Stranded (8 page)

Eve frowned, but she took Betty’s hand and struggled to her feet. She took a step and fell onto her hands and knees. “I told you! My feet are numb; I can’t walk.”

Jake reached for her arm. A few steps, and she’d be okay.

Eve jerked away. “I don’t need you to—”

“Hush!” he growled. “Betty, take her other arm, please.” The two of them boosted Eve to her feet.

He held onto her as she swayed between them. “We’ll need to help her. What do you think, Betty? Are you feeling strong enough?”

“I can do it.” Betty slipped under Eve’s left arm and clasped Eve’s hand.

Jake did the same with Eve’s right arm across his shoulder, and together he and Betty steadied Eve’s waist with their free hands.

Eve gasped. Her body quaked, her head rolled forward, and her knees buckled. “Sick!”

Jake and Betty froze.

“Should we lay her back down?” Betty gazed wide-eyed at Jake.

He paused. He didn’t like leaving them alone for the whole day. Too many things could happen. Snakes, animals, men . . . Whether Eve liked it or not, he was responsible for the three of them now.

“Let’s wait a minute and see if she recovers. If not, I won’t go far. Not all the way to the volcano.”

Eve hung between Jake and Betty, gasping shallow breaths until her stomach settled and the dizziness faded. She raised her head and straightened, bearing her weight on both feet. Jake’s clasp of her right arm over his shoulders raised her almost to her toes, but Betty’s shoulders were a foot lower than Jake’s. To stay upright, Eve had to brace her arm on Betty, all but grinding the frail woman into the sand.

“I’m hurting you.” Eve withdrew her arm.

“I’m okay, don’t worry.” Betty lifted Eve’s arm back into place.

“Here.” Jake’s hand tightened on Eve’s waist and shifted her weight off Betty’s shoulders. “I’ve got you. Just use Betty to stabilize yourself.”

At the sour scent of Jake’s armpit, Eve turned her head and gagged. How far could she walk holding her breath?

Jake took a step forward. Eve raised her right foot and set it down with a clumsy plop on the sand. Needle pricks, hot and razor sharp, shot up her calves, crested in her thighs, and plunged back to her feet.

“Hurts!” Her stomach lurched, and she panted to keep from vomiting.

Jake and Betty stopped and held Eve steady until her breathing normalized. Sweat drenched her face. She needed to lie down.

“Ready?” Jake asked. As if reading her mind, he added, “Walking’s the only cure.”

“Then go without me.”

“Ten steps. Ten steps and then you can rest.”

Crystal, her thin arms clasping life vests and coconuts to her chest, stepped in front of Eve. “You helped us swim to the lighter. Now we can help you.” She beamed as if she’d handed Eve a box of chocolates.

Did the child think life was a series of carefully balanced paybacks? Eve saved them, Jake saved Eve? Eve dragged them to the lighter, they dragged her to the volcano? She clamped her teeth against the acid words crouched on her tongue. Life had no sense to it—only consequence. There was no Judge in the sky handing out rewards, seeing to it that the scales of justice tipped in favor of good. The only justice that got meted out came from the courthouse, and even that was too often shackled.

The Romero trial. Her breath stopped. The trial was coming up in a little over two months. She had to get off the island!

She filled her lungs and released the air in a spurt. “I don’t need to rest. Go.”

The pain chewed at her strength and fogged her mind until she no longer clung to Jake or braced herself on Betty. Vaguely, she felt their grips on her arms tighten, felt the pinch of their fingers on her sunburn, felt Jake’s clasp on her waist squeeze deeper into her flesh. She didn’t care. Hell was an eternal path of smoldering coals, and she was going to walk her way right out of there.

Jake fixed his eyes on the beached lighter, a dull white speck against the sand sparkling in the morning light. Some other day he’d have appreciated the beauty of their pathway—palm trees to their left, branches bowing and skittering in puffs of wind, and to their right a palette of blue ocean and crystalline sky. But not today. Today the beach was a tunnel of sand blistering underfoot and sun blazing overhead.

“Lighter,” Betty murmured.

