by Marni MacRae
We didn’t talk, we just methodically did what we could. I endured the rocking and swaying, as I fought to keep down my Twix. I will not puke, I commanded myself. I absolutely will not puke. My stomach muscles could feel the strain of keeping my balance in the rocking raft, of the leaning and holding myself out over the side to wring, to not slip, not fall down, not fall overboard. I stopped thinking and worrying; I even stopped my mantra of not puking. I just bent and sopped, and bent and wrung, and then did it again, then again, then again.
And like before, the rain stopped. Suddenly. I kept at the bailing, knowing if I stopped I would collapse. The raft had more water in it than it ever had with the first storm, so I kept working, and Lucas, on his side, kept sopping and wringing as well.
The gray sky began to lighten. I noticed it when I finally paused and stretched my back muscles. The clouds and wind were passing. The waves were just choppy now, no more swells. And I turned to Lucas, who nodded and bent to sop some more. We worked at it until the raft was almost bone dry.
The dawn was hinting at an appearance in the east by the time Lucas took the dress from my hands and pulled me to lay down and rest. We didn’t say anything. I was just glad to have made it through, nothing lost, only sore muscles. It could have been worse. And sleep took me.
Chapter 11
My face and left arm burned. I opened my eyes and winced. I was sore everywhere. My back and arms and stomach, even my leg muscles were mad at me. I reached up a hand and touched my face, wincing at the stinging pain. The sun shone high in the sky already and looked particularly angry today.
Slowly sitting up, I began assessing myself. I was thirsty and needed to brush my teeth badly. I was hungry and sore, and desperately craved a cup of coffee. Thick, rich, coffee. To top off the morning, I sported a wicked sunburn down the left side of me.
Every bit of skin that had been exposed was now pink, and very angry. Even my left foot sported a sunburn. I groaned. This sucked. I wanted to go back to yesterday when I was only slightly hungry, not ravenous as I felt now. We could spend the day making love, and reading the Maldives book, or sharing stories with each other. But today, I sensed, was not going to be fun.
I looked down at Lucas. He was burnt on his right side, having fallen asleep facing me. I sighed and began the tedious details to begin the day. I crawled to my suitcase and rummaged for the sunscreen. It felt delicious to rub the white creamy stuff on my burn. I then fished out my light jacket and pulled it on. I would be hot, and clammy, and uncomfortable, but it was the only thing I had to cover my arms with. With that done, I found my toothbrush and toothpaste, then dug around in Lucas’s bag for his metal cup. I put a tiny amount of paste on the brush and began scrubbing my teeth.
I was so happy to have any semblance of normalcy, I didn’t notice when Lucas woke up and propped himself on an arm to watch me brush. When I finally deemed I had scrubbed away the last two days, I spat over the side of the raft, rinsed my brush in the ocean and dipped the cup over the side. I swished a small amount of salt water around in my mouth and spat that out as well. My mouth tasted like salty mint, and my teeth felt smooth and clean.
“Better?”
I jumped and glared at Lucas. “You aren’t supposed to watch me brush my teeth, it’s gross.”
Lucas shook his head as he sat up. “Sophia, I watched you pee in the ocean yesterday, and I’m pretty sure my mouth tastes like yours did before you began that chore. I was thinking what a brilliant idea that is.” He reached out for the cup, and I handed it to him.
I wrapped the dress turban around my head as he brushed, then fished the Tic-Tacs from my purse and shook out six. He returned his brush and cup to his suitcase, and I placed three of the mints in his hand.
“Breakfast. Pretend its bacon and eggs.” I popped my three mints in my mouth, and he leaned down and kissed me. Reaching up I touched his face, his whiskers were coming in more, but his short beard was unable to hide his dimples. “You're the best breakfast.” I said, and I meant it. His kiss reminded me that yes, I was sore and sunburned, and still lost at sea, but I had Lucas. Somehow that made it not only easier, but sweeter.
