Employee #1112
Acknowledgement: I submitted what I thought—by the standards of a frustrated writer with no formal training—was a halfway decent first draft to my friend Nicole Bailey. Her pointed observations gave me the insight to take this story in an entirely new direction, one that I didn't even think possible. For Nicole's keen eye for substance an unfailing eye for style, I am deeply grateful.
The rally came in the bottom of the sixth, with two out. The Padres tied the game at 3 on a homer by Fernando Tatís Jr, complete with his characteristic stutter step between second and third. Now Machado was on second, hoping to be the go-ahead run. Eric Hosmer, the Padres' somewhat maligned first baseman, made the short walk from the on-deck circle to the batter's box. It wasn't completely fair, Derrick thought from his second-deck seat. Hosmer's tenure in San Diego had been streaky and one could make the case that he had underperformed, but he could come through in the clutch. Derrick had been a fan going back to Hosmer's days in Kansas City, and was glad to see him in a San Diego uniform.
"Here we go Hos. Trade places with him!"
Derrick was quite aware that Hosmer wouldn't hear him down on the field, but that wasn't the point. The point was to allow yourself to get caught up in the moment and make a little noise and have a little fun. He took a long pull off a pint of amber ale. It was his third beer of the afternoon, but that's why God created trains. Neither Derrick nor any of his buddies had driven to the ballpark, and there were no concerns about driving home. As he set down the beer, he almost missed the 2-2 pitch that changed the outcome of the game. A slider that hung just a little, from the looks of it, and Hosmer jumped all over it, taking it slightly the opposite way. You could tell from the sound the bat made that the ball was going to carry. Derrick shifted his attention from the arc of the baseball to the center fielder, whose all-out sprint toward the left-center wall said everything you needed to know about where the ball was going. The ball bounced a few feet in front of the warning track before striking the outfield wall. The center fielder played the carom perfectly, but by the time he had the ball Hosmer was halfway to second and Manny Machado was practically walking the third base line toward home. An RBI double gave the Padres a 4-3 lead that the bullpen would go on to hold.
Derrick and his friends toasted the win with one last beer at the Half Door, and then they each went their separate ways. Derrick's way was to the ornate, turn-of-the-twentieth-century Santa Fe depot on Kettner Boulevard. Soon after, he settled into a business class seat on Amtrak train 591. Before sunset, Derrick passed the time enjoying the ocean views outside his window. After sunset, he spent the remainder of the ride back to Orange County half dozing off.
These tracks had been built sometime in the late 1800s. Then as now, they carried a little freight down to San Diego and back but were primarily there for passenger service. Beyond that, there was a paucity of historical documentation, some passing references in Wikipedia articles, and little else. It might make for an interesting project. Maybe a book about the workers who built this particular hundred-mile stretch of track. He'd have to remember to call Jess in Fort Worth tomorrow. It was time to get back in the saddle, time for at least a tentative return to research and writing. Nothing would ever erase what happened that day, now eight years past, or remove the sense of guilt and responsibility, but it was time.
* * *
And so every Saturday Derrick and his undergraduate teaching assistant Jennifer hopped in the car and left a liberal arts school in rural Michigan south of Ann Arbor to drive the hour and a half to Detroit, taking extensive notes and photographs of every factory they visited. On the day it happened, they were going downtown to an old electroplating plant, the kind of place that would have applied chrome plating to bumpers back in the days when automobile bumpers where chrome plated. This place promised to be a particularly toxic environment, and he wasn't about to take any chances. They both donned respirators before they climbed the half-assed chainlink fence in front of the building and walked in through the unlocked door.
The first thing Derrick and Jen were struck by was the peculiar way the light shone through the numerous holes in the roof, individual rays penetrating the dark indoor space is if the light of Heaven itself were illuminating this cathedral of nihilism. Derrick and Jen snapped a number of photos before Jen went looking for the roof access. She had to document the roof's decay from above, she told Derrick, and besides, the light was just so good right now. Derrick tried to talk her out of it. He didn't try hard enough. Not a day went by since then without him thinking of how he didn't try hard enough.
