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 ON THE WATER everything is clear. It is a gift for the soul; a clarity born of sea and salt air that touches the small inner voice within us that has been too long silenced by the chaos of life. It is a gift that heals; that gives us power to rid ourselves of confusion, worry, guilt, and regret; that gives us faith in ourselves and our dreams. But if we refuse to heed the gift of clarity, if we deny the inner voice that tells us who we are, then we will wither and die before our time. For when we kill the dream within us, we kill ourselves.
We may be breathing, and the blood may be flowing through our veins, but it is not living. It is merely busyness disguised as living—from children who are shuttled from one organized activity to another without a single moment simply to be themselves, to play, or to let their imaginations run free, to adults who scurry from store to store, buying whatever their money or credit will allow in the false hope that material acquisitions will somehow deaden their pain. The pain may go away for a while, but it always returns. For nothing can satisfy a dream unfulfilled, a life unlived.
On the water everything is clear. It gives us power to climb the wind and soar. You want to be happy, Kellie, darlin’? Then find the wind, find where it’s coming from and where it’s going. For it is only when your boat has a bellyful of wind in her sails and her hull is ripping through the sea, and the salt spray is stinging your face, that you will know you’re alive. You will know who you are and where you’re going. You will know your dream.
“HEATHEN BITCH!”
“Actually, the name’s Kellie. Kellie Montgomery.”
“Sinner slut!”
The guy calling me names was crazy. That he was also dangerous hadn’t occurred to me until he’d wheedled his way into my office. By the time the name calling started, it was too late to reconsider. He’d persuaded me to open the door by claiming he wanted to sign up for sailing lessons, which sounded reasonable enough, considering I run a sailing school. The part about God having personally sent him to my doorstep should’ve set off a few warning bells. But it was six o’clock on a rainy Sunday morning, and I wasn’t thinking too clearly. Okay. I wasn’t thinking at all.
I’d come into the office at that distasteful hour out of some perverse notion that if I were in the office making like a workaholic, I might actually have something to do. It was May and the opening of boating season, but Seattle’s blustery, winterlike spring had turned off even the die-hard sailing enthusiasts. After two weeks of steady rain, the only thing still dry at Larstad’s Marina was my bank account, so I wasn’t about to ask too many questions of a potential customer—crazy or not.
He looked rather endearing when he first came to the door. Dressed in a gray woolen sweater with obligatory elbow patches, a wrinkled white shirt, and garish plaid trousers that stopped just short of his bare ankles, he reminded me of an aging, absentminded college professor I once had. The poor man seemed tired, as if his clothes were too heavy for his short, wiry frame to carry. And, despite the soggy weather, he wore no hat or coat which, combined with the unruly white frizz atop his head, gave him a distinctly wet and wild look. Albert Einstein on crack.
Once inside, he shook himself off like a dog, plopped a battered leather briefcase on my desk, and sat down in the chair opposite mine.
“God sent me,” he said again. A gust of wind rattled the front windowpane as if to emphasize his point.
“Yes, sir.” Who was I to argue? Considering all the rain we’d had lately, his name was probably Noah. I riffled through my file drawer and found a standard registration form which I slid across the desk.
“Let’s get you registered,” I said.
He pushed up his wire-rimmed glasses with the tip of his index finger and considered the form. Taking his time, he puffed thoughtfully on a meerschaum pipe he’d pulled from his shirt pocket. As I waited, a lazy spiral of smoke drifted from his pipe and filled the room with the sweet smell of cherries. When he finally looked up, his face was the color of gutter water and carried an expression as blank as the paper in front of him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Where was my brain? “You’ll need a pen.” I grabbed a couple from a lopsided ceramic pot-cum-pencil-holder that my daughter had made eons ago, but he declined the offer.
“That won’t be necessary,” he said, digging into his briefcase.
He hadn’t impressed me as the fussy type, but Larstad’s Marina tends to attract a more upscale clientele. It wasn’t uncommon for my students to eschew the cheap ballpoints I carry in favor of their own Mont Blancs. It was just a simple registration form, but if it made him feel better to use his own pen, so be it. Whatever floats your boat.
