Red Sea

by Diane Tullson

  SEVEN

  FOR ONE LONG MINUTE, I think I’ve gone blind. Then I realize that I’ve fallen asleep, and now it’s dark. I have no idea if it’s just night, or almost morning. All I know is I must have been sleeping for hours.

  “Mom!” How could I just leave her like that? What if she woke up and thought she was alone?

  “I’m coming, Mom.” Automatically I reach for the flashlight clamped on the wall by my bed. It’s not there, of course. I wrestle out of the bunk and swing my feet to the floor. The shock of cold water past my ankles makes me gasp. We’re taking on water, a lot of water. Not good. I try to swallow the panic rising in my gut and wade out to the main cabin.

  I still have to hang on, but the motion in the boat now feels like angry aftershocks. The books and debris on the floor have transformed into a kind of pulp porridge. I feel my way to the dining table.

  “Mom?” I can’t see her, not in the dark, but I find her face with my hand. “Are you awake?”

  Under my hand, she stirs, moans, then falls quiet again.

  “Mom?”

  No response. Her skin feels warmer. I listen to her breathing, matching my intake with hers, grateful for every breath. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I was just so cold.” I tug the quilt tighter over her shoulders and make sure her feet are covered. “You’re okay. You’re going to be fine.” Right.

  I slog my way to the locker where we keep our boots. In the dark I can’t tell if the boots are mine or Duncan’s, not that it matters. I pour the water out of the boots, then put them on. Now I don’t have to worry about slicing my feet open on broken glass. The breaker panel is dark. When I flipped all the breakers, I turned off the bilge pump too. I wonder how much battery juice a bilge pump needs to expel a small swimming pool from the inside of a boat? What I do know is that a bilge pump can’t handle sodden textbooks. With my boot, I stir the mess in the water. “I’ve got to get rid of this stuff.”

  It’s probably just as well that I can’t see what I’m doing. Using the plastic garbage pail, I sift the bilge water for armfuls of debris that I dump in the bucket. Then I haul the bucket up the steps to the cockpit, and dump it into the cockpit. The cockpit is designed to drain itself, and the stuff I pour in flows out over the stern through the open transom. Big stuff, like cushions, I just heave out into the cockpit, not caring if they blow overboard. I am a one-woman environmental disaster. Out goes one of the plastic food containers. Another I find seems to be still closed, and I taste the contents. Lasagna. The cold congealed pasta makes my stomach roll and I can’t choke it down. I remember when my mother was making the lasagna the day before we set out. She’d been thrilled to find the right kind of cheese at the market, not Mozzarella, but something that would work. Small victories gave her such pleasure. Then I think about Eggman, and I toss the container out into the cockpit.

  I find what feels like Duncan’s chart and stretch it out to dry on the chart table. I find a Tetra Pak and open it, hoping it might be juice. It’s milk, but I drink from it, then set the container in the sink to finish later. I find a flashlight, but the water has ruined it. I find buckets and buckets of broken glass and soggy rice. Everything goes overboard. When pale dawn lightens the gray sky in the east, I’m sieving the water for anything that might clog the pump when I turn it on. My arms and shoulders are sore, my knuckles are bleeding from scraping against the floor. The wind has eased, but the sea is still churning. Sometimes it takes days for the sea to settle after a storm. It’s like the sea won’t let go of the fury.

  I flop down on the dining bench beside Mom. I pull up my knees to my chest and look at her. Her eyebrows are twitching and her eyes are moving under her lids as if she’s dreaming. I reach over and run my fingers over her cheeks.

  She starts and her eyes open.

  I shout, I can’t help it, “Mom!”

  She flinches from the sound.

  I’m so happy to see her that I laugh. “You’re awake!”

  Her eyes find mine. She struggles to focus. She says something, but her voice is barely a croak.

  “You need a drink.” But in the time it takes to grab a water bottle from the table her eyes are closed again.

  “Mom!”

  Her mouth moves, a smile or a grimace, I can’t tell, then she slips again into sleep.

  I say a very bad word. Then I give her a shake. “Don’t you leave me like this!”

