Blood Work

and the fever was gone. I’ve been okay since.”

He pointed to the slashes on the chart following the one fever reading. Raymond pulled on his pants leg and said, “Where do you sleep?”

McCaleb glanced briefly at Graciela and turned toward the stairs before she could see his face start to color.

“Come on up, I’ll show you.”

When they got back up to the salon, McCaleb explained to Raymond how he could turn the galley table into a single berth. The boy seemed satisfied.

“So let’s see what you got,” McCaleb said.

He started going through Graciela’s grocery bag and putting things away. Their agreement was that she would make lunch, he would do the same with dinner. She had gone to a deli and it looked like they were going to have submarine sandwiches.

“How’d you know that subs were my favorite?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” Graciela said. “But they’re Raymond’s, too.”

McCaleb reached over and caught Raymond in the ribs again with a finger and the boy recoiled with a giggle.

“Well, while Graciela makes sandwiches to take with us, why don’t you come out and help me with the equipment. We have fish out there waitin’ for us!”

“Okay!”

As he ushered the boy out to the stern, he looked back at Graciela and winked. Out on the deck he presented Raymond with the rod and reel he had bought him. When the boy realized the outfit was his to keep, he grabbed onto the pole as if it were a rope being dropped to him by a rescue squad. It made McCaleb feel sad instead of good. He wondered whether the young boy had ever had a man in his life.

McCaleb looked up and saw Graciela standing in the open door to the salon. She also had a sad look on her face, even though she was smiling at them. McCaleb decided they had to break away from such emotions.

“Okay,” he said. “Bait. We’ve got to fill a bucket, ’cause I’ve got a feeling they’re going to be biting out there today.”

He got the floating bucket and dipping net out of the compartment next to the live well and then showed Raymond how to dip the net into the well, and bring up the bait. He put a couple netfuls of shrimp and squid into the bucket and then turned the chore over to Raymond. He then went inside to get the tackle box and a couple more rods for himself and Graciela to use.

When he was inside and out of earshot of the boy, Graciela came up to him and hugged him.

“That was very nice of you,” she said.

He held her eyes for a few moments before saying anything.

“I think maybe it does more for me than him.”

“He’s so excited,” she said. “I can tell. He can’t wait to catch something. I hope he does.”

They walked out along the marina’s main dock, past the stores and restaurant, and then crossed a parking lot until they came to the main channel into the city’s marinas. There was a crushed-gravel path here and it led them out to the mouth of the channel and the breakwater, a rock jetty that curved out into the Pacific for a hundred yards. They carefully stepped from one huge granite slab to another until they were about halfway out.

“Raymond, this is my secret spot. I think we should try it right here.”

There was no objection. McCaleb put down his equipment and set to work getting ready to fish. The rocks were still wet from the nightly assault of high seas. McCaleb had brought towels and walked about the spot looking for flat rocks that would make good seats. He spread the towels out and told Graciela and Raymond to sit down. He opened the tackle box, took out the tube of sun block and handed it to Graciela. He then started baiting lines. He decided to put the squid on Raymond’s rig because he thought it would be the best bait and he wanted the boy to catch the first fish.

Fifteen minutes later they had three lines in the water. McCaleb had taught the boy how to cast his line out, leave the reel open and let the squid swim with it in the current.

“What will I catch?” he inquired, his eyes on his line.

“I don’t know, Raymond. A lot of fish out there.”

McCaleb took a rock directly next to Graciela’s. The boy was too nervous to sit and wait. He danced with his pole from rock to rock, anxiously waiting and hoping.

“I should’ve brought a camera,” Graciela whispered

“Next time,” McCaleb said “You see that?”

He was pointing across the water to the horizon. The bluish outline of an island could be seen rising in the far mist.

“Catalina?”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“It’s weird. I can’t get used to the idea of you having lived on an island.”

“Well, I did.”

“How did your family end up here?”

“They were from Chicago. My father was a ballplayer. Baseball. One spring-it was nineteen fifty-he got a tryout with the Cubs. They used to come out to Catalina for spring training. The Wrigleys owned the Cubs and most of the island. So they came out here.

“My father and my mother were high school sweethearts. They had gotten married and he got this chance to go for the Cubs. He was a shortstop and second baseman. Anyway, he came out here but didn’t make the team. But he loved the place. He got a job working for the Wrigleys. And he sent for her.”

His plan was to end the story there but she prompted more out of him.

“Then you came.”

“A little while later.”

“But your parents didn’t stay?”

“My mother didn’t. She couldn’t take the island. She stayed ten years and that was enough. It can be claustrophobic for some people… Anyway, they split up. My father stayed and he wanted me with him. I stayed. My mother went back to Chicago.”

She nodded.

“What did your father do for the Wrigleys?”

“A lot of things. He worked on their ranch, then he worked up at the house. They kept a sixty-three-foot Chris-Craft in the harbor. He got a job as a deckhand and eventually he skippered that for them. Finally he got his own boat and put it out for charter. He was also a volunteer fireman.”

He smiled and she smiled back.

“And The Following Sea was his boat?”

“His boat, his house, his business, everything. The Wrigleys financed him. He lived on the boat for about twelve years. Until he got so sick they-I mean, me, I was the one-I took him over town to the hospital. He died over here. In Long Beach.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Not for you.”

He looked at her.

“It’s just that at the end there comes a time when everybody knows. He knew there was no chance and he just wanted to go back over there. To his boat. And the island. I wouldn’t do it. I wanted to try everything, every goddamn marvel of science and medicine. And besides, if he was over there, it would be a hassle for me to get out to see him. I’d have to take the ferry. I made him stay in that hospital. He died alone in his room. I was down in San Diego on a case.”

McCaleb looked out across the water. He could see a ferry heading toward the island.

“I just wish I had listened to him.”

She reached her hand over and put it on his forearm.

“There is no sense in being haunted by good intentions.”