An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant

by Neal Reilly, LeAnn

  “It’s about time you got here. We’re going to be late.”

  She shrugged. “So? The turtles won’t get there until it’s dark. We’ve got time.”

  She came around to the passenger side and got in. Hearing the music, she leaned forward and began pushing buttons on the radio.

  “Please buckle up so I can go.”

  “Oh, yeah, right.” She stuck what was left of the Popsicle into her mouth and reached around her right shoulder for the belt. After she’d clicked the belt into its slot, she reached for the radio again. When she found a station playing Lito Peña’s Yo Vivo Enamorado, she stopped jabbing, turned the volume up and began singing along. John smiled to himself as she rocked in time with the music, the Popsicle dripping everywhere as her arm swung wide.

  “I bet you’d be fun at Isla Encantada.” He started the Samurai and u-turned south onto 251. An image of Tamarind dancing around the restaurant’s worn floor teased his inner eye. All at once, he knew that he wanted to hold her. Would it feel as though he held a will o’ the wisp? Or danced to the music of the spheres?

  “Isla Encantada? What’s that?”

  “You don’t get out much do you? Your father must keep you on a tight leash. It’s a bar that has live music on the weekends.”

  “‘Tight leash’? What’s that mean?”

  Mentioning her father made him squirm. He couldn’t take Tamarind into his arms as he wanted if she was as young as he feared she was. “Never mind. It’s just a figure of speech. But that reminds me. Are you twenty-one?”

  “Twenty-one?”

  “Twenty-one years old.” An image of Zoë slithered into his thoughts, but he shoved it into oblivion. She’d tried to insist that they were taking a break, not breaking up. What would she think about him hitting on a girl who looked and acted younger than his sister?

  “Oh, I’m way older than that. Why?”

  “You have to be twenty-one to dance at Isla Encantada. Do you have some sort of ID?”

  She stopped rocking. “ID? No, I don’t have any ID.” She sounded as if she didn’t know what he was talking about, though.

  “Don’t worry.” John patted her head, letting his fingers linger just long enough to feel the surprising softness of the tangles. “I’ve never seen them check. I just wanted to be sure for my own peace of mind.”

  “Piece of mind? Which piece of your mind needs to know how old I am?”

  John laughed. “The biggest piece.”

  They drove along without speaking for a while, listening to more boricua jazz. John turned north after they reached Laguna del Flamenco. The road ended short of Playa Resaca; they’d have to leave the car and hike over the same hilly terrain that John had first hiked over in late March. He turned the radio down before they reached the place where they’d park the Samurai.

  “I brought a book that I want to read to you while we wait.”

  Tamarind looked at him. Even in the growing darkness, the blue of her eyes astounded him. Hair fell into her eyes, but she didn’t seem to notice. “You brought a book? Where is it? Can I see it? What’s it about?”

  “Whoa, whoa! All in good time. Let’s just say it’s a classic of children’s literature and I’m looking forward to reading it to you.”

  Tamarind hummed a bit and looked out the window. Without warning, she leaned over and kissed his right hand. “Thank you.” Her voice sounded thick.

  Fifteen minutes later they’d caught up with the four other volunteers and the National Wildlife Refuge park ranger who all sat as far inland as they could on blankets, talking quietly. All but Jesus smiled and waved John and Tamarind over to join them. When he’d found himself skewered by Jesus’ hot glare the first night that they’d watched for leatherbacks, John braced himself for the inevitable angry confrontation. Jesus said nothing, however, about their first meeting and John stopped worrying about a destructive scuffle among the sea-turtle nests. Even so, he often caught the other man’s eyes watching him.

  In the deepening twilight, everyone brought out sandwiches and chips and listened to Pablo describe the time a nesting leatherback dug several holes before finally laying her eggs. When he finished, no one spoke for a while. The last of the sun’s light faded from the horizon and the sky gradually deepened from a honeydew melon to pale blue and finally, deep blue. Stars extruded through the velvety backdrop of sky like diamond studs in a jeweler’s display.