From the way she spoke, her tongue was as dry and leathery as his. No stopping to drink from the coconuts Crystal carried, though. Eve’s fatigue was growing with each step. Barely walking, head hanging, legs bearing less and less of her weight. Betty was staggering too.

“We’ll rest in its shade,” he promised.

He dragged Eve the last few steps when her legs stopped working. He should’ve picked her up and carried her to spare Betty, but he couldn’t. He needed Betty to be his crutch, to keep Eve upright, or they’d all three collapse on the hot sand.

His knees gave way at the boat, and the three of them fell. Eve tucked into a tight curl, mouth slack, eyes shut. He took a coconut from Crystal and dabbed juice into Eve’s mouth. She moaned and swallowed. He dabbed more, again and again, until she stopped swallowing and her mouth went slack again.

He put up the sail to provide shade while Betty and Crystal drank from their coconuts and fell asleep leaning against each other, their backs against the boat. He split his coconut open and ate the meat, debating whether to eat the other three coconuts too. That would mean replacing them. Hulling them. Delaying the trip. He closed his eyes. He wasn’t that hungry.

He woke with a start to find Crystal shaking him. The sun hovered directly overhead, leaving only a sliver of the shade they’d fallen asleep in.

“I’m hungry.” Crystal held up her coconut. “I sucked it dry.”

“Wake up Eve and Betty and we’ll all eat.”

Crystal shook the two women until they opened their eyes.

“Chow’s on.” Jake forced his lips into a grin.

Eve uncurled and sat up straight. Betty stretched and squinted at Jake. Both of them looked expectantly at him.

“Coconut meat on the shell.” He pried Betty’s open and handed the two halves to her, then did the same for Eve and Crystal. Crystal scooped the fruit into her mouth, but Betty and Eve couldn’t hide their disappointment. What did they expect, lobster?

He swallowed his irritation. “Maybe we’ll find something more on our hike up the coast.”

Betty glanced at the two halves he’d emptied and tossed aside before his nap. “I can’t eat all mine. Here, you take one of these. If anyone needs the nourishment, you do.”

“Mine too.” Eve handed one of her halves to him. “You only lugged me all the way here.”

Warmth pinched his cheeks at their kind words. He was such a grouch, way too hasty in his judgments.

“I only want half too.” Crystal added her piece to the lineup of shells.

He took their offerings only because he knew he wasn’t snatching food out of their mouths. And he was hungry. Famished.

Crystal finished her meal first. “Why’s there white on your noses?”

They looked at each other’s noses.

Eve and Betty shrugged, so Jake answered. “When people get a sunburn, they either get out of the sun or get some kind of medication. We haven’t been able to do that, so the pores in our noses secreted this white fluid. It hardens into a crust so no more damage can be done.”

Eve rubbed the top of her head. “What I can’t figure out is why my scalp is so sore. It’s more than just sunburn.”

Jake flinched as she looked his way.

“What?” She glared at him.

“Nothing.”

“No, tell me.”

“All right. It’s probably because I pulled you ashore by your hair.”

Eve’s voice rose. “You’re telling me you never learned that towing by the chin is the proper procedure?”

Jake stiffened. Push him, and he’d push back. “I’m telling you that pulling you by your hair made the difference between life and death.”

Betty reached across him and touched Eve’s hand. “I watched him, Eve. Two different times you both went under. I thought he’d lost you for sure, but he never let go.”

“The important thing,” he growled, “is that by God’s grace we made it to shore. Your head will heal.”

Eve set her empty coconut shell down, slow and deliberate. “So it will. But if there was any grace involved, it was from you, and not from any God who let all those other passengers die.”

Everything inside Jake went quiet. Ginny’s face slipped into the silent space of his mind. His gut tightened, stiffening his belly, his lungs, his jaws. He should argue with Eve, but his storehouse of Bible answers was empty. Answers wiped out by an explosion that didn’t need to have happened. Shouldn’t have happened.

He stood and dismantled the sail, pushing, stuffing, cramming his pain into the hollow places his heart wouldn’t find. “Let’s head out. The sooner we get to that volcano, the sooner we get off this island.”

Eve avoided looking at Jake when he extended his hand and hauled her to her feet. She grabbed the edge of the beached lighter with her other hand but jerked it away when the heat of the wood stung her fingers. She toppled against Jake.

