The Water Keeper

by Charles Martin

  This twenty-minute experience mixed with his nearly white coat and willingness to lick every human’s face on the planet—especially those covered in ice cream or gelato—taught me something. Tabby attracted attention like a puppy at a park. Everybody wanted to pet him, and he was only too happy to oblige. We set up camp at the crosswalk of two busy sidewalks—the walking intersection of St. George Street with Hypolita, catty-corner between Café del Hidalgo and Columbia Restaurant. If I was to advertise something in St. Augustine, that street corner was better than FOX or CNN. Over the next several hours, it seemed like every child in St. Augustine had their picture taken with Tabby, and I turned down several offers to sell him. With every picture taken, I asked folks to post it on their social media under the hashtag #findmyowner and #whitelabrador.

  All to no avail.

  The crowds thinned after dinner, so Tabby and I prepared for our trek back to the marina, both of us tired and hungry. I was in the process of standing up when I heard a voice behind me. While I’d heard voices behind me for the better part of eight hours, this one sounded different. It was distressed. And in pain. I closed my eyes and focused on the sound, trying to hear what the tone gave away. She was saying a lot but not with words.

  Her appearance matched the frantic and defeated sound of her voice. Maybe early forties, head down, brownish hair, gray at the roots, quick steps, slight limp, a mission before her. She wore one flip-flop—which had blown out—and the other foot was bare. Both were muddy. Her legs, while beautiful, were scratched along the calves as if she’d run through briars or wiregrass. She was wearing what remained of a uniform. Something a server would wear at an all-night diner. Black skirt, provocative in an institutional sort of way. White oxford, no longer white. And an apron of which she did not seem cognizant. Like either she’d worn it long enough to forget it was there or she just didn’t care what it said about her. A pad of guest checks had been stuck into the right front pocket. Pencils and straws rose up out of the other.

  Both her hands and voice were trembling as she held the phone. “But, baby . . . you can’t.” She was unconsciously walking in circles around Tabby and me now. “They just want one thing and they’ll promise you anything to get it.” Another circle. A deep breath while she tried to get a word in edgewise. “I know I did, but . . .”

  She passed me a third time, straightened, and began walking toward the marina. Her voice grew louder. More exasperated. “Wait. Don’t—Baby?” Then I heard her say one word. One word I couldn’t deny or overlook. One simple, five-letter word. She was crying as she spoke it. “Angel?”

  I shook my head and cussed myself.

  Tabby watched her go. Then looked at me. I scratched his head. “Come on, boy.”

  A block behind her, we returned to the marina where the woman began jogging along the docks, knocking on all the doors of every boat that seemed inhabited. Her voice echoed off the water. “I just need . . .” “Next marina . . .” “Daytona . . .” “No, I don’t have any—”

  Frustrated at another door slammed in her face, she spotted the marina boats. The first-come-first-serve, fourteen- to sixteen-foot runabouts used to ferry people and goods to and from larger boats. She hopped into one tied in the shadows, studied the outboard, flipped a switch, pulled the cord, and the forty-horsepower Yamaha outboard cranked on the first attempt. Something they are known for. She twisted the throttle on the hand tiller, revved the engine, cussed, found the gearshift, and slammed it into reverse, grinding the gears. The boat jerked in the water, tugging against its mooring line, sending waves and froth against the dock.

  Realizing her mistake, the woman relaxed her death grip on the tiller, idled the engine, untied the line, and without bothering to check the gas level, backed up, banging into two yachts, one piling, and the bulkhead. Finally, she managed a circle like a one-legged duck and ran smack into the hull of a sixty-foot sport fisherman, which sent her rolling head over backside to the bow. Recovering, she returned to the stern, steadied the tiller, and began an erratic and serpentine path out of the marina. Free of the no-wake zone, she twisted the throttle and put the small boat up on plane, where she immediately stuck it in the soft mud. Cussing again, she stepped out of the boat, pushed it off the mudflat—finally losing the other flip-flop—found reverse, and backed out into the deeper channel. Once free, she again floored the throttle and motored southward down the ditch.

