Red Sea

by Diane Tullson

  My own heart is racing and my hands are shaking. The infection probably accounts for her temperature. Her body is trying to fight it off. I pump a bowl of cool water from the tank and with another towel, sponge her forehead, chest, and back of her neck.

  I gather the used towels into the bowl and take it to the sink. Yesterday I just threw out the bloody towels, but I’ll have to wash these or I’ll run out. If I heat water on the stove, I can boil them to kill any germs. When we left Djibouti, we had everything anyone could need on this boat. Both Mom and Duncan were crazed that way, packing and stowing and recording so that we could be self-sufficient, so that we could survive in a world without 9-1-1. And if we lost our boat, then the go-bag too had everything we needed to survive, at least for a while. My eyes go to the wall next to the stairs where we strapped the go-bag. The varnish is lighter where the bag used to be, a ghostly shadow in the exact outline of the bag.

  I let the bowl clatter into the sink. They won’t even know what half of the stuff is. They’ll probably pitch out the antibiotics. They’ll have a good laugh at the photo, telling their pirate friends how we tried to fight them off with a flare gun.

  I put my hands up to my head. I know we had antibiotics in our big first aid kit, but the pirates took them or they’re lost. And the go-bag, of course. I clench my teeth. Where else? Where else would Mom and Duncan keep antibiotics?

  I slam open the door to the medicine cabinet in the head. I’ve already checked in here about two hundred times, but maybe they put some in another kind of container. I plug the sink and dump my mother’s vitamins out. Just vitamins. Her birth control pills are here. She doesn’t use them for birth control; Duncan had a vasectomy. Apparently, they help moderate PMS. She could use a stronger dose. There’s a half-roll of Tums and a blister pack of seasick medicine, that’s it. Under the sink I pull out more pads, a package of toilet paper, several cleaners, including antibacterial surface wipes that I set aside, a package of Velcro hair rollers my mother bought and never used, thank goodness, and my shower kit. I haven’t used it since Australia. The marina there had showers so clean you could go in bare feet. In Australia, I washed my hair every day. I take a careful sniff of my underarms. Okay, so this is a different world. I put everything back under the sink, shovel the spilled vitamins back into the bottle and close the cabinet. There’s a small cabinet in my mother and Duncan’s cabin that I’ve checked, but I’ll do it again.

  When I open the cabin door, the smell of my mother’s perfume hits me between the eyes. After the attack I wiped up their floor, but the scent has permeated everything in the cabin. Breathing through my mouth, I paw through their cabinet.

  More vitamins. A small make-up kit with foundation, mascara and, wow, two shades of lipstick. Mom took this sailing minimalism seriously. Duncan’s shaving kit, even under the onslaught of broken perfume, still smells like him. I zip it back up. Mom’s kit has a tube of Tylenol that I keep, but nothing else that’s useful. I dump out their drawers onto the bed. At home I used to hide things under my bottom dresser drawer. Sometimes I’d find stuff there that fell out of the back of a drawer and down the inside of the dresser. I get onto my hands and knees and feel around the inside of their cabinet.

  Apparently, my mother knew about the hiding place as well, although the pirates missed it. In hers, I find a zipper bag with our passports and some cash and most of their credit cards. Another bag holds a picture of me, this year’s school picture. In the picture I’m wearing a pale blue V-neck shirt. Jesse bought the same shirt and it looks better on her because she actually has cleavage. She said she forgot I bought it. At least she didn’t get her picture taken in it. I don’t have the shirt anymore. It got torn and I threw it away.

  I wonder if Mom has this picture so she could show it to the authorities if I ever made a break for it. Like I would. Half the time I spent in the cities was within sight of the boat, reading a book in the shade of a building, or playing with the seawall cats. Not that I’d ever tell her that.

  The bags are beaded with water, and I feel a small puddle in the bottom of the cabinet. I get right down on my belly and peer inside. A perfect circle of daylight meets my eye, a bullet hole in the side of the boat. Oh, good. The hole is above the water line, but in the storm the waves must have washed in. How many other holes like this are hidden behind the furniture?

