Rising Water

by Wayne Stinnett

  “Good. We’ll enjoy the dives and make plans when we’re done.”

  “Hasta mañana,” Jimmy said, and I ended the call.

  Staring down at the phone, I figured I’d delayed long enough. I scrolled through my short contact list and found the number Chyrel had given me a long time ago; the number I’d never once called.

  “Hello?” The voice was hesitant, but it was Savannah.

  “It’s Jesse McDermitt.”

  There was silence for a moment. “I’d ask how you have my number, but knowing who you are, it goes without saying.”

  “I have news about your husband.”

  “Ex-husband,” she said, her voice faltering slightly. “And I really don’t care, whatever it is.”

  “He’s dead.”

  Again, there was a moment of silence. “Did you—?

  “He was involved in a dispute with illegal drug manufacturers and was shot.”

  Once more, there was only silence. The pause was so long, I checked to see if the signal was lost.

  “And you didn’t have anything to do with it?”

  “No,” I replied honestly. “But I was there. I just couldn’t stop it in time.”

  She sighed. “It was bound to happen sooner or later, Jesse.”

  “I’d like to—”

  “Was there anything else?” she interrupted curtly.

  “I know he wasn’t Florence’s father, Savannah.”

  There was another sigh, then a squeaking sound, as if her breath had caught in her throat.

  “No,” she finally said. “He wasn’t.”

  “She’s my daughter.”

  “Yes,” Savannah said, as if a great weight had been lifted. “Charity told me some time ago that you somehow got Flo’s DNA. I really didn’t know for sure, until then.”

  “I should have told you immediately.”

  “I didn’t want to know,” she said. “Then time went by…”

  “I’d like to meet her,” I said. “I mean, with everything laid out on the table. The one time I met her, she seemed like a great kid.”

  “She’s not really a kid anymore,” Savannah said. “She’s wanted to meet her real father for years. I kept telling her the time wasn’t right.”

  “Can I?” I asked.

  She paused again. “Yes,” she finally said, resolution in her voice. “Soon. But not real soon. Can I reach you at this number?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, sitting forward on the edge of the bunk. “Any time, day or night.”

  “I’ll call you,” she said, then ended the call.

  Placing the phone on the desk, I thought about what kind of relationship I could have with Florence. My two daughters from my first failed marriage had been estranged until they were nearly grown. Now we had a good relationship and they were close; Kim lived right there on my island, when she and Marty were in. They spent a lot of time on assignment for Fish and Wildlife, though.

  Before Kim found me, I’d resigned myself to not having contact with her or her sister, Eve. But Kim had quickly learned that what her mother Sandy had told them about me was mostly lies. Eve had been a more difficult sell.

  Physically rested, but still mentally drained, particularly after the call with Savannah, I decided to wear my body down to match my brain. I put on a pair of trunks and a faded Rusty Anchor T-shirt and headed down to the lobby.

  Passing through the expansive area, I overheard several conversations about the storm. I didn’t want to push my ankle too much, so I walked out to the highway, crossed it, and turned right, following the seawall along Cow Key Channel toward the Atlantic.

  There, I picked up the pace to a slow jog. It was a little over a mile to Smather’s Beach, and as I ran, I thought about Savannah and Florence. Our affair had been brief, only a couple of weeks, but it was good. Or at least I thought it had been. I guess if she decided to go back to an abusive husband it couldn’t have been all that great for her. But I knew that women often went back; the abusers had that kind of control.

  My feet pounded the concrete, but the pain in my ankle was very minimal. I was convinced it had just been a sprain, as a torn ligament would still have had me hobbling along. A tall, dark-haired woman jogged past me in the opposite direction and smiled, her eyes making contact a bit longer than usual for two strangers passing. I smiled back.

  When I reached Smather’s Beach, I used the dune crossover and leaned against a palm to take off my shoes. Then I removed my shirt, stashed the castoffs beside a trash can and waded into the warm, almost hot, water.

