Stranded (6 page)

Jake staggered against the crashing waves as if he were a drunk flailing a bouncer. The breakers shoved him backwards, slugged his face, and snatched at the two life vests tied to his own. He fought past the fracas to the swells of deeper water and swam on his back, his gaze nailed to Betty. Her arms remained at her side. His gut churned. What was she waiting for? Had she lost sight of Eve?

Finally she waved her right arm over her head and pointed south. His stomach looped into knots. Surely Eve hadn’t slipped past him? Three times, Betty signaled him with a big circle followed by churning arms to flip onto his stomach and swim hard. He chopped the water, heart hammering, until his lungs clamored for oxygen. Each time he raised his head, Betty gestured him with another big circle to flip onto his back again.

At last she stood and pointed. Next to her, Crystal jumped up and down. Eve—she must be nearby.

He treaded water until he spotted her several arms’ lengths away. Nothing moved but her long, ropy hair swirling around her head.
Please God, not again
. He swam to her and grabbed her arm. It was cold. Icy cold.

He slipped his other hand to her neck. Above his fingers, her face was red and swollen with tiny, cellophane blisters. Her lips and eyelids and ears bulged like crimson party balloons about to burst. The pain had to be severe, but beneath his fingertips her pulse beat.

Jake shot a clenched fist high over his head. On shore, Betty raised hers, and Crystal clapped. He smiled, knowing they were cheering with him. Him and the heavenly host.

“Eve.” He shook her shoulders. Her head lolled without her eyelids giving a twitch. He didn’t dare slap her face or pull her hair to wake her up. Not with that angry red skin already torturing her. He pinched her arm, hard. She didn’t respond.

All those hours chilling in the ocean—she might never regain consciousness. His stomach clenched. What she needed was warmth. Get her to the beach, and they could take care of that.

The knots securing the two extra life vests resisted his efforts to release them. He huffed, frustration sawing at his nerves. If Eve’s face slid under water, her lungs would not survive. She needed the aid of the extra vests to keep her head up while he pulled her to shore. He worked the knots with both hands, herding Eve with his shoulder so she didn’t drift away.

When the knots finally loosened, he tied a vest around each of Eve’s thighs. Her torso rose in the water, giving her buoyancy that made her easier to tow. Floating on her back, she was now, in effect, a human lighter.

The last thing her injured face needed was his hand clutching her chin. Instead, he gripped the shoulder of her life vest and swam toward the beach. A glance back showed her head slipping lower in the vest. Another stroke forward and her chin sank into the ocean. Jake jerked her up. Reluctantly, he shifted to hold her head to keep it from going under.

In spite of Eve’s buoyancy, his feet kept kicking her butt, and if not that, her dangling legs. Towing her was like lugging a tanker. His arm tired of plowing a path for them, and his legs seemed to kick against liquid lead. With each ocean swell that lifted him, the rock on which Betty and Crystal sat slipped farther behind him. He adjusted his angle to the beach, but the ocean persisted in mastering his direction.

When the end of the beach came into view, a glimpse north showed Betty and Crystal inching their way down the face of the rock. Would they wait for him in its shadow or follow him to see if the toll of survivors became two instead of four?

The sun crawled westward until it hung over the tip of the island. Jake’s heart spiraled downward. Nothing lay beyond the farthest point of land except water. He didn’t dare rest. Didn’t dare stop kicking.

Eve’s hair floated into his face, and he pushed the strands away. His right arm tingled with exhaustion from pulling them forward, over and over, without the relief of switching arms. If he quit, even for a second, fatigue would drop his legs like bait to the current. This time it would swallow them. The lead in his legs wasn’t going to let him kick-start once he stopped moving.

He shoved aside Eve’s hair as it swished again into his eyes. Was there a way he could tuck the dratted mass into her life vest? He released her chin and slid his left hand alongside her head to corral her hair. It was surprisingly long. Long enough to wind in a loop around his palm. Suddenly he had a cord handle he could grip. He didn’t need to haul Eve by her chin, he could pull her by her hair. Better yet, he could do it with either hand.

The reprieve gave him an edge over the current. Switching back and forth between arms, he gained momentum. He was only, what, a football field away now from the island? He could make it. Locking his mind into the tick of a metronome, he chopped at the water. Left arm, ten strokes; right arm, ten strokes.

