by David Bergen
“Not on your life,” K. said. He was hung over and his eyes looked dead. He grinned.
Quinn held the throttle in the crotch of his elbow and set a chugger and let the line float out and it caught the current and spooled out a thousand feet and then he set the handle in the plastic holder and the boat rolled on the surf and they waited and watched and K. threw up one last time and he washed his face with salt water and he came up grinning and said, “I’m empty.”
By noon they’d caught a few small tuna. Not to K.’s liking. Early afternoon, the sea swelled and turned black and the small motor whined as the boat climbed and then sputtered as they fell along the walls of the swells. They took water. Quinn told K. to bail. He did so, his face white. Quinn pulled in the lines. He turned the skiff with some difficulty and pointed them back to the islands.
“Can you swim?” Quinn asked.
“I can float,” K. said. He found his phone and took a picture of the ocean.
When the engine died it was near dusk and immediately the wind was pushing them north, parallel to the coast of the mainland. Quinn pulled the cover off the Evinrude and cleaned the plugs and replaced them. He held a thumb to one of the plugs and pulled the starter. A shock went through his thumb. He ate a sandwich that Faustina had prepared. Offered one to K. but he refused, horrified by Quinn’s nonchalance.
With darkness the winds shut off and it was absolutely calm, silent save for the slap of the boat on the water.
“What now?” K. asked.
“We wait for morning.”
“You’ve done this before.”
Quinn laughed.
At night the sky was clear and the stars were myriad and the moon lit up the water and there were fish jumping and Quinn thought that there were much worse ways to spend a night. The smell of the boat, the salt, the fish at his feet, the gasoline leaking uselessly, the brine on his hands, the scent of his son on the shirt covering his nose. He slept and woke to see K. teetering at the gunnel, pissing into the ocean. Leaning back to look at the sky.
K. zipped and sat and looked at Quinn and said that he’d been married three times. All unlucky. The third marriage was the direst. He said ‘direst’ with a twist to the word, as if he’d just discovered it and the failed marriage along with it. And he talked, as if to stay the morning and the empty ocean. “Donna was pregnant with twins and I was ecstatic because I’d always wanted kids. They’re the one thing money won’t buy if you catch my meaning. And so the twins are born, boy girl, and the girl comes first and so she’s the eldest right and sometimes at night I enter their room and watch them sleeping in separate cribs, on their backs, their arms thrown upwards in surrender and I think that there is nothing sweeter than a sleeping child. My children. And they grow and grow and one day when they’re three, my daughter, who’s a terrific talker already, says a name, Sebastian, and I ask who’s Sebastian and she says Mommy’s friend and he takes us to the playground, and I want to know more of course, because I’m a glutton for pain, and so I ask her simple questions like how often do they go and what kind of car does Sebastian drive and then I ask if Sebastian and mommy hold hands and she says always and my heart just falls because I’ve known something is amiss, not right in the household of K., but I keep this information in my head, keep it there tight and safe and I harbour it and of course it poisons me. I start looking at the twins, their teeth, their noses, their hair, the colour of their eyes, if they’re bowlegged like me, and I notice differences between me and them and I start to think that maybe there is nothing of me that resides in them, you know, not one bit of DNA or genetic material. Some days I am so certain it breaks my heart, and on other days I say you are a fool K. What’s to worry? But I have to know, of course, I am one for knowing, and so I order a kit online and one night I creep into the bedroom and swab the twins’ mouths and I place the swabs in prepared envelopes and send it away for testing and six weeks later a letter comes for me in the mail, at my office, and I open the envelope, my hands shaking, and I learn the truth.”
K. stopped talking. He said that he was thirsty. Quinn handed him the water bottle and advised him to only take a sip. “All we have left,” he said.
K. grunted and drank and stoppered the bottle and handed it back to Quinn.
“Of course I want to kill Donna. But I don’t. One evening after the twins are in bed I pour a scotch and sit across from her where she’s watching Netflix and I shut her laptop and say that I know. She plays innocent at first, and then after much denial and eventual weeping, it comes out. I call her all sorts of names, they just spill out of me, and even as I’m saying all these awful things to her I’m thinking that this is safer than strangling her, or myself, for that is what I am capable of, hurting her or myself. Donna imagined that she would keep the children to herself, and for a time I fight this, but then I become heavy footed and heavy hearted and I stop seeing the kids, which is a form of punishment to myself. And to my kids, who have no concept yet of paternity. Why should they?”
Silence. Quinn was aware of the first tinge of pink to the east. He looked at his watch. He waited.
“Is fucked up,” K. said. Then he said, “What’s gonna happen?”
Quinn tried to connect K.’s dots. Finally he said, “We wait.”
“Maybe a cruise ship will find us and we can cavort.”
“Cruise ships hug the coastline. We’re in open water.”
“Something then. A container ship. A fishing vessel.”
“Maybe,” Quinn said.
“How long can we last?”
“Three, four days. We don’t have much for water.”
