Tales Of An Alaska Ferry

The last suitcase thumped onto the Tustumena’s car deck just as a gull stole a strip of bacon from a tourist’s breakfast sandwich.

Captain Ray McKinnon watched the gull bank over Ketchikan’s crowded waterfront, bacon snapping in its yellow bill. Behind him, the ferry’s loading ramp groaned beneath rental cars, bicycles, coolers, and enough luggage to outfit a small expedition. Summer had packed the dock solid. Rain shone on the planks, and the green mountains beyond the harbor rose steeply into low cloud, their slopes stitched with waterfalls.

“Somebody tell that bird it still owes me for breakfast,” Ray said.

No one answered. The dock crew was too busy waving the final passengers toward the gangway.

Ray checked his watch. Fifty-nine years old, twenty-one years with the Alaska Marine Highway, and on his final voyage before retirement, he had promised himself one thing: Ketchikan would not send him into the sunset late.

He turned toward the purser’s table. “Passenger count?”

The clerk lifted a clipboard. “One hundred seventy-seven.”

“Say it like you mean it.”

“One hundred seventy-seven passengers, Captain.”

“That’s better. The ship can carry more, but I’ve always found fewer people easier to keep track of.”

The clerk smiled nervously. Ray’s reputation had arrived before he did each morning: hard as a steel bulkhead, fair as a calm sea, and capable of making a joke while everyone else was looking for the fire extinguisher.

He glanced through the open terminal doors. Tourists streamed in beneath rain jackets and camera straps. A family argued over a rolling suitcase. Two men in matching fishing hats stopped in the gangway to photograph one another, blocking everyone behind them.

Ray raised his voice. “Gentlemen, the ship is not moving yet, but the line behind you is.”

They hurried aboard.

The Tustumena vibrated under his boots as generators came alive. Her old steel hull carried the familiar tremor into his knees. Ray had felt that vibration in storms, in fog, beside glaciers, and once while a bear wandered across the loading ramp in Haines. The ship had a thousand noises, and he knew most of them by heart.

This morning, one noise was missing.

He held out his hand toward the manifest clerk. “Give me the final page.”

The clerk shuffled the papers, frowned, and shuffled them again.

Ray looked at the stack. “That expression usually means either bad news or a very small sandwich.”

“The last page isn’t here.”

“Which last page?”

“The passenger manifest. Page four.”

Rain ticked against the terminal windows. Somewhere below, a winch clanged and stopped.

Ray held out his hand again. “Look in the folder.”

“I did.”

“Look in the printer.”

“I did.”

“Look under the folder. Paper has a strong sense of adventure.”

The clerk checked anyway. Nothing.

Ray took the manifest and counted the pages. One, two, three, five.

“Who had it last?”

“It was printed at the office.”

“Who carried it here?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not a promising answer on a ship carrying one hundred seventy-seven people.”

The clerk’s cheeks reddened. “The count is right.”

“Maybe. The names are what concern me.”

He scanned the third page. Families, couples, tour groups, a handful of deck passengers with camping gear. Page five began with a cabin reservation and ended with a line of names that appeared to belong to a fishing party. Between them lay a gap large enough to hide more than paperwork.

The terminal doors opened again. A gust pushed rain across the floor, carrying diesel fumes and the sharp cry of gulls. Ray saw the final passengers coming through: an elderly couple with matching red hats, a young woman dragging a duffel bag, and a broad man in a soaked canvas coat who kept glancing over his shoulder.

The man reached the gangway and stopped.

Ray stepped toward him. “Sir, the scenic view is better from aboard.”

The man looked at Ray, then at the ferry. “I’m meeting someone.”

“On the ship?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Most people meet someone by knowing their name.”

The man’s jaw tightened. “I’ll find him.”

Ray watched him pass. The canvas coat sagged strangely around the shoulders, as if it contained more than one man’s belongings. The young woman with the duffel followed several yards behind, head down, moving fast.

“Check those two against the manifest,” Ray said.

The clerk hurried after them.

At the foot of the gangway, a family of four stood arguing with a deckhand about cabins. The father waved a reservation slip like a distress flag.

“We paid for a room,” he said.

“You paid for a room with two bunks,” the deckhand replied.

“We have four people.”

Ray stepped between them. “Then we have discovered the ancient maritime mystery of arithmetic.”

The father stared at him.

Ray pointed toward the passenger deck. “Two adults in the cabin. Children in the lounge. Nobody sleeps in the lifeboats, the elevator, or the captain’s bathtub. I need that bathtub for emergencies.”

The mother pulled the children along....