The Boat

by Jim Markson

  He pushed onward, carefully balancing himself on the roots and finding a good footing before pulling his loyal boat along the same path. Finally, they reached open water. The boat slid off the mangrove roots, eagerly leading the way. Mike stepped in and pushed the boat away from the mangrove into small but choppy waves. He had no idea of the time of day and considered tying back up to the mangrove while he rested. But he didn’t know where he was, and it seemed certain that anyplace the wind and waves took him would be better than where he had just been.

  He cut holes in the bottom of the two MRE bags he had stashed under the forward planks and made them into funnels, leading the rainwater into gallon jugs that he securely tied to the oar locks. He pulled his dry suit back up on his torso and zippered it closed. Then he lay down in the boat to rest for a minute. On his back, he opened his mouth and caught the small drops, too tired to swallow but letting them make their own way down his parched throat. His eyes, swollen and closed, wept borrowed tears as the cool moisture puddled in his tear ducts and ran across his eyelids, washing the burning salt away as they slipped down the side of his face. The boat rocked in the waves, happy to be out of the brown water prison. Mike eventually rolled on his side and fell asleep in the rain.

  XIII

  It was a sound that woke Mike the next day. A sound he had heard before and hadn’t liked … then or now. Or maybe it was the vibrations he could feel through his back, lying in the bottom of the boat that now had three inches of water in its hull. A heavy, steady growl, the thumping of dual diesel engines driving big propellers that easily pushed the large boat wherever its captain wanted to go.

  Mike grabbed the side of the boat and went to pull himself up, but his back and shoulders cramped quickly and shot electric bolts of pain so severe he quickly let go and waited for the sensation to subside before he even dared to take a breath. He rolled over on his stomach, where he could push with his arms rather than pull, and slowly came up on his knees. He was not sure how long he had been out, but estimated it was now mid-morning. The skies were clear, the weather cool, and there was a good westerly breeze with small, soft rolling waves.

  Slowly and carefully extending his arms, he untied one of the gallon jugs of water as he searched the horizon for the motorboat. He raised the gallon jug, which was half full from rainwater, with both arms and swallowed a large mouthful. It burned as it went down his throat. He continued to hold the jug up, and his second and third mouthfuls went down much easier.

  He spotted the boat coming down from the north. At least he thought it was the north. He couldn’t see land anywhere and was guessing compass directions by the sun and what he imagined was the time of day. She was maybe 400 yards north and moving slower than he would expect anyone to go in these waters. Regardless how far he had drifted during the night, it wasn’t like there was anything to see or any good fishing here; it was a place you had to go through in order to get to some place better. Like the airport in Atlanta.

  The boat was a threat, but it could also be Mike’s salvation. In the mild weather, with little other traffic around, it could very well be on auto-pilot. The captain could be downstairs, attending to guests or other issues, and the boat could run Mike over, probably without even noticing. His was a little boat and, especially without a sail up, easy to miss even under good weather conditions; he certainly wouldn’t register on their radar. Mike was also just realizing that his boat was fairly swamped with rainwater from the prior evening and, even though the oncoming yacht was moving slow for her class, it would be hard for Mike to maneuver his boat if he happened to be on her course heading.

  On the other hand, the motorboat represented everything that he needed: fresh water, maybe some supplies, but most of all, some idea of where the hell he was. As the yacht drew closer, he could hear the engines slow even more, and she seemed to alter course to stay just slightly west of him. Mike waved his arms, ignoring the pain from his back and shoulders, noticing the boat was even bigger than he had thought, maybe seventy feet total. It crossed his mind that these backwoods waters were a strange place for such a big and expensive yacht.

  As the yacht slowed almost to an idle and came within fifty yards, a voice came over a loud speaker. “Captain of the small sailboat, are you in need of assistance?”

