Reprisal (2 page)

"I guarantee we won't sink. An absolute guarantee."

A pause, considering. Then a second smile, better than the one before. "Well

... if it's an absolute guarantee. And you're sure you don't mind?"

"I'd like the company."

A good two hours out, and the girl hadn't been seasick, thank God.

Also seemed pleased to get wet when Bo-Peep swung across the wind on a new tack. She'd sat there in the cockpit, very solemn at first, looking out over the bay--and now didn't appear to mind the open sea. Seemed to enjoy it.

When he'd helped her onto the boat, gotten her into a life jacket and settled her on the small cockpit's cushions clear of the tiller, she'd laid the metal crutches down along the devil, and said, "Accident, when I was in high school."

The wind was fair, the weather mild and clear as glass. Bo-Peep was a plain boat, down-east and broad in the beam--a solid little sailer with that deeper seat in the sea that wooden boats seemed to have. You could weight a fiberglass keel very heavy, and still the boat would have a faint vibration to it under way, a little of that milk-jug high-floating feeling.

"Tell me when you want a sandwich. I've got two tunas. And beer."

"I don't need anything, thanks." She'd put on dark glasses.

"You'll get hungry. And it's an extra sandwich I probably shouldn't have, anyway. So you take it whenever you're ready."

"... Okay. And thanks, Mr. Reed. Thanks for taking me out."

"No thanks necessary. Sailing's better with company."

The sea had been making up, but only very slightly, a cross fetch that lifted Bo-Peep, swung her a little starboard as she ran--wonderful easy sailing.

Early summer weather, and a good day to be out. The sea colors showing various jade. ... A shame the college hadn't been built on the coast instead of midstate, in the hills. They would have the sea year-round then.

"How far are we out?"

"Oh, a few miles."

"Too far to swim back, I guess."

"Too far in these waters. Much too cold.-You want to hold the tiller?"

The girl thought about it. Careful, Frank supposed, with a cripple's caution.

"... If it's okay."

"It's okay. Piece of cake. Here-scoot over here. ... That's it. Now put your right arm over the tiller as if it was a friend's shoulder. Good. Charis, that's good. Now, just hold her steady as she goes--you like those nautical terms?"

"Yes, I do." And she hung on, seemed a happy girl now, peering forward from under the baseball cap's brim. There was sea spray on her glasses.

Good deed, Frank thought, and stepped along the Bo-Peep's cable-strand rail to the bow, then around and back, checking her rigging. It occurred to him--well, he'd been considering it before--that with field hockey now a solid Olympic sport, it made a natural low-cost adjunct to soccer. Low-cost being the key, of course, as far as college administration was concerned.

A good game, too. An interesting game--about which, of course, he knew damn-all, but he could learn. Fast game, ancient game with some violence to it, but not as rough as lacrosse. ... Girls' game and men's game. East Indians played the hell out of field hockey. Be interesting to coach, and it was definitely coming on, particularly in schools with no football budget. Talk to Perry, see what the board thought about it. ...

The girl still steering pretty well. Cross swell was throwing her off a little, sagging to leeward just a bit. She didn't know to correct for that.

"Pull left--toward you--just a little bit. You're doing a really good job.

Wheel's a lot easier than that tiller."

"This much?"

"That much ... that's just right. And I think we've earned an early lunch, mate." He ducked under the half-deck, retrieved the small cooler, and opened it.

"Beer okay? I have some Cokes stowed if you want."

"No, beer's fine."

Frank passed her a sandwich and an open can of beer. "You want to sit back where you were, I'll take the helm."

Bo-Peep was riding larboard up, so the girl was awkward getting to her feet to change seating on the slant. The boat bucked a little as Frank slid in to take her place, and he felt quick cold run down his back.

"Oh god-dammit, I spilled beer all over your life thing--your life jacket."

"No problem; it's been spilled on before."

"Oh, it'll smell. Do you have another one?"

"Two more in the locker--don't worry about it."

"No, please take it off and I'll rinse it in the ocean. It'll smell. So stupid of me. ..." Sounded almost in tears. Any clumsiness probably a reminder of her handicap.

