One Bad Thing

CHAPTER 3

AFTER SORTING THE BOAT OUT FOR ANOTHER HOUR, MCKENNA MOPPED the sweat from his forehead. The sun was beating down directly; almost noon.

Abruptly, he pulled off his tee shirt and kicked off his boat shoes. He stood up on the cabin roof and made a long, flat dive, his toes just touching the lifelines.

He plunged through the surface, driving down through the clear green water to find the layer of cold below. Below him was a mass of coral, interspersed with patches of sand: a soft wash of green, red, and yellow to his unprotected eyes. McKenna stayed down as long as he could, ignoring the pressure in his lungs until his body took charge. Then he kicked off the bottom and flew to the silver shimmering above.

When he broke through the surface, there was Cain, standing with his hand on the shroud. Cain’s smile was curiously tight. “I thought you were in a hurry to leave.”

“No,” McKenna said. He flipped over onto his back, sucking down great lungfuls of air. “But it’s time anyhow.”

* * *

The two of them sat in the cockpit as the sun fell, turning the water red and gold. The wind was blowing at a steady fifteen knots right over the beam, and the Wanderer slipped over the swells at an easy six.

McKenna looked at Cain. The younger man was leaning back against the bulkhead. He looked quietly pleased. Smug almost. But all he said was, “She’s a sweet sailor.”

“That she is.” McKenna looked at the compass and then back at the steering vane. It made steady, small changes, keeping the boat on course better than he could have himself.

“Got a name for it?” Cain asked.

McKenna smiled. “Mortimer.”

Cain grinned. “Faithful, dull, and consistent. Just what you want out of a self-steering vane. Seeing as Mortimer’s doing such a good job … what’ve you got for a toast?”

McKenna hesitated just slightly.

Cain laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m not a lush.”

McKenna stood and stretched. “I’ve got some scotch.”

Cain’s smile had a bit of a twist to it. Like he was going to say something, then thought better of it. McKenna hesitated on the way down below. Cain had been nothing but helpful so far, and yet McKenna felt strange around him—stodgy. As if the young man was secretly amused by him.

McKenna got the fifth of scotch and brought it up. He used the ice pick on the remaining block of ice, dropped the chips into two glasses, then handed one up to Cain.

To his surprise, Cain was sketching something in a small pad. He smiled at McKenna and showed him what he was working on. He had captured the Wanderer. She was backing away from a dock piling, and a figure at the mast had the mainsail half raised; a bearded figure was at the wheel. The boat looked powerful, well built, beautiful. To McKenna, the little sketch suggested release from land, adventure.

“Just a starting point,” Cain said. “I dig into it, she’ll come to life.”

“You’ve already done that,” McKenna said, impressed.

Cain flipped the pad closed and put it in his front pocket. He raised the glass. “May the wind be at our backs, the sun in our faces, and our women waiting for us on the dock.” He downed the whiskey.

McKenna sipped his own.

McKenna put them on four-hour watches and took the first himself. The night air was cool enough for him to wear khakis and a pile jacket. The Wanderer surged along as the wind shifted to come across the stern quarter and freshened to just under twenty knots. He disengaged Mortimer and took the wheel. It was an exhilarating ride, with the knot-meter showing over seven knots at times.

McKenna considered a sail change, replacing the jenny with the working jib, but decided against it. The partial moon gave him some visibility, and he’d just as soon give Cain a solid rest.

Their roller-furling jenny had blown out when he and Caroline were crossing over to the U.K. The bearings froze on the roller furler itself. Now he was back to doing it the old-fashioned way. Raising and lowering one sail at a time. Part of the refit in Southampton. It had been cheaper to buy a set of salvaged sails sooner than replacing the roller-furling system and buying a new sail.

But the real damages to their finances—and Caroline’s confidence in the voyage, the way McKenna saw it—had been the knockdown on the way over. About two-thirds of the way across. A rolling, squally day. Short, angry waves, dark sky. Gusts up to forty-five. Caroline had wanted him to simply run before the wind on bare poles. But he thought that was overreacting. He came to life under those circumstances. He could forget about Sam and concentrate on the task at hand.

