About half a mile to the south, a big sportfisherman was heading my way. The thing was throwing up a huge wake, burning about a bazillion gallons an hour, and with no one on the fly bridge, they probably couldn’t even see me from the inside steering station. I slowed down and altered course so he would pass in front of my tug.
Astern, the beach was no longer visible, only the tops of the buildings. I guessed I was seven miles offshore and almost far enough south. According to the GPS, I was little more than a couple of miles away from Outta the Blue. I took the binoculars out of their bulkhead mount case and scanned the hazy horizon for the sailboat’s mast. Other than a flock of circling gulls, I didn’t see a thing. Now that the sun was climbing higher overhead, it would be more difficult to spot the sailboat, and the day’s heat was making the horizon dissolve into undulating heat waves.
The sportfisherman’s wake hit us, and though the tug was nearly as big as their boat, the wake made Gorda rock and buck. Before cranking the engine back up to cruising RPM, I went out to the foredeck with the binoculars to try one last time to spot Mike’s sailboat. Starting left, I scanned the horizon, slowly panning across the water.
Wait a minute. I’d seen something flit past in the viewfinder. Under those birds. I swung the binoculars back to try to focus on it, but I wasn’t entirely sure I’d seen anything at all. Had I imagined it? Where was it? I scanned back, found the seabirds circling tightly over a small area—white birds flying low, then swooping down at something on the surface.
Perhaps it was just a school of fish feeding, and the gulls were picking off the skittish baitfish that leaped clear of the water only to discover another predator above.
No. There. I saw something in the water. Some kind of floating debris, perhaps something washed off the deck of a cargo ship in a long-passed storm out at sea, maybe a black trash bag, maybe something more. Here in the Gulf Stream we often saw logs, jerry jugs, even plastic-wrapped bales of marijuana that had been carried up from the Caribbean, the Gulf, or as far away as the coast of South America. Once, out in the Northwest Providence channel between the Bahamian Islands of Great Abaco and the Berry Islands, I had seen a ship’s container, like the kind they load onto the backs of tractor trailers. It was barely awash, just waiting for some unsuspecting boat to come crashing into it at eight knots.
I tried to refocus the binoculars. I could make out something that looked like a black spot, and the water around it appeared ruffled. Perhaps it was nothing more than a black garbage bag tossed from the deck of some jerk’s boat—there were certainly enough jerks out on ships and boats who didn’t give a damn about trashing up the ocean. Of course, sometimes there were other things floating out here wrapped in trash bags. The locals called them square groupers. If it was a bale, I’d drive on by—wouldn’t want to touch it or get involved in any way. My dad had instilled in me from a very young age that drugs were a no-no because the authorities could impound your boat. But if it was a small boat just awash, it could be worth something. That black thing could be a mooring ball.
"Gorda, Gorda, this is Outta the Blue, over.”
Mike and his buddy were getting impatient. I really needed to boost the RPMs and get moving. I was wasting time here. The Gilman crew back at Hillsboro Inlet would sure be mad if they got that boat up and I wasn’t there to take her under tow.
I set the glasses down on the deck box and wiped my hands on my shorts. Damn, it was hot. Stepping around the big aluminum towing bitt on the bow, I steadied my right hip against the bulwark and gave it one last try, attempting to hold the glasses still just long enough to make out what those birds were so damned interested in.
Then it moved. The black spot lifted up out of the water and appeared to float there for several seconds. I blinked, not at all sure what I was seeing. Then the shape of it changed, it was turning and, through the binoculars, I began to make out features. My sweaty fingers adjusted the focus with the knob above my nose, and I sucked in air so hard the binoculars bounced. I was looking straight into the dark face of a child.
II
I lowered the binoculars and spoke aloud—“What the …” —and squinted at the object, trying to verify what I had seen, as though perhaps the glasses had been playing tricks on me. I sighted the speck on the horizon easily now with bare eyes, thanks to the circling birds. Several seconds ticked by as my mind flipped through possibilities: a sinking, a fall overboard, a rental dinghy blown out to sea. Another look through the glasses and now it was difficult to see the child in the round, dark object. The head was down, face almost in the water, no longer moving.