“Uh, sorry.” She glanced at his face and saw his eyes clearly averted from hers. She knew it—she’d as good as slapped him, reminding him of his wife’s death like that.

“It’s okay.” The words were flat, his mouth tight. He steadied her and slid her arm across his shoulders, not once looking at her. “You ready, Betty?”

Betty’s expression said she’d seen Jake’s pain too. Betty peered up at Eve as she braced her arm across Betty’s shoulders. Betty’s eyes asked, “Why?” but her mouth said, “Ready.”

They took their first step. The stink of Jake’s armpit, freshened by his nap in the hot sun, rushed into Eve’s nostrils. She flinched but didn’t whip her face away this time. The odor was a nuisance, nothing more. Nothing like the deep well of pain bored into Jake’s soul.

“Still got the pinpricks?” Betty asked. The beach was lava hot now, so they walked in the wet sand along the shore to protect Jake’s and Eve’s bare feet.

“No, but my legs—it’s like they have no bones.”

“I can tell you’re wobbly.” Betty pointed up the beach to a daub of gray. “That’s the rock Crystal and I sat on while Jake swam out for you. There’s shade there, if you can make it.”

“All right.” Eve swallowed, her mouth dry at the reminder of what Jake had done for her. As much as she hated apologies, she owed him one. “Jake. Thank you for risking your life to save mine. I’m . . . It doesn’t matter how you did it.”

The long draw of air into his lungs told her the apology, lame as it was, mattered. His knotted shoulder muscles softened beneath her arm as he breathed out.

“It was the only way I could hang onto you.”

Acid scoured the back of her throat. Did he have to keep defending himself? Why couldn’t her apology be good enough? Just like her father, Jake had to be right or he wasn’t happy.

She prickled at having to be helped by him, at having his sweaty hands clasp her hand and waist, at having to comply with his marching orders in the first place. That would end as soon as she could stand on her own. She targeted the rock Betty had designated and aimed every fiber of her will at it. Behind the rock, the volcano towered far away in the distance. It would take more than a day, more than two, to get there. Was it worth it?

With every step, the sun baked the sunburn on her head and shoulders. Her skin steamed in the unrelenting heat until she wanted to sob when Jake at last lowered her into the shade of the rock. Thirst shriveled her tongue, making it difficult to swallow.
Water. They needed to do whatever was necessary to find water.

She opened her mouth to tell Jake to go.
Don’t come back until you bring us water
. The command to the presumptuous, mighty Marine hunkered like a sweet after-dinner mint on her tongue. But before she could speak, the words melted in the hot, sweet salve of sleep. She woke to find Crystal nudging her. The child thrust half a coconut into her hands. Beside her, Betty stirred.

Crystal handed her aunt what looked like the other half of Eve’s coconut. “Almost all the nuts were green or rotten. A half’s all we get.”

“We need to find water.” Jake stood outside the shade, mouthing the words around a jaw full of coconut meat.

Eve twitched in irritation that he’d beaten her to the words. “We’ve got shade. We’ll stay here until you find a stream.”

“No.” Jake swallowed his mouthful. “We’ve got to get to higher ground for that. The end of the beach is just ahead. Let’s assess the situation there.”

Eve refrained from throwing her coconut at him. At least he’d included the rest of them in deciding what to do when the beach ended.             

She felt stronger on the next leg of the journey. She still needed Jake and Betty’s support, but she bore most of her weight and walked like a human instead of plopping down one foot after another like a life-sized puppet. Though their pace was still agonizingly slow, they arrived at the end of the beach without once stopping.

Jagged black rocks replaced the white sand. A short distance away, a tangle of undergrowth swallowed the rocks and spread inland toward a backdrop of towering trees.

“Now what?” Betty glanced pointedly at Jake’s feet. “You and Eve have no shoes.”

“We need to get to the volcano. You can wait here for me if you want.”

“In the hot sun instead of the shade?” Eve snorted. “Nice choice.”

“Feet in the ocean, head in the breeze.” Jake shrugged. “Not a problem.”

“Unless you have a second-degree burn.” Eve pressed her fingers against the top of each shoulder. When she removed her hands, five white spots faded from each reddened shoulder. “Like it or not, Commander, the troops are advancing with you.”

