The ship was a mere shape, distant, gray, and indistinct. They couldn’t tell how far away it was or figure out, quickly, which function of the navigation unit in the console would allow them to measure the distance.
“Okay, I’m going to call them on channel twenty-three and hope this time I get good sound. And when I do, Holly, you set off three flares, one after another. Okay?” Tracy asked. “Ready?”
Holly lit the first flare, and they watched as it arced over the stern and died in the water. Tracy shouted, “This is the sailing ship Opus. We are . . . well, without power at . . . Do you hear me? This is the sailing ship Opus. Mayday. Mayday.”
“Give us your position, Opus. This is the U.S. merchant vessel Cordoba. We are at sixty-eight degrees latitude and thirteen degrees longitude, approximately three hundred miles northwest of Grenada. Over,” a faint voice replied. The rest of them began to cheer loudly until Holly shushed them.
“We can see you, Cordoba. We are the sailing ship Opus, captain Lenny Amato, out of St. Thomas. Lenny is dead. Our captain is dead, and our co-captain is missing.”
“Opus, can you maintain your position? Over.”
“We are stuck on something. We won’t be moving soon, I don’t think. We are passengers. We have no experience with sailing.”
“Can you see a landmass? Over.”
“No landmass at all.”
“Try to maintain your position, Opus, or raise sail at full light. Over.”
“We have no sail. The sail is torn apart,” Tracy said mournfully. Holly lit another flare.
“We will send in a report about your position.”
“Do you see our flares? Do you see us?”
“Negative, Opus. But we’ll find you. . . .”
The lights went out, and the console went black.
Cammie was dumbfounded.
She had expected the last of the power, but not when they were so close, so nearly within the perimeter of safety. The irony pummeled her chest like fists. She drew back her foot and kicked in Lenny’s precious glass liquor cabinet. The remaining bottles clonked together.
They stood crowded in darkness, in the cockpit. The boat rocked, but without any forward progress.
“Okay, look. This is bad, but I just thought. Janis will report us missing. She will expect us to call. We can wait that out. It can’t be long now,” Holly told them.
“That’s the spirit, Holly,” Tracy said, ruffling Holly’s salt-stiff hair. “Always the cheerleader.”
“What’s my choice?”
“You could have taken to your bed, like the countess,” Tracy said, and Holly, unable to restrain herself, beamed. “I’m going to need that handheld GPS and to use the VHF radios—”
“We have a radio,” Cammie told her. “I saw Lenny use it all the time.”
“And Lenny showed me the handheld GPS.”
“Mom, he made Michel take one of the radios and the GPS in the tender that day. Remember?”
“No! I completely forgot both. But now that I think of it, I’m sure . . . it was just the radio.”
“No, he had the GPS, too. I was there. I saw it. We have one radio.”
“But the GPS is gone? He would have brought it in that night. . . .”
“He lifted me onto the ladder. And he came right after me. We were all over each other. I didn’t see him bring them in.”
“Check around, though.”
“I will,” Cammie promised.
“Yeah, well, at least maybe he can navigate himself somewhere,” Holly said pensively.
“But as for us, we can sail and sail if we ever move. . . .”
“We have the ordinary compass. We have the maps, charts, whatever. We’ll have to try to steer by the stars or something.”
“Cammie, I’ve sailed across a lake in northern Wisconsin. I know where the North Star is, and the Big Dipper. That’s it.”
“Well, I’m going to try to decipher the navigation charts today. Maybe I can figure out something useful.”
“I wish one of those big winds would come and blow us off whatever’s holding us.”
“We still have the SSB,” Cammie said. “Damn it. I never imagined there was so much about mechanical stuff I didn’t know.”
“We only have that thing when it works,” her mother replied.
“That’s what pisses me off,” Cammie said.
Occasionally, they heard a word or a barrage of chatter on the SSB, but when they answered, shouting, madly depressing whatever button there was, no one seemed to hear them. Cammie could not for the life of her figure out why. It was a straightforward mechanism. When a plane flew over, they shouted and jumped and tossed out a flare; but the plane never acknowledged them.
