Not Home Yet #2
Reg slipper-footed nimbly, in spite of the subtle rocking of the boat, and officers—without masks, and in uniform khaki tactical gear—thundered across the quay.
“C’mon baby, c’mon baby—”
“Got it!” Reg called, scrambling around to the side of the cabin and ducking through the door as Anthony, head over his shoulder, palmed the wheel of the tiller, backing them out of the slip and toward open water.
They were far enough away to claim plausible deniability when the ICE agents—Anthony was pretty sure they were the real deal this time—shouted, “Wait! Wait, we need to search your….”
And that was the last thing he could hear as he opened up the throttle and roared for the bay.
THE BOAT—the Lizzy May I—had lights, because, Eben had told them, he and his wife used to take it on weekends, and they wanted to be legally able to navigate home at night.
Fresh from having taken one of the last of the Dramamines, Reg stood at Anthony’s elbow and repeated the directions for Evinruding safely through the fog.
Anthony yawned. “I really think I could—”
But Reg, feeling brave, wrapped his arm around Anthony’s waist and leaned his head on his shoulder. He should have been flabbergasted at taking these liberties, but he felt entitled to them instead.
“You’re exhausted,” he said firmly. “You’ve been doing this all day. I can’t promise I’ll be useful for long, so please go nap.” He chuckled dryly. “It’s really very cozy down there. You and Eben made quite a nice little nook.”
His stomach gurgled threateningly, and Reg told it sternly to behave. They’d made a scant meal of Reynaldo’s sandwich, some stored protein bars Anthony had in his gear, and some of the fruit Eben had brought on board. They had more fruit and cheese for the morning, but after that?
Hopefully they’d be docked and not wandering the murky gray of Puget Sound forever, like hungry ghosts.
Anthony, keeping one hand on the wheel, leaned against Reg in return. “Okay,” he said, and the tenseness of his shoulders relaxed. “You remember everything I told you?”
“If I don’t now, I’ll never know it,” Reg told him truthfully.
Like Dean, he could sometimes develop “blind spots” in his thought processes.
With Dean it was often involved with human interaction.
With Reg it was certain kinds of logic—he would be leaps and bounds above his peers in something like trigonometry, only to be felled by a basic geometry theorem that had never made sense to him.
Infuriating.
He’d been half afraid piloting the boat would be like that, particularly since Anthony needed him so badly. But Anthony had been teaching people to shoot for years, and his teaching skills—breaking things down into small chunks and then building on prior knowledge—were amazing.
Reg had asked him if he’d ever thought of doing something besides running the shooting range, and Anthony had shrugged.
“I like the business part of things,” he’d said.
“And working with my dad. And working with the community to teach gun safety. There’s far too many wackos out there who buy a zillion semiautomatic weapons and think they’re God.
It’s like you volunteering at the school, I guess.
I feel like I’m using all my gifts to make the world a little better. ”
Reg could love this man so hard. If only they had a little more time, a little more precious time, to finish the fall they’d started months ago.
Now Anthony placed a sweet, almost absent kiss on Reg’s temple, and Reg realized with a little pop that it was too late.
He’d fallen. As Anthony hugged him tight before releasing him and wandering to the back of the small cabin to check on Reynaldo before curling into his and Reg’s cubby to sleep, Reg realized there was no going back, even if he wanted to.
All he could do was keep holding onto Anthony’s hand and hope they would never hit bottom. They would simply cling to each other and fly.
ANTHONY FELT like he’d just closed his eyes when he heard Reg calling his name.
“Anthony—Anthony—you’ve got to wake up. I need help!”
And that did it, sending him scrambling out from under the wool blanket he’d been huddling under, a part of him listening with one ear to Reynaldo’s nasal coughing as what looked to be a basic head cold took hold and wracked his still-growing body.
God. Poor kid. What a stupid, ridiculous, awful situation. As he approached Reg at the steering console he thought sadly of the two mischievous kids, sneaking off to neck in the art room, and how none of that justified what Reynaldo and Ilia had been put through in the last four days.
“What’s up?” he asked Reg, pulling his brain back into his ears.
“There’s a patrol,” Reg whispered, and Anthony realized that he’d cut their running lights and throttled down the outboard motor before he’d called.
“We’re close, but I had to veer west a little, and I think the current is pushing us that way some more.
I am pretty sure the shoreline is ahead of us, but…
.” He bit his lip, and Anthony realized—maybe for the first time—that Reg had left his glasses behind… where? Where had it been?