  What does it look like, dumbass? I’m not doing my aerobics out here, he thought as he continued to wave his arms. The big boat approached to a distance Mike considered perilously close before turning hard to starboard, the stern drifting in Mike’s direction and her bow facing into the wind. There was a loud metal clank, and two anchors that had to weigh fifty pounds each dropped from the bow and splashed to the shallow bottom in seconds. The boat engines stopped, and she floated back in the breeze, stopping about five feet short of the little sailboat. Mike was not a fan of most motor-boaters, but he couldn’t help but be impressed by the parking job.

  He sat down on the forward plank as a large launching platform opened away and downward from the back of the mammoth boat. Electric motors whirred, and the platform slowly lowered itself to the level of the waves. A swing gate at the transom opened from the back of the boat, and a woman in cutoff jeans and short blond hair stepped onto the platform.

  “You get lost Detective?” Erin said with a smile on her face.

  Mike sat looking up at her, speechless, thinking that maybe it was all a dream; maybe he was really having hallucinations from exposure, dehydration, or hypothermia. At least it was a nice hallucination.

  “Even with your questionable seamanship skills, you should have made more distance since the last time we met,” she said as she walked out to the edge of the platform and tossed him a rope.

  Mike grabbed the rope but didn’t say anything. He pulled the boat up to the platform and tied her up to a cleat. He looked Erin over from top to bottom, then looked up at the massive yacht, then back at Erin, but he said nothing. She looked cleaner than the last time he had seen her. She still had the remnants of bruising on her cheekbone, but the swelling was gone.

  Erin was looking at the sailboat. “You took on some water… is there a leak?”

  “No. Rainwater from last night,” he responded, suddenly feeling very cold and starting to shiver from deep within.

  Erin looked him over again and said, “You look like crap. Why don’t you take a warm shower, and I’ll take care of the boat.”

  She led the way, closing the transom gate behind them as they walked onto the lower deck. She opened the sliding glass door into the main salon and walked through a narrow hallway, opening a door to a large cabin on the port side. “There’s a shower through here. Use as much hot water as you want, but too hot and you’re gonna make that sunburn worse. The towels and linens are clean; I washed them myself this morning. Sleep as long as you want; we’ll stay anchored here till you get done.”

  He just looked at her, wondering if the whole crazy scenario was real. She looked at his burnt face and blistered hands, a slight shiver and lack of speech, and wondered if he might be even worse off than he looked. “Take off the dry suit … I want to make sure you can make it into the shower by yourself.”

  Mike was disgusted with the tremble in his hands as he went to unzip the torso of his dry suit. “Daa-a-mm-mn, you keeeep it cool-l-ld in heeere,” he said as he shivered, finally pulling the zipper down past his waistline. He pulled his right hand through the tight wrist cuff, but when he tried to pull it through the rest of the sleeve, his back and shoulder cramped, and he grimaced in pain.

  Erin said nothing but grabbed the sleeve, allowing Mike to pull his arm through with less pain. She helped the same way with the other arm. He sat down on the foot of the bed and groaned as he bent over and unzipped his beach booties and kicked them off. He took a breath and stood up in bent fashion, pulled the dry suit down to his ankles, and then stepped on it while he pulled one foot and then the other through the tight cuffs.

  Standing in just his rugby shorts, Mike looked up wearily at Erin, took a deep b
reath, and said, “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” she responded, walking past him into the bathroom. She turned on the shower and, as she passed him again, handed him a bottle of water. “There is more bottled water under the sink; you need to work at drinking as much as you can. Like I said, sleep after you shower, and I’ll take care of your boat.” Mike nodded his head, then turned and walked to the bathroom. Erin closed the door to the cabin on the way out.

  Although worried about her new guest, Erin quickly went to bridge and checked the yacht’s controls. The anchors had held tight, and the big boat had not drifted a foot. There was still plenty of depth all around her, and the weather outside remained mild. She turned the radar on and watched for a minute until she was confident there was no traffic of any sort within a ten-mile radius, then turned it back off. She double-checked that the ship’s beacon, the automatic identification system, was off.

