Float Plan

by Trish Doller

  “Thanks for…” I lift my upturned palm to indicate the way he held my hand during the liturgy. “I was thinking about Ben.”

  “I figured as much,” he says as we walk from the church to the taxi van.

  “Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever stop thinking about him.”

  “Don’t know why you would,” Keane says. “Eventually—and I say this from experience—you’ll start building a new house beside the ruins of the old. When you’re ready, you’ll know.”

  Back aboard the boat, we change into sailing clothes. Keane pulls the dinghy out of the water and lashes it to the deck for the next leg of the trip, while I close all the hatches and put on some music. There’s a lightness to our movements and moods. Maybe it’s because Eulalia gave me a healthy dose of home and Keane got laid, but as we motor out of the harbor into deep water, we look at each other and smile.

  more than you think (12)

  It was Ben’s idea to go to Rum Cay. He’d seen YouTube videos of some guys kiteboarding and cliff jumping, and he wanted to do that. And while he would never have admitted it, he liked the idea of visiting an island reputed to be named for a West Indian rumrunner that wrecked off the coast. It was one of the few stops on his route where he planned to rent a cottage so we could have a romantic night off the boat.

  The seas have swelled since Chemineau snuck out of the bay this morning. What was likely a pleasant sail for them has become a battle for us. The late-afternoon sun is shining, but we are pummeled by the wind, and my hands—even wearing a pair of Keane’s old sailing gloves—are sore from fighting the tiller.

  “Is it absolutely necessary for us to go there?” He eats cold chili from a can with a fork. “Bite?”

  I take the offered lump of meat and beans, wondering if he thinks it’s weird that we’re sharing a fork. And wondering if he wants to avoid running into Sara. The island is not very big. “Ben really wanted to go there.”

  “Okay,” Keane says. “Do you have any specific plans?”

  I’ve always been a little faint of heart about cliff jumping and I don’t have the money to rent a kite board, so I’m not sure what to do on Rum Cay. “Not really.”

  “Maybe this is where you pitch a tent the way you’d hoped to do on Pig Beach,” he suggests. “Flamingo Bay looks secluded. No pigs. No people. Good reefs. I’ll even stay on the boat, if you want to be alone.”

  It’s not exactly what Ben would do, but it’s a good idea. I love camping. “I’d like that. Thanks.”

  After Keane has scraped the last of the chili from the can, he takes over at the helm and I go down into the cabin. From below, I toss him a bottle of water before crawling into bed. The rise and fall of the boat through the waves lulls me to sleep.

  The sun has gone down when I wake, and the travel clock tells me Keane’s turn on watch should have been long over.

  “Why didn’t you say something?” I ask when I’m on deck.

  “This boat is a joy to sail.”

  “She’s been the perfect accomplice to all my bad decisions.” I tilt my head back and look up at the white sail against a dark sky. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “If you weren’t here right now, what would you be doing instead?”

  “Going whole days without showering. Slinging beers. Existing,” I say. “Barely.”

  “In a matter of days, you’ve solo sailed across the Gulf Stream, dodged a one-nighter with a married man, eaten flying fish, and scaled a mountain. Granted, it was a wee hillock of a mountain, but how many mountains would you have scaled otherwise?”

  “None.”

  “So maybe you know more than you think.”

  “God, you’re like an Irish Mary Poppins with facial hair,” I say. “Are you ever pessimistic?”

  Keane laughs, shrugging. “Not often, but when I am, I tend to get drunk and fall down. Like in Nassau.”

  “What happened that night?”

  “Prior to the accident, I was quite literally one of the best sailors in the world. Now I’m considered a tragedy and a liability to owners who once tripped over themselves to have me crew aboard their boats.” There’s a note of bitterness in his voice that I can’t miss. “They worry I will fall overboard or hurt myself, something that never crossed their minds when I had two intact legs. Every single time, their perception of my disabilities eclipses my capabilities. In Nassau, I was stinging from another rejection.”

  “Why do you keep trying?”

  “I don’t want to prove them right,” he says. “And … I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Is that why you’re going to Puerto Rico?”