He kissed me again, tasting of salty Tic-Tacs, and I set him down to take his medicine. I checked his bandage. The tape lost its ability to stick with all the rain and moving about, but the cut beneath still showed eight butterflies in a row, and seemed to be healing well. I took off the bandage; the wound would do better with some air now that it was beginning to heal. Once I applied a layer of sunscreen to his burned and exposed areas, I handed him his shirt and he obediently turbaned up. Finally, I opened my purse, took out the half-empty bottle of water, and we each took a mouthful. It wasn’t refreshing, the liquid was warmer than my mouth, but I was grateful for it.
Morning ablutions taken care of, I stuck myself in the nose of the raft and prepared to avoid the sun as much as possible.
Lucas rummaged around in his suitcase and dug out his little binoculars. He perched himself near the useless motor and sat staring out to sea in every direction. From time to time, he would rise up on his knees and look around, but never announced “Land ho!” or “Ship ahoy!” So I just sat and let my mind wander.
If we were rescued today (fingers crossed), what would happen? It was still a few days until my flight back to the states and home. Would I stay in the Maldives, try to visit the castaway island? Would I book a flight straight home, hoping the airline would change my ticket? Would I ever see Lucas again, he would return to Montana, and I would fly to Washington. We had separate lives, priorities. It might be, the time on this raft was the only time we would be together. I hated thinking about that, so I went back to wondering if I would stay the rest of the vacation, or would we be caught up in red tape. The Maldivian police would want us to identify the pirates and help with hunting down Jok and the Lady Sun. That made me realize, that as we floated at sea, hoping for rescue, there was no one who knew to rescue us.
“Lucas,” I said suddenly, “do you think anyone knows we’re missing?” I hoped he would assure me that yes, they would be here any minute, and I could go back to fantasizing over a big cup of coffee and a giant cheeseburger. They were the first two items I planned to buy, the first chance I got.
Putting the binoculars aside, Lucas crawled over toward me. He aligned himself beside me and took one of my hands in his.
“I mean if no one knows we're missing, then no one is looking for us are they?” My optimist had lost the battle with my realist.
“No. I don’t think they are.” He said it matter of factly, and I sensed he knew something I didn’t.
I squeezed his fingers, “Why not?”
“I've been wrestling with some things,” he said slowly, “things that don’t make sense.”
“Like what?” I asked, my focus solely on him. What did he know that made him so certain rescue wasn’t coming? The panic I commanded myself not to indulge tickled at my heart, causing my blood pressure to rise. No rescue. So our only hope would be to drift into an island or a ship. The chances of either of those things happening seemed as likely as the pirates coming back and apologizing.
Lucas pulled my hand to his mouth and kissed my knuckles. He was watching me as my panic began to rise, and I took a breath and blew it out.
“OK, spill. I want to know.”
“Well, Ducky is a big question.” He nodded to the motor on the back, sitting useless and flaunting itself with its empty gas tank and brand-new, shiny parts. “This raft is outdated. By a lot. Emergency vessels are much larger, have emergency supplies stored in them like flares and such, and if they come equipped with a motor they're battery powered. Some of the pricier ones have solar charging cells on them. This raft should have never been on the Lady Sun.”
I mulled that over for a minute. “What if Ducky was a ship-to-shore vessel, like when they needed to weigh anchor beyond a reef, and take a smaller boat to shore? Maybe you just found the wrong panel.”
Lucas looked impressed
and kissed my knuckles again. “The yacht had a ship-to-shore boat. It hung below the deck we were sitting on. I noticed it when we boarded in Malé. But that’s good thinking, the only reason I'm sure this was intended as the emergency raft is because the hatch I opened when you caught me snooping, had emergency written on it.”
“I never saw that,” I mused aloud, “but I wasn’t looking for it either.”
“Even if you had been, you might not have known what it said,” Lucas explained. “it was written in Thaana.”
“You read Thaana?”