He was cited for misdemeanor trespass. The DA seemed content to leave it at that: a tragic accident. Instead of doing research, he spent his weekends for the next year clearing brush and trash from the side of Highway 23. About the time his community service was winding down, the university settled with Jennifer's family, and the dean of the history department asked for Derrick's resignation.
Nothing came of the industrial ruins research. He couldn't bring himself to resume any of it. He found a job teaching history at a community college in Southern California, where he was sure nobody would give a damn if he ever published another word again. He and Julie sold their house in Michigan. Like so many before him, from the Gold Rush to the post World War II boom and right on to the present day, Derrick attempted to reboot his life in California.
* * *
"Sounds good. Wait; let me check something real quick." He fiddled with his phone a minute and then resumed. "Yeah, the Lakers are playing the Mavs in early January, while I'm still on semester break. I'll see you then."
* * *
The DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University turned out to be an excellent start. The railroad history collection consisted of file cabinets organized by company; a librarian quickly helped him locate the section for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. He found personnel records, crew rosters, pay records, even a few photos. There'd have to be a lot of follow-up, but some descendant of one of these guys was bound to turn up with a diary, or a box of letters to wives and sweethearts, written in the sincere hope that they would never meet. Derrick pored through the file cabinets, taking photos with his phone of any document that looked like it might be related to construction of trackage between Los Angeles and San Diego. There'd be time to read and organize later.
Jess treated him to a sixteen-ounce New York strip that was cooked to a sublime medium rare. The Lakers beat the Mavericks 112-104.
* * *
Going into a library's primary sources collection, looking through documents that haven't been seen by human eyes in decades or even centuries, is cool. Writing is cool. Collating your research is unglamorous drudgery. Derrick went about the job methodically, first weeding out the irrelevant from the relevant, then organizing the relevant. He had some idea of the size of the workforce involved in laying down track between LA and San Diego beginning in 1886. He had some names—even a few names that popped up often enough to suggest some importance. Those would be the first where he'd try to find personal records, or even a surviving descendant.
Then he had a number. He didn't think too much of it at first, but the number kept showing up over and over again. Employee #1112. He didn't even realize companies assigned numbers to their employees back in the nineteenth century. There was never a name. It might have been one of the names he had in the innumerable other records he'd been through, but the number was never seen alongside the name of its owner. He tried everything he could think of to triangulate. Any particular thing a corporation does is likely to generate more than one document: there'd be work orders, pay records, invoices for material purchases. Surely he could find two or three documents related to the same activity that listed Employee #1112 by number on one and by name on another, but nothing Derrick tried gave him any clue as to the identity of Employee #1112. For practical purposes, 1112 was his name.
The more Derrick looked, the more the enigma deepened. There were quite a few names that came up in multiple documents, but Employee #1112 showed up far more often than any of them—until he didn't. There was a pay record for Employee #1112 dated August 19th, 1887, and then nothing. This employee who turned up in document after document suddenly ceased to exist. Or maybe the AT&SF finally started calling him by his name, and Derrick just couldn't figure out which of the half dozen or so names he knew as well as the names of his friends was Employee #1112.
* * *
Spring break came and went, and then the spring semester was over. Derrick had lost momentum on the book project. It's not that he didn't set aside time to work on it. The problem was that by now he should have everything he needed from that initial library visit and should be following up on what he found. He wasn't doing any of that. He was stuck trying to solve the identity of Employee #1112. By now he knew the stack of documents that he'd been working with almost from memory. Logically, it seemed like a dead end, but he couldn't stop trying. He was compelled, pushed by an unseen force. He would wake up at night thinking about Employee #1112. The presence of this unknown and long-dead railway worker not only took up all of Derrick's research time, it was slowly beginning to consume all of his thoughts.
