The Dragon Delasangre

by Alan F. Troop

  21

  The next Tuesday, I wake to find the morning air changed, shed of the last remnants of summer’s warmth. I breathe in deep, savor the crisp, clean smell of fall—the lightness that the air takes on when it casts off most of its humidity. It invigorates me, makes lingering in bed impossible and I rush upstairs to the great room and throw the windows open so the north wind can fill the room with autumn’s first chill. Smiling, wishing Elizabeth had wakened with me, I stand by the windows facing north, toward Miami, and let the cool air wash over me.

  My smile fades when I notice the sail far to the north—the tiny yellow-and-white triangle bobbing on the bay’s blue waters, too far away to make out the shape of the boat. At first it seems not to move, but slowly, inexorably, it travels in the direction of my island. I shrug, try to ignore it, but find it impossible not to watch its progress, not to wonder why it’s sailing toward me.

  Finally I force myself to walk away from the window. I can’t think of any reason this one boat should catch my attention. I know the most westward channel in the bay lies a half mile to the east of Caya DelaSangre. I realize that, a quarter mile offshore on the ocean side, the water remains deep enough, even at low tide, for almost any pleasure boat to pass. Certainly, I think, no day goes by without at least a few boats cruising near my island. Still, this craft bothers me.

  Frowning at my uneasiness, I return to the window every few minutes to check on its progress. Within an hour I can make out the cut of the boat’s sails, the small triangular jib and the larger main sail—both made of alternating, diagonal strips of yellow and white sailcloth.

  “It may be Santos,” I tell Elizabeth when she wakes and joins me in the great room, the Hobie cat now large enough for us to make out its twin hulls and the “H” insignia in its main sail.

  She shrugs, says, “You taunted him. You must have wanted this,” and goes downstairs to work in her garden.

  I maintain my vigil as the sailboat approaches, then passes by on the bay side, close enough for me to see Santos alone on the boat’s canvas deck, the man wearing only cutoffs and a sleeveless sweatshirt, his gaze fixed on my island. Walking from window to window, I follow his progress, admiring the way he handles his boat.

  The man circles the island, finally letting his sails go slack, the boat stalling, bobbing in place while he reaches into a small blue bag lying on the canvas next to him and takes out a pair of binoculars. On his knees, constantly shifting his balance to counter the pitching of his stalled boat, Santos scans the island.

  I back away from the window when he turns the glasses in my direction but still, before he sails off into the open bay, he waves, as if he’s sure I’m watching.

  He repeats his visit the next day, disappears for almost a week, then visits us again, this time with the Morton woman on board. It becomes a pattern, a few times each week for him to sail around us—sometimes alone, sometimes with the woman. At each circumnavigation of the island he sails closer, always staring at the land, studying the house.

  October passes, then November. During that time my pregnant bride’s body progresses from slightly rounded to moderately swollen. Elizabeth complains about her human form, insists on buying new clothes each week. She gives up driving her Corvette and switches to the more comfortable seating of my Mercedes. Our lovemaking, once a daily affair, diminishes to random, occasional couplings. Elizabeth spends less time in her garden, asks less often to go to the mainland and, when we do go, complains that bumping across the bay jostles her too much.

  Food, always important to her, becomes her primary interest. While we continue to hunt and feed each evening, it no longer suffices for her. I begin to defrost steaks each afternoon. Elizabeth accepts them without uttering a single complaint.

  No matter the weather, Santos manages to continue to visit the waters around us at least once each week. Elizabeth ignores his presence completely. When I point out his boat to her, she says, “It’s in your power to stop him.”

  It is. Arturo wants to eliminate him, requests I let him do it each time we speak. Unable to get my permission for that, he offers to have the Marine Patrol harass him or to arrange for the police to arrest him again for DUI. “I finally had the opportunity to talk to the manager at Joe’s,” he tells me. “The man assured me that for the right sum of money, Santos will be fired any time we request it. And one of the governor’s aides has promised me the state will be glad to offer him a ranger’s job at the Castillo San Marcos in Saint Augustine in the event he needs a new job. If you want”—Arturo grins, obviously proud of his ability to manipulate events—“we can get the Herald to transfer Casey Morton to their Jacksonville office too.”