His arms grew heavier. The number slipped to seven strokes, then five. He traversed the current, but the wind had dropped and the breakers were too mild to carry their bodies to shore.

Three strokes each. He slugged mechanically toward shore. The white sand of another beach wavered before his eyes. Tiny beach. Better not miss it. He fixed his eyes on the white blur.

His left arm—numb. Couldn’t risk switching arms, opening his hand, fumbling for the cord handle . . .

Water gushed into his mouth and bit the inside of his nose. He jerked his face up, gagging at the brine. One foot struck bottom, then the other. He stumbled forward two steps before he could stand.

The breakers slapped his back and swept around him as if congratulating a teammate for bringing home the victory. Jubilation erupted in his chest, warming his insides. He raised his arms over his head, fists clenched in triumph. Then horror pierced his gut.

His hands were empty.

Where was Eve?

Jojo swatted the partially open door so that it whacked against the wall, emitting a sharp crack like a pistol shot. Every face in the BahalaNa Bar jerked toward him. A hot lava of glee rose in his chest as the expressions changed from surprise to fear. Inhaling the pungent incense of beer and liquor sweetened by the sweat of sudden dread, he stepped into his kingdom.

The bartender reached under the bar and produced a bottle of Jim Beam, pounding the bottle onto the counter along with a smile on his gaunt face. Above him, a small black and white television blared into the room’s abrupt silence. Jojo halted his steps to listen to the news bulletin. Was it about the sailor who had vanished at sea?

No, the bulletin was about a cruise ship, the
Gateway
. Ship, crew, and passengers had disappeared over the Philippine Trench. All were presumed dead. The Filipino announcer’s face registered sadness, but after a few terse sentences, he recovered and moved on to the next item.

Jojo grabbed the bottle and a stack of plastic glasses. So, rich
turistas
had died. The rich lived good lives, however long or short. The only real tragedy in life was to get in Jojo’s way—like the sailor who had accused Jojo of cheating at cards.

He strode to the poker game in the far corner of the room. The players’ lips tightened and their Adam’s apples bobbed in choreographed swallows. They knew Jojo’s rules. Everybody played until Jojo was done with them. Until that exact moment, no one dared bow out.

He scooted a chair to the table and dropped onto it. Even sitting, he towered over every man in the room. The light skin and round eyes passed on to him by his American father had been a magnet to back-alley bullies. Puberty toppled the tables, and by age sixteen, the six-foot-four giant with broken teeth and a maze of facial scars had avenged every evil word and deed ever directed at him.

He slammed the Jim Beam and glasses onto the table, and five bottles of cheap beer rattled on the wood. “American whiskey for my friends.” Each man, eyes lowered, took a glass and filled it halfway with Jim Beam. 

Jojo selected his target. Hadn’t Paco made himself scarce the whole month before Jojo left on the transport ship? And yet, here sat the twerp now, sporting a new watch on his right wrist and a chain of shiny gold around his neck, obviously comfortable in thinking Jojo wouldn’t dock for another week.

“Paco.” Jojo waited until Paco raised his eyes. “For you—your welcome-back gift after being gone so long.” He shoved the bottle at the quivering man.

The shoulders of the four other men relaxed. The player with a greasy eye patch shuffled the cards. The man to his left with a hairy mole cut the deck, and One-eye took back the cards and dealt. No one looked at Paco. Only Jojo, grinning, a second bottle of American whiskey next to his shot glass.

He played with his back to the wall, facing the room. The number of stragglers grew to a small crowd. Men slouched onto the six rickety bar stools and scraped chairs across the scarred wooden floor to fill tables. The television pasted background noise onto the men’s murmurs and grunts. Cajoling, ridiculing, bullying, Jojo performed for his audience.

When the room was at its noisiest, Jojo kicked back his chair and bellowed like a crazed carabao. Mouths snapped shut. Eyes stared. Paco groaned and slumped against the table, shoulders quaking, hands covering his face. His wrist was empty, his fine, gold necklace gone.

“Drinks for everyone!” Jojo roared. “Tonight Paco makes our hearts dance.”