  Her eyelids barely flutter.

  Dread crawls over me. I throw the quilt off of her and peel away the sweatshirt. It’s heavy with blood and I throw it out of the boat. Her leg has stopped bleeding and I see now that there are two bullet holes, fairly small, one on the front of her thigh toward the side, the other a little lower and behind. Gently, I prod the wounds. Mom moans, but her eyes stay closed. If she’s lucky, the two wounds means that she was hit with one bullet, that it went in and out. I run my hand over the long leg bone of her thigh. I don’t know what broken bone feels like, but Mom’s leg feels about like it should. Maybe the bullet missed the bone.

  The first aid kit in the galley has been ripped open and scattered. On the counter I find a package of sterile dressings. I take out a couple, grab a cloth and a bowl of water and go back to Mom.

  The bullet holes are crusted with blood, and I clean around the wounds, careful not to make them bleed again. A thin clear ooze runs from the wound on the front of her leg. I wipe it away as best as I can. She’s not bleeding anymore, that’s good. I don’t know how much blood she lost, maybe a lot. Maybe too much. I push that thought from my mind and cover the bullet wounds with the dressing.

  On the back of her head the gunman left Mom a bump the size of an orange. But it’s just a bump, right? Everyone gets bumps on their head. It doesn’t mean she has a concussion. If she did have a concussion, what are you supposed to do? I seem to remember something about waking them up every few hours, that they sleep like the dead. No. Not like the dead. I give Mom another shake. She mutters but doesn’t stir. I also remember she needs to be on her side with her chin tilted, so that her tongue doesn’t fall back and close off her air passage. And it’s not good for someone to rest in the same position for too long, so I roll her onto her other side. That gets more of a reaction. Mom’s eyes bug wide and she gasps. But then she sighs, like she’s tired, and closes her eyes again.

  I’m tired too. I flip the quilt over her and tuck it in around her legs. In a way, I’m glad she doesn’t know how much shit we’re in.

  I get up and fill the garbage pail with water. “Okay. I know. There’s still too much water. I’ll use all our battery power just draining the water. And no power is no good.” I grunt as I hurl the water out into the cockpit where it drains away. “So I’ll bail.” I fill another pail. And another. The work mesmerizes me. The pain in my arms and shoulders gives me something to bite into. Pail after pail after pail of water goes overboard. I stop to rest and I hear it.

  Something is bumping against the hull. Thump. Bump. Bump. Thump. Bump. Bump.

  I bail. It erases the noise. But when I can no longer hoist the pail, then I stop. And I hear it.

  “You know what that is, don’t you?” I go over and nudge my mother. “Don’t You?”

  I cover my ears, but I feel it if I don’t hear it. Thump. Bump. Bump.

  I clear the companionway in two steps. “I know it’s you!” I scream at the sea behind the boat. “You’re dead. D. E. A. D. Leave me alone!”

  Thump. Bump. Bump.

  I lean over the stern rail. “Don’t do this to me.” In the rising sun, the sea is grayish green, the breaking waves are gone, leaving behind deep smooth troughs between ten-foot swells. His shape is yellow, a watery yellow in the green of the sea, just below the surface. His hood hangs forward, the arms waft out to the side. But Duncan wasn’t wearing his yellow jacket, so it can’t be Duncan. I must have thrown his jacket overboard. Other stuff I’ve tossed overboard lingers in the waves. There’s the lasagna container, bobbing empty now, and a tin in which we keep s
altines. The empty yellow jacket sleeves undulate. They motion to me. The reflective tape on the jacket flashes in the new sun.

  Thump. Bump. Bump.

  “You’re free now.” I wave my arms at the jacket. “Ashes to ashes.” With a suddenness that makes me gasp, the yellow of the jacket disappears below the surface. “Duncan!” I search the water and maybe there is one final small flash of light, but maybe I just want it so I see it. He was never there. Duncan was never, ever, there.

  EIGHT

  “IF YOU THINK,” I HURL a bucket of water out of the cabin into the cockpit where it drains away, “that this changes anything,” I refill the bucket, “then you’re crazy.” My arms are burning with the effort of hoisting bucket after bucket of water. “I have enough to do, thank you very much.”