Then a quick succession of sixty-knot gusts put them over: green water was rushing into the cabin and both of them were hanging on to their safety lines. There was a cracking noise from the mast, and when at last the Wanderer righted, there was a noticeable fracture in the mast, about six feet up.

From then on, they had limped along with a reefed main and small working jib until docking in Southampton, where the shipyard owner confirmed what McKenna already had feared. The mast was irreparable: they had to replace the entire thing.

Money and trust. The knockdown had signaled the end of both.

Caroline said they were living beyond their means. That the voyage was just an escape that they couldn’t afford, either emotionally or financially. That, for him, it was just an escape from her and Sam.

He had told himself that she was taking out her grief on him. That she was baiting him to make him react. Make him fight back at her. Say what she thought needed saying. That he saw it as her fault. That he would have kept Sam away from that boy.

From R. J.

R. J. Mitchell.

He was always in McKenna’s head. Even more so now that McKenna was heading home.

Home. Just where was that supposed to be now?

They had sold the house not long after they bought the boat. Had to.

Pretty old place in Newburyport, about an hour’s drive north of Boston. Their home had been a small federal-style house poised right on the edge of the Merrimack River, across from Carr Island. Oaks on the lawn, a well-worn care about the place. Sam’s little catboat moored right beside the Boston Whaler. McKenna hadn’t realized then just how happy they had been. Just the three of them, until R. J. showed up at the door.

That shock of blond hair, the pale blue eyes. Showing up at McKenna’s door about a month before it happened, before that party.

About a month, shit.

Six weeks.

Six weeks noted, cataloged, and firmly implanted on McKenna’s brain. Nasty little loop of film.

“Hey, Mr. McKenna,” the kid had said, as if they already knew each other. “Sam ready?”

Good-looking kid on first impression. Slim, strong looking. No tattoos, no nose rings. Black Volkswagen Jetta behind him in the driveway. Father was a Volkswagen dealer; McKenna knew him slightly.

The boy was clean. Dressed in faded jeans, polo shirt.

With Sam’s seventeenth birthday behind her, R. J. wasn’t the first boy to show up on her doorstep. The first with a car, yes. The first to take her out on a “date” instead of a bike ride to the beach, perhaps. Certainly the first to kiss her the second she was in the car, making her blush and virtually duck down in front of McKenna as the boy turned from her to back out of the driveway and speed away.

McKenna had called out to Caroline, “I hate him.”

Caroline had laughed from the kitchen, then come to the doorway to join him. “Knew you would. Sam and I ran into him at the grocery store. Handsome boy.”

“Sammy Girl’s a little traitor,” McKenna said.

“You’re right,” Caroline said. “Growing up on us. Ungrateful for all you’ve done for her.”

McKenna had found himself growing increasingly churlish as the first weeks passed and Sam talked about nothing but R. J. This surprised no one more than himself. He had always taught Sam to think for herself, to take risks, to have confidence in her own judgment. He thought he knew how to keep his distance so she could do just that.

As an only child, Sam had always been comfortable around both parents and good at playing by herself. She was popular enough at school and always had several good friends. Some of them boys. She had blossomed past the early teenage coltishness, tall, long legged. With high cheekbones and her mother’s green eyes. Otherwise, she was very different, with fair, lightly freckled skin and red hair. A happy, exuberant little girl who had turned into a lovely, kindhearted teenager.

On her way to being a beautiful woman.

But her reaction, her affection for R. J., was something McKenna hadn’t seen before. She couldn’t help but touch R. J. when he was there, her hand on his back, pushing the hair out of his eyes, getting things for him.

She probably told her friends she loved him.

Hell, she probably did love him.

About two weeks in, McKenna realized that his daughter was most likely sleeping with R. J.

“What do you think?” he had asked Caroline later.

