Dead in the Water (18 page)

The klaxon blew long, short-short-short and plowed toward them.

“Ahoy! Ahoy!” Donna shouted, waving her arms. The fog rolled away, sank into the water and crawled into the clouds,
revealing the figures of hundreds of people as they hung over the rails and waved back. Faces peered from portholes that opened in rapid succession along the lower decks. The passengers cheered and waved. Rolls of toilet paper streamed into the water. The horn blew again.

Around her, the others finally stirred. Froze, stared, and burst into cheers. Phil grabbed Elise, then Ruth, and kissed them both. Matty threw himself against his father and jumped up and down. John started to cry and buried his face in his son’s hair.

“Thank you,” he croaked. “Thank you.”

Then John hugged Donna, and Ruth kissed her cheek, and they laughed and cried and sat down quick and hard to avoid capsizing the boat. Elise and Phil huddled at the stern, Phil with his arms around his wife. She made no move to embrace him. John sat to Phil’s right, turned sideways to stare at the ship. Matt sprawled half on his lap, half off, picking excitedly at his father’s wet shirt, chattering and laughing.

“It
is
like Vikings!” he called to Ramón. The man smiled weakly at him. Yeah, right, buckwheat, be scared, Donna thought, as she sat down on the bench—called a thwart, she remembered Ramón telling her. We’re saved and you are big-time busted, friend.

On the other side of the thwart, Ruth covered her mouth with both hands, looking dazed.

No one embraced or congratulated Ramón, Donna noted with bitter satisfaction.

“Ahoy the lifeboat. Is everyone all right?” someone called over a public address system.

“Yes!” Donna and Ramón both shouted. Donna nodded vigorously and gave a thumbs-up. Ramón scrabbled past Ruth to a plastic sack filled with flares, pulled one out, and shoved it back into the bag, as if realizing it wasn’t necessary. He sat back and dangled his hands between his knees.

“We’ll help you aboard. Sit tight.”

With one arm around Matt, John cupped his other hand around his mouth. “The
Morris
,” he called. “Is it all right?”

There was no answer. The ship bore down on them with
the seeming speed of a 747. Donna looked nervously at the oars, thought about getting the lifeboat out of the way.

“My God,” Elise said. “They’d better slow down.”

Ruth moaned. Donna dropped to her knees beside her and touched the woman’s cheek. The old lady was white and sweaty. Her fingers were gnarled balls of bone and vein, gripped around each other as if she were fighting off a mugger who’d grabbed hold of her purse.

“Are you all right?”

Ruth nodded slowly. “Yes, I think so. I … I’m so relieved.” She caught Donna’s hand. Her flesh was ice-cold. “But I feel … I’m …”

God, she might have had a stroke. Donna held her hand and waved to John. “Can you check her out?”

He duckwalked toward them, rising up to climb over the thwart. Back on the massive ship, a large, square door close to the waterline opened and something like a cart was wheeled to the edge. Men in black scuba gear appeared and crouched beside the cartlike object, gesturing.

Elise dug in her purse, produced a comb, and started raking it through her hair. Tears chained like pearls from her bloodshot eyes.

The object unfolded. It was a bright yellow raft. The divers pushed it over the side and jumped in after it, splashing into the water. Next, men bolted something onto the edge of the open area. A long suspension ladder unrolled the length of the side and tumbled into the water. The divers caught hold of it and made signs to the men waiting above them.

“Can you row to us?” the public address voice queried.

“Yes!” Donna called. Ramón was already setting the oars in their oarlocks.

“Told the captain to get an outboard,” he grumbled.

Everyone looked at everyone else. Was the captain still alive?

John finished taking Ruth’s pulse and studied her pupils. Donna noted the way he smoothed her hair from her forehead. Patting, touching her. An errant quip about bedside manner fleeted through her mind.

“You feeling better, kiddo?” he asked.

Uncertainly Ruth nodded. “I … I dreamed again,” she said, as though she were confessing. “It was so vivid …” She put her hand to her hair. Her eyes jittered back and forth. “But now I don’t remember any of it. I don’t remember a thing!”

Donna paused. She had dreamed, too. But she also remembered nothing.

“That’s how dreams usually are. Everything is fine now. We’re safe now.” Ducking his head, he grabbed Matt and snuggled him under his arm like a chick. Matt’s thin fingers gripped his back, white dabs on his father’s life jacket.

