The Sound of Many Waters

by Sean Bloomfield

  A human figure, clothed only in shadow, melted out of the foliage and limped into view. A shroud of knotted hair obscured the man’s face and a scabby gash ran from his neck to his navel. His right arm was missing from the elbow down. The man parted his hair with his only hand, looked at Dominic, and opened his mouth to speak—but Dominic heard the sound of the flowing brook and nothing else. Who was this broken person standing before him? Dominic studied the man’s features for anything familiar and his eyes came to the man’s chest where a patch of lighter-colored skin bore the shape of a conch spire.

  “Good God,” whispered Dominic. “Ona?”

  The man turned away and stepped into the forest and vanished in its obscurity. Dominic jumped across the brook and started to pursue the man, but he suddenly stopped. If it were Ona, wouldn’t he have approached? Wouldn’t he have made contact? A chill leached up the middle of his back. Something was not right.

  At dusk, Dominic and Itori returned to the village with arms full of deer meat. They gave it to the women at the cooking fire, and then Itori ushered Dominic to the chapel where they found Francisco praying inside.

  “Tell,” Itori said to Dominic, and Dominic did. Francisco listened with his hands folded across his lap and his head facing downward as if still in deep prayer.

  “I do not believe in ghosts,” Dominic concluded, “but I do not understand what else it could have been.”

  Francisco looked up at him. “Itori says you were like an animal when you killed the deer.”

  “Angry,” said Itori, nodding.

  “So perhaps your mind simply tricked itself,” said Francisco. “Let us not tell anyone.”

  Dominic glared at him. “Are you saying I did not see him?”

  “I am simply saying that the woods can play games with a tired mind. Our journey was long. Perhaps you simply need more rest. The women have prepared a place for you, a place of your own. Come.”

  They walked along the inner wall of the village. Dominic noticed a circle of women around the central fire. Dripping with firelight, they threw their arms in the air to the booms of a drum. Yaba flailed about in the shadows beyond them, thrusting his staff in the air and shrieking. “Ayyyyeeee!”

  “The crops need rain,” said Francisco. “When it comes, they will think Yaba’s invocation worked. They do not know that I have been praying for rain all day.”

  Francisco led him to a small hut. When they entered, dry, comfortable warmth embraced Dominic. He saw a hardwood cot covered in animal furs. Below it, a shallow pit filled with coals emitted a specter of smoke and a pleasant light. On the opposite side of the hut, a clay bowl filled with water and a basket of roasted hickory nuts sat atop a table carved from a single piece of wood.

  Dominic lay on the cot and ran his fingers through the soft fur. His body hummed with a feeling like warmth and coolness combined, something he never felt in any of the Spanish villas and colonial mansions he had ever lived in. Despite its simplicity—or perhaps because of it—he liked his new home.

  “This will do,” he said.

  “For now,” said Francisco, “it will have to.”

  Dominic crossed his arms. “When will you give back my sword?”

  “When God tells me to. Goodnight.” Francisco swirled out of the hut.

  Dominic stared up at the finely-woven thatch roof. “My hovel,” he said.

  He closed his eyes but behind his eyelids he saw the mysterious figure in the woods. In an ongoing loop, the man staggered into view, looked at Dominic, said something inaudible, and then stepped into oblivion. Dominic knew he would not be able to sleep—whenever his mind entangled itself around something, it did not relent, no matter how exhausted he was.

  He slunk through the low doorway of his hut and crept out of the village, not breathing until he made it through the village entrance. The direction to the hunting grounds took him down the middle trail, first past the shell mound, and then along the perimeter of the burial ground. The partial moon overhead strew droplets of silver on the tall grass, giving him enough light to follow the trail. Mosquitos whined in his ears. He batted them away. As he came to the far end of the burial ground, he froze. There, beside Ona’s grave, stood a figure.

  “Hello?” he said. The figure turned to him and in the gleaming moonlight he saw that it was Mela. He stepped toward her, but she backed away.

  “Do not be afraid,” said Dominic. “I may have seen your father.”

  She did not respond.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “I know you do not understand me.”