"Really, it's no big deal. Here, hang on to the tiller." Frank unbuckled the jacket and shrugged out of it. Then, balancing to the boat's motion, he raised the transom's cushioned seat, knelt up beside it, and leaned over to lift another life jacket out of the locker. Boat was pitching; she mustn't have a good grip on the tiller. ...

There was an instant of sudden hard pressure against the small of his back--that became terrific pressure and he was up in the air without knowing why. Up in the air upside down and going over--and saw the girl from upside down and she was leaning with her shoulders back against the edge of the half-deck, both legs still straight out from the effort of her kick.

And he was going over, and thought he could hold on to the cable rail as he went. Almost did. Almost, but not quite. The leverage snapped it out of his grip and he was over and down into the sea.

Cold came as he sank, and he swam and rose ... rose up into the air--caught his breath and saw Bo-Peep sailing away, already yards past and going.

Frank kicked level and began to swim after, swim better than he ever had, and faster. What mistake, what mistake? And reviewed what became more real as he swam, and grew calmer, swimming, and first thought about what clumsiness might have struck the girl--what saving herself from a fall might have ended in kicking him over into the sea. ... Then decided there couldn't have been such clumsiness.

He raised his head, spit salt water, and shouted, "LET GO ALL LINES! TILLER

HARD OVER!" Still swimming, still swimming fast, bucking swells. ... Went under cold salt water and came up--raised his head to shout again, and saw brightness off the boat as the girl tossed her crutches overboard. And still swimming, he saw her take the baseball cap off and shake her long hair free.

Dark-blond hair that bannered out in the wind. And she jumped to the sheets and nicely close-hauled Bo-Peep due south, so the boat ran fast and free.

The girl looked back once as Frank still swam. She looked back with little interest, then turned and sat to the tiller, steadied, and settled on her course ... sailing the boat very well. Sailing away.

Frank stopped swimming, lifted his head and shouted, "Why ...?" Too far, now, for her to have heard him.

Charis, holding a true course south through the day, ate both sandwiches, drank two beers--and was very hungry again by night, when Bo-Peep ran through moonlight along the line of breakers to Peck's Cove beach.

She left the tiller then, let the boat sway and slide into the fetch of the waves, turning, broaching beneath their crests. The beach was a moonlit line of white a hundred yards off when she ran her left arm through her small duffel's handles, then stepped up and over the landward cable rail. She balanced to a sudden lurch and drop--then, on the rise, dove sliding into the nighttime sea.

Joanna dreamed the ocean had brought Frank home, delivered him in a rush of breaking waves up the walk, so seawater thumped and foamed against the cottage door ... ran under and soaked the rag rug there.

She dreamed he stood up laughing on the stoop, dripping salt water, stomping squelching sneakers, and called to be let in.

Joanna dreamed she rose, went out into the hall and down the narrow stairs, trailing her fingers along white-painted pine paneling. Then, in the entranceway, saw the puddle spreading on the floor. Rag rug would be stained for sure with salt, she thought--and with that hesitation, woke, and lost her chance to open the door and let him in.

She lay in bed, rigid as if terrified, and felt an agony of strangling sorrow rising in her chest, so severe, so dire, it frightened her. It rose, stopped her breath, then exploded in a muffled howl. Rage and regret. After a while, she grew less noisy, and only wept into her pillow.

Finished, she sat up into late morning light, blew her nose on a Kleenex from the bedside table, and got up to pee and take her shower. For the past week, Frank's ashes scattered on the hill, she'd slept naked, without her usual T-shirt ... as if, she supposed, to lure him alive and home to her. Her body--a few years from forty, long, lean, and lightly Indian brown even in deep winters--still seemed sufficient to call a man home to her, even with the right breast gone ... replaced by a pale fading scar curving across and up to her armpit. Even with this brutal lack, this missing, surely a man must like the rest--a good body, muscled and smooth, matched by an almost Indian face, strong-nosed and high-cheekboned, its eyes the near black her grandmother's had been, darkened by Mohegan blood.

One of her poems--only one, "An Amazon"--had been written in comment on her breast, lost to cancer. Joanna traced the long, curved scar with a finger as she turned, rinsing ... chanting the poem over the shower's white sound.

My right breast, sliced away and gone, Permitted the bow such a sweeter draw, That willing I whistled a tit so-long, Rode out to fight, and in slicing saw New freedoms for my sword arm's swing, In raids from our steppe to the ocean.

