by David Manuel
Cochrane started to assess Eric and Colin’s physical condition, as they lay on the deck alongside the lifeless form of Sergeant Tuttle. Dan tapped him on the shoulder. “Let Brother Bartholomew do that. He used to be a corpsman.” Then glancing over at his friend, he caught the look on his face.
“Bart, you’re needed over here!” It was a command, not a request, and it had the effect of snapping Bartholomew out of his trance. The ex-Marine came over and knelt between the wounded men. With his hands he gently but swiftly surveyed the nature and severity of their wounds. “No broken bones,” he announced. “But we’ve got to staunch the blood flow.” He called to Ian. “You got a first-aid kit?”
“In the cabin. On the wall to the left.” Dan went and got it. Fortunately, it was a large one, complete with gauze rolls, tape, scissors, and antiseptic. He soon had his patients’ wounds dressed. He pointed to Colin’s leg. “As this one has no exit wound, we’ll have to get you to hospital, so a doctor can dig the bullet out.”
He looked down at Eric. To Ian he said, “Your son’s lost a fair amount of blood, but other than that, he should be okay.”
“Thank God!” exclaimed Ian, as it grew dark again.
“Hey,” called Colin, from where he lay on the deck, “aren’t we forgetting something?” They looked at him. “He’s getting away! With my boat!”
Cochrane frowned. “If we call Harbour Radio for a fix on him, they’ll tell us to give it up. Which I’m not inclined to do.”
“None of us are,” agreed Dan.
“Well, use your own radar!” shouted Colin, still supine. “C’mon, Ian, didn’t they teach you anything in those fancy schools?”
His brother laughed and turned to his radar, forgotten in the chase. “There he is! A thousand yards off our starboard bow!”
Swerving to the right, he jammed the throttle full forward. Her engine groaning, Goodness lunged through the sea.
The darkness was so complete and the seas so high, that even with the radar, Care Away was invisible until they were almost on top of her.
Cochrane braced himself against the side of the cabin, the rifle ready, determined to avenge the death of his fallen comrade. “Don’t worry,” he said, seeing Dan’s expression. “I’m not going to kill him. He knows too much that I want to know.”
“Well, keep in mind he’s awfully good with that side arm.”
“There he is!” cried Colin, who had pulled himself upright. And there he was—less than fifty yards ahead of them.
“Look out!” cried Dan, as the Frenchman raised his pistol and took aim.
They ducked, and Dupré’s shot went wild.
All at once, Colin’s jury-rig on the mainsail gave way, as he had planned it to. Care Away rocked to port, her main boom swinging wide. Had Dupré done exactly what Colin had under similar circumstances, Care Away’s nose would have come into the wind, and he could have retrieved her sail.
But he did the opposite. He jibed. And suddenly, gale-force wind got behind the sail and violently flung it in the opposite direction. The massive boom whipped across the boat, catching Dupré in the midsection, lifting him out of the boat, and depositing him in the black sea.
Flailing wildly, the Frenchman struggled to keep his head above water. But his life vest contained, not foam pads, but 20 water-sealed sets of cashier checks, laboratory plans, formulae and methamphetamine starter doses, one for each port of call. Instead of buoying him up, 40 pounds of dead weight was dragging him down. His life vest was his death vest.
Dan fired off his last flare just as they reached him. He had gone under. Bartholomew was about to go after him, when Dan grabbed his arm and held him back. “No! We’ve lost enough people out here tonight!”
In the bright illumination overhead, they could just make out the Frenchman’s face, looking up at them as he sank. A string of tiny bubbles came up from the corner of his mouth.
Then he was gone.
For a moment, no one spoke. Then Colin murmured, “Les grenouilles sont finies.”
Ian looked at him, surprised.
“Frog-gone,” his brother loosely translated, then added, “What? You think I didn’t learn anything at all those academies?”
He pointed at Care Away, whose mainsail was flopping loose. “If you guys don’t mind, I’d like to get my boat back!”
