Chapter 31 - TUG

Walker and Caldwell hustled Liz and Jesse down to Sawyer's dock where the rented whaler was tied up. Jesse was crying in Liz's arms, and the dog was wriggling between them. Liz kept stumbling over obstacles in the path, but Walker pushed her along every time she hesitated.

"Y'all mighta done bettah dan ol' Summy Daghw," Walker observed.

"You mean a real gentleman like you?" Liz asked, bitterly.

Walker gave her another shove. "Mine yuh mout, womun," he ordered.

Liz wondered what had happened to the decent prep school boys these men once were. She couldn't tell about Caldwell, but Walker had put on this macho persona along with the phony-balony accent. She remembered him as a fun-loving prankster who ran with a pack of Southern boys at school, but who wore all the trappings of Andover with a simple nonchalance. He could be just as Ivy as anyone.

Sumner spoke disparagingly about the Walker's of the world, the slow-witted heritage kids who skated through on their entitlements. The elite prep schools were supposed to reward the best and the brightest, but the Walkers always avoided being thrown out, and went to their parents' colleges. Liz had always taken Sum's bitterness with a grain of salt, however. When the uptight faculty wife next door had reported on Sumner slipping in her bedroom window, while her parents were out, and Greenville had caught them in flagrante, Sum had been hustled off campus in a matter of hours. He resented being condescended to by the patrician dean when he knew the dean sucked up to the "important" people. Maybe Walker's hostility to Liz was his own bitterness about having been forced to flounder in the rarefied intellectual atmosphere she'd grown up in.

"God how that hothouse twisted us all," she thought.

The tide was falling, but was still up enough it was a short climb down the ladder. Caldwell offered to take Tug, and Liz clambered down one step at a time, holding on with one hand and hugging Jesse with the other. Walker had her sit with her back to the center console facing forward, holding the boy. Tug, who was sniffing around the wrinkle wagon, yelped when Walker poked him with a silver-toed boot, and scrabbled over to hide behind her legs. Caldwell fired the outboard, and the two men stood behind the console as he steered into the foggy reach.

Idling along, the whaler jostled uncomfortably as it encountered more exposed seas, and Caldwell nudged up the revs until the boat rose up on plane and began acting like a horse at canter, surging along with the waves. He opened the chart, fished out his compass, and held the two on top of the console with one hand.

"You know da way, you?" Walker asked.

"More or less," Caldwell replied. "Different speed, but it should compute." Spotting the green daymark in the fog, he adjusted his heading slightly, and throttled up the outboard. Soon they were speeding past the bell buoy and into the bigger seas of the open passage.

Sitting with her back to their captors, Liz let the tears pour down her face, mixing with the wet fog streaming past them. She held Jesse tight, and felt his body slacken as he fell asleep from emotional exhaustion. "We must be heading east," she reasoned, although her sense of geography out here wasn't real strong. Still, this seemed like the way they'd traveled to Rogue, and Mary's shell heaps. "Maybe that's how Dunk knew about them," she reasoned. "I hope Mary doesn't get caught up in this, too."

It only took about twenty minutes for them to reach the island shore, although Caldwell missed the back door by a hundred yards or so. He had the sense to throttle back when ledges appeared ahead, and turned into the ebbing cross-current which had set off his reckoning. In another minute he could see the entrance to the Hole as a white vacancy between the dark loom of the island spruces, and he nosed into the sheltered waters. He made a perfect course for BALI. As they motored up alongside, Caldwell saw that the dingy was missing, and wondered if Cyr was off somewhere, but their co-conspirator appeared in the companionway when he heard the whaler drawing near.

When he saw Liz, Cyr made a salam with one hand, "Madame Brewster-Dow, I believe. Welcome to our elegant accommodations." Liz looked at him silently, wondering just how far this farce would go.

"Where's the Whitehall," Caldwell asked accusingly.

"Ah, dear Hacky," Cyr scolded, "you mustn't be so ardently accusatory, it's bad for your digestion."

"Where is it?" Caldwell snapped, as he nudged the whaler alongside.

"The rambunctious reprobate decided to decamp," Cyr waved his had vaguely at the fog.

Caldwell went forward and tied the bow line to a stanchion on BALI's rail, then reached down and picked up the puppy, placing him on BALI's side deck.

"You mean you untied it." Caldwell stated.

"I did go for a modest excursion, I confess," Cyr said. Looking at Liz thoughtfully, he continued, "and I happened upon a young lady, on yon isle," nodded toward Big Spruce. "And now the penny drops, doesn't it, my dear?" Liz remained silent.

"She intimated her name was Brewster," Cyr went on, "and I do believe she shares your fine mouth and graceful carriage, though built on a different model."

"Ah doane geddit," Walker spoke.

"I think a young lady relative of Ms. Brewster-Dow's is working an archeological site just around the bend," Cyr explained. "Isn't she?" He asked Liz. She sat absolutely still.

"Well?" Walker asked Liz, menacingly. She shook her head.

