Rafael never left her side. He was friendly and attentive, getting her a beer and finding her a seat at his table. Flirtation was an art form with him, but he was never forward. She like him enormously and was comfortable spending time with him, intrigued by the underlying attraction between them. She guessed he was somewhere in his late twenties, as were most of the other interns. In all, with spouses, girlfriends and two children, the group filled all twenty rooms of the hotel. The officials of the Foundation stayed at the fancier meeting hotel in the town of Tamarindo, but the Villa Baulas was cheaper, and more important, smack on the beach where the leatherbacks nested.
It was a balmy night, though Toy was surprised that the weather did not cool down after dark like it did on Isle of Palms. But it was relatively bug free. Rafael advised her to skip the “American” menu and order Tico style. So she feasted on grilled fish, black beans and rice, all washed down with cool beer. As the night wore on she learned the interns came from all over Costa Rica, the Americas and Europe. They went to different schools, held different jobs, had different goals, but they were united by their common devotion to sea turtles.
Later, one of the men played the guitar and she dangled her legs in the pool with the others while drinking beer and sharing stories. Toy discovered that she’d just missed the arribada in Ostional. They regaled her with stories of the armada of hundreds of determined, scrambling Olive Ridley turtles that came ashore night after night for a week to lay thousands of eggs in a frenzy of nesting. The turtles came in waves, crushing eggs laid the previous night as they dug new nests.
“It was like Normandy Beach, man,” Rafael told her. He had her laughing till her sides hurt when he did his imitation of a black vulture lurking in a nearby tree, watching and waiting to feast.
“Just my luck to miss it,” she told them, then admitted what she really wanted to see was a leatherback.
“Oh, I wouldn’t count on it,” an intern told her. “It’s early for leatherbacks.”
Rafael sat beside her at the pool. His legs were thin but muscled and feathered with long, soft hair. “It’s not a good situation. Last year was the worst year on record for nests. And unfortunately, they’re not expecting this year to be any better. Thanks to long-line fishing and zero international cooperation, we’re killing off an ancient species.”
“Maybe,” Toy replied. She lazily kicked her legs in the water. “But hope springs eternal, eh?”
Rafael clinked bottles with her. “So, you’re an optimist? I like that. You need to be in this business.”
She leaned back on her arms and grew suddenly quiet as her thoughts turned to Ethan. What had he called her? Unflinchingly optimistic. She wondered what he was doing now, so far away in Charleston.
The following day was all business. To get to the symposium in the town of Tamarindo they had the choice of taking an arduous car trip through the muddy roads, or a short boat ride across the estuary that separated the town from Playa Grande. They all opted for the boat.
During the day they attended the meetings and in the late afternoon she went shopping in the charming town of Tamarindo. She fingered the coins that Ethan had given her, and on impulse bought him a T-shirt with a chart of shark species on the back. She found another T-shirt with a leatherback sea turtle on it for Lovie, and a pottery vase with a primitive turtle on it for Cara. Her shopping done, she met the group at the boat dock for a ride back to the Villa Baulas.
Everyone was talking about going out later for drinks and dancing.
Rafael hooked her waist. “Come on, Nina Bonita. Let’s go.”
“Oh, no,” she replied self-consciously, uncoiling herself from his arm. “It’s been a long day and I’m tired. Besides, I can’t dance.”
He laughed. “Everybody can dance.”
“Not me.”
“Then I’ll teach you!”
Toy remembered how, when she was young, she used to love to dance in front of the mirror while the radio played. She didn’t know any popular steps, but she enjoyed just moving to the music. Once, her mama had caught her dancing alone in the house. She’d hooted at her mockingly, telling her, You dance like you’ve got two left feet.
Toy shook her head, backing away. “I’m hopeless, believe me. Anyway I want to be here at the hotel in case a guide calls.”
The public was not allowed on Playa Grande at night because it was a protected nesting ground of the nearly extinct leatherback sea turtles. If a leatherback was spotted on the beach, the alert came by walkie-talkie from the park rangers who patrolled the beach.
