Galveston (15 page)

Maywell Hope had read this book since he was a child. Indeed, it had been read to him as an infant, as he lay awaiting sleep. The book was one of three his father owned, the other two being thick tomes dealing with navigation. Maywell’s father, Marlon, was barely literate, and this book,
filled with whimsical spelling, seemed to forgive that fault. Marlon, like Hope men for generations, also suspected that there might be some clue as to his genealogy somewhere in its pages. There was no privateer named Hope in the book, but perhaps the original progenitor had changed it, or the name had been changed somewhere along the line. Perhaps Marlon and Maywell (and Maxwell and Melvale Hope, and all the others) were descended from Dampier’s right-hand man, Basil Ringrose. Or perhaps they were descended from the Chirurgeon, Mr. Wafer, the mischievous fellow who was always getting into difficulties:
Our Chirurgeon, Mr. Wafer, came to a sad disaster here: being drying his Powder, a careless Fellow passed by with his Pipe lighted, and set fire to his Powder, which blew up and scorched his Knee …
Mind you, the greater mystery was the identity of the Hope family’s Eve. If there was a woman sailing with the Merry Boys, William Dampier writes nothing about it.

Maywell’s favourite story in the book—at least, one he had read many times, particularly over the last few years—proceeded like this: Dampier and the Merry Boys, sailing the
Batchelor’s Delight
, found themselves set upon by a huge storm. They put into a cove and anchored there, furling all the sails because the wind would have torn them to tatters. The ship weathered well until the winds began to shift. Because of the furious counter-clockwise motion of hurricanes, the winds howl first toward the west and then, after the passing of the eye, in the opposite direction. Dampier had to turn the ship but knew that he couldn’t unfurl any sails in order to do so. So he instructed all of the Merry Boys to ascend the forward
rigging and cling to the foreshrouds. Maywell had imagined these men, high in the air, clutching the screaming ropes, and each other, their bodies offering enough resistance to the wind to finally turn the ship about.

Maywell wished that he could have been there.

Because Maywell had been off the island only twice in his life. He had gone once to Cuba and once to Jamaica, both trips undertaken to find women, since he had had the women on Dampier Cay, all those who were willing to have
him.
On both occasions when he’d been away from home, Dampier Cay was hit by storms. The first was not too serious; it had taken out a few homes in Williamsville and destroyed some of the yachts in the Government Harbour. The second time he’d been away, Fred had come to call. Seventeen dead on Dampier Cay, including Lester’s boy, Powell. Maywell returned home to find that many things had simply disappeared. Even the Royal Tavern was nowhere to be seen, although its place was marked by a dead refrigerator, lying on its side, wide open.

C
ALDWELL AND
B
EVERLY
sat in the Pirate’s Lair and waited for the storm. Both seemed calm, but Caldwell’s patience was that of a fisherman—who is willing only to wait one more moment, over and over again—and Beverly was busy holding her emotions hostage. This is what she’d learned from the professionals, how to ride shotgun on the weird stuff.

Jimmy Newton came in with Gail and Sorvig. The girls still wore their bathing suits, but Jimmy had put on some sort of safari gear, a khaki jacket and shorts. All of the pockets were jammed with stuff: light meters, lens cleaners, cords to connect his electronic gear. Two pockets held small still cameras, there was a large thirty-five-millimetre slung around his neck, and in a pouch over his crotch he had the beauty, his newest toy, a digital minicam that was guaranteed to give him broadcast-ready quality.

“See,
me,”
said Gail, “I’m just trying to go through life clean, you know what I mean? If I can avoid, you know, terminal illness, um, psychopathic boyfriends and, well,
hurricanes …”

“Yeah,” said Jimmy, but he was shaking his head. “Except they’re different. They’re different kinds of problems. There’s human stuff and then there’s, I don’t know …”

“God stuff?” suggested Sorvig.

“Weather
is
God,” said Jimmy Newton. “God is weather. The natives, the cavemen, they saw, you know, the sky all lit
up with lightning, they heard thunder, they said, ‘Hell yes, there’s someone up there and He’s pissed.’ So, yeah, it’s kind of God stuff, but it’s … the thing is, it’s just a lot bigger than human stuff. Okay, Gail, you say you’re trying to go through life clean. But here’s the thing. Let’s say that you, um, got cancer, and HIV, and, um, your boyfriend attacks you twice a week with a machete. That and any other shit you care to imagine. Take
that
outside when a category three is passing through. That’s clean, baby. That’s all your problems blown away.”