When the wind comes in off the ocean just right, a June evening in Southern California can be unseasonably chilly. Tonight was just such a night. The last embers of a fire were still burning in the fireplace as Derrick stared for, quite literally, the hundredth time at that final pay record.
"Come on, eleven-twelve, talk to me. Where the hell did you go?" He closed the fireplace's glass doors, turned out the lights, and called it a night.
Derrick woke with a start to the sound of tapping on the house's front windows. The wind must be stronger than he realized, making the tree branches rock until they came in contact with the glass. On the nightstand next to him, the screen on Derrick's phone was glowing. Derrick grabbed the phone and swiped up to break the lock screen. Tired eyes–without glasses—struggled to bring the screen's contents into focus. His text app was open.
I'm here.
The tapping continued. Derrick shot straight up out of bed. "What is it?" Julie asked.
"Oh, nothing. That pizza we had tonight was really salty. I'm gonna grab a Perrier. You want anything?"
"Huh-uh."
As Derrick reached the bottom of the stairs, he realized the wind wasn't blowing. Through the partially shuttered windows, he could see that the trees were still. He took a few steps closer to the window. Between the slats of the shutters he could make out the outline of a figure, clad in overalls, pacing the front porch. Derrick felt his heart race as he walked to the front door, undid the deadbolt, and flung the door open. "Dude, what's up?"
No one answered. Nobody stood on the porch. The front yard was empty. The cul-de-sac was a nocturnal still life of pale grays: grass, sidewalk, asphalt. His demand was met with nothing but the cold, damp darkness of a June night. He closed and locked the door, and walked back up the stairs without grabbing a Perrier.
"You OK?" Julie asked.
"No, I'm not OK. There was some guy on our porch and when I opened the door he was gone. And, and I got this creepy text that says I'm here".
Julie picked up Derrick's phone. "That's a text from you. Remember? My car's in the shop. You picked me up from the office yesterday and texted me when you got there. Look. My messages are on the left; yours are on the right. You said 'I'm here' and then I replied 'Be down in a sec.'"
* * *
Summer was winding down and still nothing to show for the book effort other than frustration—and a little trepidation—over the identity of Employee #1112. Derick was at home checking his e-mail. One caught his eye; the domain portion of the address was smu.edu. He opened it. It was from Mark, the librarian who had helped him out back in January.
Hi Derrick. I stumbled across this today. It was in the Southern Pacific file, but really I think it pertains to AT&SF. Hope it helps. Good luck on your research.
The attachment was an internal memo dated August 15th, 1887. Some engineers were worried about where the right of way went through the swampy areas north of San Diego. A work crew, led by Employee #1112 was to be sent by steamship from Long Beach to San Diego immediately to work on any modifications the engineers decided were necessary.
There was another e-mail from his sailing club. The club wanted to ferry three Capri 22s from Long Beach to San Diego, and was looking for volunteers. For now, the coincidence was lost on him as he started thinking through the logistics of it. He'd have just enough time before fall classes started. He called the club president.
"I can help out with the reposition of those 22s," he said. "Uh, sure. I'd be glad to singlehand if you run shy on volunteers."
* * *
Derrick fired the outboard motor and eased out of the marina in the morning sun. The plan was to leave Long Beach at 0800, carry extra fuel, and motorsail until the wind picked up. His and the other two boats would stop in Oceanside for the night, and then do it all again the following morning. Derrick got a bit later start than the other two, but there was plenty of time and plenty of daylight to make Oceanside. He was singlehanding, which was fine. This was the downwind direction. If the boats had been coming up from San Diego to Long Beach, it'd be another story. After a couple hours, the wind filled in nicely. Derrick reduced the outboard's throttle, shifted to neutral, and killed the engine, glad to have the obnoxious din of the motor replaced by the more familiar sounds of wind in the sails and water against the hull.