  Setting out at a slow pace, swimming toward the sun and the end of the pier at White Street, about a mile away, I tried to turn my mind off and let my body set its own pace. I knifed through the water with practiced ease. I’d always considered swimming to be the ultimate exercise, bringing nearly every muscle in the body into play.

  The little girl I’d met near the hospital just across the bridge on Stock Island kept creeping into my mind. She’d been eight or nine years old then, but tall for her age. She’d seemed shy, but in her eyes, I’d seen a quick mind. They flitted about, taking in everything around her. I hadn’t known she was my kid then. She’d be a teenager now. Almost the same age that Kim had been when she’d snuck away from her sister’s house in Miami with a friend and driven down to Marathon to find me.

  Raising my head for a moment, I saw that I was nearly halfway to the pier. There was a powerful storm coming, and if it hit here, it would change the landscape. I wondered what I might have to do, should Irma come this way.

  My house was solid, but against a Cat-5 storm, I wasn’t sure how it would hold up. A direct hit would have a high storm surge. On the highest high tide, there was fourteen feet of clearance below the house, where I kept the boats, and the Revenge had an air draft of thirteen.

  I had no doubt that a direct hit from a storm such as this would mean a surge at least as high as my house. The boats would have to be taken out—all of them. The Revenge wasn’t trailerable and I didn’t have a trailer big enough for El Cazador. They’d both have to be moved to my hurricane hole in Tarpon Bay on Shark River, miles inland from the coast. I just didn’t trust putting my boat up on the hard at a marina. Boats and parts of boats could get loose and damage others. Better off on the water, properly tied in a deep-water creek with a windbreak all around. The smaller boats could be trailered and staked down at the Rusty Anchor. Storm surge was less of a problem there, because it was slightly more elevated than other places in the Keys.

  When I reached the pier, I turned around and started swimming back the way I’d come. I didn’t need to look where I was going. My shadow, just ahead of me, would be my compass.

  I wondered how Savannah would tell Florence. Would she prepare her, telling the girl that they were going to meet her father? Or would she wait and simply introduce me as daddy?

  Finally, as I reached shallow water, I stood and looked around. I was roughly in the middle of Smather’s Beach when I waded ashore; almost a two-mile swim. I walked back to the east end of the beach, passing a few sunburned tourists along the way. Again, conversations I heard were about the hurricane, nearly 2000 miles away.

  “We should leave, Morris,” I overheard a woman say to her pink, beer-bellied husband. “You call this a vacation? This is a swamp, Morris. Are you listening to me?”

  Morris merely grumbled in return.

  When I reached the spot where I’d stashed my shirt and shoes, I put them on and ran back to the hotel, still undecided on the best plan, should the storm arrive. My ankle felt fine after the workout, just a little stiff.

  Back in my room, I showered, closed the curtains, and fell onto the bed, exhausted again. I left the TV off, knowing there would have been little change during the past two hours.

  The next time I woke up, I felt a lot more refreshed than I had in days. It was dark
outside, but there was still a faint glow to the southwest. I ordered a ribeye and baked potato from room service and turned on the TV.

  Irma was still a Cat-3 storm with sustained winds of 115 miles per hour. The forecast track predicted a northeasterly turn taking it right through the Virgin Islands, then continuing past Puerto Rico. A straight line from there would be along the north Cuban coast and into the Gulf of Mexico. It didn’t take a meteorologist to see that.

  Even if I had a crystal ball and could predict exactly where it would go, it was still far too early to implement any sort of plan. If you moved a boat too early, you ran the risk of mooring it right in the path of the storm when it changed course.

  But the time to implement a hurricane plan was fast approaching. I decided my go or blow time would be Tuesday afternoon, two days from now. There was a chance we might have to make the planned two-day dive trip just a single day.