“I don’t think I agree with you, Mr. Newton,” said Beverly. “I think God
is
the little human problems. All that other stuff is flash and filigree, you know. A cheap trick.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

“Well, you’re entitled to your opinion, but you are just a little nuts.”

“Perhaps. But I know what I’m talking about. You may not remember me, but I went on a tornado-hunting expedition with you.”

“Yeah, I remember. You’re a friend of Larry DeWitt’s.”

“Well, we had sex once, but that hardly makes us friends.”

“Right.”

“But what struck me about the tornado—when we finally found one, thanks to you, Mr. Newton—was that it was composed mostly of the, um,
detritus
of human lives. Condoms, candy wrappers. Nails and wedding rings.”

Caldwell opened his mouth to say, “I know what you mean,” but he choked on the first word and reached instead for his whisky.

“Hey,” said Jimmy, throwing open the trap and walking behind the bar, “I wonder if they fixed this piece of crap yet.” He opened the cupboard doors, exposing the old Bakelite radio. He reached out, flipped the toggle switch, and the silver filaments in the tubes began to glow. Jimmy unclipped a small microphone from the side of the machine, a silver disc that filled the palm of his hand, and depressed a button on the side. “Come in, come in.” He was answered by an intense spurt of static. “Hmm,” he scowled, working a dial, trying to locate a serviceable frequency.

“Hello?” came a broken voice. “Who’s this?”

“This?” responded Jimmy Newton. “This is Mister fricking Weather. Who’s
this?”

“This is Burt Gilchrist. My wife and I came to look after the property in case the hurricane hits,” explained the voice. “But we’re thinking we made a mistake. I mean, what can we do? What can we do when the storm comes?”

“Well, you should know the procedure, Gilchrist. You bought property in the hot zone.”

“Who
is
this?” shouted Burt Gilchrist, and in the background his wife could be heard asking, “Who is it?”

“Over and out,” said Newton, spinning the dial, squinting to watch a needle pass over a grid. “
NOAA.
Come in,
NOAA
.” As he waited for an answer, Jimmy cocked his wrist to the side and toyed idly with the microphone, flipping it up and down. After a moment he tried again, returning the metal disc to his lips and thumbing the button. “
NOAA
,” he said. “Come in,
NOAA
. This is Newton on Dampier Cay.”

A voice returned suddenly. “Newton? You’re on Dampier Cay?”

Jimmy Newton grinned widely and looked at his companions, vastly proud of himself. He spoke into the microphone. “Yeppers. I’m on Dampier Cay.”

“Well—it’s been good knowing you.”

“Aha!” shouted Newton gleefully. “So she’s big?”

“Jimmy, go to a safe band,” said the voice on the radio. “Go to eighty-seven.”

Newton twisted the dial. The radio screamed and made little electronic burping sounds. A voice came: “You there, Jimmy?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you bought it this time, son. Claire has sucked up Daphne. She’s heading due west at twenty knots, but we think she’s going to pick up speed any time. And we can’t see how anything’s going to change her mind, so you know … if there’s anything like high country on Dampier Cay, you better get there.”

“I’m about as high as she gets. Maybe twenty-five feet.”

“That might not be good enough, Jimmy.”

“Right,” said Jimmy Newton. “Is she going to make four?”

The man on the radio didn’t respond right away. “At least four, Newton.”

“Thank you,
NOAA
. Over and out.”

Beverly thought about Noah.

She knew that Newton had been saying “
NOAA
”—the acronym stood for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—but in her thoughts the forecaster was Noah. He stood on the deck of the ark. He furrowed his brow and
stared at the sky, and predicted that the rains would last for forty days and forty nights. Noah’s sons, clutching crooked staves, herded animals onto the ark. The animals came in pairs, as everyone knows, and in Beverly’s mind they boarded as couples, bound by love and devotion. Quadrupeds moved in comfortable unison, their heads touching. Some of the birds were actually mating as they came. The more exotic birds were belly to belly, while pigeons and seagulls did it doggy-style, flapping their wings with arrhythmic ecstasy.

