The Great Wide Sea (18 page)

If Gerry had brought Blankie with him, he would have pulled it over his head. Instead, he looked away and back and away again. We had to keep going.

“Gerry, you and I will go first,” I said. “Then Dylan, we'll bring up the gear while Gerry watches the dinghy.”

Dylan nodded. I climbed on board and gingerly lifted Gerry on after me. Our weight did not affect her set in the water. She was solid. We stepped carefully down the sloping deck into the cockpit and leaned into the companionway. Gerry sat down suddenly and I grabbed him, afraid he was falling.

“Oh, Ben,” he said. He spread his hands over his face and refused to look again.

I could see why. Toward the stern, the cabin was more than a foot deep in water. Clothespins and trash floated on the surface where an oil or diesel leak had created a sheen. In a corner of the settee, a black growth spread across the sopping cushions as they soaked up the water lapping at the top of the seats.

I rubbed Gerry's hair. “Buck up, buddy,” I said. “I'll get your stuff.” I slid down into the water, kicked aside a cushion floating at my knees, and slogged to Gerry's bunk. His books were dry, though they were in a tangled heap from the tossing of the storm. A little drawstring bag underneath held his collection of clothespins, some cars, and shells. When I brought them out to Gerry, he cradled them in his arms and crawled to the dinghy, tears drying on his cheeks.

Dylan, too, was startled at the mess, the trash, the dirtiness of it. It was such an undignified way for
Chrysalis
to slip away. He sloshed to the V-berth and came out carrying his star books and
The Chronicles of Narnia
. He found the sextant still under the lid of the nav table.

I thought about what was in my berth. I didn't want my car magazines. My diesel engine book was useless. Then I remembered Mom. Her picture was still wedged in the book, and though the book was in half an inch of water, she was dry. I slid her into my shirt pocket. She was still smooth and shiny. She was still smiling.

Then I crawled into Dad's bunk. There was nothing there. His mattress was already soaking in the water. I was backing out when I saw his poetry collection. I had left the book on his pillow the morning the storm started. Then the storm had tossed his pillow to port, and the permanent list of the boat had kept it there. The pillow had folded itself halfway around the small, fat book. I could see the book and the edge of the note just sticking out between the pages.

I unfolded the pillow and took out the book. My hand on the book looked like Dad's. It made me dizzy. As I sat on the edge of his bunk, pushing the pillow away, the pillowcase slipped and the corner of something inside showed. I pulled it out.

It was the apron. Mom's apron. The one she always wore. The one she reached around behind her to tie in a bow—without looking. The one in the dark, and Dad sliding down the front of the cabinet, and Gerry crying.

I pressed it hard against my face and breathed deep.

Late at night Mom and Dad were in the kitchen and I came down for a drink. Quietly down the stairs and into the dark hall. They were standing there in the moonlight. Mom had the apron pressed to her face and she was crying. Dad wrapped his arms around her. “Shhh,” he said. “It'll be okay. Shush, now.” She dropped her arms and pressed her face against his chest. She sobbed and choked when she breathed in. Dad rubbed her back. “Shush, now,” he said over and over. “Shush, now, baby. Shush now.” She cried, and silently I climbed the stairs again.

I rubbed the apron against my face and breathed it in. Surely her scent lay hidden in the folds. I breathed in again. Over and over. Then I heard Dylan's feet topsides. I picked up the book and stuffed the apron into my waistband.

“Are you coming?” Dylan called.

“One second.” I stood at the foot of the companionway ladder and looked around.

It was all so familiar. The little rail that held the books and flashlights on the shelf. The deep blue color of the cushions. The long scratch in the dinette table. The dull silver of the aluminum sink. The things we handled every day and never paid attention to—the handrails, the porthole locks, the light switches. And the things we had thought we couldn't live without—Gerry's little-kid CD player, my car magazines. They were all going to disappear. They were going to sink and rot.

I climbed back into the sunlight where Dylan and Gerry were sitting quietly in the dinghy, waiting for me. I handed Dad's book to Dylan and started the engine. We had skirted the stern and were heading north when I saw Gerry lift his hand and wave. Then Dylan waved too.