Donna took her place beside Ramón on the bench in the middle of the boat. He took the left oar, she the right, and without speaking, the two began to row toward the ship.

“Why can’t they get any closer? Why did they stop all the way over there?” Elise said, pawing through her purse. She found a cigarette and lit it.

For God’s sake, they were rescuing them, weren’t they? Donna wanted to tell her to shut the fuck up, but she knew Elise was just upset. Anger was fear’s twin brother.

John let go of Matt. “I should do that,” he said, indicating the oars.

Donna made a snorting sound. “Oink, oink. Stay with your kid.”

A couple of minutes later, a diver popped up a few feet from the lifeboat. The other two stayed with the raft. The man checked out the boat, asking if everyone could make it up the ladder or if they should order a hoist.

“A hoist, I think,” Donna replied, thinking of Ruth and possibly Matt. The boy was wrung out. Circles ringed his eyes and he was sunburned. He couldn’t have lost a significant amount of weight overnight, but his bony wrists seemed bonier. John appeared to have noticed it, too. His dark eyebrows showed through the tortoise-shell frame of his glasses.

The diver nodded and swam alongside the boat, urging it toward the ship.

“Have you been looking for us?” Donna asked.

“Yes.” He grinned. “I get a gold piece for spotting you first.”

She smiled, figuring this was some kind of reference to sea lore she didn’t understand, especially when John guffawed. Damn, she was going to have to get around to reading some books one of these days.

But not today. Today she was going to sleep and drink and make a lot of phone calls.

“You’ve got ship-to-shore?” she asked, and for a moment the diver looked confused. Probably hadn’t heard her. She mimicked putting a phone to her ear.

“We’re almost there,” he said, and turned back into the water.

“Of course they have a phone system,” John said. He gave Matty another hug. “See? We had an adventure, didn’t we? And we’re fine now.”

Matt didn’t smile or agree. Instead, he scooted closer to his father and sucked his thumb, and pulled at the hairs on the nape of his neck.

The lifeboat bumped softly against the hull of the ship like a water spider dancing on the surface tension. Dodging the rolls of toilet paper that careened out of the portholes, Donna smiled and waved at the onlookers and glanced up the field of white, searching for the ship’s name. “Yo, baby,” someone called; she laughed and gave the high sign.

Ah, there it was.
Pandora
. In bold black letters that seemed twenty feet tall.

Pandora
. Wasn’t that the name of the woman who let all the evils into the world? She had a box—

Behind her, Ruth gasped. Donna started to turn her head but at that moment, three men in white officer’s uniforms and hats appeared at the edge of the opening and called, “Ahoy! Are you able to board now?”

“Yes,” Donna said as John leaned over her shoulder and said, “The
Morris
! Is it all right?”

“You’ll have to speak with the captain, sir,” one of them replied. “We don’t have that information.”

“Well, where is the captain?”

“He’s on the bridge, sir. He’ll debrief you after you come aboard.”

“Let’s get off this thing, all right?” Elise asked shrilly,
pushing past Donna. The three divers positioned the boat and held it while Ramón secured the hoist.

Donna gave her a hard look, the same one that withered seasoned gang members. “Ruth first,” she said.

Elise squared her shoulders, opened her mouth. From his seat, Phil took her hand. “C’mon, darlin’. We’re safe now.”

Elise glared at him. “Who does she think she is? She’s not in any kind of authority over us. She’s not—”

“Darlin’,” Phil murmured in his soft Southern voice. “We’re safe now.”

Elise exhaled and plopped down beside him, studiously avoiding eye contact with Donna. Donna shook her head and held her hands out to Ruth, who gingerly sat on the strap while they fastened her in.

Ruth was slow, but she made it. Everyone cheered, in the lifeboat and on the
Pandora
. Matt was next, glancing down anxiously at his father. Then the Alphabitch, then John, then Phil, then Donna.

Halfway up, as she hovered in the air, a sick, dizzy leadenness wrapped itself around her. She hugged the straps of the hoist as her head spun. She tried to focus on something—the lifeboat, now small and toylike, the sparkling green and purple water, once so gray and forbidding. The anticipation of a shower, and bed.

Her stomach lurched. She was positive she was going to be ill.

Someone spoke through the cheers and the hoots. People were banging things: pots and pans? Cameras clicked and flashed.

