The Sound of Many Waters
By Sean Bloomfield
For Ever
Copyright © 2012 by Sean Bloomfield
First published 2012
The Sound of Many Waters
Bloomfield Productions
www.seanbloomfield.com
ISBN: 0615700950
ISBN 13: 9780615700953
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“The many Indians from Florida we saw were archers, and, being very tall and naked, at a distance they appeared giants... They had heard of us and of how we cured and of the miracles Our Lord worked through us.”
- Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca,
Spanish Conquistador (c.1490-1558)
Chapter One
Death. It was familiar to Dominic, as certain as the changing tide, as mundane as a moonrise, and no less ordinary than the coming and going of a visitor.
Going where? He cared not.
As his father died—sprawled on the stone floor of a villa in northern Spain—he asked Dominic to hold his hand, but Dominic ignored him. The old man looked pathetic, Dominic thought, gazing into nothingness and drowning in air, like a fish thrown on deck.
“No quiero morir,” were his father’s last discernible words, which he said repeatedly. I do not want to die. The phrase gurgled out of his mouth with each exhale until it was nothing more than a soupy whimper. At midnight he began moaning and Dominic longed for the end so that he could finally put him in the ground and sell his belongings. He did not have to wait long; by morning, the old man was as stiff and crooked as a piece of driftwood. To Dominic’s contentment, he was just as quiet, too.
The old man had passed, it seemed, while in the midst of trying to scream. His face held the look of a nightmare, and his gaping mouth was like the entrance to a dark cave, with rotten teeth for stalagmites and a fly darting around—a tiny bat. Dominic tried to close the old man’s mouth but it sprang back open.
“Even now you cannot keep it shut,” said Dominic.
Within a few years of arriving in el Nuevo Mundo—the New World—Dominic’s loathing and indifference burgeoned while he ascended the military ranks. During his career, he rarely cried about anyone’s passing, unless the feigning of sorrow might have somehow benefited him. It often did.
When natives raided the camp in El Salvador and killed the commander, Dominic stood beside his former superior’s beautiful wife at the funeral mass and conjured up a believable fit of sobbing. Days later, Dominic held the commander’s post, and, on several occasions, his widow as well.
The deaths that least affected him, though, were the ones he brought about himself. He could not even count the number of natives and Englishmen that had succumbed to his sword, the blade of which he lovingly sharpened and polished and caressed every night in the privacy of his quarters.
It was not until he killed his own son that he finally tasted the bitterness of grief.
The day had begun serenely enough, with a pink sky devoid of clouds and a gentle easterly breeze that barely wrinkled the surface of the Atlantic. Such a fine morning incited wariness in Dominic and caused him to contemplate the duality of nature; for there to be good weather in one place, he knew, there had to be foul weather somewhere else, but he never could have envisioned the raging behemoth of a cyclone that was thundering toward La Florida.
Juan, his son, woke late that morning, as he often did, and stumbled across the ship’s uneven deck before relieving himself through a cannon hole.
Dominic watched Juan with disgust. “You’ve wasted the day in your bunk.”
“It’s still early, father,” said Juan. “The sun has only just risen.”
“A real man is always up before the sun.”
“Yes, father. And perhaps one day I will be one.”
Dominic’s ship, the Nuestra Señora de los Dolores—Our Lady of Sorrows—sagged low in the Gulf Stream, her belly filled with silver ingots, gold doubloons and other treasures destined for Europe. Already, the seven other galleons in the fleet had sailed a great distance ahead and out of sight. Dominic had insisted that he be the one to oversee the transport of the King’s share, and so the other ships were not as bloated with riches as the Señora de los Dolores—or, as the other captains called her, la Señora Gorda. The Fat Lady.
Juan staggered to a cast-iron cauldron of steaming porridge that the galleymaster had prepared on deck, a manner of breakfast only possible in the calmest weather. With a ladle as long as his arm, Juan filled his bowl until it overflowed. He licked the sides of the ceramic to capture the surplus but winced when it burned his tongue.