“Oh, baby!” he said. “How long have you been blind?”
Reg grimaced. “Since this morning’s epic bazooka barfing.
” He rolled his eyes. “And I’m not blind, really.
I just, you know, shouldn’t drive without them.
I figured….” He gestured toward the fog, rolling just off the top of the water.
“I mean, I’m not so blind that I’d miss another boat.
Or, you know, an orca. I mean, if it was an orca, we’d be dead anyway, but—”
Anthony found the chuckle welling up from nowhere, but he couldn’t stop it. Spontaneously he hugged Reg—hugged him so hard to his chest, he hoped some of that guilelessness, that clever, lovely singlemindedness and goodness would seep through to his heart.
“Do orcas attack boats?” he asked.
“Not usually,” Reg muttered, muffled against his shoulder, “unless they’re whaling boats. And hey, who can blame them? This is nice. This is really nice.” Anthony felt Reg’s body relax, his head resting against Anthony’s shoulder. “It’s so hard to worry about everything all the time.”
“I know,” Anthony said softly. “It’s okay, baby. I know.”
For a moment, they were alone, the boat rocking gently as the low engine hum bore them to safety under the cover of fog and darkness.
A shout in the distance broke them apart, and Anthony switched off the engine, letting them drift.
“What happens now?” Reg asked softly.
“We hold on to the wheel and wait.”
Later—an eternity later—the boat shuddered to a halt, rocking forward hard enough to send Reg and Anthony against the console and leave bruises, and to send the boys tumbling out of their hideaway under the benches.
One ran to port and the other to starboard, and they both saw the same thing.
The boat had run aground on a sandy spit of land, with a dense growth of trees beyond.
Hopefully, if they hadn’t gotten completely turned around, they were safe.
REYNALDO INSISTED he could walk. “I’m better,” he said firmly. “The fever broke last night. Do we still have medicine?”
“Yeah, for another two days,” Reg reported. He was still shaking off the torpor of the last available Dramamine, and though he was grateful he hadn’t thrown up in twelve hours, he was doubly grateful to be free of the drug.
“Where are we?” Ilia asked. He looked to Reg and Anthony. “It would be nice to know.”
Anthoy blew out a breath, like he was getting ready to hazard a guess, but Reg was pretty sure he knew.
“The currents were pushing us to the west and north,” he said.
“And slowly. I suspect we’re a little northwest of Sooke Harbor.
Before the phone died, I checked the coastline, and this looks approximately like the Google version.
I think if we follow the shore there to our left, we’ll come to a road in a mile or two, and maybe we can flag down some help. ”
“What will we tell them?” Reynaldo asked apprehensively.
It was Anthony’s turn to answer. He’d actually spoken with Eben at length about Canada’s immigration policy. Given how close Washington was to the border, and how often Eben’s travels took him to ports in Puget Sound, it was something the natives talked about.
“The truth,” Anthony said. “You’re fleeing a dangerous situation.
Both of you. You both belong to marginalized groups, and you’re fleeing violence from both your families and your country.
I think you have a good case—and hopefully Reg’s brother can smooth the way for you. It was our plan from the start.”
Ilia shrugged, a sort of Slavic fatalism making him look, for a moment, very much older.
“What can we do?” he asked. “It is either that or we form a commune. I would….” He let out a sigh.
“This way I might at least speak with my mother again, even just in letters. Reynaldo deserves to see his aunt. I—” Again, that shrug, but they could both see the quivering lip, the wobbling chin.
“—I am grateful to not be with my uncle, at the very least. Or in a ‘detention center.’” He sneered the last word.
“Where I would be fucked into the concrete and left to die. Or El Salvador or Texas. So many worse things I could be. Let us go hope for the best.”
It was a brutal summary of their choices, and while they insisted Reynaldo sit and rest, those left straightened the cruiser in grim silence, battening down the tarps, blankets, and life preservers that had cushioned and sheltered them, and bagging up the trash to take with them so vermin wouldn’t be tempted to take over the vessel while they were gone.
“Wait!” Reg cried as Anthony made ready to hop down, using the rail and the ladder built into the side to help. “Anthony, take off your shoes and socks. The beach is sandy here, and we don’t want to walk in wet boots!”
“Ooh,” Ilia said, sitting down immediately. “That’s why he’s got the big brain. And honestly, my feet are rank, and I’ve got one more pair of clean socks!”