* * *
“Left? As in gone?” Abby asked the man who ran the boat yard.
Jay translated and the two men went back and forth for a couple of rounds. Jay turned to Abby and Eric. “He says he left last night. He needed some supplies we don’t have here, so he went over to Kam,” Jay said, indicating the island in the distance that was the more populated twin of their island.
Eric was visibly frustrated. “He said he was heading out this morning.”
“He went over last night,” Jay said, “Right around sunset. It is three hours to get over there, so he may still be there.”
Eric sighed. “Well, at least he’s not far.” He looked at Jay. “I’m going to run back to the house. I’ve got his number. Can you find a phone for us while I do that? Hopefully we catch him before he heads out.”
“Yes, my neighbor has a telephone. I’ll make sure it is working.”
As the two men began to go in separate directions, Abby spoke up. “Um...”
“I’ll be right back,” Eric said. “Unless you think you can get there and back faster.”
“Well, I can, we both know that.”
“Then go!” Eric urged her to hurry, knowing she was right.
Abby shook her head. “No.”
Eric raised an eyebrow, worried that she’d changed her mind. “Why?”
“Where’s that card with JJ’s information?” Abby asked.
Eric knew he had left it on the counter, but hadn’t seen it in a few days. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I do. I got rid of it.”
“You what?”
“I was really upset. I’m sorry.”
Eric kissed her on the forehead and smiled. “It’s OK. We haven’t emptied the trash in days; I’ll dig it out. I’ll be back, OK?”
He got two steps before Abby spoke again. “You can’t.”
He turned. “I can’t what?”
“You can’t dig it out of the trash.” She paused, staring at him with a guilty look, “I burned it.”
Eric deflated. “Damn it.”
Abby spoke. “We’ll just go after him. He just left last night, and it’s what, eight in the morning? He’s probably still there.”
“It takes three hours to get over there Abby. Will he still be there when we get there?”
“Well, every minute we sit here debating is lost time. Let’s go!”
Eric’s mind was trying to process the timing of everything. He’d been to Kam a few times with Jay to pick up supplies when they were building the villa. There was only one major harbor, and that’s where JJ would be going. Abby was right. Every minute spent debating was a minute they lost catching up to him. Eric looked at Jay and indicated the boat master. “Ask him what he’s got that will get us over there.”
The man who ran the boatyard had a few loaners that he would rent out for a day or two when someone needed to make a quick trip, but none were in great condition. He offered them the best available, a twenty-seven footer with a small cabin big enough for a bed and a two-person kitchen table. It was easily thirty years old. It was fiberglass and the once gleaming-white hull was a dullish brown now. The vinyl seats built into the deck were ripped, sewn back together, or patched with duct tape. The entire boat had a musty smell that came with the better part of three decades in the water, but it started, and the boat master guaranteed it would run without a problem.
He usually rented it for twenty dollars a day, American, for these type of trips. Eric opened his satchel and peeled off two one hundred dollar bills and stuffed them into the man’s palm. “Just in case.” He and Abby had both carried the satchels with them everywhere they went for the past several months. Their “go bags,” as they referred to them, were small enough that Eric could usually stuff his into his cargo shorts pocket yet contained everything they needed to walk away and not look back if they had to.
Within twenty minutes, the boat was gassed up and pulling from the dock. Ben came running down to the boatyard to the end of the dock where Jay stood watching the boat head towards the sea. “Where are they going?”
Jay put an arm around his son, “They’re going to find the man who came for them.”
“Are they coming back?”
“I don’t know, Ben. I hope so.”
Ben called out, “Miss Abby!”
Abby turned to see the young boy standing at the end of the dock next to his father. She smiled and waved. “We’ll be back!” She blew him a kiss, then turned back to Eric.
The second they left the mouth of the boatyard, Eric called out, “Hold on!” as he throttled the engine forward which made the front of the boat pitch up. As it leveled off, he eased the throttle all the way forward, and sent the aging propeller on the back of the boat spinning full speed and thrusting them toward the island in the distance.
The wind whipped through Abby’s hair as the aging hull crashed through the waves. She looked back one more time to see Ben standing at the end of the dock watching them. We’ll be back soon. Don’t worry, Ben, she thought to herself, unsure exactly whom she was trying to convince.
9
SEVERAL DAYS LATER, after stopping at four ports on three different islands looking for JJ, Abby was sure that Ben must have branded her a liar by now. They had missed JJ by a matter of a few hours on Kam. As they initially debated whether to try and catch him, he had left Kam before they ever pulled out of port to go there. When they arrived to find him gone, they put their heads together with that harbormaster and made an educated guess as to where he would head next.
They had actually guessed correctly, but wound up at a harbor on the wrong side of the island. When they got to the right harbor they found out that they had missed him by half a day. There was no doubt as to where he would be heading next. There was a highly populated island to the north where he would certainly make a stop to gas up before making the long trek to the big island to catch the only international flight out of the area. He was either headed there or back to Robert’s island. Either way, he would be going north.