Stupid boy, thought Dominic. You’re as daft as your mother.
Juan slurped the porridge. Studying Juan’s features, Dominic could understand why the other sailors mocked the boy. The dark skin, narrow eyes and flat nose clearly divulged the quarter-native that sullied his genes, for Juan’s mother—whom Dominic had sold into slavery—was a half-breed.
Dominic first noticed it eleven years before, when Juan was an emaciated infant who few thought would survive. As enamored with the new baby as he was disturbed by it, Dominic would lie beside Juan and watch him tremble in his sleep, hoping that the native might fade from Juan’s appearance as he grew older. The opposite, however, took place, and as the years crept by, Juan looked more like his mother. There were days when Dominic considered leaving Juan at a remote port or enlisting him in an expedition bound for an uncharted jungle, but there was something within that prevented him from abandoning his son, some inexplicable instinct that contradicted Dominic’s logic and, occasionally, infuriated him due to the nuisance of caring for a child in a savage land.
The first indication of an approaching threat was the birds. On most mornings, the terns and seagulls would leave their nighttime roosts and fly east over the open ocean where marauding tuna and dorado drove smaller fish to the water’s surface. On this morning, however, the birds soared west toward land, clustered together in massive flocks that intermittently blotted out the sun. The sight troubled the sailors.
“You know what this means,” said Pablo, the one-handed navigator whose white, windswept hair hung over his face like a foamy wave about to break.
Dominic, stoic, glanced at the birds. “Are you really so afraid of a little bad weather?”
“You know how eagerly these waters claim ships.” Pablo squeezed a bead of his rosary between his fingers. “Do not pretend we’re immune to God’s wrath.”
“Oh? And have we lost his favor?”
A gust of hot, humid wind flipped Pablo’s hair back and caused the ship to lurch to one side. “I fear you have.”
Red-hot anger rose in Dominic’s neck. He had a sudden urge to mangle Pablo, but a faint howl drew both men to look east. In the distance, the water’s surface changed from blue to gray as a wall of wind overtook it. Dominic and Pablo grabbed the ship’s rail to brace themselves just as the barrage struck; the tremendous force of air caused the ship to list. Timbers groaned. Sails ripped. The cauldron of porridge overturned and sent a flood of hot, boiled oats across the deck; it surged over the feet of the sailors and spilled into the sea through the scuppers.
“Look now, captain!” Pablo screamed over the roar of wind. “You’ve offende
d God!”
His thoughts clouded by rage and fear, Dominic leaned back and struck Pablo across the face with a clenched fist. Pablo fell to the deck and slid to the opposite side of the galleon on a slimy bed of porridge. “Your sins are unforgiveable, captain!” he yelled. “Unforgiveable!”
The sky went black and the sea morphed into a churning clash of wind and water. The waves tossed the galleon around like porpoises playing with a baitfish. Fierce gusts piled globs of foam and seaweed onto the deck and Dominic watched in horror as a fish leapt from the ocean and was sucked up into the storm. When he felt the deck of the galleon undulate like a jellyfish, Dominic knew that his beloved Señora would not survive the storm. But there was one thing more valuable than the ship.
“Fill your pockets!” he screamed to the sailors, who stared at him with eyes full of terror. “Go below and gather all you can!”
“Papa?” Juan had planted himself beside Dominic as soon as the weather began to deteriorate.
“You, too, boy! As much as you can carry.”
Hours later, Dominic woke on a deserted beach, surrounded by splintered shards of his ship and the bodies of his drowned crewmembers. He discovered Juan’s body among them. The boy’s pockets were filled with silver reales and his hands clenched gold doubloons. Weighed down by the coins and unable to swim, he had been sucked beneath the waves and spit onto shore, as if the ocean detested his metallic taste. The thing that troubled Dominic most was the serene smile on Juan’s face. Death, it seemed, had finally brought him happiness, and he could not recall ever seeing Juan smile before.
