Red Sea (10 page)

My breath comes in ragged bursts. My legs are shaking so I can hardly stand. Then I'm crying with shame and defeat. It was just my oxygen-deprived brain. I peer into the waves, struggling to get a glimpse of him again. He isn't there, never was.

I
N A MOVIE
, J
ESSE AND
I would laugh. First we'd scream, then we'd laugh. If I were writing the script, I would have Duncan extend his lifeless hand and grab my ankle. I shake off the image of the little black fish.

Wind has come up. Wind means we can move, even if I freaked out and didn't get the prop free. I tried again but only got as far as the bottom step on the ladder. Even when you know it's not real, scary stuff lingers, like after seeing a scary movie, when you check the closet and under the bed for a week. I spin the wheel, and the bow eases into a general northerly direction, close enough for now. I tighten the
nut on the hub of the wheel to hold it in place, then move around in front of the wheel to adjust the genoa.

We have an automatic pilot on this boat but it uses battery power, a lot of power. Without the engine to charge the batteries, I don't have a lot of power, so I have to steer the boat myself.

The wind fills the sail and the boat heels and we lean away, not exactly at breakneck speed, but we're under way. The boom rockets back and forth against the mainsheet as if it too wants to take the wind. I settle on the cockpit bench next to the companionway and check the chart.

The Red Sea occupies the crack between the northeast edge of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Djibouti is at the south end, the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean at the north. The island of Masamirit is roughly halfway up and marks the turn toward Port Sudan on the African coast, about six hundred nautical miles from Djibouti. Our plan was to make Port Sudan where we could fill up with fuel and provisions, then make another passage to the Suez. Emma figured the passage to Port Sudan would take less than a week. Before the attack, when Duncan went off-watch, he marked our position on the chart. His precise pencil-marked circle indicates the time, 3:00
AM
, the date, over two days ago, and our course and speed. A half-circle indicates where Duncan thought we'd be at that time based on calculations he did back in Djibouti. Emma and I plotted a similar line on her chart. It's called dead reckoning. I swallow. Talking out loud, I study the chart. “The problem is I don't know where we are now. Presumably, on Mom's watch
she held the same course which put us, at the time of the attack, about here, two hundred miles into the trip and just north of Jabal at Tair Island.” I mark a light
X
on the chart. “We could have moved a fair distance in two days just with the motion of the sea. What did Emma say about currents in this part of the Red Sea being in the same direction as the wind?” I struggle to remember, making quick notes on the side of the chart. “The storm was from the south, so blew us northward, and with the drift of the current, we might have made about two knots an hour, which is like saying two nautical miles an hour. That would put us well over one hundred miles south of Masamirit Island, and nowhere near Duncan's dead reckoning plot.” I mark another
X
on the chart. Using a second pencil as a straightedge, I draw a line on the chart. “So to get back on course, we have to steer a line roughly like this.”

Who is this
we
?

“I have to steer a course, a wild-ass guess, really, based on a wild-ass guess as to where I am now. A real sailor could use the sun and stars to find his position. Duncan has a sextant on board, although he never used it. He got our position from his
GPS
, which the pirates now have, including the spare
GPS
that Duncan kept in the chart table, and the one in the go-bag. I can't use the autopilot, so I have to steer twenty-four hours a day. And take care of Mom.” I rub my sore neck. “I could aim for another port.” Duncan has circled alternative ports on the chart, although some of these would be last resorts, literally, and with the reefs, dangerous for Emma to navigate, never mind me. In Australia
I saw boats up on the rocks, gaping holes in the sides from where the rocks bit through the thin hulls. I might make it off the boat, but I'd never be able to get Mom off. And then the shoreline might be uninhabited, or it could be days before anyone could get help. “My best bet is to try to get close to Masamirit where the others might be looking for me.” I tap my pencil on the chart. “To get within range of someone who might come back for me.”

