Chapter 27
After his standoff with Walker in the shipyard, Evan sits out on the beach alone.
It gets very late. He thinks things over, rakes his fingers through his hair, buttons and unbuttons the cuffs of his shirt,
then rolls them up. Anger still simmers inside him. A headache blooms in his temples.
He tries to tame his emotions with logical thinking.
He knows Walker isn’t a bad guy. In fact, if anything, he’s annoyingly good. Maybe because it reminds him so much of Annie,
the way she feels like the centre of the earth. His personal gravitational force.
He can’t let Walker make this decision for Annie, though. That isn’t an option.
He moves the facts around in his mind: His father is hyperfocused on the wrong things; their hometown has been reduced to
rubble; Ruth is fading faster than he could have imagined. And those facts are taking a toll on Evan. He can feel himself
changing, becoming someone he isn’t, someone he was never supposed to be. Pretty soon Annie will be the only person left who
genuinely knows who he is or was. If he loses Annie, what would be left for him? But more critically, what would become of
Annie? On a boat, no money, no safety net. He could lose her for good. That prospect is intolerable.
His overpowering instinct is to intervene. He can’t leave Annie alone with Walker any longer. He has to break them apart, at least until Ruth gets back and talks some sense into her. But how can he do that, without making it look like he’s trying to pull strings?
Evan rises to his feet, brushes sand off his pants and starts to walk home over the garbage and soggy driftwood. He climbs
through collapsed houses, over a corrugated roof abandoned beside the disembowelled convenience store, then strides through
the clearing created by Isaac’s excavator.
The nearly full moon shines overhead.
He walks uphill to the house he and Isaac have been staying in since the tsunami. Isaac is banging around the kitchen with
a half bottle of bourbon in one hand, a full tumbler of it in the other. By the looks of it, dinner is boiled eggs and salted
sturgeon. The SSB sits on the counter emitting a staticky hiss. Evan can smell the sharp scent of diesel from the generator
droning outside.
Evan folds his body into a kitchen chair beside the table. The generator hiccups, and the overhead light flickers.
“Where were you?” Isaac asks.
“With Annie.”
“What stories did she have this time?” Isaac sets the bourbon bottle down so close to the edge of the counter that Evan worries
it will fall. “A sailboat-eating squid? Mermaids building the kingdom of Atlantis?”
“Can we please not, tonight?”
“Did she teach you how to navigate by starlight?”
“Leave it be, Dad.”
“Just trying to keep your head screwed on straight.”
“Maybe you should worry about keeping yours screwed on straight.” Evan points to the bottle.
Isaac ignores him and turns up the radio. “The booms are set for morning. Weather reports are back as of yesterday.”
Evan tries to decipher the muffled voice reporting temperatures and tides. Strong wind coming up from the southwest, heavy rain starting in thirty-six hours. “We wait that out for a few days, then.”
“If you leave sooner, you can beat the weather.” Isaac stares at him with pink-rimmed eyes.
A prickle of anger at the base of Evan’s neck. “You can’t tow logs in that.”
“They offered a higher price if we deliver ASAP. Besides, it was dead calm out there today.”
Evan stands and steps toward his father and sets his jaw but then chooses to retreat to the bedroom upstairs. There’s no reasoning
with him when he’s drunk.
He’s at the top stair when Isaac says: “I let you down when your mother died. There’s no excuse for it.”
Evan looks back down the staircase, realizing only now that the redness in his dad’s eyes is not just from alcohol. He’s been
crying.
“I was a fucking mess.” Isaac takes another drink and places the tumbler back on the counter so hard that Evan wonders if
it cracked.
“Because you loved her.”
“It hurt so bad I let too many things go.” Isaac braces himself against the countertop. “We can’t let things fall apart now.”
Static from the radio interrupts him. After several seconds, he starts again: “Everyone left in this town is riding on this.
Even that sailboat girl you won’t let go of.”
Evan pushes his palms into his eyes until he sees stars. He isn’t prepared to have his loyalty questioned on top of everything
else. “Fine. I’ll go.”
“Good.” The static comes to an abrupt stop when Isaac switches off the SSB. “I’m proud of you, son.”
Crickets play outside the bedroom window in the stillness of night. Evan forces air in and out of his lungs. Staring at the chips in the twin bed headboard, he slows his breathing as he decides what to do.
Night becomes day soon enough.
He packs a bag, drinks a black coffee, and heads straight to Ruth’s cabin. Three gulls perch on the roof. Songbirds are awake,
trilling and whistling in the shrubs. A robin’s nest is taking shape in the rafters.
No one answers the door when he knocks. No smoke from the chimney. Inside, it’s quiet, and the beds are made.
