Pirate Pete's Arc

Chapter 14 of 14

Pete came back to the powder house at dawn, hoping to check his three barrels. Gloria stood outside the shack, arms crossed, waiting for him. She was the loan shark widow who held his ship contract and his rum. She smiled the way a shark smiles, and Pete knew the price had finally come due. "You want your barrels dry and quiet," she said. "Then do me a small thing." She stepped close. "Tonight my men bring in a load. I need a captain to sail it past the harbor patrol. You'll take my cargo out on your ship." Pete's stomach dropped. "My mother's still in the cove. If she sees me sail at night, she'll follow. She'll board. She'll find everything." "Not my problem." Gloria's voice went flat. "Sail tonight, or I pour every barrel out on the shore. In front of your mother. I'll walk her here myself." She let that sit. "I know where she's staying, Pete." Pete looked past her at the leaning door. Behind it sat his rum, and beside it Gloria's gunpowder. He could not sail tonight. He could not lose the barrels either. He needed a third answer, and he needed it fast. He thought of the wreck. Half a mile out, an old ship sat broken on a reef, its hold above the low tide. Nobody rowed there. It was dry inside at low water, and it was one place Gloria's men never went. If the barrels weren't in her shack, she had nothing to pour out. "I'll sail your run," Pete said. "But the barrels move first. I won't leave them here while I'm gone. Your men could crack them for the rum." Gloria studied him. Greed and suspicion fought on her face. "Move them, then. Fast. My cargo comes at dark." Pete rolled the first barrel down to his rowboat while she watched. He grunted and heaved, playing it slow and honest. Then he rowed out of her sight, past the point, toward the broken hull on the reef. A giant barnacle clung to the wreck's side, gray and ridged, an old fixture of these waters. Pete had passed it a hundred times. Today it marked his hiding spot. He hauled all three barrels into the dry hold, one trip at a time. The wreck creaked but held. When he rowed back empty, Gloria checked his boat and found nothing. "Good," she said. "Now the run." That night Pete sailed her cargo past the patrol and returned before dawn. Gloria was satisfied. The favor was paid. His barrels were out of her hands at last. But low tide would not last. Pete stood on his deck at first light and watched water climb the reef. By noon the wreck's hold would flood. His rum was safe from Gloria now, and drowning by the hour, and his mother's ship still sat in the cove.