  There’s one last bag, a small package inside wrapped in tissue paper. There’s no card, but the tag is my father’s handwriting: For Lib, on your birthday. The wrapping paper is the same he used on my Christmas gift that came while we still were in Australia. He must have mailed this one along with it.

  My birthday isn’t until April. Through the plastic I feel the package, tantalizingly heavy. What the hell. I open the plastic bag, pull out the gift and rip off the paper.

  It’s a folding knife, with a blue handle and a bright yellow cord. I open the blade. It has saw teeth, like Duncan’s sailing knife he always carried in his pants. Duncan would have slept with his. It would be in the pants he was wearing when he went overboard. My temples pound.

  So, it’s a sailing knife. On it are tools I wouldn’t know what to do with—a nail file, a small paring knife. I study each one, marveling at how much fits in one compact knife. As gifts go, it is definitely the most weird, but somehow, it pleases me.

  A year ago on my birthday, I was grounded. Jesse and I had been at the mall and met some guys who were going in to see a movie. We went with them, without phoning, of course, and so were hours late getting home. Dad said that for my birthday he’d bake me a cake with a file in it like they used to do for convicts so they could break out.

  This year, Mom would be happy if all she had to worry about was me being at a movie late. Using my new knife, I cut a piece of heavy-duty silver tape and plaster it over the hole in the hull. Won’t hold out much, but it gives the illusion of repair. I leave the drawers pulled out so I can keep an eye on the hole, but I fold all Mom and Duncan’s stuff neatly back into the drawers and stack them on the bed. I slip the yellow cord of the knife around my neck.

  ELEVEN

  NO ANTIBIOTICS. I grab the Tylenol tube and set it in the galley where I’ve put the rest of Mom’s bandage supplies. To Mom I say, “Unless you have another secret stash somewhere, then we don’t have any antibiotics. And if you do have a secret stash, then by all means, wake up and tell me where it is.”

  From the bruised apples I select a relatively healthy victim and take it and a foil pack of tuna over to the dining bench. With my knife I carve paper-thin slices of apple that I set onto my tongue, imagining that they are dissolving like snowflakes. I roll tuna inside the apple wafers and eat them together. The sweet crunch of the apple goes well, I think, with the salty blandness of the tuna. Surprising, really, that no one has thought of doing this before.

  I open the saw-tooth blade of the knife. Duncan said his could cut through wire rigging if it had to. Mine would surely cut through fishnet. I would just have to dive underwater to the propeller. Dive under the boat.

  I swallow.

  “How hard could it be?” I direct the question to my mother. “I can put my head under water in the bathtub. I’ve done it in a pool. I just don’t like to. That doesn’t mean I can’t.”

  I climb out into the cockpit. Outside, a light wind combs the jumbled seas into some sense of direction. The headsail is billowing loosely. My hair brushes my cheek. The knife hangs around my neck. I find a swim mask in the cockpit locker and fit it over my face.

  It smells of old tires and seaweed and sucks on my face too hard because I forget or don’t know that I have to breathe through my mouth. I don’t seem to get enough air that way and I have to fight hard against a rising panic. I force myself to slow my breathing, make myself calm down, before I let myself take the mask off. I laugh a little, it’s so stupid. It’s just a face mask. I put it back on but push it up onto my forehead.

  “I’ll tether myself to the boat. That way, I can pull myself back up wheneve
r I need to.”

  The waves stir the water to an opaque gray. Anything could be under there. “But there’s nothing under there, and anyway, I can climb back onto the boat whenever I want to.” I clip a tether to the wheel post. The tether extends just to the swim platform on the back of the boat. “Not long enough. I’ll need to attach two together.” Mentally I estimate the distance to the propeller under the boat. When Duncan bought the boat he had it pulled out of the water to inspect it. I know where the propeller is. I know that the bottom of the boat is painted black and looks like the belly of a whale. I didn’t like standing under the boat when it was out of the water. I felt that it could trap me. I’m not thinking about what it will be like to swim under it. “Maybe I’ll use three tethers, just to be sure.” I link the tethers and make a loop in the end to slip under my arms. I can’t wear the harness because it’s designed to inflate when it submerges in water.

