Chapter 22 - ZEN

Caldwell came awake slowly in BALI's forward berth. A diffuse light filled the compartment, and the sound of gulls crying and distant waves breaking came dimly to his ear. A loose halyard tapped the mast. The Concordia was rocking gently at anchor, and the motion was soporific.

"Just like a mother's arms," he thought. "Small wonder men keep going back to sea."

He lay in his slick nylon sleeping bag, occasionally working his legs back and forth to ease the kinks. All that kneeling in cold water yesterday had left them stiff and sore. After they were loosened up, Caldwell slithered out of the bag, and, hunched over in the tight quarters, he pulled on a pair of khaki shorts. Looking out the port lights he saw the fog, which had been creeping in last night, now enclosed the yacht in a cave of white light, and he added a white cotton polo shirt to his ensemble.

"Lucky we made it in when we did," he thought. Feeling his way blindfolded through unfamiliar ledges didn't appeal to him in the least. The cruising guide had described this place as the perfect sheltered anchorage, but conning BALI in by starlight had shaken Caldwell one more time, on a shaky day. He'd been glad to drop the hook in Bunker's Hole.

Caldwell pushed up the forward hatch cover, and hoisted himself on deck. He stood holding the forestay as he leaned out over the pulpit rail to take a long leak into the brine, blowing fog clinging to his face and arms. The deck was wet, and his feet slipped a few times as he walked along the side deck to the cockpit, BALI heeling slightly with his shifting weight.

They'd had the good sense to stow the cockpit seat cushions after they dropped anchor, and he tugged a dry floatation cushion out of the stern compartment, set it on the afterdeck, and sat down. He took a cigarette out of the leather case in the pocket of his shorts, and lit it with the gold lighter Uncles Phineas had given him for graduation from Andover. He sat silently, smoking and flicking ashes into the water. Tried to empty his mind of all thoughts.

"Get Zen," he told himself, but even in this muted white world his mind kept churning. Caldwell tried to remember some of the Chinese poetry he'd read at Bowdoin. "How like a bolt of white silk is this water...?" Something like that. Li Po was it? His college days seemed like an eon ago. He'd been happy at the small Maine college with its drunken fraternities and its mild self-importance, after the imperial superiority of Andover. He'd come to see the whole meritocratic rat race as the modern version of the old Chinese mandarinate. All the bright middleclass boys would compete by taking exams, and be slotted into the imperial bureaucracy. Maybe that's why so much of the poetry of those petty bureaucrats was filled with angst, and a longing for nature. Caldwell desired his own Cold Mountain, where he could contemplate the ineffable in a pure white fog.

"You've got to pick up every stitch.. you've got to pick up every stitch... must be the season of the witch," Cyr's operatic voice came yodeling out of the main cabin.

"So much for sublime poetry," Caldwell thought. "What IS that caterwauling," he said aloud, sliding open the companionway hatch. Cyr was up and dressed and lighting the stove.

"Heydee, Hacky-me-Tacky," Cyr replied. "Are you ready for a culinary improvisation which will elevate your gustatory standards?"

"If you mean breakfast, I could eat," Caldwell admitted.

"Philistines," Walker observed gruffly from inside his sleeping bag.

"I do believe our Cajun Companero suffers from a touch of mal de snort, this ante meridian," Cyr observed.

"Da beetch she no touch me, y'honeur," Walker said, "jus leetle kiss."

"Kiss my ass, Walker," Caldwell said. "You two snorted enough powder to fix the Belmont last night." After the POINT HANON searched them, Walker had produced his bag of cocaine, and he and Cyr had proceeded to snort themselves into an ecstasy of absurd dialogue and pie in the sky designs.

Cyr clicked his tongue, "Jelousie.. jelousie.. mon ami." He was whipping eggs together with yogurt and chives in a stainless bowl, and had a coffee pot starting to hot up.

"I'm gonna launch the dingy," Caldwell announced.

"Need a hand?" Cyr asked.

"Nah.. just keep the feed coming," Caldwell answered. He then made his way forward on deck to where an 8-foot whitehall was lashed down on top of the mahogany framed skylights. Undoing the lashings, Caldwell carefully rolled the dingy off the doghouse and right on over until its gunwhale rested on the safety-line stanchions.

"Let the Lord be praised," Cyr cried from below, as the cabin was suddenly filled with light. Walker groaned.

Caldwell took the painter in hand, picked up the bow, swung the small boat 90 degrees, then rolled and pushed it with one motion so it slid off the safety line, and splashed alongside, right side up. Tying the painter to a stanchion, he straddled the safety line, then stepped into the whitehall. Caldwell pulled the oars out from where they were wedged under the seats. He checked that the bailer was still tied to the thwart. Then he untied the line, gave BALI a shove, fixed the oarlocks, arranged the oars, and rowed into the fog.

Ten minutes later he reappeared. The rub rail on the whitehall tapped against BALI's side, and Caldwell clambered aboard, painter in hand. He secured it to a stern cleat, and followed his nose below. Cyr had, indeed, made a delicious breakfast.

After they'd eaten, and were having second cups of coffee with their smokes, Caldwell made his report. "This southwester is blowing too hard for the dingy to get to Smithport, but I still think it was right to anchor off here, until we know what's what. Maybe the Colombian got scared off, and the Coasties are looking for something that isn't there." Caldwell still hoped they might skate on this one.

"So how do we find out?" Cyr asked.

"Hitch a ride, I guess," Caldwell replied. "If we had a CB, we could probably ask a lobsterman for a ride." He shrugged. "The tide is coming back up. We can probably hail a clammer going in."

"How elegant," Cyr remarked.

"We may be able to rent something at the harbor," Caldwell went on. "For sure this is a dandy hideout, if we need one."

"So what do we do when we get there?" Cyr wanted to know. "Call Rizzo?"

"And if the drop did happen?" Caldwell asked.

"We find Dow," Walker said flatly.