The Great Wide Sea (8 page)

I inflated an air mattress and floated my sleeping bag, the food basket, and some dry clothes to shore. The weather was clear, so I didn't bother with a tent. After I changed, I hiked around the edge of the woods until dark, then built a fire on the beach and roasted my hot dogs and marshmallows. I sang “Happy Birthday” to myself, then lay back on my sleeping bag and looked up toward the sky.

Though I could remember it later, at the time I didn't really see the sky or the black tips of the trees ringing the cove. I didn't hear the hoot owls or the scurrying creatures in the leaves. I didn't feel the pebbles under me or the dampness of the dew as it settled in my hair.

What I felt that night, lying there alone and faceup to the sky, was open and cleaned out and strong. I felt invisible and perfect.

I did not want to move and I did not want to sleep.

When I woke in the morning, I sailed slowly back to the dock and bicycled home. My life was good. I wanted to keep it just the way it was. School and friends, parents and brothers, my bike and the boat, and sometimes just me—just me, a wide sky, and an open space of time. It seemed like something a person could always have. It seemed like something you could depend on, something you could trust.

I was wrong.

I watched the dark silhouette of
Chrysalis
for a long time. Then I waded into the black ocean and stroked gently into the dark. When I reached the boat, I pulled myself into the empty dinghy hanging just astern. I hauled the dinghy hand over hand to the boat and climbed into the cockpit. When I stepped on deck, the fiberglass felt smooth and cool after the acorns and shells on the beach.

Then I saw Gerry. He was sitting on the cockpit bench, his back resting against the cabin. He had been watching me.

I crossed the cockpit slowly and knelt quietly beside him. His eyes glittered at me like stars in the night.

“That was mean,” he said. “What you said.”

“I know.”

“When you're mean like that, it scares me.”

I didn't answer.

“Don't go away again.”

“I won't.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

He stood, quietly climbed down the ladder, and laid himself in his berth, carefully touching a corner of Blankie to his nose.

I looked back at the beach and then up to where the mast rose black against the dark sky. I was surprised that Dad had forgotten to turn on the anchor light. I flipped the switch, then stood in the companionway to check. Yes. There it was—tiny and white at the top of the mast, swaying gently in the dark, the only light in the cloudy sky.

I was glad I had turned it on.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I DECIDED TO CALL a truce with Dad. I didn't say that to him, of course. I just said as little to him as I could. The next day when we mumbled good morning to each other, he didn't ask why I had come back. I didn't say. After breakfast, when he said we'd start across the Bank that afternoon, I was quiet, even when he looked at me and waited for me to speak. After he went topsides to study the clouds, I pulled out a book. If we were going to go, I decided to figure out where it was we were going.

Dad was right. No matter where we went from Gun Cay, we had to cross the Bank. It was shallow, but I wasn't really afraid. And the night would be long, but I could manage it. Thinking about it twenty-four hours later, I couldn't really remember why I had jumped overboard and spent the whole day alone on the beach.

So I was quiet as we raised the anchor and turned the bow east, farther and farther from home. The wind was light, barely filling the sails. We glided slowly through the water like a ghost, but at least we moved. Gerry and I went below to sleep right after dinner. At some point the engine came on inches away from my head. The noise shocked me out of sleep, but I was tired. I put the pillow over my head and slept on.

When I took the helm at four o'clock, the engine was still going. I poured myself a cup of hot, sweet coffee and snapped into my safety harness. Dad had left the main up to steady us and to catch what little breeze we might find. I double-checked the course, the autopilot, the rpms, the knots. I heard Dad snoring before I was comfortable in the cockpit.

Then the night grew large. It curved up over me out of the ocean. I saw strange lights. I heard voices cry out. I found myself standing quickly and peering into the invisible ocean around me. I knew it was all phantoms in my head, but it was hard to believe that something so real was just something my mind invented.

