The Banks of Certain Rivers (38 page)

“There’s a sailboat,” Lauren says, pointing off to
the north. Her voice is small and clipped over the headset. “It’s
quite a ways out there.”

“I don’t think that’s him,” I say. “Too
close, wrong direction, and the boat doesn’t look right.”

“We’ll check it out,” Alan says. He levels out in
the direction of the boat, and dips down as we approach it. The boat
is small, a little sailing dory, and the man and woman down in the
cockpit shield their eyes to watch us as we fly by.

“That’s not him,” I say. Alan banks the plane as we
buzz over the boat, and the man in the boat gives us a slow wave.
“Head south. I don’t think he’s gone north.”

“Heading south,” Alan says. He turns back and flies along
the sandy shoreline, and I get a good view of the beach house as we
pass the orchard again. It doesn’t look too bad from up here.

“So why exactly did Christopher steal a boat, Neil?”
Leland asks. I start to answer, but my voice sounds choppy in my own
ears, and Alan looks back over his shoulder at me.

“Put the microphone closer to your mouth,” he says,
pointing to his own mic. “So it’s almost touching your
lips.”

I push it close to my mouth. “Like this?” Lauren does the
same.

“There you go.”

“Okay, so,” I go on, “Chris is running away to
Chicago to go to culinary school.”

Leland shakes his head. “Does Chris realize there’s a
series of paved roads to Chicago that would have got him there in a
few hours?”

“He likes sailing, too.”

“This doesn’t make too much sense to me,” Leland
says.

“There’s more to it than just that. He’s very angry
with me right now too.”

Alan points to the water. “There’s another sailboat.”

We dip down again, and I know it’s not Tabby well before we’re
there.

“Not him,” I say, but Alan makes a close pass just to be
sure.

We check out two more boats, and still no luck. As we rise back up
into the air after our last pass, I’m struck by the horrifying
thought of us finding Tabby empty, listlessly bobbing with no Chris
aboard.

How would I react to that? Could I bear such a loss?

I put it out of my head.

After a while of flying, droning on and on, Alan says, “We’re
at about a hundred and ten miles out of Port Manitou.”

We check another boat, the occupants of which seem irritated by our
close pass. They may be irritated, but I’m shaken; Alan seemed
to zip uncomfortably close to the wave tops on this last dip down.
His flying has grabbed Leland’s attention as well.

“Hey, uh, do you need to get so close to them to tell? Neil,
you can tell if it’s him from higher up, right?”

“Come on, you guys,” Alan says. “Don’t be
pansies. We’re fine. You think I want to stack us in? I like
living too.” Lauren clutches my hand more tightly, and her
complexion seems to have paled. I catch her eyes and force a smile,
but it doesn’t seem to reassure her any.

We fly along, further south, and see nothing more than powerboats
dotting the water here and there, and a regatta of small sailboats in
a race just offshore from the port town of Manistee. I shake my head
as we pass over the little boats, and we continue on, all of us
knowing that we’re at about the limit of Christopher’s
possible range.

“Is that a sailboat?” Leland asks, almost pressing his
face to the glass of his window. “Way out there?”

“Way out where?” Alan asks, craning his neck to scan the
horizon. “Give me a bearing.”

“Two o’clock.”

“I see it,” I say, leaning forward. A sail shows white
against the glimmer of the horizon, and as I keep looking I think I
can see the telltale stripes of Tabby’s foresail. As we
approach, I feel a lump in my throat.

“I think that’s him,” I say. “Yes, I think
that’s Peggy Mackie’s boat.”

Alan descends, not so severely this time. He flies so the boat passes
us on the right side, my side of the plane. To my great relief I see
Christopher in the cockpit, alone, wearing a ball cap and sunglasses,
and when he turns his head up toward us I can tell by the way his
shoulders fall that he realizes his adventure is over. I wave to him,
but I don’t think he can see me.

“It’s him,” I say. “It’s him! Can you,
is there any way you can call him?”

“We can do marine radio,” Leland says. He turns a knob in
the cockpit, and I hear him speaking over the headset.

“Christopher K., Christopher K., this is Leland Dinks in the
plane passing over you, I’m here with your father….”

Chris just stares up at the plane.

“Christopher K., Christopher K., please respond….”