Then Beverly imagined all the damned and dying creatures. Water covered the face of the earth, and the air was filled with frantic whinnies, howls and ululations. As water flowed through valleys and around mountains, eddies were formed, whirlpools that dragged the animals down. All of their eyes were white, emptied by panic.

She told Caldwell the second part of her story.

Margaret’s swimming was simply not improving, and even though Steve told her over and over again not to worry, Beverly couldn’t help herself. She told her daughter that she’d have to practise more. Beverly checked the schedule the young people at the Y had given her. There was a free swim Saturdays at two o’clock.

Beverly drove Margaret down to the YMCA. The little girl pushed buttons on the little radio in the dashboard until she at last heard the song that was number one, the song that the most people liked. She sat back in her seat and sang along tunelessly, then stopped singing abruptly as a troubled thought crept across her face. “Did you bring my swim cap?”

“No,” Beverly snapped. “That is not my responsibility. I make sure your suit and towel are clean and dry. You are supposed to remember to bring your bathing cap, nose plugs, soap and shampoo.”

“I forgot it.”

“Well, then, you will have to go without one.”

Margaret scowled. “The chlorine is bad for my hair.”

“I know it is. That is why you’re supposed to bring a bathing cap.”

Margaret’s hair was her pride and joy. Truth to tell, it was Beverly’s pride and joy. It was long, falling all the way to the little girl’s waist, and golden, full of curves and curls that caught sunlight. Margaret took good care of her hair; this confusion over the swim cap was just that, confusion—it didn’t reflect neglect on anyone’s part.

(Caldwell reached over and took both of Beverly’s hands from where they lay, like wounded creatures, on her lap. Both of her small hands fit into one of his own.)

There was a lounge area at the YMCA in Orillia, a few round tables and stools. Off to one side an old woman with milky eyes sold sandwiches, apples and coffee. On the other side was a curved glass wall, and through this parents could watch their kids in the pool. Beverly sat at one of the little tables with a stack of books. Before they left, she wanted to acquire at least elementary Spanish, as well as something of the history of the country.

From time to time she glanced up and looked through the glass wall. The pool was crowded, as though all of the children in town had decided at the same time to go swimming. The
kids were behaving badly, as kids will. They ran on the slick decks, they cannonballed into the shallow end, where signs demanded they not jump at all.

Where, exactly, was the supervision? Beverly wasn’t the only one wondering that, because those words were spoken aloud by another mother sitting nearby. There were two lifeguards on duty, a boy and girl, not yet out of their teens. The boy strolled about the deck with a paddleboard grasped behind his back. The girl sat atop the small tower with her legs crossed and her hands folded. She should have been hunched forward, peering downwards with hawklike intensity—her supervisor should have demanded it of her.

Steve sat in an office tucked into the corner, and every few minutes he would pop his head out. Sometimes he’d take a walk around the perimeter. He wore track pants, a sweatshirt and thick-soled running shoes, all emblematic of his
don’t worry
attitude, because if for any reason he needed to leap into the pool, this apparel would hamper his rescue efforts. Indeed, this point was brought up at the coroner’s inquest, although no one really paid much attention to it; Steve had comported himself in a valiant manner, even Beverly conceded that.

Beverly tried to pretend that what she saw through the glass wall was normal, and maybe it was. She would later find out—sitting at the coroner’s inquest, staring down at her toes because she could not abide the scrutiny of the artists from the newspapers—that another guard had called in sick that day.

Anyway, even if there had been a full contingent of guards, even if they’d been absolutely focused on the activity in the pool, it is still likely that tragedy would have occurred.
Because, as Steve pointed out at the inquest, attention is paid to the middle depths of the pool, which is where souls are lost. People at the sides of the pool are usually safe, and that is why no one noticed little Margaret clinging there. No one noticed that her head was a foot below the surface, that she had been there for a few minutes. No one knew that her hair, her long hair, had been sucked into one of the filtration system’s intake pipes.

Steve saw her first, blew the whistle and hollered, clearing the pool. He leapt in, and his efforts to save Margaret were furious but useless. He could not pry Beverly’s daughter away from the wall.