Shark Island

by Chris Jameson

  “Look at her leg,” Rosalie said.

  They all did. Her prosthetic had been mangled beyond repair, the lower half of it torn off, but the leg had been secured so well that the upper half had remained in place.

  The prosthetic—the fact that she’d had one in the first place—had saved her life.

  CHAPTER 47

  Naomi is surprised to discover that she’s been sleeping. Her face scrunches when she feels the light drizzle on her skin and she opens her eyes, squinting against the daylight. Confusion swirls and for a moment she wonders if she’s dreaming.

  “You’re okay,” a voice says. “You’re alive.”

  She blinks and looks up into Rosalie’s face, realizes that she’s been sleeping with her head in Rosalie’s lap. The unlikeliness of this earns even more confusion, but she sees how exhausted Rosalie looks, the dark circles under her eyes, and the stray locks that have escaped her ponytail. Naomi feels the salt on her skin and reaches up to wipe grit from the corners of her eyes.

  “How long have I been out?” she asked.

  Rosalie shrugs a little. “Less than an hour, I’d guess. But not much.”

  A small groan escapes Naomi’s lips. She’s still exhausted and she feels so stiff. Then she notices the way Rosalie is sitting, the awkwardness of her body, the way she’s propped up on her hands, and the strangeness of their situation crystallizes. Naomi sits up as quickly as she can without making it seem like revulsion.

  “Hey, be careful,” Rosalie says, gesturing toward her legs.

  Naomi starts to shift, to turn to face Rosalie. Her clothes are stiff and rimed with salt. Not completely dry, but crinkling like papier-mâché. The wind still blows strong, but less so, and only a light sprinkle falls from the still ominously gray sky. They sit atop the wreckage of the rusted watchtower, but it’s the wreckage of her own leg that gives Naomi pause. The prosthetic doesn’t even look like a leg anymore. It’s a useless twisted appendage, a ruin all its own. But the leg can be replaced.

  “Are you all right?” Naomi asks.

  Rosalie has been wearing a brave face, stern and tough. The question causes the mask to slip. Her lower lip quivers a bit, but then she nods.

  “I think so. I will be, anyway. It’s just … Kat and Bergting and the captain, that was all bad enough, but Tye … I saw it happen. The blood was bad enough, but I saw the life just go out of his face, like someone flipped a switch and he was just…”

  She can’t finish the sentence. Naomi reaches over to cover Rosalie’s hand with her own. The woman has been less than kind to her, but they are past all of that now. In the wake of such horror and terror, floating in this sea of grief, they can only be quiet and kind.

  There’s the sound of something scraping the rusty metal, and then Eddie Wolchko’s face appears over the edge of the fallen tower. It occurs to Naomi that he looks older. The gray stubble on his chin and the pain in his eyes makes him look worn and a little crazy. But then she thinks how she herself must look and suspects they’re all a bit older now. All a little crazy, from now on. Forever, from this day.

  “You feel asleep,” he says, watching her warily, like he’s afraid she might start barking or horns might grow out of her head.

  “I’m aware,” Naomi replies.

  “More like passed out,” Rosalie says defensively, and it’s never not going to be weird to have Rosalie on her side, in anything. But then Naomi has no intention of knowing Rosalie in the future. There are a lot of things Naomi has no intention of doing in the future.

  “Are you all right?” Wolchko asks, still studying Naomi.

  Who scowls. “Fuck no. Are you?”

  Wolchko blinks, wincing at the question. He shakes his head. “Of course not.”

  “Where’s Walter?” Naomi asks.

  Wolchko hikes himself up and sits on the edge of the fallen tower. “Down with the seals.”

  Naomi shifts herself over, careful not to let the wreckage of her prosthetic catch on the metal lattice, and sits beside Wolchko. She glances down and sees the fisherman standing on the smooth rocky surface of Bald Cap. A swell rises—the ocean is still undulating with the powerful storm currents—but when it washes over the island it’s only half a foot deep. Six inches of Atlantic foam rolls across Bald Cap and then subsides again, leaving the rocks glistening, wet and dark, but above water.