“Either he’s ignoring us,” Alan says, “or he
doesn’t have his radio on.”

“Get a waypoint,” Leland says. “Mark where he is,
then take us back to Manistee. There’s a little airport
northeast of the city.”

Alan writes something on the notepad in his lap, and circles Tabby in
one last pass.

“What are you thinking, Leland?”

“Just hang on. I’m pretty sure I can get us out to
Chris.”

Alan completes his circle and starts back toward the mainland, and I
twist to watch Chris and Tabby recede in the distance behind us.

We land at a
paved
airstrip, and taxi to a building at the end. Lauren, looking
positively green, has her hand to her forehead. A kid in a blue polo
shirt dashes out from the building to meet us.

“Mr. Dinks!” he says. “I’m sorry, we didn’t
realize you were coming.”

“No problem, Jimbo, it was kind of a last minute thing. Can we
grab the crew car? We’ll only be a couple hours, tops.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Dinks. I’ll bring it right over.”

The kid sprints off, returning a few moments later in a black Lincoln
Navigator. He hops out and runs around the big car, opening the doors
for us.

“Here you go, Mr. Dinks.”

We climb into the car, Leland taking the driver’s seat, me up
front and Alan and Lauren in back. Leland accelerates off across the
taxiway, only slowing to let a security gate open to let us through.

“Oh, man,” Alan says, raising his arms to lace his
fingers behind his head. “I forgot how plush the world of
private aviation can be.”

Leland has his cell phone to his ear. “Hey, Mark, yeah, been
good, you? Listen…huh? No, I came to town last minute with
some clients, you mind if I grab the boat? Just going to take them
out for a quick joyride, nothing too long. You sure? Great, great, I
owe you one!”

Leland snaps the phone shut and throws it into the center console.

“I’ve been working on a development down here for the
past eighteen months,” he says. “One of the investors
lets me use his boat. Nice boat. Fishing boat. I don’t really
like to fish.” We pass a speed limit sign reading forty-five;
Leland is going close to eighty. Alan leans forward between the front
seats while Lauren leans back and clutches the armrest on the door.
We skirt past town and into a marina parking lot, and Leland doesn’t
even bother to park in any sort of designated space, simply skidding
to a stop diagonally in the middle of the lot. He leaves the door
open after he runs out.

“I need to sit still for a little bit,” Lauren says
weakly. I point after Leland and Alan, running down to the docks.

“You don’t want to come?” I ask, and she shakes her
head. I give her a kiss. “I’ll be back,” I say.
“With Chris.”

“Come on, come on!” Leland calls. Just as I catch up to
them another earnest kid, this time in a buttoned-up polo shirt,
greets us.

“Hello, Mr. Dinks!” he says as we run past. Leland
ignores him as he leads us onward. “Mr. Reeves called to say
you were coming, the boat’s almost all set,” the kid
calls after us. “She’s over at the gas dock.”

We stand and wait for the marina crew to finish fueling the
fly-bridged fishing boat with a pair of massive engines mounted on
the stern. Leland, surprisingly, seems to be chafing at the hold-up
more than I am. When they finally withdraw the fuel line from the
fitting on the deck, Leland springs aboard and starts working at the
boat’s wheel.

“Cast us off, guys,” he says, turning a key to start the
motors rumbling. Alan unties a line at the front and I do the same in
the back, and we toss them aboard and follow them in. Leland pulls us
away from the dock and out into the marina channel, waving at some
men outside a bait and tackle shop as we pass.

“So you take this boat out a lot?” I ask.

“Here and there. Hang on.” We pass the “No Wake”
sign at the harbor wall into the swell of the lake, and Leland
presses the throttles forward to send the engines into a roar. The
boat lunges forward over the waves, and I keep myself up, barely,
against the sudden acceleration. Alan tumbles backward onto his ass,
and I am suddenly very glad Lauren opted to stay behind.

“Wow!” Alan shouts, clawing his way back up next to me.
“Wow!” My eyes tear up at the wind in my face; I wish I
had, as Alan and Leland do, a pair of sunglasses. I duck behind
Leland to shelter myself behind the Plexiglas windscreen over the
steering console.