  Duncan wasn’t tethered. He didn’t have a harness that would inflate to keep him above water. The image of his yellow jacket slipping under the water makes the breath stop in my throat.

  “I can do this. I’ll get the propeller free and start the engine. Then I can be out of here.”

  I sit at the edge of the swim platform and let my feet swing over the water. I tug on the tether, making sure it’s secure. And again. I take the knife from around my neck and shorten the cord so that it hangs from my wrist. I open the blade.

  “The ladder!” I get to my feet and unfold a two-step ladder that extends the short distance into the water. It’s harder than it looks to get back on the swim platform without the ladder. Duncan tried it once just to see if he could do it. He couldn’t. He had told us a story about these people who were becalmed on a passage and decided to take a swim. They all jumped in, then realized they’d forgotten to put down a ladder. Their boat was found but they weren’t.

  Mom said it sounded like one of those urban myths. Still, she always checked that Duncan put the ladder in before he swam. On the few occasions they swam together, Mom made me sit in the cockpit. Some lifeguard.

  Duncan only told us those stories when we were still at home. Once we moved onto the boat, real life was scary enough. I yank on the tether one more time, check the ladder, pull the mask over my face, grasp the knife in one hand and step down into the water.

  It’s not cold, but my breath blasts from my mouth in gasps. I climb back onto the bottom rung of the ladder. I can do this. I lower myself to my shoulders. Still gripping the ladder, I plunge my face into the water.

  The salt always surprises me. Cool water crawls over my scalp, into my ears. I lift my face and gulp a breath, then before I can think too much, I let go of the ladder.

  The tether is taut and I let out some slack. Treading in place, I swallow huge gulps of air. The swim platform bobs above my head. From where I am, the hull of the boat seems to curve endlessly under the water.

  “So, I’ll just dive under the boat now.” My voice sounds ridiculous with my nose sealed under the mask. Dibe udder da boat. I suck in as much air as I can hold, then let go of the tether.

  Through the mask, the sea is green where the light touches, then appallingly quickly, fades to black. I’ve barely submerged and already my air feels spent. I pull my arms against the water and kick my legs. In air. My legs aren’t even under water. The tether wafts around my shoulders. I could swim right out of it. I burst back to the surface for air.

  I knot the loop in the tether so it holds snug against my chest. My skin is prickly with goose bumps. This time I use the bottom step of the ladder to push off.

  Under the boat, there’s no sunlight. Under the boat, the water is black. It meets me like a wall and I backpedal. The tether snakes around my legs. I don’t have enough air. My eyeballs feel like they could burst. I struggle to swim out from under the boat. My foot brushes slime on the belly of the boat. When I break free of the water, I rip the mask from my face and yank huge breaths into my lungs.

  I can’t do it. I wasn’t even close to the propeller. I could see the snarl of netting around it, an enormous dreadlock. It will take hours to cut free.

  But when I cut it free, then I can start the engine. I have to cut it free.

  I put the mask on, crying now. I dive and pull, pull harder, kicking against water now, kicking toward the black underbelly. Pull! I reach for the net.

  The net is light and dense at once, like the inside of a golf ball, the way the strands of elastic wrap into a solid mass. I don’t like the way the gossamer net wants to hold me. Wants to trap me.

  My lungs are on fire. My throat contracts, trying to breathe. I stab at the net with the knife, slash it, then haul myself hand-over-hand up the tether.

  It takes too long to surface. I want to breathe water. My back scrapes on the underside of the boat. Finally I’m breathing air.

  Three more times I dive, pull myself to the propeller, stab and slash at the net, claw at the fibers and some come free. Bits of net waft in front of my mask. My eyes blur with the effort. I rake the knife across the net, plunge it into the net, again and again.

  I need air so badly that my gut is pulling in and out, trying to find air. I can hear my blood pounding in my ears. When I can’t stand it any longer, I turn to go up, and that’s when I see him. Duncan. He’s hanging suspended in the water below me, his head tipped up and wafting with the motion of the water, his gray hair streaming around his gray face. His eyes are open, gray and sightless, his mouth too. From the open side of his skull, gray tendrils trail from his brain. I scream. A school of black fish flee from beneath him, flee from their meal. I scream again and saltwater sears the back of my throat. I grab for the tether, grab and pull and kick, I don’t take my eyes from him, but he disappears in the black water. I claw for the surface, break the surface. At first I can’t draw air, then when I do, it forces my lungs against my ribs until they’ll burst. I scramble onto the ladder, then onto the swim platform, then into the cockpit.

