by Jill Barnett
The first thing he saw was Smitty’s butt. She had one knee on the bench, and she was half bent over the back of the lifeboat with an oar in her hands. She was banging it against something hard and hollow.
“You’ve almost got it!” Theodore shouted, kneeling next to her while Lydia sat on the bottom of the boat holding the baby and trying to peer around Smitty’s thin white skirt.
He watched them, then heard her bang the oar again. “There!” she said, then dropped the oar back inside and looked to be tying something. Her butt wiggled the whole time.
Hank dropped his hat beside him. He locked his hands behind his head and took in the view. Nice . . . really nice.
Finally she straightened. “That makes seven.” Dusting her hands together, she turned, and her gaze met his. She stiffened slightly.
He yawned, then scratched his head and stretched. When he looked at her again, she was frowning at him.
He frowned back. “What the hell are you doing?” She raised her chin. “Salvaging things from the shipwreck.”
He sat up and looked behind her.
Hitched to a mooring chain at the other end of the lifeboat was a rope caravan made up of floating trunks, wooden boxes, and barrels. The garbage can, which was still in the bow of the lifeboat, was filled to the brim with glass bottles, pans, and a kettle.
He glanced out at the smooth silvery water, where the bright sun reflected back. He blinked, then saw the ship supplies and wreckage that floated on the surface.
Something knocked against the stern of the boat a couple of times. Hank leaned over and squinted down. A small silver flacon was floating nearby. He fished it out and looked at it.
Smitty glanced up. “Oh. What’s that?”
“Nothing. Just an old perfume bottle.”
She held out her hand. “Oh. It looks lovely. May I—”
He tossed the bottle over the side. “The last thing we need is more crap in the lifeboat.”
He stretched and yawned again, then flexed his arms and legs and grunted and groaned a few times. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her shake her head. He ignored her and frowned up at the clear blue sky to get his bearings, then sat up and began to unwrap the rigging.
Smitty whipped out the map and plopped down on the seat, pressing the map open with her hands and a few irritating crackles. She leaned down and burrowed through a box, then pulled out a twin compass, protractor, and a pencil.
“Where’d you get those?”
She looked up, distracted. “Hmm? Oh. These?” She held up the plotting compass and pencil. “From one of the trunks.”
He watched her for a moment.
“I’ve been studying the map.”
She’d been rattling the map.
“. . . and the way I have this plotted we should sail . . .” She poked the compass into the map and swiveled it around. “About, hmmm, yes, that’s it . . . ” She lay the protractor on the map and said, “Forty degrees south. Or perhaps it should be sixty degrees?” She paused and looked up, then looked back and studied the map. “No, no, I was right. Forty degrees southwest, not south.” She pulled the pencil from the compass slot and jabbed it behind her ear before she looked at him.
He didn’t say anything, just adjusted the sail lines and checked the wind.
“We were traveling west when we left Dolphin Island and here on the map is Cook Island. It’s southwest of Dolphin.” She chattered on about how she had figured their correct course taking into account the time past and direction, never realizing that current and wind were involved.
He yawned again while she yammered about how she had calculated her course until his eyes began to glaze over.
She finally shut up and tilted the map toward him, then scratched her finger over it, pointing at a chain of islands. “See? Forty degrees southwest.”
Hank trimmed the sail, looked up at the sky for a minute, then turned the lifeboat sixty degrees northeast.
She watched him, frowning. She glanced down at the map in her hands, then looked at the sun, at the sail, and again in the direction they were headed. “I believe you’re going the wrong way.”
He gave her one of his universal grunts meant to cover a whole wealth of responses from “Yeah” to “Who cares?”
She crumpled the map in her lap. “You are not going to listen to me, are you?”
“No.”
“I am an intelligent adult, Mr. Wyatt, and I should have something to say about how we proceed.”
“Think so?”
“Yes,” she said emphatically.
“What happened to blind acceptance?”
“What happened to democracy?”
“I run a monarchy. Besides, you’re a woman.” He grinned. “You have no vote.”
Her mouth fell open and her eyes narrowed.
He didn’t smile, though he wanted to. She was angry. He stared out at the sea. “Don’t go and get your knickers in a knot there, Smitty. Women have their uses.”
She grew angrier. Her knuckles were white, and her lips thinned. But he had to give her credit; she didn’t snap at his bait. He could see her thinking.
She glanced at the children who had been watching their exchange with avid interest and leery eyes. Then she stared out at the sea for a minute. When she turned back toward him, she appeared to be biting back a smile.
Not the reaction he expected.
A second later she began to laugh, honestly and clearly, which surprised him, although he didn’t show it.
She stopped laughing after a minute or two. “Now I understand you.”
“Think so?”
“Yes.” She paused, then beat her fist against her chest and lowered her voice to deep tone. “Man hunt! Ugh! Woman cook!”
He stared at her, then rubbed his beard. “I’d say that about covers it.”
She gave him a look that said she wasn’t fooled or angry. “Does that tactic work often for you?”
He gave a sharp bark of laughter. She did have a brain. He watched her for a minute. “You are quick, Smitty.” He paused. “For a woman.”
