosenberg, and I knew that she and her daughter, Elizabeth, whose blue eyes were like looking into the face of God, were about to be taken from me forever.

I looked down at the flotsam in the water. I had no doubt it contained the clothing and shoes and remains of people who lived hundreds of years ago. “Did you see that down there?” I said to Johnny.

“Yeah, Gideon turned his rowers loose,” he replied. “That’s what he’s supposed to do.”

“Would you explain that, please?” I said.

“He’s a revelator. He makes people reveal who they are. Then they’re free. Leslie changed, too. She became an angel.”

I didn’t want to hear any more theology from Johnny Shondell.

“Sooner or later Shondell is going to search the ship,” Clete said. “Are you our friend or foe, Johnny?”

“I got to get Isolde back,” he said.

“Get out of my sight,” Clete said.