ice cream; he could spread that out some.
Grijpstra rowed. He hadn't lost his touch since his father had taken him out fishing some forty years ago. The oars stayed in their locks, little waves broke musically against the bow behind him. His direction was good for he'd drawn a line between Squid Island behind his back and Jameson's tallest church spire facing him now and if he could just manage to keep that spire between his feet, which were planted firmly against the dory's rear seat, and look over his shoulder once in while to check out the other end, he should make it easily, he thought. The tide pulled and the wind pushed, a breeze that kept strengthening as the dory got further out ofjameson. The waves increased in size. He saw a beige-colored speedboat leaving Jameson Harbor, powered by twin outboards. It approached rapidly. As the speedboat skipped across waves, wavering a bit before coming back on course, Grijpstra could read the lettering on both sides of the bow: SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT WOODCOCK COUNTY. The boat was fair-sized, thirty feet long at least, sleek, dangerous, and efficient. A shark prowling.
Hairy Harry was at the console, standing behind the wheel. Billy Boy, protected by curved glass, crouched in the bow. The sheriff smiled, Billy Boy didn't. 'How're you doing?'
'Good,' Grijpstra said.
The outboards, in neutral, growled mightily. The powerboat stopped next to the dory. 'We're enforcing rules today,' Billy Boy said. 'You been studying sea rules, Krip?'
'Not lately,' Grijpstra said.
Billy had a checklist, clipped to a board. He also had a ballpoint. He was ready to make some checkmarks.
'Life jacket?'
'No life jacket.'
'Horn?'
'No horn.'
No bail bucket either. No extra paddle. No flashlight. No flares.
'Absolutely got to have flares,' the sheriff said, towering high above the console, chewing his cigar. 'Suppose you're in trouble, Kripstra, and you want some attention. You got to fire some flares.'
'Flare gun?' Billy Boy asked.
No flare gun.
'This is for your own protection,' Billy Boy said. 'I know the fines are high but people got to learn to listen. Drop by anytime. Six violations at forty bucks each, let's see now.'
'Two hundred and forty,' Hairy Harry said.
'Thank you, Sheriff.' Billy, taking his time, steady in spite of the boat's movements, filled in the ticket. He handed it over. 'So you only got Europe dollars, I hear?'
Hairy Harry shifted into forward and pulled the gas handle a bit so that the powerboat could stay on course. 'That's okay, Deputy, we can phone Boston for the rate of exchange.'
'Plus forty percent,' Billy Boy said, 'for the trouble.'
'Did you take the rowboat, Krip?' Hairy Harry asked.
Grijpstra mentioned Little Max and the ten dollars.
'Little Max has no right to rent out Big Max's dory.'
'That'll be extra,' Billy said. 'Big Max will have to press charges. And he will. Isn't that right, Sheriff?'
'That's right,' Hairy Harry said.
'Drop by anytime,' Billy Boy said. 'Anytime before tomorrow noon.'
'That's when the bus leaves,' Hairy Harry said. 'We'll make sure you catch it. Bus back to Boston.'
'After you've paid the fines and all,' Billy Boy said.
The twin Johnson outboards roared and the powerboat turned, spraying Grijpstra with her wake.
Grijpstra rowed. The waves had grown with the strengthening breeze and it was hard to keep the dory from veering sideways. Every time it did, some water splashed against the hull and into the boat. Bar Island appeared and disappeared. There were shreds of fog. Grijpstra saw treetops through veils of froth, and purple rocks and ledges, gleaming as waves pulled back after crashing wildly. Large sea gulls with black wings and white bodies, effortlessly poised against the gale, cackled mockingly at his feeble effort to manipulate the slippery oars. A seal's head appeared, bald and round, with whiskers sprouting widely to each side. The eyes stared ghoulishly from deep sockets. The sea mammal's body, shimmering in sunlight that broke briefly through fog, raised itself vertically from a watery valley. The seal blew loudly. A greeting maybe or just clearing its nostrils? Grijpstra nodded. 'How are you doing?' The seal, overwhelmed by this human response, tumbled over sideways and disappeared into his liquid world, like a clown who, after having been hilarious for a while, feels obliged to extinguish himself comically. Grijpstra, appreciating the show, rested on his oars. Low tide, at full force now, combined with strong winds to swoosh the dory along Bar Island and through the passage between Bar and Squid Islands. Grijpstra rowed on, exhausted now, with no effect.
