Looking out toward the inlet, Neil could see two U.S. Navy vessels, one looking badly damaged, moored in the turning basin. He had never known warships to use Morehead City, but with the naval facilities at Hampton Roads near Norfolk destroyed, the Navy’s options were clearly reduced.
As the morning wore on Neil became increasingly frustrated by his inability to get any reports on the fallout situation in the southeast. There were only three stations left on the whole AM dial, each broadcasting only sporadically. Official statements never indicated what people in the Carolinas could expect.
He was depressed too by the breakup of the ship’s family. Jim was determined not to go into the Army, but he had only a few hours to come up with a workable alternative. After breakfast Jim and Lisa had spent forty minutes talking quietly to each other on the docks in the rain. Jeanne said little about her plans. After talking to Frank, she seemed to take it for granted that the refugee center was her only alternative. Although Elaine chatted pleasantly about being back on land—as if they’d just returned from an interesting cruise—Jeanne was silent. She finished packing, cleaned up the galley, and sat down in the wheelhouse with Skip.
As the boat-weary, war-weary, weather-weary crew of Vagabond gathered themselves together that late morning the wind moaned through the shrouds, halyards slapped rhythmically against masts, the rain drummed down on the decks and cabin tops. Although the seasick appreciated the lack of .motion, all were exhausted by thirty-six hours of storm at sea. Tony was the first to leave, escorting Elaine and Rhoda ashore to find the refugee center. Frank and Conrad Macklin left a few minutes later carrying Seth on a makeshift stretcher made from two oars and the last section of the jib they had used to jury-rig the awning for the new back wall of the wheelhouse. The plan was that they would take Seth to the hospital and that Frank would meet Jeanne later at the refugee center in the high school. Macklin, ineligible for the draft because of a foot shattered by a mine in Vietnam, had announced he was planning to try to get farther south by car. Neil hoped he would simply disappear.
When Olly went down into the cabin to hide the weapons and disable Vagabond’s engine, Neil was momentarily alone with Jeanne, but Jim and Lisa came in from the rain and stood awkwardly side by side in front of her. Jim’s face was partly hidden under the hood of his yellow foul-weather jacket, from which rain was still dripping. Lisa seemed lost in the over-sized foul-weather gear she was wearing, and they both seemed to Neil ridiculously young.
“Jeanne,” Jim began uncertainly. “I… I’m not going into the Army, and I guess I have to hide.” He hesitated. “Lisa wants to come with me.”
Jeanne looked at him with a strange kind of serenity and nodded once, glancing briefly at her daughter.
“Where will you go, Jim?” she asked quietly.
Jim looked uncomfortable. “Neil said last night he thought my only chance was to get a small boat and head down the waterway,” he said. “I don’t know.”
Jeanne now looked up at Neil.
“Well, captain?” she asked.
Neil resented her addressing him as “captain.”
“I’m beginning to think we were crazy to come in that inlet,” Neil replied almost angrily. “Jim is trapped. If the Army is rounding up young people, sooner or later it’ll round up Jim. The only haven from the government is out at sea.”
“Can’t he stay with Olly on Vagabond!” Jeanne asked.
“Yes,” said Neil, “but a man on the ketch in front of us said that the military police came through earlier this morning searching all the boats along the docks.”
“But why?” Jeanne suddenly burst out. “What possible use can Jim and the others be?”
“How do people like Jim eat?” Neil replied gloomily. “They have to steal to survive. If they have guns, they may end up killing. The government is trying to control chaos.”
“Then perhaps Jim should just go in,” Jeanne said. Neil shrugged and Jim stirred uneasily.
“We shouldn’t have come here, Mother,” Lisa said.
“What do you expect to find here?” Neil asked Jeanne in a low, tight voice.
Startled, Jeanne stiffened. “I’m not sure,” she replied tentatively. “A place to help other people, I guess. A safer place for Lisa and Skip.”
“Safer than what?” Neil asked.
“Safer than the Chesapeake,” she answered, looking at him, adding, less surely, “safer than the ocean.”
“Land will never again be safer than the sea,” he replied.
“We’re here, Neil,” she countered quietly.
“I hate your going… back… out there,” Neil said in almost a whisper.
Conrad Macklin suddenly burst in from the rain, stamping on the floor, seemingly unaware that he might have interrupted anything, and announced that all private housing had already been taken over either by the military or by earlier refugees. There was absolutely no food being sold anywhere. The hospital they’d taken Seth to was so overcrowded they were treating people in tents and garages, or rather not treating them—hundreds of victims of burns, radiation sickness, and retinal blindness were not being treated at all as far as he could see. Frank had stayed behind to try to get medical attention for Seth. There were no vehicles available for going south and roadblocks on every major highway. Macklin ended his report and went below to change and dry off.
Jim and Lisa were left standing in the center of the wheelhouse with Jeanne, her face averted, staring at the floor.
“Look,” Neil said, striding forward so Jim and Lisa could see him. “I’m going to find out from the Army or the Navy what the food and fallout situation is going to be here. If I’m needed in the Navy, I’ll serve. But I don’t think, Jim, that you and Lisa should go anyplace by yourselves. Hold up a bit. Stay here on the boat with Olly. Lisa, at least for now, you should go with Jeanne to the refugee center.”
“Why can’t we all stay on the boat?” Lisa asked.
“Because—” Neil began.
“Because we can’t run forever,” Jeanne replied. “Our duty is to find a place here on land to live and work. There’s both farming and fishing here. It must be better than most places. And the only way we can get more food is at the refugee center.”
“What about Captain Olly?” Lisa asked.
“He’ll stay here to guard the boat,” Neil answered. “In case… we need it again.”
Lisa looked up at Jim to see what he was deciding.
“All right,” said Jim. “I’ll hide here for a while. Lisa… you… better help your mom…”
“When… when…?” Lisa began.
“We can visit the boat, honey,” Jeanne said quietly. “We’re all just finding out what the new world has in store for us. Nothing is final.”
Lisa took Jim’s hand and, after exchanging a look with him, stared down at the floor.
“I’ll risk helping you take your things to the high school,” Jim said. Together he and Lisa began to gather up the duffel bags and small suitcases and transport them to the docks. After they’d left the wheelhouse, Jeanne stood up and went over to Neil, who was standing with his hands gripping the stainless steel wheel.
“I wish… we didn’t have to go,” she said.
“You don’t,” Neil answered.
“I mean… but you too… have to leave Vagabond.”
“I don’t have to go,” Neil replied quietly.
As Jeanne gazed at him she realized that he was making a subtle appeal to her.
“But… what would we all do on Vagabond?” she asked after a pause, Skippy holding on to her skirt.
“We would sail south out of the probable path of the fallout,” Neil answered. “To the West Indies.”