As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth Page 18

  But Ry didn’t look up, so he didn’t see that. He got the sails raised and secured and moved steadily, even tranquilly, along. An experienced sailor might find this slowness boring, but Ry was not experienced, so he felt exhilarated. He felt lucky that he was able to pull this off.

  Lucky, lucky, lucky: the Peachy Pie cleared the headland. Her big sails were filled to bursting with the mighty ocean air funneling between the islands. She screamed along, as manageable as an unpinched balloon. Along with the noise of the wind and the sloshing and slapping of water, Ry could hear the sounds of stuff slamming around below deck. It was a bad sound. But he couldn’t worry about it. He knew now that he had too much sail up, and he struggled to wrestle down the big jib.

  But before he could do so, a rogue gust of wind, an invisible fist of air, pushed the boat over onto her side, like a child knocking over a bathtub toy. Ry lost his footing. He hung briefly in the air, an astronaut taking a space stroll at the end of a lifeline. And then he was entering the water. An aquanaut, now.

  IN THE DRINK

  Del was wrong about one more thing. It wasn’t that hard to fall off the face of the Earth, if you included “under” as one of the ways you could do it. Three-quarters of Ry was already below, dangling from the life-jacketed top of him like the tentacles of a jellyfish. His harness inflated as he went under, lifting his top one-quarter back to the surface. A jellyfish. Or a lily pad.

  The Peachy Pie lay on her side, a giant wounded seabird, rising and falling. Water was flooding the cockpit. She would fill up and then sink.

  The Zodiac dinghy was still right side up, but it would be dragged under when the Peachy Pie went down. Unless Ry could get there and free it. He moved his arms and legs in swimming motions that had always worked well in pools and lakes. Here in the ocean they didn’t seem to be doing anything at all. He had no other ideas, though, so he kept trying.

  He could see the big boat going lower. The place where the Zodiac’s rope was tied to it was underwater, but he could still untie it at the dinghy end. If he could get there.

  In a flash of brilliance, Ry remembered that he also was tethered to the sinking boat. That was a bad thing, but he used the tether to haul himself close, then worked his way along the face of the deck to the stern. Once there, he set himself free, then lunged for the rope that tethered the dinghy.

  The life jacket itself was a mixed blessing. It kept you afloat, a benefit that was hard to argue with, but doing anything else was next to impossible. Like grabbing a submerged rope. Or swimming toward a dinghy. There was no doubt a technique for it. After a long and considered analysis—about 1.5 seconds—of what might work best, Ry opted for desperate thrashing.

  Okay—no.

  But he had moved closer, close enough that when he stopped thrashing, thinking to try something else, the rope floated up between his legs. It brushed his calf and instinctively he squeezed his legs together. When the rope stayed there, didn’t swim away, didn’t move, Ry lifted his knees, reached down and felt it, and knew it was the rope. He drew himself to the dinghy.

  Getting on top of it would be another feat of derring-do. He floated beside it, holding on, figuring it out. He might only have one chance. If he tipped it, that could be that.

  “Don’t be stupid,” he said to himself. “It’s still going to float. You just won’t be in it.” He wanted to be in it, though. About as much as he had ever wanted anything.

  From the troughs of the waves, all Ry could see was water and sky. And two mountaintops. No one would see him. From the crests he could see the port town. He could even make out a tiny flag, above a building. Given how hard it had been to reach the Zodiac, he doubted he could swim there.

  The thing about trying to get into a dinghy when you are floating in bottomless depths is, there is nothing to push off from. It requires a lot of strength and energy which, depending on what you have just been doing, you might not have.

  Trying to get into the dinghy with an inflated vest was, Ry decided, next to impossible. It was in the way, an inflated obstacle. Holding on with one hand, Ry worked his other hand down into the buttoned pocket of his shorts. He pulled out his pocketknife, felt with his teeth for the indentation in the blade to open it. He slashed the vest.

