“There’s a bag up in the bow, a computer bag right next to the shelves. Will you get it for me?”
He nodded and jumped down the hatch into the cabin, disappearing in the forward end of the ship faster than I could have made it to the sink. A couple of minutes later, he and Elsie crowded in close while I fired up the computer.
My first mistake became apparent the instant the chart appeared on the screen. We had passed the natural channel running up the middle of the sound by a mile at least. A half mile north of the position where Angel currently rested at anchor, the depth readings dropped to one or two feet all the way to the end of the island. The only water fit for passage lay behind us or out on the ocean.
Had I been by myself, the choice would have taken all of ten seconds to make. No one in their right mind would call Angel a sea-going vessel, but the weather couldn’t have supplied a better day to be on the ocean. From what I’d seen, I could have paddled a canoe up the coast. The water looked like a mirror laid out from one side of the horizon to the next. The wind ghosted through the rigging barely strong enough to swing the vane at the top of the mast. The good water ran two thirds of the way up the core side of the island. The rest of the way would be picking our way through sandbars and marsh. Angel could do a little better than seven knots at full speed. We could run that fast at sea. We couldn’t in the sound. No matter how many times I looked at the chart, the math worked out the same. If we wanted to make Portsmouth by dark, we had to do it on the ocean.
Elsie had more at risk than I did. I didn’t have a six-year-old grandson aboard. She would have to make the final decision. As captain, the ultimate responsibility for the safety of passengers fell on my shoulders. I had no doubts that Angel could make the trip. Elsie might, but I couldn’t force her out on the ocean. The best thing I could do was lay out the options, both good and bad. I thought it over for a long time before I pointed to the still water at the mouth of the inlet.
“In half an hour, water will be pouring through there. We can make it through now without much of a problem.”
Elsie frowned and glanced toward the inlet.
I kept going, trying to get my thoughts out before she interrupted. “As best I can tell, the ocean is as flat as the sound. We can make it in three or four hours by running up the coast. If we want to stay in the sound, we need to backtrack about a mile and pick up the channel running up the middle. It will take us most of the way.”
The old woman pursed her lips, her face thoughtful. “Most of the way gets us to what we used to call stupid water.”
She looked up. “The water isn’t stupid. People are for trying to go through it.”
I nodded. “The last few miles would be nasty, for sure. That chart has depths of less than a foot across a lot of it.”
I looked at Daniel as pointedly as I could before glancing back to Elsie. “I’ll go either way. I think we can make it fine on the ocean side, but the call is yours.”
She hesitated.
“The weather out here can change so fast you don’t know what hit you until you’re right in the middle of a bad day.”
“I know,” I said quietly. “I’m not worried about a storm slipping up on us. The air is too dry for that. It’s the wind that has me worried. It’s calm now, but out here you never know. Two hours from now, it could be blowing a gale.”
I stopped long enough to let that sink in. “And we all know what that means.”
“That we do,” Elsie agreed, “waves, maybe big ones, maybe not.”
I tugged on my ball cap and settled it lower to block out the glare off the water.
“Angel can run in swells quartering off her bow, but choppy seas? Four or five feet is about the max I’d want to try over a distance like that. Anything more and we’re in trouble.”
She reached out and ruffled her grandson’s hair. “What do you think, Daniel?”
“I want to go on the ocean,” he said without hesitation. “The weather man said the wind would stay low until tonight.”
“What weather man?” Elsie asked him.
“The one on the TV this morning.”
She looked up at me. “Well, there you go. The TV said the wind wasn’t going to be bad. So, let’s get going and do it while we can.”
“Alrighty, mates,” I said in my best pirate voice, “man your stations, cinch up your life jackets, and secure all loose items. We are going to sea.”
With the tide at dead low, Angel had to hug the center of the inlet to keep from grounding. Long sandbars ran out from the islands on either side like long, tanned fingers. Gulls and pipers picked along a shoreline fifty yards away. I kept the throttle just above idle and eased the sailboat through the still water.
Our timing had been perfect. Inlets acted like a pressure relief valve, allowing water to slosh back and forth between ocean and sound. The moon’s gravity drove that process in the form of in-coming and out-going tides. Had we tried the inlet at full flood on the incoming tide, the current would have been fierce.
I kept an eye on the depth meter. Less than six feet lay beneath her keel when we cleared the southern point. The place should have been crowded with fishermen, but only a few pickup trucks sat on the sand. I counted nine figures moving on the beach. All of them stopped to watch as we passed.
We kept a straight course out until the depth dropped to nine feet. I stepped down into the cabin at that point and pulled the release pin on the keel. It dropped with a satisfying thunk. Angel straightened up immediately as the extra weight hanging below gave her a much better center of gravity.
The water outside the inlet proved almost as calm as it had been on the sound. Long swells, so smooth they looked oily, drifted in off the ocean barely a foot high and spaced far apart. As soon as I had the keel down, I climbed back into the cockpit and shoved the throttle forward. Angel leapt as if wounded. The speed readout on the GPS quickly rose to seven and a half miles an hour. Even though the throttle still had a few more notches of power to burn, Angel wouldn’t go any faster. Physics insisted that she would have to ride her own bow wave to do that.
