The Water Keeper

by Charles Martin

  In thirty seconds, as the sheriff’s deputies appeared in the driveway, the helicopter was airborne again and disappeared over the rooftops. Summer appeared to my left, hanging on my arm. Her face posed a question her lips did not articulate.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. We may have been too late.”

  The sheriff’s deputies had been prevented from entering the grounds by a locked front gate. While they worked to open it, I began to focus on the next few minutes. They would want a statement from us, and I knew I didn’t want to give it. No time. So I turned Summer and Ellie around and pointed. “Boat. Now.”

  They understood. We returned down the walkway to the dock, loaded into Gone Fiction, and untied her ropes. Reversing quietly, I backed out of the dock and then slid the stick forward. By the time the deputies made it through the house and into the backyard, we had cleared the pilings and were moving back toward the IC. The nearest deputy, some jacked guy wearing shades and SWAT gear, ran to the water’s edge and told me not to move any farther. I slid the throttle to full and we shot forward into the ditch and out of his line of sight.

  Chapter 28

  Once into the open water, I dialed Colorado. He answered after the second ring. I told him what had just happened and asked him to call the local sheriff’s office, explain who I was, and tell them we’d be at the hospital if they wanted my statement. I also asked him to find out what he could about the girl in the helicopter and where they were taking her. If she lived, I wanted a few words with her.

  He hung up, and I returned to Summer and Ellie, who were both huddled on the back bench, riding in silence with stunned looks on their faces.

  Summer sat staring at a silver chain draped over her right hand, at the end of which dangled an odd-shaped piece of honeycomb. One hand was holding the other. Both were shaking. As was she. She was close to cracking. She was holding Angel’s Jerusalem cross. The one I’d seen her wearing when we met in the chapel.

  “Where’d you find that?”

  She spoke through tears while looking in the direction of the helicopter, which was now little more than a speck in the sky. “In the hand of that girl.”

  I returned north. Ellie appeared on my right side. Hanging on to the T-top with one hand, the envelope with the other. “Did you save that girl’s life?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  She touched her nose. “What did you give her?”

  “It’s called Narcan. When someone uses heroin or hydrocodone, any kind of opioid, the drug binds to receptors in their brain. It blocks pain. Slows their breathing. Calms them down. In the case of an overdose, it can be fatally calming because they quit breathing. Become unconscious. The drugs I gave her reverse that and kick the drug off the receptors. Waking them up.”

  She pointed at the AED.

  “That allowed me to shock her heart back to work. Sort of like jumper cables for the human body.”

  Her face spoke of earnestness. “You always carry this stuff in your boat?”

  I shrugged. “I have for several years—although the drugs and technology are always changing.”

  “How many times have you used all this?”

  I shrugged. “Some.”

  “Does it always work?”

  I stared across the bow. “No.”

  She didn’t take her eyes off me. “What now?”

  I pointed at the now-disappeared helicopter. “You mean for her, or—” I looked straight at Ellie. “You and me?”

  “Both.”

  “If she wakes up and can talk, I’d like a few minutes with her. As for you and me, that’s up to you.”

  She clutched the envelope to her chest. The events of the last hour had shaken her. When she spoke, she turned her face away. “Could we stop for a second?”

  Palm Beach lay to the east. West Palm Beach proper to the west. Our cutwater had just entered the Lake Worth Inlet. I cut the throttle, navigated around Peanut Island, and ran the boat aground in the shallows of the low tide sandbar just north of the island. Given the outgoing tide, the water was shin deep. Forty or fifty boats had done likewise. The weekend had started early. The air smelled of suntan oil and rum, and was filled with the sounds of Bob Marley and Kenny Chesney. Off to our left, a dozen college kids floated a Frisbee through the air while one optimistic dog ran back and forth.

  I cut the engine. She laid the envelope flat across the console. In front of me. Her hands were shaking again, so she crossed her arms and buried her hands in her armpits. “Will you?” She stared at it. Then me. Her lip quivered. “Please.”