Jake’s euphoria snapped like a broken wishbone. He’d lost Eve. He stared dumbly at his empty hands.
Go back and get her.
He could do it. That was all that mattered, wasn’t it? To do what he couldn’t do before—to save a life instead of letting it slip away as if it were inconsequential pocket change? He lowered himself into the jostling breakers to turn around, but his legs sprawled helplessly and he barely caught his breath before his head plunged beneath the surface.

“Jake!”

The shout brought him up sputtering.
Ginny?
He could do it—he could save her.

Heaving against gravity, he lurched to his feet to return to the ocean. A wavering blob on his left came into focus. Crystal—yelling at him, tugging a caravan of life vests.

Eve? He blinked in confusion.

The youngster stopped in the shallow water, leaned over Eve’s head, and grasped her under the arms.
Crystal’s blue shirt and shorts plastered her thin frame. She must have waded in after Eve. Gratitude choked Jake’s throat. But why was the child’s face scrunched like that?

Crystal’s wail slapped him like an open hand to the cheek. Blood rushed to his head, stinging his face. Noooo! Eve. She was dead . . .

He cried out and smashed through the waves to them. The life vests had wedged Eve’s body into the wet sand at the edge of the beach. Her head was tilted back, her eyes open and vacant.

“Her face,” Crystal blubbered. Her fingers lost hold of Eve’s arms, and she plopped onto her backside.

Her face? Crystal was crying about Eve’s face? Jake dropped to his knees beside them. He raised Eve’s head and pressed his fingertips against her neck. His breath untangled from the knot in his chest. “She’s alive.”

Crystal clambered to her feet. “But, but what happened to her face?”

Her voice shook with horror. Did she think fish had been nibbling on Eve, eating her alive? He could see why. “It’s sunburned, that’s all. There’s nothing to cry about.”

Crystal stepped back as if he’d smacked her. Great, she’d taken his words as a rebuke instead of as a comfort. Seizing her hand, he drew her back to him. “Hey, I meant she’s going to be okay. You’re her friend, aren’t you? How about if you call her and see if she replies?”

Crystal drew in a shaky breath while he shifted Eve into a sitting position. Averting her eyes from both Jake and Eve, Crystal dropped to her knees beside them. A wave trickled across the wet sand and batted her legs. She dangled her fingers in the foam, the corners of her mouth twitching into a frail smile.

How long since she’d last played like a normal kid? A twinge of guilt pinched Jake. His wasn’t the only world that had turned upside down.

“Eve?” Crystal’s voice quavered. She peeked to see if Eve responded, then glanced at Jake. She called again, louder, her voice shrill against the backdrop of tumbling breakers. After her third attempt, Jake closed Eve’s eyes against the burning sun.

“She’s out cold. We’ve got to warm her up, fast.”

Crystal hunched her shoulders and rubbed her arms. “We could bury her in the sand. It’s nice and hot.”

“Scorching hot, don’t you think? That’s what my bare feet say. How about if we make a human toaster instead?”

The high pitch of Crystal’s voice cascaded into a giggle. “What’s that?”

“Did Betty come with you? I need both of you for the toaster.” 

Crystal pointed at the jungle encroaching the back of the beach. A bundle under the shade of a stumpy tree raised a slender arm and waved. “Aunt Betty said you’d make it, and you did.”

Jake’s chin quivered. An old lady with a snakebite and a scared kid known as Crybaby had tromped through sand and vegetation to be with him. He wasn’t with the one person in the world he wanted to be with, but how good of God that he wasn’t all alone either.

He blinked away the pricking in his eyes and stood, half lifting Eve. His legs wobbled and he sank into a crouch. No way he was going to carry Eve to Betty.

He shaded his eyes and squinted at Crystal. “I need your help again. You game?”

Crystal’s prompt grin, spreading white teeth across a face burned almost as badly as Eve’s, squeezed his heart. The kid had the wail of a foghorn, but the brightness of a sunbeam.

“We’re going to slide Eve across the hot sand on these life vests. I’ll pull her by her legs while you hold up her head, okay?”

Crystal’s mouth and eyes rounded into circles. Was it the idea of touching Eve’s head?

