No Regrets and Other True Cases

  The Neslunds never had children together, possibly because Ruth was in her forties when they married. But she kept in touch with about a dozen of her nieces and nephews and was very close to her niece Donna, who was a frequent visitor in Ruth and Rolf’s home. Ruth was something of a surrogate mother to her. Ruth claimed that Donna didn’t like her own mother, Ruth’s older sister Mamie, and that she was trying to effect a reconciliation. In the meantime, she welcomed Donna into her home. And so did Rolf.

  The first ten years of the Neslunds’ marriage passed quietly, and they weren’t at all newsworthy. They were simply an older couple living in a very nice home set far back off the road in a sheltered cove of Lopez Island.

  But over the next decade, their relationship took an ominously violent turn.

  Three

  Financially, the Neslunds had done extremely well as they approached their twentieth wedding anniversary. Rolf had his salary, and Ruth’s dabblings in real estate were paying off. She acquired two lots in Port Townsend, and two more in Anacortes, the first city on the mainland where ferries from the islands docked. The Anacortes lots had come about in trade for a high-powered boat engine Rolf owned.

  “Rolf did it,” she said, proudly. “Sight unseen by both parties.”

  The early building lots Ruth bought cost no more than $800 originally, and she didn’t make a huge profit on them. But by the late seventies, she was much more savvy. On one day in May, she bought two lots for a total of $18,000 and turned them around in two months, selling them for a $4,400 profit. She bought another in Bellingham for $3,000, knowing she could sell it the next day for more than double that. She usually had her buyers lined up before she purchased the properties; she didn’t even have to use her own money in the purchases: That came out of her profit.

  While she was paying off the mortgage on the Alec Bay house, Ruth began collecting cars and other valuables: a motor home, a Dodge van, a classic 1966 Mustang, a Lincoln Continental, an Oldsmobile convertible, farm trailers and boat trailers, a twenty-eight-foot cabin cruiser, Duncan Phyfe tables and other antiques, a coin collection, silver flatware. She registered the cars illegally in Louisiana, “because it was cheaper there,” and used an ambiguous “R. Neslund” as the name of the registered owner, which could have been either Ruth or Rolf.

  Ruth acquired horses, buggies, and more houses on Lopez Island itself, and sold them on contract with 12 percent interest coming to her. Without striving to remember, she could tally up every single asset she had, how much she owed, how much was owed her—at what interest— and she never had to glance at notes. She knew how much was in each of many bank accounts.

  When Rolf retired, he would receive a pension of $1,800 each month from the Puget Sound Pilots.

  They were doing very well indeed.

  But that was on the business side of their union.

  Over the years, Ruth and Rolf Neslund extended their evening cocktail hours further and further into the night. And when they drank, they fought. Their midmarriage arguments had long since exacerbated to ugly episodes. What had begun as grumbling and sniping at one another soon became angry words and insults. At a certain point, they began to actually exchange physical blows. They scratched, hit, bruised, and even bit one another.

  Once, Ruth claimed to San Juan County sheriff’s deputies Greg Doss and Joe Caputo, Rolf actually forced her head into the kitchen stove’s oven. What he intended to do next was a question. Turning on the gas wouldn’t work, and she was far too plump for him to push her all the way in and roast her as the Wicked Witch threatened to do to Hansel and Gretel.

  Ruth told Caputo that she had been seeing to a roasting chicken in the oven when Rolf leaned on her shoulders and pushed her arms against the hot grill. She held her arms up quickly and showed him the “burn marks.” Caputo wasn’t sure if she was really burned, or if the oven racks were dirty, leaving grease marks on her lower arms.

  It was just drunken stuff, but disturbing nonetheless.

  Usually, the Neslunds had had so much to drink that they couldn’t even remember the details of their fights. They would waken in the morning and be shocked by their own reflections in the mirror. Ruth looked haggard, and Rolf often had dried blood on his face, deep scratches, black eyes and bruises, bite marks, bald spots where hair had been pulled out, and other wounds from their violent domestic battles.