“As you said.” She gave him a sugary smile. “We do have our uses.”
Chapter 5
“Hey, Smitty! Make yourself useful and hand me that can of water.”
Margaret slowly looked up from bouncing the baby—an attempt to keep her happy. Annabelle didn’t want to be held. She didn’t want to play. She wanted to crawl all over the boat. She wanted to throw handfuls of soda crackers. She wanted to do anything but sit still.
Lydia and Theodore had had two arguments over who got to sit by the goat, another about who had asked first, one about who was hogging the other’s space, and three more about who touched who. Now Lydia was pouting, and the goat brayed with obnoxious regularity.
It was hot, and Margaret was sweating. The air was thick enough to swim through, and her head ached from the heat of the sun. She had draped a tarp over her head and over the children to block out the sun.
Her sweat-damp hair hung in her face, and she had Annabelle’s soda crackers crumbled all over her. In her mind, they were hopelessly lost and His Majesty, king of his little monarchy, wished her to hand him the can of water.
He had stripped off the black tunic and was lounging in his end of the boat in what must have been his prison clothes: a pair of filthy cotton pants with a rope belt and a cotton shirt with only one button left. The shirt gaped open and showed his tanned chest and washboard-flat stomach, both of which were covered with black curly hair.
At one time—perhaps a year ago—his clothing had most likely been white. Now it was gray. He held the sail lines in one rough hand; the other hand was tapping an irritating tune on the rim of the boat.
His hat cast a shadow over his face. She couldn’t see it until he tilted the hat back, stretched, and gave a jaw-cracking yawn, then scratched his hairy, tanned stomach. Next he jutted his chin out and scratched his beard and neck with such vigor she was surprised he didn’t use his foot
She watched
him, completely amazed.
After a minute he looked at her expectantly.
She smiled innocently.
“Well . . .”
“Hmm? Did you want something?”
“The water. Hand me the water.”
“Oh, certainly.” She clamped one arm around Annabelle and grabbed a tin cup from behind her. “Let me pour it for you.”
He frowned at the cup. “Where’d you get that?”
“This cup? From one of the trunks.”
She spun around on the seat so her back was to him, and the baby giggled and clapped her hands. “Fun! Fun!”
Yes, Annabelle, Margaret thought, this is going to be fun. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Hank was looking off in the distance, whistling. She tapped the water can with her foot to rattle it and quickly dipped the cup in the ocean, then covertly dried the outside with her skirt.
She turned back, gave him another honeyed smile, and handed him the tin cup. “Your water.”
He grunted something, then raised the cup to his mouth and swilled down a nice big Neanderthal-sized gulp.
Water sprayed everywhere, and he roared one of those foul words. He swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “That’s seawater!”
“I know.”
“What the hell did you do that for?”
“The peasants are revolting.”
He stood up, rocking the boat, and stepped around the mast, then crawled past her. He grabbed the can, grumbling a string of foul words before he moved back to his end of the boat.
Annabelle looked up at him and said, “Hi!” He frowned.
She grinned and waved her hands. “Sit, sit, sit, sit!”
“No, Annabelle.” Margaret shook her finger. “No. No. That’s a bad word.”
He raised the can and gulped down some water, then screwed the cap back on the can and set it down between his feet.
“Shouldn’t we be rationing that water?”
“Worried, Smitty?”
She scanned the horizon on all sides, then gave him a pointed look. “Do you know where we are?”
“I don’t have to know where we are.”
It was like talking to a brick.
“Men have instincts. Think of it as a sixth sense.”
“What? Ignoring women?”
“That, too.” He waved her off with one rough hand, then added, “I know exactly where I’m going.”
“Without the map or a compass.”
He tapped a finger against his temple and gave her a cocky I-know-everything look. “It’s all in here. A natural gift, sweetheart. Like knowing the exact moment to pick a pocket.”
She shook her head. “You have no scruples.”
He grinned as if she had just complimented him. He propped his arms on the boat rim and nodded at the trunks behind her. “Any cigars in those trunks?”
The look she gave him was meant to tell him exactly what he could do with his cigars.
“Beer?”
“No. No cigars, no beer, and no hoochy-koochy dancers either.”
He grinned and stared at her legs. She looked down. Her humidity-drenched skirt clung to her like a second skin.
“I don’t suppose . . .” He raised his head and looked her in the eye, then shook his head. “Nah . . .”
After a few minutes he began to whistle and tap out another tune on the boat rim. He sighed and glanced around him. “This is the life. Fresh air. Sunshine . . .”
Annabelle hit her in the face with a handful of sticky soda crackers, then giggled. Margaret blinked, then brushed the crumbs off her face and took the cracker tin away from her. Annabelle let loose with a howl that raked down her spine, then the baby began to squirm and twist.
Fifteen torturous minutes later Hank glowered at her for the hundredth time. “Can’t you shut that kid up?”
“I’m trying . . .” she gritted, frustrated and edgy and feeling completely disarmed by one little baby, who was howling like a banshee, trying to squirm off her lap and succeeding. Margaret tried to give her back the cracker tin, but she batted it away and screamed louder.