I turned to look back. From this distance, her sides were still shining white. She was tilted at a crazy angle and her mast was broken, but she was still beautiful. We rode the waves a few moments watching, but that was all we could do. The wind was picking up and the waves were pounding us. I turned the dinghy north again, rounded the point, and headed across the shallows over the coral toward our beach. Now we were going with the waves, but the dinghy didn't have a keel to keep it straight in the water. We were bouncing around on top of the waves like a cork. The closer we got to the beach, the more the waves became breakers. Dylan and Gerry huddled around our haul trying to keep everything dry. The books had made it through the storm and now here we were just trying to get to the beach and everything was getting soaked.

But I was more worried about beaching us. Normally when you beach a dinghy, you slide in on gentle waves, hop out quickly, and then haul the dinghy up the sand before any waves can knock it around. But these waves were too big. If we had had a choice, I would have said we couldn't land. But we had no choice. We'd just have to do the best we could and get ready for a beating.

Nearer shore, the breakers were bigger and closer together. We would ride over one, and the next one would break on our stern. “You guys are going to have to jump,” I told Dylan and Gerry. “Just jump in and wade to the beach when I say go.”

“I can't,” Gerry said.

“But when I beach it, I'll have to kill the engine and tilt it up to keep it from dragging in the sand. I'll lose control of the boat. You guys have to be out before then.”

Dylan nodded. He took Gerry's arm.

“No!” Gerry cried, and clutched his books and toys.

“Now!” I shouted.

As Dylan lifted Gerry, threw him over, and jumped out after him, I spun the boat away and headed straight back out into the breakers. When I turned back toward shore, Dylan was dragging Gerry through the water. Their hands were empty and Gerry was crying, but they were safe on the beach. Nobody hurt—yet.

My turn. I planned to take the boat in as close as I could, then kill the engine and tilt it up so the prop wouldn't bang into the sand. Without the prop, I had no way to steer. I'd just have to ride the waves in. If I was lucky, I'd ride all the way in and hardly wet a toe getting out. If I was unlucky, the waves would turn the dinghy upside down and it would beat me to death.

I kept the speed up going toward the beach so I could control the boat through the breakers. I was watching carefully, trying to gauge the depth of the water and how close I could get, but today the bottom was blurred with stirred-up sand. I tried to remember the slope of the bottom. I tried to measure distance by the size of Gerry and Dylan standing on the beach watching me. I was concentrating. I was careful. But I waited too long.

Just as I was reaching for the button to kill the engine, I felt it. The dinghy fell straight down. The prop slammed into the sand, grabbing it and holding the dinghy momentarily like an anchor. The motor twisted on the stern. A breaker rolled over the top of the motor and poured into the bottom of the dinghy. Then the dinghy rose up. The motor twisted the opposite way and fell off, disappearing into the waves. The dinghy bobbed free, but heavy. I grabbed the starboard side to throw myself into the water when another breaker hit and shoved the dinghy portside down into the waves. I fell out backwards, splashing uncontrolled into the water. I heard the dinghy inches from my head and furiously pushed against the sand, away from the tremendous rocking weight of the dinghy, now half-submerged and lumbering through the waves toward the beach.

I righted myself in the breakers and stood to see the dinghy already ten feet away washing toward the southern curve of the beach. I spat out sand and wiped my eyes while Dylan and Gerry stood on the beach, watching the dinghy sluggishly bobbing along until it stopped a hundred feet away in six inches of water. The waves drove its bow into the sand and then washed over its stern to fill it deeper and deeper with water.

Finally Dylan moved. He walked slowly to the dinghy, picked up the towline snaking around in the water, and pulled. Of course it didn't move. I sloshed out to join him, but even with both of us it didn't move. Two people cannot drag a dinghy full of water through the sand. Gerry brought us one of the spare lines from our gear. I tied the two lines together, then tied the longer line to a low tree on the edge of the beach. At least now it wouldn't wash away. I could worry about salvage later.

