Cross Current

by Christine Kling

  She shook her head and reached for the water bottle. I let her drink a little more but stopped her after a couple of mouthfuls.

  The dress she wore had been hand-hemmed with tiny little stitches, and the lace around the collar had been added by hand as well. But either she had lost weight during her time at sea, or the dress had been made for a much larger child. I wondered if it had been her First Communion dress. The thin fabric fell in folds off her shoulders and the skirt nearly ripped as I began to wring out the dirty water. The waistline of the dress could have enclosed two little bodies her size.

  She licked her lips, swallowed and pointed toward the swamped boat. “Name Erzulie.” She closed her eyes after she spoke, as though the effort had depleted the last of her energy.

  “The woman? That’s her name? Er-zoo-ly?” I tried to pronounce the name as she had with that musical rhythm.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  I reached for her arm. “Oh my God. You speak English?”

  She nodded, every movement an effort. “Papa Americain.”

  A white American, I guessed. That explained the light skin.

  Her thin arm reached toward me, and I thought she wanted another drink, but she wrapped her small hand around my fingers. “You help me.” The effort of saying those three words completely did her in; her eyelids drooped again, her mouth opened, her breathing came fast and shallow.

  I entwined my big fingers with her tiny brown ones and squeezed softly. “Yes,” I said, my throat constricting so this time I could barely croak out the words. “I’ll help you.”

  I saw a small twitch at the corner of her mouth. It was almost a smile.

  III

  Holding her arm, I helped Solange to her feet, but her little legs collapsed beneath her. I scooped her up and carried her toward the pilothouse. She was tiny, couldn’t have weighed more than fifty pounds. I could feel her eyes watching my face, and then she rested her head against my shoulder. Her salty braids brushed against my neck, and I touched the top of her head with my chin, cradling her tight to my chest as we passed through the door. I felt as though a fist had grabbed hold of all the organs in my chest and was holding them tight. I didn’t want to let her go.

  When I got to the bunk that ran along the rear of the small compartment, I set her down and straightened her dress around her scrawny knees.

  “Stay here,” I said, motioning with my hand because I wasn’t certain how much she understood. She curled up on her side and closed her eyes. I covered her with an old beach towel.

  Out on deck, I fired up one of the gas pumps and drained most of the water out of the fishing dory. The hose kept picking up floating debris and clogging the filter, but I soon got out enough water that I could climb down into the boat to tie a good towline on her.

  I hadn’t been able to smell anything when I’d been up on Gorda's deck, but once I was down in the boat, with the water now pumped out, the stench from the corpse struck me. It was a thick, cloying smell, almost palpable. I felt it would permeate my hair and clothes the way cigarette smoke does. The woman’s skin was discolored, turned an ashy green, and though I tried not to look at her, I found myself drawn back again and again for a quick glance at the form that had once been a woman. She wore a bright tropical-print dress with parrots and palm fronds. In other circumstances, it might have looked cheerful. I imagined this woman must have thought so when she chose it, and I envisioned her in an outdoor market in Port-au-Prince, carefully selecting the dress she would wear to America, not knowing it would be the dress she would die in.

  Nothing from my lifeguard training told me how long it takes a body to swell. Had she drowned? I couldn’t tell without a closer examination, nor could I tell whether the skin on the side of her head had been broken by some blow or simply ravaged by the gulls that had been feeding on her. And I wasn’t about to roll her over. I would deliver her to the authorities as I had found her.

  I tied two long nylon lines to the bow bitt and climbed back aboard Gorda. After securing the towlines at the stem, I put the tug in gear and got us on a heading for Port Everglades. In the logbook, I made my entry, noting the time and date and the exact GPS location where I had picked them up—Latitude 26° 11.67 Long 79° 58.12.

  Abaco had been cooped up in the head a long time and I could hear her whining. I eased her out and introduced her to the girl. She put her paws up on the bunk, her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth, breathing dog breath all over the kid. The child’s eyes popped open and she reared back against the bulkhead. But when Abaco licked her hand, Solange’s mouth spread in a tentative toothy smile, and I knew they would be friends. I opened a bottle of Gatorade this time, gave her a little, and left them to get better acquainted.