  I refuse all of it. “He’s harmless,” I tell Arturo. And I repeat to Elizabeth, “Nothing’s happened since October. If the man could do anything, he would have done it by now. If he wants to serve his dead sister by sailing around my island a few times each week, so be it.”

  * * *

  Still, whenever his boat arrives, I stop whatever activity occupies me and turn my attention to his movements. Some days, when the wind and water collude to provide safe passage for him, I envy his time on the boat. I’ve sailed Hobie Cats myself and know the pleasure of skimming across the water before a stiff breeze.

  On the days that the weather turns bad, the wind punishing Santos with its gusts and shifts, the waves leaping around him, threatening to engulf him, I wonder at his perseverance, wonder if I would be so constant, so willing to risk injury for a lost cause.

  “I admire him,” I say to Elizabeth when she refuses to look at the catamaran cruising off the island’s shore.

  “Why give the fool any recognition?” She shakes her head. “What he does accomplishes nothing. One day he’ll realize that and go away.”

  She harumphs and walks from me when I say, “At least he’ll be able to tell himself, he tried his best for his sister.”

  22

  Elizabeth’s appetite amazes me. By mid-December, she takes to consuming her human prey each evening, as well as two twenty-four-ounce steaks upon awakening and another two each afternoon. She catches and eats so many of our younger dogs that I have to ask her to stop, lest our pack declines so much it no longer represents a threat to outsiders.

  “The child must be fed,” she says. “I have to maintain our strength.”

  I nod and take my swollen bride in my arms, smile when she accepts and returns my embrace, holding me longer than she used to. Pregnancy has softened her, made her more needful of my affection. I find I like her wanting more from me than sex and food. We often spend hours sitting side by side in the great room, watching the waters outside, silently enjoying the warmth of each other’s company. Other days we walk on the island’s beaches, holding hands, discussing our future.

  Elizabeth provides no argument about the child’s first name. “Henri,” she says, “is a fine name, a strong name. Could we give him my father’s name too?”

  “Of course.” I smile at the weight of such a name—Henri Charles DelaSangre—for such a small, yet-unborn presence. I wish he could be born sooner. I possess no doubt that Elizabeth will be a good mother. Already she has begun to prepare a birthing chamber in one of the other bedrooms, helping me scrub down the walls and floors, reminding me again and again that we’ll need fresh hay when her time nears.

  I no longer wonder about our relationship. “If you demand perfection from your mate,” Father taught me, “then you must learn to expect loneliness in your life.”

  As much as I would like Elizabeth to share more of my likes and dislikes, I find myself cherishing the time we spend together. She may not care for books, but she seems to enjoy sitting at my side while I read them. She may not love music, but she tolerates my listening to the stereo. We both smile at each other’s presence, both reach out to touch each other whenever we’re near and, I think, if it never gets any better, it still can be more than enough for me.

  Even Santos no longer seems to bother her. When
his boat comes into view, she no longer leaves my side. We discuss the water conditions and his sailing technique. “After the baby’s born, I’d like to learn to sail a boat like that,” she says. “Will you buy me one?”

  “Sure,” I tell her.

  The first true winds of winter arrive a few days before Christmas. For the first time since summer, the sun fails to warm the midday air. Outside, the wind beats against our closed windows, moans when it can’t force its admittance. I take one look at the gray skies, the frenzied, frigid waves leaping on the bay and call the office, tell Emily to cancel my weekly meeting with Gomez and Tindall. Then I build a fire in the great room for Elizabeth and me. “This is Florida,” I say. “It’s not supposed to get this cold.”

  Elizabeth grins, shakes her head at my discomfort. “The weatherman says it’s only sixty degrees. At home it grows colder than this every night,” she says. “You’re acting as if a blizzard has attacked us when we both know it will be warm again in a few days.”

