Beast (2 page)

The pillow smelled of Elizabeth.

He slept.

The engine droned on. Injectors pumped fuel into the cylinders, pistons compressed the fuel to combustion, and a thousand explosions every minute turned the shaft that held the propeller that drove the boat north into the night.

A pump drew seawater through a fitting in the hull and passed it through the engine, cooling it, and fed it aft to be flushed overboard with the engine’s exhaust.

The engine was not old, had had less than seven hundred hours on it when they bought the boat, and Griffin had nursed it like a cherished child. But the exhaust pipe was harder to tend. It exited the engine compartment aft and nestled tightly beside the propeller shaft, under the floor of the after cabin. It was of steel, good steel, but for a thousand hours or more of engine use it had carried tons of salt water and acrid gases. And when the engine was not running, when the boat was sailing or tied to a dock, salt residue and molecules of corrosive chemicals had lain in the exhaust pipe and begun gradually to eat away at the steel.

The minuscule hole in the exhaust pipe could have been there for weeks. They had had fair winds all the way up from the Bahamas and had used the engine only to power in and out of St. George’s Harbour and Dockyard, and routine pumping of the bilges would have removed any excess water. But now, with the engine running steadily and the heat-exchanger pump working full time and the boat punching into the sea rather than sailing gently with it, thus stressing its innards, the hole was growing. Bits of rusted metal flaked away from its edges, and before long it was the diameter of a pencil. Water that had dripped into the bilges now flowed.

Elizabeth steered with her feet and leaned back against the cushions in the cockpit. To her left, in the west, all that remained of the day was a sliver of violet on the rim of the world. To her right, a crescent moon was rising, casting a streak of gold that tracked her on the surface of the sea.

No souls, she thought as she looked at the moon. It was an Arab idea—she had read of it in The Discoverers, one of a score of books she had for years been meaning to read and had at last devoured in these past six months—and she decided she liked it: The new moon was an empty celestial vessel setting out on a month’s journey to collect the souls of the departed, and as the days passed it swelled and swelled until, finally, engorged with souls, it disappeared to deposit its cargo in heaven, then reappeared, an empty vessel, and began again.

One reason she liked the conceit of a ship of souls was that for the first time in her life she was beginning to think she understood what a soul was. She was not a profound person, had always deflected serious conversations before they could plumb too deeply. Besides, she and Griffin had always been too busy living to pause and reflect.

He had been on the fast track at Shearson Lehman Brothers, she in the private banking division of Chemical Bank. The eighties had been a time when they had gathered toys: a million-dollar apartment, a half-million-dollar house in Stonington, two cars with heated seats and light bulbs in the backseat ashtrays. The money came in, the money went out: twenty thousand dollars for private-school tuition, fifteen thousand a year for eating out a couple of times a week, twenty thousand for vacations, fifty thousand for maintenance and upkeep.

Twenty thousand here, twenty thousand there—they used to joke—and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

It was a joke, because the money just kept coming in.

And then one day the tap was turned off. Griffin was laid off. A week later, Elizabeth was given a choice: half time at half salary, or quit.

Griffin’s settlement would have allowed them to live for a year, no frills, while he looked for another job. But another job (undoubtedly at less money) would have meant climbing onto the same treadmill, a few paces back of the pack.

The other option was to take their severance money and buy a boat and see if, in fact, there was more to the world than confit de canard and designer fizzy water.

They kept the house in Stonington, sold the apartment in New York and put the proceeds in a trust to fund the children’s education.

They were free, and with freedom came excitement and fear and—day after day, almost minute after minute—discovery. Discovery about themselves, about each other, about what was important and what was dispensable.

It could have been a disaster, two people confined twenty-four hours a day to a space forty feet long by twelve feet wide, and for the first couple of weeks they wondered. They got in each other’s way and carped about this and that.

But then they became competent, and with competence came self-assurance, and with self-assurance, self-esteem and appreciation for one another’s strengths.

They fell in love again, and, just as important, came to like themselves again.