  “Yeah. Heard from a guy who knows a guy who knows another guy who said there might be someone looking for crew.”

  I’m about to apologize when I remember he hates that. “That fucking sucks.”

  Keane smiles. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” I pick up Ben’s chart book and open to Rum Cay, shining the flashlight along our route. He wanted to sail into Port Nelson, the last remaining settlement on the island, but Keane is heading for Flamingo Bay.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he says. “I know you had your heart set on Rum Cay, but we can’t navigate the bay in the dark. There are coral heads that make it hazardous to try until daylight. We can change course and do some open-water sailing until sunrise, or we could sail on to Samana. I reckon we’d get there midafternoon and gain back a day on our timeline.”

  It bothers me that we’ve deviated so much from Ben’s route, but I don’t want to risk damaging the boat and the reefs in the dark. Keane’s logic is sound.

  “Samana is uninhabited,” Keane says. “You can snorkel an uncrowded reef, camp under the stars on your very own beach—everything you were going to do on Rum Cay—and be one hop closer to the Turks and Caicos.”

  As Keane adjusts course, I feel a small pang of regret over not getting to see a place Ben wanted to visit, but I swallow it down. He hands over the tiller and returns with cold sandwiches and a bag of Doritos.

  “Even though I can, cooking on a rolling sea is not high on my list of favorite things,” he says. “When we reach Samana, maybe we can catch a couple of lobsters and have a proper meal.”

  The rest of the night we stay faithful to our four-hour schedule and every time I come off watch, I sleep so that when we reach our destination, I won’t crash. By morning the wind has subsided and the boat glides easily through the water. Keane comes up on deck, yawning and scratching the back of his head. Rum Cay sinks on the horizon in our wake while Samana rises up in front of us.

  “Are you doing okay?” I ask. “You’ve had your leg on for a long time.”

  “I took it off a bit while I was sleeping,” he says. “So I’m good, but I look forward to having a swim.”

  The anchorage at Samana is on the south end of the island and inside a formidable reef. We have to approach from the west and navigate our way through a break only forty feet wide, following a coral-riddled path to clear water.

  “We’ve got the incoming tide.” Keane consults the chart book. “If we shoot for the middle of the break, we should have enough water below the keel.”

  “It looks scary.”

  “Indeed. Ready to drive her in?”

  “Me? No. I can’t.”

  He rakes his hand up through his hair. “Look, you’re a fine fair-weather sailor, Anna, and you’re quite brave for striking out alone. But I’m not always going to be with you. The only way you’re going to learn is by doing it.”

  “What happens if I hit the reef?”

  “The same thing that happens if I hit the reef,” Keane says. “It’s pointless to speculate what might happen. What we need at present is to not let fear rule the day. So I’ll go up to the foredeck, where I’ll spot for coral heads and guide you in.”

  a universe that is not listening (13)

  The water through the cut is a sloppy crisscross chop and I hold the boat to a painfully slow speed as we motor through
a minefield of coral. I don’t want to do this. I have an iron grip on the tiller to keep my hand from shaking. My heart is like a wild bird in my chest, slamming against the cage of my ribs. My eyes are everywhere at once. On the depth sounder, which indicates the water is ten feet deep. On Keane’s back as he stands in the bow pulpit. On the dark forest of coral on either side of the boat.

  “We’re nearly through,” he calls down to me. “Nearly clear.”

  The stillness is cut by the muted underwater scratch of coral against the gelcoat, like tree branches dragged across a window. The boat stutters, and the vibration travels up through my feet, into my body.

  “Keep going.” Keane’s voice is calm, but I’m burning with anger and fear. Every instinct I have tells me to stop the boat to keep it from happening again. From making it worse.

  “I told you this was going to happen,” I say, pushing the words between gritted teeth. “I told you.”

  “Easy, Anna,” he says. “It’s going to be okay. Keep going.”