Midday found Derrick relaxed in the cockpit, broad reaching on starboard tack. This downwind run was even easier than he thought it would be. All he had to do was keep the compass on the heading that he knew would bring him to Oceanside by nightfall and admire the views of the coast slipping by off his port side. He was making almost the same voyage Employee #1112 made just before the end of his employment with the AT&SF, at pretty much this same time of year. That pay record must have been his last check. What happened after he arrived in San Diego is anybody's guess. Maybe he didn't get along with the engineers and got himself fired. Maybe he quit on the spot when he saw what a pain in the ass dredging those swamps was going to be. Maybe he enjoyed his day at sea so much he took a job on a freighter or a fishing boat in San Diego. Whatever it was, the secret died with Employee #1112, and all that was left for Derrick today was to gaze on the view of the same coast that 1112 had viewed over a century ago.
* * *
Everyone called him Red, even though his beard had long since gone gray. No one knew his real name—no one had ever asked. His responses to any inquiry from a subordinate were as loud as they were profane, and almost certain to carry an admonition to get one's ass back to work. None of his current work crew had ever seen him in a scrap, but at six feet, four inches and 240 pounds, he didn't give off the impression of someone to be trifled with. Nevertheless, he had a reputation for defending his crew the way a mother bear defends her cubs. The way he raised holy hell when the bridge over the Saint Anne River almost ended in disaster was still legendary. "The river's not even a hundred yards wide and doesn't even have any fecking water in it, and still you almost get my goddamn people killed. Fer chrissakes, my dog could do a better job running this railroad."
Red smiled. Of course it was an act. Mostly. These laborers were all young enough to be his sons; their motivation and ability to pay attention were in constant need of adjustment. They all either left their families' farms or the factory jobs that they couldn't hold down, and sought adventure in California. Well, they found adventure, all right. Mucking out a goddamn swamp. A goddamn swamp that had already been mucked out, but evidently the engineers thought it was so much fun the first time that they should send down a work crew to do it all again.
He stood on the deck of the steamship, watching as the water just beyond the ship's stern was roiled by the massive screw. His crew were all below decks, retching their pathetic guts out. Likely none of these kids had ever even seen the ocean before taking this job with the Santa Fe. Red had. He could still feel the soft breeze of July as the summer sun gently dried the racks of salt cod. That was a long time ago, and today he was faced with the impossible task of getting these greenhorns ready to get some actual work done tomorrow. He walked through the companionway to find his seasick crew.
"Jasus H Christ, if I ever seen such an ungrateful bunch of sorry-ass gold bricks in all my years. Here the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe go to all the expense to give you this pleasure cruise and all you can do is sit your asses down here and feel sorry for yourselves."
One laborer wearily looking up from the tin bucket that he'd been puking into was all the response he got.
"Come on, you seasick pansies. Get your asses topside. You need some fresh air, it stinks to high heaven down here."
With the first few breaths of sea air, their demeanor changed almost immediately. Maybe these guys will work out after all. Red was lost in his thoughts when the starboard lookout shouted, "Rogue wave!" It was over in seconds. Red's only thought as he floated in the waves was that those guys would all still be below decks if he hadn't said anything.
* * *
Without warning, the jib started flapping violently. Derrick found himself in a considerable header. The wind that had been behind him and to his right was shifting counterclockwise, so much so that the sail lost its curved shape and ceased to draw wind, flapping uselessly. Sailors called it luffing. Instead of a leisurely broad reach, he was now on a beam reach, with the wind coming directly in from the boat's starboard side, and Derrick had more work to do. Instinctively, he reached across the cockpit for the jib sheet and trimmed in until the jib stopped luffing, and then gave one extra yank against the winch for good measure before cleating off the sheet. He then increased the mainsail trim. Almost immediately, he regretted the slight overtrim in the jib sheet. The wind wasn't just shifting; it was building. A lot. Derrick wasn't sure what to think about it at first. The wind this time of year in Southern California is dominated by convection from the land mass, and is extremely consistent and predictable. In a quarter century of sailing, this was something Derrick had never seen. It was like somebody flipped a switch. One minute it's a pleasant twelve knots off his starboard quarter; the next it's a dangerous twenty-five knots off his beam, and still building.