  And then, in the same way the guy riding that camel with the goatskin full of milk invented cheese—which is to say, completely by accident—Ry discovered the best way to board an inflatable dinghy if you are floating next to it, which is that a swell comes up behind you and you sort of swim right in.

  He sprawled, surprised and elated, adjusting to his new situation. He rode a couple of swells, just glad to be topside. The open pocketknife was still clenched in his fist. When he noticed how near it was to the inflated dinghy, he snapped it shut and carefully shifted to an upright position. From which he immediately saw how fast the Peachy Pie was going down. He didn’t have much time: if he didn’t cut the tow rope very, very soon, the dinghy would go down, too. Trying to stay balanced as the little boat was lifted by the swells and fell into the troughs, he leaned forward, gingerly, to grasp the rope and pull it toward him. Opening his knife once more, he hacked frantically at its sturdy fibers. It was not that great a knife.

  He sawed away, not allowing himself to look up at the sinking sailboat. Halfway through, he peeked. Uh-oh. He sawed harder. He cut through the last stubborn strands. He tossed the rope away from him and watched it disappear.

  And that’s when the last beautiful bit of the Peachy Pie went under. That’s when it occurred to him that the Peachy Pie was a beautiful expensive object that didn’t belong to him, and he had just trashed it. He made a mental note to be sorry about that if and when he made it to shore. Really, really sorry. If and when.

  Untethered, the wind blew him quickly away from the Peachy Pie. Though, how could you even tell?

  His hands were trembling. Glancing down at them, he noticed that Yulia’s phone number could still be read, though being in the water had washed some of it away. He knew her last name now, too. Unless Del had been hallucinating or something.

  For a few minutes, Ry just sat, riding the waves. The wind entered his life jacket where he had slashed it. It billowed out from his chest, fluttering and flapping, reminding him how useless he had made it. He didn’t need that. He took it off and pitched it.

  He remembered that the Zodiac had a motor. He turned around to start it up. It did start up, but it was such a tiny farting motor. With one of the oars, he got himself going in the right direction. He focused on riding the swells.

  Progress was slow. Glacially slow. Or maybe it wasn’t. It was hard to tell whether he was getting closer to the island ahead, farther from the one he had left behind. The water just kept moving under him, sideways. He thought of the Polynesians, navigating the Pacific in dugout canoes. How did they even know they would get anywhere? And they didn’t have motors. Maybe they had sails. He couldn’t remember. He could picture sails, but he might be making that up.

  Ry didn’t know how much gas there was. He decided he’d better row, to help himself along. That meant he had to sit backward, turning his back on his goal. Also, he wouldn’t be able to see the oncoming waves. He had to keep looking over his shoulder. Oh, well. So what?

  It was discouraging, though, how he didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. The oars seemed as useful as toothpicks. He started to keep his gaze just below St. Jeroen’s for as long as he could, to stay on course without trying to measure his distance. He made himself sing songs, a whole song before he looked up. Traditional sea chanties—“Silent Night,” “Happy Birthday,” “The Alphabet Song,” which could also be sung as “Twinkle Twinkle”—as well as some newer ones.

  He started to make one up called, “I Hate the *#@! Ocean,” but then, because it seemed like bad karma to insult Neptune at this time and place, he switched over to “The Ocean Is My Friend, My Beautiful, Beautiful Friend.”

  That’s what Ry was singing, over and over, when the motor died. He tried a fe
w times to start it again, but it was no use. The gas tank was empty. The dinghy had spun sideways. Facing Africa. All you had to do was cross the Atlantic. No sweat. Ry sat there, bobbing along. He looked to the right, toward Finisterre, staring without seeing. He was tired of keeping his spirits up. But no one else was going to do it. Were they.

  Then his eyes came to the rescue. They could make out windows on the buildings, windows! He was getting there after all.

  “Okay,” he said. “Full Polynesian, now.” He turned the boat. And he rowed. And rowed. And rowed. And rowed.

  When he got close enough, the island and the sea relented and carried him in to shore on rolling, breaking waves. There was the final obstacle of dodging boulders and coral heads. If your only tool is a paddle, does everything look like water?

