Red Sea (15 page)

“
Yirmi
? Twenty what? Miles? Hours? Days?”

The man screams at the boy. He snatches the money out of my hand then jumps down into their boat. He indicates again the direction. “Masamirit,” he says. The man cuffs him in the ear and grabs the money. The boy scrambles away. Then their engine revs up and they wallow out onto the waves. The woman with the baby watches me from under her arm as the boat slips again into darkness. I listen to it a long time until maybe I just imagine that I can hear it. Then it's gone.

I haul in the headsail so it stops its flapping and put the engine in gear. The course the boy indicated is more westerly than mine. I alter course to the west and crank the engine full on.

THREE TIMES
I decide he misunderstood me and showed me the wrong way, or showed me the wrong way just because he felt like it. Three times I change back to my original heading. Three times I zig and zag across the night on his heading, on mine, sweating in my foulies, peering into the blackness for the Masamirit light. I think about the woman and child on the boat. Were they going home, or fleeing it? What was so awful about their lives that they got in that boat on a sea like this? But what can I know of the desperation of people who live along fine fluid lines of blood, religion and geography?

When it first appears, I think it must be a freighter again, just a faint white light between the darkness of sea and sky. But freighter lights don't flash, and I sail closer, close enough to count the flashes, to match the pattern with that on the chart, to know, yes, I'm looking at the light on Masamirit. I sail another mile toward it before I can no longer convince myself that I'm seeing things, then I believe it, I only just believe it; now I can reach Port Sudan. I am almost there.

I
T'S LIKE BEING HIGH
, this frenetic cocktail of exhaustion and nerves. I've followed Duncan's waypoints from the light on Masamirit, estimating actual distance where he would have used his electronics, and I'm lucky, really lucky, because with each course change, I see more freighters, more garbage in the water, more signs that I'm on track for Port Sudan. Now, an almost continuous line of tanker traffic marks a westward path in the night. If I had to, I could follow them in. But I plot each mile I make, penciling my own path on the chart, translating each hour in the cockpit to a new place on the sea, tiny steps west toward help.

Each time I go below, I hold my breath until I find my mother still with me, her heart still beating, and I tell her how close we are to landfall. “Two hours until first light, Mom.” Then, “I can see it now, Mom! I can see lights on the African coastline.” And finally, just as the sun burns a white line on the horizon, “Lights, Mom, from the city!”

I haven't slept, haven't eaten, don't care. I stand in the cockpit with my eyes on the distant city, plotting the chart with certainty, now that I can take bearings from landmarks. My penciled line creeps closer toward Port Sudan, and I'm grateful for it because just looking at the far-off city isn't real enough.

I've notched up our speed and the sound of the engine hums through my feet and legs until I feel like I'm more part of the boat than the world. I stand at the wheel and steer, imagining that I'm steering a knife-edge course, trying to believe that I'm getting us there faster.

It's been hours since I first spotted the city and now, finally, it emerges in focus. I can make out the white-pillared oil tanker station, a city in itself, and from that, and Duncan's notes on the chart, the course to find the harbor entrance. At this point, I could plunk us against almost any hard place on the shoreline, even the tanker pontoons, but I know where I need to go to get the fastest help for my mother. I have to find
Pandanus
.

With one hand on the wheel, one on the chart, I visually navigate a line toward the coastline, marking radio towers and mosque domes and water towers, matching the icons on the chart with what I can actually see, marking
my progress toward the basin where sailboats would dock. I call to my mother from the cockpit, “Just five more miles. We'll be there in time for breakfast.” Then, from behind a massive stone breakwater, “I see sticks, Mom! I can see the masts of boats!”

I've shrugged off my jacket and fleece, but I'm still in my foulie pants and boots. Sweat is running down my legs. I flip on the automatic steering and unearth two rubber fenders from the cockpit locker. These I tie onto the rail on the side of the boat to cushion the boat from the dock. Then I scramble to attach a line at the stern and the bow of the boat, and one in the middle to hold us to the dock. I jump back into the cockpit just as the boat reaches the opening in the breakwater.