I tried Dylan's trick again and stared at the sky. Dylan was wrong. The stars did change. The Milky Way wasn't even in the same place it had been when I went to bed. Arcturus was gone and Orion was advancing from the east, his shield pointed west and the three bright stars of his belt clearly visible. Then they all started to fade.

The sky slowly separated from the ocean and the sea monsters resolved into clouds. The light I was supposed to watch for still hadn't appeared. We didn't seem to be making enough speed through the water for the rpms we were putting out. I didn't look forward to a day of creeping across a flat sea with the engine shaking the boat and covering everything with the nauseating smell of diesel fumes.

At six o'clock Dad crawled up out of the companionway looking old. He hadn't shaved since Key West and his beard had come in scruffy and thin. When he was young, his hair had been blond, but now it was dark, and the gray showed more and more as it got longer.

“How's it been?” he asked. His voice was normal—tired, but normal. I thought maybe he'd forgotten to be angry this morning.

“Good,” I said. “No adventures.”

He nodded. “Coffee?”

“Sure.”

He disappeared down below and I sat with my heart pounding, waiting.

He came back up and handed me a cup. I tasted it. He'd put in the sugar I like. I could hardly drink it. This was my old dad come back, just like that. Right up the companionway into the new morning.

He sat down and sipped at his cup. I remembered that from home. The way he held the cup in two hands and brought it to his face like a bowl. He sipped. He paused. He sipped. Three times. Then he lowered the cup into his lap, took in a deep breath, and arched his back into a slow stretch.

“Seen the light yet?” he asked.

“No. Nothing yet.”

“Nothing?” The edge of his voice sharpened and I felt something spinning away from me. Something it would have felt good to remember. It was gone and the small of my back felt tired and tight.

“No. Nothing yet.”

“You've held your course?” The lines were starting back into his forehead.

“Yes,” I said. “I've held my course.”

“Are you sure? Did you fall asleep? You got tired. We're off course. I know it. Go get Dylan up. We'll put him on the bow pulpit to watch.” Dad was spilling his coffee as he twisted around, looking for coral heads.

“Dad,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “I've held my course. I did not fall asleep. Something's not right with the engine.”

“But it's been running all this time. I heard it.”

“Yes, but we're not getting enough power from it. There's a current through here with the tide and all, but—Well, I think something must be caught on the prop.”

Dad nodded. I saw his jaw working. “Okay. Someone has to jump in and look. Go get on your swimsuit.”

Of course. Just like the anchor in Bimini. While Dad turned off the engine, I went down below to put on my swimsuit. Gerry was still sleeping in his ball. Dylan lay with one arm thrown up, circling his head. I left them and found Dad securing a line on a cleat off the back of the boat.

“You can't wear a life jacket because you couldn't get under the boat that way. But I'll float the life ring behind the boat so you'll have something to grab if you need it.”

I stood on the stern and looked over. The sun was up high now. Already the air was getting hot. I could see straight down. The bottom was clearly visible. Even the ripples in the sand showed. We drifted past a patch of brown turtle grass, and a fish flashed in a glint of light near the rudder. I waited a moment, the night and the sleeplessness crushing my consciousness to a tiny spot of dread at going over into the ocean with no land in sight. Then I jumped.

The water was cool and clean. I came quickly to the surface and saw the boat already twelve feet away from me. I poured my energy into my strongest crawl, dragging myself through the water to the boat. Still it crept forward. I had closed the distance by only two feet. I was spent. I grabbed the line and let it slip between my fingers until I had the life ring in my grip. Dad was calling to me as I wiped the water out of my eyes.

“What's wrong?”

“I can't catch up. I can't swim that fast.”

Dylan came up behind Dad. The mainsail hung lifeless on the mast, but they moved to take it down too. The halyard whirred, the sail flapped, and I rode on the life ring, feeling the cool, clear water around me and watching the bottom slip by. A great wad of seaweed floated by. Sargassum. Yellow-brown and knobby. It headed straight for me. I stuck out my arm and pushed it away. It floated stupidly toward the horizon. I pulled myself hand over hand along the trailing line back to the boat's stern.

