The Crimes of Jordan Wise

little time.

Bone didn't come up at three to take his watch, so I went down to call him. He was still asleep, but thrashing restlessly now. I shook him awake, told him the time. It took him a few seconds to shake off the grogginess. His mouth worked as if it were dry and foul-tasting; the way he heeled his temples told me he had a headache.

I said lightly, 'Too much rum last night, Bone?'

He didn't answer. He stood, pulled a T-shirt over his head, and headed up the companionway.

I slept well enough, but only for about four hours. At seven I got up, turned the flame on under the coffee pot, sluiced off under a cool shower before I dressed. The coffee was ready by then. I poured two mugs full, added sugar to one, and carried them topside.

As soon as I saw the position of the sun, I knew that we were heading in the opposite direction from the course I'd set the day before. Bone was standing at the helm, stiff-backed, staring straight ahead. He didn't answer when I said good morning. I extended one of the mugs; he shook his head without looking at me, so I set it down on the chart table.

'You changed our course,' I said. 'How come?'

'Heading back, Cap'n.'

'Back to St. Thomas? Why?'

'Heading back, Cap'n.'

'What's the matter? Are you sick?'

'Yeah, mon. A little sick.'

I laid a hand on his arm, the way you do. He shrugged it off as if it were an annoying blowfly.

'What the hell, Bone?'

His gaze rounded on me, and there was a look in his eyes I'd never seen before. As if something had cought fire in their depths. As if he were looking at somebody he'd never seen before. He said nothing, just stared at me.

He knows, I thought.

He knows!

Moment of panic. Involuntary reflex because of it. A sudden roll as we plowed through a wave trough. All three of those things caused the mug to slip out of my hand. It tilted in Bone's direction as it fell, splattering him with hot coffee on the way down. More coffee splashed his pantlegs when the mug shattered on the deck.

I don't know, maybe he thought I did it on purpose. Or maybe something just broke loose inside him. Whatever the reason, his reaction was snake-sudden.

He spun toward me and grabbed two handfuls of my shirt. I said something, I don't remember what, and clawed at his wrists. He had a grip like an iron fllike. He crowded in close and swung me around and slammed my back up hard against the mizzenmast. Pain tore a yell out of me; I folight him but I couldn't pull free. He had me pinned tight against the spar.

At some point in the brief struggle one of us must have kicked down on a leeward spoke, causing the wheel to spin counterclockwise. Windrunner's bow fell off to port. Wind hammered into the lee side of the mains'l with a crack like a big Umb breaking off a tree. The main boom swung inward as the yawl jibed. Bone and I both saw it an instant before it swept across the cockpit. He was the one in harm's way, his body shielding mine, and there wasn't enough time for him to twist aside. The boom smacked him on the shoulder with enough force to send him staggering into the starboard rail, and the rail catapulted him overboard.

The end of the boom missed me by no more than two inches. I heard the sound of him hitting the water and instinct sent me lurching back to the helm. I spun the wheel hard to bring her up into the wind, then ran forward and ripped the life preserver off the starboard shrouds and flung it back into the wake.

Bone had surfaced a dozen feet from where it landed. He bobbed there for a few seconds, not making any move toward the doughnut. I thought he might be hurt or too dazed to see it and I yelled above the wind, 'Bone! In front of you!'

No answer. But then I saw him start to swim in a strong crawl toward the preserver and I knew he was all right. I scanned the sea around him. No dorsal fins, just white-flecked blue water.

I ran aft to the wheel, steadied Windrunner up into the wind until she was right in stays. Then I hurried forward again, dropped the main and staysail, came back aft. Bone had reached the ring, was resting there with one arm looped through it, looking in my direction. I waved at him. He didn't wave back.

I went below to start the auxiliary engine. At the wheel again, I circled the yawl under power until I could see Bone and the doughnut bobbing to windward. I idled down a hundred feet from him, eased the yawl upwind until I was close enough for him to reach up with one hand and catch hold of a rail stanchion. He tossed the preserver on deck, hung there two-handed until the roll was right, and then heaved himself aboard.

He wouldn't take any help from me. Wouldn't look at me until he'd hoisted himself to his feet, streaming water, and then it was only a brief glance followed by a short, sharp nod. There was an angry-looking welt on his shoulder where the boom had clipped him.

'That was close,' I said. 'Too close.'

He didn't say anything.

'You shouldn't have grabbed me like that,' I said. 'The coffee . . . it was an accident. The jibe, too. One of us must've kicked the wheel. . .'

Silently he tugged at his wet clothes.

'Bone, listen to me—'

'Don't say it, mon. Ain't nothing I want to hear.'

He made eye contact for three or four seconds and then moved past me and went belowdecks. But that look stayed with me, left me feeling chilled and empty. The burn in his eyes had been extinguished; there was nothing in them for me any more, no feeling at all. Cold, blank, like the unseeing eyes of a dead man—

What? Did I think of what?

Not rescuing him? Leaving him out there to drown?

My God, no! Not for a second. The thought never entered my head. I could no more have killed Bone than I could have chopped off my right arm, to save my ass or for any other reason. He was my mentor, my friend—my only friend. I loved him like a brother.

What do you think I am, some kind of monster?

All the rest of that day Bone stood on deck with his back to me, working when necessary, the rest of the time just smoking his pipe and staring out over the water. Wouldn't talk to me. Wouldn't make any more eye contact. There was no way to guess what he was thinking; his face was like a stone mask.

How did he know about Annalise? The question kept nagging at me. It couldn't be from any mistake in my calculations. A combination of little things, probably. My telling him she'd left me. The empty ice chest. His abnormally long sleep and the hangover effects of the Valium mixed with rum. The new padlocks on the sail lockers and the fresh scrape in the starboard rail. Bone noticed every detail on a boat. He may have been sensitive to anything abnormal on one, too, in the same way he was sensitive to atmospheric conditions. He was an intelligent man; give him enough components and he could fit them together into the correct equation.

What would he do about his suspicions? Turn me in? I didn't think so. Didn't want to believe he would. His code of noninvolvement was why he hadn't confronted me; it would also keep him from going to the law. Our friendship weighed in my favor, too. And the fact that I'd saved his life had to count for something.

Still, you can't be absolutely certain how anyone will react to a given situation. You can't even be certain how you yourself will react. He could never condone the taking of a human life, no matter what the reason. He couldn't even sanction the killing of sharks. If his moral code was stronger than all the factors in my favor, there wasn't anything I could do about it. You could talk until you were blue in the face to a man like Bone, and the only voice he'd be listening to was his own.

Time would tell. All I could do was to keep as silent as he was and sweat it out.

Nothing happened after we returned to St. Thomas. Bone had his gear packed and ready before we entered the Sub Base harbor, and he walked away without a word as soon as we docked.

Two long days passed. No one came around asking about Annalise. By the end of the second day I began to