Rafael looked at her like she was crazy. “A leatherback isn’t coming tonight, Bonita. They won’t be here for at least another week or so. Come on, Toy,” he said, seductively tugging the hem of her shirt. “Let me teach you how to dance.”
“You go ahead,” she said, relieved that the small boat had arrived at the dock to ferry them across the inlet.
After a shower, she decided to walk the beach before dinner. The surfers had gone for the day and only a magnificent frigate bird, with its pointy M shaped wings, soared over the waves.
Her first night had been filled with the excitement of her arrival in the foreign country and meeting her fellow interns. Tonight, however, she felt her separateness acutely. Her heart was inexplicably heavy with homesickness. She walked along the pristine shoreline, acutely aware that it was not her shoreline. She worried about Lovie, if she was well, happy, even if she missed her mother. Everywhere she turned she saw something that made her think of her. Wouldn’t Lovie enjoy this shell? Wouldn’t she love to play in this cresting surf? How Lovie would laugh at the enormous iguana that lounged by the pool!
She’d expected to face a host of things new, to feel naive, even gullible, on her first trip outside the country. But she didn’t expect to feel such loneliness. The ferocity of it surprised her. After dinner, she couldn’t bear the thought of going dancing. So when most of the others had driven to town, she sunk into the fiery red hammock that hung in the corner of the porch outside her room to read material from the meetings. But her gaze wandered from the page to the Pacific in the distance.
The gentle rocking of the hammock and the ocean breeze lulled her to sleep. She awoke with a start to a firm shaking of her shoulders. Opening her eyes, she was stunned to discover that it was pitch black.
Rafael raised his flashlight, his eyes bright with excitement. “Toy! Wake up! We got the call!”
“What?” she asked, groggy.
“There’s a leatherback about a half mile up the beach. Grab your gear.” Then with a laugh he added, “You know this turtle came early, just for you.”
She felt electrified and practically fell out of the hammock in her scramble to get out. Her hands were shaking as she collected her backpack from her room then ran to meet Rafael. He led her through the deep darkness past the thicket of trees to the hotel’s beach gate where a resident marine biologist and a local ranger with a large flashlight were waiting to check off their names.
Only a handful of the interns assembled, the rest having gone dancing, and they could talk of nothing but how early in the season this nesting turtle was. The dark eyed, gruff guide was fiercely protective of his stretch of beach. If someone on the list was late, he didn’t care. He wouldn’t allow stragglers onto Playa Grande at nightfall. Once he was satisfied that his group was organized, he ordered them to, “Pair up, stay close and keep up!”
Toy paired up with Rafael. She’d thought she was in pretty good shape but she had a hard time keeping up as they hiked at a clipped pace toward the small dot of light at the far end of the beach. She panted as she sprinted across the half mile of soft sand.
“I thought you were going dancing!” she said to Rafael, barely able to speak she was breathing so hard.
“I was,” he replied, not the least winded. “But then I thought about you sitting here by yourself, and about beginner’s luck, and I decided I wanted to be here when you saw your first leatherback.”
&nb
sp; “It’s not my first sea turtle,” she replied defensively. “I’ve seen hundreds of loggerheads.”
Her eyes were growing accustomed to the dark and even in the minimal light she could make out the smirk on Rafael’s face. “Those aren’t real turtles,” he replied. “Loggerheads are toy turtles compared to the leatherbacks.”
She was affronted by this and would have said something in defense of her beloved loggerheads, but the guide flashed his light on a trail of turtle tracks carved into the beach for them to see. Toy swallowed her words and did a double take. The tracks had to measure six feet across and looked like they were dug into the sand by a bulldozer.
Rafael looked at her, his smug grin saying I told you so.
The guide moved up the beach alone while the biologist clustered them together along the shore. He told them that the leatherback was just ahead and that they had to wait until another guide signaled that they could move forward. No one was allowed to approach until the turtle began digging.