  My breath comes in ragged bursts. My legs are shaking so I can hardly stand. Then I’m crying with shame and defeat. It was just my oxygen-deprived brain. I peer into the waves, struggling to get a glimpse of him again. He isn’t there, never was.

  TWELVE

  IN A MOVIE, JESSE AND I would laugh. First we’d scream, then we’d laugh. If I were writing the script, I would have Duncan extend his lifeless hand and grab my ankle. I shake off the image of the little black fish.

  Wind has come up. Wind means we can move, even if I freaked out and didn’t get the prop free. I tried again but only got as far as the bottom step on the ladder. Even when you know it’s not real, scary stuff lingers, like after seeing a scary movie, when you check the closet and under the bed for a week. I spin the wheel, and the bow eases into a general northerly direction, close enough for now. I tighten the nut on the hub of the wheel to hold it in place, then move around in front of the wheel to adjust the genoa.

  We have an automatic pilot on this boat but it uses battery power, a lot of power. Without the engine to charge the batteries, I don’t have a lot of power, so I have to steer the boat myself.

  The wind fills the sail and the boat heels and we lean away, not exactly at breakneck speed, but we’re under way. The boom rockets back and forth against the mainsheet as if it too wants to take the wind. I settle on the cockpit bench next to the companionway and check the chart.

  The Red Sea occupies the crack between the northeast edge of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Djibouti is at the south end, the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean at the north. The island of Masamirit is roughly halfway up and marks the turn toward Port Sudan on the African coast, about six hundred nautical miles from Djibouti. Our plan was to make Port Sudan where we could fill up with fuel and provisions, then make another passage to the Suez. Emma figured the passage to Port Sudan would take less than a week. Before the attack, when Duncan went off-watch, he marked our position on the chart. His precise pencil-marked circle indicates the time, 3:00 AM, the date, over
two days ago, and our course and speed. A half-circle indicates where Duncan thought we’d be at that time based on calculations he did back in Djibouti. Emma and I plotted a similar line on her chart. It’s called dead reckoning. I swallow. Talking out loud, I study the chart. “The problem is I don’t know where we are now. Presumably, on Mom’s watch she held the same course which put us, at the time of the attack, about here, two hundred miles into the trip and just north of Jabal at Tair Island.” I mark a light X on the chart. “We could have moved a fair distance in two days just with the motion of the sea. What did Emma say about currents in this part of the Red Sea being in the same direction as the wind?” I struggle to remember, making quick notes on the side of the chart. “The storm was from the south, so blew us northward, and with the drift of the current, we might have made about two knots an hour, which is like saying two nautical miles an hour. That would put us well over one hundred miles south of Masamirit Island, and nowhere near Duncan’s dead reckoning plot.” I mark another X on the chart. Using a second pencil as a straightedge, I draw a line on the chart. “So to get back on course, we have to steer a line roughly like this.”

  Who is this we?

  “I have to steer a course, a wild-ass guess, really, based on a wild-ass guess as to where I am now. A real sailor could use the sun and stars to find his position. Duncan has a sextant on board, although he never used it. He got our position from his GPS, which the pirates now have, including the spare GPS that Duncan kept in the chart table, and the one in the go-bag. I can’t use the autopilot, so I have to steer twenty-four hours a day. And take care of Mom.” I rub my sore neck. “I could aim for another port.” Duncan has circled alternative ports on the chart, although some of these would be last resorts, literally, and with the reefs, dangerous for Emma to navigate, never mind me. In Australia I saw boats up on the rocks, gaping holes in the sides from where the rocks bit through the thin hulls. I might make it off the boat, but I’d never be able to get Mom off. And then the shoreline might be uninhabited, or it could be days before anyone could get help. “My best bet is to try to get close to Masamirit where the others might be looking for me.” I tap my pencil on the chart. “To get within range of someone who might come back for me.”