  Her pinball path proved she’d never steered an outboard, but she was in the process of training her mind—push the opposite way you want to go. I admired her gumption but wondered how long it’d be before the marina sent the authorities to drag her back. Or she sank that boat.

  Tabby and I loaded into Gone Fiction and slipped out of the marina. By then, the woman was gone. As was her wake. This time of night, the larger yachts had moved inside to escape the winds off the coast and were traveling north and south in the ditch—some as fast as twenty-five or thirty knots, thinking themselves safe from smaller vessels. Few people travel the ditch at night. Those yachts would be splitting the channel down the middle with their wakes—some as high as five or six feet tall, rolling and breaking toward the shoreline.

  I thought about the woman. She and that boat didn’t stand a chance.

  Tabby and I left St. Augustine with thoughts of making Daytona by midnight. The problem was that it was dark, and while my electronics are accurate, hurricanes and storms have a way of moving boundaries and causing changes in depths. Nighttime navigation can be tricky, and while I knew these waters, I didn’t trust my electronics. Never have. I only use them to confirm what the markers are telling me. That’s not to say they’re not accurate. They are. Generally. I’ve just learned to trust my eyes more than the screen.

  Chapter 6

  The moon was once again high and clear, casting our shadow on the water. This stretch of the IC was primarily residential, which made it poorly lit compared to a city like St. Augustine or Daytona or Jacksonville. Also, while the Florida Keys get much of the attention when it comes to the waters of Florida—and deservedly so, because they are lovely—some of the most beautiful water in North Florida can be found on the Matanzas River between St. Augustine and the Tomoka Marsh Aquatic Preserve. Or the waters leading into Ormond and Daytona Beaches. Right in the middle sits Marineland—the world’s first oceanarium. Made famous by Hollywood moviemakers for eighty years with such 1950s classics as Creature from the Black Lagoon and Revenge of the Creature.

  Half an hour outside St. Augustine, I throttled down through Crescent Beach, passed just west of Fort Matanzas, and then cruised along the stretch where A1A literally forms the border of the IC. I ran with my bow and stern running lights on, along with lights atop my T-top, but I turned off the light from my electronics as it interfered with my ability to find the center of the channel and the next buoy. With Marineland on my port side separating me from the Atlantic Ocean, I made the bend heading south-southwest when I spotted residue of a small craft’s wake. It wasn’t tough to spot. Foamy white powder on a sea of black glass.

  The woman. Had to be.

  And she wasn’t alone on the water. Something else up ahead, traveling from south to north. Something big.

  The problem with the Intracoastal here is that it narrows to less than a hundred yards. The further problem is that there is shoaling at either edge, meaning the actual channel is maybe forty yards wide and seven feet deep. Narrow and shallow, yes, but this is not normally a problem on sunny afternoons. When it becomes a problem is now—when it’s dark and two vessels traveling opposite directions are fast approaching one another at the narrowest point.

  I saw the white water from the cutwater of the northbound vessel and quickly judged her length at greater than a hundred feet. The woman in the dinghy had the sense to move to the right but only slightly, proving she was unaware of the havoc about to be unleashed on her small vessel. She could avoid the bow of the bigger boat but not the wake.

  I nudged the throttle forward and kept
my eyes on the coming vessel.

  What happened next would have been amazing had it not been horrific. With the throttle high and traveling something between twenty and twenty-four knots, the naïve woman passed the perpendicular line of the bow only to meet the wake of the oncoming vessel, which was traveling closer to thirty knots. And unlike the cutwater, the wake was dark—same color as the water. Which was the same color as the night.

  The speed of her boat meeting the speed of the wake ejected her at better than fifty knots. Shot out of a cannon, she spiraled some fifty feet in the air. Her small boat road up the first wake, only to leave the water entirely. The propeller spun dry just briefly, maxing its rpm’s. Then the nose of the small boat slammed into the second wake. The collision broke the dinghy in half, both pieces disappearing into a sea of foam while the woman’s flailing, screaming body flew through the dark night air.