I crammed the pens back in the pot just as he found what he was looking for in his briefcase. Only it wasn’t a Mont Blanc that he now held in his hand—it was a Colt .45. I knew the weapon well, having taken a bullet from one a few months back. Another instance of misjudging a dangerous situation.
“Hey,” I said, raising my hands palm-side out. “No problem. You don’t have to sign the form. Consider yourself registered.”
He aimed the pistol at me. “You can cut the chatter now. I don’t want sailing lessons.”
“If it’s money you’re after, feel free to help yourself.” I motioned to my handbag lying on top of the file cabinet. “There’s not much cash, and the credit cards are tapped out, but hey, it’s all yours.”
He glared at me indignantly. “God doesn’t want your money.”
Tell that to the televangelists. “What does He want?”
A smug smile. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
Slowly I lowered my hands and rubbed my shoulder. Just looking down the barrel of the Colt had been enough to cause the pain of the old injury to flare up again. I winced, but Noah didn’t seem to notice.
He leaned back in his chair, the pistol ever vigilant. “Well?” he said.
At forty I was too old to be playing games, especially at the point of a gun. “Well, what?” I replied irritably.
“What do you think God wants?”
Despite my parents’ best efforts, I’ve never considered myself particularly religious. My father was a devout Catholic, and my mother was an equally devout Mormon, which meant I’d spent most of my formative years shuffling between one church or the other. But I abandoned churchgoing altogether after my parents were killed when I was thirteen. The confusion caused by their untimely deaths, plus the unresolved issues surrounding their battles over which church represented God’s one true religion, had left me spiritually bereft. I had no idea what this guy or God could possibly want, but I struggled to think of something that might placate both of them. My mind drew a blank.
“Uh, I’m not sure.”
He frowned, frizzy white eyebrows arched at a menacing angle. He yanked the pipe out of his mouth and slammed it onto the desk.
“Unacceptable!” he shouted, waving the gun wildly with his other hand. “Try again.”
I flinched at his outburst, feeling like a disobedient child who’d disappointed her teacher.
“Obedience?” I ventured timidly.
“Excellent.” He rewarded my scholarship with a crooked, toothy grin. A piece of gristle or something clung to one of his incisors. “And what else?” he asked, working at the irritant with the tip of his tongue.
Having exhausted the store of my knowledge of things godly, I hemmed and hawed for a few more uncomfortable seconds. Then the phone rang, startling us both. Without thinking, I said, “That must be God now.” Bizarre as it sounded to my own ears, Noah seemed to accept the suggestion as perfectly plausible. He waited while I answered.
“Uh, hello?” I said.
“Kellie?” It was my sister Mary Kathleen. “You sound strange,” she said. “Did I catch you at a bad time?” That she should be calling me at six o’clock on a Sunday morning seemed almost as bizarre as having God on the line. Kate is one of those people whose biorhythms are more in tune with night owls, bats, and teenagers. “If It’s Before Noon, It’s Too Soon” could’ve been her theme song.
“Yes, God. We were just talking about you.”
Noah nodded agreeably.
“God?” asked Kate.
“That’s right. Your messenger came as you requested. In fact, he’s sitting in front of me as we speak.”
“What are you talking about?”
“No problem, God. Always good to hear from you.” I glanced at Noah with a reassuring smile.”
“And I thought I was Looney Tunes in the morning!” Kate said, laughing. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“He asked me to explain what you want, but the gun he’s pointing at me is too distracting.”
Noah blinked nervously, but kept the Colt steady.
“Gun? Uh . . . Kellie, are you in some kind of trouble?”
By Jove, I think she’s got it. “Yes, definitely!”
“Oh, shit. Listen, sis, I’m going to hang up and get some help. Okay?”
“I understand.” I kept on talking to the dial tone after she’d disconnected. “Yes, sir. I’ll be sure and tell him.”
Noah scooted to the edge of his chair. “Tell me what?”
I put one hand over the receiver and said, “He says you should leave now.”
“What? That can’t be.”
I offered him the phone. “If you don’t believe me, talk to Him yourself.”