  I set my alarm for 0400 and got back into bed. I wanted to be fully rested before the dive tomorrow. Again, my thoughts drifted to Florence and her mother. Savannah had lied to me. Okay, it was a lie of omission, not telling me she wasn’t exactly single. But it was a deception. Years later, I’d seen them get on a boat with a man to go out to his yacht. I hadn’t seen him clearly enough to be sure, but it could have been her husband. At any rate, she’d moved on with her life, and I’d moved on with mine.

  Some life, I thought, as I drifted off to sleep. A hermit’s existence filled with occasional dangerous assignments.

  Waiting at the fuel dock the next morning, I watched Gaspar’s Revenge idle into the marina and turn toward me. Jimmy skillfully brought her to the dock, where the gas monkey and I quickly made her fast. I handed the man my card and he went to turn on the pump.

  “You don’t look none the worse for wear,” Jimmy said, as he came down from the bridge and pumped my hand vigorously. “I’m glad you’re back, man.”

  “Glad to be back,” I said, opening the fuel access hatch and removing the cap.

  I heard a commotion at the foot of the dock and looked back. Peter and his entourage, consisting of one man and four women, were walking toward us. Even though it wasn’t yet light, there was a handful of people around, getting boats ready for a day of fishing or diving. Everyone stopped to watch the four women walk past. Sidney’s niece, Naomi, was among them.

  They were all young, beautiful, and walked with the confidant stride of runway models. Hell, throw in a smoke machine and wailing guitars and it would have been a rock video.

  “Whoa,” Jimmy breathed.

  “Down boy,” I said. “Try to act professional.”

  “Hiya, Jesse,” Peter called out. “Hey, Jimmy. Long time no see.”

  Neither Peter nor the girls following him paid any attention to the gaping mouths they were leaving in their wake. Peter’s assistant, a young man I only knew as Claude, appeared overly self-conscious about all the attention, though.

  “Good to see you, too, Peter,” I said, noticing that they were all wearing sneakers. I smiled at the peculiar, Bohemian underwater photographer. “You’re early; we’re just fueling up. If the fumes are too much, you’re welcome to go right on inside. The AC’s on in there.”

  “What do you think about that hurricane?” Peter asked, as he stepped over, then offered a hand to one of the women.

  “Hurricane?” the young blonde asked.

  “Not to worry,” I said. “It’s still days from the Leeward Islands, and they’re more than a thousand miles from here. We’ll have blue skies and calm seas here for at least a week.”

  “That’s good news,” a second blond woman said, as she followed the first into the boat’s interior. An unassuming, dark-haired woman was right on her heels.

  Naomi stepped down into the cockpit and offered a hand to Claude, who was standing beside the boarding ladder with his arms full of camera gear.

  Peter followed the girls inside as Jimmy hung up the fuel hose. The assistant followed Peter in, but Naomi remained in the cockpit.

  “You’re Rusty’s friend,” she said. “We met at the airport week before last.”

  “Yes, I remember. Sid’s niece, right? Long vacation?”

  “No,” she replied. “I decided to stay. Mind if I ride up top for a while?”

  Jimmy gave me a glance and shrugged. While we were underway, another pair of eyes on the bridge would free him up to talk shop with the two photographers.

  “Sure. Why not?” I turned and signed for the fuel, pocketed my card, then followed her up the ladder.

  I started the engines as Jimmy cast off the lines. Then I nudged the Revenge away from the dock.

  “This is quite a dive boat,” Naomi said, sitting on the edge of the port bench seat. “Looks fast.”

  “Thanks,” I replied. “It’s really a fishing boat, though. But I make an exception for Peter and his groups. What made you decide to stay?”

  “Oh, where do I start? I love the people I’ve met, and everyone’s attitude is so cool. The water’s beautiful and the sand hot. I’m not real crazy about the rowdiness here in Key West so much, though. How far away is this place we’re going?”

  I grinned at her. “I know just what you mean. I came to the Keys a long time ago and just never left.” I flipped on the roof-mounted spotlight and trained it toward the channel markers. “We’ll reach Fort Jefferson in about two hours. Nervous about going that far on the ocean?”

  “Oh no,” she replied. “I’ve done some sailing.”