“And then we die? Like marooned pricks?”
“We won’t die.”
“Funny. You were sleeping before and I watched you and I thought I could kill you. Easy. Or you me.”
Quinn was hunkered by the engine. The night was cool. He had nothing to say.
“I saw your sister. The other day,” K. said.
“You know that then. That Clarita is my sister.”
“She told me so. She’s still a beauty.”
They were quiet.
“As the captain of this ship, will you keep me safe?” K. asked.
“Is there danger?”
“Fuck yeah. We’re stranded at sea. Lost.”
“Not lost,” Quinn said. “We’ll find the way.”
“I’m hungry,” K. said.
Quinn plucked a dead tuna from the belly of the boat and he took his knife and he sliced a fillet for K. and handed it to him and said, “Here.”
K. took the tuna and ripped off a chunk with his teeth and he chewed slowly, savouring it.
“This will make a good story someday,” K. said. “For the twins.” He studied Quinn through swollen eyes. “How is your boy?” he asked.
“He is good. Healthy.”
“And you have another. Moses.”
Quinn said nothing. Felt anger bloom in his head, or maybe it was despair.
K. slept. Quinn kept watch. Slept some and woke with a start. The sun was high in the sky. The water was calm. Utterly still. He took the bottle of water and opened it and wet his mouth. Swallowed. He prodded K. and woke him and handed him the bottle. “Just a little,” he said. K. took the bottle and drank deeply. “Enough,” Quinn said. He wrenched the bottle from him. A third remained.
K. panted in the bottom of the boat. His lips were dry. His ankles were burned. He looked a scarecrow splayed against the gunnel.
The boat was outfitted with a tattered canvas top and this thin sheet offered some shade if they moved from side to side as the sun climbed. K. spent the day hugging the shadow, speaking little, moaning occasionally. Quinn surveyed the horizon and tinkered with the engine. He pulled it apart and cleaned the carburetor. Put everything back together and pulled the cord. Nothing. He removed the gas line and took in a great quantity
of air and held his mouth to the rubber and blew out the line. Bits of dirt, some sand, the remaining petroil. He reset the fuel line and worked the pull. There was a spark and the motor ran for a second and then quit. He spent the remaining daylight dissembling and cleaning the carburetor once again. He cleaned the plugs. Reassembled everything. K. watched.
“Will they be looking for us?”
“Yes,” Quinn said. “There will be a search. There will be boats, and there will be planes.”
“We are worth it then,” K. said, and he smiled.
“They will send out planes because of you. You are worth it.”
K. accepted this. The facts were logical.
Even so, an hour later he asked, “Should we start to pray?”
“If you think it’ll work.”
“My first wife prayed. And prayed. A lost shoe found was an answer to prayer. Your wife, she prays?”
“She does,” Quinn said.
“She’s certainly praying for you right now.”
“Yes.”
“Does that give you comfort?”
“I’ll take the comfort of my wife’s prayers.”
“And your boys, they will learn to pray?”
“I imagine. They spend most of their time with their mother.”
“Ah, yes, mothers. God bless ’em. Some of them. I heard that four out of ten children born are not sired by the man that thinks he is the father. Those are some numbers. I’d like to meet this Moses. He’s a good boy?”
“He is.”
“And handsome?”
Quinn nodded.
“Walking?”
“Was at nine months.”
“I said to Clarita that if she’d marry me I’d move to the Islands. She said that island life was slow and sleepy. She said that I would find it difficult.”
“She’s fickle,” Quinn said. “And a talker.”
“She is,” K. said. “And she doesn’t keep secrets.”
K., as he spoke, was pointing at the sky and following with one eye the line of sight along his forearm. Shearwaters at sea.
At night dolphins swam alongside the skiff. Quinn heard them calling at first and then jumping and when he sat up he saw their shadows slipping through the water. K. had become delirious and was babbling. Quinn, knowing what K. knew, considered various scenarios. Letting the man die at sea from thirst and exposure. Throwing him overboard and watching him paddle about in the tub until he drowned. Saving him and returning to the islands where he could make his claim if he so pleased. It would break Faustina’s heart. The rules in Quinn’s own heart were conflicted and many. His loyalty was to Faustina and to the boys. And then to Clarita, weak as she was. And then it was to himself and then to his boat and finally to K., a dissolute and feeble man, even though he imagined himself to be strong. This was self-deception at its greatest.
The sun rose in the morning as decreed, crossed the sky, and descended into the far end of the ocean. Disappeared. The water bottle was empty. Quinn caught a blue runner of a medium size and cut fillets and told K. to suck slowly at the meat. He himself held the fillet in his teeth and breathed in and out slowly. Took in the moisture. K. ate quickly and immediately threw up the fish and whatever liquid was left in his body. He moaned. Lay on his side in the bow.
Their third night on the ocean, K. attempted to throw himself into the water. Quinn caught him and tied him with fishing line to the bench at the bow. The salesman thrashed and howled and cursed. Tried to bite Quinn.
