by Ted Bell
“You were a very naughty girl last night, Victoria.”
“I was not.”
“Yes, you were. And I’ve half a mind to give you a good sound spanking.”
“Only half?”
“Shh, here comes my savior! Betty! Over here! Get out the oranges. Those are her favorites.”
Vicky could hear the big pig meandering through the scrubby palms. The pig made loud snorting sounds as she emerged onto the beach and headed in their direction.
“She’s huge,” Vicky said, shrinking back from the beast. “And hairy. I thought pigs were soft and pink. And small.”
“Betty is a very well-fed animal. She has many admirers. Hold out an orange in your hand. She’ll take it from you.”
Vicky did, and Betty immediately gulped it down whole.
“Terrible manners,” Vicky said.
“She’s a pig, for heaven’s sake.” Hawke patted Betty’s snout affectionately. “A blind pig at that, aren’t you, Betty?”
“A blind pig who saved your life, apparently.”
“If not for Betty, I would now be, to use a favorite Americanism, toast,” Alex said while he patted and nuzzled the pig.
“I know you two are close, but is Betty going to be joining us for the entire picnic?”
“No. She just wanted to stop and say hello. Watch this.”
Hawke grabbed the sack of oranges and apples, got to his feet, and strode down to edge of the surf. Betty followed him. Hawke threw all the oranges out beyond where the waves were forming, and all the apples, too. Betty trotted out through the surf, swimming just as a Labrador might, her nose leading her to the nearest oranges.
Hawke looked back and smiled, then sprinted through the sand and returned to Vicky.
“That ought to keep her busy for the better part of an hour,” Hawke said, dropping to the towel.
“More wine?” Vicky asked.
“No, thanks. Wine and sunshine make me sleepy.” He lay back on the towel and closed his eyes.
“Me, too,” Vicky said, lying down beside him. “It is a lovely little bay.”
“Isn’t it?” Alex said, yawning. “I call it the Bay of Pig.”
Vicky smiled. She rolled toward him, then propped her head up on her hand and stared at this man she’d come to love. He’d closed his eyes and there was a contented half-smile on his face. His thick black hair was wet and shining. His chest, beaded with salt water, was rising and falling rhythmically. What saved him, she thought, was that he had no idea how good-looking he was.
She sat up and unhooked the top half of her red bathing suit. Then she put her hand over his heart.
“Are you asleep?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t suppose you would mind terribly if I licked your shoulder?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Just a lick, lollipop. I love salt. I think I don’t get enough of it, the way I eat. It’s essential to the body’s fluid balance, you know. Sodium. Chloride. Yummy.”
“Lick away then, darling. Dine to your delightful sufficiency.”
“Thank you.”
“How am I?” he said, after a few moments of feeling her tongue dart about his neck and shoulders.
“Yummy,” she said. “Can’t get enough.”
“You could always pour some olive oil and vinegar into my hair and make a small side salad to go with the entree.”
“I’ll stick with the main course, thank you.”
“Suit yourself, then.”
She started with his shoulder but soon moved to his chest and then to his belly. She immediately noticed a marked increase in his breathing rate.
“Sorry to bother you. I wonder if you would mind pulling down your bathing suit?” she asked, brushing the tips of her white, coral-tipped breasts across the deeply tanned skin of his belly.
“My bathing suit?”
“Here, I’ll help you.”
She took the bow of little white strings that held up his navy blue bathing suit in her teeth and pulled them apart.
“There you go,” she said. “Now, will you please pull it down?”
“Why should I do that?”
“Because you’re my lunch and you’re covering up my favorite part. The piece de résistance.”
He pulled both knees to his chest, lifted himself off the towel, and removed the bathing suit in one motion.
“Well done,” she said.
“Happy now?” he said.
“Oh my, that does look good,” Vicky whispered in his ear, and then her lips were everywhere, causing him to arch his back upwards involuntarily as he felt her mouth close around him.