  She skipped down the stairs to the lower deck and out to the platform at the stern. She grabbed the swing-arm of the winch, normally used to launch jet-skis, and hooked the line up to the bow of Mike’s boat. The boat was slowly and carefully pulled up at an angle onto the platform. Just as the stern of the boat came onto the platform, Erin stopped the winch, walked over to the little sailboat, and unscrewed the drain plug located in the transom. During the ten minutes it took to drain the water out of the boat, Erin surveyed the boat inside and out for any damage. Finding none, she stepped back to look at the boat, seeming to hang there by a thread. She marveled at how small it was, and how far it had come. The only navigation equipment she had found was a sealed bag containing laminated charts and a compass.

  She thought back just several nights prior, when she had been certain that she was about to be attacked by a large shark and this little boat rescued her. Steadfast was the word that came to mind when she looked at the boat; firm and unwavering in purpose and resolve. There were rough seas that night, but the boat had dipped her beam only enough to allow the swimmer on board, and then laughed at the waves banging at her boards. The boat had seemed to welcome Erin’s hand on the tiller after Mike passed out. Erin thought back to the ghost Mike had been talking to that night. She recalled how the boat had almost steered herself to the beach, rolling over the surf break, and shaking her centerboard and rudder when bottom got close, letting Erin know she should lift them up to prevent damage. There wasn’t much to her, but the boat was well designed and well built. Who knew what travails she had been put through as she struggled to safely bring her lunatic master wherever he wanted.

  She got out a brush pole, hosed down the outside of the boat, and gave it a quick scrub. The boat had drained all the water out of its hull, and she replaced the drain plug, slowly lowering the winch so the boat rested on the platform leaning to starboard. She smiled at the boat and headed back to lower deck and then up to the galley.

  From inside the refrigerator, Erin withdrew three lobsters she had caught and cooked first thing that morning. It was not lobster season, and she certainly didn’t have a permit, but these were the least of the crimes she had committed in the past few days. She put a little bit of grapefruit juice and white wine vinegar into a bowl and added some chopped shallots and cherry tomatoes, some mustard and a dash of lime juice. She stirred the concoction vigorously, the aroma making her salivate as she anticipated one of her favorite dishes. She took the meat out of the lobster tails and cubed it, along with two avocados and some diced onion and bell peppers, threw it all in the bowl, swirling it around as her appetite grew. She emptied the mixture into the hollowed-out avocado halves and put three in the refrigerator, leaving the fourth on the counter as she took a healthy spoonful.

  Mike leaned against the fiberglass wall with his head directly under the showerhead, the water slowly breaking away days of salt and sweat. The rugby shorts were rinsed repeatedly before being wrung out and hung over the shower door. He washed every part of his body as thoroughly as he had ever washed in his life, eventually sitting down to make sure he had washed every nook and cranny in his sea-wrinkled feet. The towel was soft and fluffy, but it still stung whenever he touched any of the many parts of his body that were sunburned. He looked under the sink and pulled out a plastic first aid kit, applying antibiotic cream to the blisters breaking through under the calluses on his hands.

  He brushed his teeth, never thinking about who might have previously used the toothbrush, and only when he went to replace it did he wonder who owned it. Hell, who owned the whole ship? How the hell did this woman named Erin, who only a few days ago was bobbing for her life in the Gulf of Mexico, land up at the helm? And what was she doing in the brown water of Ten Thousand Islands? He rubbed the toothbrush against a bar of soap, worked it through the fibers, then rinsed it out and put it back where he found it, apologizing to whoever owned it for having so befouled it.