Chapter Two
Zane Fisher reached overboard and drove a steel gaff into the side of a 40-pound mahi mahi, pausing as the fish caught the water broadside with its wedge-shaped head. In one motion, Zane swung the mahi over the gunnel of his boat and into an open icebox, blood spattering all over the white deck. He slammed the lid of the icebox shut and lay on top of it. The fish—now incensed by the sting of the ice—thrashed inside so vehemently that it lifted the lid several inches despite the weight of Zane’s 25-year-old body, like a caged beast trying to escape.
“He’s still a bit green!” Zane yelled to his client, Miguel, referring not to the fish’s emerald color but to the substantial amount of vigor left inside it. Miguel stood watching the spectacle from the safety of the bow, still holding the fishing rod.
“How the hell do you know it’s a he?” said Miguel.
Zane was delighted that Miguel had finally engaged him in conversation. Best of all, he asked him a question he could answer. “It’s simple really,” said Zane. “The males, they’ve got square-shaped heads, and females’ heads are curved. I guess human girls aren’t the only ones with curves, right?”
Zane laughed at his own joke, hoping that the excitement of the moment would make Miguel more apt to laugh along with him. Miguel, however, did not even smile.
“I see,” was all that he said.
The mahi continued to thrash inside the icebox, but with air flowing through its gills like slow poison, the veracity of its writhing diminished and Zane was able to latch the lid. He stood and wiped the blood off his face and listened to the fish’s tail thump against insulated plastic.
What motivated the fish to continue fighting inside the icebox? Was it fear? Anger? Did it somehow know that it would never again stalk the quiet depths or glide on saline currents? Whatever the case, Zane wanted it to die soon. It saddened him to see anyone—or anything—suffer.
Only moments before, the fish had been prowling a deep expanse of ocean several miles off the coast of Palm Beach, basking in the balmy flow of the Gulf Stream. Its prey that day was flying fish and it had used a patch of sargassum seaweed as a shady cover, ambushing any school that passed. Like most local fishermen, Zane cherished sargassum. With tiny natural buoys scattered between its yellow leaves, sargassum was unique among seaweeds; it stayed afloat during its entire life cycle. It was a thriving ecosystem that existed solely on the tops of waves, a tangled oasis for countless creatures including baitfish, juvenile sea turtles, crustaceans, and the myriad predators that consumed them. Zane’s heart had thumped with excitement when he spotted dozens of flying fish leaping frantically, bereft of their usual grace, from beneath a spread of sargassum.
“Get ready!” Zane said to Miguel as they approached. “Something’s chasing that school of flying fish.”
Miguel glanced toward the melee but showed no excitement about it, so Zane attempted a joke in hopes of drawing out a smile. “Or should I say a flock of flying fish?”
Miguel looked at Zane with a blank, almost irritated, stare. But the clatter of a strike ended the unpleasant moment, and Zane turned to see one of the trolling rods bowed over. Line peeled off the reel, causing it to sing out a high-pitched wail. The mahi at the other end of the line leapt from the water and shook its head in an attempt to throw the hook. Its body shimmered like molten metal in the afternoon sun. Zane was awestruck by the sight, but his mind quickly sprang to work.
“Grab that rod!” he shouted to Miguel. “Start reeling!”
Now in the icebox, the mahi was finally succumbing to the alien atmosphere of the world above water. Flopping turned to faint wiggling and soon all movement ceased. Zane lifted the lid. The skin of the fish—which had been vibrant and neon-green just moments before—was now a dull, silvery hue, and its eyes stared into oblivion. The beast was dead.
“Sweet fish, Miguel!” Zane’s body still tingled with adrenaline. “Hold it up and I’ll snap a picture.”
Miguel glared at Zane. “I told you before. No photos.”
