Waste Not, Want Not td-130 Page 4

  Lenn held his binoculars steady.

  "They're in some kind of trouble," he said with a frown. "Looks like a fire. Radio over. Ask if they need help."

  "Aye, sir," the first officer said. As he reached for the radio, Captain Lenn continued to monitor the other scow.

  It was still smoking. Could be an engine fire. But who knew what they were hauling? Depending on what was on board, a small fire could send a scow up in flames in seconds.

  "I can't raise them, Fred," the first officer said. "Could be they have their hands full."

  "Hmm," Lenn said, lowering his binoculars as the first officer came up beside him. "You and Bob better take the little boat over. See if they-"

  "Holy shit!" the first officer interrupted. He was staring out the window.

  Lenn wheeled just in time to see the other scow's nose lift out of the water. He whipped his binoculars back up.

  A huge fissure ripped the side of the scow. Streams of garbage slurped overboard as the ship listed to one side. As Lenn watched in horror, the bridge windows shattered. Flames began pouring out into the clear blue sky.

  Lenn spun. "Weigh anchor," he ordered. "Sir?" the helmsman asked.

  "Do it! Get us out of here, best possible speed!"

  "What is it, Captain?" asked the suddenly worried first officer. "What's wrong?"

  "Get on the radio to Mayana," Lenn snapped. "Tell them we're under attack."

  "Attack?"

  "Now!" Lenn twisted back to the grimy window. The scow was already slipping under the waves. All that remained was a thick oil slick and bits of floating garbage. He searched desperately for survivors in the widening debris field.

  The first officer had raised Mayana.

  "They want to know if this is some kind of joke," he said, holding out the microphone.

  "Give it here," Lenn commanded. He took a step. But only one.

  The scow lurched suddenly. Lenn had to grab the navigation station to keep from being hurled to the deck.

  "Dammit!"

  He scrambled to his feet and ran to the bridge window. The sea was still calm. Not a cloud in the sky. They hadn't been hit by a sudden squall. Lenn's stomach sank, growing cold as the ocean deep.

  "Captain?" the first officer asked. He was steadying himself on the back of a chair.

  Lenn's voice was flat. He had known it as soon as he'd seen the other scow's damage. Hoped to hell he was wrong.

  "Torpedo," Captain Frederick Lenn replied, voice hollow.

  The instant he spoke, a second explosion rocked the scow. Lenn felt the rolling impact through the metal deck.

  The men were thrown from their stations.

  As Frederick Lenn watched, the rear of his boat split apart. The bridge twisted as the massive weight of garbage shifted and began vomiting into the sea. "Abandon ship!" Lenn shouted.

  The bridge was angling into the water. As the ship listed, the men stumbled and crawled across the slanted floor and out the door.

  The deck was slick. Greasy water attacked their ankles. When his helmsman slipped and fell against the rail, Captain Lenn dragged the kid back to his feet by his shirt collar.

  A lifeboat hung behind the bridge. Holding on to chain railings, the men scurried back to it. As they reached for the metal hooks, there came a sudden painful groan.

  Captain Lenn stopped dead. "My God," he whispered.

  And the ship bucked beneath his feet and split cleanly into two halves.

  The bulk of the cargo dumped into the sea, the bridge pitched forward and a pile of front-loaded garbage came toward them in an avalanche.

  Eighty thousand pounds of trash barreled across the cabin and slammed full force into the struggling crew. Captain Lenn caught a mouthful of rotting garbage before he and his panicked crew were swept into the churning sea.

  With more groaning and spilling greasy mounds of trash, the little scow from New York joined its proud captain and crew in a watery grave.

  Seagulls pecked away at the lazily scattering trash. And far off, the single eye of a periscope watched in silent satisfaction. Sun glinted off glass as it dipped below the waves. And was gone.

  Chapter 4

  It was awful. Just so sad and scary at the same time. And they didn't really care. They were doing it just to shock. It was like all those TV programs now. Those ones where men would jump out of airplanes with rubber bands around their legs or practically set themselves on fire for money. Or worse, the ones where women with tattoos and no self-respect cavorted around like little tramps with men to whom they weren't even engaged, let alone lawfully married.