“Can you sail her?” asked Bartholomew, concerned.
“With one arm—make that leg—tied behind me!”
Then he thought better of it. “Actually, why don’t you come along? In case I faint, or something. I’ll let you do all the work; I’ll just tell you what to do.”
Bartholomew nodded, but Dan looked carefully at his friend. “You okay with that? It’s going to be a pretty hairy ride.”
“Piece of cake,” said Bartholomew, grinning.
42 welcome to bermuda
The No-Name tropical storm reached its peak at midnight and started to track away from Bermuda to the north-northwest, at ten miles per hour. In its wake there was wind damage everywhere—trees down, power out, boats sunk at their moorings. The front page of the Mid-Ocean News featured a big photo of the Scandinavian Sovereign with a massive dock ballard hanging down from her nose. And sure enough, the Royal Gazette carried a letter by an indignant citizen shaming the Bermuda Weather Service for failing to issue proper warning.
By the following afternoon, the airport was open, power was mostly restored, and things were getting back to normal.
Colin’s bullet had been removed, and he was recovering nicely in a semi-private, drifting in and out of sleep, when he had a visitor.
“Colin,” she said softly, “how—are you?”
His eyes opened—and he thought he must still be dreaming. It was the one person he wanted to see most—and whom he’d given up on ever seeing again.
He couldn’t speak.
“Anson came and got me,” she said at last. “He flew to Boston, but then got right on a plane to Atlanta. My father wasn’t going to let him see me, but he couldn’t very well stop him.” She smiled. “You know Anson, when he makes his mind up.”
He grinned and nodded.
“When I left here, I was sick as a dog, and sick of you, and—”
“I remember.”
“So, by the time I got to Live Oaks, I was totally bummed. Daddy got Doc Tatum to load me up with antibiotics and antidepressants, to the point where, according to Anson, I was practically drooling.” She laughed. “It wasn’t that bad!”
He smiled. “Anson’s been known to exaggerate.”
“Anyway,” she concluded, “I didn’t really want to push the divorce thing, but I was kind of out of it. And you know Daddy.”
She shook her head. “I was not at the hearing. And until Anson told me, I had no idea there was a lump-sum settlement.” She looked down at him then, and her voice broke, as she said, “I would never have let him take Care Away!”
“It’s okay, hon,” said Colin, patting her hand and smiling weakly.
“No, it’s not okay!” she insisted, squeezing his hand. “Anyway, when Anson asked me if I was happy, all I could say, he told me later, was that I wanted to be with you.”
There were tears in Colin’s eyes.
“That was enough for him. He bundled me and Jamie into his rental car. My father was furious, but Anson, well, he can get awfully angry, too!” she recalled with a smile.
“Tell me about it!” Colin chuckled.
“Anyway, he drove us to Atlanta, and stayed with us and got us on the first plane here.”
Colin shook his head. “If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up. It’s the best I’ve ever had.”
She frowned. “While we were in Atlanta, I called Ian. He said he’d meet me. On the way here, he told me about all that happened.” She shook her head. “Wow.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
“Thank God, you’re okay!” She looked down at the heavily bandaged leg. “You are going to be okay, aren’t you?”
Then he grew serious. “You know how they say your life passes before your eyes, just before you drown? Well, it did. I was in the water at night in a raging gale, my leg shot, trying to keep Eric afloat, and—I sort of had a life review.”
He looked at her. “You know what the best thing in it was? You. And the next best thing? Jamie. And I vowed that if I lived, I would find you and tell you that.”
She lifted his hand and kissed it.
When she could speak, she said, “I saw a few things myself, waiting in the airport.”
She looked at him. “I’d been on the verge of coming back, and I suspect Daddy sensed it, which was why he was pushing so hard on the divorce thing. But it wasn’t until Anson talked to me while we waited at the airport, that I saw some things. I saw you through his eyes. I saw the Beater, one of the best sailors on the planet. I saw how sailing was your life and your passion, and how wrong it would be for you to give it up.”