  John snapped on his flashlight and pulled out The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Although he read quietly to Tamarind, the other volunteers clearly listened in and refrained from speaking. He’d read only two sentences when she interrupted him.

  “‘War raids’? What are those?”

  “This book is set during World War Two when the Germans bombed London, kind’ve like when the U.S. Navy used to bomb Culebra.”

  Next to him, she shivered. “I remember that.”

  John looked toward her, but the darkness obscured her features. Her wild hair appeared black against the royal sky, the stars crowning her with a glittering diadem. He laid his hand on top of hers where it rested on the blanket. “So I guess you can relate to the children in this book, huh?”

  Tamarind shifted. “I guess.” She spoke so quietly that John strained to hear her.

  He waited, but she said nothing more and no one else spoke about the bombing or one of the former targets, an abandoned tank now rusting on Carlos Rosario—along with unexploded bombs amidst the island’s largest nesting grounds. So he picked up the book and continued reading. After a while, he lost himself to the reading, to the story of the children playing hide and seek in the strange old country house to which they’d been sent. Underneath it rode the rhythmic wash of water on white sand and the taste of salt on the air. He’d read a third of the book when one of the other volunteers spoke in a low voice.

  “Our first mother has arrived.”

  Everyone turned toward the beach, now illuminated only by moonlight. A leatherback—a large one, perhaps fifteen hundred pounds—emerged from the water and heaved herself across the sand toward them. They melted back into the tree line and waited until she found the spot she wanted and dug furiously at the sand. When she finished digging the tear-shaped egg cavity, Pablo came forward and lifted her rear flipper so that the rest of them had a clear view of the eggs as they dropped into the sand. Serena counted the large, fertile eggs and Inez counted the small, infertile ones. John and Tamarind measured the turtle after she’d finished laying her eggs. As she held the tape measure next to the leatherback’s beak, Tamarind wiped the salty tears from the sea-turtle’s eyes with reverent fingers. Jesus documented everything and took a picture of the leatherback—at six and a half feet from beak to tail, she was the largest seen on Culebra in several years.

  The leatherback buried her eggs and turned toward the sea, throwing sand behind her to cover her tracks. They all watched her go. Tamarind stood away from John as she did every time a leatherback struggled back across the beach, her lips pursed and her eyes unfocused. She hummed faintly and the air around her seemed to vibrate slightly. When the sea turtle gained the wet edge of beach and seawater reached to embrace it, Tamarind sighed and relaxed her stance.

  “She’s safe again,” she always said to anyone listening.

  ***

  Nightly turtle watch lasted through June. John picked Tamarind up every evening on 251 near Tamarindo Estates and dropped her off before dawn in the same place. Even though he urged her to let him walk her home, she always said no. The one time that he’d ignored her and followed her up the access road, she’d disappeared almost in front of his eyes. When he finally turned to head back down to the Samurai after calling for her for fifteen minutes, she jumped out of the scrub along the roadside, shouted, and laughed when he yelled out in surprise. Then she dashed up the road and out of sight still laughing. Tonight he just waited until she’d bounced up the hill like a schoolgirl and then followed a ways behind until he saw her approach a squat cinderblock building a
hundred yards off the road to the southeast. It was an odd place for a house, so far from town where most of the Culebrenses lived. As far as John could tell, Tamarind’s only neighbors besides the resort were wild horses and lizards. He never saw anyone greet her.

  During their weeks watching for turtles, he finished reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and then the five successive books in the Narnia series. Pablo, Serena, and Inez huddled close, listening, but Jesus prowled along the edge of the beach as a panther paces near a water hole, waiting for quarry. While he read, John watched the flashlight beam that bounced among the acacia, wary at the other man’s restless energy. As long it wasn’t directed at him, he wouldn’t worry.

  Besides straining his eyes on dim text, John spent a small fortune on batteries for his flashlight over the course of their turtle watch. One night, when only a single turtle braved the trip from shallows to sandy beach, he drained two sets of spare batteries.