Toy was grateful for the chance to catch her breath. The night was hot and humid, void of wind and already she was coated with a sheen of sweat. They didn’t wait long. The biologist waved his hand and whispered loudly, “Stay to the rear of the turtle, out of its line of vision.” As a group they quietly made their way up the dune to gather at the guide’s red light.
The beach was short and rather steep, perfect for nesting turtles. As Toy drew near, she heard the unmistakable sound of a turtle’s flipper scraping the sand. The night was very black with a slender moon. Rafael turned to her and waved her closer. “Come up here,” he whispered. She drew closer and hunkered low, squinting in the darkness.
Nothing prepared her for what she saw. There before her, in the dim light of moon and stars, against the creamy, glistening sand, lay an enormous, prehistoric looking black hulk. Her mouth slipped open. The enormity of the leatherback hit her first.
Then it’s uniqueness. The leatherback was unlike any other species of turtle she had seen. Loggerheads, kemps, ridleys, greens or the hawksbills—all those turtles had a curved, hard shell. This gorgeous creature’s shell was leathery and long with vertical ridges that curved from the tip by the head to the point at the rear. Most different, however, was that beneath the curved black shell was a blubbery body, like that of a walrus.
She knelt beside Rafael in the cool sand and he reached over to hold her hand. Looking up, she saw awe and wonder on his face as well, despite his being a seasoned intern. She smiled, grateful to share this moment with a friend. She thought of the other faces she wished could be here to share this night—Cara, Flo, Emmi, and especially Lovie.
Shoulder to shoulder they watched as the five-foot-long, at least one-thousand-pound turtle used its rear flipper to scoop out a cupful of sand. Then the other flipper repeated the motion, one after the other, in an ancient ritual. Despite her enormous size and bulk, the flippers were beautifully boned, more like human hands than the flippers of loggerheads. They lent her a remarkably feminine grace as she dug.
When the nest was over two feet deep, she rested and the beach slipped once more into a deep island silence, broken only by the comforting, omnipresent rolling surf. Then the turtle began laying her perfectly round, white eggs. They glistened in the moonlight and landed silently into the soft sand. An intern came forward to collect each of the sixty-some eggs in a bag as they dropped.
Toy knew that these eggs were collected and put into a hatchery. The species was so endangered, each hatchling survival was critical. When she looked at the turtle’s head and saw the tears washing away the salt from her eyes, Toy wept her own salty tears for this gentle giant and her fragile offspring. Toy knew full well that she could be witnessing one of the final few remaining leatherbacks nesting on this Pacific beach.
Too soon, the guide signaled that it was time for them to leave. Toy was crushed, hoping she could watch the great sea turtle make her way back to the sea. She couldn’t imagine how magnificent this creature would look as she slipped under the wave. The guide waved insistently, and with a sigh, she quietly left along with her group, grateful for the chance to see the leatherback at all.
As they trooped back to their inn, she lifted her gaze from the town to an endlessly vast, black sky littered with brilliant pinpricks of starlight. She slowed pace, eyes to the sky, when in a sudden flash, she caught the streaking tail of a falling star. In the time of a gasp it was gone.
She laughed as her heart lifted and she felt a sudden joy thinking of her dearest friends on the turtle team. Were they out on the beach tonight, too? Did they see this same shooting star on the shore of another ocean, waiting not for a leatherback to lay her nest, but for a nest of loggerheads to erupt with dozens of hatchlings? She felt sure they did.
She felt her loneliness dissipate like sea foam, and making a heartfelt wish, she sent it to her friends.
Darryl sat in the small bar section of a grill house on Shem Creek. The restaurant was still crowded, even at the late hour, but the only folks in the bar were himself and two pretty girls huddled at a table in the corner. One of them was crying her eyes out, causing raccoon-like black circles of mascara to ring her eyes. The crying blonde was leggy and lean with a body that made Darryl think the guy causing those tears had to be a fool. But it was the friend consoling her, a smaller, baby-faced girl with doe eyes that drew his gaze. She reminded him of Toy.
“Shit,” he murmured, feeling the slam of pain again. Lifting his hand, he signaled the bartender for another beer.