Colin didn’t know what to say.
Amy did. Her eyes were shining now. “Thanks to Anson, we were in the Crown Room at the airport. There was an old Time magazine that had an article about home schooling. About how Harvard and other colleges are dying to get home-schooled kids because they have good study habits, are emotionally more mature, and less likely to trash the campus.”
“Don’t tell me!” he said, laughing. “We’re going to home school Jamie!”
She nodded. “We’re enrolling him right now in Care Away Academy! Do you love it?”
“I do love it. I love you!”
“And we’re going to do this together,” she rushed on. “Don’t get the idea I’m going to do all the teaching. You’re going to teach him math, which he’ll need for navigation, and mechanics, so he’ll know how to keep his boat shipshape, and French, for when we go to the Med—”
“Hmm, I might let you teach him French,” Colin said with a rueful smile. He looked up at her, pleading. “Amy, tell me this dream will never end.”
“It never will, darling. I promise.”
In the airport restaurant that afternoon, waiting to board the plane to New York, Maud and Margaret, and Jane and Buff were having a late lunch.
Maud was her usual blunt self. Fixing Buff with her gaze, she said, “You think you have your priorities straight now?”
“I do,” he replied, meeting her gaze so that she could see that he meant it.
“And you,” she turned to Jane, “the one who married him for better or for worse? The next time it gets worse, you’re not going to mouse around. You’re going to tell him what he’s got to jolly well do to make it better? Do you read me?”
“I do!” she exclaimed, laughing.
“Then I now pronounce you new man and new wife! And to celebrate, I think we should have a bottle of their best champagne—which you,” she informed Buff, “are cheerfully going to pay for!”
“I’ll drink to that,” he said cheerfully.
“And so shall we all!” agreed Maud heartily.
“Shh, Maudie,” said her cousin, “Not so loud! You don’t have to make a perpetual spectacle!”
“Of course I do! I’m unsinkable, remember?”
Atop his hill, on the blue-tiled terrace surrounded by bougainvillea, the owner did his best to appreciate the clear and sparkling sunset.
To be sure, the Swiss account had been drained. And he had permanently lost his eyes and ears in the police department. And he would be forced to sell the coffee plantation in Jamaica to cover his losses. That was the most unpleasant part, no longer being able to escape the island’s cold, damp winters.
But he chose to look at the bright side. Though their operation was compromised, he was not. His accomplice had drowned without revealing anything—or he would not be sitting here now. That meant the network was still intact. All it needed was a little patience, until fate brought him another accomplice with a fresh infusion of capital.
In the meantime, he would still wear his medals to the Queen’s Birthday Party on the Governor General’s lawn, the third Monday in June.
Yes, there was brightness after rain.
Ian Bennett took Dan Burke to the airport. “I’ll ship your marlin, soon as it’s ready,” he said, smiling. “The taxidermist I use is a real craftsman. You’ll be pleased.”
“I hope Peg will,” replied Dan, who was having second thoughts about introducing such a sizable artifact into their rather modest living room.
Ian laughed. “Oh, there’ll be a period of adjustment; there always is. But eventually she’ll be as proud of it as you are.”
At the airport, they shook hands. “Chief, come back soon for a real fishing vacation. And next fall, when Nan and I come up—”
“We’ll invite you over, so you can admire that thing collecting dust over the sofa!”
Father Francis and Brendan Goodell brought Brother Bartholomew to the airport. Their passenger did not talk much on the ride, but they didn’t notice. They were nattering away, as usual. “Tourism’s really hurting after nine-eleven,” the old priest was saying. “I hear all the hotels are laying people off.”
As usual, Brendan took the opposite tack. “But the reinsurance industry took the hit and survived. The island’s got new respect in that quarter.”
