The newspaper reports that fishermen report ghosts. It does so tongue-in-cheek, inferring that the fishermen are drunk. I’ll allow they may be drunk, but that doesn’t mean their vision is unclear.
My name is Victor Alley. Immediately after WWII, I was stationed here, doing harbor patrols from the Coast Guard base in South Portland. I was a very young man, and this is a young man’s story.
When you are young, and when the world asks you to go into action, mistakes happen. Unseasoned men ride the great urgency of action and emotion, responding to feelings of duty and feelings of guilt. They do not have words or balance in emergencies. Sometimes people die in order for young men to learn how to handle themselves. Two days after my 19th birthday our story went like this:
Winter darkness shrouded the inshore islands, and enclosed the harbor and channel and buoy yard at the Coast Guard Base in South Portland. I shot pool in the barracks and hoped my girlfriend would phone. We had already made our evening harbor patrol. The boats were secured. When the call came over the p.a. to proceed with our boat I did not even rack my cue. Just laid it on the table and ran. Our Cap got fussy when those boats didn’t move quick.
As I grabbed foul weather gear, Wert still searched for his. Then he followed, trotting, not running. His rating called him a third class engineman, but nobody ever saw him get his hands dirty. He was football-player big, with a moon face.
Case, our first class engineman, had the engines cracking and stuttering as I made it to the boat basin. Beneath the floodlights of the boat basin the forty footer seemed more like a tiny ship than a big boat. It was painted white as snow on mountains, and it carried a high bow, a real wave buster. It sported low rails and plenty of working room aft. When we jumped aboard, and I cast off, our bosun mate, Tommy, sapped it hard.
Those engines could scream like animals. The stern grabbed deep, digging in with the twin roar of diesels as the boat moved out. Those engines were still cold. Tommy knew better. He cleared the end of the pier and cut through shallow water, crosscutting flooded tideflats to the channel. Spray rose luminescent in the darkness. I climbed up beside Tom. He was hitting it just way too hard.
“You’ll drag the bottom out,” I yelled. I could feel fingers of rock reaching toward the hull. Tommy looked kind of crazy. Tall and skinny with thick black hair like a Portuguese. Just crazy. He muttered a name. He stood at the helm totally concentrated, and motioned me away.
I stepped aft. The engine ran at least two-thirds. Tom pushed it that way until we made the channel, and then he ran the engines full. They screamed in overspeed, the bow high and rock steady in the hard hand of the water. Case tapped my shoulder, and we both moved forward to be away from the scream of engines. We did not know that Wert tagged along behind us.
“The Portland cops called. We’re after a boat,” Case told me. “Guy who stole it killed his old lady with a knife. He’s got their kid in the boat with him. They think.”
“Who thinks?”
“The cops didn’t find a kid’s body. The kid and all of her clothes are missing.”
Tommy did not let up. He held it wide open in the middle of the channel, heading seaward. Distant lights of Portland and South Portland started looking fuzzy, the way they do just before winter fog arrives.
Wert interrupted us. The All-American Boy. His voice practically bubbled with excitement. “This beats towing in broken down fishing boats. A murderer.”
“Get back to those engines,” Case told him. “Don’t take your eyes off that oil pressure for a second.”
“If we’re going to have a murderer, we’d ought to have a gun.” Wert acted conversational.
“You want a gun, join the Army,” I told him.
Wert just asked for it, leaving those engines at those rpms, and then refusing to hurry when Case gave an order.
“You done it this time,” Case told Wert. He literally turned Wert around and gave him a shove aft. Then he turned back to me. “He lies better than I tell the truth. Waste of ink to put him on report.” Case was tense, and that was unusual. He was mostly easy going, a guy without enemies. Wert even liked him. He was the kindest man I ever knew. I’d learned a lot from him. Case had broad shoulders, broad face, a nice smile and not much of a beer belly.
“I gotta talk to him.” Case motioned at Tommy.
“The engines?”
“Sure,” Case said, “and some other stuff.”
I figured the engines were either okay, or wrecked by now. “What are we doing?” I asked Case.
“We’re hurrying to put the cork in the bottle. We’re blocking the seaward side. The killer can’t escape through the harbor mouth. At least that’s part of it.”
“What’s the other part?”
Case looked like he wondered if I would understand. “Tommy’s acting weird,” Case said. “He sorta gets his beanie unscrewed in emergencies. This ain’t just about some nut and a stole boat.”
I almost understood. I knew the story. During the war Tommy served on a cutter escorting convoys. On a dark night a freighter was torpedoed. There were survivors in the water. Tommy had the deck on the fantail because the gunnery officer was forward.
It was an awful story. Tommy spotted the survivors, and sonar picked up the German sub at the same time. The sub hovered a hundred feet down, directly below the freighter’s surviving crew. The captain of the cutter made a command decision. He depth charged the sub. Men struggling in the water turned to bloody pulp. A few survivors on the outskirts of the explosions did not die. The captain made the decision, but Tommy gave the order to drop the charges. It was one of those things that nobody talks about, and everybody seems to know about.
“Tell him not to get too weird.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“C’mon,” Case said, “let’s talk that poor fella out of wrecking those engines.”
I followed Case, and he climbed up beside Tommy who leaned way out around the spray shield. The engines screamed, and the bow rode so high at this speed that he could not see a thing. Case put one hand on Tommy’s shoulder, grinned at Tom like Tom had just told a pretty good joke, and then Case eased the controls. Speed came off, the bow dropped, and the boat skidded a little sideways. We’d come far enough that we could see the lighthouse at Portland Head.
“Take a strain,” Case said. “Guy with a wild hair crossways can’t figure anything out.”
“The police boat is out checking the islands,” Tommy said. “If that guy gets in behind the islands we’ve lost him.” He did not even hear Case.
“Get it figured,” Case said. “What you’re doing ain’t working.” He paused as he figured the next move. He looked toward the misty lights that told of fog. “At best we’ve got an hour. Go up to the Head along the edge of the channel, then double back along the other side. He won’t be riding the middle of the channel.”
“I want a piece of that clown.” Tommy’s voice sounded in control, but it still sounded a little crazy.
It came to me, watching him, that Tommy had been quiet for too long. Been holding everything in. I figure he didn’t care about the murderer. He just wanted to hit something that needed hitting.
“Cruise it slow,” Case said. “Use the searchlight, because he’ll be running without lights.”
It’s a big harbor, nearly as big as Boston. You could hide two hundred lobster boats in this harbor, and the odds on finding even a dozen of them would be pretty long.
“Because the guy’s crazy,” Case said. “He’s runnin’, but I doubt he’s going to hide. If he hides we won’t find him.”