They made love there on the beach with the blind pig swimming to and fro in the blue sea, chasing the apples and oranges. Vicky was astride him, riding, rocking, her hair matted to her forehead with the heat of both sun and passion, her eyes locked on his right up until the instant when she cried out and arched her back, raising her arms to the sky with both hands outstretched, reaching for something she’d never quite touched until this very moment.
She lay in his arms for a time, her head on his chest, listening to his heart pumping, feeling him fall slowly away from inside her and drift down into what she hoped was the bliss of a peaceful dream.
He began to snore softly. She got up and put on her bikini, looking down at him, smiling. The she dropped to her knees once more and stroked the damp black ringlets of hair on his chest.
“Alex Hawke,” she whispered to him, “you can’t hear me, but you know what I wish more than anything? I wish I’d become a surgeon instead of what I am. I wish I could take a little scalpel inside that brain of yours and find the exact little furrow of gray matter where whatever hurts you is hiding. Snip, snip, snip, I would cut it out. And you’d never have those terrible dreams, ever again.”
She sat up and brushed the hair back from her eyes. She sucked deep gulps of tangy air deep into her lungs, feeling totally invigorated, bristling with sharp, kinetic energy. She got to her feet and stood there, shielding her eyes with her hand, scanning the blue horizon. A flock of white seabirds was circling the pretty little island of pines beyond the channel.
Pine Cay, Alex had called it. It couldn’t be more than a mile from where she stood. She was a strong swimmer. A competitive swimmer. She could swim across and explore the pine forest while Alex slept. She could probably be over and back before he woke up, he was sleeping so soundly. The water was such a lovely shade of light blue it seemed to be begging her to plunge in.
She swam out toward the delicious river of dark blue that ran between the two islands.
Alex had no idea how long he’d been asleep.
He sat up with a start, realizing Vicky was no longer beside him. He looked around, but didn’t see her swimming or anywhere along the deserted beach.
He called out her name. No answer.
He leapt to his feet and ran along the line of scrub palms. Maybe she went exploring. He called her name repeatedly, thinking, she’s barefoot. Why would she go back among the rough and prickly palms?
His heart started pounding. That’s when he heard something that sent an arrow of fear through his heart.
Alex…Alex…Alex!
Faint. And coming from the sea.
He ran to the water’s edge, desperately scanning the rolling waves for a sight of her. There. A faint smudge. It had to be Vicky. She was halfway across the pass between the two islands! In the very middle of the vicious riptide rushing toward the open sea!
He made a running dive and started swimming as hard as he could, cursing himself furiously for not warning her about the current. Stupid! He never dreamt that she’d go out that far, but remembered how enchanted she was with the pine-forested island. That had to be it. She’d decided to swim over and—
He stopped swimming and raised his head. He could barely make out the dim shape that had to be her.
No…no…no…
Her voice was weaker now, a faint no r
epeated over and over. She was telling him to stop. Telling him the current would only take him as well. He plowed ahead another fifty yards, feeling the swift pull of the running tide taking him into its grip.
He swam harder. He was strong. Stronger than this bloody current that was stealing Vicky away from him. He swam until the muscles in his legs and arms were burning and then he swam harder still.
Another look. There. She was much farther away now. He saw her go under. Then surface again. He swam toward her, heedless of the wicked pull of the water. Raised his head, gasping for air. A sick, hollow feeling began to steal its way inside him. For every ten yards of progress he gained, she was being swept away another thirty.
He plowed forward, refusing to acknowledge it was hopeless now, unwilling to give up. He swam another thirty yards, feeling himself right on the periphery of where the rip was strongest. He raised his eyes, stinging with a mixture of tears and salt, and looked again.
“I love you!” he cried out, praying she might yet be able to hear him.
He saw her just that one last time, briefly, being pulled past Pine Cay now, and then he saw her go under. Waited. Fought the tide. Waited for that dear little head to surface, please, just once more and maybe he could get to—somehow get to—God—just to see her again…
He knew then that she was gone. Simply. Irrevocably. Gone.
