Gulf coast girl: original title, Scorpion reef

by Charles Williams

  Minutes dragged by. We must have passed it. We had to go back. But back where? Direction had no meaning because we had no idea where we had been or which way the current was setting us. There was no point of reference. Even the sloop’s position meant nothing; it was drifting in the same trackless void. In another five minutes I knew it was all over, as far as the life belt was concerned. It could be a hundred yards in any direction. We’d never find it now.

  I heard the growl of the starter on the sloop, and the engine took hold. They had the sail off her now and were coming back under power to look for us. The running lights swung, and then I could see them both, lined up. They were bearing down directly on us. A flashlight was probing the darkness on each side. I swam away, towing her.

  They went slowly past. Light swept the water ten feet away. The engine stopped in a minute and she slowed, rolling heavily in the trough.

  “Manning!” It was Barclay’s voice. “Can you hear me? You’ll never make it ashore. You’re ten miles off the beach. Call out and we’ll pick you up.”

  We were treading water with just our faces out. My arms were around her and I could feel her shaking.

  “Can we make it—without the life belt?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. I couldn’t lie to her here.

  “Could you, alone? If I went back?”

  “No,” I said.

  A sea lifted us and broke over our heads. When we came clear she gasped, “Maybe you could, without me. I owe you that.”

  She didn’t know what I meant. I told her. “If they have you, they can make me come back.”

  She understood then.

  “Let’s try it, Bill,” she said.

  “We’ll probably drown,” I said. “I’ve got to tell you that.”

  She was frightened by water and she could panic like anybody else, but when the bets were down she was calm. There was a wonderful quiet courage about her now. She knew what would happen if we went back, and she knew we’d probably be dead by sunrise if we didn’t. She made the decision coolly.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Help me take these clothes off.”

  I helped her. I fumbled a little, unsnapping the back of the dress, but we got it free and I held her with an arm about her waist while she stripped it and the slip off over her head. We sank through the water, tight in each other’s arms, and I could feel the wonderful smoothness of her against me. When we came up the Ballerina was drifting away to leeward and to the north of us, and I could hear Barclay still calling out, making promises. I cursed them, monotonously and helplessly, and with an infinite bitterness.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I know the same words. I’d use them but I haven’t got the breath.”

  She wore no girdle. She unfastened the garter belt and I helped her strip off the nylons. “Will that do?” she asked, gasping a little with water in her throat.

  “Yes,” I said. I stripped to my shorts and told her to hook the fingers of her left hand in the waistband. “Kick with your feet,” I said. “Very slowly. Don’t struggle. And when you’re tired, just float and rest.”

  I couldn’t see the glow over the city at all, but I swung my face and oriented us with Polaris, heading a little north of west. I swam slowly. The seas rolled up behind us, raising us, and then broke in white water about our heads and passed on downwind in the darkness. There was no sound except the roll and swish of water. I could scarcely feel the drag of her weight, and knew she was kicking with her feet.

  “Don’t work too hard,” I said. “Slowly. Very slowly. And don’t think about it.”

  And shut up and don’t waste breath talking, I added silently for my own benefit.

  I tried to remember which way the current set along here, but I couldn’t. The tide should be flooding now, which would help, but it would reach high water and start to ebb long before we were anywhere near shore. That was when it would get us. We might go on for hours, but inevitably our arms and legs would grow heavier and heavier until it took everything we had merely to stay afloat. After that it would come fast.

  I wondered if we could make it, by some miracle. I had swum that far once or twice, I was sure. You lost body heat very slowly in this Gulf water. The sea and wind were behind us. No, I was just kidding myself. I’d done it before, but never after having been nearly 48 hours without sleep, and never towing somebody else. She would become exhausted, even if I didn’t, and begin to struggle in panic, and when she dragged us under we were finished. I tried not to think about it.

  I saw the lights of the Ballerina. She was coming back now, and passed several hundred yards to seaward. When she returned the next time she was half a mile downwind. They thought we had the life belt, and would keep right on searching.