  “I’ll be glad when I can read to you during the day,” he said after the flashlight dimmed so low that he had to shut it off or they’d be forced to wait for sunrise to walk back to the Samurai. “This is becoming expensive.”

  Tamarind sat so close to him that long spirals of her hair rested on his bare upper arm. The toes of her left foot, powdered with sand, brushed his whenever she dug them into the beach. She smelled salty and earthy at the same time.

  “Don’t you have to leave soon? I think maybe this is the last leatherback we’ll see this season.”

  “I’m thinking about staying longer. I wrote a research paper based on my experience from the Trench mission. My advisor’s okay with me staying as long as I keep getting work done.” But Zoë was not okay with it. She’d found out where he was staying from Stefan and started leaving him phone messages with Valerie, the owner of the guesthouse where he’d rented a room. She’d written, too. He just couldn’t bring himself to be as blunt with her as he should be.

  “Oh.”

  “Still working on reading Green Eggs and Ham?”

  She didn’t answer right away. In the dark, John felt her swaying and guessed that she still traced her finger through the sand at her side.

  “Yes,” she said finally. “All the letters looked like bird scratching in sand for a while, but two days ago when I looked, the scratches rearranged themselves in front of my eyes. Some of the words look just like themselves now.”

  “You’ll have to read to me then.” He looked out toward the horizon, which lightened toward dawn. Fifteen feet away from them on the beach, the other volunteers sat talking quietly. “I haven’t taken you dancing yet. The first Friday after the watch ends, I’ll pick you up at the same time and we’ll go grab some dinner first. How’s that sound?”

  Tamarind had grown still. “I’ve never gone dancing.”

  “Don’t worry.” He put his hand on her back. The heat from her skin warmed his palm through the cotton of her t-shirt. “I’ve seen you dance every day for the past six weeks and you’ll put everyone else to shame.”

  “As long as I don’t have to read to them.”

  A few days later, Teresa Jimenez, the refuge manager, called an end to the season’s turtle watch. All the volunteers met at Señorita’s at sunset that day to drink beer and poke fun at each other in the brighter lights of the restaurant. John had forgotten the burnish of Tamarind’s hair, the peculiar blue of her eyes. For all that she drank only Coke—albeit several of them—her face flushed as the evening wore on. She even imitated birdcalls for their group with astounding accuracy.

  He couldn’t remember the last time that he’d been out with a group of people, chatting and drinking, and having such a good time. Probably last fall, around the time he and Zoë met. Even Jesus seemed relaxed, his sleepy eyelids minimizing his flat gaze and lending him a seductive air. John suspected that Jesus remained as alert as ever, however.

  Half an hour later, Jesus proved John’s suspicions right.

  “Do you know what ‘Culebra’ means, Juanito?” He’d taken to calling John by the diminutive, but John knew that it had nothing to do with affection.

  Everyone stopped talking to listen.

  “Yes. ‘Snake.’”

  “Ah, bueno, good.” Jesus toyed with the neck of his Medalla bottle. “There are no snakes on this island. Why is it ‘snake island’ then?”

  “I dunno.”

  Inez spoke. Where she’d been red-faced and laughing only seconds before, she was very serious. “To remind us about the snake, the evil, that lives at the heart of paradise.”

  Serena picked up where Inez left off. “There cannot be an isla encantada without a culebra. Some say a great snake sleeps at the heart of the island, waiting for the end of the world when it will hunt again.”

  Jesus sneered. “These two, they are virginal. They do not understand, Juanito. Pero tú comprendes, sí? You want to show our little bird of paradise here the true meaning of culebra. You don’t have it in you, though.”

  “What does that mean?” Tamarind’s voice broke their locked gazes.

  Pablo, who’d had too much to drink, slurred his words. “Means Jesus is jealous.”

  “Jealous? Why?” Tamarind looked at Jesus, puzzled.