  The air-conditioned cabin was cool and dark, the water-level portholes covered by closed curtains. Mike sat down on the bed with a towel wrapped around his waist. He didn’t want to go to sleep until he had some answers about the ship he was on. He stared at the red numerals of a bedside clock indicating it was just past noon. He surrendered, let his head fall to the pillow, and barely pulled the sheet up before his eyes closed. He awoke an hour later, comfortable, like he was in his own bed at home. And then, suddenly, he was frightened, sitting up—he wasn’t in his boat; what happened to his boat? It was dark and cold; where the hell was he? Where was his boat? As he moved, every muscle in his body seemed to start to cramp simultaneously, quickly reminding him of what he had been through and where he had landed up. He lay back down and, caught his breath, thinking to himself that the starkness of sobriety was gonna land up giving him a heart attack.

  He pulled on his wet shorts, walked down the hall, through the salon, and into the afternoon sunshine of the lower deck. His boat was lying at an angle on the launching platform and Erin sat not far away, legs dangling in the water, a fishing pole in her hand.

  Adjusting to the sunlight, Mike put his hand over his eyes. “Catch anything?” he asked.

  She looked up. “Had a nice snapper on the line, but a goddamn shark cut him in half.” Still looking up at him, she said, “You look better; guess you’re gonna make it after all. I made some fresh lobster salad. You better help yourself before I eat it all.” She wound in the fishing line and stood up. “Also found a bottle of Pedialyte, best thing for dehydration. Come on,” she said as she walked past him, “you don’t need to spend any extra time in the sun.”

  She motioned for him to sit at the table in the shade as she opened the sliding glass door and walked inside. She returned with a plate holding the three remaining avocado halves full of lobster salad in one hand, and two bottles of Perrier and a bottle of Pedialyte in the other. “The Pedialyte tastes like shit,” she said, tossing him a fork. “Eat the lobster first; I caught it this morning up off of Marco.” She grabbed one of the halves and started eating it, looking up at him only when she had a mouthful of her own. “Damn, I love this stuff.”

  “Thanks,” he said, not sure what else to say as he took a forkful. She was right, it was delicious. As they ate, he looked at Erin fully for the first time. If she wasn’t wearing the same cutoffs she’d worn the night he met her, they sure looked the same. She wore a long-sleeved cotton Guy Harvey fishing shirt that stopped right at her waist line. Her legs were tan and muscular, and her feet were bare. It was again her eyes that caught his attention, almost unnerved him. She was watching him as he looked her over. She didn’t mind, didn’t look away when they made eye contact—was it indifference? Self-confidence? Drugs? He never did get a straight answer on how she landed up bobbing around in the Gulf that night. He couldn’t figure it out, but she was definitely different.

  “Just you on this big ol’ ship?” he asked.

  “And you,” she said matter-of-factly, adding, “Unless you brought along your invisible friend?” with raised eyebrows. They both knew what she was talking about, but Mike was
not going to get into it.

  “You own her?” Mike asked.

  Erin thought about the answer for a while and simply responded, “Yeah, it’s mine.” She had another forkful of the salad, looking at him, assessing the man, while still enjoying her meal. “Be careful what questions you ask, Detective Kelly. You may not like the answers you get.” Mike knew it was good advice; he had told many trainees never to ask a question to which they did not already know the answer. He wondered what her game was, what her background was, what she had been through that made her so different from anyone he had met.

  “Well,” Mike said, thinking about how to ask the question so that he learned what he needed to know, without her having to tell him something he didn’t want to know, “just coincidence that you happened to pick me up?”

  “Oh, hell no, I’ve been looking since yesterday. That’s a tiny little boat, and this is a mighty big cesspool. Thought you would have made more progress south; assume you went into the islands and got lost?” Mike nodded his head yes.

  “That morning on the beach, I went through your things and saw you didn’t have squat for navigation—how do you think you’re gonna make it through this area without a GPS?”

  “Had one when I started,” he said, recalling being run down by a boat with dual diesels just like this one. “Down at the bottom of Tampa Bay now; it’s a long story.”

  “Yeah, well, anyway, I figured you might have some problems—seemed like a good chance to pay you back for helping me that night.” They looked into each other’s eyes, both wondering about all the things that weren’t being said.