Rob Scott: The Hickory Staff

Charleston, South Carolina

Next winter

The bay waters rolled in gentle swells, almost silent, deep blue colour fading to black. Norman Felson looped a bowline hitch around a small stanchion near the helm of his thirty-six-foot sloop, the Offshore Maid, and attached the opposite end to the tiller, fixing the helm to free his hands because a spanker line had come loose aft. He hauled it in, then hustled back to the bridge as soon as he had the errant sheet reset. He was still uncomfortable sailing the sloop on his own, and didn’t like to be away from the helm for more than a few seconds. He looked forward to sunrise; he worried less in daylight.

Kay, his wife, was working in their small cabin; he smelled the aroma of fresh coffee mixing with the cool breeze drifting down from the Chesapeake. Save for the distant glow of channel markers and moonlight glimmering in a kaleidoscope of geometric glints flashing from wave to wave, the bay was dark. Felson navigated north and east using his GPS satellite computer, heading towards the Charleston Harbour lighthouse before turning into the Atlantic and setting course for Nags Head. He liked to imagine himself a sailor from a previous age; he’d often try to stay his course using compass and the stars alone – though he was rarely successful. He silently cursed his Coast Guard navigation instructor for encouraging him to rely so heavily on satellite technology.

He checked again to be sure he had programmed the correct coordinates into his navigation computer before calling to Kay, ‘Is the coffee ready?’

‘Just about,’ she replied, ‘I’ll be up in a minute.’

Felson took a bite from a blueberry jelly doughnut coated with uncooperative powdered sugar and realised he was actually quite happy to live in this age. Certain the doughnut was the finest invention of the last millennium, he found himself imagining with a shudder what Francis Drake might have eaten for breakfast as he prepared to battle the Spanish Armada in 1588: drytack biscuits infested with weevils. Drawing out a dollop of jelly with his finger, he grimaced; the old captain’s fare could never have been as exquisitely simple and delicious as the doughnuts Felson bought, still warm, for $2.99 a dozen.

Kay appeared from below. She smiled as she handed him a steaming mug bearing an embossed logo from the Fairfield Gazette, the paper that had carried his first story more than forty years earlier. Now he was the editor, and proud of it.

‘Thank you,’ he said, taking a sip. Kay didn’t answer; she stared out into the inky darkness as the undulating waves, unbroken by even the smallest of whitecaps, rocked the Offshore Maid in gentle rhythm. Her hair was pulled back with a length of black velvet ribbon; her cardigan was unbuttoned despite the chilly pre-dawn wind.

‘Honey?’ Felson bent over to recheck their heading on the compass mounted above the helm. ‘Kay, are you-?’

He turned to find his wife standing directly behind him and jumped. ‘Jesus, you scared me… what-?’ His words were choked off as Kay took him firmly by the throat. With almost inconceivable strength she began to squeeze the life from him. Felson tried to prise her fingers from his neck. He felt his hand, coated with bloody pus, come away from her wrist, and, for a second, he was concerned for her. Why was she bleeding? But confusion was soon supplanted by terror: Kay was not relaxing her grip.

Panic struck. Norman Felson began to struggle furiously, kicking and writhing in his wife’s unfeasibly forceful grasp. He felt his nose begin to bleed as capillaries burst and heard himself gagging phlegm against the collapsed walls of his windpipe. As consciousness closed in, Felson watched his wife draw back her free hand. A tiny fist illuminated only by light from the sloop’s galley came forward with lightning speed to slam into his chest, tearing sinews and shattering bones.

Kay Felson wiped her bloody hand on the folds of her skirt and tossed her husband’s body back against the transom like a load of soiled laundry. A thin trickle of blood ran across the deck and out a scupper into the bay as the elderly woman gripped the helm and brought the Offshore Maid about.

With a cry of alarm, arms flailing, Steven Taylor broke the surface of the water. The sting in his eyes and briny taste in his throat confirmed his first suspicion. ‘The ocean, Christ, I’m in the ocean,’ he shouted, then coughed and began treading water. Thankfully, it was not too cold, and by the dim light of dawn he could see land, a beach, about a quarter-mile to the west. His sodden boots and woollen clothing weighed heavily on him, but he was glad to have them. He set his jaw for the difficult swim to shore.

Kicking towards the beach, Steven’s thoughts were churning. Would his credit cards still work? If not, he’d have to steal a wallet. He needed a flight, quickly. He had no idea where he was, or how far it was to Denver; Steven prayed he would come ashore, find an airport and be in Colorado by late afternoon. They would be expecting him between 5.00 and 5.15. After that, at least the immediate pressure would be off, and Steven would have twelve hours more to get home.

Fifteen minutes later, the sun had risen further in the morning sky and Steven recognised that he was on the east coast – he wasn’t certain which east coast, but he was hoping against hope that it was the United States. He had no passport to ensure safe passage home from a foreign country. He could claim he had lost it, or that it had been stolen, but he did not have the luxury of time to argue with the clerical staff at an American Consular Office in some foreign city. As Steven approached the beach, his concerns were alleviated somewhat by the sight of a dimly lit sign above a closed concession stand: Bratwurst.

He laughed to himself. ‘Well, unless they put in an ocean off the east coast of Germany, I’m back home… off course by eighteen hundred miles, but home nevertheless.’ If this were Florida, Hilton Head or, even better, New Jersey, there would be an airport close by. Judging from the temperature of the water he guessed he was south of the Chesapeake; although chilly, he hadn’t succumbed to hypothermia – at this time of year, northern waters would be much too cold: he would have frozen by now.

As he waded ashore, his feet leaving the only imperfections in the trowel-perfect sand, he noticed someone lying on the beach. It was too early for tourists: this was someone who had been there all night. Shaking water from his clothing, he quickly covered the distance to the sleeping form.

‘Hey, wake up.’ Steven nudged the stranger lightly by the shoulder. He was a young man, probably in his mid-twenties, dressed in a rumpled suit and ruined tie; he smelled of stale beer and vomit. ‘C’mon, wake up,’ Steven repeated emphatically.

‘What? Christ, what time is it?’

‘It’s 5.15,’ Steven said, though he had no real idea – he had traded his watch for a horse in Rona months ago.

‘Are you a cop?’ the young man asked, still half asleep.

‘No. Listen, I have one quick question. Where are we?’

‘What? Leave me alone. Jesus!’

‘Tell me where we are.’ Steven was slightly amused: this young professional would soon wake to a painful hangover.

‘Folly Beach, South Carolina. Now shove off, asshole.’ The groggy drunk rolled back onto the sand. As he did, Steven noticed a set of keys lying near a pack of cigarettes, a lighter and nine empty beer bottles.

He waited a minute, counting the man’s steady breaths, before he silently stole the keys and the lighter. Running up the gentle slope to the parking lot, he hesitated a moment and turned to look once more at the sunrise. The light had brightened the waterfront, bringing a sense of hope and renewal. The still form of the sleeping drunk seemed out of place, ink spilled on an impressionist landscape.