  While I’d looked at Ellie, I’d not really studied her. Although she tried hard not to be, she was stunningly beautiful. Like, take your breath away. Maybe here and now, having suffered the violence of what she’d just seen, her walls were crumbling. Of if not crumbling, at least the gates were opening.

  Summer appeared at my left shoulder. The three of us formed a semicircle around an envelope that as far as I knew had not been opened in thirteen years. I opened the clasp, folded back the top, and emptied the contents onto the seat next to me.

  One item appeared. A letter.

  I unfolded it. It was printed on official letterhead from the Sisters of Mercy convent in Key West.

  Like the envelope, the letter was dated thirteen years prior.

  It read:

  Dear Florence,

  You have been offered provisional acceptance into the Sisters’ initiate. We eagerly await your arrival.

  Sincerely,

  Sister Margaret

  Something rattled in the envelope, so I turned it on its end, emptying it completely. A ring fell onto the seat. It spun like a top, wobbled, and then settled.

  When it did, it took my breath away.

  It could only mean one thing.

  Chapter 29

  I picked up the ring, turning it in my hand. The band was made of three thinner platinum bands woven together. Mounted above the vine-looking band sat a single diamond and two smaller emeralds, both mounted in silver settings on either side. Ellie looked at me. Her head tilted sideways. She stared at the ring as I placed it into the palm of her hand. When I did, something passed from me to her. Something I can’t name and never knew was there. But something real, something palpable, left my body and wrapped around hers.

  She looked at the ring with incredulity. Shaking her head. Anger rising. She was about to throw the ring in the water when I caught her hand. “Wait.”

  A vein had popped on the side of her head as she crumpled the letter. Speaking to the wad of paper, she said, “Just say it. You don’t want me. Never did. Just throw me out with the trash. Why the riddle? Why all this? Just freaking say the word!”

  “Maybe she is.”

  Ellie shook her head. “What do you mean?”

  I straightened the letter. “I don’t know any of this for certain, but I think your mom did not intend to have you, and when she found herself pregnant, she gave you up and then went to this convent. Where she might be still. So maybe . . . you . . . we . . . should just go here”—I tapped the letter—“and ask around. Can’t hurt.”

  Her shoulders rolled down at the edges. “I’ve been waiting my whole life for somebody, anybody, to tell me who I am and where I come from and why nobody wanted me—and all I’ve got is this stupid letter and this ridiculous ring that’s not worth squat.”

  I stared at it. “It was to her.”

  “How can you say that? She dumped it in this box thirteen years ago and hasn’t looked back since.”

  I shrugged. “You don’t know that.”

  She cocked her arm again as if to throw it.

  “Wait.”

  She set her hand in her lap.

  “You can throw that if you want, but don’t let your pain speak louder than your love. Thirteen years ago, pain took that ring off and love put it in that box. The fact that you’re holding it now is a message, I think, from your mom. Before you bury her at sea, you might try to figure out wha
t she’s saying.”

  Ellie stared out across the water and shook her head.

  I pointed south down the IC, toward the Keys. “Can I tell you a story?”

  She did not look impressed.

  “I know you see me as this ancient old man with arthritis and bad eyes, but I was actually in love once.”

  Her complexion altered ever so slightly. “Why would I care about who you loved?”

  I ignored her. And while I was working hard to keep her attention, I had all of Summer’s. “Sophomore year of high school, we’d all gone to this party. Big house on the river. Ski boats. Jet skis. Parasail rides. The parents even had a helicopter and were taking the kids on rides. Pretty wild party. Entire school was there. Maybe two hundred kids. I was sweet on this girl named Marie. She liked me but I was quiet, kind of a nerd in tenth grade, and not real popular. In my spare time, I fished and looked for stuff. Like sharks’ teeth or Indian artifacts.