A shiver runs up his spine.
He retraces his steps back to the shipyard, calls out from the warehouse door, and waits. Water drips through a downspout.
A rustling noise, then the groan of the boat on the cradle. Eventually, Annie and Walker both climb out of Polaris, wearing the same clothes as the night before.
“For fuck’s sake.” Evan feels hot anger spill from a thousand cracks in his skin. But he has to keep it contained, to push
ahead. He manages to level his voice: “Sorry to interrupt.”
“You’re not,” Annie says, but she doesn’t seem sure.
“Booms are ready and I need to get Ruth in a couple days.” Evan swallows the burning feeling. “Got to leave right away if
I want to beat the storm that’s coming.”
“How do you know there’ll be a storm?”
“Weather reports started back up on the radio.”
“Shouldn’t you wait?”
Evan dodges her question. “I could probably use a deckhand this time, in case the weather turns bad.”
A long pause. Walker is watching him; it’s as if he can see straight through Evan’s skull. The whole thing feels bleak, a
wrong turn inside a game Evan made up. One he doesn’t want to play anymore.
“I’ll go with you,” Walker says.
“We should both go,” Annie says.
“I’d prefer if only Walker goes,” Evan says quickly, somehow managing to keep his voice steady. “I’m not sure you’re stormproof these days.”
Immediately, he regrets saying it.
“Right.” She looks down at the ground. “You don’t think I can handle it.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I don’t know what you mean at all, lately.” Her voice is clipped. She climbs out of the boat, down the ladder, and past him.
Annie wanders around the kitchen, picking up items and putting them down again. She doesn’t know what to send along with Evan
and Walker. Nothing feels adequate; nothing will make them stormproof, either. All she manages to pull together are a toothbrush
and a can of pinto beans. As if those would do them any good. She doesn’t even have a bag to put them in.
“Why won’t Evan wait a couple days?” she says anxiously.
Walker takes the items from her hands and sets them in a cloth bag on the counter. “Nothing you can say will change his mind.”
“He should be terrified of a storm when he’s towing booms.”
Walker puts dried fish in an old margarine container, then places it inside the bag with the rest of the food. He seems resigned.
“He’s living inside a storm already.”
“And now he’s taking you with him?”
Walker takes Aiden’s old slicker off the hook by the door and puts it on. “It’s my own decision to go. Don’t put it on him.”
“But why do you have to?”
“He can’t do it on his own this time.”
“Neither of you should go.” She turns back to the pantry to get the rice.
“If I don’t go, he could get hurt.” Walker is matter-of-fact.
Annie pours half the rice into an old Safeway plastic bag, then ties off the handles. “Will you have enough drinking water?”
Walker turns to grab some water purification tablets. “How about these in case?”
Annie pauses. What she really wants is to bubble wrap them both for better protection. She unclasps her whalebone necklace.
“Please take this.”
Walker hesitates.
“A whale died on the beach when I was little. Hit by a boat. She was all by herself.” Annie takes his forearm and pushes up
his sleeve. She wraps the leather cord twice around his wrist. “My dad carved the beads from the bones.”
“You should keep it with you.”
“If you don’t have some kind of good luck charm, I’ll be too afraid.”
“You won’t always be afraid of the sea, Annie,” Walker says, as she attaches the clasp.
“Please don’t take it off until you’re both back.”
His eyes appear bluish now. Last night, they were their usual grey, and last night she didn’t feel alone at all. It was sex,
but it wasn’t sex. Their bodies pressed together had a singing bowl quality, like the ones she used to hear on the beaches in Baja.
“I’ll miss you,” he says.
“I can’t watch you go.” She pulls Walker’s sleeve back down, hiding the necklace. “I’ll be here waiting.”
They leave Annie behind.
Hours pass as Evan drives the tug through the channel. He runs his hands nervously over the cool steel of the helm. The booms
are a carpet of logs behind them, carving floating hieroglyphs into the water.
Walker stands on the foredeck and watches the sea.
The two of them have not exchanged words since they left.
It’s nearly evening now. The light fades behind a growing bank of clouds. The channel is smooth, not a lick of wind—-a calm
that hides what’s ahead.
Evan fidgets with a chewed pen cap as he watches the barometer. He doesn’t need another radio report to tell him there’s weather coming, and sooner than predicted. His pulse has quickened. He scans the chart in front of him.
Walker comes into the console. “That storm is coming,” he says.
“It wasn’t supposed to hit this quick,” Evan says. “We need to find a safe harbour.”
Walker looks out at the water, unblinking. He’s doing that quirky thing where he’s too quiet and seemingly obtuse, and it’s