Cry for the Strangers

soaked.”

“I’d rather go along the beach,” Missy sulked. “I don’t like the woods. Or we could go into the old house and wait for the rain to stop.”

“The rain isn’t going to stop.” Robby grabbed his sister by the hand and began leading her toward the woods. “Besides, we aren’t supposed to go anywhere near that house. Mommy says empty houses can be dangerous.”

“It isn’t empty,” Missy replied. “There’s someone there. There’s been someone there all afternoon.”

Robby stopped and turned to the little girl. “That’s dumb,” he said. “Nobody lives there. Besides, how would you know if someone was there?”

“I just know,” Missy insisted.

Robby glanced at the old house, bleak and forbidding in the failing light, then pulled at Missy once more.

“Come on. If we aren’t home pretty soon, Daddy will come looking for us.” He started picking his way over the driftwood, looking back every few seconds to make sure Missy was behind him. Missy, more afraid of being left behind than of the woods, scrambled after him.

15

Max Horton glanced at the threatening sky, then adjusted the helm a few degrees starboard, compensating for the drift of the wind that buffeted the trawler.

“Jeff!” He waited a few seconds, then called again, louder. “Jeff, get your ass up here!”

His brother’s head appeared from below. “What’s up?”

“This storm’s going to be a real son-of-a-bitch. Take over up here while I figure out where’s the best place to put in.”

Jeff took over the helm and Max went below to pore over a chart. He switched on the Loran unit he’d installed a month earlier, then pinpointed their exact location on the chart that was permanently mounted on the bulkhead. They could probably make it to Grays Harbor, but it would be tricky. If the storm built at the rate it had been going for the last hour there was a good chance they’d be trying to batter their way into port through a full gale. He looked for something closer and found it. A minute later he was back at the wheel.

“Ever heard of Clark’s Harbor?” he asked Jeff.

Jeff thought a minute, then nodded. “It’s a little place — just a village. They’ve got a wharf though.”

“Well, I think we’d better head there. We could probably make it on down to Grays Harbor, but I don’t like the feel of things.” He pulled Osprey around to port and felt the roll change into a pitch as the boat responded to the rudder. The pitch was long and slow with both the wind and the sea at their stern, and Max chewed his lip tensely as he tried to gauge how much time he had before he’d have to bring the boat around, throw out a sea anchor, and ride it out.

“I told you we shouldn’t have come this far south,” Jeff muttered.

“Huh?”

“I said, I told you we should have stayed up north. We’ve heard the stories about the freak storms down here. This isn’t any big surprise!”

“It isn’t any big disaster either,” Max replied. “We’ve got the wind and the tide working for us, and we can make Clark’s Harbor in thirty minutes. Is there any coffee down there?” He jerked one thumb toward the galley, then quickly replaced his hand on the wheel as Osprey began drifting off course. Jeff disappeared and returned with a steaming mug, which he placed in a gimbaled holder near Max’s right hand. Then he lit two cigarettes and handed one to his brother. Max took the cigarette and grinned.

“Scared, kid?”

Jeff grinned back at Max, feeling no resentment at being called “kid.” Max had always called him that, but he had always used the term fondly, not patronizingly, and Jeff had never objected, even though both of them were now nearing thirty.

The trawler, a commercial fisherman, was their joint property, but Jeff always thought of it as Max’s boat. Max was the captain — always had been and always would be — and Jeff was a contented mate.

There was a two-year difference in their ages, but they had always been more like friends than brothers, even when they were children. Wherever Max had gone he had taken Jeff with him, not because their parents made him do it, but because he liked Jeff. If Max’s friends objected to the “kid” tagging along, they were no longer his friends.

They had bought Osprey four years ago, when Max was twenty-five and Jeff twenty-three. Jeff had been very worried the first year, sure that the immense loan would sink them even if the sea didn’t. But the sea had been kind to them, and it looked as though the loan would be paid off by the end of the current season — all they really needed was four or five more really good catches, and Max seemed to have a nose for fish.

It was Max’s nose that had brought them here today. The rest of the fleet that worked out of Port Angeles had stayed safely in the Strait, but Max had gotten up that morning and announced that he “smelled” a school of tuna to the south. They would go after it and spend the night in Grays Harbor before heading back north the following day.

He had been right. The hold was filled with tuna, and all had gone according to plan. Except for the storm. It had come upon them suddenly, as if from nowhere, giving them no time to complete the run south.

Now they were moving steadily if sluggishly through the heaving sea. A constant stream of rain mixed with salt spray battered against the windows of the wheelhouse, but Max held his course by compass, only occasionally glancing out into the gathering darkness. After some twenty minutes had passed in silence, he spoke.

“I’m going to have to send you outside.”

Jeff checked the buttons on his slicker and put on his rain hat.

“What am I looking for?”

“Chart shows some rocks in the mouth of the harbor. They should be well off the port bow, but keep a lookout. No sense piling this thing up when it’s almost paid for.”

Jeff left the wheelhouse and felt the wind buffet him. He clung to the lifelines strung along the length of the boat and made his way slowly forward until he was in the bow pulpit. He strained to see through the fading afternoon light, and his stomach knotted as he thought of what might happen if he failed to see the rocks.

And then they were there, sticking jaggedly above the surface, fingers of granite reaching up to grasp the unwary. Jeff waved frantically, but even before he made the gesture, he felt Osprey swinging slightly to starboard: Max must have seen the rocks at almost the same instant he had. He watched the water swirling and eddying around the reef as they swept past; then, when the danger had disappeared beyond the stern, he returned to the wheelhouse.

Max was finishing his coffee, one hand relaxing on the wheel, grinning cheerfully.

“You could have given them a little more room,” Jeff commented.

“A miss is as good as a mile,” Max replied. “Want to take her in?”

“You’re doing fine. I’ll get ready to tie up.”

A few minutes later, as the trawler crept into a vacant slip, Jeff jumped from the deck to the wharf and began securing the lines. On board, Max cut the engines.

Jeff had just finished tying the boat up when he became conscious of someone standing nearby watching him. He straightened up and nodded a greeting. “Some storm,” he offered.

“You planning to spend the night here?” Mac Riley said.

“On board,” Jeff replied.

“Storm’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better,” Riley said dourly. “Don’t think you can do it.”

“Do it? Do what?”

“Spend the night on that boat. We got a regulation against that here. Too dangerous.”

Max came out of the wheelhouse in time to hear the last, and jumped from the deck to join Jeff on the