Buried At Sea (21 page)

Jim started the engine.

The waterspout—for it was surely that now, a seaborne tornado—suddenly came straight at the sailboat. Jim tried to steer away from it. It parted in the middle—halfway to the sky. The top half rose to the clouds, the bottom splattered on the sea like a gigantic water balloon.

He thought he was home free. But just as quickly, top and bottom rejoined. Lunging suddenly, it tore through the place where Jim had started the engine, leaving wild white water in its wake, and raced off toward the horizon. It had almost disappeared, when it split vertically into two spouts that ran back at him like a pair of giant legs. They flanked the boat. Water cascaded onto the decks. Jim tried to steer between the legs. They were moving in unison, closing, beginning to join. He shoved the throttle, but the engine was already running wide open.

The legs merged a hundred yards ahead of the boat and formed a single column again. As he turned away, it suddenly collapsed—half its water tumbling back into the ocean, half vanishing in cloud.

Dear Shannon.

I just saw a waterspout. Awesome. I was really scared—in fact so scared that the fear knocked some seasickness right out of me. I had always assumed waterspouts were mythic phenomena like mermaids. When it split into two legs and came at me from both sides. I looked up half expecting to see a giant groin. But way up in the sky was a patch of robin's-egg blue sky.

I think I'm getting very lonely. Maybe because I don't get sleep running the boat. I feel like some homeless guy who keeps getting woken up by the cops. Move along, pal! Trim the jib. reef the main, look out for that supertanker.

The wind sprang up. It continued backing and gradually the warm, damp southwest monsoon displaced the Harmattan. The change in direction—the swing from the bow's right to left--caused the sails to jibe about. Jim saw the shift coming in time to haul in the sheets so they didn't crash around and was rewarded with a gentle, almost subtle, shift of boom and jib. Once he had established her onto a port tack, she sailed slowly west again, on a weak southwest breeze blowing over the port bow.

The air cleared some more and when he could see a five-or six-mile circle around the boat—a fifteen-minute safety factor of ship-steaming time—he went below to hydrate Will with another saline bag. The old man never woke.

Jim checked the horizon and put a veal stew he had thawed into a pot on the stove. Then he took the laptop up to the cockpit and wrote to Shannon again. To read the screen in the glare, he put on a navy T-shirt, which reflected dark on the screen: Hi. I'm on course and feeling better. Can't wait to get home. I don't let myself think about how long it will be. I just tell myself it will be soon. I mean. what's four thousand miles?

I can't get those poor Nigerians out of my head. I have this picture of them all running from a burning wave. I can see the wave breaking right over the old guy with his stick and the fat ladies selling beer. You read about this stuff in the newspapers, but it's not the same. I guess the reporters have to stay above the fray, so they can't let their emotions really go. Have to have a blind or cold eye. Well, first time you see people living that bedraggled, there's no way you can have a cold eye, no way you cant wonder why. Are they supposed to always be poor because it's Africa? Dr is the oil somehow keeping them poor? Listen to me. I sound like my dad.

He sent it and found an e-mail from Shannon waiting for him, titled "Who is Will?!?" Dear Jim.

I'm very worried. Don't tell Will, but I've been looking into his background and I'm afraid that I sent you sailing with somebody pretty mysterious, like he's a criminal or a spy or something. Maybe this wouldn't mean much, if he hadn't killed that girl. But that makes me wonder even more who is he really and what is he up to. Please write as soon as you get this.

Jim quickly wrote back. He didn't want Shannon to worry needlessly. Will might be a little crazy, thoroughly

paranoid, and maybe he knew some odd types, but by now, despite all Jim's unanswered questions, they had been through a lot together. He had to set Shannon straight about Will.

Dear Shannon,

He killed the girl in self-defense. That doesn't make him dangerous. I know him better than you do, having sailed with him for the past two months now. So don't worry. I think of him as my friend.

He radioed it off, went up to the deck to check the sails, and stayed at the helm until a freighter some miles off finally vanished over the horizon. When he radioed again to check his mail, he found Shannon's reply.

