Fear Nothing

“That’s a bleak assessment.”

“I guess so.”

“Yet you don’t seem depressed.”

Carrying the cat, Roosevelt led us out of the main cabin and through the aft stateroom. “I’ve always been able to handle whatever the world threw at me, son, both the ups and the downs, as long as it was at least interesting. I’ve had the blessing of a full and varied life, and the only thing I really dread is boredom.” We stepped out of the boat onto the afterdeck, into the clammy embrace of the fog. “Things are liable to get downright hairy here in the Jewel of the Central Coast, but whichever way it goes, for damn sure it won’t be boring.”

Roosevelt had more in common with Bobby Halloway than 1 would have thought.

“Well, sir…thank you for the advice. I guess.” I sat on the coaming and swung off the boat to the dock a couple of feet below, and Orson leaped down to my side.

The big blue heron had departed earlier. The fog eddied around me, the black water purled under the boat slip, and all else was as still as a dream of death.

I had taken only two steps toward the gangway when Roosevelt said, “Son?”

I stopped and looked back.

“The safety of your friends really is at stake here. But your happiness is on the line, too. Believe me, you don’t want to know more about this. You’ve got enough problems…the way you have to live.”

“I don’t have any problems,” I assured him. “Just different advantages and disadvantages from most people.”

His skin was so black that he might have been a mirage in the fog, a trick of shadow. The cat, which he held, was invisible but for his eyes, which appeared to be disembodied, mysterious — bright green orbs floating in midair. “Just different advantages…do you really believe that?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said, although I wasn’t sure whether I believed it because it was, in fact, the truth or because I had spent most of my life convincing myself that it was true. A lot of the time, reality is what you make it.

“I’ll tell you one more thing,” he said. “One more thing because it might convince you to let this go and get on with life.”

I waited.

At last, with sorrow in his voice, he said, “The reason most of them don’t want to harm you, the reason they’d rather try to control you by killing your friends, the reason most of them revere you is because of who your mother was.”

Fear, as death-white and cold as a Jerusalem cricket, crawled up the small of my back, and for a moment my lungs constricted so that I couldn’t draw a breath — although I didn’t know why Roosevelt’s enigmatic statement should affect me so instantly and profoundly. Maybe I understood more than I thought I did. Maybe the truth was already waiting to be acknowledged in the canyons of the subconscious — or in the abyss of the heart.

When I could breathe, I said, “What do you mean?”

“If you think about it for a while,” he said, “really think about it, maybe you’ll realize that you have nothing to gain by pursuing this thing — and so much to lose. Knowledge seldom brings us peace, son. A hundred years ago, we didn’t know about atomic structure or DNA or black holes — but are we any happier and more fulfilled now than people were then?”

As he spoke that final word, fog filled the space where he had stood on the afterdeck. A cabin door closed softly; with a louder sound, a dead bolt was engaged.

24

Around the creaking Nostromo, the fog seethed in slow motion. Nightmare creatures appeared to form out of the mist, loom, and then dissolve.

Inspired by Roosevelt Frost’s final revelation, more fearful things than fog monsters took shape from the mists in my mind, but I was reluctant to concentrate on them and thereby impart to them a greater solidity. Maybe he was right. If I learned everything I wanted to know, I might wish I had remained ignorant of the truth.

Bobby says that truth is sweet but dangerous. He says people couldn’t bear to go on living if they faced every cold truth about themselves.

In that case, I tell him, he’ll never be suicidal.

As Orson preceded me up the gangway from the slip, I considered my options, trying to decide where to go and what to do next. There was a siren singing, and only I could hear her dangerous song; though I was afraid of wrecking on the rocks of truth, this hypnotic melody was one I couldn’t resist.

When we reached the top of the gangway, I said to my dog, “So…anytime you want to start explaining all this to me, I’m ready to listen.”

Even if Orson could have answered me, he didn’t seem to be in a communicative mood.

My bicycle was still leaning against the dock railing. The rubber handlebar grips were cold and slick, wet with condensation.

Behind us, the Nostromo’s engines turned over. When I glanced back, I saw the running lights of the boat diffused and ringed by halos in the fog.

I couldn’t make out Roosevelt at the upper helm station, but I knew he was there. Though only a few hours of darkness remained, he was moving his boat out to his mooring even in this low visibility.

As I walked my bike shoreward through the marina, among the gently rocking boats, I looked back a couple of times, to see if I could spot Mungojerrie in the dim wash of the dock lights. If he was following us, he was being discreet. I suspected that the cat was still aboard the Nostromo.

…the reason most of them revere you is because of who your mother was.

When we turned right onto the main dock pier and headed toward the entrance to the marina, a foul odor rose off the water. Evidently the tide had washed a dead squid or a man-of-war or a fish in among the pilings. The rotting corpse must have gotten caught above the water line on one of the jagged masses of barnacles that encrusted the concrete caissons. The stench became so ripe that the humid air seemed to be not merely scented but flavored with it, as repulsive as a broth from the devil’s dinner table. I held my breath and kept my mouth tightly closed against the disgusting taste that had been imparted to the fog.

The grumble of the Nostromo’s engines had faded as it cruised out to the mooring. Now the muffled rhythmic thumping that came across the water sounded not like engine noise at all but like the ominous beat of a leviathan’s heart, as though a monster of the deep might surface in the marina, sinking all the boats, battering apart the dock, and plunging us into a cold wet grave.

When we reached the midpoint of the main pier, I looked back and saw neither the cat nor a more fearsome pursuer.

Nevertheless, I said to Orson, “Damn, but it’s starting to feel like the end of the world.”

He chuffed in agreement as we left the stench of death behind us and walked toward the glow of the quaint ship lanterns that were mounted on massive teak pilasters at the main pier entrance.

Moving out of an almost liquid gloom beside the marina office, Lewis Stevenson, the chief of police, still in uniform as I had seen him earlier in the night, crossed into the light. He said, “I’m in a mood here.”

For an instant, as he stepped from the shadows, something about him was so peculiar that a chill bored like a corkscrew in my spine. Whatever I had seen — or thought I’d seen — passed in a blink, however, and I found myself shivering and keenly disturbed, overcome by an extraordinary perception of being in the presence of something unearthly and malevolent, without being able to identify the precise cause of this feeling.

Chief Stevenson was holding a formidable-looking pistol in his right hand. Although he was not in a shooting stance, his grip on the weapon wasn’t casual. The muzzle was trained on Orson, who was two steps ahead of me, standing in the outer arc of the lantern light, while I remained in shadows.

“You want to guess what mood I’m in?” Stevenson asked, stopping no more than ten feet from us.

“Not good,” I ventured.

“I’m in a mood not to be screwed with.”