  “Marie and I had been friends longer than most. Childhood. We kind of grew up together. She was my best friend when guys weren’t supposed to have a girl as their best friend. We shared secrets. Hopes. Dreams. She knew I had my heart set on the Academy and she was just about the only person who told me I had a chance. That I could do it. Marie believed in me, and as a result, I did too. When I broke forty-eight seconds in the four hundred meters, set the state record, she was cheering me on. Without her, I don’t think I’d have broken sixty.”

  “If Marie had an Achilles’ heel, and she did, it was acceptance. I couldn’t have cared less, but her identity was inextricably woven into the fabric of the crowd she hung with. She liked the popular guys with letter jackets and college offers. The ones everybody was talking about. I was night shift. Community college. Nobody was talking about me. She also had a thing for fast cars and fast boats, and I had neither.

  “It was a Saturday. I worked at a tire store and got off work about nine p.m. When I got home, word of the party had spread. I had one interest in that party, and she wasn’t real interested in me. So I grabbed a light, a few poles, hopped in my Gheenoe, and fished a full moon and a flood tide. Big redfish love a full moon, and they were hitting on top of the water, making a loud smack. If you’re a fisherman, it’s a good sound.

  “Midnight found me toward the mouth of the river, where the IC meets the St. Johns. It’s big water and no place for a Gheenoe, but the reds were there, so . . . About twelve thirty, I heard a distant helicopter. Then I saw a boat motoring slowly downriver with two large spotlights searching the surface of the water. Never a good sign. A moment later, the helicopter passed overhead, a larger searchlight, and then the boat, which circled through the inlet and sent a wake my way that nearly swamped me. I heard loud, frantic voices. I flagged them down and saw several guys I recognized from school, the guys with letterman jackets and college offers. They told me they’d gone night tubing and one of the girls had been thrown off. They couldn’t find her.

  “‘What’s her name?’ I asked.

  “One of the guys flippantly waved his beer through the air. Shook his head. ‘Starts with an M. Mary. Marcia. Something.’

  “Three Coast Guard boats appeared soon after. Flashing lights. Sirens. Followed by two helicopters. The water became a choppy mess and no place for my boat. It was also September and the moon was high, which meant there was about twice as much water, so an outgoing tide would be moving about twice as fast as normal in an attempt to get all that water out.

  “I asked the guy, ‘What time this happen?’

  “He swigged his beer and threw the can in the river. ‘About eight thirty.’

  “That was four hours ago. I looked at those people like they’d lost their ever-loving minds. Idiots. They were all looking in the wrong place.”

  Ellie had softened. While her shoulders pretended to be doing me a favor, her face told me I was getting through that granite exterior. Summer had moved closer. Touching me ever so slightly with her shoulder.

  “I cranked the engine, turned the throttle to full, and made my way by moonlight about three miles toward the inlet where the St. Johns River meets the Atlantic Ocean. The Jetties is a narrow, deepwater shipping canal for both commercial and military vessels, including submarines, and the waves rolling between the Volkswagen-size rocks that make up the Jetties can reach six to eight feet on a calm day. Nobody in their right mind would ever take my boat anywhere near it.

  “Twenty minutes later, I reached the Jetties. The waves were over my head. Even if I was able to navigate out of the channel, against the waves, when I returned the force and height of the waves would nosedive my boat and sink it like a torpedo. I cut the engine, felt the pull of the current taking me at six to seven knots, and knew that Marie had already passed through here. She was floating in the Atlantic. Out to sea. I cranked the engine and pointed the nose through the waves. My only saving grace was that I was the only passenger and both my weight and the engine weight lifted the bow enough to soften the blow of the waves. Several waves crashed over the bow, but I was able to bail enough water to stay afloat and still push out to sea.