Dylan was leaning over, watching the water run by the boat. “I think we've stopped now, Ben,” he said.

I dove again. Under water was completely silent except for the trailing line slapping the surface and the
whushing
water moving around
Chrysalis
. I could see perfectly. There was the rudder, newly slimed since Dad had bought her with a clean bottom, and there was the prop with a huge ball of sargassum wrapped round and round it, trailing back toward the rudder. Then I was out of breath. I popped up to the surface.

“Seaweed,” I gasped, and dove under again. This time I swam immediately for the prop with my hand outstretched. I touched the seaweed and grabbed. A handful pulled away from the blades. I was out of air. I surfaced. I gasped. I dove. I pulled. Five times. Down under the belly of the boat, a grab, and then up, gasping for air. Finally I grabbed the right strand and the seaweed pulled away completely. The prop was free.

As I surfaced, I could feel my heart thudding in my ears. I eased up out of the water like a turtle poking up its head. I floated for just one second and then turned to Dad and Dylan. The boat was already twenty feet away. The wind on the mere sides of the boat, the tiny wisp of wind we were trying to catch in our sails, was moving the boat that fast. For a flash I imagined the boat sailing away and leaving me there, floating on the Great Bahama Bank. I could see the bottom, but it was too deep for me to stand on. Coral heads were somewhere, but they were invisible from here. Boats would sail by, but they wouldn't see me. At night, they would assume my cries were the mysterious cries of the night sea. I would float and float and float. No one would ever find me.

I shivered and grabbed the last foot of the line as it slid by. Dad reached out his hand to help me back on the boat, and I took it. He handed me a towel. “You called that one right,” he said, and squeezed my shoulder. When he started ordering us around again, I looked over the side and watched the water. His instructions, his complaints, his criticisms—I let them all go past me. Looking in the water, I felt sad for Dad.

And a little sad for us too, I guess.

The tiny breeze dried the salt water on my skin to a sticky film. Dylan handed me another cup of coffee. Twenty minutes later, Gerry spotted the light. We took a fix on it. When it was due north, we turned south, heading for Joulters Cay on our way to Andros.

The wind picked up. We turned off the engine and raised the sails. I stood at the bow, balanced against the lift and fall of the waves, watching the flat, moving disk of ocean surrounding us. The water creamed under the bow and the boat bent into the taut pull of the wind across the curving sails.

Then I was glad—glad that we were picking our way into Joulters Cay after a long night crossing the Bank. Glad that we could see the coral heads and that the chart was clear about where the shallows were. Glad as we curved around to the southern tip of the island and dropped our anchor into the clear, bright water that filled this new world around us.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

WHEN WE FINISHED anchoring at Joulters Cay that morning, I remembered that I had been up since four A.M. and climbed into my bunk to nap. Dad was under the boat, checking out the prop. Dylan was stationed at the rail to hand him tools as he needed them. Gerry was in the cockpit under the shade of the bimini. He had added acorns and coconut hulls to his car collection. The hulls were buildings. The acorns were bombs. I could hear the acorns hitting the cockpit seat right over my head and dropping to the floor. Gerry's voice told some story. Then Dad yelled for something and Dylan's feet pounded over my head.

It was impossible to sleep.

I turned and looked out the tiny porthole in my bunk. All I could see was the surface of the water. Then Dad's head popped up in the middle of my view. He spat out his snorkel and called for Dylan again.

“I need a knife,” he yelled.

I heard Dylan's feet and saw his shadow fall over Dad.

“Don't just drop it to me,” Dad said. “Tie a line on it.”

Dylan was busy and then Dad swam toward the side of the boat and out of my sight. “A little more seaweed,” I heard him gasp. “Won't pull off.”

Another splash and he was back under the boat. I heard bumps against the hull as he swam toward the prop.

Everything went quiet. Gerry had stopped bombing his cars. Dylan was waiting for Dad to surface again. In a split second I was asleep.