“About five words; Emergency, bathroom, seat belt, no, and please.” He shrugged when I stared at him, my expression portraying my amusement. “It was a long flight,” he defended himself. “Anyway, the question is, why would a multimillion dollar yacht equip its self with an inappropriate and outdated emergency raft? I have a sneaking suspicion Ducky is a fishing vessel.”
“What? Why would anyone put a fishing boat on a yacht as an emergency raft?”
“That's the question. Or one of them.”
I went back to the problem and tried to analyze the clues. After a few minutes of no answers forthcoming, I nudged him in the ribs. “OK, tell me the rest, maybe it will piece together.”
“Well, Jok is the other question. His behavior was strange. We were on the Lady Sun for hours, and other than a greeting, we were left completely alone. It seemed like he didn’t know how to do his job as a host, or he was occupied elsewhere. It was supposed to be a tour of the islands, remember?” He looked over at me. “Were you told that too?”
I nodded. “I thought it strange that we never went sightseeing, as that was part of the brochure, but I was distracted, and jet-lagged, and then of course there was you.” I nudged him again.
“What about me?”
“Um, you’re very distracting.”
“Oh.” He smiled then and leaned in to kiss me. “You’re sweet.” Lucas continued with his point. “So, when the pirates boarded, it appeared like they knew we would be there. I can’t figure out why Jok even picked us up if he never intended to deliver us to the island, and he only wanted the yacht. Also, why was he working with the pirates at all? What could he possibly gain? He would lose his job, be banished from the Maldives, or worse, imprisoned, even executed. The risks were high. So the whole thing is a mystery.”
“But why wouldn’t they be looking for us?”
“Because Jok is the only one who knows we're missing.” He said simply. “Our families won’t be alerted to us not arriving on our planes for another five days, and then they may wait a day in case we just missed our connections. After that, they would contact the authorities and start a search. We have a week or so before we could ever expect them to begin.”
A week. Anything could happen in a week.
I refused to panic. I refused to cry. I sat there holding Lucas’s hand and tried with all my might not to let futility catch me. Beat me. I'm Sophia, frickin', Canon; I do not give in, or give up. There had to be an answer, a way out of this. I closed my eyes tight and began counting in my head. Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve … I got to thirty-four and felt calmer. I opened my eyes and released Lucas’s hand. I had been gripping it too hard, and my fingers hurt.
I was disappointed in myself that I hadn’t put it all together. Connected the dots, noticed the strangeness. But in my defense, the last forty-eight hours had been pretty full. A lot had happened, and I comforted my ego with the explanation of all the distractions. A shiny yacht I had chalked up to good luck, a pleasure cruise with a handsome man who wouldn’t talk to me, the anticipation of reaching the castaway island. The champagne, the pirates, I mean who can think when there are pirates holding you at gunpoint? Then the escape, the jump overboard, the raft, the storm, the sex. Yeah, I had a lot on my mind. It was easy to miss, to not see the red flags.
But Lucas had seen them. He had been thinking. It came to me all in a rush that he must have noticed something was amiss from the start. Why else would he have been messing around with the panel? And he kept his head when he spotted the pirates, had warned me, kept me close. He'd risked himself to rescue me, killed a man, God knows how, perhaps with his bare hands. I looked at his hands now, strong and rough and capable of killing, of caressing. They were hands that held me and made me feel safe.
Through everything that distracted me, Lucas had been puzzling out the pieces and knew we wouldn’t be rescued. Not anytime soon. And he hadn’t freaked out. No cursing or throwing the stupid motor overboard. He had instead been calm, and caring. He had made love to me as if we lay in our own bed, safe on land, not a worry or care. I couldn’t figure him out. What kind of man lets things roll off of him like that?
I drew in a deep breath and let it out, slowly blowing out the fear and the tenseness in my shoulders. Well if he can roll, so can I. What we needed was a plan.
I looked around, out at the sea, hoping the plan would present itself. The breeze that had picked up cooled my skin as it blew across my damp neck. I was clammy with sweat; wearing the jacket had kept the sun off my skin, but it made me warm and muggy. I unzipped it and held it open for the wind to get inside, cool my chest and dry the sweat that trickled down my cleavage to end in my bra, which was already damp with it. The breeze fluttered the back of the light material, and I felt like a limp kite, unable to take off, but dreaming of the sky.