  Time passed somehow. The reach, pull, reach became monotonous, and then mechanical, and at last eternal. I had never done anything else; I’d been born swimming through warm water toward a shore that receded nine miles ahead as fast as I advanced. Ursa Major wheeled over and down in the northwest and Cassiopeia swung up like the other arm of a giant counterbalance turning around Polaris. It would soon be dawn.

  My arms began to grow heavy long before I would admit I was tiring. My breathing was ragged now, and sometimes I inhaled water and choked. I looked around once and the sky was pink in the east. Then, suddenly, it was full daylight. I looked ahead. There was nothing but water, and the sea running, and far off to our left the bare mast of the Ballerina. Land didn’t even exist any more.

  We couldn’t have covered much more than a third of the distance, and I knew I was almost done. I let my feet down, treading water, and she came up against me with only her head above the surface. Her face was drawn with weariness, and there were blue circles under her eyes. She put a hand on my arm under water and tried to smile. A sea picked us up and threw us together. Her face was only inches from mine.

  “I’m sorry about the life preserver,” she said, her voice thin with exhaustion.

  “It’s all right,” I said. There was a bad pain in my side and my breathing was labored. I knew it was stupid to waste breath talking, but suddenly I wanted to tell her.

  I put a hand on each side of her face. “I couldn’t tell you before,” I said. “Even—if he had run out on you. But it doesn’t matter now. Have to tell you. I love you. More than anything—in the world. You’ve never been out of my mind since you walked out on edge of that pier—”

  She didn’t say anything. She brought her arms up very slowly and put them about my neck. We went under, our lips together, arms tight about each other. It was like falling endlessly through a warm, rosy cloud. I seemed to realize, very dimly, that it was water we were sinking through and that if we didn’t stop it and swim up we’d drown right there, but apparently there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t want to turn her loose long enough to swim up. We went on falling, through warmth and ecstasy and colors.

  White water crashed about our heads. We were right on the surface and hadn’t fallen anywhere. We gasped for breath and I held my face against hers. “Shannon—Shannon—” I said.

  “Don’t talk,” she whispered.

  I held her, and kissed the closed eyes, and we went under again with that sensation of falling through infinite rose-tinted space. We came up. I saw the sun rising out of the sea. I didn’t want to die. They couldn’t take it all away now.

  I started to swim again, but the stroke was ragged and uneven and she seemed to be a heavier weight pulling at me. Suddenly the drag was gone. Panic seized me. I thought she had gone under and was drowning. I turned. Her head was still above surface. She had let go deliberately.

  “Go on—” Her face went under and she choked.

  I caught her arm and pulled her up and toward me, and held her with her face above water. I saw the Ballerina going by again to seaward. They were too far away. They wouldn’t see us. I wondered if I wanted them to. I couldn’t think; it was all mixed up. Bein
g willing to die in the future, even in a future measured in hours, was one thing; dying now was something else. But it didn’t matter what I thought. They’d never see us. They were nearly a mile off.

  “Go on—” she gasped. “Maybe you can make it. Leave me. I’ve ruined everything for you—”

  “Hush,” I said. “Don’t waste breath.”

  We went under.

  I pulled her back to the surface. It seemed to take a long time. Once more, I thought. Maybe twice. But the panic hadn’t started yet. I hoped we wouldn’t fight each other when it did. Maybe there wouldn’t be any panic. No, there always was, when you took that first mouthful and your throat shut off automatically to keep it out.

  My eyes opened. We were on the surface again, and I saw that the sloop had turned and was bearing down directly toward us. But they couldn’t have seen us. Then some detached part of my mind figured it out as calmly and analytically as if I were working out something with a slide rule in a classroom. It was those glasses. It was those 7 by 50 binoculars I had bought in New Orleans. They were the reason they’d kept on searching. Barclay had known he could locate us as soon as it was light.

