T. Boyle - When the Killing's Done

“Later,” he tells her now, colder than any mummy, and then softens it. “Tonight,” he says, “when we get back. And I’ll take you to dinner. To celebrate. But right now we’ve got some business to do, remember?”

Stretching, her bare legs canted away from the sleeping bag and that warm, fleshy odor rising to him: “We almost there?”

He nods, already in motion. “Yeah,” he says. “And coffee’s in the galley, hot, fresh and ready. I’m going to wake Wilson, okay?”

Breakfast consists of bagels, peanut butter and a fruit medley Anise put together the night before. They eat at the helm, she perched beside him on the seat, her bare legs tucked under her, spooning up fruit while he pushes the throttle forward and the boat skips over the waves. Wilson is down below, rattling around, singing snatches of something unrecognizable in a clear tuneless voice. The sun hovers and fades. Birds skew away from them and fall back in their wake. Full throttle, a bit of chop now, the bagels rubbery, too moist, the coffee setting fire to his stomach, each sliver of fruit dropping down his throat like a stone thrown from a cliff — is he going to be sick, is that it? — and then the island’s right there in front of them, big as a continent.

The anchorage is on the north shore, near the eastern tip of the island, and as they motor into the mouth of the cove — rock right to the water, the cliffs wrapped around so tightly it’s like heading into a cave with the top lifted off — they can see the Park Service boat moored to one of the buoys there, buoys reserved for the NPS and the Coast Guard, while the dock beyond them is for the exclusive use of the concessionaire that brings day-trippers out to the island. Everybody else has to drop anchor farther out and take a dinghy into shore. All right. Fine. He has no argument with that — or maybe he does, because these sons of bitches act as if the place is their own private reserve when in fact it’s a public resource, but that’s moot now. What matters — what heartens him as he drops anchor and scans the cove — is that nobody seems to be around. No recreational boaters, no Park Service types, no Ph.D.s or bird-watchers. Just the mute black cliffs and a scurf of parched brown vegetation. And the dock, with its iron steps and railings winding up onto the plateau above.

Anise will stay with the boat, that’s what he’s decided. She’s not going to be happy about it, but the breeze is picking up and even after he puts out the second anchor he realizes somebody’s going to have to stay aboard in case of emergency — the anchorage isn’t as protected as he’d like, and the last thing he wants is to come back to a boat blown onto the rocks. And he needs Wilson with him to spread the stuff, because Wilson has the mind-set and stamina to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible — before anybody shows up to ask what they’re doing, that is — while Anise, for all her commitment to the cause, tends to dawdle, making a fuss over this plant or that or stopping to admire the view or a butterfly or the way a hawk soars and dips over the cliffs on wings of fire, already composing the song in her head. Besides, she’s the most recognizable, especially with that hair and the long smooth white run of her legs no man could ignore, unless he’s blind, and there aren’t all that many blind park rangers, at least as far as he knows. All this comes to him as he stands on deck, scanning the shore with his Leica. Off in the distance, he can hear the barking of seals. The sea begins to slap at the hull. If it was flat-calm, dead-calm, it would be different.

Inside, in the cabin, Anise and Wilson are busy twisting open plastic bottles and upending them in the depths of the backpacks, along with a judicious measure of cat food, out of the twenty-five-pound bag, the tabs and kibble intermingled like chicken feed, not that he’s ever seen chicken feed, but it’s the principle, the scattering principle, he’s interested in. Reach in and fling — that’s what he’s after. Vitamin K happens to be the antidote to brodifacoum and other anticoagulant baits, and the idea is that if the rats consume the poison pellets, well, then they’ll eat the vitamins too — they’ll want them, need them — and, once ingested, the vitamins will go to work neutralizing the blood-thinning properties of the bait. That’s the hope, at any rate, because he’s seen what the poison does and it’s as cruel as anything he can conceive of — heartless, sickening — and people think nothing of it, not on the islands or in their own backyards.

He’s never caught any of them at it, but his neighbors must sow d-CON like grass seed, judging from all the sick and dying animals he’s found along the roads, birds especially. Jays, crows, sparrows, even a hawk. Any number of times, walking down to the post office or the beach or to have a drink in one of the bars along Coast Village Road, he’s come across rats huddled on the side of the pavement, their eyes red, a bright blooming spot of blood in each nostril, quaking, suffering, unaware of him or anything else, and what of the raccoon or opossum — or dog — that comes along and scavenges the dying animal or even its corpse? They call that secondary poisoning, and he doubts if that’s very pretty either.

“Okay,” he says, bracing himself against the table as the boat rocks on the swell, “I don’t see any helicopters, or not yet anyway — when they do the drop they’re going to close off the island, and if we don’t hustle out there, who knows how long before some Park Service honcho comes along and tells us we can’t land at all.” He hefts one of the backpacks experimentally. “Oh, and we’re going to need to fit everything in just two of the packs.” He glances at Anise, then drops his eyes. “The wind’s up, baby. You’re going to have to stay aboard. Like we discussed.”

“Uh-uh. No way.”

“Sorry.”

“Shit,” she explodes, jerking her pack across the table as if it’s come to sudden vicious life before snatching it up and slamming it to the floor. “I don’t want to be cooped up in here while you’re out there, I don’t know, doing things. I want to do my part. Why you think I even came?”

This is the kind of thing that goes right by him, because there aren’t going to be any arguments, not here, not today, and he doesn’t bother to answer. He props his own pack between table and bench, folding back the flap to expose the interior, which, he sees, is a little better than half-full. Without looking up, he bends wordlessly to retrieve her pack and invert it over his. There’s a dry rattle as the tablets tick against the nylon interior, Wilson gliding forward to offer up his own pack so as to balance out the load. When they’re done, when they’ve shrugged into the packs and adjusted their identical black baseball caps — Anise’s idea, as are the black jeans and hoodies, a way of confusing their identities in the event anyone should spot them on the trail — he digs out a tube of sunblock and extends it to her. “It’s not fair,” she mutters, squirting a dab of the stuff in one palm and leaning forward to work it into his face and neck in a firm circular motion, her hands cold, fingers wooden, making her displeasure known.

What can he say? That he’s sorry, that he’ll make it up to her, that someone has to be in charge? That life is imperfect? That’s she’s not in kindergarten anymore and neither is he? He gets to his feet while she’s still applying the stuff, impatient, nervous now, in danger of losing it, and all he can say is, “If the boat breaks anchor, you just start the engine and keep her away from the rocks till we get back. All right? You got it?”

Then they’re in the dinghy, the waves jarring them like incoming rounds even though they’re in the lee of the boat, and Anise is handing down the backpacks while he yanks at the starter cord on the little 20-horsepower Merc, thinking Please God, do not let them get wet. Not now. Not after all this . He can picture the thing flipping, the vividest image, the shock of the water, the crippling waves, he and Wilson clawing and blowing while the swamped boat slews away from them, a thousand bucks’ worth of vitamin K 2spread across the bottom of the bay and every rat on the island bleeding out its mouth and ears and anus. The wind tastes like failure, like defeat and humiliation. It’s over , he’s thinking, over before we start . But Wilson is sure-handed, Anise adept, and the engine catches on the second try. He shifts into gear as the dinghy drifts free on a whiff of exhaust, twists the accelerator and noses the boat toward shore.