  “I understand you,” she replied in flawless Spanish. “But one can lie in any language.”

  Dominic suddenly felt angry at Francisco. Why hadn’t the old man told him that Mela spoke his language? What other secrets was he keeping?

  “I am not lying,” said Dominic. “I saw your father, I think, during the hunt.”

  Mela looked at the grave. “My father is dead.”

  “I thought so, too, but remember—his body is not in there.”

  “You’re a Spaniard. Why would I believe you?”

  “I hardly believe myself. I have seen many strange things lately. But this was different. It seemed… real.”

  Mela stared at him for a long time, and then at the grave. “Take me there.”

  Distant lightning sent white flickers through the woods as they trekked. Growls of thunder shook the ground beneath their bare feet. Thick clouds rolled in and extinguished the moonlight. Mela whistled a mournful tune.

  “Please whistle, too,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “It calms storms.”

  Dominic puckered his lips for a moment but then he stopped and shook his head. He wanted to please her, but he would only go so far. “You can whistle for both of us.”

  When they reached the brook, Dominic shivered against a cold breeze that carried the sweet, earthy scent of looming rain. They came upon a family of foxes huddled around the bloodstained patch of grass where Itori had quartered the buck. The animals scampered into the forest, leaving behind gnawed bits of bone and sinew.

  “How did he look?” said Mela.

  Dominic paused to choose his words. “Not well.” He gazed at her. “I am surprised you came with me.”

  “I love my father.” She leapt across the brook and turned to face Dominic. “I am one of the few who want him to be alive.”

  Dominic jumped across, stumbled in the soft ground, and fell toward Mela. She caught him by his shoulders. He looked into her eyes. “Who would not want him to be alive?”

  “Can you not see? Chiefdom has blackened Utina’s heart. He has fallen in love with power. He wants to bring back the old ways. He wants to take me as a lesser wife. My father would never allow these things.”

  “Wife?” Dominic felt a knot form and tighten in his chest. He took Mela by the hand and led her toward the place where he had seen the man. Could they run off together? Find the coast and walk to San Agustín? She pulled her hand away, but he took it again and this time she did not retract it.

  “Francisco asked me not to tell anyone what I saw,” said Dominic. “Why?”

  “Because of Yaba’s vision,” said Mela. “He and Francisco are jealous of each other, I think. They are both shamans—but with different sorcery.”

  All at once the rain came heavy and cold. Dominic felt Mela’s hand trembling, so he put his arm around her and pulled her close.

  “We should go back,” she said.

  “Alright,” said Dominic. In truth, he wanted to stand there and hold her all night.

  As they turned back toward the brook, a vein of lightning flashed across the sky and brightened the forest. They both gasped when they saw him—the man standing behind a curtain of rain on the other side of the brook—but just as quickly the lightning faded and darkness pervaded the forest.

  “Father?” said Mela. She clenched Dominic’s arm so tightly that he could feel her sharp fingernails digging into his skin. The rain was deafen
ing.

  Another streak of lightning lit the night, and in that instant they could see the man clearly. It was Utina, holding a spear and staring at them with a livid pout. A crack of thunder reverberated in Dominic’s chest and Mela pulled out of his grip.

  Chapter Twenty

  On the day Zane planned to kill himself, a tropical depression had formed off the coast and the seas were far too rough for his boat to make it through the inlet. Besides, no one would have believed that he intended to fish on such a blustery day. According to the marine forecast, though, the following day would be calmer, so, to pass time, he plopped himself on a stool at the Lager-Head and ordered a draught beer and a basket of stone crab claws—the perfect last meal.

  Zane cracked open a claw, pulled out the meat and dipped it in a blob of creamy mustard. He rolled it on his tongue and savored the sweetness. He figured he could eat a hundred stonies in one sitting, but at $25 a pound, he could only afford a few.

  He looked around the bar. Like most unfishable days, it was packed with drunken captains and mates. They reserved their best fishing tales for such times. Zane noticed Leather Heather sitting alone in a corner booth, leaning on a table and holding her head in her hands, the smoke from her cigarette swirling around her face like a bridal veil. He almost wanted to check on her.