This would have to be his last one, he thought, figuring out the total in his head. He was near flat broke. If it wasn’t for that gig he had tomorrow night, he’d have to hit his mother for another job. Lord knew, she’d never simply lend him the money. The dust flew whenever that old lady pried open her pocketbook. When he’d come home she’d made him earn every penny she gave him. He had to paint her ratty picket fence that would have looked better if he’d just ripped it out. Then she had him fix the drywall in the front hall after her no-good, drunk boyfriend punched a hole through it after she’d kicked him out.
He brought the beer to his lips and took a long swallow. Wiping his mouth, he felt a stab of despair. All that money he’d sweated to earn was just so he could take Toy and Little Lovie out for a nice time. He didn’t want them to know he was down on his luck. He’d tried real hard—never swore in front of them, watched his manners, polished his boots and sat and listened to Toy go on and on about those damned turtles.
And for what? She didn’t want nothing to do with him.
“Baby, I tried,” he muttered and grimaced as shame ripped through him. She wouldn’t even kiss him. He took another long tug from his bottle.
The background music was country and some guy was singing about life not being beautiful. He lifted his bottle. “You got that damn straight.” He cocked his ear and listened to the lyrics.
You think you’re on your way
And it’s just a dead end road
At the end of the day.
“Hell, I could’a wrote them lyrics,” he said in a surly voice to the bartender.
The bartender only nodded, his eyes on his towel as he dried a bar glass.
Darryl sneered and shook his head. Dumb kid was too young to know shit, he thought. He could teach him a thing or two about country rock. He’d played for some of the best country rock bands in the country. Hell, he had real talent. All he needed was one break. Just one fucking break. Hell, he thought, feeling a familiar fire in his belly. What was he doing wasting his time hanging around this nowhere town? After his gig he’d have a little money in his pocket and he was heading for Nashville. Now there was a city! His lips curled as he brought the bottle to his lips. After tomorrow, he was outta here.
The pretty girls in the corner rose from the table and crossed the bar to the door. The tall girl had cleaned up her face and even though her eyes were puffy, she was damned sexy. But it was the smaller one Darryl’s eyes followed, mesmerized by the swinging o
f her sweet behind. She had that dark eyeliner around her pale blue eyes, making them look all smoky, the way Toy used to do.
He sneered and ripped his gaze away to his hands. She was probably a tease, too.
A low, slow burn began in his belly, the kind that he knew could grow into a simmering rage. He tilted his head and drew hard on the bottle, but it was empty. He slammed the bottle down on the bar, drawing the attention of the bartender. He was a big shouldered guy and he stopped drying the glass and narrowed his eyes in warning.
Darryl dug into his pocket for a couple of singles, laid them flat on the bar then pushed himself away. He’d sung at too many establishments just like this one and knew better than to stiff the bartender all because he was crying in his beer over some no-count girl.
24
On Saturday, Darryl pulled up along Palm Boulevard on the Isle of Palms and let the motor idle while he dug through his pockets for the address. This can’t be right, he thought, pulling out the wrinkled sheet of paper that Toy had given him. He lifted his sunglasses and read the address again, then looked again at the number on the mailbox.
“Well, whaddaya know,” he chuckled, looking at the modest, pink stucco house set back from Palm Boulevard. Behind it, Hamlin Creek was racing with the incoming tide.
This was what they called a doghouse coming up, though he knew any house on deep water these days was worth a world more than he’d likely ever dream of affording. He just figured the house of high and mighty Cara Rutledge would be one of them big mansions that was sprouting up all over the island. The kind that was manicured and uppity, like her.
As he walked up toward the front door, he felt uneasy about confronting Cara to pick up his daughter. He’d never actually met her, but from all the words he’d had about her with Toy, he had her fixed in his mind as a real ballbreaker. Toy used to be intimidated by her and it was always Cara said this and Cara said that. He chuckled as he looked down at his feet. But what kind of tough lady had stone turtles for a front walkway?
Swimming Lessons Page 31