He hesitated briefly, muttering something under his breath. Then, with the Colt still leveled at me, he leaned across the desk with his free hand to take the phone. But I slammed the receiver onto the desk much like he’d done earlier with his pipe. The move so startled him that he jerked his hand away, knocking the pipe onto the floor. Instinctively he bent over to pick it up.
Momentarily out of his line of sight, I jumped up and grabbed the receiver. Then, with both hands wrapped around it like a baseball bat, I swung at the Colt with all the strength I could muster. Unfortunately the pistol did not conveniently fly out of his hand. It must have hurt, though, because he yelped like a wounded pup before bolting out of his chair and sprinting around the desk to confront me.
“Heathen bitch!”
That’s when I introduced myself. When all else fails, try manners.
He wasn’t impressed. “Sinner slut!” he yelled. Up to this point, his voice had been merely creepy—a high, raspy twang that sounded like a violin with a bad cold. But the yelling had deepened the tone somehow, dripping venom with every syllable.
If I’d been rattled by the sight of the .45, it was the hatred now spewing out of the guy’s mouth that set my heart to racing. I retreated a step and tried to keep my cool, figuring help would come charging through the office door at any minute.
He was in my face, his breath as foul as a clogged-up sewer. The Colt was just inches from my stomach.
“Listen,” I said evenly. “We’ve obviously gotten off to a bad start here. Perhaps if we both sat down again and—.”
A noise at the door. Finally! I held my breath and waited for the rescue.
Tap-tap. Tap-tap. The knock was very soft, very polite. The police were knocking? Whatever happened to kicking down the door and storming the joint?
Noah gripped my arm and twisted me around so that I was in front of him, the pistol jammed into my lower back.
“We’ll answer it together,” he growled, shoving me forward. As we lurched across the room, the door swung open and I caught a glimpse of my rescue team—and the certain knowledge that I was doomed.
The storm troopers I’d been hoping for had come in the persona of one Todd L. Wilmington, a.k.a. the Weasel. A tall, gangly, Ichabod Crane type, Wilmington’s main problem was that he suffered from delusions of adequacy. The L in his name stood for Larstad, which meant he had connections. As the nephew of the marina’s owner, old man Larstad, Todd L. Wilmington didn’t have a real job. Unless you consider hanging out at the marina and messing with everyone’s head a proper job description. As usual, he strode into the room with a self-important air that only the truly incompetent can pull off.
We all froze where we were, staring at one another. This lasted for a couple of unnerving moments until Noah took charge of the situation. Squeezing my arm roughly with one hand, he brandished the pistol at the Weasel with the other. “Shut the friggin’ door, you faggot!”
Wilmington responded predictably—he fainted.
The trouble with someone taking a dive is that they tend to fall where they shouldn’t oughtta. In this case—on me. I tumbled backward like a wobbly bowling pin and fell spread-eagled on a toppled Noah. This time the pistol flew out of his hand and landed just beyond reach of our tangled heap.
Wilmington was out for the count, but Noah and I squirmed around on the floor like a couple of lusty lovers. Trying to pry ourselves from the Weasel’s dead weight wasn’t easy, but I had the advantage. With just the one body on top of me, I was able to extricate an arm and a leg, which I knew would be enough to free myself. I’d had my share of wrestling matches growing up. As the youngest and puniest of six kids, I always wound up on the bottom of the pile, and quickly discovered what it took to survive.
With my newly liberated limbs, I got enough leverage to start rocking Wilmington. I rocked ‘n’ rolled, rolled ‘n’ rocked, until I’d tipped his bony carcass onto the floor. Noah was wriggling and flailing the whole time, but I didn’t let him pull the same trick on me. Once I was clear of the Weasel, I flipped onto my feet like a pancake turning on a hot grill. The ease with which I’d carried off the stunt made me grin. I grinned even wider when I saw what was lying right next to my feet.
Noah spotted the pistol at the same time. He quickly rolled over and grabbed for it, but by then I’d already scooped it up and had it pointed at his head.
“Freeze!” I yelled, amazed at the gutsy way I sounded.
He froze. |
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