The Young Men and the Sea #2
Reg put his arm over Reynaldo’s thin shoulders, and Anthony slung his around Ilia’s.
Nobody spoke—this wasn’t television, where they could quick-talk and banter until the last moment.
Instead they stayed absolutely still and silent, listening to the shouts of the men, the protests of the civilians, and finally police sirens.
There were sudden shouts—this time in Russian, and while they could see nothing, Anthony got the feeling that the armed intruders with the weapons had taken off.
Well, it wasn’t like they were turning themselves over to the police, either, because that might get them real ICE, and the boys would still be in a bad, bad place.
After the longest half hour in the history of time, Anthony shook himself out of a torpor and glanced out of their shelter.
He could see lights on in the hotel room they’d left but nobody coming after them.
“Did we get everything?” he asked quietly. One of the things that had kept them up the night before was repacking the backpacks so they only needed one extra bag.
Nobody had wanted to give up the books, so Anthony had made them divvy up the paperbacks so everybody had a couple of their own.
“Where to?” Ilia asked quietly, and Anthony was about to suggest they stay there and sleep, when Reg said, “I’ve got an idea.”
It was hard moving from their impromptu shelter into the gray dawn.
The hooded sweatshirts and denim weren’t enough, not even with the handknitted hats and scarves they had packed.
The moisture from the air had penetrated everybody’s clothes by now, and he knew if his teeth were chattering, the boys were probably unable to speak.
So they were silent, their footsteps muffled by the fog, as they followed Reg, and it didn’t take conversation for Anthony to figure they were heading for the docks.
“What did you see here?” he asked softly.
“Sh…,” Reg murmured. “There’s a whole row of them.”
And Anthony realized what he was looking for.
Many of the boats docked at the pier were hard-core fishing boats—big enough for sleeping quarters and storage for the fish, needing a crew of at least five or six to take them out and work. But that’s not what Reg had spotted.
He’d spotted smaller day-trip boats, with enough of a cabin to offer shelter, but not enough to store valuables.
In fact, most of the cruisers on this particular pier didn’t even have doors or locks.
You boarded the boat and either sat in the modest protected cabin, or you made your way to the front and putt-putted your way out of the strand, facing the spray and clutching the railing.
“Move like we belong there,” Reg said softly, and then walked across the pier with his back straight and his backpack over his shoulder, like somebody leaving early for a day trip.
He chose one of the smaller boats, not too fancy, not too battered, with an easy step up from the dock before climbing into the cabin.
He paused there and waited for the boys, and then moved deeper into the small space, noting, Anthony saw, the pile of tarps and life preservers toward the back of a space that probably sat six comfortably.
“Quick,” he said. “Under the pile. We don’t want them to see us when they come looking. But don’t make the boat rock too hard.”
Anthony helped cave out spaces for the boys while Reg made a hollow for the two of them.
After securing Ilia and Reynaldo behind a screen of life jackets and wool blankets—some of them from their own emergency bag—Anthony crawled under one of the benches that sat contoured to the side of the cabin and pulled a tarp over the two of them, one arm secure around Reg’s shoulders.
For a moment, their breaths were unbearably loud in the awakening predawn quiet.
Then, as their heartbeats steadied, some of the calls of fishermen leaving early and the more distant sound of motors as the larger commercial boats began to pull out of the harbor permeated the fog and lulled them into believing things were normal, at least for a space.
I wonder how long we’ll know to wait? Anthony thought, and it was the last thing that went through his mind before he fell asleep.
HE WASN’T sure how long he dozed, Reg tucked in against his side, before he realized the boat was rocking back and forth as somebody moved about topside, shouting to somebody else out on the dock.
“No, you can’t board my vessel!” the man called. “I don’t know who in the fuck you are! Any moron can wear a mask—isn’t that illegal now?”
An unintelligible reply shot back, irritated and not at all the sound of a professional law enforcement member.
“No, I don’t need to pull out my phone. I reckon you’re being recorded by half the people out here. We’re not stupid. What’s that? I can’t hear you.”
As Reg stiffened next to him, Anthony felt the rocking of the boat as the man who’d been apparently freeing the mooring ropes from the dock entered the cabin and started preparing the boat to back out of its slip.
In a voice meant only to be heard in the shelter of the cabin, he said, “Unless you want to meet the asshole with the gun I was talking to, you’ll all stay absolutely still until we’re out of the bay.”