  I leave her laughing in the great room while I go below to light a fire in our bedroom. Elizabeth mindspeaks to me a few minutes later. “He’s here again.”

  “Santos?” I say. “In this weather?”

  Elizabeth joins me at the window, watches with me as the sailboat fights its way through the water, one hull rising and lowering with each wind gust, the boat almost going airborne as it races from wave to wave. “He’s crazy,” I say.

  “They’re both crazy,” Elizabeth says and I nod when she points out Casey Morton standing, busy working the jib lines, helping keep the boat from flipping by leaning out away from the Hobie, supported only by her feet against the trampoline and a wire suspended from the top of the mast, connected to a canvas sling beneath her rear.

  “It’s called being out on a trapeze,” I say to Elizabeth, pointing to the other wire that supports Santos in the same way.

  In their full black wetsuits, they look to me like two shadows sailing. “No life jackets,” I say, shaking my head. But I have to admire his control, the Hobie leaping and bucking, slicing the tops off waves as it overtakes them.

  Santos amazes me by turning and zigzagging north, battling the vicious north wind until he finally reaches the channel between my island and Wayward Key. The boat turns toward the channel, slows for a moment, wallows in the rough sea, then shoots forward. Santos and Morton lean back, away from the boat as the windward hull rises, Morton shifting position, her left foot slipping.

  She shouts, reaches for Santos, her body pivoting away from the Hobie, only her right foot remaining in contact with the trampoline. He grabs for her with his right hand, his fingertips touching hers.

  A gust of wind hits the sails and the boat speeds ahead, burying both bows into the wave to its front. The Hobie stops as if it’s hit a wall, the stern rising, Morton flailing her arms as the momentum launches her in an arc controlled by the trapeze line attached to the mast. Santos follows, their forward momentum and the wind beneath the trampoline combining to somersault the boat, the man and the woman colliding as they wrap around the mast, their heads crashing together—mast wires tearing their skin, the boat settling over them, floating, bottom up.

  I breathe in deep, watch the disabled boat drift forward, and shake my head.

  “Aren’t you going to save them?” Elizabeth asks.

  “No,” I say. “They’re under the boat. They’ll drown before I can reach them.” I turn, look at her. “Anyway, I thought you’d be relieved to see them out of the way.”

  She shrugs, and continues to watch.

  A head emerges from the water. I stifle a celebratory shout. Instead, I calmly say to Elizabeth, “I think it’s Santos.”

  The man holds on to the capsized catamaran, fumbles with the lines attached to him and, once they’re free, dives under the boat. A few moments later he surfaces, pulling Morton with him. He has to almost throw half her body onto the overturned boat before she tries to hold on, slipping a little as he undoes her lines, staying in place only with his help. When he lets go of her for a second, to get a better grip on the boat himself, she slips away, and sinks into the water.

  I almost moan when she does, hoping that Santos has enough sense to stay with the boat, thinking it better that one of them, at least, survives.

  Santos shouts at her, but the current whips Morton away. He pauses a moment before leaving the safety of the boat, pushes off when she surfaces, treading water, twenty feet from him.

  Neither has a life jacket and I know the current will carry them into the ocean within minutes. Do I have enough time to rescue them? I look at Elizabeth, try to calculate how angry a rescue attempt would make her.

  “I think you should save them,” she says.

  I stare at her, my mouth open until I regain my voice. “Why?” I ask, not about to admit my own desires in this.

  “Go now! Bring them back here. I’ll explain later.”

  The Yamahas thunder to life the moment I turn the ignition key on the Grady White. I throw off the dock lines and speed out the harbor, smashing into waves as soon as I leave the island’s protection. The cold wind lashes me, salt spray soaks my clothes as I negotiate the channel, twisting and turning, the boat battering its way through the swells.

  “Elizabeth!” I mindspeak when I reach the open bay and turn north. “Can you still see them?”

