Cross Current - Kling Christine - Страница 3

Out on deck, I began to clear away the mooring lines and to prepare a towline for Outta the Blue. Periodically I looked up from my work and gave a 360-degree horizon check to see if there was any boat traffic around me. It was a very quiet Wednesday morning—only one freighter visible farther out in the Gulf Stream, and a little drift fishing boat close into shore. Mike had been right about the stillness out here. There was no way a sailboat could sail herself home right now. It felt good to be moving; the breeze from the boat’s forward motion made my neck tingle as the sweat began to dry. I pulled my damp T-shirt away from my skin. The way the smooth, silvery water reflected the high clouds, it looked like Gorda was motoring through liquid mercury. Tiny particles of dust rested dry on the surface of the sea. Abaco found a spot in the shade of the wheelhouse and stretched out to sleep, her belly flat on the still-cool aluminum deck.

I wondered if the day would ever come when I would be able to put it all behind me, go back to being B.J.’s buddy, forget about the nights we had spent together. In the first years we had known each other, from the time I met him when I used to work as a lifeguard on Fort Lauderdale Beach, to the days he’d starting working for me on Gorda, I had watched him go through a string of beautiful girlfriends, none of whom lasted more than six months. Even though they’d always parted on good terms and remained friends with him, I swore to myself I would never allow my attraction to him to put me in the camp of B.J.’s ex-girlfriends. And here I was, after only four months.

This time, though, I had been the one to put on the brakes. I was the one who said time out. If I were honest with myself, I’d have to admit that it wasn’t only that we were practically living together. What really scared me was the way B.J. had started looking at and talking about families. B.J., the Serial Dater, talking about kids? Even though the end of my twenties loomed only a few months away, and most women my age were thinking about finding a man, settling down, buying a nice little 3-2 out in the western suburbs close to a day care, I just couldn’t picture myself there. The very thought of kids scared the hell out of me. I like sleeping alone, leaving the bathroom door open, getting up at 5:30 and going down for a sunrise run on the beach, or driving over to Lester’s Diner for a piece of pie a la mode at 4:00 in the morning when I can’t get back to sleep. And not being responsible for anyone but me.

About half a mile to the south, a big sportfisherman was heading my way. The thing was throwing up a huge wake, burning about a bazillion gallons an hour, and with no one on the fly bridge, they probably couldn’t even see me from the inside steering station. I slowed down and altered course so he would pass in front of my tug.

Astern, the beach was no longer visible, only the tops of the buildings. I guessed I was seven miles offshore and almost far enough south. According to the GPS, I was little more than a couple of miles away from Outta the Blue. I took the binoculars out of their bulkhead mount case and scanned the hazy horizon for the sailboat’s mast. Other than a flock of circling gulls, I didn’t see a thing. Now that the sun was climbing higher overhead, it would be more difficult to spot the sailboat, and the day’s heat was making the horizon dissolve into undulating heat waves.

The sportfisherman’s wake hit us, and though the tug was nearly as big as their boat, the wake made Gorda rock and buck. Before cranking the engine back up to cruising RPM, I went out to the foredeck with the binoculars to try one last time to spot Mike’s sailboat. Starting left, I scanned the horizon, slowly panning across the water.

Wait a minute. I’d seen something flit past in the viewfinder. Under those birds. I swung the binoculars back to try to focus on it, but I wasn’t entirely sure I’d seen anything at all. Had I imagined it? Where was it? I scanned back, found the seabirds circling tightly over a small area—white birds flying low, then swooping down at something on the surface.

Perhaps it was just a school of fish feeding, and the gulls were picking off the skittish baitfish that leaped clear of the water only to discover another predator above.

No. There. I saw something in the water. Some kind of floating debris, perhaps something washed off the deck of a cargo ship in a long-passed storm out at sea, maybe a black trash bag, maybe something more. Here in the Gulf Stream we often saw logs, jerry jugs, even plastic-wrapped bales of marijuana that had been carried up from the Caribbean, the Gulf, or as far away as the coast of South America. Once, out in the Northwest Providence channel between the Bahamian Islands of Great Abaco and the Berry Islands, I had seen a ship’s container, like the kind they load onto the backs of tractor trailers. It was barely awash, just waiting for some unsuspecting boat to come crashing into it at eight knots.

I tried to refocus the binoculars. I could make out something that looked like a black spot, and the water around it appeared ruffled. Perhaps it was nothing more than a black garbage bag tossed from the deck of some jerk’s boat—there were certainly enough jerks out on ships and boats who didn’t give a damn about trashing up the ocean. Of course, sometimes there were other things floating out here wrapped in trash bags. The locals called them square groupers. If it was a bale, I’d drive on by—wouldn’t want to touch it or get involved in any way. My dad had instilled in me from a very young age that drugs were a no-no because the authorities could impound your boat. But if it was a small boat just awash, it could be worth something. That black thing could be a mooring ball.

"Gorda, Gorda, this is Outta the Blue, over.”

Mike and his buddy were getting impatient. I really needed to boost the RPMs and get moving. I was wasting time here. The Gilman crew back at Hillsboro Inlet would sure be mad if they got that boat up and I wasn’t there to take her under tow.

I set the glasses down on the deck box and wiped my hands on my shorts. Damn, it was hot. Stepping around the big aluminum towing bitt on the bow, I steadied my right hip against the bulwark and gave it one last try, attempting to hold the glasses still just long enough to make out what those birds were so damned interested in.

Then it moved. The black spot lifted up out of the water and appeared to float there for several seconds. I blinked, not at all sure what I was seeing. Then the shape of it changed, it was turning and, through the binoculars, I began to make out features. My sweaty fingers adjusted the focus with the knob above my nose, and I sucked in air so hard the binoculars bounced. I was looking straight into the dark face of a child.

II

I lowered the binoculars and spoke aloud—“What the …” —and squinted at the object, trying to verify what I had seen, as though perhaps the glasses had been playing tricks on me. I sighted the speck on the horizon easily now with bare eyes, thanks to the circling birds. Several seconds ticked by as my mind flipped through possibilities: a sinking, a fall overboard, a rental dinghy blown out to sea. Another look through the glasses and now it was difficult to see the child in the round, dark object. The head was down, face almost in the water, no longer moving.

I dashed back into the wheelhouse and took a bearing. After pushing the throttle up to max RPM and adjusting the helm to aim just to the right of her, I reached for the mike, then paused, my arm hanging in midair.

I knew the rules: You sight a vessel or a person in distress at sea, you call the Coast Guard. But the rules about what would happen next were really lousy. I knew for sure that if it was a six-year-old Cuban boy, he might end up a celebrity. They’d take him to Disney World, give him a puppy. My guess was this one would get, at best, a trip to the airport. I decided to wait a bit. The required call to the Coast Guard could be made after I knew for certain what this was all about.