  No. A rock is still a rock. Ry jabbed at it with his oar, trying to push away, and flipped himself over. He was under the surf. It moved him along and passed him by. Moved him farther and passed him by again; withdrew, sucking him backward. His hands and his toes scraped the bottom. Bracing himself against the pulling, pushing waves, he stood up. He was in waist-high water. On the average. He waited for the next wave and rode it in.

  He crawled onto the warm sand. His stomach full of salt water, dehydrated, sunburned, physically spent, emotionally whipped, he passed out. The sun inched downward. The shadows grew longer. The rhythm of the waves was a lullaby.

  SEEING THINGS?

  About thirty yards away, Ry’s parents made ready to sail. Skip tested the bilge pumps. Wanda checked on the weather one more time. Once bitten, twice shy, and all that.

  “Are we ready?” she asked.

  “Almost,” he said. “I just need ten, fifteen minutes.”

  “Hey,” he said a moment later. “Do you think you could go grab us a couple of those saltfish-johnnycake sandwiches? I think I’m getting addicted to those things. And some bottles of water or juice or something.”

  “Okay,” said Wanda. “Do you want anything else?”

  “No,” said Skip. “Just a sandwich and a drink. Here.” He fished some bills and coins from his pocket and dumped them into her cupped hands.

  “I think that’s enough,” he said. “Anyway, it’s all we have left. Of cash.”

  Wanda counted the money up and put it in her own pocket. She walked one last time back into the little town, to the lunch cart in the square. She passed the fragrant and fishy grocery store, where the butter came in cans. From New Zealand. She passed the once elegant, now down on its luck hotel. Passing the small litter-strewn town beach, she almost cried out. A boy about Ry’s age, he even had Ry’s hair color, he was even shaped like Ry, lay sleeping on the beach, down near the water’s edge. He slept like Ry, in the same position. She couldn’t see his face. She felt an impulse to go tap the boy on the shoulder and make him look up at her.

  “You’re being ridiculous,” she said to herself. “He’ll think you’re a nutcase.” She didn’t go over. She kept walking. It couldn’t be, of course. Still, a pulling sensation passed through her.

  As she was buying the sandwiches, she decided that on the way back, she would go over to the boy. She could say, “Oh, from the back, you look just like my son.” That kind of thing happened all the time. Besides, who cared if he thought she was nuts? She would never see him again.

  But when Wanda got there, the boy was gone. There was an impression in the sand. She spun around. He couldn’t be far. She saw him, walking into Finisterre. He walked like Ry. She would go see; she just wanted to see this boy’s face. Then she could let go of it.

  Keeping her eyes on him, she half walked, half ran. Because she was watching him, trying to catch up, the voice at her elbow made her jump. She looked down. It was a goat. It was talking to another goat. When she looked up again, she could not find him in the lazy, busy square. She hurried over to where he had been. She turned around, scanning in every direction, willing him to appear.

  After ten minutes she decided she was being foolish.

  “You are on a tiny island,” she said softly, “that no one has ever even heard of. How would your son be here?”

  IN FINISTERRE

  Ry’s rumbling stomach woke him. He raised himself onto his elbows, then to his hands and knees, and stood up. And blinked. The inside of his head was a solar oven, baking salty wet wads of tangled wool. He knew that time had passed, was passing now. He had to get moving. But he needed his brain, and that wasn’t going to start up without some calories and some unsalted hydration.

  As he walked into town, an isolated outpost of brain that was still functioning reported that there was a little money left in the sodden lump of wallet in his back pocket. It would be soggy, but probably was not yet pulp. Another outpost observed that the words on the cardboard sign hanging on the lunch cart were English words. Ry’s head began to clear. The buildings that formed the edges of the square were two stories high, some of white and bright-colored wood and cement and some of very old-looking stone. Lots of porches on the second floor, with gingerbread woodwork on the railings and below the roof. Open porches, to catch the breeze. Shutters. Palm trees. Cars. People.