He KILLED her—for whatever reason

He wrote back immediately, realizing how helpless she must feel so far away. Dear Shannon,

Relax. I know I don't know much about him. Though since he got stabbed I'm a little more inclined to believe his story about being chased—not completely. (For ell I know she was pissed off; I do know she was stoned out of her gourd.) Fact is, he is one tough old bird and smart as hell, and I've grown to like him very much. And don't forget he saved my life when I went overboard. But none of that matters, because as far as my safety is concerned, I'm in charge now.

Even if Will is somehow -bent* or a thief or whatever. he's flat on his back. I'm driving the boat. He can't do anything to me. And frankly, he wouldn't even if he could. To that extent I trust him. We've become shipmates—there's a bond, and he wouldn't break it. And that's all that matters. So relax. I can handle this and I can handle Will. Love.

Jim

He radioed it and checked a few minutes later for Shannon's reply. Dear Jim.

I would really appreciate it if you would just think about what I've said. Your "shipmate" is possibly a very dangerous man. You knew—or suspected—that before, when he first got paranoid. Now you've seen him kill somebody. And I can't find his name anywhere. So I just wish you would keep your eyes open and stay alert just in case you're in danger. Jim fired back.

Wait a minute. First, if you don't like the word shipmate try friend. Second. I didn't see him kill anybody. I didn't see what happened. But I did see the knife in his chest, which I'm taking as a damn clear sign he was attacked. So I would really appreciate it if you would please not make him into something he isn't. I repeat. the main point is, I'm driving the boat to safe American territory in Florida, where I'm going to jump off and get on a plane home.

That evening he found another e-mail waiting for him.

A DAMN CLEAR SIGN HE WAS ATTACKED? The trouble with you, Jim. is you almost never get mad—and never at me--and then when you finally do. you get sarcastic. Which is really a sign that you get angry more often than you show—because you're afraid to show it. I don't like thinking of you as a coward. But sometimes I think that as strong as your workouts have made your body, the one part you haven't developed is your backbone.

Dear Shannon.

I would like to end this conversation now. If you've got a problem with my backbone. tell me to my face. not in a goddamned letter.

Dear Jim.

And I don't like you treating me like a hysterical idiot.

Shannon knew she had to find some way of putting Jim on guard against Will, some proof that the man he was stuck with alone on a boat was not to be trusted. She went onto the Internet to PeopleFind. They needed full date of birth or an address. Will had filled in only the year on his application. She tried Larchmont Yacht Club as his address. No luck. For a criminal records search PeopleFind required a Social Security number in addition to a date of birth, and even if she had that, which she didn't, criminal records searches were restricted to a single county, of which there were over three thousand in the United States.

She went to a Web search engine and typed the search words: "William Spark." Ignoring a banner ad that asked "Striving for a washboard stomach?" she found matching sites for a literary webzine, a fan page for someone named William, a romance author, criticism and fiction of William Dean Howells—a name she recognized from one of Jim's college books—William Butler Yeats, William Tell, the Burlington Police Department, and something about "nakedness and naturalness." There were 674 sites for the name William Spark and not one related to the man Jim had gone sailing with. She tried other search engines: Google, Hotbot/Lycos, AllTheWeb, and Savvy all yielded nothing. She signed onto the New York Times archives. Will's name produced no news stories.

She drove to the Westport Library and logged onto the DIALOG and DataTimes news services and found nothing under Will Spark. An interlibrary Lexis/Nexis subscription yielded nothing either. She tried variations on Will Spark's name—William Spark, Spark Corporation, Spark Enterprises—no Will.

Maybe she was expecting too much of the news services. But when she tested them by typing in her father's name, she got all sorts of news stories and press releases detailing his government career with the Agency for International Development, from his first assignment in a green revolution farm program in Zimbabwe right through his early retirement and subsequent foray into the health club business. Jim had mentioned that Will Spark had gone to Yale. She tried various Yale University websites. Nothing. She practiced on Jim. She found his old bike-racing record, his final triathlon entries, a gory article in Fitness magazine about his worst crash, his résumé on the International Personal Trainers Association home page, and, of course, the bio she had written for the RileySpa's website.

Jim,

There's nothing on the entire Internet about him. Like he made up his name or something. Like I sent you sailing with someone who doesn't exist. JIM LEANED ON Will's doorway, balanced against the ceaseless motion of the boat, and watched him sleep. His sunken cheeks, grizzled with stubble, quivered as he slowly drew in and expelled air.