  “Good. It’s always a bonus to have another pair of eyes.”

  “You need anything, Skip?” Jimmy called up.

  “Yeah, could you bring me up some—?”

  “Coffee, yeah,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “That’s it for now,” I said, pointing the bow toward the southwest. I turned to Naomi. “You care for a cup?”

  “Sure.”

  “Bring an extra mug, Jimmy,” I called down, as I slowly eased the throttles forward, bringing the speed up to eight knots.

  “Why’s he call you Skip?”

  “I’m the captain. Skip’s short for skipper.”

  “Aunt Sid said you used to be some kind of spy or something.”

  “Spy?” I replied, wondering where she’d gotten that idea. “Not hardly. I was in the Marines and after that, I used to move some of Homeland Security’s people around sometimes. Definitely not a spy.”

  “So, this is your job now? A boat captain? Sounds exciting. Do you live here in Key West?”

  So, Rusty’s wife had told her I was a spy, but not that I lived on an island just a few miles from them and chartered for a living? I was going to have to talk to Rusty.

  “It’s not really a job,” I replied. “I own Gaspar’s Revenge and enjoy being out on the water. Chartering lets me do that while someone else pays for the fuel. I live a little north of Rusty’s place.”

  Jimmy called up from below, and Naomi moved over and knelt by the ladder to take the Thermos and mugs from him.

  “Thanks, Jimmy,” she said with a smile.

  I waited until she’d poured us each a cup, then pressed the intercom button and spoke into it. “We’re clear of the outer markers, Jimmy.”

  His voice came back over the speaker. “Si, Capitan. Everyone is seated.”

  I pushed the throttles up to halfway and the Revenge came up out of the water, heading toward Southwest Channel. I moved the spotlight around to illuminate the water ahead of us and then switched the overhead lights to red.

  “So, how long have you been doing this?” Naomi asked, straining her neck to look forward.

  “You can sit over here,” I offered. “The seat’s higher. I started chartering soon after I arrived here in the Keys, in ’99.”

  She moved carefully behind me and then lifted herself into the second seat by the helm. “Oh, this is a lot better
. I was only ten years old then. I guess you were in college before you came here? I went to Oklahoma State.”

  I laughed. “No, I didn’t go to college. Before I came to the Keys, I was a Marine for twenty years.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her turn toward me, studying my face. “You can’t be that old. What’s Jimmy’s story?”

  “Jimmy?”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen him around the Rusty Anchor. Rusty’s letting me work there, waiting tables and stuff.”

  “He was born and raised here,” I said. “A true Conch like Rusty. Spent a few years in the Navy, then came home and worked as a shrimper until I hired him. One of the best flats guides in the back country.”

  Naomi talked almost non-stop for the two hours it took us to reach the Tortugas. Mostly chit-chat requiring little input on my part. But she asked a few more questions about Jimmy. Was there something there? She seemed intelligent, and our conversation covered quite a few subjects. Jimmy was very intelligent, though he tried to hide it behind a surfer façade.

  “Was that where you met Rusty?” she asked, as I started to slow the boat. “In the Marines?”

  “No, I met him on the bus that was taking us both up to Parris Island for boot camp.”

  She gave me a curious look. “How old was he then?”

  “Rusty? He’s a year older than me, so… eighteen.”

  Her face showed doubt. “Huh.”

  “What?”

  “I just assumed he was older than you; about Aunt Sid’s age.”

  “He is,” I said. “A year older.”

  “I meant more than a year,” Naomi said. “You look a lot younger than him.”

  I’d never really considered it. Rusty and I had known each other a long time and I just saw him the same as always. I guess we’re all like that with people we’ve known a long time and see regularly. We don’t see the lines in the face deepening, or the graying of hair, or in Rusty’s case, the losing of it. He’d always been bald. He’d shaved his head before boot camp.

  Jimmy climbed up to the bridge. “Peter wants to do some shots onshore first, save the afternoon sun for the reef.”