They had no idea what they would do when they got home. Maybe Griffin would try for another job in the money business, though from everything they’d read— mostly in the Caribbean edition of Time—the money business was in the dumper. Maybe he’d try to find work in a boatyard. He loved tinkering, didn’t even mind varnishing and sewing sails.

And she? Maybe she’d teach sailing, maybe try to join the staff of an environmental group. She had been horrified by what they had seen of the destruction of the reefs in the Bahamas and of the wildlife in the Windwards and Leewards. They had snorkeled over barren bottoms littered with the sea-bleached shells of dead conchs and the shattered carapaces of spiny lobsters. Around island after island they had seen the ocean environment despoiled and destroyed. And because they had had time to think and observe, they had come to understand more fully the cycle of poverty breeding ignorance breeding poverty breeding ignorance. She had concluded that there might be something she could do, could contribute—as a researcher or a lobbyist. She still had contacts with a lot of the rich people she had dealt with at Chemical.

It didn’t matter. They’d find something. And whatever they found would be better than what had been before, for they were new people.

It had been a wonderful trip, with not a single regret.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. There was one regret— that they had had to turn on the engine. She hated its relentless rumble, the absurd gurgle as the exhaust pipe dipped in and out of the water, the vile smell of the fumes eddying over the stern and swirling in the cockpit.

The hole in the exhaust pipe had begun to grow, as tiny bits of rusty, weakened metal had flaked away. With each surge of the boat, with each slight heave from side to side, there was movement, not only of the hull but of everything within it—not much, not noticeable, but enough to cause strain, enough to aggravate weakness.

An eye could not have seen the hole grow, but now, as the boat’s bow stuttered between two short, choppy seas, the exhaust pipe was seized by a slight torsion. It buckled and tore, and then all the water from the cooling pump poured into the bilges. And because the pipe was broken, when the boat’s stern dipped and the exhaust outlet submerged, there was nothing to keep the sea from rushing in.

Elizabeth was sleepy. The boat’s motion was the worst kind of soporific: staccato enough to be unpleasant but not violent enough to force her to stay alert. Perhaps she should wake Griffin.

She looked at her watch. No. He’d been asleep for only an hour and a half. Let him have another half hour. Then he’d be fresh and she could get some sleep.

She slapped herself in the face and shook her head.

She decided to sing. Impossible to fall asleep singing. Scientific fact. So she sang the first few bars of “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?”

A wave lapped over the stern of the boat and soaked her.

No problem. The water wasn’t cold. It would—

A wave! How does a wave come over the stern of a boat when you’re heading into the sea?

She turned and looked.

The stern was four inches from being awash. As she watched, it dipped again, and more water rushed aboard and spread over the cushions.

Adrenaline shot up her back and down her arms. She sat still for a moment, willing herself to stay calm, to gather data. The annoying gurgle from the exhaust pipe had stopped. Fumes no longer swirled over the stern.

The seas on either side of the boat looked higher. The boat’s motion was sluggish, wallowing, ass-heavy.

She reached forward of the wheel, lifted a plastic cover and flicked the switch that turned on the bilge pump. She heard the electric motor start, but something was wrong with the sound. It was distant, faint and laboring.

“Howard!” she shouted.

No answer.

“Howard!”

Nothing.

A length of bungee cord was looped over the boom, and she hooked each end around a spoke of the wheel, securing it, and went down through the hatch.

A stench of exhaust fumes choked her and burned her eyes. It was coming up through the floor.

“Howard!”

She looked into the after cabin. Six inches of water covered the carpet.

Griffin was in a dark, foreboding dream when he heard his name called from what seemed a great distance. He willed himself awake, sensing that something was wrong, wrong with him, for his head hurt, his mouth tasted foul, he felt drugged.

“What is it?” he said, and he rolled his legs over the edge of the bunk. He looked aft and saw, through a bluish haze, Elizabeth running toward him and shouting something. What was she saying?

“We’re sinking!”

“Come on… .” He blinked, shook his head. Now he could smell the exhaust, recognize the taste.