  One thing was certain-years ago they never would have allowed such things on television. This was just the latest example of the sorry state of the media. In fact, this was worse than all those other shows combined.

  All these thoughts passed through the empathetic brain of Eileen Mikulka as she sipped fretfully at her morning coffee in front of the fifteen-year-old TV in the warm and tidy living room of her small home in Rye, New York.

  "How long has it been going on?" the matronly woman asked, her sympathetic eyes glued to the screen.

  The steam from her World's Greatest Grandma mug curled up around her blue-tinted perm. "About one last night. I can't believe they're wasting all this time on it. They should just let them drown."

  It was just like Kieran Mikulka to say something horrible like that. Eileen's youngest seemed fond of shocking his mother with such thoughtless statements.

  The boy was in his mid-thirties and without a job. He did little but sit around and watch television all day. They said that TV viewing desensitized the young to violence. If Kieran Mikulka was any example, that was certainly true.

  "Kieran, that's a terrible thing to say," Mrs. Mikulka scolded as she put down her mug. She was careful to use one of the cute little froggy coasters she'd picked up twenty-seven years ago on a Jersey shore vacation with her late husband, God rest his soul. The frog was mostly worn-out now, but you could still see his faded green eyes.

  Of course it was terrible. That should have gone without saying. Anyone with an ounce of heart would think the same thing. On the screen the image played again.

  Fire and rescue personnel stood on the street. Beyond them a crowd of onlookers-some still in pajamas and nightgowns-stood anxiously. All around, raging water from a fierce overnight rainstorm rolled furiously down the gutter, cascading into a culvert at the end of the road. The water crashed white around the boots of the burly men.

  The storm drain was barely visible, so deep was the river. The men stooped and dug with their gloved hands. Tree branches and clumps of wet leaves were pulled out. Once they were removed, some of the raging water rolled into the drain. With shouts from the men, a tiny camera no bigger than a wire was slipped down through the metal grate.

  Eileen Mikulka had seen the footage three times. She held her breath as she watched the tiny camera snake its way through the water and into the dark cavern below the street.

  She didn't know how far down it went. It seemed to go on a very long time. At the last moment, it twisted....

  And there they were. All wet and frightened. The three kittens sat meowing on a slippery ledge. Mrs. Mikulka's heart broke when she saw them. "No one knows how they got here or what happened to their mother," a reporter said, voice as serious as if she were reporting on an attempted presidential assassination. "But the three kittens-dubbed Muffy; Tuffy and Sam by the children who first heard their pitiful cries-have so far evaded all attempts by rescue workers to save their lives."

  "It's terrible,'" Mrs. Mikulka said, eyes sad as she watched the drama on the flickering TV screen.

  "It's ridiculous, Ma," Kieran insisted. "Lookit." With the remote, he flipped from channel to channel. All the networks were carrying the same story. "It's been going on like this all night. Three mangy cats were stupid enough to fall in a hole and they're treating it like a dead Lady Di, for Christ's sake. Who the hell cares?"

  "Language," Mrs. Mikulka scol
ded. "And I care. You should, too. Remember Mr. Tiddles?"

  Mr. Tiddles had been the Mikulka family cat until an unfortunate encounter with Mr. Phillips's Oldsmobile had sent him prematurely to kitty Heaven. His earthly remains were buried in an old Buster Brown box out behind the toolshed.

  When she thought of her beloved cat gone ten years come June-Eileen Mikulka made a mental note to do a little weeding when the ground dried out later that spring.

  "They're just strays. Ma," Kieran insisted morosely. "Who'd notice if they all died?"

  Eileen Mikulka stood. She fixed her son with a hard look. "God would notice," she said firmly. "He has a place for all his creatures, whether they know it or not."

  She had been saying that a lot lately. Eileen was a Presbyterian with a churchgoing record that could charitably be described as spotty. But the more it became evident that Kieran intended to waste his life on the couch, the more she had been speaking about God's great plan for everyone. She had said it so much Kieran didn't even roll his eyes anymore. With a grunt, he flipped over to Barney on PBS.