  This, he mused, was the last day of his life, and he could not think of a better way to spend it than with the people he had grown up around. Would they miss him? Maybe.

  It had been five years since his arrest. The seven months of prison he served, however, did not feel like nearly enough time to atone for what he had done. His life itself seemed a more fitting compensation, and that was a sentence only he could impose.

  His plan, though, was not entirely selfish; in fact, he had designed it to inflict the least amount of suffering on the few people who still cared about him. He would make it look like an accident. First, as if preparing for any other day at sea, he would load his boat with fishing gear, bait, ice and even a turkey sandwich never to be eaten. After clearing the inlet, he would drive due east, past the tepid waters of the Gulf Stream, until his depth finder—with its range of 1,500 feet—went batty because it could no longer detect the seabed. He had a hundred feet of anchor line tied to four cinderblocks stowed in a bow hatch and after placing the blocks on the edge of the gunwale, he would fasten the other end of the line around his ankles. Then, with his boat still motoring forward, he would jump into the water and watch the line come taut and his weight would yank the blocks off the side and their weight, in turn, would drag him down, down past the place where blue fades to purple, down past the realm of swordfish and giant squid, and down to the moonrock floor of the abyss where angry pressures would shrivel his body into a crumpled likeness of itself and blind crabs would prune the meat from his bones and every molecule of his body and soul would be diffused into the ocean like so many lost mariners before him. When someone found his empty boat still putting around at sea, everyone would assume he fell off and drowned while fishing alone. It was something that happened sometimes.

  “Are you Captain Zane Fisher?” said a voice from behind. Zane spun around on the barstool and found a dark, well-dressed man standing there. In his three-piece suit and shiny dress shoes, the man looked out of place at a waterfront bar.

  “Yes, sir,” said Zane.

  “And that’s your boat out there at the dock, is it? The Lucy?”

  “Lucia.”

  The man sipped a banana daiquiri garnished with a cocktail umbrella. “I’d like to charter it tomorrow.”

  Zane hesitated. “I may have other plans. What are you looking to catch?”

  “Something exceptional.”

  Zane was eager to follow through with his original plan, but would one extra day really matter? If he took the job, then at least he could leave the world with no unpaid debts; the economy was so bad that people had all but stopped paying to go fishing and his bar tab was closing in on absurdity.

  “Be at the dock at 7 a.m.,” said Zane, and then he smiled, “but don’t bring any bananas, okay?”

  The man shot him a confused look. “Why not?”

  “Because they’re bad luck.” Zane was equally confused. Keeping bananas off a boat was an age-old fishing superstition he thought every angler knew.

  Now, as he hid inside the cramped leg compartment of Shady’s sidecar, his face pressed against the reeking belly of the pit bull that sat in the seat above him, Zane could hardly believe that his first conversation with Miguel had taken place only two days before. Now in danger of losing his life, he felt grateful he had not ended it himself. Leather Heather, in fact, had saved him.

  “Are you sure, bro?” Shady yelled over the roar of the Harley.

  Zane poked his face out between dog fat and the sidecar seat. “I have to say goodbye to her. It’ll only take a second.”

  “You’re the boss.” Shady reached into the sidesaddle of his bike and pulled out a wad of black leather and a red bandana. “Put this on so no one recognizes you. It’s my chick’s, so it should fit.”

  Back at the gas station, Shady had agreed to take him to Gainesville only after Zane assured him that—if the cops caught them—he would say that Shady had no knowledge of him being a so-called person of interest. The Law had pulled out of the parking lot without even seeing the frantic old woman chasing after him, giving Shady enough time to lock up the shop and usher Zane into the sidecar.

  Zane pulled the pants over his legs and the jacket over his arms, trying not to disturb the dog. The clothes were almost too big for him; Shady’s girlfriend, he surmised, was a fairly hefty woman. He wrapped the bandana around the top of his head. If he were not hiding in the cramped leg area of a sidecar beneath gigantic dog balls that bounced like a jogger’s breasts every time the bike hit a pothole, he might have felt pretty cool at that moment.