  The seals are everywhere. Some of them are sleeping, while others lumber to the water and slide across the rocks, heads popping up a few feet out into the channel. Bald Cap is tiny, so only a very small fraction of the seals that followed them north can rest here, but Naomi glances across the channel at Deeley Island, and even at this distance she thinks the dark mass on the shore there must be more of the herd. How many of them will stay here, nest here, she has no idea. Did the WHOI team’s experiment work? In her heart, she doesn’t want to know. The answer will never matter.

  What’s odd is how quiet the seals are, as if they’re also older now, exhausted and grieving. Walter stands down there among them, hands thrust into his pockets, still as a statue with its eyes westward, toward shore. He’s so still that when he moves, just to take his hands out of his pockets, Naomi flinches.

  Walter turns to look up at the three of them, there on the wreckage, and points to the south.

  “Get your asses down here,” Walter says. “They’re coming.”

  Naomi hears Rosalie whisper a quiet prayer as they all look across the water to see the Coast Guard cutter rounding Deeley Island. She puts a hand on Wolchko’s back and feels a dam break within her. Shuddering, breath hitching, she exhales loudly, expecting tears to fall. But Naomi doesn’t cry then. The tears won’t come, though they would have been relief. She wonders if she’s dehydrated. After so much time in the water and after all the rain, the irony feels cruel.

  Wolchko and Rosalie climb to their feet, stand on the edge of the rusted tower, and begin waving their arms to signal the cutter. The cutter replies with a blast of its horn to let them know they’ve been seen.

  Naomi smiles, hates that she’s smiling—after all that’s happened, it feels grotesquely disrespectful—but she can’t get the smile off her face. To make it worse, she blurts a single, shaky laugh.

  And then the tears come.

  Shock, she thinks. I’m in shock.

  As the Coast Guard ship approaches, she watches the water, searching the swells and troughs for any sign of a fin. Her rational mind knows that the signal has been shut down, but the fear will lurk in her subconscious forever. She will always scan the water now. For as long as she lives, she will never trust the ocean again.

  CHAPTER 48

  The ship’s horn startles Lorena. She glances over at Kyle, recognizing the flicker of hope and excitement in his eyes. They’d watched the unthinkable unfold across the channel. Sitting inside the tent, they had watched the tower on Bald Cap come down, and they’d known people must be dying. But then the sharks had gone away. As the storm began to subside, they had counted fins every five minutes or so, until twenty minutes passed during which they had seen only one. Since then, they’ve not seen a single shark. They’re still out there somewhere, Lorena knows, but their frenzy is over.

  The horn sounds again, and Kyle scrambles out through the tent flaps. Lorena follows, so happy that the rain has all but stopped. The wind gusts and droplets spatter down from the branches and leaves overhead, but she doesn’t mind. Lorena isn’t going to be bothered by anything now, not with help arriving at last. She’s told herself that Jim and Dorian are safe. At first she feared the worst, but then she hated herself for surrendering to such dark thoughts, and ever since she has told Kyle she is certain his father and brother made it to Bald Cap, that they survived the tower’s collapse, that the sharks have gone away and everything will be all right. She has told Kyle this over and over until at last she has come to believe it herself.

  Only she hasn’t. She doesn’t. Not in her true heart, not in the dark rational core of her, the part she knows every per
son has, the piece of the mind that remains aware of its mortality. That piece of the human mind keeps quiet most of the time, and she’s never been more grateful than now.

  “Come on!” Kyle calls.

  Lorena smiles in hopeful anticipation as she picks her way down from the tree line, over the rocks. The water has receded dramatically, but they can’t get close to the water here. There must be two hundred seals spread across the northwestern shore of Deeley Island, and Lorena knows better than to get too close.

  She and Kyle stand side by side, hearts pounding, as the Coast Guard cutter sends a little rescue boat over to Bald Cap, the rescuers just tiny figures in the distance. The survivors on Bald Cap are evacuated quickly.

  “How many are there?” Kyle asks, eyes narrowed as he tries to get a count. “I wish your phone hadn’t died. We could be sure.”

  Lorena takes his hand and gives it a squeeze. “They’re okay, Kyle. I know they are.”

