Adrift in the Sound Read Online Free PDF Page B

the end of the rope, he grasped slick blood. It ran through his fingers and down the back of his hands. He choked, kept hauling.
    “What the heck you doing?” Gilly shouted from the dinghy. “Throw the line, man. Goddamned thing got caught in the prop.”
    Rocket picked up the coil and threw it again, hard, hitting the second mate in the chest, knocking him overboard. With the emergency lights on, Rocket saw where the propellers had sliced into Looney. The first mate maneuvered the dinghy around the animal’s tail and tossed a life bouy to the man gasping in the frigid water. He hauled him to the side, pulled him up by the shoulders of his peacoat, hoisted his leg over the side and rolled him onto the bottom of the skiff like a big fish.
    They called for more line to secure Looney’s body until the Coast Guard got there to haul the carcass from the shipping lane. Rocket ran around on the deck, heaving line, tightening slack, tying off, wiping salt from his wet cheeks with his sleeve. Looney’s flukes lifted out of the swells and flapped listlessly, then the animal eased free of the lines. His sleek back disappeared beneath the water’s ruffled surface, created a hole in the sea that rapidly filled. The men stood for a moment in shocked silence.
    Dripping wet and shivering in the wind, the mates quarreled in the rocking dinghy. Rocket dropped the useless lines he held in his hands. Over the loudspeaker, the captain ordered the men back aboard. They came around, aligned the dinghy to the tug’s stern and climbed the slippery rungs to the deck. The winch snapped as Rocket lifted the dinghy out of the water and it took a half hour to fix it. Then, in the night slit, where black meets black, between sky and water, Rocket walked the deck, stood his watch, scanned the rolling sea looking for any sign of his orca.

FIVE
     
    A FEW DAYS LATER , Lizette heard a car pull up in front of the house on Franklin Street and went to Sandy’s bedroom window. She watched Rocket lean into his car and haul out his sea bag, then bounce up the walk to the Dog House and disappear inside.
    “Rocket’s home,” she told Sandy, who lounged on the bed. “Wonder if he’ll notice?”
    Sandy rolled onto her side, didn’t answer.
    Next door, Rocket dropped his bag at the foot of the stairs and greeted the Dogs, surveyed his house and friends. The Dogs grunted at him and turned back to the TV. Something’s different , Rocket thought, but couldn’t put his finger on it. He sensed things had been moved while he was gone, but wasn’t sure what. He took a sniff. Furniture polish?
    In the kitchen, he found the sink empty. The cracked linoleum had green and white swirls, a pattern he hadn’t noticed before. When he tripped over a garbage bag near the back door, empty beer bottles clinked. Going into the dining room, the piano gleamed. “What the hell happened here?”
    “The nut job from next door,” Bomber huffed, tucked his chin into the collar of his Army jacket. Rocket looked puzzled. “You know? Lizette? The one you told me to go get? The one you hired to clean the shitter?”
    “I offered to pay her for doing the dishes.” Rocket said, looked confused. “That’s all.”
    The Dogs sat in stiff silence. Finally, someone mumbled “Lizette’s a crazy lizard, man.”
    Rocket glanced around. The pizza boxes and potato chip bags were gone. The floors were swept and mopped. He searched the crowd, settled on Bomber. “Where is she?”
    “Next door,” Bomber said. “She wants money, man.” Then added, “Jerry the landlord came by.”
    Rocket headed out and jogged up the sidewalk. At Sandy’s house, he looked into the empty living room, yelled up the stairs and heard a muffled reply. He thundered up the stairs, burst in, found Sandy stretched out on her bed, honey-blonde hair fanned across a pillow, Lizette fluttering over her.
    “What’s up?” Rocket stepped to the edge of the bed and scanned Sandy’s short, shapely body. “You