“I hear the Minister of Tourism is meeting daily in emergency sessions with his counterparts from the other islands.”
“Maybe so,” replied Brendan, “but Ezra, the bartender at the Coral Beach Club, tells me that a number of their regulars changed their vacation plans and came back because they didn’t want to fly so far. Guess if you’re a terrorist looking for a plane to kill a building with, you pick one with ten or twelve hours of fuel on board, instead of four or five.”
“Besides,” the priest agreed, “you’d have to look pretty hard to find someone here who didn’t like Americans.”
In the back seat, Bartholomew caught the scent of cedar and hyacinth through the open window. And on South Road, he gazed at the bright blue Bermuda waters and allotted them a double-page spread in his album of forever memories.
Father Francis had been right. He was leaving with a heavy heart. But he hadn’t thought it would be this heavy. He had almost lost it this morning, at his last Mass. The window was open at the back of the tiny three-pew chapel, and in the middle of the service, a small, black form had entered.
No one noticed at first, except Rheba, the old black lab by Father Francis’s side. Bartholomew turned and saw that it was Noire, come to say goodbye. He reached over, and she let him brush her ears one time. Then she leapt up on the windowsill and was gone.
The sister beside him leaned close and whispered, “Don’t worry, Bart; we’ll take care of her.”
He choked up. So—what was it about this place that had so gotten to him?
Getting close to God.
Finally.
He recalled what had come to him on the ferry, a week ago—it seemed like a year ago.
You can take what you’ve learned home with you, and you can remain as close to me as you choose.
They had arrived. It was time to say goodbye. He hugged Father Francis and thanked him. “You know what you said about leaving?” Bartholomew said. “You were right.”
“I know.”
“I’ll be back.”
“I know.”
A planeload of new arrivals was just coming through customs. They were greeted by a Calypso band, courtesy of Bacardi’s. “Welcome to our island Paradise,” they sang. “Welcome to Bermuda.”
43 compline
As soon as he reached the Friary that evening, Bartholomew went to find Anselm. He didn’t have far to look; the Senior Brother was in his favorite chair in the library. Bartholomew was glad he was alone.
Anselm got up and gave him a hug, then waved him to the chair beside him. “Well?”
“What can I say?” answered Bartholomew. “It was all you knew it would be—and so much more than I thought.”
/>
“I didn’t know how it would turn out,” said his old friend. “I prayed for you every day.” He smiled. “And I hear from Father Francis that you and Chief Burke managed to get involved in another—situation.”
Bartholomew chuckled and nodded.
“Did it interfere with your retreat?”
The younger monk shook his head. “My retreat ended, just as the other began.” He thought a moment. “In a way, it prepared me.”
Anselm looked out the window at the night. “Tell me what you learned down there.”
Bartholomew took a long time before replying. “That trust in God is the bedrock of our life here. That my will is far stronger than I supposed. And far less inclined to submit to God’s will. But—I can be as close to Him as I choose, in my heart.”
Anselm stood up. “Then it was an excellent retreat, Bartholomew. It’s time for Compline.”
Compline was the last service of the day, the “putting the Church to bed,” as it were. Joining the other brothers in the new basilica’s robing vestibule, they observed silence as they donned their robes. Except for the Gregorian chant, they would continue Grand Silence, as it was called, until after Matins in the morning.
Slipping into his robe, it occurred to Bartholomew that it was the first time he’d worn it in nearly a month. Funny thing, it seemed to fit better now.
As they formed up in a column of twos, waiting to enter, by chance Novice Nicholas wound up beside him. Bartholomew looked at him and smiled. Then, without speaking, he put an arm around his shoulders and gave him a hug.
There was one more friend he wanted to greet that night, back in the friary. But Pangur Ban merely looked up at him and stalked away, as if to say, you can’t just walk out of people’s lives that way.
Later that night, however, long after lights out, the door to their room pushed open a little, and a heavy lump landed on the end of his bed. He was careful not to disturb it.