Margaret blew a hank of limp hair out of her face. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Christ! Do something.”
Lydia looked up from beneath the shadow of the tarp and said quietly, “My mama used to rock her.”
“Yeah, Smitty. Listen to the girl. Go on.” Hank waved his hand and acted as if it were his idea. “Rock her.”
She counted slowly to ten.
“What are you waiting for? Rock the kid!”
She shifted, holding Annabelle who screamed and squirmed and kicked.
Margaret leaned forward. She plopped the crying baby in his lap. “You rock her.”
“Like hell!” he bellowed and froze. “Get her off me!” He sat there, his arms spread out as if little Annabelle were something untouchable.
An instant later, Annabelle stopped crying so suddenly that everyone stared at her. She sobbed once, then hiccupped She tilted her small, wet face up and stared at Hank.
He was eyeing the baby the way some of the opposing attorneys—the men—eyed Margaret.
The baby hiccupped once more, then stuck two fingers in her mouth and curled her small, pudgy body closer to his big, tanned one. She sighed and snuggled her head against his dark chest.
A moment later she was sound asleep.
The mournful sounds of an old freedom song rode slowly on the thick, stagnant air. The notes sounded sadder than Hank remembered. He stopped playing and tucked the harmonica away, watching Smitty stare out at the water. The children had fallen asleep, and the goat was eating the hem of her skirt.
It was suddenly quiet, the only sound that of the water lapping at the sides of the boat. After a few minutes she turned back and looked at him.
“We’re lost,” she said abysmally.
“We are not lost.”
“Do you know where we are?”
He looked left, then right, then skyward. “We’re floating in the middle of the Pacific.”
“Funny,” she said under her breath. “Very funny.” She dipped a handkerchief in the water and swabbed her neck and cheeks. “I know we’re lost.” She slicked her hair back from her face with the damp cloth.
“You women are always worrying about something. Everything’s a big deal to you.”
“Oh, I see. Men are calm and rational and understanding.”
“We don’t get our knickers twisted over stupid things like women do.”
“Stupid things?” She wrung out the handkerchief with a firm twist.
He gave the cloth a pointed look. “Primping.”
“I’d hardly call cooling myself off primping.” She swabbed her neck and hands. “However, I don’t expect you to understand that.”
“Knowing how to stay alive is a helluva lot more valuable than sewing samplers and drinking tea.”
“I don’t sew samplers and drink tea. I have a profession.”
“A profession,” he repeated mockingly, then laughed. “A professional female?”
She looked at him as if she wanted to say something, but she remained silent.
“So what is this profession? Tea tasting?” He laughed again.
She eyed him for a long time, then said, “I don’t think I’m going to tell you.”
He shrugged as if he could care less. After a minute or so he looked at her. “I know one thing.”
She sighed. “What?”
“This profession of yours can’t be in navigation.”
“Goad all you want, I still say we’re lost.”
“Which is why I’m sailing the boat and you’re not.” He locked his hands behind his head and watched as she dipped the cloth again and wiped her arms.
“There’s a whole ocean of cool water out there, Smitty. Don’t let me stop you.”
“Pardon me?”
“Just strip and jump in.”
“You expect me to jump in the ocean.”
He shru
gged. “It’s cool. Think of it as bathing.”
She dipped the cloth in the water again. “This is sufficient, thank you.” She rubbed the handkerchief over her arms.
He snorted.
She looked up. “What was that for?”
“You women and all your little niceties. Just take off your clothes and jump in the water.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “I’m supposed to believe you wouldn’t look.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t look.” He winked. When she said nothing, he added, “What’s the matter? No guts?”
“Give up.” She turned to look out at the sea. “Your tactics don’t work with me.”
“Yeah . . . I have to say, you don’t take the bait often.” He paused, then began to tap out a tune on the boat rim because he knew it annoyed her. “Tell me something.”
“What?”
“What do you call that thing you’re wearing anyway?”
She looked at him, frowning. “What thing?”
He waved his hand at her clothes. “That thing.”
“A dress,” she said with enough sarcasm that only a deaf man could miss it.
“Not much to it. Looks pretty thin and cool to me.” “It’s imported cotton. From France.”
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“I’ve been to Paris.” He gave her a lascivious grin. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, Smitty . . .” He waited for a moment. “That cotton thing you’re wearing sure didn’t cover much when it was wet.” He shook his head, then he gave a short, sharp cat whistle. “Helping you inside the boat was, well, it was almost like looking at a French postcard.”
Her back went ramrod straight. She was silent, her eyes looking anywhere but at him.
Before he had time to gloat, the wind picked up as quickly as it had died. It almost seemed to come out of nowhere. A small gust blew the tarp back and her hair from its topknot. Another stronger gust buffeted the sail. The boat rocked on a shallow swell, and the air began to cool a few degrees.
Frowning, Hank glanced around, then looked behind them.
Rolling into the horizon was a fast-moving cluster of dark storm clouds. He whipped back around.
Smitty was looking at the clouds, too. “That’s a storm coming.”