  I know she can’t hear me. Even if she could, what’s she going to do? Jump out of her bed and rescue us? Still, I talk to her. It fills the emptiness. “Yes, we have the radio. But the radio battery is low. Low, low, low.” My pail scrapes against the floor as I bail. I’ve got almost all of the water out of the boat. “And who knows where the charging unit is. Maybe one of the pirates is putting it on his mantle right now, like a trophy.” I hoist the bucket out. “We have to get closer to our friends, closer to anyone, before we call for help.” No one is hearing us where we are. No one except the pirates. I quickly squelch that image. “So if you just want to lay there, fine. But don’t expect me to keep you company. It’s that simple.”

  I remove the last of the water with a mop. At least I can see the floor again. The boat still looks like hell. I’ve managed to cram everything back into place, but it reminds me of cleaning up the house after a party when nothing looks quite like it did before. I found an opened package of cookies that escaped the water, and I take these and the milk carton and sit on the bench beside my mother.

  “Yum. Hobnobs. You love these cookies.” I break a bit of the cookie into my mouth. The buttery sweetness makes my mouth water. Even the milk tastes good, and normally I hate Tetra Pak milk. UHT, ugly horrible taste, but it lasts forever. I eat the cookie, then pry another from the pack. “I’ll try to save some for you.”

  I lean back so that I can see her face. The cookie snaps in my fingers and the milk stops in my throat. Mom’s eyes are wide open.

  I swear, then say, “You startled me!” Her eyes swivel up to mine. “You’re awake. That’s very good.” I try to smile, but the ghostly color in her face makes it difficult. She doesn’t speak and her eyes seem fixed and glazed.

  “Mom?”

  No response.

  I grab a water bottle and hold it to her lips. “You must be thirsty. Have some water.” I squirt a small stream into her mouth.

  Her eyes widen and she coughs, weakly at first, then she sucks a breath and coughs again. Her eyes fill; she draws one more interminably long breath, then finally clears the water from her throat.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I gave you too much.” I hold the water bottle against her lips. “I’ll be more careful.” This time I dribble the water over her tongue and she swallows it. I hold my breath. Her forehead crinkles as if in pain, but she drinks slowly, fighting for every swallow, and she drinks the bottle down. Then her eyes close again.

  “Mom?” I sweep the hair from her forehead. Louder this time, “Mom!” I press my hand against her forehead, willing her to open her eyes. Her head feels heavy, inert. She’s out again.

  My throat clenches and tears hit me so that I’m sobbing like a little kid. “Mom!” I want to crawl into the berth with her like I used to do a million years ago when I’d get into bed with her in the night and she’d put her arm around me and pull me against her, vanquishing whatever had sent me running in the dark.

  I wipe my eyes on my shirt, sniff my nose. This is like every Disney movie, with the mother or father always getting offed, leaving the young on their own to face the perils of the wilderness or the wicked witch or whatever. Of course they’re never all alone. Cinderella had the fairy godmother; Simba had the farting warthog. I’d take a farting warthog right now, anything other than this being alone.

  I climb out into the cockpit. The sun is directly over my head. Noon. There’s no wind, although the waves wrench the boom back and forth over the cockpit. The pirates used a fishing net to foul our propeller. I know something about this because once, before we left Australia, Duncan backed down on a dock line that I’d left trailing in the water. It took Duncan over an hour in the water, diving down to the propeller, hacking away the rope, coming back up for a gulp of air, before he could start the engine again. In Australia, the water was so clear you could see the bottom. It was just one rope, not an entire net. Now, we’re in the middle of the Red Sea. Goose bumps lift up on my arms.

  There is nothing left of the mainsail, but I could unfurl the headsail, maybe, except that there’s no wind.