In his four years as a charter fishing captain, Zane had never experienced such disinterest and animosity from a client before. What would normally be hailed as a trophy catch—a cause for celebratory high-fives and cold beers all around—seemed to mean nothing to Miguel, not even important enough to commemorate with a photograph. It was as if fishing was the last thing he wanted to be doing, and yet he had agreed to pay $500 for the trip. Miguel’s dark face had carried that same look of indifference and melancholy throughout the day. None of the battles with fish—no matter how violent and thrilling—seemed to invigorate Miguel, nor had the sight of a sailfish vaulting from the ocean as if it were trying to fly. In fact, Miguel spent most of the day staring at the sky, even while fighting the mahi that now lay dead in the icebox.
To each his own, Zane thought. As long as I get paid.
Miguel glanced at his watch—a diamond-encrusted Rolex that flung veins of light across the deck whenever the sun hit it—and then looked at the screen of the boat’s GPS system.
“This is where I want to fish next,” he said, pointing to an area on the digital map that was about five miles north of their position.
“The bite’s been more to the south,” said Zane.
Miguel stared at Zane for an uncomfortable moment, so Zane tried to fill the silence with more words. “The Gulf Stream, you know, it comes really close to shore just south of here, and the fish—”
“I don’t care,” interrupted Miguel. “I hired you to take me fishing, and I’m telling you where I want to go. Take me there.”
Zane looked away from Miguel’s icy gaze. There was a disturbing air about the man, as if some vile thing lurked beneath his murky surface. Most fishermen lived by an unspoken code of respect and kindness while on the water, as if thankful for the mere opportunity to live a life connected to it. Boaters, for example, always waved when passing other boaters—a stark contrast to the hand gestures common on Florida’s busy roadways—and anglers, for the most part, were courteous toward each other. With his terse, businesslike demeanor, however, Miguel was like no other fisherman Zane had ever met. Was he hiding something? Perhaps it was nothing more than a personality flaw, Zane finally told himself, or the product of a difficult life. And who was he to judge, anyway?
Zane forced a smile. “Maybe they’ll be biting up north today, too. Let’s give it a shot.”
Miguel s
tared ahead. “Let’s.”
The center console fishing boat slid over the waves at over 40 miles per hour in the direction of Miguel’s GPS coordinates. Zane glanced toward the shore as they cruised. Now five miles off the coast of Jupiter, Florida—his hometown since birth—he could see the Jupiter Lighthouse piercing the horizon, its hibiscus-red tower distinct against a dull summertime haze. Built in 1860 atop an Indian shell mound and taller than any of the condominiums and mansions that surrounded it, the lighthouse was a backdrop for some of Zane’s most potent memories. The lamp at the top had been preserved and still swirled every night, casting an intense beam of white light across the entire town. It was like God’s searchlight, Zane imagined, because it always found him in moments of intense happiness, danger or despair.
It shone down on him, for example, on the night of his 15 birthday when he invited his classmate and secret crush, Lucia, out in his canoe to fish for snook beneath the Loxahatchee River Bridge. He had been surprised and terrified when she said yes. With her heart-stopping smile, coconut brown skin, and eyes the color of shallow sea, Lucia had always intrigued him, but Zane was a shy boy who rarely found the courage to talk to girls. That’s why he asked her to go fishing; saying the word ‘date’ was impossible.
There was no wind that night. As Zane paddled the canoe across the glassy surface of the Loxahatchee, he glanced at Lucia. With her head tilted back to gaze at the night sky, she looked almost supernatural against the cosmos. Her shawl of hair, draped over her shoulders, was as black as the tannin-stained river below, and her skin was awash in starlight.
She’s perfect, Zane thought, but what’s a girl like her doing in my canoe?
“People shouldn’t group the stars into constellations,” said Lucia. “They’re so much better when you look at them as a whole.”
“I guess most people like order,” said Zane.
“Like Miss Harper.”
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