  My eyes are blurred with tears as we motor the last few yards into a broad sandy-bottomed clearing. The only reason I know we are in the clear is because Keane tells me. He lowers the anchor, and when he calls back to put the engine in reverse, I do. The anchor catches in the sand and he motions for me to kill the motor, and I do that, too. I steel myself, preparing to scream at him, but before I have the chance, he leaps over the starboard lifeline—prosthesis and all—into the water to survey the damage.

  “It’s right below the waterline,” he calls up to me as I stand in the cockpit, seething. “A bit deep, but it’s only a scratch. An easy fix.”

  “You asshole.”

  “Anna—”

  “Ben spent a long time making his boat beautiful,” I say. “And it’s ruined.”

  “It’s not ruined.”

  “You could have driven us in. This didn’t have to happen.”

  “I could have,” he says. “But it’s not Ben’s boat, Anna. It’s yours and you’ve got to know how to sail it.”

  “Hiring you as a guide was supposed to be the sensible thing to do!” I shout. “You wouldn’t have hit the fucking reef!”

  I was looking forward to this anchorage, where I could peel off my clothes and wash away the miles between Cat Island and Samana. I imagined snorkeling and catching spiny lobsters for dinner. Instead anger shimmers off me like a hot road and I want to be as far away from Keane Sullivan as my limited world will allow. Except I have a boat to repair.

  “I’m sorry about the scratch.” Keane climbs the swim ladder. It’s odd to see him wearing his leg, and even though I don’t want to be worried about him, I can’t help thinking water, especially salt water, is bad for his prosthesis. “And it is only a scratch. But I was not wrong that you need to be able to rely on yourself. However, I may have been wrong to push you when you weren’t prepared.”

  A small snort escapes me. “May have been?”

  “If you don’t want to learn, what’s the point of all this?” he asks. “Why not pack it in and go home?”

  “I don’t want to go home.”

  Keane looks beyond me and rubs the heel of his hand against his mouth as if blotting the words he wants to say. “Then take responsibility, Anna. Decide you really want to learn how to sail, so that when I leave you in Puerto Rico, you’ll be ready for the Caribbean.”

  He goes down into the cabin for his tool bag before coming back out on deck. “I need your help to fix the boat. I can’t do it alone.”

  I take the bag. “I want to repair the scratch.” It comes out petulant.

  We launch the dinghy without the engine, and as I row to the starboard side of the boat, Keane pushes the boom out over the port side and hops up to sit on it. The boat heels over and the jagged scar lifts out of the water. It’s nearly a foot long and about an inch wide. Deeper in some places than others, but the fiberglass matte is not exposed. It’s not as bad as I expected, but looking at it makes me ache.

  Following Keane’s instructions, I rub sandpaper over the scratch until the bottom paint is removed. The repair compound resembles a stick of modeling clay that I knead until it’s soft. I press it into the scratch, using a putty knife to smooth it out. While the compound dries, I watch a school of blue tangs zigzag beneath the dinghy and my anger starts to fade.

  Ten minutes later there is a long gray patch in the navy-blue paint. It’s not pretty, but the boat is fixed.

  “Do you think it will hold?” I ask when Keane and I are both in the cockpit again.

  “It should,” he says. “But if it fails, we’re in no danger of sinking.”

  My anger has abated, but a thick fog of tension clouds the air between us. I wonder if Ben and I would be squabbling if we had made this trip together. Would I be sick of him? Except I’m not sick of Keane. I’m irritated. Mostly because, as usual, he is right—about everything.

  “I’m going snorkeling.”

  “I’ll, um—” Keane stops short of saying he’ll join me, which is smart. I want to be alone. “Have fun.”

  The reef surrounding the boat is in shallow water, and swimming along the surface puts me closer to undersea life than I’ve ever been. I’m an arm’s length from branches of elkhorn coral, and the fish are so close that I can almost grab them. Hidden in crevices are large grouper, and queen conchs are scattered across the sandy bottom.