"Doane lye tuh me, woman," Walker snarled, stepping around the console, but Caldwell, who was moving a fender along BALI's rail managed to get in the cowboy's way before he could hit Liz again. All the weight on that side of the whaler threw Walker off balance, and he had to grab for BALI's safety line.

"Oop, hang on," Caldwell warned, grabbing Walker's arm. "If he keeps beating Liz, I'm going to have to do something," Caldwell thought.

Liz quietly stood up, holding the sleeping child. "May I get aboard now?" she asked, and the moment passed. Caldwell helped Liz onto the Concordia. She took Jesse below, and settled him securely in the forward berth, under Caldwell's direction.

"I'm sorry about this, Liz," Caldwell whispered as they tucked a blanket around the child. Liz just looked him in the eye silently.

"Awl raght," Walker commanded,"Ah wanna know abaght disheya young lady you fown, Cyrano."

"A handsome and healthy wench, rather scantily clad, and engaged in archeological research," Cyr answered. "I offered to assist her in the more physical aspects of her work," he wiggled his eyebrows. Liz shivered. "But she made gestures at me with her shovel, so I came away." Cyr concluded.

Walker laughed loudly. "Scared y'all off wid a spade, huh? Ahm suprahsed ad you. Mebbe we should offah owah combined services," he said. Caldwell was getting increasingly uncomfortable. Were his partners thinking about rape as well as abduction? He could see Liz was beginning to shake again.

"How did you lose the dingy, Cyr?" Caldwell interjected, hoping to change the subject.

"I neglected to fasten it, old chum," Cyr replied with a melodramatic shrug. The puppy yelped on deck.

"Ah, the call to hound," Cyr quipped, climbing into the cockpit. "Oh dear," he intoned, "the wretched animal has befouled the deck."

"No biggie," Caldwell said quickly, and he passed around Walker, climbed on deck and dipped up a bucketful of seawater with the scrub pail, sluiced the puppy mess out through a scupper. Then he lifted the trembling dog and set him in the cockpit.

Cyr had gone below where he and Walker were now laying down two fat lines of coke.

"Did you call Rizzo?" Cyr asked Walker. The cowboy stiffened, and his hand trembled slightly.

"Mainardi was there," Walker answered without an accent. "Said some fishermen were trying to sell them the barrel. Said if we didn't deliver it we were dead meat." He leaned over and snorted up a good jolt of powder.

"Mama?" Jesse's plaintive voice came from the forward berth.

"You seem to have brought the whole damned menagerie back with you, cowboy," Cyr complained. Walker looked at the woman and child, and his eyes narrowed. Liz quieted Jesse, reassuringly.

"The master of the house was not at home, I gather?" Cyr asked, nodding at Liz. He leaned down and took a snort.

"Ump," Walker sniffed, and rubbed his nose. "Negateeve, amigo. But we got da lure t' cadge da fish. Maybe we have da lil fun wi da bait?" Liz looked over the heads of the two coke addicts and straight into Caldwell's eyes. Her jaw set and her hands clenched.

"I'm not in for that play," Caldwell said calmly.

"Mebbe you-all wahnt invaghted," Walker remarked, snorting the last bit of the line.

"Not on my boat," Caldwell spoke firmly.

"Well, well, well.." Walker said, sitting back and staring at Caldwell. "Ah sense ahr spynless wondah has come ovah all chivalrous, mon ami," he spoke over his shoulder to Cyr.

"Tres gallant," Cyr observed. The puppy whined again in the cockpit. Walker angrily got up, pulling the 45 out of his waistband where he'd tucked it, and started aft.

"No," Liz said aloud. Walker stopped in his tracks.

"Fuck you, bitch. I'll show you what to expect if your Prince Charming doesn't come across." Walker spat over his shoulder, without a trace of drawl. His unadorned voice was even more menacing after the cornpone. "You and your smartass husband, who ended up as a pissant fisherman, and your stuck-up father, who made fun of us lesser beings, and your whole goddamned holier-than-thou. I won't have your dogshit in my life."

Walker pushed past Caldwell, who was stunned by his virulence, bounded into the cockpit, grabbed Tug by the scruff of the neck and slammed him on the side deck. The puppy screamed, and so did Jesse, clutching at Liz's sweater. Then Walker seized the puppy again, flung him up in the air, and fired at him with the 45. Tug landed in the water, scrabbling awkwardly, blood welling out from his side, and Walker leaned over the rail and emptied the gun into him.

Jesse was shuddering in terror in Liz's arms, trying to say "Tuh.. Tuh.. Tug?" Liz hugged him speechlessly, wondering just how far this monster was willing to go. Cyr had a crooked grin frozen on his face.

To his own surprise, it was Caldwell who reacted first. He leaped up into the cockpit and slammed Walker in the face with his opened hand. The big cowboy fell back over the tiller, astonished.

Caldwell stood over him, panting. "You leave Liz and the kid alone, you've done enough." He said.

Walker rubbed his face. "Da worm, he turn," Walker remarked, and nodded his head. "But manana, mah fren, is annudda day."