Red Sea (6 page)

Over my shoulder, I look to the back of the boat. Duncan can't still be there. That's why we wear a tether, so that if we go overboard, we stay with the boat. He didn't have a tether; he won't be there.

I have to be sure. Still on my hands and knees, and pulling myself with my hands, I inch my way to the back of the boat. Seawater pierces my eyes and I blink. For a second, I think I see him, his white head bobbing on the waves, but it's just foam from the waves. In every direction, all I see is the storm. I know he's gone. I just hope he died before he hit the water.

My feet are slippery on the companionway steps as I scramble down to my mother.

HANGING ON WITH
one hand, I reach up to haul closed the hatch. Now the screaming wind doesn't steal my breath and drill into my ears. I make my way down into the boat.

With every step the floor pitches and disappears under my feet. It's louder being inside the boat, like being inside a drum. The wind resonates in the mast, boom and rigging so that the hull vibrates with the howl of it, magnifying it. Open locker doors slam back and forth against the bulkheads. A set of enamelled plates behind one locker door lift and clatter like cymbals. Curtains at the windows sway out to vertical, then drop back against the acrylic panes. A juice glass rockets from one open locker and shatters on the opposite wall.

Everything on the floor now swims in half a foot of sea-water. I latch down a couple of floating floorboards so that I won't step into the bilge.

Swinging by one arm, I fish the top boards of the dining bench out of our slough and replace them. The bench cushion is hopelessly sodden and I leave it on the floor. “Looks like you'll have to sleep on the hard plywood.” Pulling myself hand over hand against the rolling of the boat, I find a quilt that is reasonably dry. “I'll fold this up for you.” I position the quilt along the dining bench, then fit the canvas lee cloths that will hold Mom in like a hammock. Mom calls the dining bench a sea berth and sleeps here when we're at sea. She says it's the best bed in the boat because it rocks less, like being on the middle of a teeter-totter versus the ends. In a storm like this, it's a subtle distinction.

I think of Fanny's basket hammock, of Emma and Mac's snug boat. They wouldn't have heard my mother's mayday. We're just too far away. I was too late getting back to the boat. My throat closes and my eyes fill, and I push the thought out of my mind.

In all her gear my mother weighs a ton, and I can only use one arm to lift her because I have to hold on with the other. I hoist half of her onto the bench, then, anchoring her chest with my knee, I strip off her jacket. Underneath, her fleece is wet around the neck so I take this off, and her sweatshirt. Her final layer, a T-shirt, is reasonably dry and I leave it. Now for the pants. The one pant leg hangs in yellow ribbons. Gripping the waist band, I ease Mom's pants down to her boots. The inner layers are sodden with blood. Taking a breath, I peel back what's left of the fabric.

From the middle of her thigh, a thin river of red runs into my mother's boot.

The breath stops in my chest. I grab her sweatshirt and wad it against her leg, wrapping the sleeves of the shirt around. If I had another set of hands, if I even had both of mine, I'd do all that direct pressure stuff you learn in first aid. I can barely tie a knot in the sleeves of the sweatshirt.

I lower Mom's head to the quilt. “You'll be fine.” My voice is shaking, my hands too. I take off one boot, the good one. Seawater dumps into the cabin. The other boot spills red onto my pajamas.

I push Mom onto her side and draw the quilt around her. The sweatshirt seems to be stemming the worst of the bleeding. I tighten the lee cloths. She's cocooned now, just her pale face visible outside of the lee cloths. I slump down on the bench beside her. My jaw hurts where I got slugged. Every joint in my body feels like someone has driven nails into it.

I take my mother's jacket and untangle the radio. The battery light shows a pale yellow. “Not much battery left.”
I glance around the mess that is our cabin. “Maybe I can recharge it if I can find the charging unit.”

Looking around, I see Eggman left the fridge open. I reach over and drop the lid, then switch off the breakers on the main electrical panel. The fridge motor falls silent.