The bottom continued sloping downward, the water growing deeper and deeper as we left the island behind. The depth meter read twenty-three feet when I swung the boat into a turn that took us from a little north of east to due north.
Seven and a half miles an hour sounds slow. It felt like we were flying though. I’d let Daniel steer on the sound and saw no reason to change captains with the sea so flat. I told him to forget about the compass and just keep the island about the same distance off the port side. The depth meter had an alarm feature. I set it at five feet and told the boy to cut the speed immediately if it sounded.
A few seconds later, Angel heeled abruptly to one side as a low swell struck her nearly broadside. The instant it passed, she leaned heavily the other way as she slid down the back side of the passing wave.
Shock and fear washed over Daniel’s face.
I grinned at him.
“It’s okay. Steering out here will take a little more effort.”
Looking out over the water, I pointed to the next swell. “Cut into that one and take it off the quarter rather than letting it sweep in from the middle.”
I watched the wave with him.
“Just so you know, Angel will feel a little weird when we go through it, like she’s huffing and puffing, but not going anywhere. That will pass once the wave goes by.”
“Now,” I told him when the swell was about twenty yards off the bow.
He pulled Angel to starboard in a gentle arc. The wave lifted her easily and slid underneath with virtually no impact or heel.
“Now straighten us out.”
The numbers on the GPS dropped each time he quartered a swell, and rose as Angel came off the back. I sighed. The maneuvering would increase our transit time at the expense of making the ride smoother. How much more time was involved, I didn’t know.
An hour later I had my estimate. We had covered six miles with
sixteen left to go. I headed below to tell Elsie. She had retreated to the cabin shortly after we passed the end of the island. I found her on the starboard side bunk, fingers pressed against her temples. She opened her eyes as I approached.
“Something wrong, Hill William?”
I shook my head. “Just thought I’d let you know we’re making decent time. We should be at the inlet in a couple of hours.”
“Good,” she said in a low voice. “That’ll give us plenty of time before dark.”
“You take anything for that? I have aspirin, Tylenol, Advil, maybe even a Goody Powder or two.”
She sighed. “I never get seasick, at least not like other people. My head takes to pounding as soon as I get on the ocean. Nothing helps.”
The lines at the corners of her eyes looked deep and strained.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said, “just get us there. That’s the best medicine you can give me.”
I searched for something else to say, but couldn’t find any words that might offer any relief. Elsie was old enough to know how to treat her ailments and what worked best on most of them. If she needed to get there faster, I would do it if humanly possible.
Leaving her on the bunk, I made my way back to the stern where I relieved Daniel at the helm. Rather than seeming disappointed, the boy simply slid over and stared at me. Ten minutes later, the same flat, smoky eyes still watched me. He swayed in rhythm with the boat, leaning back slightly as Angel climbed the back of a swell, canting forward when she slid down the other side. Occasionally, when a roguish wave sent spray arcing across the bow, he would flinch. Other than that, the six-year-old sat as still and quiet as a mannequin.
My mind worked through a handful of reasons. At first, I thought maybe he just wanted to see how I steer. That idea died after a couple of minutes. He didn’t watch the tiller, didn’t seem to care if the boat quartered the waves in the same way or if the ride was smoother.
From there, I ventured back toward thoughts of autism. What I knew of the condition centered on internalization. Daniel certainly seemed impaired when it came to social interaction and the constant stare could fall into the realm of repetitive behavior. At the same time, he seemed acutely aware of his surroundings and others. Not once had he seemed unable to communicate, but rather the silence came across as a choice.
No matter how I worked it around in my head, the kid just seemed weird. Elsie muted that impression somewhat by being constantly active, vocal on her opinions and quick to fill any gap in the conversation. When she was up, moving and engaged, I had little time to think about the boy. The longer he stared at me, the more I began to wonder if she had adopted that type of behavior partly as a defense mechanism to keep attention on her instead of Daniel.
With too many avenues to explore and none of them producing answers, I decided to try and break the ice.
“You seemed pretty sure earlier when you said Angel would get us to the island,” I said and shot him a lopsided grin.
His eyes flickered as if his thoughts had been wandering and I’d jolted him back to reality.
“Yes.”
The word hung in the air. I waited for an explanation, for him to offer insight into his certainty, anything. Nothing followed. I shifted uneasily. Social etiquette demanded that I not let the fledgling conversation die. At that point, I could have pissed all over social conventions and walked away without looking back. I wanted him doing something other than staring at me.
I waved my hand toward the mast.
“Maybe someday, I’ll take you out and let you sail her, maybe when I bring you and your grandmother back. How’s that sound?”
He glanced to one side for the first time in ten minutes and then shrugged dismissively.
“Grandma will come back. I don’t know if you and I will.”
“Sure, you will,” I said, feigning a certainty I didn’t feel. “Angel is a fine boat. She’ll carry us back with no problems at all.”
He grinned suddenly, the same abrupt and toothy smile that had sent chills scampering up my arms earlier.