I sat down by Dylan and Gerry and we looked at the dinghy.

“We didn't lose it,” I said. “When the tide's down, we'll bail and drag it high on the beach. It'll be okay.”

“What about the motor?” Dylan asked.

“Lost,” I said. “And ruined.”

He nodded.

“The other stuff?” I asked.

“All lost,” he said. “And ruined.”

I touched my pocket and felt the wet stiffness of Mom's picture. Not lost, I thought. Not ruined.

Then I remembered and felt at my waistband. Gone. I had meant to put it under my pillow. I had meant to breathe it again. To find the scent.

I rested my elbows on my knees and looked down at the sand I was sitting on. Zillions of little grains—white and pink and black. Little broken-up shells and tiny branches of coral. All piled here to make an island. And we were on it. The three of us together. Lost in the middle of the great wide sea.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

WE SPENT MOST of our energy the next day digging the dinghy out of the sand, bailing it, and dragging it high up on the beach. I snorkeled for the engine, but the sand had completely buried it. Nobody could remember what happened to the paddles, but it didn't matter. I told Gerry we could find something to use if we needed to, but I knew we would never get back to
Chrysalis
. Even the coral reef was too far for us now.

In the afternoon we sat under the waving spinnaker and looked out to sea. After a while, Gerry curled up on his side and fell asleep and Dylan wandered away to look at the sea grapes. I was thinking numbers. We had been on the island seven days. We had drunk two of our bags of water and eaten almost half our stash of food. Maybe we were in good shape. Maybe a plane would fly over tomorrow or a boat would sail up two or three days later. With the spinnaker flying and
Chrysalis
wedged in the rocks, our situation would be obvious to a boat passing on the east or north or to an airplane flying overhead.

Or maybe that wouldn't happen. Maybe no planes ever flew over. Maybe no boats ever passed by. We hadn't seen anything for the last seven days. Unless—

Dylan suddenly sat down beside me. “It's too early,” he said. “I don't know when they'll be ready.”

“What?”

“The sea grapes. They're edible, you know. People even make jelly out of them. But I don't know when they'll be ready.”

I nodded. Then I pointed to Gerry sleeping and whispered, “I want to talk.” Dylan quietly followed me down the beach to sit in a patch of shade under a palm.

“Dylan,” I said, “we need to see what's on the other side of this island.”

He sat a minute, then asked, “What do you think is there?”

“I don't know, but maybe there's another beach—without the coral reef.”

I looked at him closely. Dylan never seemed to squint or tighten up his eyes when he was thinking. They weren't especially big eyes, but they were always round and dark. And he had small, neat ears like Mom's. Little ears that barely showed now under his ragged hair. And his hands were still—not fingering the grass or digging in the sand. They were quiet beside him while he looked at me and knew what I meant.

“You mean maybe there's a place on this island where a big boat would actually choose to anchor,” he said.

“Yes.” I looked out at the water. “Coral reef to the north and west. Cliff and rocks to the east. Apparently cliff to the south. That leaves the southeast.”

“Maybe there's a boat there right now,” Dylan said.

I nodded. “But how would we know? We have to go see what it's like.”

So we decided to explore the rest of the island. On an almost gray day when clouds were scudding overhead and we thought we felt a drop of rain every now and then, we put on the shoes we had brought off
Chrysalis
and packed the last three breakfast bars, a knife, and a jar of water in a shirt tied around my waist.

I made Gerry leave Blankie, so he started the trip crying and dragging behind. Dylan and I were already scrabbling through the rocks at the western tip of the beach while Gerry was still wandering around camp. “Sit down,” I told Dylan. “We'll wait here where he can't see us. That'll make him catch up.”

We waited and the silence grew. Dylan lifted his head slightly and looked. “He's still dragging that stick in the sand. He hasn't noticed yet.”

Then Gerry's voice carried to our hideaway. “Ben? Dylan?”

We didn't answer.

“I wish we had the EPIRB,” Dylan said quietly. “It would send a signal.”