The following day, K. was silent, a prostrate and bound form slowly drying out. Quinn again pulled the carburetor and tore it down to its core and laid out the parts on the stern bench upon which he’d placed his son’s T-shirt. He had an old toothbrush and with this he cleaned and scrubbed the parts. The sun heated his back. As he inspected the brass fuel jet and the fuel bowl, Quinn found that the tiny hole in the jet was plugged. With a copper wire retrieved from his toolbox he cleaned the hole. He poured a few tablespoons of petroil into the plastic bailer and laid the fuel jet and bowl in the liquid. Lifted the pieces into the air and blew on them. When they were dry, he reinstalled the carburetor. Darkness had fallen by the time the engine was reassembled. K. was silent in the bow. Quinn checked on him and found a pulse. Clouds covered the sky and a light wind had picked up and was pushing them southwest towards Belize. He would wait till morning, when he could gain his bearings, and if the engine fired and started, then he could ascertain his position and point the boat in the right direction. He slept. Woke to check on K., whose breathing was short and bubbly. He slept some more, aware of the wind on his face and the rocking of the boat on the waves, which had grown larger.
In the morning, K. was dead. He knew immediately when he opened his eyes and looked at the body lying in the bow. There was no movement, no breath. A dead man was like a dead fish. No evidence was needed.
He cut off a section of tattered tarp and laid it over K.’s body. He surveyed the sky and noted the direction of the sun as it leaked through the light clouds. His phone had been useless since the first day out, and it remained useless, save for the compass. He had only a little power left on it, but enough to check the compass. He calculated the days and nights at sea and he calculated the wind and its strength and the number of days with and without wind and when he had finished his calculations he set his course with the aid of the compass. He bent to the engine and pumped the fuel bulb until he had resistance and the bulb was hard and the fuel bowl was full. He pulled out the choke. He paused, took the cord handle, and pulled. The engine started immediately. It screamed and shed blue smoke, and he pushed in the choke slightly and the engine settled and the smoke dissipated. He sat and listened to the engine putter. A beautiful sound. He shouted into the air. Stood and shook his fist at the sky. He sat and settled himself, pointed the boat south-southwest, and he set out.
The men in uniforms who questioned him at the DNI in Tegucigalpa were called Chávez and Boquín and they were both in their thirties, and they both had straight white teeth and strong smiles. Chávez was the one who talked and he was talking now, leaning forward to speak, as if Quinn might be hard of hearing. He said that K., being a dead American, was of special interest and calls were being made and questions were being posed and the people at the American embassy had asked for a body, but it appeared that there was no body to deliver and how was this so? “Did you kill the American?” he asked.
“I did not,” Quinn said. “He died of exposure.”
“And you got rid of the body. Why do this? What were you hiding?”
“Nothing. I was hiding nothing. The body was decomposing and was stinking.”
“But you threw the body overboard just before the Carolina arrived.”
“I did not know the Carolina would be arriving. If I had known I would have not thrown the body into the ocean.”
“How well did you know this American, K.?”
“A little. I took him out fishing three times in total.”
“He was a rich man.” This was a statement, not a question, but Quinn felt that it still required a response.
He said that yes, he believed K. was a rich man.
“How much did he pay you for the trip?”
“Two thousand.”
“Dollars.”
“Yes.”
“Can anyone else verify this?”
“No. We were alone when he paid me.”
“And so it might have been one thousand. Or five hundred. It is your word against the word of a dead man. Did you have any reason to kill him?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“The question is only hypothetical. But necessary. Did the two of you have an argument?”
“No.”
“Did this American, K., threaten you?”
“No, he didn’t.”
Chávez smiled. “He was a s
mall man. We’ve seen your photographs. The ones you took. Why did you take them?”
Quinn did not speak for a time. Then he said that he had taken the photographs to prove that K. was dead. Because he feared that he would end up being interrogated. Which was now happening, and so his fears had proved to be quite real.
“But why be fearful if K. simply died of thirst and exposure? What was there to fear?”
“Not being believed,” Quinn said. “I am a fisherman with a small boat. Mr. K. is an American businessman. So, you see?”
Chávez nodded in agreement. He understood, but this was not his job. He required the facts. He asked if Quinn’s sister Clarita knew this man K.
“Briefly. A year ago.”
“They were lovers?”
“I don’t know.”
Chávez shrugged. “Your sister said the same. She didn’t know. How can she not know? Either they were, or they weren’t.”
“The man had many women. He talked constantly about them. About my sister, I do not know.”
“But you do know about the ocean, yes? You know the boats, you know the winds, the tides, the dangers. You know the engines. How is it that, as you say in your testimony, the engine only started after the American died? How is it that you only built a sail from the tarpaulin after the American died? Why is this timeline so?”
Quinn knew there was no good answer but responded in a manner that might be credible. He said that there had been little wind, and therefore no reason to build a sail.