The muscles in Jake’s jaw tightened, highlighting his own pale spots from the scars on his right cheek. “Better to wait until you can walk in that tangle by yourself. Three abreast will be—”

“Get me a sturdy branch for a staff and I’ll manage just fine.” Eve lifted her right foot and wiggled her toes, then did the same with her left foot. “The pain is gone.”

“Good, you can trail us, then. We’ll flatten the path for you and maybe make better time.”

Before Eve could answer, Jake turned and batted through the underbrush. Apparently his feet were tough enough to take on the rough vegetation. She’d barely sat down before he returned with branches for each of them.

“Ready?”

As if she could say no. But she did. “After I take a dip.” She used her branch to get to her feet and with all the dignity she could muster limped into the shallows of the ocean. Betty and Crystal followed her, but Jake splashed by them and dove into a wave.

Jerk.

Out of the water, he lined up Crystal to follow him, then Betty behind her. By default, without a word or gesture from Jake, Eve’s position was last. She hobbled into the lineup and he headed inland.

“We’ll stick as close to the ocean as we can,” he said over his shoulder, “but the farther we go, the more we’re going to find rock cliffs between us and the ocean.”

Eve glanced at her pampered, painted piggies.
No squeals out of you, girlies, not a one of you.
She clenched her teeth and followed Betty into the vegetation. It was an obstacle course that stood between her and the Romero trial, that was all. She’d get to that courtroom if she had to crawl on her knees.

They followed an animal trail that snaked between outcrops of volcanic rocks and patches of twisted undergrowth. The pungent odor of heated vegetation assailed their nostrils, vying with tiny, flying insects determined to investigate every orifice on the travelers’ heads. The number of beaches diminished, while the rugged terrain looming over them became more and more difficult to climb.

“This is probably our last beach.” Jake helped each of them clamber over a rocky incline to a scrap of sand at the ocean’s edge. “We’ll travel on top of the cliffs now.”

Betty collapsed onto the sand. “Jake, I’ve got to rest.” Her hair and face were drenched in sweat, and her green T-shirt and shorts clung to her like paste. She fanned her face, more to drive away the bugs,hungry for her eye
s―
Eve guesse
d―
than to create a breeze against the noon heat.

Eve eased down next to her and sheltered her swollen face against her knees. Her mouth was cottony with thirst. Two days of coconut juice had taken a toll on everyone’s bowels. The embarrassment of the frequent side trips it occasioned was topped only by the odor clinging to their shorts when they returned.

Their fearless leader sat down next to them. “Let’s bathe and take a break. You gals can take a nap while I look for water.”

No protest here. Eve waded into the ocean, scrubbed what she could of her body and clothes, and crawled back to shallow water to lie submerged except for her aching face. She closed her eyes.

“I want to go with Jake,” Crystal said.

“Go.” Betty’s assent was a puff of air out of her lungs.

She expected Betty’s pillow-soft snores to follow. Instead, as soon as Jake and Crystal were out of hearing, Betty spoke, her voice sharp. “What is it with you and Jake?”

Eve sighed and opened her eyes. “I know Jake saved my life, and I’m grateful to him. But I also know the nature of men.” She sat up. “You watch: he’s going to expect us to be running around like his personal slaves, waiting on him hand and foot.”

Betty scowled. “I don’t think Jake is that kind of man.”

“That’s the only kind of man there is. If you don’t look out for yourself, he’ll expect everything to revolve around him—with his word as the law.”

“Come on, Eve, you can’t tell me you’ve never known a good man.”

“Never.”

Betty snorted. “Come on! Your father? Brother? Teachers, doctors—”

“All looking out for themselves.”

Betty stared at her, her face sober. When she spoke, the words came out softly, tiptoeing as if Eve lay bandaged on a hospital bed. “Then I think you’ll find you’ve met your first good man in Jake.”

Eve laughed, the sound harsh, grating her ears, grating her throat. “Watch with me, Betty. You show me—show me exactly when I should believe that.”

“No, Eve.” Betty’s smile was sweet. “I want you to tell
me
—tell me the exact moment. Because you will see it.”