Bear and His Daughter (18 page)

“I’ll take it out of the freezer,” Blessington said.

A swimmer would have to contrive to make land somewhere between the rock wall to the north and the reef and sandspit on the right. There would be easy swimming at first, through the windless afternoon, and a swimmer would not feel any current for the first mile or so. The last part of the swim would be partly against a brisk current, and possibly against the tide. The final mile would seem much farther. For the moment, wind was not in evidence. The current might be counted on to lessen as one drew closer to shore. If only one could swim across it in time.

“It’s all right,” said Freycinet. “I’ll do it. Have your swim.”

Beyond that, there was the possibility of big sharks so far out. They might be attracted by the effort of desperation. Blessington, exhausted and dehydrated, was in no mood for swimming miles. Freycinet would not leave them there, off the Pitons, he told himself. It was practically in sight of land. He would be risking too much—witnesses, their survival. If he meant to deep-six them he would try to strike at sea.

Stoned and frightened as he was, he could not make sense of it, regain his perspective. He took a swig from a plastic bottle of warm Evian water dropped his towel and jumped overboard.

The water felt good, slightly cool. He could relax against it and slow the beating of his heart. It seemed to cleanse him of the cabin stink. He was at home in the water, he thought. Marie was frolicking like a mermaid, now close to the boat. Gillian had turned back and was swimming toward him. Her stroke still looked strong and accomplished; he set out to intercept her course.

They met over a field of elkhorn coral. Some of the formations were so close to the surface that their feet, treading water, brushed the velvety skin of algae over the sharp prongs.

“How are you?” Blessington asked her.

She had a lupine smile. She was laughing, looking at the boat. Her eyes appeared unfocused, the black pupils huge under the blue glare of afternoon and its shimmering crystal reflection. She breathed in hungry swallows. Her face was raw and swollen where Freycinet had hit her.

“Look at that asshole,” she said, gasping.

Freycinet was standing on deck talking to Marie, who was in the water ten feet away. He held a mask and snorkel in one hand and a pair of swim fins in the other. One by one he threw the toys into the water for Marie to retrieve. He looked coy and playful.

Something about the scene troubled Blessington, although he could not, in his state, quite reason what it was. He watched Freycinet take a few steps back and paw the deck like an angry bull. In the next moment, Blessington realized what the problem was.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” he said.

Freycinet leaped into space. He still wore the greasy shorts he had worn the whole trip. In midair he locked his arms around his bent knees. He was holding a plastic spatula in his right hand. He hit the surface like a cannonball, raising a little waterspout, close enough to Marie to make her yelp.

“You know what?” Gillian asked. She had spotted it. She was amazing.

“Yes, I do. The ladder’s still up. We forgot to lower it.”

“Shit,” she said and giggled.

Blessington turned over to float on his back and tried to calm himself. Overhead the sky was utterly cloudless. Moving his eyes only a little, he could see the great green tower of Gros Piton, shining like Jacob’s ladder itself, thrusting toward the empty blue. Incredibly far above, a plane drew out its jet trail, a barely visible needle stitching the tiniest flaw in the vast perfect seamless curtain of day. Miles and miles above, beyond imagining.

“How we gonna get aboard?” Gillian asked. He did not care for the way she was acting in the water now, struggling to stay afloat, moving her arms too much, wasting her breath.

“We’ll have to go up the float line. Or maybe,” he said, “we can stand on each other’s shoulders.”

“I’m not,” she said, gasping, “gonna like that too well.”

“Take it easy, Gillian. Lie on your back.”

What bothered him most was her laughing, a high-pitched giggle with each breath.

“OK, let’s do it,” she said, spitting salt water. “Let’s do it before he does.”

“Slow and steady,” Blessington said.

They slowly swam together; breaststroking toward the boat. A late afternoon breeze had come up as the temperature began to fall.

Freycinet and Marie had allowed themselves to drift farther and farther from the boat. Blessington urged Gillian along beside him until the big white hull was between them and the other swimmers.

Climbing was impossible. It was partly the nature of the French-made boat: an unusually high transom and the rounded glassy hull made it particularly difficult to board except from a dock or a dinghy. That was the contemporary, security-conscious style. And the rental company had removed a few of the deck fittings that might have provided hand- and footholds. Still, he tried to find a grip so that Gillian could get on his shoulders. Once he even managed to position himself between her legs and push her a foot or so up the hull, as she sat on his shoulders. But there was nothing to grab on to and she was stoned. She swore and laughed and toppled off him.

He was swimming forward along the hull, looking for the float, when it occurred to him that the boat must be moving. Sure enough, holding his place, he could feel the hull sliding to windward under his hand. In a few strokes he was under the bow, feeling the ketch’s weight thrusting forward, riding him down. Then he saw the Rastafarian float. It was unencumbered by any line. Honoré and Marie had not drifted from the boat—the boat itself was slowly blowing away, accompanied now by the screech of fiberglass against coral. The boys from the Pitons, having dealt with druggies before, had undone the mooring line while they were sleeping or nodding off or scarfing other sorts of lines.

Blessington hurried around the hull, with one hand to the boat’s skin, trying to find the drifting float line. It might, he thought, be possible to struggle up along that. But there was no drifting float line. The boat boys must have uncleated it and balled the cleat in nylon line and silently tossed it aboard. He and Freycinet had been so feckless, the sea so glassy and the wind so low that the big boat had simply settled on the float, with its keel fast among the submerged elkhorn, and they had imagined themselves secured. The
Sans Regret,
to which he clung, was gone. Its teak interiors were in another world now, as far away as the tiny jet miles above them on its way to Brazil.