  Frowning, Mrs. Mikulka glanced at her watch. "Oh, dear," she clucked.

  She didn't have more time to lecture her son or to fret about those poor, poor kittens on television. Gathering up her coffee cup, she hurried into the kitchen. It was immaculate, just as she liked it. It was getting harder and harder to keep it that way. By the time she came home in the evening there would be dirty dishes, crumbs and empty cracker boxes all over.

  She rinsed out her coffee mug and put it in the dishwasher. Her handbag was near the refrigerator. This was where she'd kept it for years, ever since the children were little. But for a while recently she had started keeping it in her bedroom. Ever since that time a few months back when she started to notice bills disappearing from her wallet. But she had started leaving it out again now that she was keeping enough money for lunch locked in her desk at work.

  "I should be home at the usual time, dear," she called into the living room. "Don't lean on the door to the fridge when you look in, and don't hold it open too long."

  This time there wasn't even a grunt.

  Purse in hand, Eileen Mikulka hurried out to her car.

  She seemed to be having a harder time getting to work on time these days. She used to come in much earlier than eight o'clock. But her employer had lately cut her back to a strict forty-hour work week, insisting that it was for her own good. After all, she wasn't getting any younger.

  It seemed to be harder for her these days. She now had too much time in the morning to get ready. As she drove up the lonely wooded road she wondered if she could start sneaking in earlier again. Probably not. Other bosses might not tiotice that she had started coming in at the old, early time. Maybe they would even applaud her diligence. Not her employer. When he said 8:00 a.m., he meant 8:00 a.m.

  In fact, this was one of the traits she admired in him. Unlike a lot of men these days, her boss meant what he said. He was also serious and strict and punctilious. He liked order to his world. Her employer was very much of the old school, which was just fine with Eileen Mikulka.

  A high wall rose beside her car. As she rounded a bend, she noted a lighter spot in the rough shape of an arch. The wall had been damaged more than a year earlier and had only recently been repaired. Mrs. Mikulka assumed it would take many years for that one spot to fade in with the rest of the wall. She doubted she would be around to see that far-off day when the wall finally matched once more.

  Her thoughts turned once more to Kieran, sitting on the couch in the living room, day after day. Wondering who would take care of her poor lost son on that day, Mrs. Mikulka drove the rest of the short way to work.

  The wall led to a gate. Mrs. Mikulka steered her car under the watchful gaze of two granite lions and headed up the gravel drive to Folcroft Sanitarium.

  The big brick building was coming to life in the warm smile of early spring sunlight. The crawling ivy that clung to its sides had lately darkened and was ready to bud. Beyond the sanitarium, Long Island Sound invited morning pleasure boaters to enjoy the unseasonable warmth.

  Mrs. Mikulka watched the crisp white sail of one boat close to shore as she walked from the parking lot to the side door of the building. It was so nice to see people enjoying themselves. Kieran didn't seem to have that anymore.

  When she thought of her son, she immediately thought of the poor kittens trapped in the storm drain. They were so pathetic. Dripping wet and meowing pitifully. You just wanted to take them and cuddle the daylights out of them.

  How her son could say something so awful about those cute little creatures was beyond her. Maybe it was the lack of a male role model. His father passed on when Kieran was still in his twenties. He had already been a handful at the time. He'd only gotten worse in the past decade.

  She shook her head as she pushed open the fire door.

  It was cool inside the stairwell. Mrs. Mikulka climbed up to the second floor.

  It was dark in her office. A flick of a switch and the overhead lights hummed to life. As she did every morning, Mrs. Mikulka went to her desk and locked her handbag in the bottom drawer. Getting back up, she carefully smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt.

  She cast a glance at the inner office door. A brass nameplate read "Dr. Harold Smith, Director."

  Not a sound issued from inside. Still, Mrs. Mikulka knew that her employer was already on the other side of that door, toiling away, Dr. Smith rarely missed a day, and only then because he was away on business of some sort. It made her feel good that there was still someone in this crazy world who treated his work as seriously as Dr. Harold Smith. Mrs. Mikulka ran some water in her little sink, starting the coffeepot in the corner.

