Inside was frenzied order: it was like a normal supermarket, except that everyone was moving twice as fast as usual and their carts were twice as full. The shelves were three-quarters empty. The room was unlit: the usual harsh glitter of a supermarket was lacking. Neil looked back at the aproned clerk—whom he noticed pocketing something, presumably the hundred—and patted his waist where the gun was. The boy smirked uneasily.
Neil took an empty metal cart, put in the bag of fishing gear, and entered the fray. He knew he’d have to take what he could get, which wasn’t much. He found six cans of pears in syrup and eight cans of mixed fruit: that was all that was left in the canned fruit section.
In the dried fruit section he was luckier. Since dried fruit was ridiculously expensive and not all that essential except to a starving man, there was a lot left. Neil took it all. There were still a few boxes of dried noodles and spaghetti, and he threw those in, followed by a large bag of potatoes. Frozen and refrigerated foods were mostly gone, which reminded him that Crisfield had no electricity. He wondered whether the lights were out in the rest of the world as well. There were some tinned crackers left and he grabbed them, but all the canned meats were gone.
Forty minutes later, his cart overflowing, Neil headed again for the back door. There was a man standing beside it with a rifle, its butt resting awkwardly on the floor. Neil took out all of the rest of his money, a hundred and sixty dollars, and held it out to him.
“To save time I’d like to leave by the back way,” he said. “Here’s what I owe, plus tip.”
“What’s the trouble, Calvin?” a voice called out behind him.
“He wants to leave by the back way,” said Calvin.
“Here’s more than enough money to cover my purchases,” said Neil.
“How much money you got?”
“A hundred and sixty dollars,” Neil said, handing it to him.
“Shit, mister,” the manager said, taking the money. “This don’t cover much more than half what you’ve got there. Our prices are triple.”
“Then I’ll go to my boat and bring back more money.”
“You do that.”
Neil pulled out his gun and pointed it at the belly of the man with the rifle.
“I’ll take my food with me now though,” Neil said. “Won’t I?” he asked the manager sharply.
“Let him go,” the manager said, backing away.
And Neil left.
As he pushed the cart across the bumpy back lot of the supermarket he felt tremendous relief. The food situation had been his greatest worry. Now, although what he’d bought normally wouldn’t last six people more than a week at the most, rationed it might go a month. He’d even bought a large container of dog food as a compact, non-perishable source of protein.
He picked up the pace when he hit the smoother sidewalk of the main street. It was almost five o’clock, and if Macklin had located the puller, he could start work on the propeller shaft before Frank got back. If Frank got back.
When he came around the corner and made for the dock, Neil stopped. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Ahead of him was the fishing trawler Lucky Emerald, and in front of it was nothing. Vagabond was gone.
Abandoning the shopping cart in the marina parking lot, Neil ran to the dock, his eyes searching the water for the trimaran. It wasn’t in sight. Even while the dread in his stomach told him the boat had been pirated he tried to think of why else it might have been moved. Frank had returned and taken it to a boatyard… But they would have left someone to tell him, and as he let his eyes search up and down the docks, he saw no sign of either Vagabond or any of its passengers.
He needed a boat he could use to give chase. But chase where?
“Ahoy, Lucky Emerald!” he shouted at the trawler. A big red-faced man came to the door of the deckhouse and looked down.
“What happened to the trimaran?” he shouted up to him.
The man looked at the spot where Vagabond had been, then out into the bay.
“Sailed out of here close to an hour ago,” he said.
“Was there any trouble aboard?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Where was she heading?”
The man stroked his chin and scowled.
“Southwest,” he said. “Out the main channel.”
“Have you got a small boat I can borrow to give chase?” Neil asked. “My boat’s been stolen.”
The man shook his head.
Neil went back to his food cart and wheeled it up to the dock next to the Lucky Emerald.
“Keep an eye on this for me,” he shouted and went to find a boat. Macklin had hijacked Vagabond, and Neil raged at his own stupidity. He’d assumed Macklin wasn’t a sailor and wouldn’t try anything with a crippled sailboat, but if he had gotten hold of a puller, he may have felt he should take Vagabond while the taking was good. Poor Jim.
Over the next forty minutes Neil went down the docks and around to two marinas trying to buy, borrow, or steal a small boat. No one would help him. Twice he was turned away at gunpoint. After he’d tried the last dock in the village, he turned back in a fury. He stopped a young man who was walking along carrying a fuel tank and asked him for help but got another “Sorry, fellow.” On the street again, a police car came toward him with its siren wailing, and Neil tried to wave it down. It whizzed past.
At the dock where Vagabond had been tied up he found Frank standing with his hands in his pockets staring dull-eyed out at the water.
“Frank!” he called.
“Where are you hiding my boat?” Frank asked with a puzzled frown as Neil came up to him.
“She’s gone, Frank,” he answered. “Stolen. Close to two hours ago.”
Frank’s already tired face looked stunned.
“Wh-what?”
“Two men, I think,” he went on. “And as far as I know Jim and Jeanne Forester and her children are still aboard.”
“Stolen?” Frank repeated, looking even more bewildered. He walked past Neil to the edge of the dock to look out the channel toward the bay. Several gulls were circling behind a small runabout, but there was no sign of Vagabond.
“We’ve got to get a fast boat and catch Vagabond before she gets too far down the bay,” Neil said to him.
Frank looked at Neil with glazed eyes and didn’t reply. He hadn’t shaved, and he looked haggard. He turned back toward the water.
“If Vagabond gets too far away, there’s no hope for any of us,” Neil persisted. “I can’t get through to the Coast Guard by phone. We’ve probably got to get her back ourselves. In another few hours everything will be lost.”
Neil saw that Frank was in shock, and he felt a similar sense of helplessness beginning to flood through his own body. A small fishing smack putted by along the channel, and the little old man standing stiffly at the wheel looked at Neil and smiled and winked. Still preoccupied, Neil didn’t register anything at first and then came alive.
“Hey! Captain! Ahoy, there!” he shouted, and ran up to the water’s
The old man was facing forward again, and Neil thought he must not have heard. He felt his shoulders slump, but the fishing smack abruptly swung to the left, away from them, and kept circling until it was heading back toward the dock. As Neil watched and Frank came up beside him, the boat, Lucy Mae, angled into the dock.
“That boat’s too slow,” Frank said.
“Not with this light wind and rising tide,” Neil answered, and they watched as Lucy Mae coasted forward, banging first one piling and then the next, and stopping inches short of the Lucky Emerald only after the old fisherman had snubbed a line around a piling.