  She tries to let go of his hand, but he holds on and Lorena doesn’t dare pull free. Together they watch in silence as the tide continues to go out and the tiny figures are brought aboard the Coast Guard cutter. Soon the ship is setting off again, looming toward them, approaching Deeley Island with clear purpose. Lorena smiles. Even in the grim little rational core of her heart, she knows this is a good sign. The Coast Guard has left the small rescue boat in the water and it zips along, bouncing on top of the waves, outpacing the larger vessel. They know there are people on Deeley, or they would’ve hoisted that rescue boat back onboard.

  A lightness fills her and she breathes deeply, watching the officers onboard the rescue boat.

  Then she glances up at the approaching cutter and sees several figures on deck. She squeezes Kyle’s hand and tugs him along with her as she walks nearer the shore. Seals bark at them but shuffle out of the way, none of the beasts bellowing a challenge. Maybe they’re too tired for a fight today.

  She watches the figures lined up at the cutter’s bow railing, studies their silhouettes, their body language, her smile broad. Her first inkling is a knitting of her own brow, as if some part of her sees the truth before her conscious mind can recognize it.

  If Jim were onboard that Coast Guard cutter, he’d be there at the railing, eager to be reunited with her and with his son. The nearer the cutter draws toward the island, the surer she becomes that none of those figures at the railing is familiar. Jim isn’t among them. Neither is Dorian.

  Kyle lets go of her hand, and Lorena barely notices.

  The cynical little voice at the core of her heart feels no surprise at all.

  But her feet go out from under her and she sits down hard on the rocks, numb and weak and bleeding hope. She ought to have known better, she thinks, than to believe in happy endings.

  Then she hears Kyle’s voice, parses the questions he’s asking. The rationalizations he’s running through, speaking them aloud to try to make them real. Maybe his dad and Dorian are injured, being treated on board. That’s got to be it, he tells her. And then he’s calling her name and she can hear that he’s becoming angry with her, frustrated that she’s assuming the worst.

  Lorena looks at him, hating herself for her selfishness. She’s been thinking about her own life and what she has lost, but this boy had just lost his father and his brother, his two best friends in the world.

  Realization strikes Kyle. Lorena watches it happen, sees the way his face crumples.

  “No,” he says, shaking his head. “No.”

  It’s her own face that’s done it to him. She knows that immediately. He’s seen the pity in her eyes and that’s what drives it home, that her heart is breaking even more for him than it is for herself. That’s when he knows it’s true.

  “No,” he says again.

  The rescue boat reaches the rocks and one of the Coast Guard officers jumps into the water and starts wading toward them, finding an open path amidst the seals.

  The cutter remains offshore, not daring to come any closer.

  Lorena sits on the rocks, the surf washing over her legs, and stares at the distant strangers on the deck of the cutter, wondering why they get to live.

  It’s going to be all right, she wants to say. She should tell Kyle that. Really, she should.

  But he’s not a little kid. He’s seventeen. He knows better.

  The time for pretending is over.

  CHAPTER 49

  Walter keeps to himself as the Coast Guard cutter makes for Boothbay Harbor. It’s disorienting as hell, sitting by himself on the deck with a blanket over his shoulders. A medic has checked him over, treated the cuts on his hands and a long scrape he didn’t remember getting on his left arm. His thoughts keep turning toward his boat. He imagines it now, on the bottom, curious fish investigating its shattered hull, maybe a lingering shark prowling around it. Walter worked so hard for that boat, lived on a meager budget, just to ensure that he didn’t have to rely on others for his living. Too many racists and homophobes out in the world. Too many assholes. Now that insurance policy is gone.

  But it isn’t the boat he mourns. The loss weighs on him, yes, but when he envisions the boat down on the seabed his thoughts slip over to Jamie. The way Jamie died. The way Jamie never gave a second thought to how different he and Walter were, always seemed surprised if someone brought it up. Now Walter’s going to go home and the other guys he knew, the other fishermen, will talk about what a tragedy it is, but he knows that in no time they’ll be making jokes behind his back about Walter and Jamie, just like they always have. Maybe they’ll say Walter’s a captain’s widow now. They’ll never understand that what he’s lost is not only his best friend but the only person he’s ever had in his life who has embraced him with blind acceptance, never wanting or needing him to be anything other than the person he is.