  Sometimes, Ruth would run away from Rolf and lock herself in the little bunkhouse behind their home while Rolf slept it off. She claimed to have been terrorized, but, in truth, she gave as good as she got. Perhaps even better.

  Ruth’s plans for gracious entertaining and lovely dinner parties for their friends usually ended disastrously. The facade she tried to present is reminiscent of the character “Hyacinth” on the popular British comedy show, Keeping Up Appearances. Hyacinth’s “candle-light suppers,” meant to be her open door into high society, never quite succeed—and neither did Ruth Neslund’s. Both the TV character and the real woman had fine china, floral arrangements, silver, and linens—but the women themselves lacked the charm and civility to carry these social evenings off. Many of the Neslunds’ longtime friends began to find excuses to decline Ruth’s invitations.

  One couple on Lopez Island would recall an evening with the Neslunds. The food was wonderful, and everything went well until the liquor began to flow and one of their hosts took offense at some remark the other made. Soon, the guests were forgotten and the meal was over as Ruth and Rolf battled with each other. Their company watched, stunned, and then tiptoed out.

  “Ruth called me the next day,” the wife of the guest couple remembered, “and I could tell she felt so bad. She apologized over and over for the way her dinner ended. I could tell she was terribly disappointed—and humiliated, too. She asked us to give her another chance, swearing that it would never happen again.”

  At length, the guests agreed to return for another meal with the Neslunds. Again, the table setting was perfect and the food was even better. But Ruth and Rolf could not seem to get through an evening without a fight, and the after-dinner “entertainment” was a repeat of what had happened before.

  Gossip about the failed dinner parties soon spread around Lopez Island, and those who considered themselves comedians added to it. Dining at the Neslunds’ home became a joke, and both career authors and other residents who lived on the island wrote hilarious, long poems or fashioned elaborate stories about them.

  In a way, it was sad that a couple who had been together for so long should come to be a laughingstock. In between their arguments, though, the Neslunds appeared to be happy enough. There are couples who seem to enjoy fighting and making up as much as they do making love—who actually use arguments as foreplay. Maybe the Neslunds fell in that category.

  They didn’t live close enough to their neighbors that their shouting carried through the woods, so no one cared very much. They were peculiar, but there were lots of “peculiars” in the islands and they were all accepted by the natives. The Neslunds had the right to do what they wanted.

  Although he was in his eighth decade, Rolf Neslund had no intention of retiring. He was one of the most dependable ships’ pilots around.

  He was well past his seventy-fifth birthday when the United States Coast Guard renewed his license on November 3, 1975, for five more years.

  TO U.S. MERCHANT MARINE OFFICER

  This is to certify that Rolf Neslund, having been duly examined and found competent by the undersigned, is licensed to serve as Master of Steam or Motor Vessels of any gross tons upon oceans; radar observer; also First Class Pilot of New York Bay and Harbor to Yonkers; Boston Light Vessel to Boston, Via North and Narrows Channels; Nantucket and Vineyard Sounds; Delaware Bay and River to Philadelphia, Pa; Los Angeles Harbor to Wilmington; San Francisco Bay and Return; Columbia River, Astoria, Oregon to Sea and Return; and on Puget Sound and Connecting Inland Waters for the term of five years from this date.

  For nearly three more years, Rolf Neslund was consid
ered to be fully capable of maneuvering huge ships from coast to coast and on the Atlantic and Pacific. He had every reason to be proud of his prowess, and, indeed, he was. The young boy who had stowed away in Norway to make his way to America had more than proved himself.

  If Rolf had his way, he intended to work until he died at the helm of a ship. And he came close to doing just that. But he would soon have both his reputation and his physical body threatened by a cataclysmic event. Rolf would become, if not “famous,” then infamous in the annals of shipping in the Northwest—long after most men would have retired.

  On June 11, 1978, Rolf was either seventy-eight or eighty-one—depending on which of his birthdates you believed. He was healthy and he loved his job and the camaraderie he shared with other members of the Puget Sound Pilots’ Association. He was an institution, a grand old man who was much admired by far younger members. Everybody liked him, and he was in the midst of life when most men his age were sitting beside their fireplaces, or on a patio in Arizona.