“Possible,” she said. “Probable. I’ve talked with her before, I’ll talk to her again.”

“And say what?”

Caroline had touched McKenna’s cheek. “About how to be careful, sweetie.”

“Ah, damn it,” he’d said. “How about how Daddy’ll hurt the boy?”

“No, dear.”

Sam was seventeen, Caroline reminded him. Next year, she would be off at college and almost entirely beyond their control.

I know, he said. I know, I know.

He knew that time passed, that things changed. She couldn’t be his baby forever. She couldn’t even be his sixteen-year-old, who the year before had been still happy to do an overnight bike-hike in New Hampshire with her parents. Climbing up and down the hills on her new road bike, leaving her father and mother behind during the first thirty miles. Then practically in tears at the end of forty, when they stopped early because her legs had cramped up. She had lain on a picnic table as her parents, her buddies, massaged her legs and teased her unmercifully.

She had been half laughing, half crying. “What a dope,” she moaned. “I was sooo much faster than old Mom and Dad …”

No, McKenna had loved his daughter. He wanted her to find the right guy. For her to love and be loved.

The problem was R. J. himself.

He had reminded McKenna of his own father, Bobby McKenna. Sixty-six years old and still not a man. Took off when Rob was five. Since then, McKenna hadn’t seen his own father more than a half-dozen times in his entire life. The last time had been a few years back. Silver-haired Bobby. With money, and charm, and a wife about two years younger than Caroline. Bobby, who had spread his arms wide and said, “Look at you, it worked out fine. Best thing I could’ve done for you, hitting the road. I just wasn’t right for a kid.”

No, McKenna felt he knew, R. J. down to his bones.

“What do you expect?” Caroline had said one night. Sam had left earlier and the two of them were sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. Getting used to the empty sound of the house. “You think she’s going to find the right guy the first time out? Did we find each other that fast?”

“Just about.”

It was true. He and Caroline had been married in their early twenties. Caroline was pregnant with Sam. But in those days, during those six weeks or the seventeen years before them, McKenna never had dreamed of being without his wife. That they would ever consider their marriage a mistake.

McKenna found R. J.’s arrogance intolerable. The way he affected indifference; or worse, truly felt it.

And then there was the money. He always had cash. In the early weeks, he showered Sam with presents. With small pieces of jewelry, with a portable CD player, with clothes.

“Where does he get all the cash?” McKenna had asked Sam one night. They were in the kitchen, and R. J. was due to pick her up in a few minutes. “What does he do for work?”

“His dad’s place,” she said, shrugging. “I guess.”

“You guess? You put the summer in waitressing at the Galley; you know how hard it is to earn spending money. How’s he doing it?”

Her face turned stony. “Different people do things differently.”

“What’s that mean? Does he do drugs?”

“I said he works for his dad!”

“You’ve seen that?”

“What’s with you?” The color on her face had risen. “Why don’t you like him?”

Caroline had stepped into the kitchen. “Rob, can I see you?”

McKenna had bit his lip. He had nothing. No evidence. Overprotective father, he told himself.

Caroline said the same in the hallway off the kitchen.

That night, McKenna had tossed and turned, unable to sleep until Sam returned home. It was already approaching two in the morning.

Caroline had rubbed his back. “Ease off, honey. We don’t want Romeo and Juliet on our hands. Sam will drop him or he’ll fade away soon enough. She’s beginning to get fed up with him, I think. Leaving her stranded at the mall last Tuesday made a big impression. Besides, he’s not that bad. I’ve seen worse.”

Caroline had been a high school teacher for fifteen years. McKenna trusted her judgment.

But he still didn’t trust R. J.

“He’s careless with her,” McKenna said.

Careless with her feelings. Four weeks in, he’d break off dates at the last minute if something better came up with his friends. One day, McKenna had picked up the phone and it was R. J. He was on his car phone: “Hey, Mr. McKenna, tell Sammy’s something’s up. I won’t be able to see her tonight, tell her I’ll make it up to her.”