“You got those coordinates?” Leland shouts to Alan over
the din of our very fast motion. The boat slams onward, bashing wave
after wave after wave in knee-jarring jolts. “Keep an eye on
the GPS, okay?” He points to a screen in front of the steering
wheel, and Alan nods. Leland bends down to pull a pair of binoculars
from a well under his seat, and hands them to me.

“You look for him,” he says. “Tell me when you see
him.”

It takes a little
more
than thirty minutes for us to reach Tabby. I see the boat first, and
watch through the binoculars as we close in on it. At first it seems
like Chris doesn’t respond to us; we’re just another
fishing boat blasting out into the lake on a Sunday afternoon. But he
starts paying more attention to us as we approach him, glancing in
our direction from time to time until he’s finally watching us
exclusively. When he realizes we’re coming for him, he tries to
steer Tabby away.

“Sorry kid,” Leland mutters as he pulls back on the
fishing boat’s throttles. “I think we’re a little
faster.”

Our vessel slows and settles down into the waves, and Leland eases us
alongside the sailboat. Christopher continues to turn the wheel to
steer away, and the mainsail and boom swing wildly above him. He
won’t look at me as we ease up next to him. He won’t look
at any of us.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The two boats come together in
the waves
, and I move to the gunwale of the fishing boat,
looping my arm around a chromed awning post to keep myself steady.
Aboard Tabby, Chris has his back to us and continues trying to steer
away, even as the sailboat is no longer driven by its crazily
flapping sails.

“Hold on, Neil,” Leland says as we approach. “Wait
up, wait up.” The vessels move out of sync with each other, we
rise up on the waves as Chris falls, and vise versa. Leland gives the
throttle a little surge, and the two boats line up perfectly.

“Now, Neil,” Leland says. “It’s good, go!”

I jump over Tabby’s lifeline and land sprawled over the
cabintop, bashing my knee so hard against a cleat that it makes me
gasp. I get back to my feet, helping myself up with a hand on one of
the mast shrouds, and wave at the fishing boat to let them know I’m
okay. Leland backs away to give us some space.

“Chris,” I say, staying where I am on the side deck. “You
really had me worried.” He turns his body to his left so he’s
not facing me. “I’m not mad. I understand, okay? I
understand.” I move closer to the cockpit, and I have to duck
to miss the swinging, clanking boom. “I should have told you. I
should have told you a long time ago. I understand why you’re
mad.”

From the side, I see Chris has his lips pressed tight, and a tear
slides down his face from beneath his sunglasses.

“I love your mom, okay? I always will. But she isn’t
coming back. Ever. She’ll never come back to us. I’ll
take care of her as well as I can. I might even have to sell part of
the orchard to take care of her. I’ve been talking to Leland
Dinks about it. I probably should have told you that too.”

Chris says nothing, but he sniffs and more tears come down his
cheeks. I take another step toward the cockpit.

“Lauren is a good person. She is kind, and funny, and
compassionate. She takes good care of your Grandma. I’ve been
in love with her for a while. We just…I was over there with
her a lot when we first brought Grandma back from the hospital. I was
lonely, she was breaking up with a guy she’d been seeing, and
we liked each other. I didn’t even realize at first. She asked
me to go to dinner with her, can you believe it? I could have said,
let me talk to Chris, why don’t I talk to Chris before we go
out. Instead, you know what? We went to dinner over in Traverse City.
Instead of telling you what was going on, I tried to hide it from
you. I know you were younger, but you weren’t stupid, you could
have dealt with it.”

I step down into the cockpit, and Chris makes a little sound as he
wipes his nose with his hand.

“You’re the only thing I have, Chris. When you left, it
was almost too much. I couldn’t have taken it if you’d
left me. You’re my only son. My only family.”

“Then why did you almost do the same thing to me?” he
screams, his voice breaking. “You don’t get it at all, do
you? Why did you try to leave?” He turns to the stern of the
boat and lunges like he’s going to jump overboard, but I’m
there, somehow I make it around the wheel to him and get my arms
around his strong body to pull him to the bottom of the cockpit. My
knee throbs, and the sails flap impotently over our heads.

“No, Christopher. No.” I say, the side of my face pressed
between his shoulder blades. “Don’t leave. Please don’t
leave.”

“Why not?” he says, crying, twisting himself away. “Why
not, when you were going to do it again?”