  Somehow we were still afloat. I could see Barclay standing on the boom with an arm around the mast, directing Barfield at the helm. They cut the engine and drifted down on us.

  I watched them helplessly, unable even to struggle any more. We had failed. But we were still alive. Barclay climbed down into the cockpit and tossed a line. I caught it and he pulled us over. When the sloop rolled down, he and Barfield caught her arms and lifted her over the side. I heard Barfield whistle, and then laugh. I stared up at him through the mists of utter exhaustion, tried to curse him, and couldn’t.

  They hauled me in. She was on her knees in the cockpit, unable to rise, her head bowed and water running out of her hair. The red rays of the sun coming over the horizon splashed against her body and the two wisps of underclothing were stuck to her like wet tissue. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and the most completely beaten. I took a step toward her, stumbled, and fell myself.

  “Some dish, Manning,” Barfield said. “A wet dish, but a dish.”

  I tried to get to my feet. He put a hand on my head and pushed gently, and I collapsed like a column of building blocks.

  Barclay’s voice lashed out, the first time I had heard anger in it. “Help her below, Barfield,” he said.

  They helped her down the companionway. I lay for another minute in the cockpit, fighting for breath, and then managed to get to my feet. I went below, staggering weakly and holding onto anything I could reach. They had put her in the starboard bunk in the forward part of the cabin, the one she’d been in before. I pulled the curtain aside and leaned against the door of the head. Barfield stared at me with amusement and went out.

  Barclay was pulling the sheet up over her nearly nude body with the impersonal efficiency of a nurse.

  I looked at him. “Thanks,” I said.

  “Not at all,” he replied. “Best fall into the other bunk yourself. You both look a bit done in.”

  I indicated the sheet. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Why not? Gratuitous brutality is for fools.” He went out.

  That was it, I thought, lost in a sea of fatigue. That was as near as I’d ever come to figuring him out and he’d said it himself. Gratuitous brutality was for fools. He was a pro, and was brutal only for pay. Why give away something you could sell? To Barfield this half-clad girl was a peep-show and a snicker; to Barclay she was an investment.

  I stood beside her bunk, swaying a little, staring down at the lovely, wide-cheekboned, Scandinavian face and the long lashes on her cheek. Her hair was a sopping ruin.

  I knelt a little and started taking out the pins, and when it was loosed I spread it across the pillow. Maybe it would dry a little.

  Her eyes opened. They looked up at me and her lips moved. “You could have made it alone.”

  “I can’t think of any place I want to go alone,” I said.

  “Neither can I,” she whispered.

  I bent and kissed her, and everything caved in on me. I fell into the other bunk and was asleep before I could straighten out.

  * * *

  I awoke. Barfield was shaking my arm. “Rise and shine, Manning,” he said. “Barclay wants to see you.”

  It all came back and I could taste the bitterness of failure. I sat up. I was stiff and sore all over, and the shorts were still wet with sea water. “What time is it?”

  “Four o’clock. You’ve been sacked out for ten hours.”

  “All right, all right. You can dock my pay.” I reached up on the shelf above the bunk and found a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. I fired one up and inhaled gratefully. She was still asleep in the other bunk with the sheet pulled up over her breast. She didn’t stir.

  Barfield stepped backward and leaned against the locker. He had taken off his shirt and was pink with sunburn where he wasn’t covered with hair. I wondered where the other gun was and decided Barclay probably had both of them. They’d have better sense than to try to hide it somewhere. He had a magnificent build, with shoulders like a lumberjack, and I thought he’d outweigh me fifteen or twenty pounds. He moved with good co-ordination and was light on his feet for a man that much over 200, and I had an idea he’d take me in a fight. Either way, somebody would get hurt. He’d been hurt before. The nose was flat because it had been broken and he had white scar tissue running down into his left eyebrow. The gray eyes were sure of themselves and a little hard. His hair was crew cut and almost as white as cotton, or at least it looked that way against the tanned slab of a face.