  From where he stood, he could see two banks. He could change his wet American dollars into kopecks or drachmas or whatever kind of money people used here. He chose the bank that had “Canada” in its name and headed over. His shoes had become foot-torture devices, weighty saltwater-and-sand top-notch flesh abraders, but he was able to ignore them. He would take them off when he got out of the bank.

  At first the woman behind the counter was not going to take Ry’s wet money. She didn’t have a place for wet money. She turned him down. He walked toward the door, temporarily defeated. Then he turned around and got in line again. She smiled when she saw him in front of her, but she turned him down again. He got in line again. This time her smile was wider. Like the door when you can get your foot in.

  “I understand your situation,” Ry said. “But I’ve been waving it around. Look, it’s hardly even wet anymore.

  “I’m from Wisconsin,” he added. “Which is right next to Canada. We’re, like, next-door neighbors.”

  “If you’re my neighbor,” she said, “how come I never saw you before?”

  She took his damp bills, two tens, and gave him some Caribbean money. Ry thanked her and heaped blessings on her head and told her she had saved his life.

  “Next, please,” she said, looking past him. He hurried to the lunch cart in the square.

  The lunch-cart woman was closing up shop, but Ry persuaded her to sell him most of what she had left at a reduced price. He sat down on the base of a clock tower in the middle of the square and took off his foul evil shoes. As he ate the first sandwich, he saw a familiar face.

  “Hi,” he called out, and waved.

  “Hey,” said the Austrylian. “Good sail?”

  “It was awesome,” said Ry. “You?”

  “Amazing,” said the Aussie. “Nothing like it.”

  “Where did you park your boat?” Ry asked.

  “At the marina,” said the A. He pronounced it “mareener.” “It’s the only place you can, isn’t it?”

  “As far as I know,” said Ry. “I thought you might know if there was anyplace else. You know, like the cove on St. Jeroen’s.”

  “Not on this island,” said the A. “Well, see you, then.”

  “See you,” said Ry. “Back at the mareener.”

  Still eating, he walked in the direction of the water, his composting shoes tucked under one arm.

  The Zodiac had washed up, and a handful of little kids were playing on it and around it.

  “Hey,” said Ry. They scattered, shrieking, and he laughed. He looked both ways. To the north, he could see masts poking up on the other side of a shrubbed spit of land. So he headed north.

  It only took minutes to reach the marina. A couple of dozen boats were moored there. A few more were arriving; two were taking their leave. Ry eyed the departing boats with a flutter in
his heart. One boat was huge—that would definitely not be them. The other one could be.

  He walked around the harbor, looking. He didn’t know what kind of boat he was looking for, or what it was called, only roughly what size it would be. He had to identify it by its occupants. Its crew. A lot of boats didn’t have anyone on deck just now.

  He didn’t know what he would do if he didn’t find them. In an odd way, he didn’t even think about it, which surprised him. He knew he would do something. Maybe he was getting used to not knowing what happens next.

  He saw a beautiful boat that reminded him of the Peachy Pie, and remembered to feel sorry, really sorry. Wow. Yulia was not going to be happy. If he couldn’t find his family, he could offer himself to her as an indentured servant to work off the cost. He looked at the faded number on his hand. He should have used a pen at the Canadian bank to reinforce it. Ry added memorizing the number to the mission of looking for his parents and their boat.

  He said it aloud, over and over, as he walked.

  Until a moving shape up ahead caught his eye. Ry stopped in his tracks. He smiled, laughed almost. It was really pretty brilliant what your brain, with the help maybe of your heart, could identify. All he saw, and from a fair distance, was a man’s back. The man was only putting something into a trash can. Then the man stepped onto his boat. Ry could tell by the shape of the man, and how he moved, that this was his father.

  And though he had made a mistake about that once as a child, he was certain that there was his father leaving, getting ready to sail away. His mother’s immediately identifiable even in a life jacket mom-shape moved along the boat, checking in her mom way that all was in order. There was the boat, moving away from the dock. Ry was running now.