They spent the night rocking in the boat parked safely in harbor. It was too dangerous for unseasoned boaters like themselves to make the trip to the next island overnight, and it was so late in the day that it didn’t make sense to go out for a couple of hours, then drop anchor for the night. They left at daybreak, and by early afternoon pulled into port at their destination.
Eric recognized the island as soon as they landed. They had sunk Robert’s boat off this very coast about ten months ago and had begun the second half of their journey to find their new home. Their boat was running rough and needed some work, but Eric was certain he could find their way back to Robert’s island from here.
“Let’s see if we can find JJ first. It would be a heck of a lot easier with a guide,” Abby said.
“I’ve got to figure out what’s going on with the engine anyway. You go ahead and see what you can find. I’ll talk to the harbormaster to see if there’s someone here who can take a look at her for us.” In reality, Eric didn’t need someone who knew their way around a boat. He was nearly certain it was the air filter, which was a quick fix he could do himself. What he really wanted was to find a chart and see if he could plot his way back to Robert’s island on his own if he needed to.
Abby grabbed her go bag, which contained a respectable amount of money, a fake passport and other identification, a travel kit with a small comb, toothbrush and toothpaste, a few tampons, and an extra pair of underwear. While it was anything and everything she needed to go on the run, she had been on her second pair of underwear for a couple of days now. Although she had scrubbed her clothes a few days ago, she was beginning to wonder at what point they would get up and walk away on their own.
“I’m going to look for a couple of new things to wear. I’ll find something for you, too, unless you want to do some shopping on your own,” she said with a devilish grin.
Eric raised his eyebrow and gave her a look that said, Really? He hated shopping.
“Anything you pick will be fine, I’m sure.”
Abby gave him a quick kiss before heading off to find a market, leaving him to take care of the boat.
It took him all of five minutes to remove a panel and take out the air filter to find that it was undeniably filthy. No wonder the engine has been running so rough; the thing is choking for air. He wasn’t holding out hope that he would find a new one for this thirty-some-odd-year old beast of an engine. But with a vacuum and ten minutes, he could get it good enough. He had performed the same operation on his pickup truck back in Texas more times than he could count. What he really wanted were some charts of the waters around here.
He went up to the boathouse and introduced himself to an elderly local man with deep brown skin and wiry white hair who appeared to be, if not running the place, at least keeping an eye on things.
Holding up the filthy air filter he asked, “You don’t know where I can get one of these, do you?”
The old man behind the counter shook his head no. Eric wasn’t sure if that meant, “No, I don’t know where you can get one of those” or “No, I don’t speak English, and I have no idea what you’re saying.” Either way, Eric figured a vacuum would do.
As if it would help make his point, slowly and a little too loudly, he asked, “Do you have a vacuum?”
The man nodded and put down his paper to produce a small vacuum with a handheld attachment from behind his desk.
Eric thanked him and stepped outside. After banging the dust off the filter then methodically cleaning it, he returned the vacuum and thanked the man who just nodded, barely looking up from his newspaper.
“Do you have any maps?” Eric asked. The man looked at him a little confused. “Maps? Charts?” Eric waved his hands in the air miming what he thought was a universal sign for map. He was met with only disappointment. He looked around frustrated, until his eyes settled on a world map on the wall. Walking over to it, he patted it with his open palm, “This. Do you have one of these, for the islands?” Eric waved his hands some more, hoping to make his point.
The man produced a heavily folded paper from his top drawer and stated more than asked, “You’re American? Ten dollar.”
“Alright!” Eric was thrilled. “Now we’re in business.” He knew he was overpaying. More than overpaying, he was getting ripped off royally, but he didn’t care.
It took him a few minutes to figure out where he was on the map. Once he did, he let out a whistle at the multitude of small green blobs that dotted the blue of the ocean.
Looking up at the man he asked, “Do you know where Trial Island is?”
The man just shook his head no, then returned to his paper.
Well, it was worth a shot, Eric thought. “Thank you again,” he said, waving the map and the freshly cleaned air filter as he left. Returning to the boat, he quickly reinstalled the air filter and turned over the engine. It rumbled for a moment, and then settled into a deep purr like a lion getting its chin rubbed.
That problem solved, Eric cut the engine and spread out his map on the deck of the boat. After he figured out their location for the second time, he marked it with a pencil so he wouldn’t have trouble finding it again. Then he stared. He stared for a very long time, as if waiting for the map to speak to him and tell him which way to go to find Robert. “Damn, there’s a lot of those things,” he said to himself, looking at the many islands charted on the map.
Staring off into space, thinking about the way he came last time he and Abby went through here, he found himself staring at a familiar boat. The name was QUEST II. He mulled this over, preoccupied with figuring out how to find their way back to Robert’s island. Finally, it dawned him. Isn’t that the boat that almost hit me?
Eric stood to peer over the side and get a closer look at the boat that was parked in a slip about twenty yards away. “Sonofabitch, I think that’s the one. I’ll be damned.”
His next thought was that maybe it was JJ’s boat. He sat on his deck with the chart laid out in front of him, but he was watching QUEST II and waiting for some sign of life. If it’s JJ, then problem solved. He didn’t have to figure out where he was going.