  Crossing the bow of the oncoming yacht, I pulled back on the throttle, turned slightly westward toward the shore, and rolled over the six-foot wake. First one, then a second, then a third. When clear, I slammed the throttle forward and ran three seconds to where I thought she’d landed. My depth gauge read five feet, then four. Then two. Given the height of her cannon shot, the impact would probably knock her unconscious. At the very least, it’d knock the wind out of her and might break a few ribs. The trick for me was to ride far enough to hear or see her hopefully on or near the surface of the water while not so far as to chew her up under my spinning prop. I pushed it as far as I could, watching Tabby’s ears for any signs of life, and pulled back on the throttle when he sat up and looked to our right. I cut the engine when he stood and began barking, and then I shined a spotlight across the surface of the water.

  Seeing nothing, I cut the wheel to the right and killed the engine, allowing my momentum to turn me ninety degrees while I scanned the surface of the water. When Tabby ran to the back of the boat and began barking his head off, I focused on the water at the stern. Seeing lifeless floating arms and what looked like hair, I stripped off my shirt and dove in, pulling hard in the water as the outgoing current tugged me from her and her from me.

  Digging deeper against the water, I crossed the distance and was met by kicking feet, flailing hands, and a choking woman. She was sinking beneath the surface when I reached down, sank a hand beneath her armpit, and lifted her up and out. When her mouth cleared the waterline, she sucked in a giant breath of air, only to choke and cough and fight for more—pulling me down with her. Fighting me, she was making it impossible to get her to the boat, so I shoved her in front of me, snaked an arm around her waist, rested her head against my shoulder and chest, and began side-kicking toward the boat and Tabby. She was frantic, and if I didn’t get her to the boat soon, she’d drown us both.

  When Tabby saw us, he dove in, circled us, and led us back to the boat. When we got there, I held her up against the swim ladder, which she clung to. Coughing, choking, and shaking, she was about to lose it. I helped her climb up and sat her on the bench seat, where she cried, rocked back and forth, and hugged herself. Tabby climbed up the swim platform but couldn’t find purchase with his back legs, so I lifted him by the neck and back and set him in the boat. He promptly shook and then sniff-checked the woman.

  She was doubled over, crying from her belly, knees in her chest, and bleeding a lot. Tabby stood next to her, licking her face and ears. I grabbed a towel out of one of the fore storage compartments and wrapped it around her shoulders. Finally, I turned on the console and T-top lights. Even in the blue LEDs, covered in mud and blood, she was beautiful. Her hair was matted across her face and her fingers were cut. Several were bleeding, which meant the impact had sent her to the shoaling. Her face, too, was cut above one eye, with the wound trailing down her cheek. Shoulder scrapes too. Evidently her back had taken the brunt of the impact, since that’s where the cuts were deepest. She quickly bled through the towel, spotting it red.

  I figured she’d talk when able and the best thing I could do was get her some help, so I cranked the engine and turned north back up the ditch, and only when I got the boat up on plane did I turn to look at the woman. She was staring up at me while Tabby licked the blood off her face.

  I pulled into the municipal marina, threw a bow line around a cleat, cut the wheel, and allowed the current to turn the Whaler and bring her alongside the slip while I secured the stern. Hopping onto the dock, I was met by a young attendant. When the lights of the small marina lit the bench seat, he noticed the woman. “Dang. She need help?”

  I helped her stand only to realize her skirt was gone. The woman was wearing underwear but not much of it. I grabbed a second towel and wrapped it around her waist, and he helped her up out of the boat. She was in shock; speech wasn’t happening. I looked at the attendant. “You got a doc in the box? Anything close or open this time of night?”

  He shook his head. “Closest medical is Baptist South. Forty-five minutes that way.”

  “You got a car?”

  He frowned. “Do I look like I have a car?”

  My options were limited. An Uber driver would never let me in the car, and while paramedics would certainly help with the woman’s physical condition, they couldn’t help her where she needed it. I, on the other hand, maybe could.

  First I needed to get her cleaned up before infection set into these cuts. “Where’s the nearest motel?”