  There was an empty can in a cupboard that she had decorated with a piece of old wallpaper. It was for the office coffee fund. When she picked it up, the change inside rattled. She shook it out into her palm. She didn't bother to count it. There was always the right amount.

  As part of her duties every morning, Mrs. Mikulka got her employer a little something from the cafeteria. It was not something he had requested. Dr. Smith's wife was a notoriously bad cook and, well, Eileen Mikulka had decided to see to it that the poor man had something to keep his strength up. He worked so hard.

  The first time she had done it, she paid out of her own pocket. The first time was also the last time. Dr. Smith liked to pay his own way. On the second day the change had appeared in the coffee-fund can. It was always the exact right amount, down to the penny.

  The coffeemaker was just beginning to gurgle as Mrs. Mikulka left the office.

  She headed down to the cafeteria, which was at the tail end of the breakfast rush. Individual trays were being prepared and loaded on carts for Folcroft's patients. A few doctors and nurses sat scattered at the cheap tables around the room.

  Mrs. Mikulka took a tray from a stack and went to the serving line. There was only one person in front of her, a lean young man in a blue suit.

  A woman in a starched white uniform and redcheckered apron was ringing up the man's order. "Good morning, Eileen," the cafeteria worker said as she worked the old-fashioned register. "Good morning, Helen."

  The young man glanced back over his shoulder. "Oh, morning, Mrs. M.," he said, offering a pleasant smile. "I didn't realize it was you sneaking up on me."

  Mrs. Mikulka returned the young man's smile. "Good morning, Mr. Howard," she said.

  Assistant Director Mark Howard was a new addition to the Folcroft family. He was such a nice young man. Always so cheerful. Although lately he seemed a bit more careworn than when he'd first arrived at Folcroft two years earlier. That was no doubt due to his great responsibilities. Folcroft administered to the needs of many elderly and invalid patients. Mr. Howard took that duty very seriously. So nice for a man his age to treat his job with such sobriety.

  Mrs. Mikulka wondered briefly how old he was. Probably about thirty. Younger than Kieran and already in a position of authority.

&
nbsp; "You're a little late getting down here today, aren't you?" Mark Howard asked Mrs. Mikulka as he paid for his food.

  "A little," she admitted. "I was still on time for work," she added hastily. "It was just something I saw on the television this morning slowed me down."

  "Not those poor kittens?" the cafeteria worker asked as she prepared Dr. Smith's usual breakfast. Two halves of toast. Dry. No butter, no jelly.

  "You saw?" Mrs. Mikulka asked. "My Kieran showed it to me. Wasn't it terrible? The poor dears."

  "They say it might be hours before they get them out," the cafeteria worker said knowingly.

  With a bemused smirk, Mark Howard extricated himself from the conversation. "I'll see you in a bit, Mrs. M.," he said softly, not wanting to interrupt.

  Still grinning, he carried his tray with its bowl of cornflakes, carton of milk and glass of orange juice out the side door and was gone.

  Mrs. Mikulka felt her face flush. She didn't know what was wrong with her this morning. She certainly hadn't wanted to seem like a gossip in front of Mr. Howard.

  Paying hastily for her breakfast tray with the change picked from the coffee-fund can, she hustled upstairs.

  The coffee was ready. She filled a mug from the pot and placed it on the tray beside the plate of toast. She walked to the inner office door and rapped a soft knuckle beneath the nameplate even as she pushed the door open.

  The room beyond was cheerlessly functional. Everything was bland and colorless, including the gaunt man who sat behind the big desk across the room. "Good morning, Dr. Smith," Mrs. Mikulka said as she brought the tray over. She set down coffee and toast. "Is there anything else you need?"

  "No," replied Director Smith, in a voice as tart as unsweetened lemonade. "Thank you, Mrs. Mikulka, that will be all."

  She nodded efficiently. Cafeteria tray in hand, she left the drab office to begin her day's work.

  When the door clicked shut behind Mrs. Mikulka's ample form, Dr. Harold W. Smith checked his Timex.

  One minute after eight. Mrs. Mikulka was a minute later than usual this morning.