Hesse went on, about water, powering the freezers and lights, and volunteer rotations.
“He’s got it all figured out,” Claude said to Travis. “But see, he’s counting on the idea that no one will steal food from the kitchens to bring a little something extra on the lifeboat. Look around. People are thinking, he doesn’t think the lifeboats are a bad idea for the ones who take them – but that they’ll screw everyone left behind. These folks are thinking, what does that have to do with me?”
Travis said nothing. He had a flash recollection of a refugee camp in Sudan, and the sea of anguished black faces. Emaciated bodies wearing rags. Red Cross workers carrying on, keeping their concentration on tasks, as if on a raft in that sea. He felt again that complete vulnerability, his tiny island of white safety amid that sea of black desperation.
John Hesse finished talking, and Travis watched the two big men walk away to the staircase out.
A boy ran up to Mighty Lee Golding, and the star wrestler signed something for him.
“I need a walk,” Travis said. “Why don’t we go get some fresh air on deck?”
Corrina agreed, and they offered to walk Vera back to her room. Gerry and Claude stayed in the Atrium.
“Pavel, you look tired,” Vera said to Darren. “Beautiful boy.”
Darren looked up at his mother but kept silent. The foursome walked up four flights of stairs and along the hallway to Vera’s cabin. Travis carried Darren after the first flight. Vera’s room was at the far end of the hall, among the penthouses.
At the end of the hallway in the dim light something caught all their eyes at once. Legs protruded from a corner. With one step further they saw the whole body. It was the gunman from Vera’s room.
He had a knife in his back, and dark staining spread across the orange.
Some history from the prison perhaps had followed him, or some disagreement in conducting the raping and pillaging.
Vera was on him at once, screaming, without enough breath for it. She landed on the corpse and pulled the knife from his back, plunging it into him again and again, trying to scream. She stabbed twice more before Travis grabbed her arm as she drew it back. He held it gently until she dropped the knife.
She pulled her arm from Travis and stood up, an old lady, wild and blood-spattered. Corrina held Darren to her waist. Vera looked in all their faces.
“What happened?” she said. “What happened?”
Travis held her as she went limp. He walked her to her bedroom where she lay down.
Vera regained her composure and looked up at Travis.
“You can stay here tonight,” Vera said. “You will be more comfortable here than downstairs with the mob.”
Travis left Corrina and Darren in the living room, and went back to the dead pirate. He turned the body. There was the gun, in a pocket. Travis took it. He hadn’t fired a gun in years; he’d never fired a pistol. But he wanted that gun now, and at the same time, didn’t want anyone else to have it. Didn’t want anyone to know about it.
Travis walked the gun to Vera’s galley, under his shirt past Corrina and Darren, looking for a place to hide it, thinking through what was likely in each drawer or closet: food, cutlery, towels, pots, baking dishes.
Finally he went into the bedroom. Vera was already asleep. He opened a closet, stood on his tiptoes and pushed it to the back of the top, empty shelf, out of sight.
They left Vera to sleep and found their way, away from the gunman’s body, to the small walking deck, shaded by the deck above. Chairs and tables were overturned and left on their sides, helter skelter. The sea was calm, and there was something fearful in its unbroken spread as far as they could see. The ship made no wake now, it sat as solid as an island, the small waves breaking against her hull. The oil spill had spread and now encircled the ship. The black curtain delineated their drama. Beyond that frame, within that frame.
They stood at the railing.
“I love you,” Travis said quietly. He knew he shouldn’t be saying this. He felt ashamed for himself saying it but he couldn’t stop. “Corrina, I love you and Darren. That’s all I could think about when I ran from my place, and in the crowd at the dock, and when I thought we were going to get shot. Maybe when we get off the ship-”
“Oh Travis,” Corrina said, shaking her head. “Please don’t”
Darren looked up at the two of them, mindless of their words, and smiled.
Hesse and Colonel Warrant were in different places for much of the day, but before the dinner crowd arrived, they caught up in the office.
“We need to do some serious risk analysis,” the Colonel said.
“The guy with the gun is a risk,” Hesse said.
“Yes, he is,” the Colonel said.
“But what can we do?”
“Don’t give away too much, the less he knows about Brenda and the power and everything, the better. And the less he’s around the better. That’s not a guy who gets told what to do. The more he’s around, the more he’s gonna argue with you, and sooner or later the guy with the gun wins the argument.”
“Let’s just keep him happy and fed and far from us,” Hesse said.
“That’s all we can do. Maybe the Mighty Lee Golding’s a sweetheart. I heard Killer Kowalski was a vegetarian.”
In the Theater, Lee sat in a front row seat with his wife and Rick’s wife while Rick sat facing them on the edge of the stage.
“I wish I would have been there,” Rick said, “Man, I wish I could have seen their faces.”
“I bring joy,” Lee said. “It’s what I do.”
“They must have pissed themselves when they saw two giants and a machine gun.”
“Well,” Lee said. “I wasn’t there to frighten them. Just to make sure we’re planned for, whatever they’re doing.”
“They seem like they know what they’re doing,” Rick said. “They got a freezer going there, I’m sure they’ll get ours hooked up. I mean, I trust them and all but I’m glad they saw you and Adam and the gun.”
“Why do you trust them?” Jessica said. “Are you that good a judge of character? You can judge a guy on the other side of the ship that you haven’t even seen?”
“Well,” Rick said, “they sent the doctor.”
Back home, Jessica’s mother lived in the mansion with her and Lee.
Jessica had been a shy child, afraid of the world, but in her mother’s poor house she had been a princess. She dated and married famous Lee Golding, and her character had grown louder and more confident. With Lee’s support, she’d gone back to school, and then quickly ascended the corporate ladder, becoming with each step more extroverted and sure. She worked at a major insurance company as a vice president. In The Mighty Lee Golding’s palace in suburban Atlanta, her mother still called her Princess.
“God,” Jessica said. “If we don’t get off this ship soon I’ll use that gun to shoot myself.”
21
They walked forward along the dark-stained wood planking around the bow end of the Penthouse Deck. The sun was descending so that it caught them straight on from the side. Corrina and Darren were holding hands. They saw others on the deck, some at the brass railing alone, some in canvas deck chairs with spouses or children. No one said hello, no one nodded as they passed. They were all together, but each group was alone on the deck.
“I don’t see anybody out there,” Darren said.
There was nothing but the green and lace waves stretching out into the haze.
They continued onto the larger foredeck. Rows of deckchairs were tumbled over each other. No one seemed to care to clean any of the mess now. Two small semicircular bars rung around a large hot tub, sitting half empty and dead. They walked to the railing and looked out.