While the Secretary waited in his vehicle on the dock, his security detail's chief and Captain Negus of the MV Squanto were having a bad-tempered, pointless exchange over the gangway's having been down all night. The chief of security had angered Negus by insisting the captain had been ordered to secure it.
"Wasn't by you," Captain Negus said.
"No, it wasn't by me, Ace. Personally, not by me. But you were ordered to keep the vessel secure with the gangway up. That didn't get done, did it? So guess what?"
Captain Negus did not like to be dressed down by people in sunglasses, which, off season, he took as a sign of moral inauthenticity. He was a buoyant soul, pretty easygoing but not used to scoldings. When the local Coasties checked his underway on-board passenger numbers or the supply of children's life jackets, the atmosphere was not chummy, but it was respectful, and there were handshakes without snipe or snip or snot like with the goddamned Heron's Necks. Captain Negus did not like being asked to "guess what?" because it brought to mind his unhappy childhood. Least of all did he like being addressed by a younger man as Ace. Captain Negus was proud of his past military time, although he shared several attitudes with Taylor Shumway, who was after all his second cousin.
"You'll have to tell me, mister. I ain't much of a guesser."
What the gruff agent delighted in telling him was that the boat would have to be gone over completely again, big spaces and small spaces, because the enemy's devices came in all shapes and sizes. His crew would have to have their papers checked again. It would take a lot of goddamn time and the Secretary would have to wait and the scheduled customers would have to take the ferry after his. When they walked out from under the car deck, the rain was falling harder and the security detail had put on their lettered rainwear and were reading the crewmen's laminated IDs again. A Coast Guard engineman, a boatswain's mate and one of the detail went through the vessel's spaces for the second time.
After the security detail finished with the captain and crew and allowed them behind the auto barrier, the Secretary got out of his car and began measuredly pacing the plank section of the pier. He was so angry that he found it necessary to imagine subordinates, inadequate ones, close by. It was better than feeling alone. Sometimes, alone in silence, he would imagine dialectical conflicts with enemies, turning their taunts against them, making them out to be utter fools. Of course they were imaginary. Two agents monitored the ovoid orbit of his pacing.
The rain eased again. Soon segments of blue appeared overhead. "What do they pay these weather dudes?" someone in the waiting group asked. "They should stick to balloons or drones," someone else said, and a third person muttered under her breath. But they did not seem to be changing arrangements. The Secretary continued his rotations.
When it became plain to the small civilian crowd that no one would share the Secretary's boat in any weather, folks began sauntering away. Some strolled toward the pretty town, some to see if they could reclaim Heron's Neck.
Captain Negus and Taylor Shumway stood on the A deck, one up from the car deck, looking at the scene. Scully, a boozy but efficient deck sailor from away, stood beside Jimmy Slaughter, the dockmaster, who was very short and fat. Jimmy never went to the mainland, and for that reason never bothered about his few yellow teeth, which were mostly lower incisors. His appearance annoyed the senior menials at Heron's Neck, which cheered him somewhat. Jimmy had two assistants, his children. One was Jin, the pretty blonde in the Bosox cap on the dock. The other was Jimmy Slaughter Junior, a youth with his father's shape but with fresher tattoos and the island's first, only, and apparently last Mohawk. Both male Slaughters had been impressed for the trip across.
"Son of a bitch tells me I ain't allowed onto my own goddamn boat all night," Captain Negus said.
"Lookit the Secretary or whatever," Scully said. "Fuck-face dimwit. Turkey."
"Jeez," Jimmy Slaughter said, "gimme a passenger load of drunks anytime over these weasels." He shook his head at them, causing one security agent to frown from the dock.
"Yah, well," Jimmy's cocky son told his father. "Good money for this, right?"
"Ya," the captain said, "you get a receipt but ya gotta wait for it. Your fuckin' fuel's twice as much by then. Taxpayers don't get it. Never will. Fuckin' nation of sheep."
"'He calleth his own sheep by name,'" Taylor said rather bitterly.
"So? That there's in the Bible or what?" Scully asked. But Taylor was too amazed and upset to answer. He had recognized a man on the dock as his recent guest, Eric. He began to tremble.
Some of the disappointed passengers and their friends were being accosted by Eric with a notebook. They appeared to appraise him as a nobody at best. Eric also approached some of the politicians, who with their wives graciously eased around him with sour looks. One politician wished him a pleasant morning. Another actually said that it was good to see him again. But it became obvious to the Secretary's detail, if not to the Secretary himself, that Eric's spindle-legged progress was directed toward that official.
Scully was trying to engage Taylor for reassurance. The kid had his fits, not that he couldn't work right through them. No one could say he wasn't a good worker. Scully was also trying to engage Captain Negus's eye.
"Know what?" Scully said. "Now they took Johnny Damon down there and made him look like a fuckin' salesman." By "down there" Scully meant New York or Washington or anywhere. Scully called Cape Ann "down there" and the Bay of Fundy "down there."
"You're right," Taylor said, but he never lost sight of Eric. His thoughts were confused but his anger was not in the least diminished. "I'll be a son of a bitch," he said. No one responded to this.
Scully went on about Johnny Damon.
"Fuckin' Steinbrenner," he cawed. "Says he looks good now, he looks like a Yankee." He noticed Taylor's evil eye on the pier. "I kinda liked it when Johnny Damon looked sort of like you, Taylor."
Below them, the Secretary was screaming at Eric. Eric was trying to smile. But the Secretary simply kept screaming, halting some of the in-crowd — though only for a moment — in their tracks.
"Look at the little rat," the Secretary screamed. The chief of security put his weight against the Secretary as if assisting him to stand. He might also have seemed to be holding him back. Ignoring the Secretary, two other agents, one male, one female, were taking Eric down.
"Why are they doing that to him?" Taylor asked.
"They better do that on town property," said Negus. "I don't want that crap on the Squanto. A passenger got certain rights."
"Stay down, sir," said the female agent as the Secretary carried on. They succeeded in leveling Eric to the wet pavement. Other agents came over quietly. The one in closest custody of Eric was a black woman in a gray pantsuit.
"I wanted to especially ask you," he told the woman. "I hoped we could talk."
"You lucked out." She lifted Eric's leg as though she were about to make a wish on him while her colleagues kept him prone. She ran cupped hands up the khaki pants, ripped out the cuffs where they had been sewed and twisted Eric's leg to rotate it on the hipbone, each twist eliciting a groan. Then she let the leg fall.
"When's the last time you ate, sir?" she asked him. Eric mistook her question for solicitude, but it was just profiling.
"Christ," Taylor asked no one special, "t sn't he one of them or what?"