Was he surprised? He hoped that Shannon was wrong. But how could he be surprised after all the stories, the half-truths, and sudden turnabouts? My pals in Lagos. My pals in Calabar. Old friends. Helicopter to the airport. My good gal loves me. . . . Access codes blocked the files in Will's laptop. And his teak desk, which was built into the forward bulkhead of the main cabin, was always locked. But there was a brass key on the lanyard that secured his bosun's knife to his shorts.

Jim took the shorts, knife and all, to the main cabin and worked the key into the lock. The face hinged down, forming a writing surface. Inside, the desk was much deeper than it appeared from the front and riddled with cubbies, slots, and shelves. Puzzled, Jim stepped forward into the tiny cabin where he had stowed his bags, tapped its aft bulkhead, and suddenly realized that the cabin was so small because the back of Will's desk had been extended into its space.

The cubbies and slots and shelves contained a row of identical green cloth-bound books, scraps of notepaper, magazine and newspaper clippings, micro floppy disks marked as email copies, some exquisitely fine seashells, a red cloth sack of Krugerrand gold coins, a gold penknife, an antique pocket watch, and a silver derringer.

The breech of the derringer—a double-barreled affair, which Will had left hinged open in its safety position—revealed a bullet in each barrel. Jim picked it up. Loaded for a bear. A very small bear. If only Will had used it on Margaret instead of that damned shotgun. The "books," as Jim discovered when he pulled one out, were actually hard-bound accordion files in which Will had stowed letters and invoices. Jim riffled through them: paperwork and more paperwork—bills, invoices, faxes—for the endless expenses required to keep Hustle afloat and habitable. Jib-furler replacement in Hawaii; freezer repairs in Panama City; a new wind generator in Barbados; a letter to Hild Sails of City Island requesting that a replacement jib be shipped to Hawaii, a diesel heater installed in Hong Kong, Gill sea boots from Team One; foul-weather gear; and shackles, blocks, line, oil filters, batteries.

Jim was about to turn his attention to the floppy disks when he noticed that the tropical damp had curled the covers of some of the files. A well-thumbed cover had peeled apart, the cloth separating from the cardboard. It smelled of an odd mix of mildew and perfume. The file was empty. But when Jim picked it up, a folded blue paper hidden between the cloth and the cardboard fell out.

Wondering if he had finally found something personal about Will Spark, Jim unfolded the paper. It was a letter, several pages long, handwritten in green ink. The opening lines told him that it was deeply personal and the fact that Will had hidden it meant it was heartfelt. He didn't want to read it—nor did he have to. The greeting read, "My dearest Billy." That was what Margaret had called him, too. Billy. It was signed, "Yours always, Cordelia." That seemed odd, because her opening lines had sounded like a good-bye. Big deal. So he'd had a girlfriend named Cordelia

which anyone could have guessed since he'd named a boat after her—and Cordelia called him Billy. Plenty of guys named William were called Billy. But how many Wills were also called Billy? There was a gulf of personality between those two names: Billy, warm and cuddly; Will, patrician and remote.

Jim thought for a moment, listening to Hustle's hull plow its endless furrow. If he were going to put Shannon at ease, he had to read the damn letter, personal or not. He had guessed right. It was a long, sad good-bye, with a lot of unhappy talk of perfect memories tempered by a firm belief in the right decision made. Cordelia forgave him, she said, for running out on her, and had taken him back more than once, she pointed out. But she could not forgive his business—"a dirty business," she called it—and so she was saying good-bye. "At the end of the day," she wrote, "were I to stay with you, I would be condoning behavior that falls far, far below the marginal standards I attempt to maintain for myself. Surely, I do not set myself up as an angel, but I cannot knowingly entwine my life with a thief, which is what you are, my dear, even though I know that I will miss you far, far more than the thief will ever miss 'his Cordi.' "

Though Cordelia might be wrong, Jim reflected. WillBilly—had kept her letter and named a boat after her. But what kind of thief? he wondered. Hadn't the poet called Will a thief, too? Was the poet justified?