A bizarre-looking building with sloped tiled roofs, two above, two below, the top one ending in a spire, peeked out of the pines. Grijpstra thought he couldn't have reached China yet. A wave raised the dory so that Grijpstra could see the ocean ahead, stretching, he remembered, not to China but back to Europe, to Nellie, to comforts, to survival, to ideas he would never realize now.
Although he felt impossibly tired and dizzy, he still made a show of working the oars. Why? To impress Nellie, facing him from the dory's back seat. Nellie looked pretty in a white dress and straw hat. Like the day they'd gone out on the Amstel River together.
The successful lover knows how to amuse his beloved.
'These waves are from the Far East, Nellie, as painted by-who was it? Hokusai? Hokusai waves, remember the reproduction I showed you? I wanted to use that wave in an Amsterdam canal, with dead ducks on top.'
'HenkieLuwie,' Nellie said tenderly.
'Hokusai waves can swallow your house at Straight Tree Canal, Nellie.'
Nellie laughed. Funny HenkieLuwie!
So he was putting it on a bit maybe. 'Well, they can swallow your bicycle shed.'
A birch canoe passed, paddled by a smiling dog-faced woman. Then the forty-foot-long and forty-year-old cabin cruiser Kathy Three appeared, big and just sturdy enough to weather the weather. The vessel's eight-cylinder diesel thumped on relentlessly while the short skipper, Flash, his hairdo standing up in the wind, and equally short first mate, Bad George, his plastic face emotionless, looked the other way, sweeping the rough sea with binoculars, missing the dory bobbing out of sight between waves.
The dog, Kathy Two, small, blackish gray except for her blond face and feet, did see Grijpstra, and jumped about the bridge, waving long mustaches and eyebrows, barking shrilly. 'Thar she blows,' captain and mate shouted at each other.
The Kathy Three stopped and backed up a bit. A triple hook, attached to a good length of thin rope, whizzed toward the dory's bow. Bad George, shouting through what Grijpstra took to be a papier-mache mask and leaning across the railing, held out both hands. Grijpstra, wet through and through, holding his bag firmly like a bureaucrat out in the rain, was hoisted aboard. The dory itself followed. Kathy Two, jumping and sliding about the slippery deck, welcomed her wet guest. Passenger and dog were directed to the front cabin, where Grijpstra lay down on a cot and Kathy Two jumped up, putting a paw on his chest and her face on his arm, growling pleasantly.
'Damn dog usually don't like nobody,' Bad George said, bringing hot coffee. The mug rattled against Grijpstra's teeth as he took in the cabin, resting place of broken and rusted tools, worn rope reinforced with tape, generic dog food and baked beans in large cans, dented fuel containers, and well-used engine parts. The cabin was clean, however, like the kitchen behind it, where scoured pots hung from hooks swaying between bunches of onions, a smoked ham, dried fish, and net bags filled with vegetables and potatoes.
Flash Farnsworth came to check his catch too. 'You could have been swamped by them big waves, you know,' Flash said. 'Good thing Aki kept calling. Radio was acting up again, we didn't hear her for a while. How're you feeling?'
Grijpstra felt cold, hungry, his legs hurt, his head was throbbing. He didn't think this Hobbit was real. Flash did have hairy long toes, curling out of his sandals. He wore gray overalls with a yellow silk scarf, torn and dirty. He must have found the scarf, Grijpstra thought, lost by a tourist, blown into a tree. Flash didn't seem the kind who would buy silk scarves. His gray-and-white beard was shapeless, like a cloud blown against his face. The hair wafted up into his eyes. When he spoke, irregular teeth glinted.
