I Asked For The Witness Statement Before I Moved Anything

The envelope held an order to keep Rung Seven in her berth pending review. A chain across the wheel would follow if I ignored it.

There was also a form that offered to settle the case for $18,000 and the surrender of my harbor work permit.

"That's quite a discount," I told the empty wheelhouse.

I put both pages in clear sleeves.

Then I sent a short reply. I disputed the claim, requested a hearing, and asked for every record used to support the hold. I copied the clerk who handled harbor board filings.

I paid $14 for confirmed delivery. It was the first money I spent fighting back.

At home, above a closed shop on a steep Astoria street, I laid my wet boots on newspaper. Rain ticked against the window. Across the room, my laptop sounded a soft bell.

The storage service had sent its receipt.

There were two kinds of time in my work. The equipment used one common clock for positions and sonar pings. The display could show local time. A careless export could make an honest line look an hour wrong.

I wrote down both, with the offset beside them.

At 9:48 p.m. local time, my boat had been on line C-14, well across the channel from the wreck. The raw sound record showed the cable trench passing under the towfish. A row of old anchor scars matched the bottom there.

A line on a screen alone would not do. I needed the receiver record, the station record, the sonar, and someone who could explain their limits.

I called Dr. June Bell, an independent survey examiner I had worked with twice.

"I can't buy a friendly opinion," I said.

"Good," she said. "I don't sell those."

Her fee for the first review was $1,800. She asked for direct access from the storage service and the equipment settings from before the trip.

"Send your conclusion last," she said. "Let me see the data first."

I liked that enough to stop feeling sick for a minute.

The next afternoon, the harbor clerk released a four-page incident packet. I read it at my kitchen table with a ruler under each line.

The witness was Nolan Voss.

He had written that he saw my stern light over the wreck at 9:48, then heard a scrape through his hull. He said my tow cable had pulled free from something heavy.

His statement had no photograph.

The attached damage picture came from a harbor survey made the next morning. It showed a fresh cut in the mud near the wreck's stern and an empty patch where a bronze pump cover had been mapped.

That picture proved a change. It did not prove who made it, or at what minute.

Sedge had turned Nolan's claimed time into the time of the damage.

I circled that step in pencil.

Then I noticed the last sentence.

"Witness vessel remained west of the site throughout the evening."

Gray Heron had no public position signal that night. Its transmitter had been marked out of service.

I could hear Sedge already: My witness had a breakdown. Your boat had a towfish.

The easy story had been written before anyone asked me a question.

I called Sedge's office and asked for the wreck's recent survey history.

"The site files are being reviewed," his assistant said.

"Please log this as a records request."

"It may take a while."

"Please log today's date."

I did not raise my voice. I had worked underwater beside men who mistook shouting for air. It never gave them more.

By five, two clients had postponed jobs. Eight booked workdays, at $1,200 a day, now had someone else's name beside them.

I wrote $9,600 on a fresh page. Then I listed each job and kept the messages. A large number could make a man wild. Smaller numbers with names and dates could go in a claim.

That evening, I walked to the dock to check my lines. The wet ramp smelled of creosote and river mud. I put one foot on my ladder, then stopped.

Counting had always helped me climb out.

I needed something that helped me stand still.

So I counted the steps I had finished. Notice saved. Records requested. Originals locked. Examiner hired.

Four.

"You always talk to your shoes?" a woman asked.

Estelle Rocha stood at the top of the ramp with a folded tide book under one arm. At sixty-seven, she had a patient gaze and a pilot's habit of looking past the nearest moving thing.

She had retired from river work, but the river had not retired from her.

"Only when the shoes need advice," I said.

She came down slowly.

"I saw where those boats were that night," she said. "And someone has just asked me to forget."