  “What do you expect of me, anyway?” I slam my fist against the side of the boat. “I’m fourteen. I can still fit into clothes from the kids’ department.” My throat aches with fatigue and new tears threaten. “I could quit right now and no one would blame me. Not Dad, that’s for sure.” Dad can get lost in a parkade. Dad says we’re heroes for going on this trip. Especially me, he says, because I’m normal, not an adventure-crazed thrill-seeker. I’m not sure that Mom or Duncan fit that description either, but they definitely have more adventures than Dad. When we were together, Dad’s idea of a high-risk experience was staying at a two-star hotel. The first thing Mom did after the divorce was take me camping in Mexico to see the pyramids. Dad made me pack water-purification tablets, not that he needed to worry. Mom wouldn’t let me even rinse my toothbrush with tap water.

  I wonder what he’s doing now, Dad? It’s the middle of the night where he is.

  I don’t even know which rope is for the headsail. I study the jumble of multicolored ropes in the cockpit. “So much for neat-and-tidy, Duncan. I guess the storm undid your coils.” Each rope feeds through a cleat on the cabin roof. Each of these is labeled, of course. I find the cleat labeled Mainsheet and haul on that rope to secure the boom. The one marked Headsail/Genoa I begin to unravel from the others.

  When Duncan unfurled the genoa, he did it at the same time as he pulled it in on one side of the boat or the other. That way the sail doesn’t flail, which I guess is hard on the sailcloth. I know which ropes control the sail. (“Sheets, Lib, not ropes.” I get it, Duncan.) These feed through blocks on either side of the cockpit and have figure-eight knots in the ends. This was the first knot I learned to tie, the figure-eight stopper knot. Duncan taught me using a string of black licorice. Every knot I tied right I could bite off and eat. My mother hates black licorice. Duncan’s not wild about it either. He bought it because I like it.

  In the mess of ropes I find one sodden flare that disintegrates when I pick it up. I toss the ruined flare in the sea. I coil all the ropes, making sense of which go where, including the one attached to the top of the mainsail. This one is called a halyard, who knows why. If I lowered the mainsail, I could pack the rags of sail into the long canvas bag attached to the boom. The pirates took Duncan’s spare sails, so there’s nothing to hoist in place of the tattered mainsail, but at least the useless sail would be out of the way and not making me crazy with the flapping. I’ve never done this job by myself either, but I’ve helped Duncan and my mother. They like to lower the sail into orderly folds that they flake evenly over the boom before drawing the bag around it. I’m not after beautiful sail stowage. I uncleat the halyard and let the rope fly.

  About half the sail plummets into the cockpit, an immense expanse of tattered sailcloth that piles onto my head. Cursing, I mound it onto the boom and cram it down inside the canvas bag. The boom is higher than I’m tall, so I stuff the sail above my head, feeling with my hands where there’s room to shove more sail. With each armful of sail-cloth I’m able to stow, more bursts free from the constraints of the bag. Finally, though, I can pull the rest of the sail down into the ba
g. As lumpy as I’ve stuffed the bag, it’s impossible to pull the zipper closed to hold everything in place. Instead, I wrap the boom in three places with webbing straps. The bag looks like a giant snake that’s eaten several distinct meals.

  I turn my attention to the headsail. Furled, the genoa is wound into a tight roll at the bow of the boat. In a perfect world, it will unwind into a powerful, pulling wing. But it is not a perfect world, that much I know. I let slip the furling line.

  There’s not much wind, so the genoa uncoils like a flaccid flag. Optimistically, I winch it in on the left side of the boat, cleating the genoa sheet, ready for the imaginary wind that will take me out of here.

  Although, which way I should steer is not immediately clear. The gunman’s bullets managed to miss the compass on the steering post. I remember from plotting the course with Emma that we’re heading northwest, not that I’m going anywhere anyway. I flop down onto the cockpit bench. Shielding my eyes from the sun, I tip my head to rest on the back of the bench.

  Each one of my muscles feels like an over-stretched rubber band. There must be several hundred muscles just in the back of my neck. The ones in my legs are denying all direction from my brain. Apparently, I even have muscles in my lungs, because the act of breathing is difficult.

  The others in the flotilla will be wringing themselves out after the storm. Emma has her foul weather gear hung out to dry in the cockpit. Mac is making them lunch, a peppery omelet, maybe.