I throttle down and ease the boat into the harbor. Instantly, the sea flattens and the wind dies in my ears, the scent of land fills my nose. I hear cars and the sounds of halyards clanking against masts. A huge lump lodges in my throat and I have to work hard not to cry. I can't cry. Not now, not yet.

Boats are tied along several concrete pontoons. It's early, and I don't see anyone in the cockpits. I see flags from Sweden and the Netherlands, many flags, but I stop myself from searching for
Pandanus
and look for a place to tie up. Any place will do, even against another boat. But there's a vacant spot on the very end of one pontoon, and this is what I aim for.

Boats don't have brakes, and it's not pretty. I crunch the boat against the pontoon, popping the fenders back onto the
deck, scraping fiberglass against concrete, the engine roaring in reverse to stop us. Now several heads emerge from their boats. I kill the engine, grab the spring line at the middle of the boat and leap over the rail onto the pontoon. The sudden hardness of land makes my knees buckle and I stumble, but I manage to loop the line over a cleat and snug
Mistaya
to the pontoon. The bow is yawing, but the boat isn't going anywhere. People are running now; I hear feet pounding on concrete coming toward me, voices calling. I'm on my knees, struggling to get to my feet. “Help.” It comes out as a croak. “Help!” Now I'm crying. A bare-chested man lifts me, speaks to me in a German accent. I indicate the boat. “My mother!” Another man jumps aboard
Mistaya
, tosses the bow and stern lines to others now on the pontoon. “My mother! You have to help my mother!”

“Lib!”

I hear Emma and now I can't stand. The German man catches me, lowers me to the concrete. Emma is running, her eyes on me, the boat, the shreds of mainsail bound on the boom, the bullet holes, her eyes taking it all in. I motion to the boat. “My mother.”

Without breaking stride, Emma points to a woman on the pontoon. “Get us a vehicle. No, two, an ambulance if you can.” The woman's eyes widen and she stands, dazed. “Now!” The woman blinks, then moves off toward the ramp. “Run!” The woman runs. Emma vaults onto
Mistaya
and disappears below.

The German man is holding my hand, talking to me. I don't have a clue what he's saying, but I hang on his words.
Emma sticks her head out of the companionway, orders more people around, glances once at me, then ducks below again. I try to get up, to go to my mother, but my knees are liquid, and the German man cluck-clucks, tells me to sit. Several men return with gangplanks and lengths of rope and proceed to lash together a stretcher. They hoist this onto the deck of
Mistaya
and lower it down the companionway.

Then Mac's hands are on my shoulders, his voice soft and solid in my ears. “Duncan?”

I can't form the words, so I shake my head. His hands seem very still, then he squeezes my shoulders. “You did well, girl.” He leaves me to help with the stretcher.

Someone slips a blanket around me even though I'm sweating, because that's what you do for people who are bashed up, I guess. The German man helps me to my feet and leads me to a laundry van, waiting at the top of the ramp. The woman is there, the one who Emma told to get the ambulance, and she climbs into the front seat with me. She's talking to me, saying something about the van being faster than waiting for an ambulance, but I'm not listening. I'm watching Mac and the other men carry Mom on the stretcher. They're running. They slide the stretcher in on the floor of the van; Mac jumps in and shouts something at the driver. I see the driver for the first time, his eyes wide with concern. At Mac's command, the driver steps on the gas and we lurch into the street.

Mom's eyes are closed, and I watch Mac beside her on the floor of the van, grateful that he's there, that he's urging the driver on, that he doesn't have all the time in the world
because she's sick, my mother, very, very sick. Sick and not dead. The woman puts her arm around me, and I put my head on her shoulder. She speaks to me like I'm a child, words without meaning, but I want to believe her. “You're going to be okay.”

I
PEEL ANOTHER ORANGE,
letting the juice run down into my shirtsleeves, licking the juice from the side of my hand, eating the orange in exploding mouthfuls. Mac peels one for my mother and places small pieces on a plate beside her bed. She lifts these to her mouth and chews slowly.

Mac is just back from Tel Aviv. He finished the delivery of the
Pandanus
while Emma stayed with Mom and me.