  He and Ruth had their fine home that was almost paid for, and, despite their violent domestic issues from time to time, their marriage had survived for seventeen years. Survived, perhaps, but no one could say it was exactly thriving.

  Amazingly, Ruth was still jealous of Elinor, and continued to suspect that Rolf was sneaking away to meet with her for who knew what kind of carrying on.

  While it was true that Rolf and Elinor had never really lost touch with one another, it’s doubtful that at this point there was anything even slightly illicit between them. They were close friends, and Rolf loved the two sons they shared. Over the years, he made many trips to his homeland in Norway, and if Elinor was there when he was, they saw each other. He still sent her money behind Ruth’s back from time to time.

  In early 1978, Rolf finally decided to put in for his pension. By the end of the summer, he planned to say goodbye to the ships and his piloting duties, and return to Lopez Island for good.

  But then something shocking happened that no one who knew Rolf Neslund would ever have predicted. This extremely careful and canny pilot destroyed one of the most important bridges in a city so surrounded by waterways that every bridge is vital to the orderly passage of traffic.

  When the first pioneers arrived in what would one day be the great city of Seattle, they settled on Alki Point. Many years hence, the waterfront land they called “New York Alki” (Chinook tribal jargon for “bye and bye”) was to become “West Seattle.”

  Back then on November 13, 1851, the Denny Party, including Arthur A. Denny, Charles Terry, and other famous pioneer families, suffered through a bitter cold and rainy winter with only jerry-rigged shelters. Their wives sobbed with homesickness and their children sickened. No one could ever have convinced those first settlers that West Seattle would one day become a most desirable place to live for the working men and women who commuted to downtown Seattle.

  Seattle is landlocked to the north and to the south, with Lake Washington on the east and Puget Sound and Elliot Bay on the west. Its destiny has always been dependent on waterways.

  The Duwamish River Waterway separates West Seattle from the main part of the city. This is a comparatively narrow ribbon of water, just wide enough to make it impossible for West Seattle dwellers to reach Seattle without crossing a bridge or taking a ferry. Without a drawbridge, commuters would have to drive south, east, and north again—almost twenty miles out of their way—to get to work, go to the downtown theaters, hospitals, sports events, and other important sites in the heart of Seattle.

  In 1978, the West Seattle Bridge was certainly in need of refurbishing. Back in 1924, the first of two bascule-designed bridges over the Duwamish Waterway was completed—the ultimate in modern construction at that time. An identical span opened in 1930. Forty-eight years later, the old bridge sorely needed replacement. It was barely serviceable enough, though, until bonds in the amount of $150 million were voted in to pay for a new, higher, pivot-wing bridge.

  At least it was until the dawn of June 11.

  Rolf Neslund was serving as the pilot of the vessel Chavez, a forty-ton, 550-foot ship capable of holding twenty thousand tons of gypsum rock. He stood on the ship’s bridge as it idled near Duwamish Head. He had successfully guided the Chavez to that point from the Pacific Ocean, and then into Elliot Bay, something he had done scores of times.

  Everything seemed normal.

  It was only ten days from the longest day of the year, and the dawn of day was still just hidden behind the mountains to the east, so it was dark and warm as they headed toward the loading area. A good morning to be at sea. Armed with the confidence born of all he had survived in his tussles with oceans and rivers, Rolf Neslund believed in himself, and in his almost mystical grasp of what it took to get a ship to do what he wanted. With his wide-planted feet, he felt the Chavez’s heart rumbling and beating through the decks, and he knew all the sounds and the smells and the shifts that meant he was right on target.

  Two tugboats began to move into their slot so they could help bring the huge ship from the wide waters to the north into the narrow slice that is the Duwamish’s West Waterway. Neslund, the old pilot, would call out the commands to keep the Chavez straight and true in an almost impossibly tight and shallow river which local industrial waste had turned the color of lead. The West Seattle Bridge’s drawspan was up and waiting.

