At The Edge

34

Maria was ready for a vigorous pull. After a deep breath in anticipation of great pain, she shrank her hand by folding her thumb and yanked. Her arm shook; then her hand popped free. In seconds she had the second hand loose and crawled quickly for the deckhouse, with one eye on a nodding Groiter. As she opened the cabin door, Groiter jerked up, pointing the gun. Quickly she pulled herself inside, rolled, and once out of sight went to work on her feet.

"Hey, Maria Fischer," he called out.

"What do you want?"

"You and me, we can make a deal."

"Groiter, look, a ship," Corey said.

"I see it." His voice had the tones of a man resigned to his fate.

Maria jumped up. Her breath seized at the awesome sight of the multistory supertanker. Leaping from the galley into the pilothouse, she grabbed the wheel and spun it. Autopilot! She fumbled madly with a black box overhead.

"Off," she screamed, flipping the switch. Grabbing the wheel, she threw the spokes. This time she felt resistance as the rudder dug in. A wall of black steel. A huge bow wave. She was turning, but so was the tanker.

"Oh God, oh God!" Then she saw a small boat racing. "Dan," she said.

Having checked all three outbound boats-and finding nothing-Dan was beyond desperate. Then for three minutes he had watched the scene on the radar. A mere speck, perhaps a boat with no radar reflector, a tiny target, going headlong into a supertanker's path. The freighter appeared as a moving island on the screen. The smaller something was almost invisible. Turning up the gain on the radar did little good, the second vessel barely visible, explaining why he hadn't seen it as he crossed the bar. Either the skipper was asleep at the boat's helm or the boat was out of control. The tanker hadn't picked up the tiny wisp of a target, either.

He picked up the VHF and broadcast on Channel 16.

"Mayday, Mayday, southbound supertanker off Palmer, you are about to run over a trawler. Mayday, Mayday, southbound supertanker, you are about to run over a trawler."

Ignoring the fog and repeating the warning continuously, he pushed the boat to twenty-eight knots. It was dangerous. One seaborne log and he was all done. It didn't matter. In his gut he knew that this time he was right.

He strained his eyes. The fog was burning thinner.

"There," he said, pointing. Shohei grunted. They could see the boat before the tanker.

"Mayday, Mayday, southbound supertanker, you are about to run over a trawler."

"Damn, the big guy is moving to dodge me," Dan said in disbelief.

Dan threw his own wheel over, but the tanker continued turning into the trawler.

A horn blasted across the water like a shock wave. Behind the tanker the water boiled.

"Reverse. He's hitting reverse," Dan said.

Slamming the throttle forward, Dan headed for the trawler. In seconds it would be kindling.

Thunk! A bullet hit the pilothouse wall, missing Corey's nose by inches. A second bullet passed over her head. Least of her problems. In seconds it would be too late. Not hesitating, she dived off the bow and swam as hard and as fast as she could.

Maria shrank from the black wall that grew above the trawler.

Then bullets and wood flew as Groiter tried to shoot Corey.

Maria ran out of the wheelhouse. "Dan," she screamed, seeing his shock of blond hair.

Then a shot chunked the bulkhead next to her, sending splinters everywhere. He's trying to kill me. To kill anything. She leaped, hit the water, and swam.

There were a few seconds when Groiter hoped they might somehow pass in front of the tanker, but the giant bow backed by 100,000 tons of steel and petroleum hit the small fishing trawler amidships. The stern, which held Groiter, scraped along the tanker's vertical steel starboard wall for fifty yards or more, until cast aside by the ship's wake. As the lit stern of the tanker passed, Groiter, in water up to his waist, gripped the gun and began shooting wildly at the sea, hoping that against all odds he might hit Corey.

Desperately he tried to claw his way around the boat as it listed and turned, but the concrete was too heavy and he found no handholds. His fingernails made ugly noises as they scrabbled over the deck planking.

"Please," he said to no one in particular as he made his final attempt to stop his slide into the cold, dark water.

"You missed," he heard Corey call in the distance as he sank beneath the waves.

Corey looked to the east, where the sun would be shining on the beach, and began to swim.

Her hands stretched out flat with each stroke against the smooth, glassy sea; her breath pushed into the cold water; the bracing smell of salt was in her nostrils; the silky sensation of the water's passage lapped under her arms. She swam without thought of time save the rhythmic passing of her breaths, ignoring the folly of her will to live.

Then the sea became hard and brittle. Her hand cracked on something solid. She grabbed the metal. It was the stern of a small boat, and there was a man standing over her. He wore a deep blue down coat over a blue cotton dress shirt, deeply wrinkled, open at the neck.

Dan Young.

Reaching behind her, she drew the fillet knife from her waistband. He held out a hand. She grabbed. As he came low to swing her up, she thrust the blade straight for his heart, feeling every inch of the knife slice through flesh. She shrieked her satisfaction.

Then from above, hands closed on Corey's neck. She was shaken like a sapling. She heard screams of white-hot, crazy anger. Her own, she realized, as the deadly earnest grip tightened. Relaxing her body, she went totally limp. Her mind became a shrinking tunnel, and just before it closed to utter blackness, the hands departed.

Water closed over her head. Summoning all her rage, she stroked toward a breath. The first inhaling of sweet ocean air came in a stupor, leaving only the haziest memory. She floated away. There was the churning water of a wake and the fleeing vessel. The cold, cold water.

Maria clambered onto the boat nearly hysterical. Shohei held his hand tight to Dan's chest above his heart. Maria put her hands under his head, beside herself with fear for him.

"Drive, drive," Shohei was saying.