“Not if the monsters eat you, Mr. William.”
Before I could respond, Elsie’s voice rose from the cabin.
“Daniel, come down here please.”
He rose and walked away without looking back. I watched him go, the chills clenching the middle of my back and prickling along my scalp this time. He never returned. Half an hour later, I peeked down into the hatch. He lay next to Elsie. Both looked as if they were sleeping.
I left them lying and headed back to the tiller, happy to be alone and away from those eerie eyes.
Three times on the run north, we passed camps on the beach. Only one of them had people evident. A couple with a small child stood on the sand and waved as we passed. Other than three tents, nothing else marred the twenty-two mile run up the coast. The beach itself looked like a strip of sand sticking out from a wild tangle of scrub pine and brush. I knew from my previous trip to the island, that camping on the beach meant waking up in the middle of the night with breakers pounding right outside the tent. High tide had brought them so close one night, my father and I had moved the tent at four in the morning.
Venturing behind the dunes at any time offered a hazard of its own. The swampy interior hosted millions, maybe billions of thirsty mosquitoes. Deer flies kept the smaller insects company and bit a hundred times harder. Where mosquitoes left their victims slapping every inch of exposed skin, the deer flies left them jumping and howling.
Every can of Deep Woods Off that I could find went into the cart when I shopped for provisions. I had seen Dad come scurrying out of the bushes with his pants still undone and trailed by a dark, shimmering cloud nearly twice his size. The sight of him waving his arms like a madman and stumbling over his shorts had sent me rolling with laughter. The lesson stuck though. I had no desire to paint Blood Bank on my rear and serve up portions to the little insects.
We rounded the point at the northern end of the island at exactly four p.m. and slipped into the current of the incoming tide. The numbers on the GPS immediately jumped up a couple of notches to almost nine knots. Even though the depth finder still showed plenty of water underneath, I eased back on the throttle until Angel’s speed came in just under five knots.
Boats from Ocracoke had been delivering tourists to the ghost town for years, occasionally dropping off campers, but mostly hauling visitors and ATV’s across for an afternoon excursion. Somewhere up ahead lay the dock where they landed. I’d never seen it before. The worry that slid through my mind hinged on whether or not the structure was large enough to dock against and still leave room for the tour boats. Either way, I knew any dock facility would be out of the current and in calm water. With sundown less than three hours away, I needed to get off the water and find a camp for the night. Even a stretch of sandy beach out of the main channel would work. With her keel up, Angel floated in a foot of water and could be beached safely as long as the shoreline had room between the rocks.
I didn’t have to wait long. The island terminated in a sharp point on the northern end. Just past it, a wide bay opened off to the left, curving inward like the back side of a sickle. Protected from wind and waves, the water inside looked like a sheet of glass. With an eye on the depth meter, I swung Angel towards the center, only noticing the small dock once I had the boat already headed in the right direction.
We had barely cleared the point and slid in behind the lee of the island when the first mosquito landed on my arm. I swatted it away and dug in the locker under the pilot’s seat for a can of Off. After spraying every bit of skin I could find, I turned to find Daniel standing in the hatchway. I tossed him the can.
“You’ll need it. Make sure your grandma slathers some on too.”
He looked doubtful.
“Whatever you miss, they will find. I saw a guy wake up one morning with a swollen band of flesh half an inch thick around his neck. He had coated everything else.”
The closer we
came to the dock, the less it looked like an option. Short and stout enough to hold the ATV’s the tour boats carried, the surface stood nearly four feet off the water. I didn’t need a measuring stick to know that Angel would stick past the end of the dock. The only way I might be able to line her up alongside without becoming a hazard to other boats, would be to plow her nose into the island.
The beach looked more promising. The gentle arc of sand curved around for a quarter mile at least. Thick patches of weeds choked the southern end. Just below the dock, a downed tree spread branches and snags at least thirty feet out into the water. I looked for a good spot and finally spotted an empty slice of beach fifty yards north of the dock where a thick pine marked the end of sand and the start of island proper.
The depth alarm squawked when we were still a couple of hundred yards out. Daniel jumped at the shrill tones. I gritted my teeth and hunched over the display, punching buttons until the unit fell silent. A moment later, the sound of the keel dragging bottom sent me scurrying toward the cabin to crank up the chunk of steel hanging below the waterline. As soon as it slid into place, I flipped the lever that locked it in the up position and headed for the bow.
Daniel sat at the tiller, his face as empty as it had been most of the day.
“Watch me. When you see me wave, kill the engine. The switch is right there next to the throttle. Turn it left. Got it?”
When we were about thirty yards off shore, I leaned out and waved my arm up and down. The engine died immediately. I let Angel coast a bit more and dropped anchor in barely two feet of water. I paid line out to port until the boat had slid past and then looped the end of the rope in a quick figure eight around the forward cleat. When it caught, the sudden strain pulled her nose sideways while momentum pushed her stern around. As soon as her bow was pointed back towards the inlet, I undid the line from the cleat and let her slide backwards. Ten or fifteen seconds later, she grounded only a few feet from the shoreline.
The Island - Part 1 Page 9