The Drifter

“It said ‘eat me’ last time I looked.”

“Then at least fix the lettering on the stern,” she advised. “If you didn’t name her, who did?”

He thought for a moment, no doubt weighing what it was safe to tell her. “Some English guy I met in Seattle. I won her in a card game. Her owner was down on his luck, but I’m told in her day, she sailed the Far East, plying the waters around the island groves, looking for rare teas. I mean to go there someday,” he said, almost to himself.

“Go where?”

“I’m not sure. Someplace far. Exotic. Maybe I’ll just follow the sunset until I find what I’m looking for.”

The gruffness in his voice caught at her. “And what’s that, Mr. Underhill?”

“Paradise. Like that picture in your office.” His ears reddened after he spoke. “I guess. Just something I’ve always wanted to do.” He shrugged dismissively. “Pass me that mallet, will you?”

She handed it to him, frowning a little.

“What’s the matter, Doc?”

“I find you quite hard to understand,” she admitted. “My profession is the motivating factor of my life. It’s what gives me direction and purpose. Yet you have no plan for your life beyond sailing to the next port. You’re like this ship, Mr. Underhill. You’ve got no fixed rudder. No fixed course. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“I’m a dreamer. You’re a planner. Who the hell are you to say your way’s better?”

She felt a flush rise in her cheeks. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I apologize.”

“You don’t need to.” He picked up a sanding block and got to work.

“How long will these repairs take?” she asked, eager to leave the topic of planning and dreaming.

He blew out his breath. “Weeks, according to Davy Morgan who claims to know such things. He was amazed I was able to get here from Seattle. He gave me a list of repairs a mile long. I can do the work myself, but I’ll have to go back to the city to earn enough money to pay for supplies.”

“How will you earn the money?”

He winked. “I’m a gambling man.”

“Is that why you’re on the run?” she asked.

“Who said I was on the run?”

“You didn’t have to.” She pressed her mouth into a wry smile. “I guessed it as soon as you tried to abduct me. You confirmed it when you warned me not to alert the sheriff.”

He squinted menacingly at her. “And did you?”

She forced herself to hold his gaze. “No. But if you give me a reason to, I shall.”

“I’m not looking for trouble.”

“I know.” And she did. She’d briefly considered a visit to Sheriff Lemuel St. Croix, but she hadn’t actually done it. St. Croix was a tough, humorless man who seemed out of place in Coupeville. A bachelor of middle years, he had a taste for fine things; even on his modest lawman’s salary he’d managed to acquire a Panhard horseless gasoline carriage. Keeping law and order in the town did not seem to concern him overly much. This was not a problem since crimes in the area tended to be petty and few.

Lost in thought, she watched Jackson work. When he spoke of the sea, a dreamer took the place of the gunfighter. There was something compelling in his intent manner. Passion burned brightly in his gaze; she was caught by it. She couldn’t remember the last time such a powerful desire had burned inside her. The rigors of everyday life had dulled her heart to dreaming, it seemed.

When had it happened? she wondered. When had all her dreams died? And why hadn’t she felt the loss until now, until she looked into the eyes of a stranger and saw the lure of possibility?

She shouldn’t probe into the life of this drifter. He was clearly on the wrong side of the law, clearly had much to hide in his past. The less she knew about him, the better. It was time to tell him what she’d come to say in the first place. “Your wife seemed troubled when I checked on her yesterday evening.”

“She lost a baby. I guess that might trouble a woman some.”

And you? she wanted to ask. Does it trouble you?

“Of course,” she said carefully. “But I fear it is more than that. She said—” Leah broke off. Were they a husband and wife who shared everything, or did they keep secrets from one another? “She seems agitated.”

“Yeah, well, she gets that way.”

“She’s been having some rather terrible attacks of panic, almost like waking nightmares. She speaks of blood and fire—a stain on the floor, a burning house. And she seems to have a horror of being closed in. Mr. Underhill, your wife suffers from a fear that someone or something is after her. Someone is hunting her down.”

She wanted him to laugh it off, to joke it away as he did so many things.

Instead, his eyes took on the metallic sheen they’d had the first time she’d beheld him. The dull gleam of gunmetal. Danger emanated from him, causing her to take a step back toward the skylight hatch.

“It’s all just her talk,” Jackson said. “And none of your goddamned business.”

“Anything that affects the condition of my patient is my business,” she retorted.

He squeezed his jaw, clearly fighting his own temper. She wondered what made him so angry, what he was hiding. She wished it could be as he said—none of her business. Unfortunately, it was.

“Carrie’s had a rough life,” he said grudgingly. “We were raised in an orphanage, and if she seems scared sometimes, it’s because her whole life’s been scary.”

She felt an unexpected thickness in her throat. Life had clearly been brutal to Carrie. “I see. I’m sure the orphanage was awful for you both.”

“Awful,” he echoed, putting a wry twist on the word. “I guess you could say that. All right, Doc. You ready to help with the mast?”

Surprised, she followed him up on deck. He’d put his outburst behind him. It was, she realized, the boat that seemed to save him. He forgot everything else when he worked on it.

“Here.” He tossed her a line. “Grab onto that. If I did this right, the top section should drop into place.” He struggled for several moments with his end, breaking out in a sweat and cursing. He paused to peel off his plaid shirt and fling it aside. Leah stared, caught herself doing so, then forced her attention to the task at hand.

As the tall fir topmast responded to the ropes and pulleys, she caught her breath. Jackson experimented with hoisting the sails, and with an unexpected thrill, she took heady satisfaction in the majestic loft of the canvas. She felt a curious tightening inside her, a sort of breath-held anticipation. Then, when the sail unfurled against the sky, the sensation uncoiled with a sudden warmth that made her part her lips to utter an involuntary sound of pleasure. How had she missed the excitement of seafaring when she lived right at the edge of it?

Shading her eyes, she admitted the answer. She missed everything important because she was an outsider. It took a stranger on the run to show her the wonders right under her nose.

She lowered her hand to find him eyeing her curiously. The sun glinted off the sheen of sweat on his shoulders.

“Is something wrong, Mr. Underhill?”

“You liked that, didn’t you?”

“Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I did find it…diverting.”

“I mean you really liked that.”

“Indeed. But how can you tell?”