I dashed back into the wheelhouse and took a bearing. After pushing the throttle up to max RPM and adjusting the helm to aim just to the right of her, I reached for the mike, then paused, my arm hanging in midair.
I knew the rules: You sight a vessel or a person in distress at sea, you call the Coast Guard. But the rules about what would happen next were really lousy. I knew for sure that if it was a six-year-old Cuban boy, he might end up a celebrity. They’d take him to Disney World, give him a puppy. My guess was this one would get, at best, a trip to the airport. I decided to wait a bit. The required call to the Coast Guard could be made after I knew for certain what this was all about.
I circled around and began slowing the tug several hundred yards out, preparing to pull alongside. I could see now that it was a wooden boat, about fourteen feet long, probably an island fishing boat, but full of water, the gunwales just awash, rising only a few inches above the calm sea. Even full of water, wooden boats will float. The water inside the hull looked dirty and filled with debris. A large pile of bright-colored clothing was mounded up in the stern, and sloshing around in the water were rusty cans, bits of paper, and white plastic water jugs, now empty. Where the hell had they come from? This was not a boat meant to cross oceans—no sail, no outboard, not even oars that I could see. I didn’t think it was possible they had come up from down island in this boat. But if not from there, then where?
The child was sitting at the bow of the swamped boat, arms wrapped around a wood post. When I came closer, I saw that her hair was plaited in several short black braids. I realized that it was a little girl, maybe eight or nine years old.
She’d heard the sound of my engine and looked up once, lifted her hand a few inches and waved, then lowered her head again to rest against the post. She was wearing a white dress—or what had once been a white dress. From her chest down, where the fabric had been immersed in water for God only knew how long and the fabric floated off her legs in the garbage-filled water, the dress was stained a dirty rust-brown.
When I was about fifty feet off the boat and had put Gorda's engine into reverse to bring her to a complete stop, I saw that it wasn’t just a lumpy pile of bright-colored clothing floating amid the debris inside the boat.
“Oh, shit,” I said aloud. It was a dress and the fabric was stretched tight. I could now see the other side of that mound, and I could make out the head. The bloated body of a woman was floating facedown next to the child.
I’ve never been seasick in my life, but for just a few seconds I thought I was going to lose it. The birds had been at work on her already, and the bloodless flesh on the side of her head was peeled back, the pink bone showing.
“Hello,” I tried, but my voice sounded strangled. I didn’t want to scare the girl any worse. “Hello. Hey, kid, are you okay?” Whatever island she came from, she probably didn’t speak any English, but I had to say something, to try to get her to raise her head again, to pay attention.
Gorda was now dead in the water, and the child was about twenty feet off the port side, her head still down. She had shifted her position a bit so that her large brown eyes were staring up at me. I expected to see some measure of excitement in her face, a realization that rescue was at hand, her ordeal over, but she simply stared, her eyelids starting to droop, as though she hadn’t even enough strength left for hope.
At the sound of my voice, Abaco go
t to her feet and padded over. She jumped up and saw the girl over the top of the bulwark and began to bark. The girl’s eyes snapped open, fear causing her to use what little energy she had. I grabbed the dog’s collar, dragged her into the wheelhouse and down to the head.
“Sorry, girl,” I said as I closed the door and locked it. “Let me get her aboard first. Then you can meet her.”
Gorda was up current, to the south of the swamped boat. The relentless Gulf Stream would eventually close the gap between us, but I might need the girl to help me, to take a line. If necessary, I’d go in the water myself, but that would be a last resort.
“Hey, what’s your name?”
She lifted her head and opened her mouth, but no sound came out—at least nothing that I could hear over the sound of Gorda's idling engine. She was clearly in bad shape, and the exposure to heat and salt and no fresh water had robbed her of her voice.