In the hospital in Port Sudan, Mom got massive doses of antibiotics, then an air ambulance took her here to the capital, Khartoum, for surgery to cut the dead tissue out of her leg. The doctor took as little as he could. He said he
used to be a military doctor, that gunshot wounds often get infected, especially if they're not treated right away. He said Mom was lucky she was shot with an
AK - 47
, that an
AK - 47
is actually designed to wound, not kill. I said, “How humane,” but then he explained that it's better to wound a soldier than kill him. That way the soldier is taken out of the fighting along with other soldiers who have to carry him.

I guess a Sudanese doctor knows something about war.

The doctor said that Mom's concussion was only minor but that she might have trouble remembering what happened. He figures it was her blood loss that kept her so out of it. He said she's lucky.

I'VE BEEN TELLING
Mom the story again about that last night at sea, finding my way to Port Sudan.

“It was Duncan's chart that got us there. He had the course changes marked right into the harbor.”

“That's always the hardest part of a passage,” Mom says. “Leaving the fairway of the open sea and heading for the rocks. Duncan was like a cat, the last part of a passage.” Her smile fades. The silence around her bed grows.

Then Mac speaks. “I thought you were delayed because of the storm, that you'd lost your mast or something. But then when we couldn't reach you on the radio, I knew it was something more.”

“That storm,” Emma shudders. “We never should have left port.”

Mac says, “The storm surprised everyone, even the forecasters. We were deep in it, and Djibouti Weather was still
calling for calm winds. No one could have anticipated that it would hit us that way.”

Jimmy lost his mast in the storm and he and his wife got airlifted off the boat, abandoning it. Emma says the boat washed into a bay still trailing its rigging but otherwise, not a scratch on it. Jimmy and his wife were already long gone home.

Just to Emma I say, “I'm glad for the storm.”

Emma nods. She knows about Eggman.

“Search planes couldn't find you,” Mac says. “The storm must have blown you miles off course.” Mac chews and swallows another half-orange. “How you got so close to Masamirit on your own is mind-boggling.”

Officially, Duncan is missing at sea and presumed dead. Mac said that on his trip to the Suez in
Pandanus
, a little bird landed on his boat too, a bird with yellow breast feathers. Mom wants to have a funeral for Duncan when we get home, buy a headstone, put it on an empty grave. But we've scattered his ashes, all of us, on the Red Sea.

I say to Mom, “I e-mailed Dad today. He wants to come and take us home.” My throat sticks on the word
us
. “I meant to say, he wants to take me home. Although, I guess you could tag along.”

“We should have quite the entourage.” Mom's sister wants to come, and my grandfather, and about nine of Mom's friends, including a dentist and a professional dancer. Strange but true. Mom sighs, “It'll be good to be home.”

Home. Our house is still leased to tenants, so we're going to stay with Mom's sister. She has a condo downtown that
looks onto English Bay. I can take the bus to my school, or I might enroll in a new one.

Emma and Mac will bring
Mistaya
through the Suez for us. They found a charter boat company in the Caribbean, that will put
Mistaya
in its fleet, and offered to deliver it there for us. They'll fit it in around their other deliveries, sail through the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and cross with it in December, just after hurricane season.

Selling
Mistaya
wasn't an option, not even for Mom. She says
Mistaya
is part of Duncan, part of all of us, and she can't let it go. The charter company will take care of the boat for her, and we can still sail on it a few weeks each year. I'm not sure Mom is eager to sail again. It's maybe too soon for her.

I say to her, “Dad doesn't need to come. I think I can find the way.”

Mom smiles. “You could, I know that. But let him be a father.”

I'M PACKING
M
OM'S
bag as she sits with her leg up, watching me. I've already packed mine. There wasn't much I could take. Everything seems to match a boat life, not a back-home life, although I did take the knife Dad gave me. Into Mom's bag I put her things, and a few of Duncan's. I unzip his shaving kit and breathe in his familiar smell. She says, “It's hard, this goodbye.” I glance at her, thinking she's talking about Duncan. “I mean leaving our life on
Mistaya
,” she says.