“What’s the problem?” McKenna had asked, and the boy had yelled that he couldn’t hear, that he had to hang up.

But McKenna could hear just fine, and he thought he heard laughter in the car. It sounded like R. J. was grinning when he said it—as if he didn’t care at all if his girlfriend’s father realized he was lying.

Tears had sprung into Sam’s eyes when McKenna passed along the message. For that, McKenna wanted to put his hands on the boy himself.

Instead, McKenna just asked, “You sure he’s worth it?”

“I don’t know. His parents are screwy, and he’s had his problems. But I think we’re going to be all right.”

McKenna wanted to step in right there. Say that things probably wouldn’t be all right, shouldn’t be all right … because the boy wasn’t trustworthy. Wasn’t worth his daughter’s love; certainly not her first love.

But Caroline had stepped in. “We hope it works out for you, if that’s what you want,” she’d said. And she warned McKenna away with her eyes. Over that night’s coffee in their kitchen, she said, “C’mon, Rob. She won’t put up with this forever. Give it time.”

But time, it turned out, was at a great premium.

Their last evening together, McKenna had argued with Sam. The three of them were midway through dinner when R. J.’s car horn sounded. Sam jumped right up. “Gotta go.”

“Ask him in to sit with us,” McKenna’d said. “You can finish your meal.”

“Uh-uh,” Sam said. “He says you make him feel uncomfortable. I’ll just go out to him.”

“Where are you going tonight?” Caroline asked.

“Movies.”

“To see what?”

“Don’t know.” She shrugged. “Whatever’s playing at the mall.”

McKenna didn’t buy it and he said so.

“Oh, come on, Daddy!”

“Rob!” Caroline snapped. “Let her go.”

“I don’t trust that guy,” McKenna said. It was almost a whisper, and it was painful. As his daughter went out the door, he said, “You’re smarter than he is—act it!”

She slammed the door.

Sifting through the chaff later, talking to the police, reading the reports, and then the dry news articles over the next few days, McKenna learned what had happened to his daughter.

Two nineteen-year-old skinheads had crashed the beachhouse party where R. J. and Sam had gone instead of the movies. And it turned out that although R. J. was not doing drugs himself, he was selling them.

McKenna never found out if Sam knew about the drugs or not.

Apparently the previous weekend R. J. had stiffed the two skinheads, Billy Bragg and Jeremiah Donovan, on a gram of coke. Cut in into a third with baby powder. At the party, they announced they were going to work it out of him. They were pumped on amphetamines and still wearing weight-lifting belts from their afternoon workout.

Reportedly, no one tried to stand up to the two, except Sam.

She got between them and R. J.

She tried to talk sense, tried to calm them down.

R. J. not only let her, he had apparently kept his hands on her shoulders and shouted at the two skinheads to drop it, that he’d make it up to them.

Then Billy Bragg hit her.

The autopsy said that her jaw had been shattered from the first blow alone. The cause of death was the damage to the back of her head. Apparently, Bragg had flung her to the side in his attempt to get to R. J. She tripped over him and hit her head on the raised stone fireplace. They said she died instantly.

One of Sam’s friends had started screaming that Sam was bleeding. That she was no longer breathing. Billy and Jeremiah stopped to investigate and R. J. ran.

The DA had started out with a homicide charge against the two skinheads, but downgraded it to manslaughter after Billy confessed.

R. J. had testified, his voice shaking somewhat. He denied the drug sale empathetically, and his parents were there with an attorney to represent him. There was talk of charging R. J. with drug trafficking. But as the DA explained apologetically to McKenna, when the police had searched R. J.’s house within an hour after Sam’s death, they had found no narcotic substances. Instead, they found R. J.’s mother and father sitting with him in their living room. R. J.’s room bore the marks of a hurried but efficient cleaning, as did the upstairs bathroom. R. J.’s father insisted that none of them would answer any questions until after their attorney arrived.

So there had been no real evidence to hold R. J. Just the outraged hearsay of the two skinheads.