One sail instead of two, and no engine—at this rate of speed, Mac and Emma will already be in the Suez. My throat aches with the futility of the plan. I tip my head back and close my eyes. The boom thumps against its restraints with each light breath of wind, but I can't be bothered to secure it. “I need to steer the boat, use the wind I have, don't let any spill from the sail.” The sun feels warm on my face. “I'll do all that, sure.” Below, I can hear Mom murmuring in her sleep. With the wind, the boat motion is less like being in a washing machine. Thump, bump, bump. I need to move the mainsheet block so the boom doesn't thump. Thump, bump, bump. It's not the boom. My eyes fly open. It's coming from the very back of the boat. I get up and move to the stern rail. Below me, on the swim platform, a locker door that holds our lifeboat canister is swinging open. The lifeboat canister is no longer in there, taken by the pirates, no doubt. The locker is always latched, but it isn't now, and that's what has been making the noise.

Okay, I'm certifiable now. I need to go and latch the locker door. I don't want a wave to take the door off, and
I sure don't want water in that locker acting as an anchor. But I'm afraid to go even as close to the water as the swim platform.

Every scary movie I've ever seen replays itself in slow motion in my mind. Duncan used to rent old classics like the one about the blind lady who went around loosening all the light bulbs so at night, the bad guy would be in the dark and she'd have the advantage.

Not much advantage, really, more like half a chance. She was just an old lady.

Then there was that Nicole Kidman movie where she and her husband are on a sailboat and the weirdo takes her hostage. I thought that movie was pretty funny, the way the bad guy, after they thought he was dead, climbed back onto the boat.

This is stupid. Just go and latch the locker door. He's not going to reach a cold bony hand over the swim platform and wrap it around your ankle and pull you into the water, under the water, down deep into black water, to the place of the dead.

The wind has increased substantially. The boat is carving a path through the water. Gingerly, I take a step down to the swim platform. Then another. I need to pee. The movement of the boat is greater here, like being at the end of the teeter-totter when it bumps on the ground. I'm suddenly aware that I'm not tethered.

Green water sloshes over the swim platform, dousing my feet.

Oh, here's a good one.
Jaws:
how the shark took out the
entire back end of the boat. Those big teeth strung with human entrails.

I crouch down and slam the locker latch in place, ripping skin off my knuckles, then stumble on the steps back into the cockpit, peeling another strip of skin off my shin. I'm breathing as if I'd run four times around the track. Back in the cockpit, only then, I look into the water.

There's nothing. I knew there wouldn't be. Right.

“W
E'VE GOT SOME WIND NOW
, M
OM
. We can sail.” I don't tell her that I didn't get the prop cleared, that I was too afraid. I tuck a bottle of water into her berth, just in case she wakes up with miraculous strength and will to live. “And here's a pack of saltines, a little crumbly, I'm afraid.”

I step in behind the wheel, loosen the nut and adjust our heading. Then I tighten the headsail. The boat heels as we pick up speed. If the wind comes up any more, I'll have to furl part of the genoa. A gust could knock us down.

I open a granola bar, pocketing the wrapper, nibbling the crunchy oatmeal in small bites. I have another in the pocket of my sweatshirt, but I make myself wait for it.

It's not easy steering the boat. With no land in sight, all I have to go by is the compass bearing. I try to make small movements with the wheel so that the boat doesn't yaw. Mom hates it when we yaw.

I hope she's all right. I hope she doesn't wake up and think she's alone. I'll have to get down below to check on her before it gets dark. Dark. I force panic back down my throat. What am I going to do tonight? I'll have to stay out here to sail the boat, but I know I won't be able to stay alert all night.

Emma could. She sailed single-handed once across the Atlantic. She said she slept in the daytime mostly, when freighters were more likely to see her and not run her down. She set her alarm so that she woke up several times an hour.

Of course, she had an autopilot that steered the boat for her. And she didn't have a mother on board with a festering, gunshot leg.

In the pirate movies, the ship's doctor was always sawing off infected limbs. I picture my saw-tooth knife, my mother's leg.

Mac could do it, maybe, cut off someone's leg, but Emma couldn't. Emma once, at the market, bought a fresh chicken, really fresh, because they plucked it for her but left its innards. She made Mac clean it. He grossed us all out by extracting the gut in a long gray strand.

The granola bar threatens to make a break for it.

I stand at the wheel all that afternoon, pretending that my legs aren't tired, pretending that the granola bar was enough to eat. Finally, I let myself go below for a break.