  Later, there were those who came forward to say Rolf was getting a little vague and that sometimes he didn’t pay as much attention as he should. He knew they were wrong. It was true that he didn’t like modern tools like radios and other electronic devices used by the young pilots; he was like an old cowboy who knew how to control a bucking horse or an angry steer. He sensed in his bones what was right, and he would give his orders to the helmsman without using the portable radio.

  As the ship’s pilot, Rolf Neslund was the top man in navigating the Chavez safely into port. From the moment the pilots board the big ships, they instruct everyone from the ship’s crew—including the captain—to the longshoremen who man the lines and the tugboat crew on what to do and when. Visibility, storms, ferryboats, and docked ships can all make a pilot’s job more difficult. On this night, the tugboats needed to pull the Chavez to the left because there was another ship on the right—an ancient freighter waiting to be dismantled and recycled partially blocked the already-tight route.

  This was a dicey route, and seconds counted as the Chavez moved through the waterway. Men aboard a Coast Guard boat on traffic duty watched the massive ship warily.

  The Coast Guard officers called Rolf on the portable radio and got no answer. The reason was simple. Rolf Neslund had turned the damned thing off.

  In the hierarchy of the sea, Rolf was in charge. No one else on the ship could countermand his orders, and it was a heady feeling, as it always had been—whether he was the captain or the pilot. He ordered the helmsman to turn to port (left) and they slid by the no-longer-seaworthy freighter.

  And, then, for some inexplicable reason, the old man had a spate of forgetfulness, possibly even a small stroke—a TIA (transitory ischemic attack)—something that made him lose precious seconds of awareness. The West Seattle Bridge lay ahead, its red lights blinking to warn drivers that the barricades were coming down. Its alarm bells were harsh in the soft darkness. Cars that looked like toys lined up obediently at the edges of the huge bridge, held back by the safety arms.

  For those precious instants, Rolf Neslund apparently forgot that he was the pilot in charge, neglecting to notice that he had not ordered the seaman at the helm to turn back starboard (right) and then to straighten it out.

  The Chavez’s captain, a citizen of Yugoslavia who had an impeccable safety record, suddenly realizing they were in trouble, raced to the wheelhouse, shouting “Hard-a-starboard!” And then he desperately ordered the man at the wheel to put the huge ship into reverse.

  They were headed straight for the West Seattle Bridge’s east support piers at a speed of nearly six kn
ots.

  At that point, Rolf snapped back to alertness and realized the danger, too. He stumbled toward the wheelhouse to repeat the same order the captain had just given. The only thing they could possibly do to stop—or even slow— the Chavez was to drop the anchors. But that maneuver wasn’t likely to work because the ship’s path was already committed. From his long, long experience, Rolf knew that there were huge cables carrying power and phone lines to homes and businesses on either side of the bridge span below. If they dropped the anchors, they would cut underwater cables which were as thick as a man is tall.

  It was far too late to do anything but stand on the Chavez and wait for what was about to happen. It only took ten or twenty seconds, seconds when the tugboat captain of the Carole Foss frantically did what he could to keep his crew from being crushed between the ship and the bridge piers or decapitated by wires, ropes, or knifelike slivers of shattered steel from the bridge.

  And then, inevitably, the Chavez sliced into the bridge as if the span’s supports were made of butter. There was a tremendous shudder and a sound like an earthquake as the force of the impact exploded, sending steel and concrete and wood, and everything else that made the West Seattle Bridge strong, into the river and its shores.

  It was quite possible now that the whole structure would fall down upon those who watched, almost stupefied with shock. Everything was suspended for seconds that seemed hours. The ruined bridge could easily plunge into the sudden abyss: the cars and their drivers and passengers, the bridge tender in his little house, all of it.

  Thank God, however, the remnants of the ruined bridge held, and no one died.

  That was the good part of it, the almost miraculous part of it. But there was hell to pay, and a long Coast Guard investigation lay ahead. The young Yugoslavian captain lost his job, Rolf Neslund lost his reputation as a peerless captain and pilot, and people who lived in West Seattle or wanted to go to West Seattle had to wait seven years for a new bridge to be built.