I found the plus that minus can bring, With those pleasures of easier motion.

Aren't one-breast women who can fight, Completer than weak two-titted ladies?

For by war is darkness beaten to light, And bright heavens hammered from Hades.

Joanna lifted her long, soaked hair to rinse again, the shower spraying meager and barely warm, as if fresh water here on the island was shy in the presence of the ocean.

""The plus that minus can bring ..."" But nothing had been won in losing Frank.

"Mom, I've registered for my courses, and I'm going to do the summer session.

I really don't want to stay out here, and I don't know why you want to."

Rebecca's round inelegant face--her father's face, and intended to be merry-still slightly pale with shock, blue eyes milky with pain and confusion.

Too sudden and early a loss for her. ...

A conversation on Sand Hill, the long slopes of the hillside--duneside, really--furred with sea grass, tangles of sea grape. A conversation as they'd walked across and down to the cottage, the small bronze jar held empty in the crook of Joanna's arm. There hadn't been many at Frank's memorial on the mainland, at White River--the college's faculty scattered for the summer. Eric and Donna'd been there. Susan Thom--who, Joanna suspected, had been half in love with Frank for years--weeping in the chapel. Susan had gone out to soccer games innumerable; more of them than Joanna had.

Those, and maybe two dozen others ... the dean, the McCreedys, Dornmann from Math, and his improbable wife. Jerry Conner, and some summer-session students, graduate students who'd known Frank, played ball for him, sweated to his jokes and whistle.

Coach Reed.

Good-bye to Coach Reed in a fieldstone chapel--fake Norman, like all the old college buildings--but beautiful, cupped in green hills.

The fieldstone--streaked with karst limestone--had been Professor Budwing's clue years before, a geologist's notice of which ridge to search to find a possible cave. And he'd found it six years later, the only major limestone pit and multimile galleries in the state. A labyrinth of passages, pitches--and two duck-unders in the White River, running deep beneath its hills in the dark. A caver's dream--by far the largest, most extensive of the few big caverns discovered in New England.

Merle Budwing had been a notable caver, and his "Concave" a notable find.

Budwing had confirmed it only a few months after Joanna joined the Midstate Grotto. Confirmed it past its narrow scrub-grown entrance--then, in only a few yards and not yet anchored, not yet rigged, he'd slid into a chute, thirty steep down-slope feet of wet slime-clay.

Chris Leong and Terry Parsons had followed Budwing in, heard the sudden struggle as he slid down ... then suddenly no sound except a long descending shout, not really a scream. A shout that ran out of breath many silent seconds before a dull and distant sound of impact almost four hundred feet down.

It was a record pit for the state, for all New England--and one of the deepest in the country. A geological surprise, a TAG cave, a Tennessee Alabama Georgia-type limestone cave where none were supposed to be, thanks to Whitestone Ridge--a lone coral reef in a Laurasian sea, forty-two million years before--and the White River, that had sculpted it, hollowed and carved it all the ages afterward.

Joanna's first major caving with Midstate had been the body rescue. They'd anchored at Concave's mouth, and double-roped down the chute. Then the long pit rappel down four hundred feet of 7/16th Blue Water II, a slender spiderweb strand of rope vanishing into descending dark, silence, vastness.

Merle Budwing, cave-cool, damp and undisturbed, lay waiting for them on slide shale far, far below, alone except for small skeletons of animals who'd fallen his forty-story fall, but years or centuries or millennia before.

... Professor Budwing's memorial had also been held in the college chapel. But that had been midterm, and the chapel crowded with faculty and students, and cavers from around the country.

For Frank, last week, only a few-thirty, forty people from summer session--sat in the pine pews, listening to Father Hayes's Episcopal and measured compliments.

Joanna's father, come from upstate, had sat at the back of the chapel, aged, bulky, noncommittal through the service. Louis Bernard hadn't been impressed by Frank. "A pleasant young man," he'd said to Joanna, the first time he'd met him. "--Is there anything more?" The "there" almost a "zere," a touch of Quebec still sounding from his childhood. ... Her father always superior, a little snotty to Frank, rude even when Frank took the old man out two weeks ago--during a visit from hell--and let him fish off the Bo-Peep, mess her up with fish guts.