Elizabeth peeled back the carpet in the main cabin and lifted the hatch covering the engine compartment. By now Griffin was standing over her. They saw that the engine was half underwater. The batteries were still dry, but the water rose as they watched.

Griffin heard sloshing in the after cabin, saw the water and knew what had happened. He said, “Shut down the engine.”

“What?”

“Now!”

Elizabeth found the lever and choked off the engine. The rumbling died, and with it the circulating pump. No new water was being forced aboard, and they could hear the comforting electric whine of the bilge pump.

But there was still an open wound in the stern.

Griffin grabbed two dish towels from the sink and a shirt from a hook, and he handed them to Elizabeth. “Stick these up the exhaust pipe. Tight. Tight as you can.”

She ran up through the hatch.

Griffin reached into a drawer and found a crescent wrench. He knelt on the deck and adjusted the wrench to one of the bolts holding the batteries to their mounts. If he could get the batteries out of the engine compartment, raise them a couple of feet, a foot even, he could give the bilge pump time to stop the water from rising. He had meant to move the batteries, after he read a cautionary article in one of the boating magazines about how dangerously dependent modern boats had become on sophisticated electronics. But that would have involved some reconstruction beyond his talents, which would have meant dealing with island labor, which would have delayed them.

Delayed them from what?

He cursed and heaved against the first bolt. It was corroded, and the wrench skidded off.

With its way gone, the boat slewed broadside to the sea and fell into a rhythm of steep, jerky rolls. A cupboard door flew open, and a stack of plates skidded out and crashed to the deck.

He tightened the wrench and leaned on the handle.

The bolt moved. He managed half a turn, then the wrench handle butted against the bulkhead. He yanked the wrench off, refitted it and turned again. The water rose.

In the cockpit, Elizabeth lay facedown on the fantail, spread-legged, her feet braced against the roll. One of the dish towels was balled in her fist, and she felt along the hull for the two-inch opening in the exhaust outlet. She could barely reach it with the tips of her fingers, and she tried to jam the towel inside. The pipe was too big, the towel too thin. It slipped out of the hole and floated away.

She heard a new sound, and paused to decipher it. It was the sound of silence. The bilge pump had stopped.

Then she heard Griffin’s voice below. “Bermuda Harbour Radio … this is the yacht Severance … Mayday, Mayday, Mayday … we are sinking … our position is … Fuck!”

Elizabeth pulled the shirt from under her chest and balled it with the second dish towel, and again felt for the hole in the stern.

The boat yawed. Water rushed over the stern, and she skidded. Her feet lost their grip. She was falling. Her arms flailed.

A hand grabbed her and pulled her back, and Griffin’s voice said, “Never mind.”

“Never mind!? We’re sinking!”

“Not anymore.” His voice was flat. “We’ve sunk.”

“No. I don’t—”

“Hey,” he said, and he gathered her to him and held her head against his chest and stroked her hair. “The batteries’re gone. The pump’s gone. The radio’s gone. She’s gone. What we’ve got to do is get the hell off before she slips away. Okay?”

She looked up at him and nodded.

“Good.” He kissed her head. “Get the EPIRB.”

Griffin went forward and uncovered the raft lashed to the cabin roof. He checked to make sure all its cells were inflated, checked the rubberized box screwed to the deck plates, to reassure himself that no one in some out-island port had stolen their flares or fishing lines or cans of food. He felt his belt to make sure his Swiss Army knife was secure in its leather case.

A five-gallon plastic jug of fresh water was tied to the boat’s railing, and he untied it and set it in the raft. He debated going below to retrieve the small outboard motor stowed forward, then decided: Forget it. He didn’t want to be caught below when the boat sank.

As he undid the last of the raft’s lashings, Griffin felt a weird satisfaction: He wasn’t panicking. He was acting precisely as he should—methodically, rationally, thoroughly.

Keep it up, he told himself. Keep it up. And maybe you’ve got a chance.

Elizabeth came forward. She carried the plastic bag containing the boat’s papers, their passports and cash, and in her other hand the EPIRB, the emergency beacon, a red box covered with yellow Styrofoam, with a retractable antenna on one end.