He arranged himself so he could study the chart, but kept the dock in the corner of his eye so that he would surely notice anyone coming or going. Staring at the chart, he willed himself to retrace the steps he had taken ten months ago; the last time they had found their way to this island.
It had taken them three days to get here, and they had traveled in a southeasterly direction the entire time. That much he remembered. They made two stops on the way here, both at dusk, for gas and food. Doing some rudimentary math, he tried to figure out approximately how far they could travel in a day. Finding islands that fit within that pattern, he ultimately settled on two islands far to the north that must be Trial Island and Robert’s island. The fact that they were tiny and unnamed on this chart only strengthened his opinion.
Eric finally looked up from the chart and gave a little fist pump, before he noticed that there was a man on the boat that he had been trying to watch. The man, in fact, was watching him, but quickly turned away when Eric looked up. It was not JJ. He was tall like JJ, and even had the curly hair, but it was not JJ. The man on the boat was a big guy, not out of shape, but just large and broad, whereas JJ was built like a swimmer. His curly hair was longer, and he had a full beard. “Oh, well,” Eric said to himself. He was sure he knew where they were going anyway, and was very excited to share the news with Abby.
* * *
Much like the island they had called home until a few days ago, the market on this island was right near the harbor. This harbor was much larger and busier, and therefore the same could be said about the market. This was the most populous place they had visited since going into their self-imposed exile, but Abby was comfortably sure that with her long brunette curls now dyed dirty blonde, straightened, and tied up in a bandana, and her right leg bared of its hunting knife, she would not be recognizable.
As had become habit over their past few stops, she asked a few men working the gas lines at the edge of the boatyard if anyone meeting JJ’s description had passed through in the past day or so. As usual, the men were less than helpful, and she walked away unsure if they had understood the question, though she was reasonably sure they were watching her backside as she strolled down the dock and exited to the market.
Assuming that JJ would have the same needs as they did, she made her necessary rounds through the market to pick up some food and water, all the while asking the various vendors if they had seen the tall, curly haired American. None of them had. Given how many times she had done this, she no longer became frustrated – she just smiled and moved on.
She came close with a vendor at a produce stand. “Yes, yes, I have seen this man,” he said.
Abby lit up. “When? Today?”
“Yes, yes, today I see him. Very tall, bushy curly hair.” The man used his hands to indicate around his cheeks, “Big beard. American, not clean,” he said, shaking his head.
Abby sighed. Another strikeout.
The man went on. “He seem in a hurry. Probably trying to race the storm.”
Abby gave him a puzzled look.
“Big storm coming,” the man said. “He said he leaves before the storm. I tell him no, no, no.” He threw his hands down, exasperated. “American no listen to me. He will see. Bad storm.” He turned, shaking his head.
After purchasing some fresh vegetables and fish that she would cook with some rice back on the boat, she wandered further into the market to find the clothing vendors. She bypassed the ones selling local garb and visited the carts that featured baskets and shelves overflowing with American brands manufactured here. Not wanting to travel too heavy, she picked out a pair of shorts and a few pair of underwear for each of them, as well as another tank top for herself and a couple shirts for Eric.
Walking by a rack of sundresses, she stopped to admire one in the front. It was a pattern she has seen a m
illion times, but was apparently still in style. There were large shapes of tropical flowers on a white background. The flowers were a beautiful orange, the color of cantaloupe, and the front was low cut and trimmed with a simple lace that also trimmed the bottom of the dress. She held it up in front of herself in a full-length mirror.
It was fun, flirty, and wasn’t practical in the least. Eric would like it, though, so why not give him something nice to look at? She smiled at the thought.
The woman manning the cart noticed her and walked over, standing behind her. “The color is beautiful with your hair,” she said.
Abby pushed her sunglasses on top of her head so she could see the colors better. The woman was right. Her shoulder-length blonde locks and the cantaloupe looked great together. She smiled at the woman. “How much?”
She asked, “American?”
“I can pay dollars, yes.”
The woman smiled and said in her accented English, “You look familiar. How long you been here?”
Abby lowered her sunglasses back over her eyes and smiled uncomfortably. “Just passing through. How much?”
The woman looked over everything Abby had in her arms, then seemed to take in what Abby was wearing – a less-than-impressive shorts and tank top combo that she had been wearing for a week straight now. Abby was obviously American, but didn’t give the appearance of having much money on hand. “Eighteen,” the woman said, indicating everything Abby had in her arms.
Abby returned to the boat to find a rather excited Eric. He flashed her a smile. “I know where we’re going!”
“You do?”
“Yep, come here.” He still had the chart spread out.
He put his arm around her and pulled her close. Abby smiled. He smelled freshly clean, like he had just gotten out of the shower. She loved being close to him.
“Look,” he said, indicating a large island. “This is where we are right now.” His finger traced up and to the right, “and this is where we are going.” He indicated two very small islands. “The one on the right, that’s where Robert is; the one just to the left is Trial Island. I’m sure of it.”
Escape, the Complete Trilogy Page 29