He lifted his face to the heavens and screamed mercilessly at God.
* * *
Alex Hawke turned and swam as hard as he could for Kestrel. The edges of the rip had him, fought him, but not hard enough to overcome his rage. In minutes, he was climbing aboard the sloop. He ducked down through the companionway to the small navigation station.
There was a satellite phone hanging above the notebook computer with the GPS system.
Ambrose was on the sat phone speed dial.
He picked up on the first ring.
“I need immediate help,” Alex said, gasping for breath. “Immediate! I need our main launch in the water headed out the cut between Hog Island and Pine Cay. At least two divers aboard. I need you to call the Bahamas Air-Sea Rescue Command at Harbor Island. Tell them we need search-and-rescue choppers out here now.”
“Alex. Calm down. What’s going on?”
“It’s Vicky, goddammit.”
“What’s wrong, Alex?”
“She’s gone. Swept out in the riptide. I don’t know! Maybe we can save her! Christ, just get some bloody help out here, all right?”
“We’re coming,” Ambrose said, and hung up.
Alex scrambled back up on deck and hoisted the main and the jib. He weighed his anchor and headed the sloop out into the cut, his eyes fixed on the area where time and speed of current might have put her since he last saw her.
His eyes were burning. He was praying for that little brown smudge he’d last seen drifting away from him.
Praying to see it again. Simply praying for it to still exist.
37
Reel Thing, a brand-new fifty-foot Viking sport-fishing boat, was swinging on her anchor in the dark of a small cove. It was a hot moonless night, and only the lights of a few dim stars were visible. The cabin lights were all off below and above decks, and the sounds of the Allman Brothers came softly from speakers mounted throughout the boat.
The owner, Red Wallace, and his best fishing buddy, Bobby Fesmire, were sitting in the stern drinking Budweiser in the dark. Red was the biggest Ford dealer in South Florida. Bobby was his sales manager. Red and Bobby went way back. They’d gone to Florida at Gainesville together, pledged Kappa Alpha together, and played on the national championship Gator football team together. Both of them still wore their big gold NCAA rings with all the diamonds on their pinky fingers.
They took this little fishing trip to the Exumas as often as they could, which was once every two or three months. Sometimes they took clients so they could write it off, most often they’d bag the clients so it was just the two of them.
Tonight, they’d moored the boat in a small cove, ringed with mangroves. The wind was out of the east, so Reel Thing had her stern toward the small opening to the channel. Not that there was anything to see, but it gave them a view of the heat lightning blooming on the horizon.
“Know what heat lightnin’ is, Bobby?” Red asked.
“Yeah. Lightnin’ that comes from heat.”
“No, it ain’t. It’s ordinary lightnin’ comes from so far away, you can’t see nothin’ but the reflection of it. Ain’t no such thing as heat lightnin’.”
“Why the hell d’you bring it up then?”
“Just tryin’ to educate your dumb ass, is all.”
“I ain’t so dumb.”
“Only guy I ever knew saw a family reunion as a chance to meet girls.”
“You sayin’ it ain’t?”
“Bobby, we had a class of five hundred and thirty-seven seniors graduate.”
“Yeah?”
“You did not graduate in the top five hundred and thirty-six.”
“And your point is? Grades don’t mean nothin’ in my book. Look at us. We’re doing pretty damn good, I’d say. Couple of dumbass crackers sitting on top of the whole damn world. Look at that ring. What’s it say?”
“NCAA National Champions.”
“Bet your ass.”
Earlier that afternoon, Bobby and Red had given up on marlin fishing and found a little cove to put up for the night. At sunset they’d sat out on deck, drinking beer and casting into the mangroves. Didn’t hook a snook or any other kind of damn fish for an hour or so and gave up when it got too dark to see.
They had two big sirloins sitting out on the counter down in the galley but they’d pretty much forgotten about them. They’d wolfed down some boiled shrimp earlier. Good shrimp, too, from the Publix supermarket down the street from the Bahia Mar Marina in Lauderdale.