  He pointed at the lights up the dock and across the street. The doors of the motel were all outward-facing with a view of the marina. I handed him a hundred-dollar bill. “You get me a room, bring me a key, you can have the rest.”

  His eyes widened and he disappeared up the dock. I turned to her. Her hair was still matted against her face. She had begun that convulsive crying in which she had no control of her breathing either in or out. The towel across her shoulder was one large spot of red. “Can you walk?”

  She put her left leg in front of her right, only to buckle. I caught her, stood her upright, and she fell into me. I picked her up, threw her legs across my arms, and carried her up the gangway and across the street. The attendant came out of the office, pointed to his left. I followed. At the last room before the stairwell, he unlocked the door, stepped out of the way, and placed the key in my right hand.

  “One more thing?” I asked.

  He waited.

  “Check on my boat. Make sure she’s secure and will be there tomorrow when I show up.”

  He left without a word.

  I carried her into the room and the door shut behind me. Tabby stood attentively. The look on his face said, “What now?”

  I set her on the bed, where she curled into a fetal ball. Shaking. I peeled one corner of the towel off her shoulder, but it had begun to clot and stick, so the farther I peeled, the more it reopened everything. If I kept this up, it would hurt her. I stepped into the bathroom, turned the shower on warm, and knelt next to the bed. “Listen, I can call an ambulance . . .”

  Staring through the wall toward the IC, she shook her head.

  “I need to get a look at how badly you’re cut, but if I keep picking at these towels, it’s only going to make things worse. I need to get you to warm water.”

  She slid her feet onto the floor and I helped her stand. I couldn’t figure out if she trusted me because she had no one else or because she was so delirious she didn’t know better. Regardless, she leaned on me as I dragged her into the bathroom. While steam wafted above us, she stepped into the warm shower and just stood while the tub filled with red and mud and pieces of oyster shell.

  When she was ready, I slowly pulled the towel from her shoulders, exposing fifty cuts and a myriad of tiny oyster pieces stuck in her skin. Evidently, her landing had skidded her across an oyster shoal. She turned to expose a shredded shirt and sliced back. I helped her out of her shirt and stood back while she leaned against the wall and allowed the warm water to wash down her back. Tabby stood next to the tub, tail wagging. I grabbed the bloody towels and set them aside, allowing
the tub to drain. For three or four minutes, she just stood. Finally, she sank to her bottom and sat on the floor of the tub, head on her knees, while the water and steam brought her back to life.

  I needed to pick the oyster pieces out of her back, so I pushed the control knob and converted the water from the shower to the tub spout. I sat on the edge of the tub. “Are you tough?”

  She nodded without looking at me. I pushed in the stopper and began picking out the mud and oyster shells as she leaned against her knees. As the water in the tub turned a deeper red, I cleaned her back. Halfway through the process, she braced herself on the edge of the tub where Tabby took the opportunity to lick her hand clean. She hung her hand around his neck and allowed me to finish the process—which took the better part of an hour. When I’d finished her back, I said, “Can you stand?”

  She did, and I continued washing the sides and backs of her legs. When I got her as clean as I could get her, I said, “I’m going to grab some clothes from the boat. You okay if I leave?”

  She nodded without looking at me.

  I grabbed a bag of clothes from the port side storage where I found the attendant watching my boat like an eagle. “Anyplace around here open this time of night? Food or something?”

  He thought. Then shook his head. “Lots of bars.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Grocery store. ’Bout a half mile that way.”

  “Thanks.”

  I walked to the store where the sign on the door read, “No shirt, no shoes, no problem.” I walked in and found them closing up for the night, so I made a trip through the deli. I bought a fried chicken. Some cold chicken salad. A few apples. A mug of soup. Some mac ’n’ cheese. Some saltine crackers and some applesauce. I topped it off with a bottle of wine and some Gatorade and herbal tea. I exited through the pharmacy, picking up antibiotic ointment, Band-Aids, gauze, pain pills to help with the swelling, and hydrogen peroxide. If she didn’t hate me already, she would when I finished putting all that on her back.