From Gorda's foredeck I picked up the fifty-foot length of nylon line I had been preparing to toss to Outta the Blue and tied a quick bowline in the end, then pulled a loop of line through, fashioning a lasso of sorts. I’m no cowboy, though, so I used the boat hook, and as the gap between the boats had closed to about ten feet, it was easy to reach over with the looped line hanging off the end of the pole.
“Sit up, will you? Get away from that wood post.”
She didn’t move.
“Hey, kid.” I motioned with my free hand. “Move. Move over. Sit up. I want to tie your boat to mine.”
Finally, she seemed to understand what I wanted her to do, but she looked from me to the body in the back of the boat and then back at me. Her expression did not change, but she scooted closer to that misshapen thing.
The line dropped neatly over the four-by-four post, and I pulled it tight. Keeping the tension on the line, I rigged my aluminum ladder over the gunwale, down into the water, then began to pull the water-logged fishing boat over to Gorda. It was not easy, not like pulling a boat sitting on top of the water that glides smoothly across the surface. This one had to push aside the displaced water, but slowly I brought in the line. The submerged hull came alongside and thumped against Gorda's aluminum hull.
After tying off the line, I lay on my belly across the gunwale and reached out to the child. “Here, take my hand.”
She didn’t need to understand my words; my outstretched hand had a universal meaning. She stretched her arm out slowly, and I realized for the first time just how thin she was. I saw the bones of her wrist and elbow protruding beneath the dark skin. There was no return grip in that small hand, but I pulled her up and toward the boat. She reached out with her other hand and attempted to grasp the side of the aluminum ladder, but she didn’t have enough strength in her fingers.
It wasn’t a pretty rescue. When it became clear that her legs could not support her and the ladder was useless, I dragged her light frame out of the water and across the ladder. She landed on the deck like a boated fish, dripping and breathing hard, wide-eyed and twitching.
I grabbed a towel off the bunk in the back of the wheel- house and approached her slowly. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. Let’s get this towel around you.”
"Gorda, Gorda, this is Outta the Blue, over.” The radio sounded much louder with the engine down to an idle. The girl’s deep-sunk eyes barely registered my presence, and she didn’t resist when I wrapped the towel around her shoulders. “It’s okay. I’ll be right back.”
In the wheelhouse, I grabbed the mike and we switched to a working channel. I stood in the doorway where I could keep an eye on the girl.
“Listen, Mike, I’ve got a little problem.”
“Hey, Seychelle, we wondered what was going on. We been watching you through the binoculars, and it looks like you’re stopped dead. You got engine trouble?”
“No, it’s not that.” For some reason that wasn’t fully formed in my mind, I was not yet ready to announce over the airwaves to all the bored fishermen and yachtsmen who were eavesdropping on our conversation exactly what was now tied alongside Gorda. “I’ve found something here. It’s a partially sunk boat and a hazard to navigation. I think I’d better tow it in first.”
“Break, break. Gorda, Gorda, this is Little Bitt.”
I blew a lung full of air out through rounded lips and tapped the radio microphone against my forehead. Damn. I keyed the mike and said, “Hey, Perry, should’ve known you wouldn’t have anything better to do than sit around drinking and listening in on my frequency.”
Perry Greene was the owner of Little Bitt, a twenty-eight-foot open tow boat that looked like a floating junkyard, piled high with gas cans, rusting engine parts, and greasy fenders, but she had an engine that ran like a watch. I had to grant that Perry was a hell of a mechanic, but I just wished he’d keep his chewing-tobacco-stained teeth and greasy fingernails as far from me as possible. Since the big corporate giants like SEATOW had come into town in the last couple of years and begun eating up the pleasure-boat-towing market, Perry and I were just about the only two independent operators left in the towing business in Fort Lauderdale, and he had taken to visiting me, perched on Gorda's bulwarks, Bud in hand. To make matters worse, he always wore these cut-off jeans that were cut way too short, and he apparently did not own any underwear. I had seen way more of Perry Greene than I ever wanted to.