  The bike jerked to a stop. “Hurry up,” said Shady.

  Zane squeezed past the dog and jumped out. Shady had stopped at the edge of the bridge, enabling Zane to descend the narrow trail of concrete to the underside of the embankment without anyone seeing him from the roadway. When Zane reached the bottom, he turned the corner and stopped.

  “You okay, Fishy?” yelled Shady.

  “Yeah,” said Zane, but he wasn’t. Nothing looked the same under the bridge. Blankets and trash were strewn all over the place.

  “Mama?” he called out, but the only sound he heard was a boat wake clapping against the seawall. He stepped into the dimness of the bridge’s shade. Most of the debris scattered about were pieces of the Styrofoam that had been inside the duffel bag. Had Mama Ethel rifled through it to look for more coins? He barely knew her, but it did not seem like something she would do.

  “Mama? It’s me, Mister Zany.” Still no response.

  He found the empty duffel bag hanging from a finger of rebar protruding from the concrete. He picked it up, thankful he had removed the coins before he went topside. His shorts sagged beneath his new leather pants, so he pulled his last stack of coins out of his pocket and put it in the bag.

  “I almost didn’t recognize you,” said a voice that he instantly recognized. He turned and found Miguel standing in the deep shade beneath the embankment. “Going to a costume party?”

  “Where’s Mama Ethel?” said Zane.

  “You mean the negro? She wouldn’t tell me where my coins are, so I insisted she go for a dip. Who knew she couldn’t swim very well—not with a bullet in her back and all.”

  Zane looked toward the river. There, pressed up against the seawall, a multicolored mass swayed in the waves. When he saw the purple pants and Nike shoes, his stomach knotted up. “Mama,” he whimpered. She was face down in the water, her arms spread wide like a child pretending to fly.

  He had brought this evil to her. He was, once again, at total fault.

  “Now,” said Miguel, pointing a handgun at Zane, “unless you’re keen to join her, you need to tell me where my coins are.”
r />   “I hid them.”

  “I see. Well, maybe you are smarter than your father. Perhaps we can make a deal. How about you tell me where they are and then we split them. Fifty fifty.”

  Zane heard Mama Ethel’s sweet voice in his head. The worm betta not find nothin pretty in the robin’s song. He took a step backward and said, “I’m the worm.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I know all about your deals, Miguel. Go to hell.”

  Zane bolted up the embankment. He heard Miguel clambering after him. How had Miguel found his hiding place? What were the odds?

  “Go!” said Zane as he jumped into the sidecar, squeezing himself and the duffel bag in beside the dog. Shady gave it full throttle and they skidded onto the highway, narrowly missing a U-Haul moving truck, and two shots rang out behind them. One bullet struck the motorcycle’s taillight while the other whizzed past and hit the moving truck’s rear view mirror; glass shattered and the truck skidded to a stop.

  Zane looked back. Miguel, standing beside the bridge, slid his gun into the waistband of his pants. Zane had to look again to be sure he saw it correctly—and there it was, a crooked smile on Miguel’s face. Why in the world was he smiling?

  “Who was that guy?” said Shady.

  Zane thought for a moment. “I’m still trying to figure that out.”

  “You know, I could have left you. It wasn’t smart to give me that gold in advance.”

  Zane was not sure how to answer. “Thanks, I guess.”

  They took a right onto US1 and The Law zoomed by in his cruiser, lights flashing and sirens howling, without even noticing them. Zane hunched deeper into the leg compartment of the sidecar and wiped dog drool off his face. He heard the sound of rain and thunder. Peeking out, he discovered that it was playing on the motorcycle stereo. The squally sound eased into jazz instrumentals and Shady nodded his head while The Doors grooved out Riders on the Storm.

  Shady turned onto a side street and then rocketed onto the I-95 ramp. They zoomed north on the highway at a constant 79 miles per hour, passing gargantuan SUVs and family sedans and smears of dead animals, the Brazilian pepper trees on the roadside a lime-colored blur in their periphery.