What Derrick really needed to do was shorten sail—or spill wind off the sails—but he was running out of options. He tried to reach for the jib sheet, but the boat was heeling too much for him to risk leaving his seat on the high side. The overtrim on the jib sheet had induced lee helm. Ordinarily a sailboat will naturally want to turn into the wind. An unattended tiller would result in the boat pointing harmlessly into the wind, giving a singlehander a chance to get organized. This boat wanted to point away from the wind. If he lost his grip on the tiller, the boat would spin uncontrollably away from the wind, exposing her sails to more dangerous wind angles and introducing the very real possibility that the wind would catch the mainsail on the opposite side and swing the boom wildly across the cockpit in a rig-smashing accidental jibe. The insane heel angle, which was still increasing, and the risk of losing his grip on the tiller also meant that reaching the furling line to furl up the jib was out of the question. The mainsail was a catch-22. He couldn't increase main trim to counteract the lee helm because he was already carrying too much heeling force, and he couldn't spill wind off the main to reduce heeling force because that would worsen the lee helm.
Another small header brought the wind just ahead of his beam, and an enormous gust threw a wall of spray into Derrick's face, temporarily blinding him. At the same time, a towering swell hit the boat from the starboard beam. The boat simultaneously heeled to the new wind and rolled to the swell, and before Derrick could clear the spray from his eyes, his whole world turned to water. He couldn't tell up from down, and it took a moment to fully realize what was happening to him and his boat. A keelboat can't capsize; the point of the keel is to put some weight down low and keep the boat upright. In severe weather though, a keelboat could be thrown into a sudden roll that causes the masthead to slam into the surface of the water before popping back up, something called a knockdown. This wasn't a knockdown. This was worse. This was a rollover.
Derrick emerged in the water, and watched in disbelief as the boat righted itself without him in the cockpit. The mainsail was seriously damaged, but the jib had stayed intact—and trimmed. The wind pushed the boat downwind at a speed that Derrick knew he couldn't catch up to. Sailors are taught from the beginning that one should never leave a floating boat. Derrick hadn't had much choice, and darkly reflected that the sharp rocks on the shore north of Laguna Beach would render that particular dilemma moot anyway.
Remarkably, his handheld VHF radio was still clipped to his belt. Miraculously, it still worked as he powered it up and selected channel 16. "MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY. This is S/V ICE DOG, S/V ICE DOG, S/V ICE DOG. I am a Capri 22 with one POB. My position is," he paused and read the numbers off the radio's GPS display, "three three tack five four north, one one seven tack eight two west. The boat has had a rollover and I am overboard. S/V ICE DOG listening one six."
The receiver broke squelch with a couple crackles, but he didn't hear any voices answering. He looked toward the shore and thought about making a swim for it, but he didn't like his chances in the surf on those rocks, especially not in this wind. Better would be to fire up the personal locator beacon attached to his life jacket and hope the Coast Guard would earn their money today. He turned his attention seaward and looked in horror at what he saw. In the distance he saw a figure, clad in overalls, floating in the waves.
Without hesitation, Derrick started swimming toward the figure. He lost his grip on the VHF radio, but kept swimming, desperately trying to reach the struggling survivor. It was him. It had to be him. Whatever rogue wave had rolled Derrick's boat over must have washed him off the deck of that steamship. Derrick kept swimming, looking up every few strokes to see if the figure was still there.
Minutes passed, or maybe hours. No way to know. All Derrick had was the swimming, the effort, and the figure some impossible distance away in the waves. Water obscured his vision, as if it had started raining. Derrick felt a tug on the straps of his lifejacket. He reached back to brush away whatever was tugging at him, but it only got worse. He spun around and threw a left hook, connecting with a man in a helmet and mask. The man didn't punch back, but quickly overpowered Derrick, spinning him back around to face away from the man and wrapping an arm around him. Derrick flailed his arms uselessly for a moment. "He's out there! He's still out there!"