“Matter of fact, Seychelle, I just dropped a boat off at Lighthouse Point Marina, and I was on my way out to see how you was doing with that sunk Haitian boat, and it turns out you ain’t even there.”
Much as I hated to ask, I didn’t see that I had any other choice. “Perry, I was on my way out to tow in Outta the Blue, but something’s come up. Could you go pick Mike up for me? He’s on this same frequency,” I said, as if Perry didn’t know. “Mike, you there?” I called.
“I’m here.” I could hear in his voice how he felt about this. Mike had about as much fondness for Perry as I did, and in just those two words I could tell that he was furious at my handing him off like this.
“Okay, you guys work out the details, and this is Gorda clear and going back to one six.”
I felt bad about it, but I had a problem that was going to take most of the rest of my afternoon. I’d be lucky to make it back to Hillsboro Inlet in time. After I set my radio back to the emergency frequency, my hand paused as I was about to hang the mike on the side of the receiver. By law, I was required to call the Coast Guard right about now. I looked at the skinny kid collapsed on my deck. I watched her chest rising and falling under the white cotton as she took short, shallow breaths. Reading the papers about boatloads of immigrants getting sent back home via Coast Guard cutter had always irked me, but never enough to do anything about it. But this was different. This was personal. I’d found her, and somehow that made her my responsibility.
I grabbed a bottle of water out of the ice chest on the wheelhouse floor.
She appeared to be closer to ten years old when I examined her up close. I offered her the sport bottle. She looked at the top but didn’t move to accept it. I leaned my head back and squirted the water into my mouth, showing her how, and the first little light appeared in her eyes. She took the bottle and drank eagerly, the water dribbling out the sides of her mouth as she gulped at the stream. Her arms gave out after about five seconds of holding the bottle aloft. The plastic bottle bounced to the deck, and I grabbed it and righted it before too much spilled.
“That’s okay,” I said. It didn’t matter if she couldn’t understand what I was saying. I was talking mostly just to soothe her. “You’re not supposed to drink too much anyway. You have to go slow. We’ll see if you keep it down.”
During my seven years as a Fort Lauderdale lifeguard, I had treated many drowning victims, but never an exposure victim as severe as this child. I had been trained as an EMT, and I knew the victim needed to rehydrate slowly. The girl’s large brown eyes were sunk deep in their sockets, and the skin on her forearms was a dark reddish mahogany. Her upper arms showed a distinct tan line, wit
h the skin peeking out from under her sleeves a much lighter shade of brown. She probably had second-degree bums over a good twenty percent of her body and was suffering from heat exhaustion. I couldn’t see any blistering. Her legs were shriveled and bleached-looking from the long-term immersion in salt water, and that might have contributed to keeping her overall body temperature down.
I tried to remember some phrases from my two years of high school French. “Comment tu t'appelles? You know, your name? Ton nom. What’s your name?”
She pointed to the water bottle, and I squeezed another squirt into her mouth. After she swallowed, she licked her lips and whispered something. I couldn’t understand her at first.
“What was that?”
“Solange.” Her voice was a little stronger and, from the name and the pronunciation, I’d clearly guessed right in trying French first.
“Solange?” I asked with my voice if I had pronounced it correctly, and she nodded, again that faint smile flickering in her eyes.
I patted my own chest. “Seychelle. Je m’appelle Seychelle.”
Her lips moved, shaping the word, but no sound came out.
At that point I’d about exhausted what little I could remember from two years with Mademoiselle Goldberg. I pointed at her. “You, Solange, Haiti?”
She nodded and said, “Haiti,” her voice louder now and pronouncing the name Hi-yee-tee, as though correcting me.
The next question was awkward, but I had to know. I had been about her age when I saw my mother’s body on the beach after she had drowned, and I had only recently started to come to terms with that event in my life. And I hadn’t had to spend days in a boat with the body. But I had to know. I pointed to the woman in the boat. “Ta maman? "
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