  “He reached her. . . .” she says. “He’s been trying to swim holding her. Their boat floated past him a minute or two ago. . . . He’s trying to catch up to it, but I think it’s moving too fast.”

  I push the throttles forward, fight the wheel as the boat takes a glancing blow from one roller, then goes airborne over another. “How far are they from the ocean?” The Grady White leans on one side as I turn into the Wayward channel, salt spray coating the windshield, turning it opaque, nothing in view around me but churning water.

  “Not far at all.”

  “Where are they?” I cut back on the gas, slow the boat, and search the waters in front of me.

  “To your right . . . about fifty yards. Look toward the corner of our island, just offshore.”

  I turn the boat in the direction Elizabeth says, stare at the waves, catch a glimpse of a black wetsuit, a flash of yellow hair. “I see them!” I say, keeping my eyes on them, speeding up, going past them, then returning, so the current will bring them to me, looking for a way to rescue Santos and his woman without the boat crashing over them.

  Santos backstrokes with one arm while he holds the girl with the other. He doesn’t look up until I reach beside him and put the boat in neutral. “Take Casey first!” he says, making the girl raise her left arm. I reach for her just as a swell lifts us, and carries her out of reach. We come together after it passes, the boat almost drifting over the floating couple. Before another swell overtakes us, I bend over the side of the boat, grab her by her wrist and yank her out of the water.

  She yowls at the sudden shock of having her entire body weight suspended by one arm. I pull her in, ignoring her groan when her body accidentally strikes the side of the boat, dropping her on the cockpit floor where she collapses, gasping, coughing, retching. Another swell lifts the boat and I rush to the side looking for Santos. Seeing nothing, I race back to the wheel, reach for the throttle.

  “NO!” Elizabeth mindspeaks. “He’s at your stern.”

  I find Santos clinging to the bottom of one of the outboard motors, seemingly oblivious to the idling engine’s grumble, vibration and exhaust—trying to gain enough purchase to climb into the boat. Unaware of my surveillance, he struggles on, maintaining his grip around the motor shaft with one arm while he tries to grab the cowling with the other, the boat smashing up and down, his body colliding again and again with the still propeller.

  “Not a very smart place to put yourself,” I say.

  Santos looks up. “I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to put the motors in gear.”

  “It wouldn’t have been a very pretty sight if you were wrong.” I extend my
arm, help him clamber over the stern. He drops to the floor next to Morton, holds her in his arms.

  “She’ll be fine,” Santos says. As much for her benefit as mine, I think.

  I throw the motors in gear and concentrate on turning the Grady White, working my way back to the safety of my harbor.

  Santos feels us turning, and says, “Wait! What about my Hobie?”

  “It’s already out there.” I tilt my head toward the ocean. “It will probably drift to shore, somewhere up the coast, in a few days.”

  “No.” Santos stands, steadies himself against the back of my chair and looks out to sea. “Look, I appreciate your help. God knows I didn’t expect it. But we don’t need you to bring us all the way back to shore. If you can take us to my boat and help me right it, I’m sure I can get us home safely.”

  I shake my head. “It’s just a boat,” I say. “Anyway, don’t worry—I’m not taking you to shore, I’m bringing you to my island.”

  Elizabeth meets us at the dock, three, large white-cotton bath towels in her arms. She waits while Santos and I help Casey Morton out of the boat, then hands towels to both of us. She unfolds the third one and stares at the woman—Morton shivering, barely able to stand. “You poor dear,” Elizabeth says, shaking her head at Morton’s blue lips, the purple bruise on the woman’s forehead and the numerous cuts and tears to her wetsuit. “We’ll get you inside and warm right away.”

  I raise my eyebrows at my bride’s newfound solicitude, watch as she tenderly wraps the towel around the woman. “Elizabeth,” I mindspeak. “You wanted me to save them. I did. Now what?”

  She glares at me, puts one arm around Morton’s waist and guides her toward the house. “Come,” she says over her shoulder. “Let’s get all of you by the fire.”