"Sir, you have to come with me. Just relax. Sir?"
"He's out there. Oh God, no. He's still out there!"
Derrick found himself strapped into a Stokes basket, being hoisted up into a helicopter. Moments after he was in, helmet-and-mask guy was being hoisted up. "He's out there! You have to go pick him up!"
"Who's out there sir? You called in on the radio that you had one POB. Were there any other persons on board your vessel?"
"No. Just me on the Capri. But I saw somebody out there."
"We didn't see anybody, sir."
"With all this wind and spray, it's a wonder you can see anything."
"Wind and spray?" Helmet and Mask asked. "Sir, it's a beautiful day. It's twelve knots."
"I'm telling you, he's out there."
The man pulled off his helmet and grabbed a headset. "Lieutenant, the guy says he saw somebody else in the water. . . Yes ma'am. Thank you ma'am." He turned back to Derrick. "Sir, you're almost in shock. You need to relax. We'll find the other guy."
"OK . . . look for a steamship . . . it was eighteen eighty-seven . . . ."
The helicopter's engines grew louder, and the aircraft banked to the left. Derrick felt tired, more tired than he ever felt in his life. He closed his eyes.
* * *
The room Derrick woke up in was brightly lit. A TV was mounted high on the wall opposite the bed. A sort of TV tray on wheels straddled the bed. An IV bag hung on the other side of the bed. The view out the window to his left wasn't too shabby; this hospital room had to be a good ten floors up.
A man in a tropical blue Coast Guard uniform stood beside the bed. "Good evening sir. I'm Aviation Survival Technician Second Class Ramon Herrera. We met earlier today."
"Nice to see you." Herrera had a bruise on his right cheek just below the eye that suggested he might have gone a round with Manny Pacquiao. "Jesus. What happened to you?"
"Sometimes water rescue victims become combative. It's an occupational hazard."
"Well, I hope you gave as good as you got it."
Herrera smiled. "I held my own. Anyway, I wanted to tell you about that second person in the water you reported. We couldn't stay on station, so the AC, uh aircraft commander, called in your report. An 87-foot cutter that happened to be under way spent a few hours doing a search pattern in the area. They didn't find anything. We didn't pick up any EPIRBs, and nobody has been reported overdue."
"What time is it?"
"It's eight o'clock at night. Late enough that if a surfer or paddle boarder's family got worried, we'd know about it by now. You were the only one in the water today, so hopefully that'll put your mind at ease."
"Yeah. Must've been seeing things. Thanks. And bravo zulu on the rescue today. I'd buy you a drink, but I heard the bar here sucks."
Herrera laughed. "Well, maybe I can take you up on that another time."
"Done." As Herrera left the room, Derrick fumbled around on the TV tray. His phone was long gone—probably at the bottom of the Pacific—but there was a pad and pencil. He wrote down AST2 Ramon Herrera. He'd make good on that drink offer.
A woman in teal scrubs wearing a stethoscope entered the room. "Hi. I'm doctor Denise Chen." If Derrick lived to be a hundred, he would never get used to the sight of an MD who's younger than him. "You were in shock when you came in, and had a bit of hypothermia. That's all stabilized nicely. My biggest concern now is how much seawater you might have ingested. I'd like to keep you on the intravenous antibiotics overnight, and then we'll send you home probably tomorrow with some oral antibiotics."
"Sounds good."
"Are you feeling OK? Do you have any questions for me?"
"Not that I can think of. I'm feeling pretty decent. Thanks a lot. Nice to meet you."