“That is not going to happen again,” Tracy said, swearing under her breath. “Cammie, here’s what I want you to do. First thing in the morning, I want you to find the crowbar and pry loose any pieces of wood or fiberboard that you can.”
“From where?”
“From the galley, the saloon, wherever you can find it. I’ll find some paint.”
Day Eleven
The roof of the saloon was made from pristine panels of button board, snow bright and smooth. Starting at dawn, and using the claw end of a hammer, Cammie ripped them all down. Tracy used markers and waterproof blue paint Lenny had stored in the ama on Holly’s side and wrote in letters five feet high: SOS.
Cammie nailed a panel to the roof of the cockpit, ignoring the ugly splintering of the fiberglass sheathing. It read: HELP. THE OPUS! She made two more exactly the same. These, she threw overboard—one just after they ate, one at noon. Later, as she was applying some previous passenger’s aloe to the burns on her shoulders that had blistered and broken, she felt movement.
The wind shifted, and suddenly the boat was again adrift. Despite its disabilities, it seemed stable. It could be steered. In the cockpit, Tracy steered out toward the color band that signaled deeper water.
Elated to be headed somewhere, anywhere, Cammie later settled in for her watch.
But time passed slowly. The lantern’s glow bounced, making reading more irritating than diverting. She brought up the CD player, put in a CD, and softly sang Patsy Cline songs. She sang the theme of every movie she could think of. Finally, she nearly dozed at the wheel.
When she woke, she thought she was dreaming.
Just in front of her face, seemingly feet from the windshield, she saw what she thought was a dark cliff. But the cliff had numbers on it, high above her.
Cammie wrenched the wheel with all her strength, and had the boat proceeded another few yards, it would not have been enough. They missed the freighter by mere feet, all the while unable to hail it.
Frantically, Cammie jiggled and shouted into the SSB, and then the VHF, then the SSB again, her hell-bent determination to be heard temporarily banishing the knowledge that the freighter could have crushed them and that its pilot would have felt that the boat had nudged a reef, if that. He’d have gone on, carrying cars and cabinetry, statuary and stainless steel ovens, tiles and tires. They would spiral down, like Michel and Lenny, their hair like trendrils of seaweed among the corals, their open eyes as impassive as the eyes of the gliding fish.
Cammie watched the huge city of a ship churn loudly into the distance and tried to restore her calm. Her chest was heaving as though she’d run ten miles. She needed flares. She needed to have them with her on watch at all times. They had to have a watch along with whoever steered, someone who could look off the stern. It was just too much for one inexperienced, weary, frightened human. She found a box of flares, and as the freighter retreated, she lit and tossed out two. The SSB crackled, and a voice said, “. . . nightfall.” But no one responded to Cammie’s increasingly hoarse calls. One day, she would tell her mother what she had almost done and how close salvation had come before a nightmare.
But not tonight.
The freighter had made a noise, passing, like a great wave. Its engines pounded, louder than any train. She couldn’
t imagine how her mother and the others had slept through it. And then Tracy, her voice sluggish with sleep, called, “What?”
“Nothing, Mom. I dropped something,” Cammie called. “Go back to sleep.”
Then, behind them, just off the stern, Cammie saw what looked to be a dim light. She shouted, “I see something! Everybody!”
“What is it?” Tracy called back, alert now.
“I think it’s a . . . I don’t know, but it’s moving,” Cammie said as Tracy scrambled up the stairs. “I can see the lights going up and down.”
“Get the big flashlight!” Tracy called to the others. “Cammie thinks there’s a boat of some kind back there. Maybe a fishing boat! We need to signal them.”
“Now,” Cammie said. “While it’s still dark. They won’t see the light otherwise.” They all willed the sun not to rise.
“You keep signaling,” Cammie said. “It might not even be a boat. It could be nothing but, what do they call that stuff? That phosphorescent stuff? St. Elmo’s fire? Or some kind of glowy coral?” They were all awake and huddled on the stairs to the cockpit by then. “I’m going to check the bilge. Aunt Holly, can you steer for a while?” She crossed the deck and lifted the hatch to survey what she could see. “Mom, there’s water down in here. A lot of water . . .”