“But right now everyone is in their own private storm. And they're so far away they won't hear us anyway.” I'm cold suddenly, so cold my hands shake and my teeth chatter. I need dry clothes. I set the radio in its spot at the chart table and, hanging on for every step, I slog through seawater to my cabin. It's like being drunk, this feeling, an overwhelming need to lay down. There is less water in my cabin. I rip off my wet clothes, leaving them in a puddle on the floor, hang my jacket on a hook and ransack a pile of clothes to find a T-shirt and shorts. My hands fumble as I put on the clothes. So cold. I jam my mattress back into place and turn over my slashed pillow, then crawl into the bunk. My quilt is gone, but I find a blanket that is dry and wrap it around me. My knees are weak, everything is weak, my head feels too heavy for my neck. Using the pillow as a brace against the storm, I cram myself into a ball in the corner of my bunk. I cover my ears to block out the howling wind. I don't close my eyes because when I do, I see Eggman, and Duncan, so I lie there and listen to the blood racing through my arteries and veins and capillaries, and wish I could stop shaking.

F
OR ONE LONG MINUTE
, I think I've gone blind. Then I realize that I've fallen asleep, and now it's dark. I have no idea if it's just night, or almost morning. All I know is I must have been sleeping for hours.

“Mom!” How could I just leave her like that? What if she woke up and thought she was alone?

“I'm coming, Mom.” Automatically I reach for the flashlight clamped on the wall by my bed. It's not there, of course. I wrestle out of the bunk and swing my feet to the floor. The shock of cold water past my ankles makes me gasp. We're taking on water, a lot of water. Not good. I try
to swallow the panic rising in my gut and wade out to the main cabin.

I still have to hang on, but the motion in the boat now feels like angry aftershocks. The books and debris on the floor have transformed into a kind of pulp porridge. I feel my way to the dining table.

“Mom?” I can't see her, not in the dark, but I find her face with my hand. “Are you awake?”

Under my hand, she stirs, moans, then falls quiet again.

“Mom?”

No response. Her skin feels warmer. I listen to her breathing, matching my intake with hers, grateful for every breath. “I didn't mean to fall asleep. I was just so cold.” I tug the quilt tighter over her shoulders and make sure her feet are covered. “You're okay. You're going to be fine.” Right.

I slog my way to the locker where we keep our boots. In the dark I can't tell if the boots are mine or Duncan's, not that it matters. I pour the water out of the boots, then put them on. Now I don't have to worry about slicing my feet open on broken glass. The breaker panel is dark. When I flipped all the breakers, I turned off the bilge pump too. I wonder how much battery juice a bilge pump needs to expel a small swimming pool from the inside of a boat? What I do know is that a bilge pump can't handle sodden textbooks. With my boot, I stir the mess in the water. “I've got to get rid of this stuff.”

It's probably just as well that I can't see what I'm doing. Using the plastic garbage pail, I sift the bilge water for
armfuls of debris that I dump in the bucket. Then I haul the bucket up the steps to the cockpit, and dump it into the cockpit. The cockpit is designed to drain itself, and the stuff I pour in flows out over the stern through the open transom. Big stuff, like cushions, I just heave out into the cockpit, not caring if they blow overboard. I am a one-woman environmental disaster. Out goes one of the plastic food containers. Another I find seems to be still closed, and I taste the contents. Lasagna. The cold congealed pasta makes my stomach roll and I can't choke it down. I remember when my mother was making the lasagna the day before we set out. She'd been thrilled to find the right kind of cheese at the market, not Mozzarella, but something that would work. Small victories gave her such pleasure. Then I think about Eggman, and I toss the container out into the cockpit.

I find what feels like Duncan's chart and stretch it out to dry on the chart table. I find a Tetra Pak and open it, hoping it might be juice. It's milk, but I drink from it, then set the container in the sink to finish later. I find a flashlight, but the water has ruined it. I find buckets and buckets of broken glass and soggy rice. Everything goes overboard. When pale dawn lightens the gray sky in the east, I'm sieving the water for anything that might clog the pump when I turn it on. My arms and shoulders are sore, my knuckles are bleeding from scraping against the floor. The wind has eased, but the sea is still churning. Sometimes it takes days for the sea to settle after a storm. It's like the sea won't let go of the fury.

I flop down on the dining bench beside Mom. I pull up my knees to my chest and look at her. Her eyebrows are twitching and her eyes are moving under her lids as if she's dreaming. I reach over and run my fingers over her cheeks.

She starts and her eyes open.

I shout, I can't help it, “Mom!”