  “Once I broke free of the Jetties, the waves calmed and I could make out the surface of the water in the moonlight. I cut the engine, let the current pull me, and listened. I did this every couple of minutes as the lights of the shoreline grew more and more distant. Finally, with land six or seven miles to my west and a whole lot of really big water to my east, I just sat there floating. Listening. Letting the current pull me. Somewhere in there, I heard a voice rise up out of the water. In the middle of that really big dark ocean, I heard my name. Faint. Then louder. I searched frantically but couldn’t make it out. So . . .”

  I fell quiet, shrugged, and acted like that was the end of the story.

  Ellie looked at me like I was loco. “That’s it?!”

  “Yeah, I just gave up on her because it was hard and I didn’t have enough information to go on.”

  She looked at the ring in her hand, then at me, and rolled her eyes.

  I leaned in closer. “Would you like me to finish the story, or would you like to throw that ring in the water?”

  She feigned indifference. Crossed her arms. “I’m listening.”

  “Couple hundred yards south, I saw a disturbance in the water. Could have been anything. But I aimed for it and held the throttle wide open until I reached where I thought it had been, then I cut the engine, coasted, and listened. Marie was screaming at me off my starboard side. That’s the right side. I pulled hard on the tiller and found her clutching a piece of driftwood and wearing a life jacket, which probably saved her life. She was cold, in shock, her head barely above water.

  “I knew I’d never make it back through the Jetties, and I wasn’t sure if I had enough fuel to make it back to land, so I pointed the nose at the lights onshore and hoped. We ran out of gas a couple hundred yards from shore. I paddled the rest. We pulled the Gheenoe up on the beach, I built a fire, and we sat there holding each other until the sun rose. We never told anyone what happened. When they asked her at school, she told everyone she’d hit her head on a dock piling and was only able to climb up before she passed out. When she woke up, she walked home.”

  I fell quiet again, and Ellie called my bluff. “That’s not the end of the story.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  She shook her head. “I’m young. Not dumb.”

  Summer’s eyes were boring a hole through me, willing me to tell the rest. I stood, walked to the bow, and spoke out across the water. To the memory. “That night on the beach, after she’d finished shivering, she held up a single finger, touching mine with the tip of hers. She said, ‘You could’ve died out there tonight.’

  “She was right. I nodded.

  “‘Why’d you leave everyone to find me?’

  “Maybe I was trying to impress her and maybe I was telling the truth. Whatever. I said, ‘Because the needs of the one outweigh those of the ninety-nine.’”

  Ellie frowned. “Seems kind of
heavy for a high schooler.”

  “Looking back, maybe it was.”

  “Where’d you learn that? Self-help book?”

  “A friend of mine. A priest. And until that moment with Marie, I really had no idea what he was talking about.”

  I continued with my story. “When I said that, her fingers spread and intertwined with mine.” I held up my hand, fingers spread. “This silly hand gesture started there. It became the fabric of us. Our thing. It was how we remembered the moment. We could be in a crowd of people, loud music, chatter, and all she had to do was touch my fingertip with hers, and immediately we were back in that water. Sitting on that beach. Her and me. Us against the world. Then it wasn’t so silly anymore.

  “And that morning as the sun rose, we walked the beach. Hand in hand. Maybe the most perfect sunrise in the history of the sun rising. With the water foaming over our ankles, the sun hit the beach and shone on something at the water’s edge. I lifted it. A silver cross. Washed up by the same flood tide that had ripped her seven miles out to sea. It was hanging by a leather lace. I tied the lace in a square knot and hung it around her neck. It came to rest flat across her heart. She leaned against me, pressing her ear to my heart. Beneath the waves rolling gently next to us, she whispered, ‘If I ever find myself lost, will you come find me?’

  “I nodded. ‘Always.’

  “She wrapped her arms around me, kissed me—which almost made my heart stop—and said, ‘Promise?’

  “‘I do.’”

  When I turned around, Ellie was staring up at me. Summer sat beneath the T-top, wiping tears. Ellie tried to harden her voice, but my story had knocked the edges off of it. “Why’re you telling me this?”