Someone spoke, and she swore she heard a familiar voice—whether man or woman, she couldn’t tell—heard the voice say,
She’s the one
.

“Donna? Donna?” John queried her. The hoist quivered as it raised her to deck level and stopped. He reached for her hand.

“I’m okay.” She shook her head to clear it. “I’m fine.” Took a breath and unbuckled herself as hands reached to help her.

So many faces. She put her left foot on the deck and her
right knee buckled. Someone, not John, caught her arm and supported her; in the crush of well-wishers, she never did see who it was. The cheers in the cavernous space were deafening. Despite the fact that this was some kind of service entrance—a forklift was parked on the other side, and on the walls hung signs about union rules and OSHA and workman’s comp—a throng of passengers had pushed their way in. Camera shutters whirred and clicked and the ship’s horn rattled the metal posts that divided the room into halves. The press of bodies was suffocating.

“Stand back, stand back, please,” an official voice boomed. “A little air, please.”

The passengers obeyed, moving to either side of imaginary barriers and leaning over them to smile and wave and take pictures.

A crewman in a black jumpsuit stepped aside as a bearded man in a startlingly white uniform and a black-billed hat trimmed with gold braid approached the group. He had epaulets on his shoulders.

“Welcome aboard,” he said heartily. He had a British accent. “I’m the staff captain, Edward Smith. And this is Chief Officer Lorentz Creutz”—he gestured to a tall, older man—“and Dr. Hare, our ship’s doctor.”

The doctor, a short, rotund man, stepped forward. “Are any of you in pain? Have there been any injuries?”

As he spoke, a woman dressed in a starched nurse’s uniform with a square cap on her head pushed a wheelchair toward them. A man in hospital greens followed with another.

“I don’t think we need those,” Ruth said firmly. Bemused, Donna slung her weight on her hip. Somehow, she’d imagined their rescue would be more dramatic: hauled dripping from the ocean, hacking and coughing, blankets thrown around their shoulders as they limped or were carried from the pitching deck of some old steamship. It was vaguely disappointing.

“Nevertheless,” the doctor replied, “I would prefer it if you’d ride in one to the infirmary. I want to check you all
over.” He reached down and chucked Matt under the chin. “You thirsty, tiger? Like some orange juice?”

“I’m no …” Ruth began, and collapsed.

John pushed his way to her side. “Get a gurney!” he called. He leaned over Ruth as the doctor knelt beside him. “I’m a physician.”

Hare pressed two fingers over Ruth’s neck. To the wide-eyed nurse, he said, “You heard the doctor. Gurney. On the double.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” She whirled on her heel.

“Ruth?” Donna chafed her wrists. “Honey, you okay?”

Ruth’s eyes fluttered open. “I dreamed …” she whispered. Donna put her ear to the woman’s lips, but she said nothing coherent. A long, sibilant
ssssss
issued from her mouth, like the kiss of a snake.

Two more men dressed in hospital greens lowered the stretcher to the ground. John put both his hands around Ruth’s hip while the doctor slid his around her upper arm.

“We’re going to move you onto the stretcher,” John said softly.

Ruth started, took in the men holding her. Her hands waved in little circles as she tried to make them set her down. “I’m all right now,” Ruth protested. “It was just …” She looked puzzled, as if she couldn’t recall what she’d been planning to say.

“Here we go,” John said as he and the doctor eased her onto the stretcher. Deftly accomplished. Donna silently applauded.

The metal legs of the stretcher unfolded as the men in the greens pulled the stretcher to hip height. Wrapping his hand around Ruth’s, John said to Donna, “Could you take Matt for me?”

“Sure. That okay with you, big guy?”

Matt’s eyes widened. “Captain Nemo!” he cried. “We forgot about Captain Nemo.”

“
No problema
, kiddo.” Donna headed back toward the edge of the opening as Ruth was spirited away. Ramón trailed after. Donna glared at him over her shoulder and he slowed up, looking abashed.

“I want all of them in wheelchairs,” Hare told the nurse. “Stat.”

Matt ran to the edge before Donna had a chance to stop him. “Hey, mister!” he called down. “Mister, get my cat, please!”

Queasily, Donna joined him at the side. Two divers were directing the lashing of the lifeboat to a large hoist, which was connected to the floor by a winch. One of them flashed a thumbs-up and crawled into the lifeboat.

“She’ll be scared,” Matt directed.