  Out on deck, I made a quick check around the horizon for boat traffic, cleaned up, coiled the lines, and checked on my tow. The fishing boat was riding well, given that the Gulf Stream was like a lake. I was glad I wasn’t towing in a following sea. The weight of the body in the back of that fishing boat was making it ride very low in the stern. I checked our progress toward the red-striped stacks of the power plant that marked the entrance to Port Everglades. We’d be in all too soon, and I knew I’d better get a hold of Jeannie so she could meet us at the dock.

  I called Outta the Blue on the VHF and asked Mike to call Jeannie on his cell phone and tell her to meet us at the Lauderdale Marina fuel dock in front of the 15th Street Fisheries Restaurant. I knew I’d have to get myself a cell phone one of these days, but I was postponing the inevitable as long as possible. “Tell her it’s an emergency,” I said.

  “You okay?” he asked over the party-line airwaves.

  “Yeah, sure.” I tried to make my voice sound light and unconcerned. “You know Jeannie—it’s hard to get her moving unless you tell her it’s an emergency.” I laughed and held the mike open long enough for him to hear. When I turned from the radio to check on my passenger, she and the dog were curled up together in the bunk, both fast asleep.

  Jeannie Black was my lawyer and best friend. Though she worked out of her home, and her six-foot height and nearly three-hundred-pound figure didn’t fit the image of the high-powered corporate lawyer, I would match Jeannie’s brains and heart against anyone’s. Legal entanglements were a given in the world of no-cure, no-pay marine towing and salvage. The client promises you anything to get his boat off the rocks, but once he’s safely hauled at the yard, he often has second thoughts about the agreed-upon terms. Just recently Jeannie had helped me settle a salvage claim that paid off my boat loans and made Gorda mine, free and clear. She’d shown me how to use the rest to set up a college fund for a young girl we’d met on that job. I knew Jeannie would figure out a way to keep Solange safe.

  The rocks at the end of the harbor jetty were abeam before we passed the first pleasure boat on her way out of the harbor. The twenty-foot center console open fishing boat was bristling with dozens of rods and antennae. She was piloted by high school boys. As it was Wednesday, just past noon, they were probably skipping school. Shirtless, they looked like they were wearing white tank tops as their chests still bore the tan lines from their last time in the sun. They hooted and hollered at what they must have thought was a drunk, fat lady facedown in the skiff behind Gorda.

  Once inside the harbor, I slowed the tug in the turning basin and pulled my tow alongside. With a small tarp I’d pulled out of the deck box, I covered the body enough so that when we tied up at the pier at Lauderdale Marina, the dock jocks couldn’t speculate on the contents.

  The dock in front of the restaurant parallels the Intracoastal and serves as fuel dock space for most of its two- hundred-foot length. Late in the afternoon, the restaurant sends someone out with fish scraps to feed the pelicans, and hundreds of the birds flock to the dock. The nearly tame birds often hang out on the pilings, waiting for an unscheduled handout, and the antics of the greedy pelicans bring the tourists. Some days you had to elbow aside the families in matching mouse T-shirts just to tie up yo
ur dock lines. Fortunately, there were no tourists on the dock this afternoon.

  No one came out to take my lines. The dock jocks recognized the boat and knew that I preferred to handle my own docking, tie off my own lines. Once the tug was close enough to the dock, I used the boat hook to drop a midships spring line over a piling cleat, then I slowly idled the engine in forward, helm hard over, until she eased in and nudged alongside the bleached-wood dock pilings. When Gorda was secure, I turned off the engine and checked on my tow. I was considering whether or not to tie a stem line on the fishing boat when I saw Jeannie hurrying through the opening between the 15th Street Fisheries Restaurant and the small bait shop. As always, she was wearing a billowing tropical-print muumuu—today’s was decorated with huge red hibiscus flowers; the voluminous straw handbag over her arm had a matching yarn flower sewn on it.

  “Seychelle, we’re here!” she called, as though I could miss her. Her twin sons, Andrew and Adair, waved to me and then ran to the bait tank and leaned over to watch the fish, their identical blond heads ducking under the wood lids, rumps in the air as they pointed into the water.