She flinches from the sound.

I'm so happy to see her that I laugh. “You're awake!”

Her eyes find mine. She struggles to focus. She says something, but her voice is barely a croak.

“You need a drink.” But in the time it takes to grab a water bottle from the table her eyes are closed again.

“Mom!”

Her mouth moves, a smile or a grimace, I can't tell, then she slips again into sleep.

I say a very bad word. Then I give her a shake. “Don't you leave me like this!”

Her eyelids barely flutter.

Dread crawls over me. I throw the quilt off of her and peel away the sweatshirt. It's heavy with blood and I throw it out of the boat. Her leg has stopped bleeding and I see now that there are two bullet holes, fairly small, one on the front of her thigh toward the side, the other a little lower and behind. Gently, I prod the wounds. Mom moans, but her eyes stay closed. If she's lucky, the two wounds means that she was hit with one bullet, that it went in and out. I run my hand over the long leg bone of her thigh. I don't know what broken bone feels like, but Mom's leg feels about like it should. Maybe the bullet missed the bone.

The first aid kit in the galley has been ripped open and scattered. On the counter I find a package of sterile dressings. I take out a couple, grab a cloth and a bowl of water and go back to Mom.

The bullet holes are crusted with blood, and I clean around the wounds, careful not to make them bleed again. A thin clear ooze runs from the wound on the front of her leg. I wipe it away as best as I can. She's not bleeding anymore, that's good. I don't know how much blood she lost, maybe a lot. Maybe too much. I push that thought from my mind and cover the bullet wounds with the dressing.

On the back of her head the gunman left Mom a bump the size of an orange. But it's just a bump, right? Everyone gets bumps on their head. It doesn't mean she has a concussion. If she did have a concussion, what are you supposed to do? I seem to remember something about waking them up every few hours, that they sleep like the dead. No. Not like the dead. I give Mom another shake. She mutters but doesn't stir. I also remember she needs to be on her side with her chin tilted, so that her tongue doesn't fall back and close off her air passage. And it's not good for someone to rest in the same position for too long, so I roll her onto her other side. That gets more of a reaction. Mom's eyes bug wide and she gasps. But then she sighs, like she's tired, and closes her eyes again.

I'm tired too. I flip the quilt over her and tuck it in around her legs. In a way, I'm glad she doesn't know how much shit we're in.

I get up and fill the garbage pail with water. “Okay. I know. There's still too much water. I'll use all our battery
power just draining the water. And no power is no good.” I grunt as I hurl the water out into the cockpit where it drains away. “So I'll bail.” I fill another pail. And another. The work mesmerizes me. The pain in my arms and shoulders gives me something to bite into. Pail after pail after pail of water goes overboard. I stop to rest and I hear it.

Something is bumping against the hull. Thump. Bump. Bump. Thump. Bump. Bump.

I bail. It erases the noise. But when I can no longer hoist the pail, then I stop. And I hear it.

“You know what that is, don't you?” I go over and nudge my mother.
“Don't You?”

I cover my ears, but I feel it if I don't hear it. Thump. Bump. Bump.

I clear the companionway in two steps.
“I know it's you!”
I scream at the sea behind the boat.
“You're dead. D. E. A. D. Leave me alone!”

Thump. Bump. Bump.

I lean over the stern rail.
“Don't do this to me.”
In the rising sun, the sea is grayish green, the breaking waves are gone, leaving behind deep smooth troughs between ten-foot swells. His shape is yellow, a watery yellow in the green of the sea, just below the surface. His hood hangs forward, the arms waft out to the side. But Duncan wasn't wearing his yellow jacket, so it can't be Duncan. I must have thrown his jacket overboard. Other stuff I've tossed overboard lingers in the waves. There's the lasagna container, bobbing empty now, and a tin in which we keep saltines. The empty yellow jacket sleeves undulate. They
motion to me. The reflective tape on the jacket flashes in the new sun.

Thump. Bump. Bump.

“You're free now.” I wave my arms at the jacket. “Ashes to ashes.” With a suddenness that makes me gasp, the yellow of the jacket disappears below the surface. “Duncan!” I search the water and maybe there is one final small flash of light, but maybe I just want it so I see it. He was never there. Duncan was never, ever, there.