Forcing herself to put Dan's head on the deck, she jumped up and engaged the throttle. The GPS made the entry to the bay obvious on the electronic chart.

Ground speed was thirty-five knots. The boat flew. Sometimes she could see ahead and sometimes she just stared at the screen. If they hit something not visible on the radar, they would all die. If they slowed, Dan would lose whatever slim margin he had. With her whole being she wanted to hold him, but instinctively she knew Shohei was strong, that he understood bodies and that he could best stop the life from seeping out of Dan.

Glancing back, she saw Shohei blowing air into Dan. They broke into the sun and neared a coast guard vessel.

She picked up the radio. "Coast guard, we've got a wounded man. He's dying," she cried out, choking, nearly hysterical.

"This is the United States Coast Guard. We have a helicopter and a lifeboat coming your way."

Dan could feel the joy when he saw Maria bending over him. With a tired grin he looked into her eyes. Then, in a twinkling, he felt a terrible sting in his shoulder. His face burned. Where did Maria go?

A white light, a wave of foreboding.

"Dear God, dear God!"

He heard Maria's voice through the white light. Something utterly serious, he knew. Then the light grew warm. People gathering around, and in his ear, Maria's voice. "Don't die, Dan Young, don't die." He could see so many things. Tess and her calm smile. Maria in court, standing on the counsel table. Nathaniel.

"Daddy, Daddy" cried Nathaniel's voice.

He was in a glass-topped casket. Tess lay beside him now. People with red roses were standing all around. There was a man wearing vestments and holding a small black book. Those standing around began tossing the roses as they were lowered to the place where they would stay for a night.

Maria waited in a large anteroom of the St. Joseph's Episcopal Church. It wasn't a place in which she felt familiar. She had mostly forgotten her childhood experience of its customs and rituals. The woodwork was dark mahogany, very fine, the design Tudor. Two large windows allowed sunlight through head-high half-curtains. In the corner were large bouquets that had not yet been put out. For a moment the world had left her alone. Looking through the window, she saw a hearse drive up. Dan's brother got out. Tears flooded her eyes. Soon it would be time. She had to pull herself together. Any minute her mother would come.

As if the thought summoned the person, there was a knock.

"Come in," Maria said.

"We need to get you ready," Laura Fischer said.

"I know."

Mrs. Fischer removed the wedding dress from its stand and Maria slipped off her robe.

"I'd love to know what you were thinking." Her mother began helping her into the dress. It was a Vera Wang and very expensive. It embarrassed Maria. There would be people dressed in army boots at her wedding as well as people in designer originals.

"Do you see the hearse out front? The one covered with 'Just Married'?" Maria asked.

"Hearse?" Laura Fischer walked to the window and peered out.

"I've heard of practical jokes on your wedding day, but this is more interesting than most."

"It's a very special message." Maria pointed to several pages on a window seat. "That's the homily the priest is giving during the ceremony. It explains the hearse. Dan sent Nate with the homily. Nate confidentially advised me that his father was worried I might look out the window and not understand."

"Nate was in here?"

"He's the son of the groom. That doesn't count."

Laura finished the last button while Maria went to the vanity to inspect her makeup.

"I'm not really a makeup person. But my cowboy grew up looking at teenyboppers in Maupin with makeup. Tess wore makeup. Do you think I'm giving away too much of my own identity?"

"Oh yes. Shaving under your arms and a little blush will no doubt twist your soul, dear."

"Ever since Dan Young started looking at me in the courthouse, I started changing what I wore, my hair, then lipstick. Jeez, why couldn't I just stay myself?"

"This would certainly explain it," Laura said, reading the homily. "It's really one of the most touching things I've ever read. You're going off in a hearse because he's dying to every love but yours. There won't be a dry eye in the place. It's so un-macho of Dan."

"There's more to macho Dan than meets the eye."

"Apparently," Laura said. "Let's do the veil."

"We're ahead of schedule."

There was a knock.

"That'll be the bridesmaids ready to go."

''I don't understand how I can wear a veil. The symbolism is so outmoded.''

"The hearse is for you, honey; the wedding is for the rest of us. Wear the veil. I think your father has invited everyone he ever met, and then some."

"He's gloating. But he doesn't really know what I've reeled in here. He hasn't completely won."

Laura sighed a deep sigh.

"Mom, I love you. And you know what I'm going to whisper in Dad's ear when he gives me away?"

"What, dear?"

"I'm going to try to fix us. I'm going to tell him I want to sit in his den and watch football again."

"Oh dear. He'll cry in front of his friends."

Dan was in the pastor's conference room, which was also a kind of theological library. He stared in the mirror; everything seemed in order. Turning to Nate, he stooped down to help him with the cummerbund on his tuxedo.

"Dad?" Nate said.

"Mm-hmm."

"I still miss Mom."

"I do too. Always will."

"Maria says she can't be my new mom because Mom is still my mom."

"That's right."

"But she says she's going to be like my godmother. She's there to remind me what Mom would want, and to stand in at parties and games and stuff and remind me that Mom's proud of me. And she says she loves me like a mom. Is that right?"

"That's right."

"Do you think Mom knows?"

"She knew we loved her, Nate."

Dan was fluffing the large salmon fly in his hat.

"Does Maria know we love her?"

"I believe she does. Wouldn't hurt to tell her, though."

"You're not gonna wear your hat, are you, Dad?"

Dan looked down and smiled mysteriously.

"Dad, I don't think they allow cowboy hats with tuxedos."

"It's livin' at the edge, son."

Dan watched Nate screw up his face in disdainful puzzlement.

"I'm just kidding, Nate. There are times when a man can leave his hat behind."