  Keane cannonballs into the water several yards away from me, first as a mass of bubbles, then as a man swimming—fins strapped to both his intact foot and the foot of his waterproof leg—toward a hollow near the bottom of the reef where a spiny lobster hides. Keane uses a tickle stick to tease the lobster out into the open and a net to scoop it up. He surfaces, before returning to the bottom to catch another. The lobsters are so abundant that he doesn’t even need to try. I swim away from him and lose track of time, listening to parrotfish chomp algae from the coral with their human-looking teeth, and watching my shadow send tiny fish behind seaweed fronds, where they hide until I’ve passed.

  Keane is washed, dried, and reading a book in the shade of the boom tarp when I come out of the water. The lobsters are in the dishwashing bucket on the floor of the cockpit, scrabbling against the plastic, crawling over each other in an unsuccessful campaign to escape. Keane puts down the book.

  “Hey, um—I’d like to apologize for making you do something you were clearly afraid to do,” he says. “I overstepped my bounds and forgot that I am, technically, your employee.”

  I shake my head. “You were right. I need to learn. I hated you for a few minutes, but I’m over it.”

  Keane grins. “So I don’t need these lobsters as a peace offering?”

  “Oh, you still need them.”

  We load everything into the dinghy—tent, sleeping bags, a couple of lobsters bound in aluminum foil, a bowl of chopped apples and grapes masquerading as fruit salad, and a bottle of rosé—and motor to shore, where we dig a firepit in the sand and pile it with driftwood. We wait for the lobsters, nestled among the burning branches, to roast inside their shells, and we watch the sky turn orange and red, as though it, too, is ablaze. Samana is one of the easternmost islands of the Bahamas, off the beaten path, and we are utterly alone.

  “The first time I ever had lobster was with Ben.” I peel back the foil in tiny increments to keep from burning my fingers. “His mother throws an annual Fourth of July party with giant steamer pots stuffed with lobster, clams, and shrimp. To me, it was always this incredibly expensive thing my mom would order on the rarest, most fancy occasions, and the people at the party were eating it like it was nothing special.”

  I pop a piece of meat into my mouth. The lobster is slick with olive oil and tangy with bits of fresh lemon—better than any I’ve ever tasted.

  “See, I come to it from the opposite direction,” Keane says. “My uncle Colm was a lobsterman, so in summers, he’d bring us pail after pail of the wee bugs. I was about four or five years old when my da—at what must have been our third lobst
er supper of the week—cracked open a tail and said, ‘What do you reckon the poor folk are doing right now?’ And I, who had grown excessively jaded with the experience, muttered, ‘Eating bloody lobster again.’ The whole table exploded with laughter because we were all thinking it.”

  I laugh.

  “He gave me a right bollocking for cursing, but it’s still a running joke whenever someone wonders aloud what the poor folk are doing. Eating bloody lobster again.”

  “You’ve led such an interesting life,” I say. “Mine has been so … average.”

  “I don’t know about that.” He sucks the flat of his thumb between his lips to lick off the oil. “Here you are, on your own private beach, eating a crustacean who was minding his own business beneath the reef a few hours ago. Seems to me your interesting life is just starting at a different time than mine.”

  “My sister called me selfish for doing this.”

  “Reminds me of my eldest sister, Claire,” he says. “Her worldview is a bit myopic, not extending much beyond the Dingle Peninsula. She loves me well enough, but she’s of the opinion that sailing is not a proper profession and, apparently, there’s a misery-to-fun ratio I’m failing to honor. She views my choices through her lens and has arrived at the conclusion that I’m doing life wrong, rather than considering I have a lens of my own.”

  My breath catches in my chest when I realize Keane Sullivan is the person Ben was trying to be. He planned an adventure he never intended to take, imagined a life he never intended to live. Instead he sailed out on a tide of pills and tequila. Instead I am taking this trip with the person Ben could have been. Should have been.

  Everything about this is wrong.

  A broken sound crawls up my throat, pushing at the back of my lips, and I stagger to my feet. “I, um—I need—I’ll be back.”

  “Anna?”

  I move away from the fire as quickly as the shifting sand will allow, not answering Keane. Not looking back. Closer to the water’s edge, the sand is harder, packed tight beneath my feet and I break into a run. The island is small, and the beach is not infinite, but I run until my lungs burn and the fire is distant. I collapse in the sand and howl.