When all was said and done, Billy Bragg got five years, Donovan got three, with eligibility for parole in one. Sentenced to MCI/Concord.

R. J. walked.

Rob and Caroline McKenna left the courthouse bearing the weight of a life sentence in the location of their choosing.

Hours later, McKenna awoke on his hands and knees.

One moment, he had been asleep in his bunk, the next he was on the cabin sole.

Cain’s watch.

McKenna’s head cleared almost instantly. Outside the wind shrieked through the rigging, and the Wanderer groaned as she was knocked all the way down on her side.

McKenna’s heart tripped rapidly in his chest, but he kept moving, pulling himself to his feet.

“Get up here, Rob,” Cain called.

Slowly, the Wanderer came back up and headed into the wind.

The jenny was snapping and popping, sounding like a machine gun. Much more of that and it would rip itself to shreds.

“We’ve got to get that sail down,” Cain called down. “That gust was over fifty. Who could’ve figured on this just one day out of the BVI?”

McKenna pulled on a pair of shorts, went forward and grabbed the storm jib, and hustled it up into the cockpit. The seas were running about fifteen feet, the tops being whipped off. The boat was stalled, in irons. She began to drift back slowly. Cain spun the wheel to head the stern toward the wind. Luckily, a breaking wave pushed the bow over and the jenny snapped full. The Wanderer began to make way again. McKenna let out both the jenny and the main and the Wanderer limped along with both sails luffing hard.

“Start the engine,” McKenna said.

Cain turned the key, and the diesel rumbled to life. He kept the boat idling along at just over two knots while McKenna used the jiffy reefing to shorten the mainsail from the cockpit.

“I’ll get that jenny down,” Cain said.

“I’ve got it,” McKenna said.

“C’mon, Skipper. You don’t even have a harness on yet.”

McKenna hesitated then realized Cain was right. He took the wheel. He began shivering; he’d come on deck without his foul-weather gear and the temperature had dropped noticeably.

Cain snapped his own lifeline onto the cabin rail and quickly headed up the leeward side, then he stepped up to the mast to release the jib halyard.

McKenna edged the throttle ahead to help steady them against the waves. He headed the boat into the wind slightly and released the jenny sheet altogether. The big sail began to beat against itself again.

Cain untied the jenny halyard.

But nothing happened.

“C’mon,” McKenna said under his breath.

The younger man swore and then looked up.

McKenna saw the halyard hang limp—no tension on it. And the big jenny had not shifted at all.

“Damn it!” McKenna said. Just what changing the block was supposed to have prevented. The jenny was stuck.

He looked at the wind indicator. On average, the wind had leveled off to just over thirty knots.

He set Mortimer, ducked below quickly for foul-weather gear and a harness. Back on deck, he snapped on a safety line and hurried up to the mast.

Cain saw him and wordlessly ducked past the beating sail, then he braced himself against the pulpit and tried to tug the sail down at the luff. McKenna worked the halyard end, using quick rolling flips, trying to center the line on the pulley

But the sail didn’t budge.

Cain looked at McKenna. “The block must’ve jammed.”

The used block. The one McKenna had picked up in Southampton.

Cain looked aloft. He had to shout to be heard over the beating sail. “I’ll get the bosun’s chair.”

McKenna opened his mouth and shut it. Another gust almost knocked them down again. It would be hell to be aloft in this kind of weather. But nothing compared to losing the mast.

“I’ll go up,” McKenna said.

“Forget it,” Cain said. He crawled down into the cabin and turned on the spreader lights, so that the deck was suddenly illuminated. He came back a few minutes later with the bosun’s chair, the tool belt, and pouch.

McKenna reached for the bosun’s chair, but Cain pulled it away.

“I said I’ll do it.” Cain unsnapped his safety line.

“This isn’t a democracy around here, Cain. Give it to me.”