Anthony breathed deeply, and he heard one of the boys do the same, and then he closed his eyes and hoped for the best.
The rumble of the boat as it putt-putted through the water must have been as soothing as the warmth under the pile of tarps, because Anthony’s eyes closed again before he could wonder if they were all going to have to walk the plank into the freezing waters of the Northern Pacific Ocean when this guy had cleared port.
It was about then he realized he’d left his gun, of all things, in its lockbox in the SUV that afternoon as he’d been gathering their packs.
“ALL RIGHT now, everybody awake. I’ve got breakfast for you if you need it and water if you don’t. Come on, it’s fine. Everybody’s safe here.”
“You say that,” Ilia responded, “but I’m the perfect size to feed a big fish. Maybe you just want to dangle me behind the boat as bait!”
That surprised a chuckle from their sailing friend, and Anthony and Reg had a chance to wriggle out from under their tarp in time to see a squat, weathered man in his early fifties offer Ilia a hand out of his own cubby.
“It’s a small boat, boy,” the man said. “There’s no room to put a big fish if we caught one with you. Now your friend here—we might be able to throw that fishy over the hull.”
“As long as I can sleep some more,” Reynaldo mumbled, and Ilia turned a worried face toward Anthony and Reg.
“He’s sick,” he said soberly. “His body is very hot.”
“Ibuprofen,” Reg said, thumping his knapsack on the deck before sitting down so he could rifle through it. Anthony reached down as Reg handed him a bottle.
“He’ll need food,” Reg said, and Anthony remembered the sandwich they’d been saving for later for the boy. It was currently mashed into his pack, but that didn’t sound appetizing. “We’ve got—”
“Fresh fruit or an egg sandwich?” their skipper asked, holding out a bag.
“Fruit,” Reynaldo murmured, smiling weakly. As their new friend (hopefully) cleared off the bench on the boy’s side of the cabin, he sat hunkered, and Ilia came to get the ibuprofen and a bottle of water from Anthony.
A few moments later, Anthony found himself sitting next to Reg, an egg sandwich in his hand—still steaming.
“Please, mister,” Anthony said, only partially kidding, “tell me you’re not going to chop us into little pieces and feed us to the sharks.”
“Well, since you were stowing away in my cabin, don’t you think I should ask you the same thing?” their skipper said, but his eyes were twinkling, and Anthony gave a shrug.
“Those two are little,” he said blandly. “I think you could take ’em.”
The man threw back his head and gave a hearty laugh. “You might be right,” he said, and then he sobered. “Let’s just say we don’t like ICE in these parts and leave it like that.” He frowned. “Not that I think those bozos were ICE.”
“They weren’t,” Reg said, and then gave the boys an apologetic look. “ICE doesn’t wear masks anymore, for one thing. But it doesn’t matter. They called ICE on us, and now neither of the boys can go home.”
The man grimaced. “That’s rough,” he said, taking in the boys and nodding. “I….” He grimaced. “Honestly, I’d offer to sail you up through Puget Sound to Victoria, but I wasn’t planning on leaving the bay today. I don’t have enough fuel.”
At that moment, Reynaldo interrupted him with a vicious bout of coughing, and Anthony’s heart sank.
The waves pounding at the ship didn’t seem to faze either of the boys, and he was good with the motion of the boat as well—it was a sound solution, and one Anthony was embarrassed he hadn’t thought of, but the fuel thing was tricky.
“Do you have enough to see us to Seattle?” Reg asked, his voice a little faint. He was eating his sandwich determinedly, but it hit Anthony that maybe Reg wasn’t so excited about boats.
“And then what?” the man asked. “You go overland?” Their friend glanced at Reynaldo, who had finished half his sandwich and then curled up on the bench, his head in Ilia’s lap.
Ilia was smoothing back his hair gently, murmuring in Russian.
“He… I’ll be honest. I don’t want that kid in a hospital anywhere in the States.
They’ll send him to a detention center without even asking to see his status and… .”
They all shuddered. Children were dying in those centers. The thought of these boys—their boys—in a place without a blanket, or food, or medical care, was enough to make Reg shake his head vehemently.
“Crap,” he muttered. “Look, I don’t even know your name, Mr.…?”
“Eben Fields,” said the man, holding out his hand.