  “Not jealous. Just waiting. Waiting for you to fly from this spineless worm. When you do, mi reina, I will be ready.”

  The evening’s mood soured after that. Inez and Serena, darting looks at Jesus, made excuses for leaving. Pablo, lurching to his feet, declared that he needed to get up early to go out on a dive and asked Jesus to walk him the five blocks to his apartment. Jesus finished his beer and dropped some cash on the table as he stood to go. He looked down on John and Tamarind but said nothing more. They watched him trail Pablo out Señorita’s door, his posture sober and cocky. They didn’t move or say a word until the waitress came five minutes later, and then John roused and said that it was time to head out.

  As he drove Tamarind home, he reminded her of his promise.

  “Looks like we’re going dancing tomorrow.”

  “It’s Friday?”

  “Yup.”

  “Okay then.” She looked out the window at the moon-washed road for several moments, but then a song on the radio caught her attention and she hummed along with it and tapped her fingers on the doorframe.

  “Tamarind?” His voice had grown deep in seriousness.

  She turned to look at him. “Yes?”

  “Forget about Jesus. We’ve got bad blood between us, that’s all. It isn’t about you.”

  “‘Bad blood’? Has he hurt you, John?” She’d sat up straight, her face in darkness against the moonlight.

  “No, of course not. ‘Bad blood’ is just a saying. It means we’ve disagreed before.”

  “Oh.”

  Something in her voice, in its small uncertainty, caused him to reach out and push the hair from her face. Tendrils curled around his fingers almost as if they were alive. “See you around sunset, then?” He spoke gently.

  She nodded. “I’ll be here.”

  When John let her out at the bottom of the hill, he watched her silhouette shrink against the pricks of starlight until it winked out at the top. With her disappearance, the night diminished and became ordinary. Even the music on the radio sounded tinny and weak. He quickly turned and drove back south into town and bed.

  Tamarind leaned against a palm tree waiting for him the following evening. She wore the blue dress that he’d bought her before he left the island in early April. For the first time since he’d known her, her hair looked combed and smooth curls lay sedately on her shoulders. Shell hair ornaments clipped long strands together in small bunches away from her face, and around her neck hung lures on transparent fishing line. But her feet were still bare.

  She slid into her seat.

  “You look great. You even make bare feet look dressed up.”

  Tamarind looked down at her feet as she pulled her door shut. “Should I have worn shoes then?”

  “No, no. Wouldn’t lo
ok natural on you, I think.”

  “Feet do?”

  He glanced over as he pulled away and saw her looking down at her feet. Another glance told him that she wiggled her toes.

  “I’ve never seen anyone whose feet look more natural on her than yours do on you.” Out of the corner of his eye he sensed her looking at him. He grinned.

  “We’re going to the Dockside for dinner. Is that okay?”

  “Sure.”

  They chatted about books during the ten minutes it took to get to the Dockside. John wanted her to take the ferry with him to San Juan and visit a bookstore.

  “Really? You’d really take me with you?”

  “Sure. You should get to help pick out the next books I read you. I also need to pick up some supplies, if you don’t mind tagging along that is.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t mind.” She vibrated a low hum; a few soft clicks escaped her mouth.

  “You know you hum and click all the time? I’m starting to be able to tell what all the different pitches, tempos, and volumes mean. I’m guessing you’re being polite. Am I right?”

  “No. I’m excited. And scared.”

  “Really?” He looked at her. “Well, I’ll try not to disappoint you then.”

  The Dockside had few customers this hour in the off-season. The waitress led them to a two-person table looking out over the canal where they ordered buñuelos de queso, mojo isleño, and tembleque. John ordered a Medalla and watched with a smile as Tamarind ordered a Coke.

  “How do you like your fish?”

  Tamarind wrinkled her nose and sliced off a tiny wedge from the mojo isleño. “Not much. I can hardly taste the fish with all the other flavors. I like my fish fresher, too.”

  “How do you normally eat it? I thought this garlic sauce was popular in Puerto Rico.”