  Micah will try to comfort him, of course. That’s what a boyfriend is supposed to do. But he won’t understand what Walter has lost any more than the fishermen will.

  This is the loneliest pain Walter has ever felt.

  The other people around him are hurting, too. The woman and the kid the Coast Guard picked up on Deeley Island sit together on a bench at the cutter’s stern. They don’t hug, but they’re side by side and hand in hand, faces mostly blank. Here and there, the teenager starts to cry again and wipes tears from his eyes, straightening his back, trying to be strong. Tough. Maybe his dad was the sort who wanted him to “man up,” or maybe he’s just trying to wrap his head around what it’s going to cost him to grow up right now. His father’s dead. His older brother, Dorian, is dead. Walter thought he and Jamie had saved Dorian. He doesn’t tell the kid and his mother—if that’s his mother—that they’d pulled Dorian out of the water. It’s not going to help them to know the older brother escaped the sharks once just to die twenty minutes later.

  Gone is gone.

  The cutter docks and the EMTs are onboard in an instant. Sheriff’s deputies wait on the dock. Walter can see the cars, along with a news van from WGME 13, the CBS affiliate out of Portland. He’s sure the others are on the way and doesn’t want a thing to do with them. He won’t be talking to any fucking reporters. He’ll never understand the people who endure horrors and talk about it hours later with a camera stuck in their faces, as if telling the world about the pain of your baby falling out a window is going to make the hurting stop.

  EMTs carry the one-legged girl off the cutter on a stretcher. Naomi, he reminds himself. Whose shark attack last summer set all this in motion. Walter knows it isn’t her fault and he admires the hell out of her. Young woman has steel in her spine and ice in her veins as far as he’s concerned. If not for her, he and the two Woods Hole scientists—Rosalie and Eddie—would all be dead. Walter doesn’t doubt this at all. And he sympathizes with all she’s been through.

  But he hopes like hell that he never sees her again. If he could manage it, he’d like to never hear her name again, either, though once this fiasco hits the news he suspects he’s gonna hear Naomi Cardiff’s name over
and over again for years. Every time he does, he’s going to think about Jamie.

  A light drizzle still falls, but the wind has all but died. The sea is calm.

  Walter takes the arm of a Coast Guard officer. “Who called you? How’d you know to come and get us?”

  The Coastie cocks his head. “Harbor master, sir. I guess you’re Walter Briggs, which means it’s you we were looking for. Harbor master didn’t hear back from you and couldn’t raise you on the radio. Raised an alarm, I guess.”

  Walter thanks him, lets go of his arm. He’s been hanging back while the EMTs take Naomi off the cutter, in no hurry to go anywhere. Now he’s watching EMTs talk to the woman and the kid, and Coast Guard officers escorting Eddie and Rosalie, and he realizes he wants off this tub. Right now.

  He shrugs off the blanket. Doesn’t thank the Coast Guard, doesn’t stop to talk to any of the other people who almost died today, just walks to the gangway and gets off the damn boat. The dock shifts beneath him, but even that feels immediately better than being onboard a boat. The cops have kept the gawkers and the press back a reasonable distance, so while he walks off the dock nobody’s bothering him. Walter feels a weight on the back of his neck, like the atmosphere itself is getting heavier.

  He hears a voice call his name and thinks it must be Micah. His stomach gives a little twist as he realizes Micah is the last person in the world he wants to see right now. The sympathy, the sweetness, the false understanding, the awkward attempts at comfort, and the presumptions of an intimacy that isn’t really there.

  The voice calls to him again and Walter glances up. Past the cops and the gawkers.

  It’s Alice. Her face is streaked with mascara. She’s still crying, but it looks as if she’s been trying to get ahold of herself and now she wipes at her eyes. Walter heads toward her without even being conscious of altering his path. A cop tries to talk to him, but he keeps going. Most of the spectators stand aside, but one middle-aged guy with a handheld recorder tries to ask him questions, maybe a local journalist.