First, I prepare for the long night. I clean Mom's leg wounds using the anti-bacterial wipes I found earlier and cover them loosely with gauze. She's out again, which makes it easier to work on her leg. When she's conscious and I shift her in her bed, she cries out and often slips away, from the pain, I guess. But I have to move her so that she's not always lying on the same spot. I wash her with cool water and change her T-shirt. It's about all I can do and the effort seems pathetic. I pull the quilt around her shoulders. I dig out my foulies to wear in the cockpit: warm socks, boots, pants and jacket, along with a fleece cap and gloves. I may not need everything, but there's nothing worse than being cold. I glance over at Mom. Okay, there are worse things than being cold. I boil a pot of potatoes, cutting them up small so they cook fast, throw in some shredded cabbage and mash everything with milk. I put a bottle of hot sauce in my pocket because I can eat almost anything if it has enough hot sauce. I fill water bottles, pee again, then take everything to the cockpit.

The evening has already cooled. I set us back on course, then spoon out the potatoes. It's not even close to delicious, but it's food. I sprinkle my bowl with peppery sauce, place the bottle in the cup-holder on the wheel post, and settle against the stern rail to eat.

On the sea, the setting sun plummets from the sky, leaving a blaze of red in its wake, then blackness. The compass is dotted with luminescence, like Mom's watch, so that I can steer. I put the fleece cap on to ward off the night air. Even with all my gear, I shiver.

I try not to check Mom's watch. Time can creep so slowly at night and it feels awful to think an hour has passed when it's only been ten minutes. So I play a game with myself. When I want to check the time, I make myself mentally sing the lyrics of three songs, then I count to three hundred sixty. Sometimes I try to recite the alphabet backward.

Before, when it was Duncan, Mom and me, the most we'd be out here was three hours. The worst watch was midnight until three because the night was long on either side. Duncan usually did this one. That way, Mom could finish her watch as the sun came up. That's what happened when the pirates found us. When I had left her alone on her watch.

Tonight I'll do every watch. And tomorrow night, and the one after that. If that's what it takes.

The moon rises out of thin strands of cloud, startling me with its redness. With no power, we're traveling without lights. Normally all boats carry lights, in set colors and configurations to indicate the direction and size of the boat. That's how you know what you're seeing in the darkness, and if it's going to mow you under. For an eternal moment the moon is an enormous freighter on the edge of night and it makes my heart stop, first to think it would run us over, then to think it might rescue us. But it won't do either because it is just the moon.

Emma said her mother called full moons
bomber moons
from the war, meaning the bombers could easily see their targets. I never asked her, but I wish I did: was a full moon a bad thing, because the bombers could see the ground, or a
good thing, because the bombs would fall where they were supposed to, on military bases and landing fields, not on apartment buildings and hospitals?

The moon lends some light to the cockpit, for which I'm grateful. It allows me to see the compass, which, strangely, I find I need to check less frequently. My legs anticipate the cross swells. I can close my eyes and feel the wind over my neck and cheek, hear it popping and fluttering in the genoa, sense our direction as surely as watching the compass needle.

It makes me less afraid, knowing that I can “see” the wind.

I let myself sleep ten minutes each half hour, tightening the wheel to hold our general direction, setting the alarm on Mom's watch to wake me. I sleep curled on the floor of the cockpit, up against the companionway so that if Mom wakes up, I'll hear her. I tether myself to both wheel post and companionway.

The alarm beeps in my ear like a gong, hauling me from sleep, to my leaden feet, to the sail and the wheel and the compass. I don't sit down, because I'll fall asleep. I stand. I practice ballet moves from when I was six and Dad took me to the community center for lessons on Saturday mornings, then brought me home and watched cartoons with me. Ballet moves are from my first life, life with Mom and Dad together. Ty is from my second life, Duncan's life. And this now is number three. I remember plot lines from books I read and capsulate them into book jackets. Then I pretend I'm the reviewer and assign stars for how good they are. The Nicole Kidman movie, if it ever was a book, gets negative two
stars. When the watch beeps again, it means I can tighten the wheel and crawl off to sleep.