“Her face is a stomach-turner, isn’t it?” Might as well face the facts as run from them. He stood and tugged Eve onto the beach. “She’ll never recover if we don’t get her out of this sun. You ready?”

Was
he
? The long swim towing Eve had drained him, and here he was going to do it again, only over a sea of blazing sand. But to rest would be to penalize Eve. He’d make it. The journey’s end was as good as within spitting distance.

He clasped Eve’s legs under his armpits so that he faced Betty, and leaned into a mule-harnessed pull. He didn’t look back, but a jerk on Eve’s body followed by a piggy half-squeal, half-grunt told him Crystal was on board.

Halfway to Betty, the sand sizzled the soles of his feet. No leaping his way over the coals this time. It was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other. If he ever ended up in the ocean again, he’d stow his shoes in his pockets.

The heat crackled up from his bare toes to his tongue. How long since he’d drunk that coconut juice? Stomach acid pitched flames into his mouth and scorched the back of his throat. Every breath he took was a chore. Exhaustion pressed against his face from the inside like a balloon ready to burst.

And then, there was Betty, reaching out to him, guiding him with her tiny hands on his arm into the shade.

“You’re a hero, Jake. You saved her!” Betty’s eyebrows rippled into a funny crook as she peered up at him.

A hero? He’d done it? He crashed onto the sand, dumping Eve’s legs.

Betty and Crystal rushed to his side. Why were they undulating like that, mouths moving, no sound?

“Hug her,” he blurted, gesturing at Eve. His mind jumbled the words on his tongue. “You two, toaster . . . Eve, bread between.” His words jerked with the effort of keeping them straight.

His eyelids quivered shut. Had he made sense?

Crystal shrieked as Jake’s eyes rolled to the back of his sockets and his eyelids slid shut. Aunt Betty glared at her, lips squeezed in that cut-the-nonsense look Crystal hated. She clenched her bottom lip between her teeth to keep from crying. But she’d never seen eyeballs swivel like that—it was awful, like they weren’t attached any more.

A shiny green fly with bulging red eyes and translucent wings landed on Jake’s mouth and scuttled across the tire tread of his lips. Noooo! Hadn’t she learned in science class that flies spit saliva on the spot they want to eat?

“Scat!” Aunt Betty flapped her hands above Jake’s face. The fly buzzed away, circled several times, and finally disappeared. Aunt Betty placed four fingers to the side of Jake’s Adam’s apple. “He’s okay. Poor guy only swam half the ocean to get Eve here.”

Aunt Betty removed her hand, and Crystal slipped her fingertips onto the four white splotches fading from Jake’s sunburnt neck. His pulse thumped against her third fingertip, and she giggled. It was as if that fly had snuck under his skin and was trying to shove her finger away.

“His skin’s burning.” Betty reached over and grasped Eve’s ankle. “And she’s cold as ice. Let’s get her out of those vests and slide her and Jake together to help each other out.”

Crystal was good at untying knots. She had the two vests off Eve’s thighs before Aunt Betty finished untying her one knot. Together they rolled Eve onto one shoulder and then onto the other to free her of the vest on her chest.

“No sense trying to move Jake. Let’s bring Eve to him.” Aunt Betty stooped to Eve’s head and seized her shoulders. Crystal joined her, and they shoved, tugged, and pulled on Eve.

“Good grief, I didn’t know she was that heavy.” Aunt Betty released Eve and sat down. “Unless we roll her like a log, we’re not going to budge her.”

“Let’s just do a toaster, like Jake said.” Crystal stepped to Eve’s back and crouched next to her aunt. Aunt Betty’s face was bright red, like all her sunburn had rushed up and pooled there. And now her eyes were wobbling, like Jake’s had.

Her aunt’s eyelids fluttered. Her shoulders sagged forward, pulling her head and fluff of white hair into her clothes like a turtle into its shell. Crystal stifled a sob. Not again! This was what Aunt Betty had done when they got off the lighter—passed out, leaving Crystal all by herself.

She wasn’t alone, though. Jake and Eve were with them now. She helped her aunt stretch out on the sand to hug Eve’s back, one arm flung across Eve’s stomach. Her aunt’s eyes drifted shut, and the familiar puffs of her snores rose like invisible smoke signals over Eve’s right shoulder.

