“We do what we must do, Jim,” he said. “Right now we’re sailing Vagabond to Point Lookout.”
“And when that stuff starts falling on deck?” Jim asked, still searching Neil’s face for any sign of fear.
Neil looked back at him neutrally.
“Then we sweep it off,” he replied.
Jeanne and Lisa, with Skippy and the dog huddled around them, blinked in bewilderment at the chaos that was now the waterfront of Point Lookout. Two hours after they’d been thrown out of the station wagon, there were several hundred people where the night before there had been perhaps two dozen. In places along the docks and on the wooden picnic tables a thin layer of ash had been discovered at dawn, a discovery that had increased the panic. Jeanne had already seen people siphoning gasoline from parked cars for boat engines or their own cars, seen men rush past with guns stuffed in their belts, rifles in their hands. People milled along the dock, pleading with anyone on board a boat to take them along, the women sometimes weeping, the children silent. She had seen five or six people with burned faces and arms and two people being carried on makeshift stretchers. One of the cars that had driven into the parking lot had most of its red paint blistered.
One by one over the two hours since she’d been up searching for Vagabond, vessels had motored away from the dock area, a few completely packed and low in the water, others with only two or three people aboard. Some were motor yachts, some sailboats; most were open boats with inboard and outboard engines. All wanted to get away from Washington and the fallout.
Although many boats had already left, the waterfront was still crowded. Several of those that had been at anchor were now coming in to get fuel or to pick up passengers. Others were arriving from down the Potomac.
Jeanne had recovered from the shock of being thrown out of her car. The men had let Lisa and Skippy leave and had tossed out the children’s duffel bags, her larger suitcase, and a sleeping bag, but had driven off with her smaller suitcase, her handbag, and a lot of little stuff in the car, including snack food she’d tossed together. She had no money or credit cards, and they hadn’t eaten breakfast. When she’d rolled into the creek, she’d wet her jeans through, so had changed into white shorts and blouse; her wet boat shoes she’d had to leave on, since her other shoes were in the missing smaller suitcase.
As she stood with one arm around Lisa’s waist and the other holding Skippy’s hand, she was tremblingly considering other options. With every minute that passed the chances of the trimaran’s arriving at Point Lookout grew smaller. She could conceive of no reason for Frank not to have arrived by now. He’d said he hoped to come at ten last night, early morning at the latest. What could possibly stop him from motoring across the bay? Her only conclusion was that Frank had decided that she and her family were dead. He wasn’t coming.
So what could she do? She had no husband, no home, no car, no money, no friends, and no place to stay. Her isolation and powerlessness saddened and angered her. The burned faces, sightless eyes, and the shuffling, numb way so many people moved frightened her. She had to focus on her alternatives, but when she did she could see only one: she should try to get across the bay to Crisfield. Frank would probably not be there, but it seemed like her only hope. At least they would keep moving. She should try to hitch a ride on some other boat.
Even as she decided, she could feel herself absorbing the alternating numbness and hysteria she saw all around her. The people on shore were becoming more numerous and the remaining boats fewer. Two fistfights had broken out at the gas dock, and just after ten a man had been shot. The absence of electric power had forced the marina to develop some sort of mechanical siphoning system and the dockmaster’s efforts to ration the amount of fuel he pumped seemed to have provoked the shooting. Within two minutes of the gunshot everyone seemed to have forgotten about it. The wounded man had staggered off alone. There were no policemen.
When she went in search of a boat owner who might be willing to take her and her family across the bay, she left Lisa by the marina office to take care of Skippy and their two bags and went out on the docks alone. The stretch of dock next to each remaining boat was thronged with men and women either dully or passionately begging for a chance to get on board. Clustered around the first boat were two families, two stony-faced mothers, their children cowering big-eyed around their legs, the husbands, angry, holding out money. She didn’t see any sense in competing, so she moved on.
The second boat was a twenty-five-foot motor yacht with two men working on its engine. One of them looked up at the group accosting him from the dock. She saw the man stare appraisingly at an attractive blond woman who was pleading with him to take her and her child, and then his gaze shifted to Jeanne herself, first her bare legs, and then her breasts, and finally her eyes. She felt a sensual shock: from fifteen feet away and without uttering a word the man seemed to have propositioned her.
She hurried on. The third boat was filled to overflowing, but as she passed it she had the feeling that these people had boarded an empty boat and that no one really knew what was going on. She was walking back from the end of one of the arms of the T, when a slender young man about thirty came up and stopped her.
“Are you looking for a boat?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied eagerly. “I want to get across the bay to Crisfield.”
“1 might be able to help you.”
“Thank God. I’ve got two children too. Where’s your boat?”
“Two children?” the man said, frowning. “We’ve only got room for one more person.”
“They’re only children…” Jeanne pleaded. “They won’t take up much…”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, we’re just too full.”
When he brushed nervously past her and hurried away, she stared after him in shock.
“You bastard!” she shouted at his retreating back.
As she headed back down the docks toward the marina office she realized how vulnerable she was, especially with two children. No one wanted that additional responsibility. Lisa and Skippy were still where she’d left them, hot and hungry. Lisa had fished a half-eaten banana out of a trash can, and Skippy, after first accusing it of being dirty, had finally eaten it. She grabbed Skippy’s hand, and they traipsed like the war refugees they were down the fifty feet of road to the entrance to Kelly’s, but seeing that Porter’s Boatyard seemed much less crowded, she decided to try there first.
At the gate two men with shotguns greeted her.
“Can we help you, ma’am?” one of them asked.
“Yes, I hope so,” Jeanne replied, thankful for the first sign of politeness she’d encountered all day. “I…1 need to get a boat ride across the bay.”
“Do you know anyone in here?” the man asked.
“No.”
“Our orders are that no one is permitted to enter the yard unless they’re friends or guests of owners of one of the boats here. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.”
She hurried back to Kelly’s Marina, which was slightly less crowded than the town docks, but the situation was the same: boat owners nervously preparing their boats, refugees looking for rides. She paused in the yard before going out. She had nothing to offer that the others didn’t have, but she had to try.
“Lisa,” she said to her daughter at her side. “I want you to keep yourself and Skippy thirty or forty feet behind me and out of sight. Follow me, watch me, don’t lose me, but stay away until I call you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mother,” Lisa replied. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m trying to get us a ride across the bay, where I hope to find Frank.”