* * *
Getting discharged from a hospital involves a lot of hurry up and wait. Endless forms to fill out and pages of discharge instructions to go over. Not only does every doctor who heard your name have to sign off on your discharge, at least half the doctors who had lunch with them also have to sign off. Finally, at about one in the afternoon, Dr. Chen gave the final approval. Julie was there to bring him a set of clean clothes and give him a ride home. At some point, an orderly gave Derrick a plastic grocery bag containing the clothes he had on when he arrived.
Derrick opened the bag and looked in at the damp shorts and t-shirt inside. The bag gave off a musty smell. He thought he might just toss the whole thing out when he got home. Something else caught his eye. A light blue brimmed cap. He had a dingy old Padres cap from several years ago when the Padres wore blue. He always wore it sailing. He was sure the cap had fallen off during the rollover and was lost forever but apparently it had somehow survived the ordeal. He reached into the bag and picked up the cap. It wasn't a Padres cap. It was the kind of blue denim hat that you'd picture a nineteenth century railroader wearing. Derrick put the hat back in the bag with a trembling hand. He didn't say anything. Julie had been trying to talk him into seeing somebody ever since that night with the dark figure on the porch, and he was starting to think she was right, but not now. He was just a few minutes from getting out of here; the last thing he needed was to wait around several more hours for a psychiatric evaluation.
Derrick glanced across the bed at the dry clothes that Julie brought for him. "Uh, could I have a moment of privacy?"
"But honey. I'm your wife. It's no big—"
"Please? I'll only be a minute."
The look on Julie's face was more perplexed than annoyed as she turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her. Derrick reached into the bag with his wet clothes and pulled out the hat. He studied it a moment, turning it in his hands. The room had an uncomfortable steel-framed chair, the kind that seemingly every hospital room has one of so that at least one visitor can sit. He tossed the hat onto the chair and walked to the window, taking in the view as he twisted out of his hospital gown and dressed.
He turned away from the window after he finished dressing, glad to finally be in some real clothes, and saw the overall-clad figure, wearing a blue denim railroader's hat, sitting in the chair. The figure slowly turned his head to look at Derrick without saying a word, without so much as a change in his facial expression to indicate that he even noticed that Derrick was there. The blue of the figure's overalls and hat were muted, almost drained entirely of all color, as were the tones of his skin and hair. It was as though Derrick were looking at a projection of an old black-and-white photo.
"Wherever it is you belong," Derrick began, surprised his voice even worked, "it's not here. And it's not my home, or my boat.
"I know that somehow you fucked up. I don't know how I know it, but I know it, and I also know what it feels like. I fu—," his voice caught. He took a deep breath. "I fucked up. Maybe you came looking for me because it's something we share.
"I won't forget her ever—her sly sense of humor, the way she loved pizza—but the way I've been carrying this around, I can't keep carrying it around forever. And neither can you. I'll tell your story. And the men you were responsible for, I'll tell their story. I give you my word, they won't be forgotten. Their story will be told. You're done here. A hundred thirty-five years is long enough. You're done here."
The figure appeared to nod slowly, still not making anything resembling eye contact. Derrick turned to look out the window again, and put his face in his hands. He wept for Jen. He wept for Red. He wasn't even sure why it occurred to him that the guy's name might be Red; it just seemed right. When he turned from the window only the hat remained in the chair, right where he tossed it in the first place. Derrick picked up the hat and put it in the bag with his wet clothes, then walked into the bathroom and washed his face. He found the pad and pencil on the TV tray and made a note to himself below Herrera's name to book a flight to SFO when he got home. The National Parks Service managed a maritime history museum in San Francisco with an impressive research center. He'd find out what happened to that steamship and keep his word.
He opened the door and for the first time saw that he was in room 1112. No. This had to end. Right the hell now. He said he'd tell their stories—and he would—but it was well past time he was left alone. He walked back into the bathroom and threw the hat in the wastebasket, and then walked out of the room to find Julie waiting for him.
"Let's get out of here. I have a lot of work to do on that book project," he said confidently.
"Okay, but where did you get that goofy-ass hat you're wearing?"
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