  I took another drag on the cigarette and studied the beat-up face. “Fighter?” I asked.

  “Amateur. In college.”

  “Football?”

  He shook his head indifferently. “They hired their football players.”

  She was lying on her back with her face turned to one side. Her hair streamed across the blue pillow slip in a cascade of silver, and you could see the outlines of her breasts under the sheet. Barfield stared. “What a build,” he said.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and take the sheet off?” I asked. “She’s asleep.”

  He shrugged. “You’re easy to get sick of. Work at it, don’t you?”

  “This cruise wasn’t my idea,” I said. “I didn’t know I was supposed to be a ray of sunshine.”

  “Well, you’d better roll off your fat and get on deck. Barclay wants you.”

  “All right,” I said. “I signed for the message. You can scram.”

  His face and the gray eyes were ugly, but he didn’t move toward me. Barclay had probably read him off about picking fights with the gilt-edged investments or letting himself be provoked. A fight could get out of hand, and Barclay needed his passengers alive for a while yet. He turned and went out.

  I went into the after part of the cabin, got some dungarees out of a sea bag, and put on a pair of slippers. I looked in the small mirror on the bulkhead. My eyes were puffy with sleep and I needed a shave. I looked as rugged as I felt. Sticking a pack of cigarettes and some matches in my pocket, I went on deck.

  It was a clear afternoon. There wasn’t much sea, and the breeze had moderated a little. She was still on the port tack under unreefed mainsail and jib. There was no land in sight.

  “Good afternoon, Manning,” Barclay said. “Do you feel better?”

  “Rested,” I said. “You want me to relieve you now?”

  He shook his head. The only concession he had made to the informality of an ocean cruise was to take off his tie. He still had on the tweed jacket, and I could see the bulge of an automatic in each of the patch pockets. His face was pink from the sun, and his jaw was covered with a stubble of brown whiskers.

  “No,” he said. “Barfield relieved me for a while this morning. You can take over at six. What I called you about was the matter of food. You can cook, I presume?”

  “A little,” I said.<
br />
  “Well, suppose you prepare something, sandwiches at least, and make some coffee. And call Mrs. Macaulay. Tell her we shall have a meal of sorts and a briefing session here at around five o’clock.”

  “Briefing?”

  His eyebrows raised sardonically. “Yes. We intend to take up, at long last, the trifling matter that brought us out here. I refer to the location of that plane. Provided, of course, that we don’t have any more distracting swimming parties. We should be some fifty miles offshore now, so perhaps she’ll leave her life belt below when she comes up.”

  I took a last puff on the cigarette and tossed it overboard. “I have some news for you,” I said. “She lost the life belt when she went overboard and didn’t expect to reach shore. She was merely committing suicide rather than come back.”

  “Very touching,” he said. “But you’ve come to the wrong department. I’m not the custodian of Mrs. Macaulay’s happiness.”

  Barfield spread his hands and shrugged with burlesque sympathy. “You see, Mortimer? It’s a cruel world.”

  “And I have more news for you,” I went on, ignoring Barfield. They’d know, sooner or later, so why not start preparing them? “You’re never going to find that plane. She told me what Macaulay told her, and you couldn’t find the Pacific fleet with the information.”

  He shrugged. “Really, we don’t expect to find it that easily. It may be the second or third location before she begins to get near the truth.”

  I kept my face expressionless, but it scared me. It was what I had been afraid of all the time. They had no conception at all of the immense waste of water out here and of the firsthand, pinpointed accuracy of information you had to have in order to locate something lost in it. The only thing they’d ever be able to see was that she wanted the stupid diamonds herself and was holding out on them.

  “If you had lost your watch overboard between here and the sea buoy,” I said, “could you go back and find it?”

  “An airplane is considerably larger, old boy. And Macaulay knew exactly where it went in, or he wouldn’t have tried to hire a diver. But enough for now. We shall take that up when Mrs. Macaulay is present. Right?”