My eyes flew open wide, and I turned, letting my jacket cling back to my skin as I grasped Lucas’s shoulders.
“A sail! We can make a sail!” I was so excited about the idea I hugged him hard, and kissed him loudly on his mouth, which I noticed was dry and starting to chap.
Lucas hugged me back and looked to our suitcases thoughtfully, “Yeah,” he said slowly, “that may work.” I saw he was thinking it through, he turned his face to the breeze for a minute, then reached over and grabbed my face and kissed me. “We'll make a sail,” he said softly, “and we will get home.”
I took his meaning of home to be America, not an invitation to his house, but it warmed me and excited me that we had a direction. A plan.
First things first, I dug through my purse and found my Chapstick. I applied some liberally to my lips, which were also quite dry, then handed the tube to Lucas, who did the same. Then I pulled out the bottle of water and took a mouthful.
The sweating and heat were sapping away all my moisture, and I contemplated stripping off the jacket. On second thought, though, I knew the sunburn would do more damage to me, so I left it on and resigned myself to being clammy and uncomfortable. Because we will make a sail, move across this ocean and go home.
Lucas finished the bottle of water, and I replaced it in my purse. I made a mental note to refill it from the metal can later. By my estimation, with Lucas’s water bottle, the one left in my purse, and the water stored in the can, we had about three days of water between us. We would have to ration more than we'd been drinking, with the heat of the sun and the inevitable sweating. We would need our wits and every bit of focus if we were to get off of this raft. I hoped that three days of sailing would be enough to land us somewhere. Anywhere that had a phone would do. Or cell service.
Lucas and I rummaged through our bags and decided that my wraps would be the best choice for a sail. I had brought three. A white one, a black one with white turtles running up the hem, and an orange one that was the color of a sunset and displayed blue dolphins dancing diagonally across the brilliant material.
I love wraps. I have stacks of them. In the summer, they're light and sexy. I wear one almost every day, matched up with a cute pair of sandals and a bikini, they're the perfect summer garb. Now my three favorite wraps would be a perfect sail.
As I removed the small sewing kit from Lucas’s shaving bag, he said behind me, “Sophia, there’s a small problem with the plan.”
I turned to him, sewing kit in hand. “There always is, isn’t there.” I refused to let the comment ruin my optimism.
He smiled, but I could see it was jus
t to make me feel better. “We don’t have a mast.”
I sat there, clutching a handful of brightly-colored wrap, and the small plastic box that held needles and an array of tiny cardboard spools of thread. I looked away from him, not wanting to see his face that I knew only showed indulgence. Not wanting him to see my face, which I was sure was close to cracking and letting out the panic, or worse, tears.
I took a second and concentrated on the feel of the sweat that was slowly dripping down my back, and then I steeled my spine, set my shoulders and turned back to him.
“Then find one.” I gestured out to the water around us. “Find some driftwood, the ocean is filled with it. We haven’t been looking for anything, but we could have passed by dozens of masts since yesterday and not even known it. “So,” I said in my best schoolteacher voice. “I will sew the sail. You look for the mast. We’ll figure it out as we go.”
I knew I was in denial, but once I said it aloud, my idea actually sounded logical. There's always stuff washing up on the shore of every beach I’ve ever been to. Washington gets the debris from Japan and China all the time. Tons of it. So asking for a stick wasn’t outside the realm of expectations.
I set to my task.
* * *
The sewing kit was really quite pathetic. It had little spools of thread that would do for sewing a button or repairing a tear but to actually make something it would be nearly impossible.
I decided I would make individual stitches every two inches; I would make them strong and tie them off, and then make the next one. It wouldn’t be a seamless stitch job, but it would hold the wind, and maybe with luck, and a mast, and the rope we had tied everything down with, it would turn into a sail that would carry us home.