Wait, she didn’t want to be the front part of the toaster! Crystal’s lower lip trembled as she stared at the nasty cellophane blisters on Eve’s face. Please, no, the blisters weren’t moving, were they? Crawling like hungry maggots around Eve’s nose and lips, bumping into each other across her cheeks and forehead?

She gagged and turned her head away.

Across from her, Jake hadn’t stirred. Was his chest moving, or were those heat waves shimmering like when they’d carried Eve? He was a hero, Aunty had said. He’d swum half the ocean to save Eve. And Aunt Betty, she was a hero too. How many times walking down here had she fallen, but got up? She kept pointing to Jake, a tiny dot on the ocean, and saying, “We’ve got to be brave, sweetie, like him.”

Crystal whimpered and lay down. She rolled herself against Eve, shuddering as the front of Eve’s damp shirt pasted itself against the back of Crystal’s. Her head bumped into Eve’s chin. An icy chill crawled down Crystal’s backbone. Ick, had she squished Eve’s blisters? She whimpered again and wriggled lower against Eve’s body, away from the horrid head.

Her legs touched Eve’s, skin against skin, and Crystal gasped. Eve was cold—really, really cold. Eve wasn’t just bread—she was frozen bread.

Taking hold of Eve’s arm, she clamped herself against the frigid body. The coolness invaded her, sucking on her body heat like she was a popsicle. Now
she
was a hero, wasn’t she? Both she and Aunt Betty—a human toaster defrosting Eve, bringing her back to life. Eve had saved their lives, now they would save hers.

She lifted her T-shirt and pressed Eve’s arm against the warmth of her stomach. Eve’s hand and fingers were crinkled like Grandma’s when she’d had her hands in dishwater too long. Crystal laid her arm alongside Eve’s to create another toaster, and used both hands to enclose Eve’s wrinkled fingers with their long, polished red nails.

What had happened that Ginny and all those passengers had died? Crystal sniffled. When she and Aunt Betty were sitting on the rock, she’d asked if her mom was like Ginny. Mom would’ve been, if she’d lived, Crystal was sure of it. But Aunt Betty said no and had mushed her lips together in that way that meant she didn’t want to talk about it. Crystal closed her eyes against the pain and clutched Eve’s arm in a tight embrace.

She woke with sand in her mouth. She’d rolled onto her stomach and broken the toaster. She grabbed Eve’s arm. The flesh was warm.

“Hey!” She sat up and sputtered sand, wiping it away with both hands. “Hey, everyone!” She shook Eve, then Aunt Betty. Neither moved. She crawled to Jake and shook him. “Jake!”

Were they dead? All three lay in the exact same positions she’d last seen them in. Her insides froze, and for a moment she couldn’t move.

Forcing herself, holding her breath each time, she checked the pulse in their necks. Jake’s and Eve’s were strong, but Aunt Betty’s was faint. Crystal pushed up the leg of her aunt’s shorts and inspected the snakebite. It didn’t look any different. She pinched the skin on the back of Aunt Betty’s hand. It stayed wrinkled. Her own too.

As if tapped on its shoulder, her thirst blazed. That’s what they all needed—coconut juice.

“Jake.” She jiggled his arms. His shoulders. His head. “Please, Jake, wake up!” When he didn’t respond, she poked him hard in the ribs. Nothing. She wanted to slap his face, but he was an adult. She couldn’t bring herself to do it.

She got to her feet. The only palm trees she could see were in the direction she and Aunt Betty had come. How many trees had she trudged by with her aunt hanging onto her shoulder? One or two coconuts had to be close. Nothing bad would happen if she walked far enough to grab one but stayed close enough to keep everyone in sight.

None of the bodies stirred as she stepped farther and father away. The gulls had abandoned the sky and were plopping along on sturdy, webbed feet at the ocean’s edge. Were they eating, or had the sun dropped low enough to signal bedtime? The granules of sand that had steamed her sandals earlier were cool now under the shadows stretching across the beach from the jungle.

Where were all the coconuts she’d seen? Fear prickled the back of her neck. Wait, there up ahead was a nut, a dark smudge on the white sand. She’d have to step out of sight of Jake, Eve, and Aunt Betty, but only for a minute.