  I climbed up onto the dock just in time to be enveloped in a Jeannie hug.

  “Are you okay? When Mike called, I was so worried! The boys stayed home from school today with the flu, so we came straight here.”

  My face was pressed against a huge red blossom, and I could barely breathe. “Jeannie, let go, I’m okay.” She released me, and I took a deep breath.

  “So tell me, then, what’s this emergency?”

  I knew it would be hard to explain. “Do you think you can get down onto the boat?”

  She eyed the three-foot drop to Gorda's deck and gave me an exasperated look. “It won’t be a pretty sight, but I can do it.”

  She was right on both counts. Once she was down on deck, I led her to the wheelhouse, and while I went in, she stopped at the door. Abaco was still curled up with the girl, but the dog lifted her head when she saw us, and her tail thumped against the aluminum bulkhead. The girl awoke with a start and tried to pull away from us, back into the shadowy corner of the wheelhouse bunk.

  “It’s okay. Shhh. It’s okay,” I said to the child. “This is Jeannie. She’s my friend.” The girl’s head dropped, chin to chest, as though the effort of holding her head up was just too much for her. I turned to Jeannie. “We’ve got to get her to a hospital. She needs IV fluids. She’s severely dehydrated.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. Whoa. Time out.” She was making referee signals with her hands, and for a moment my mind flashed on the image of her billowing muumuu racing up and down the sidelines of a playing field. “Stop grinning at me.” She pointed at the girl. “Where did she come from?”

  “I found her out there.”

  “Oh,” she said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm. “You just found her.”

  “Yeah. I saw what I thought was a half-sunk boat, adrift, and when I went to investigate I found her in it. I have no clue how long she’s been out there.”

  “And apparently you haven’t called the Coasties or they’d be here by now.”

  I shook my head.

  “What is it with you, Seychelle? Don’t you ever learn? It’s not like they’re going to send you to jail for it, but why do you always have to start by pissing off the authorities?” She shook her head.

  “She’s only half of the story, Jeannie. Come on.” I led her around the wheelhouse and pointed down at the fishing boat tied alongside.

  “That’s what I found her in.”

  “Okay, it’s a boat.”

  “Look again, Jeannie.” In the stern, a foot was visible protruding from the tarp.

  “Geez, Seychelle, what the...”

  “That’s exactly what I said, Jeannie.”

  “I take it that person’s in a lot worse shape than the girl?”

  “You could say that. It’s a woman—was a woman. The girl says she’s no relation. I wanted you here before the cops came.”

  “I guess I can understand that. So I’m here. Let’s make that call. Now.”

  “Okay, okay.” I crossed the aft deck, then turned back to face her. “You understand this, don’t you, Jeannie? I mean the kid, she’s Haitian, and you know what they do with illegal Haitians.”

  “I know. I know this is just you being you. This time, though, you’re up against the U.S. government—the INS. You probably don’t have a hope in hell of keeping that little girl here. Especially if we continue to delay calling the authorities.”

  “But she says her father’s American.”

  “You talked to her? She speaks English?”

  “Yeah, she speaks a little English—maybe even more than a little. It’s hard to tell. She barely has the strength to say two words. I just don’t want her to get thrown into a foster family, even for a day or two, and then shipped back to Haiti.”

  “Seychelle, I’m not an immigration attorney.”

  “I know that. I just need you to get me some time, that’s all. Maybe I can find her father.” I climbed up onto the dock, carefully avoiding the dozens of white splotches of pelican poop.

  “That’s pretty iffy. For all you know the guy won’t even want to claim her.”

  I straightened, brushed off my hands, and paused for a minute, trying to find the right words to express the feeling I’d had ever since looking into those big brown eyes through the binoculars. “Jeannie, there’s something about finding a kid like that.” I thought about how frail and helpless she had felt when I’d lifted her in my arms and carried her to the bunk, and once again I felt the tightness in my chest. “I just can’t turn her over and walk away. I’ve got to try.” I headed up the dock.