Red and Bobby had been down here scouring the Exumas and Bahamas for fish for about ten days. Red had been wearing the same T-shirt every day. It said, “My Drinking Crew Has a Fishing Problem.”
That sentiment pretty much summed up the entire voyage. They hadn’t caught a hell of a lot of marlin, but then again, as Red had often pointed out, they hadn’t caught a hell of a lot of hell from their wives either.
Red, who was sitting in the fighting chair on the stern, took a big swig of his Bud and said, “Bobby, lemme ask you another goddamn question. How many fish we catch this week? Total.”
“Three,” Bobby said. “Maybe.”
“And how many beers you reckon we’ve had all week?”
“Hundreds. Maybe a hundred and fifty.”
“So, let’s go with a hundred and fifty. Now let me ask you another question. How many times does three go into a hundred and fifty?”
“Shit, I dunno. What do you think I am? A human calculator?” Bobby burped deeply and tossed his empty over his shoulder.
“Hell, Bobby, it ain’t like I’m asking you to divide goddamn Roman numerals! It ain’t rocket surgery! It’s simple damn arithmetic. You’re a car salesman. You ought to be able to do the calculation. Three goes into one-fifty, lemme see now, fifty times.”
“Sounds about right.”
“My point is, we’ve achieved about fifty-to-one beer-to-fish ratio. And I think that’s pretty goddamn good, considering.”
“Considering what?”
“Considering the fact that I like Budweiser a hell of a lot better than I like fish. I’m going to tell you a secret I’ve never told anybody else. I can’t stand the taste of fish. Hate it. You ever tell my wife, Kathy, that, I’ll whup your sorry ass.”
“Well, that’s good, Red, that you don’t like ’em,” Bobby said. “ ’Cause if them damn helicopters and search-and-rescue boats are back here in the morning, your chances of catching any marlin’ll be about the same as they were today. Shitty.”
“I was monitoring channel sixteen earlier, up on the flybridge. I think they gave up on whoever or whatever was missing out there. We should be all rig
ht for tomorrow.”
“Maybe.”
“I will eat a tuna fish sandwich,” Red allowed after a long silence. “Long as it’s got a lot of mayo. Mayo I can eat out of the jar.”
“Hell, I’ve seen you do it.”
“How many times America save France’s ass, Bobby?”
“Least twice. And what’d they ever do for us?”
“That’s my point. The frogs invented mayo. In my book that just about evens things up.”
“Good point.”
“Hell, Bobby, I’d eat a mud sandwich, you put enough mayo on it. Hey. You hungry?”
“Could be. You want, I’ll go put that cow meat on the griddle?”
“I could eat—damn, it’s late—what the hell time is it?”
“Gotta be getting close to midnight,” Bobby said. “You want yours rare or—holy goddamn Christ! Red, what the hell is that?”
“Hell is what?”
“Look out there in the channel! Off to starboard. See it? Looks like the whole damn ocean is exploding!”
Red leapt out of his fishing chair and ran to the stern rail. Bobby was right. Something was going on out there. “Sonofabitch! Hand me them damn binocs, Bobby! Hanging right there by the tuna tower ladder.”
Red put the binocs to his eyes and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The sea was exploding. About a thousand yards off the Reel Thing’s stern, out in the middle of the dark deep channel.
“Shitfire, Red! Lemme see.”
He handed Bobby the binoculars.
“Jesus,” Bobby said. “What is it, Red?”
“Whale? How the hell do I know? What am I, a goddamn oceanographer?”
A huge mound of boiling white water was growing in the midst of the inky waves of the channel. It became a mushroom shape, rising and growing, and then the roiling sea did explode and a massive sharp-edged black snout emerged, surging majestically into the midnight sky at a forty-five-degree angle. Black and white seawater was pouring off her sleek dark sides in sheets.
“Well, I’ll be damned, Bobby,” Red said, passing him the binocs just as the strangely shaped hull finally broke the surface.