“No!” Tracy shouted angrily. “Not enough to sink us!”
“I don’t think so, but stuff is floating. Stuff is . . . It would come up to my knees.”
“Well, you’re little. We’re going to have to hand-pump it, then. The manual pump is up in the cockpit.”
“How do you know this stuff?” Cammie asked in wonder. “I’m proud of you!”
“I just . . . I don’t know it. I looked at it,” Tracy told her daughter. “I look at everything. I read owner’s manuals. You didn’t get all that precision from your father.” To their mutual surprise, they were able to manage wry smiles. Holly gave up her position to Tracy, and they worked steadily, taking turns, to make sure the bilge was relatively dry.
The others could not go back to sleep. The sky turned gunmetal, then the familiar striations that signaled the appearance of morning.
It was Olivia who finally asked, “Why hasn’t that boat caught up?”
“I don’t know,” Cammie said. “Maybe they can’t see us very well. It’s just a flashlight. Damn, if only we had the lights. The lights ran off the diesel. Lenny said we’d never have to worry about the refrigerator or the toaster or anything. Maybe one of the tanks is low. I’ll have to try to switch over or fix it somehow. Why aren’t they working? The motor and the generator, they don’t have anything to do with each other. Or maybe they do. Maybe running the motor does something for the generator.”
“I don’t want you mucking around electrical stuff. I’ll do it,” Tracy said.
“Mom.” Cammie gave Tracy a level look. “You can’t check the oil on the van with the dipstick. At least give me the respect of treating me like an adult out here. You got full-on aces with the bilge pump.”
Tracy looked away and said, “Fine. Whatever.”
Cammie examined the mucky quagmire belowdecks. There were more tools in cases like fishing tackle boxes, but more sturdy, and even some of Lenny’s MREs—though no longer RE, by the look of them. Still, she handed them up to Olivia. Now, a broccoli-and-noodle casserole, a box of cereal, a packet of crackers, and some nuts were the sum total of their food—except for the tins of beans and tuna stored on little gated shelves in the ama.
“Maybe these are salvageable,” Cammie called up.
She located the generator and wished she had been the one to examine it sooner, instead of standing there holding the light while her mother screwed around with it. The operation was straightforward enough. She fiddled with it, sure she would be successful, but to no effect. When she emerged, she said as much. “Either it’s just busted, and I can’t figure out how, or we . . . or we used up the fuel we had. That’s impossible, though. But I don’t think I can do anything with it.”
“How could this have happened and us lose the sail, too?” Tracy mused.
“It’s not possible,” said Olivia, her voice on the verge of a squeal. “Two things like that couldn’t happen at the same time.”
“Except they did,” Tracy told her dully.
“What do we do now?” Olivia cried.
“We could eat that casserole,” Holly said. “And when all we have are a few gallons of bottled water and whatever trickles out of the faucets, we’re going to wish we had it.”
The noodle casserole was cold. None of them could stomach it, although they were hungry from all the activity and the paucity of rations. All of them opted for handfuls of raisin bran and nuts. As they sat down to eat, Cammie apologized. “I’m sorry. I can’t find a manual or any notes about the generator in the old logs. They just say, ‘We dove today.’ Or, ‘The temperature was twenty-five Celsius.’ Or, ‘We made fine time.’ Or, ‘We have good luck with family groups,’” Cammie said. “But I know how to work the little manual water maker. It’s going to take a hell of a lot of work to make a little fresh water from seawater, just like Lenny said. But a person can do it. I’m not worried about that.” Her face was unreadable in the gloom, but something thrummed in her voice.
“What are you worried about?” Tracy asked.
“That boat. If I shine the light right on it, I can see that it’s a boat. It’s still back there. It’s like they could come up beside us, but they’re not. And the lights on it are funny. They’re smudgy. They’re like fog lights, but only just.”
“That’s what I thought,” Olivia said.
“Maybe they’re poor people. It doesn’t mean they’re bad,” Tracy said.