  Leaning against the side of the bait shop, the pay phone receiver to my ear, I began the second run-through of my story for the 911 dispatcher when I noticed the Coast Guard launch. The hard-bottom inflatable with a center console was piloted by what looked like two well-fed Iowa farm boys in blue coveralls. With their identical builds, Florida tans, and military-style haircuts, they looked like older versions of Jeannie’s twins, only one was blond, the other brunette. It was the blond who motioned for his buddy to back the boat closer to the wooden fishing boat. Though their launch was only eighteen feet long at best, the blond waved his right hand in the air, making concise hand signals to back up a little more, speed it up, slow down, stop, as if he thought he was docking a 747 in her berth at the airport.

  When the blond reached down and pulled back the tarp, first he lost his Florida tan as the blood drained from his face, and then his barracks breakfast went when he heaved into the Intracoastal off the inflatable boat’s stern.

  IV

  Over the course of the next couple of hours, Gorda turned into a rendezvous point for nearly every law enforcement agency in South Florida. Abaco paced the decks and barked at the men and women who came aboard, but soon even she was exhausted, and she retreated to the shade of the cabin. The paramedics were the first on the land side, and I was glad to lead them to Solange. Their uniforms, equipment, and squawking radios scared her, but they had to stick an IV needle in her whether she liked it or not. Solange didn’t cry, but the fear in her eyes was naked and raw, and I wished there was something I could do to make it all seem less terrifying. I tried to imagine the world she had known in Haiti. Though I had never been there, I was pretty certain that her former life did not include men in uniforms crowding her, asking her questions, poking her, feeling her limbs.

  Several Fort Lauderdale Police Department cars arrived and were followed by a Crime Scene Unit and then the coroner’s van. The FLPD Marine Patrol Unit tied their launch alongside the Coast Guard inflatable after a young woman who worked the dock complained that all the boats were eating up her fuel dock space.

  Soon there were two sites being worked: the child in Gorda’s wheelhouse and the wood fishing boat with the dead woman. A turf war was under way as the Coasties and the sheriffs and the local Fort Lauderdale PD all tried to take control of th
e scene. Shouting men and women on the aft deck of the tug and on the fuel dock tried to move the wooden boat from where it was tied on the outside of Gorda over to the dock so they could begin to collect the evidence and deal with the body. Thus far they were more concerned with all of that than with questioning me, so I sat and held Solange’s thin hand as the medics worked on her. Each time something new and strange was thrust at her, those deep brown eyes turned to me with a yearning for reassurance.

  Those eyes did something to me. They fired up some deep inner mechanism I didn’t know I possessed. I wanted more than anything to wrap my arms around her and protect her from harm. I wanted to tell her it was all going to be okay, as my dad used to tell me when things got bad for my mom. He would hold me and tell me that everything would turn out fine if we’d just give her time, only that turned out not to be true at all. I couldn’t be sure that things were going to turn out fine for Solange, either.

  The Border Patrol pulled up in a big white Chevy Suburban with green lettering on the side just as the paramedics were pushing Solange on a gurney toward the back of their van. Jeannie told the officers they would have to follow the unit over to Broward General if they wanted to question Solange. I wanted to jump into the back with Solange, but I gave her hand one last squeeze and tried to smile.

  A uniformed officer ordered me not to leave the scene until I had spoken to the detective in charge. Jeannie assured me she would follow the ambulance to the hospital and see that Solange got the care she needed, both medically and legally. I thanked her, waved them off, and walked back onto the dock, girding myself to face the grilling I knew was coming.

  “Miss Sullivan, over here.”

  There, standing next to the bait tank, was the last person I wanted to see. Somehow, though, I’d known all along it would be my luck that he would pick up this case.

  “Detective Victor Collazo.” I bobbed my head in a curt hello. He hadn’t changed much in the months since I’d seen him last. Even in this heat, he was wearing black pants and a long-sleeved shirt that was supposed to hide the thick black body hair that tufted out of his collar and around his wrists. His neck was shaved close all the way around. It looked like a firebreak in the black forest. I imagined his barber had to replace his blade after each Collazo visit. In response to the heat, he’d removed his suit coat, and the sweat rings under his arms already reached nearly to his waist.