A wave crashed over the bow, sweeping the feet out from under both of them, knocking the boat over. McKenna grasped Cain by the arm, and held on to the mast. The younger man scrambled to gain purchase on the deck. His head swung round and McKenna could see the young man was frightened, but not panicked. McKenna closed his eyes and pulled with all his strength, conscious that if he let go, the younger man was no longer wearing his safety line.

The rush of water eased and the Wanderer came back up.

Cain scrambled up to the mast. “Thank God you’re strong as an ape.” He jerked his head up. “Look, Skipper, you’ve got what, fifteen, twenty pounds on me? And how many years? C’mon, I rock climb for a hobby. Help me up here.”

McKenna hesitated, then looked up at the pitching mast and said, “All right.” He wrapped two loops of the spinnaker halyard around the winch and began cranking.

Slowly Cain began to rise up the mast. He clung to it tightly, trying to keep from being thrown free. Once, he did anyhow, and flew out into the jenny itself. As the boat rolled back into a trough, he swung hard at the mast, but got his legs out front and deflected it with his feet.

Nevertheless, McKenna could feel the vibration in the mast when Cain hit. In the illumination of the spreader lights, the younger man looked dazed and McKenna saw blood on his face.

McKenna called, “You all right?”

“Just peachy. Now get me higher.”

McKenna kept cranking until Cain got an arm around the spreader, the flat horizontal piece that kept the shrouds away from the mast.

“Hold it here a second.” Cain’s face was above the spreader light now. He rested his upper body against the spreader, his head down.

McKenna said, “How’re you doing?”

Cain looked down at him and then held on tight as the Wanderer was knocked over again. As she came up, Cain yelled, “Having a hell of a time. Wish you were here.”

McKenna grinned. “You ready?”

Cain nodded. “Haul away.”

McKenna cranked him up to the next spreader, and finally, all the way to the top of the mast. Cain was at face level with the head of the reefed mainsail now, so he lashed a line around his waist and the mast to keep himself in place. “The halyard’s jammed at the block,” he shouted. “I’m going to take off the quick-release shackle on the jenny so you can haul it down. Then I’ll put the new block on.”

McKenna cleated the spinnaker halyard to keep Cain aloft, and then hustled over to the bow to pull down the jenny. The sail fought him, snapping and flinging jib sheets with enough force to draw blood if he let them connect. But he managed to collapse the sail without injury, then he threw open the bow hatch and stuffed the sail in. The deck was suddenly much quieter.

“Watch it!” Cain cried.

Something hit the deck just beside McKenna, and he turned to see a black block bounce once, roll down toward the scuppers, and then tumble out into the sea.

“Sorry,” Cain yelled. “That was the old piece of shit!”

McKenna stood back and watched Cain attach the new block. It took three times as long as it would’ve under normal conditions. Cain had to keep an arm for himself on the mast, and one for the boat.

But he did it. He hauled up the bitter end of the halyard, fed it through the block and then McKenna let him down. Cain handed him both ends of the line.

Cain’s face was covered with sweat and seawater, his legs and arms were trembling. His knuckles were bleeding, and a steady stream of red trickled down his cheek from a cut on his right temple.

“You all right?” McKenna said.

“Couldn’t be better.”

“Was it the block?” McKenna said.

“Yeah. Wheel inside cracked and split in half. Whole thing was blown out, jammed the halyard. The new one I put on is a stainless-steel Harken. It’s not going anywhere.”

Cain looked like he was going to say something else but he didn’t.

“Take the wheel while I put on the working jib,” McKenna said. “Then I’ll finish your watch and you can go below and get some sleep. You did a hell of a job.”

Cain nodded abruptly. “Thanks.”

“It’s the least I can do.”

Cain didn’t argue with him.

Why should he? thought McKenna. He felt flushed and angry with himself.

Cheap used block. Part of the Southampton refit. It looked perfect when he bought it. But it could’ve cost them the mast. Hell, it could have cost them the boat and their lives. One of Caroline’s objections proved legitimate once again.

That they simply couldn’t afford McKenna’s escape to the sea.