“I found an even bigger flashlight, bigger than the one Cammie has, a humongous flashlight, in Lenny’s things. We could try signaling with that,” Holly said. “I’m going to take a nap, Olivia, so come with me and get it and bring it back. Let me know if anything happens.”
As soon as Olivia returned, Tracy turned on the big light. Blink. Pause. Three rapid blinks. A blink. Then three rapid pulses.
Still, the boat seemed to keep its distance.
On the yola, Ernesto was sweating and swearing, his wolfish stink overpowering. Exertion made it worse. The young man thought Ernesto would beat Carlo to death. If he had not needed Carlo’s back and hands, the young man was sure Ernesto would have killed his cousin. On the island, at the home of the woman, they had been left a cache of fuel. And then Carlo, whose job it was to fill up, had left the fuel behind. Until now, he had not told Ernesto, and unaccountably, Ernesto had not noticed the gauge. When he did, he began to scream.
They would not make it to their meeting with Chief. There would not be enough diesel. A boat so painted as Bonita could not slide into any harbor and refuel, even here, where few questions were asked of anyone. Even had there been a harbor or a ship to hail for help.
And then Carlo saw the light. The blinking light. Three times. Then again. Then three rapid blinks.
The young man saw it also, the clumsy attempt at Morse code. He saw it with a faltering heart.
Carlo chortled. He raised his binoculars. It was the same big three-hulled boat. They had lost sight of it. Now here it was again. “Mujeres blancas,” he said—the young man understood no more than he wanted to—and “mala.” He assumed Carlo was suggesting that the women they could see plainly on the boat, whenever the big lamp they held up shined on them, would want it badly. Thus, he soothed Ernesto. Drink, rape. The things the women would have, food and fuel, perhaps valuables to be sold. The boat itself.
Maybe, the young man thought, they would be satisfied with the boat, the big yacht, to drag somewhere and then claim on the way back. A boat such as this one could be restored and sold for a great deal of money. The hope was faint that this bounty would satisfy his partners. The young man looked down at his hands. He was astonished by them. They still looked like a boy’s hands. As if he had never grown up. He had never be
en good at reading or writing logically, but his mother said he was good in a crisis. He could solve problems. But he felt too young. He would need to be a sorcerer, like the men in the fantasy books he had loved as a child when his sitter read them to him, to make these women invisible to Ernesto and Carlo.
If the women were invisible, they could survive.
A big freighter had passed an hour before. Ernesto had killed the lights as they’d watched it slide by. So they’d waited until full darkness had fallen to make their move. No longer needing to worry about wasting fuel, Ernesto opened up the huge motor. The boat reared up and, instantly, was upon Opus.
“I guess they’re not poor fishermen,” Tracy said to Cammie through the open cockpit door.
“They could be. That’s a shitty boat, but the engine . . . ,” Cammie said.
Ernesto was not discouraged. The boat was a prize.
Now that he was close enough to examine it, by the light of the lanterns the women switched on, he could see that only the mainsail was destroyed. Perhaps these women were too stupid to run the motor. He almost laughed aloud. Americans were stupid, but all rich. There would be good things on this boat. The men were cramped, their clothing stiff with dirt and sweat. They did not mind the filth, but they minded the jerky and rough flatbread they carried to eat. On this boat might be steaks and chocolates. Where there were boats in trouble, there sometimes were watches, wines, and women cowering beside spineless, chinless hombres. Perhaps the men were working belowdecks. The men could die quickly or be bound and thrown down to watch as they fucked their women. When he saw the girl who had been waving and throwing flares, her body supple as a fluid under her brief clothing, he felt even better. Here was another prize, to have and even to sell. Perhaps even more valuable than the big boat. If the old bitches were left to live, they would not remember him.
Ernesto had learned that Americans thought all men who spoke his tongue looked like one man.
He shifted to let Carlo steer. After grunting and gesturing at the young man to pick up the gun and take it from its case, but to keep it low, out of sight beneath the seat, Ernesto lifted a hand and waved. With simple words and gestures, he told the young man not to bother to load the automatic rifle. They might need ammunition later for something serious. The sight of the gleaming big blue gun would suffice.
Still Summer Page 17