“It’s no good,” Blessington said to her.

“It’s not?” She giggled.

“Please,” he said, “please don’t do that.”

She gasped. “What?”

“Never mind,” he said. “Come with me.”

They had just started to swim away when a sudden breeze carried the
Sans Regret
from between the two couples, leaving Blessington and Gillian and Honoré and Marie to face one another in the water across a distance of twenty yards or so. Honoré and Marie stared at their shipmates in confusion. It was an embarrassing moment. Gillian laughed.

“What have you done?” Honoré asked Blessington. Blessington tried not to look at him.

“Come on,” he said to Gillian. “Follow me.”

Cursing in French, Freycinet started kicking furiously for the boat. Marie, looking very serious, struck out behind him. Gillian stopped to look after them.

Blessington glanced at his diver’s watch. It was five-fifteen.

“Never mind them,” he said. “Don’t look at them. Stay with me.”

He turned over on his back and commenced an artless backstroke, arms out straight, rowing with his palms, paddling with his feet. It was the most economic stroke he knew, the one he felt most comfortable with. He tried to make the strokes controlled and rhythmic rather than random and splashy to avoid conveying any impression of panic or desperation. To free his mind, he tried counting the strokes. As soon as they were over deep water, he felt the current. He tried to take it at a 4 5-degree angle, determining his bearing and progress by the great mountain overhead.

“Are you all right?” he asked Gillian. He raised his head to have a look at her. She was swimming in what looked like a good strong crawl. She coughed from time to time.

“I’m cold,” she said. “That’s the trouble.”

“Try resting on your back,” he said, “and paddling with your open hands. Like you were rowing.”

She turned over and closed her eyes and smiled.

“I could go to sleep.”

“You’ll sleep ashore,” he said. “Keep paddling.”

They heard Freycinet cursing. Marie began to scream over and over again. It sounded fairly far away.

Checking on the mountain, Blessington felt a rush of despair. The lower slopes of the jungle were turning dark green. The line dividing sun-bright vegetation from deep-shaded green was withdrawing toward the peak. And the mountain looked no closet He felt as though they were losing distance, being carried out faster than they could paddle. Marie’s relentless screeches went on and on. Perhaps they were actually growing closer; Blessington thought, perhaps an evening tide was carrying them out.

“Poor kid,” Gillian said. “Poor little baby.”

“Don’t listen,” he said.

Gillian kept coughing, sputtering. He stopped asking her if she was all right.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really cold now. I thought the water was warm at first.”

“We’re almost there,” he said.

Gillian stopped swimming and looked up at Gros Piton. Turning over again to swim, she got a mouthful of water.

“Like … hell,” she said.

“Keep going, Gillian.”

It seemed to him, as he rowed the sodden vessel of his body and mind, that the sky was darkening. The sun’s mark withdrew higher on the slopes. Marie kept screaming. They heard splashes far off where the boat was now. Marie and Honoré were clinging to it.

“Liam,” Gillian said, “you can’t save me.”

“You’ll save yourself,” he said. “You’ll just go on.”

“I can’t.”

“Don’t be a bloody stupid bitch.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I really don’t.”

He stopped rowing himself then, although he was loath to. Every interruption of their forward motion put them more at the mercy of the current. According to the cruise book it was only a five-knot current but it felt much stronger. Probably reinforced by a tide.

Gillian was struggling, coughing in fits. She held her head up, greedy for air her mouth open like a baby bird’s in hope of nourishment. Blessington swam nearer her. The sense of their time ticking away, of distance lost to the current, enraged him.

“You’ve got to turn over on your back,” he said gently. “Just ease onto your back and rest there. Then arch your back. Let your head lie backward so your forehead’s in the water.”

Trying to do as he told her she began to thrash in a tangle of her own arms and legs. She swallowed water gasped. Then she laughed again.

“Don’t,” he whispered.

“Liam? Can I rest on you?”

He stopped swimming toward her.

“You mustn’t. You mustn’t touch me. We mustn’t touch each other. We might…”

“Please,” she said.

“No. Get on your back. Turn over slowly.”

Something broke the water near them. He thought it was the fin of a blacktip shark. A troublesome shark but not among the most dangerous. Of course, it could have been anything. Gillian still had the Rasta bracelet around her wrist.

“This is the thing, Liam. I think I got a cramp. I’m so dizzy.”

“On your back, love. You must. It’s the only way.”

“No,” she said. “I’m too cold. I’m too dizzy.”

“Come on,” he said. He started swimming again. Away from her.

“I’m so dizzy. I could go right out.”

In mounting panic, he reversed direction and swam back toward her.

“Oh, shit,” she said. “Liam?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m fading out, Liam. I’ll let it take me.”

“Get on your back,” he screamed at her. “You can easily swim. If you have to swim all night.”

“Oh, shit,” she said. Then she began to laugh again. She raised the hand that had the Rasta bracelet and splashed a sign of the cross.

“
Nam,
” she said. “
Nam myoho renge kyo.
Son of a bitch.” Laughing. What she tried to say next was washed out of her mouth by a wave.

“I can just go out,” she said. “I’m so dizzy.”

Then she began to struggle and laugh and cry.

“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,” she sang, laughing. “Praise him, all creatures here below.”

“Gillian,” he said. “For God’s sake.” Maybe I can take her in, he thought. But that was madness and he kept his distance.

She was laughing and shouting at the top of her voice.

“Praise him above, you heavenly host! Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

Laughing, thrashing, she went under; her face straining, wide-eyed. Blessington tried to look away but it was too late. He was afraid to go after her.

He lost his own balance then. His physical discipline collapsed and he began to wallow and thrash as she had.