Troubled Sea (2 page)

Chapter 2

It blows great guns indeed.

—Dickens

Hetta Jenkins sucked in her breath as stars slid dizzily past the screened hatch above her bed. The anchor chain bridle groaned as
HiJenks
reached the end of a sixty-degree swing, the boat shuddered under the attack of a gust, then swung back to rest. Small wind waves slapped the hull, rocking the boat gently as she rode easy again on her anchor. Hetta exhaled.

Disentangling herself from her slumbering husband’s arms, she slid from the warm bed, shook off a hint of vertigo, pulled on sweats, and climbed three steps leading to the main saloon. During the next gust she braced herself, screwed security clamps on the teakettle before turning on the burner, and then pulled out her laptop. While her coffee water heated, she booted up the computer, pulled up the “Log of
HiJenks
” file and began tapping the keys.

November 8, Punta Caracol, Sea of Cortez. Wind: 40 knots, gusting to 55!

Sky: Clear

Water Temp: 71 F. Barometer: 1030 (WAY up!)

An E ticket at Disneyland had nothing on this ride. It feels like going over one of those hills, say, Jones Street, back in San Francisco and the bottom drops out of your stomach. Only sideways. Over and over. You’d think, after five winters here, I’d get used to it.

Another howler hit, this time spraying the boat with a fine mist of salt water. Hetta rose to check a depth sounder on the steering console. Nothing had changed. They were securely anchored.

“I knew that,” she clucked while mixing steamy water with instant Nescafé Clasico, sugar and coffee creamer. Taking a sip, she returned to her computer.

It’s five in the morning and I’m on self-imposed anchor watch. Jenks says I should sleep, but with enough rattling, banging and creaking to wake the dead (but not, I notice, old twenty-years-in-the-navy Jenks), I might as well watch. Not that I can  see a damned thing. I feel like a Jack London character trapped in  his cabin, howling wind and wolves threatening the door. At least we don’t have wolves. Sharks maybe. I’m so tired I can hardly see this screen so I think I’ll heed my captain’s wise counsel and try to sleep. H.

She stood, stretched, and was strapping her laptop into its workstation under the dining table when the wind suddenly dropped. She waited. Not a stir.

Walking ten feet to the main cabin door, she slid it open and stuck her head into predawn chill. Gleaming in the blue-black moonless sky, the stars seemed touchable and, as she watched, a satellite streaked overhead.

Bioluminescent sea creatures formed their own constellations in the dark bay water. A shimmering glow next to the boat drew her gaze downward to where a large squid undulated like a sea specter. Hetta shivered and closed the door.

Chapter 3

I wiped away the weeds and foam

I fetched my sea-born treasures home...Emerson

Nota Buena to Log of
HiJenks

Nov. 8, 8:00 a.m. Punta Caracol

Wind:  0-zip-nada! Sky:   Clear

Barometer: 1018 down 12

The barometer tells the story: This norther is history! H.

Hetta put the computer away, clicked on a burner under the coffeepot and smiled at Jenks. He was stretched out on the settee, nose in a book. Something with exploding planes on the cover. You wouldn’t know he was reading an action book from his relaxed manner. Long and lanky, he melted in repose. On the other hand, when Jenks was underway—that’s the way Hetta thought of it—he resembled a cross between John Wayne and Gary Cooper when they had reached self-assured maturity: Wayne’s saunter and Cooper’s straight-shouldered authority. Not a "man in touch with his feelings" kind of guy. “I’m going outside to enjoy my coffee in wind-free comfort. Want a cup, 007?”

Jenks shook his head, too engrossed in the last few pages of his novel to look up.

Hetta filled a ceramic mug bearing a logo from the Bluebonnet Cafe in Marble Falls, Texas, left the cabin and padded aft over warm, freshly rinsed decks. Settling into a plastic chair, she propped her bare feet on another one, gave her toenail polish a critical look and promised another coat. The sun’s rays, already heating her skin, cut through the remaining storm sediment in the water to dapple the sandy bottom. Good, it’s clearing. In another couple of hours we can snorkel.

“You gonna take a walk today?” Jenks asked, sauntering on deck. Evidently the novel’s author had successfully saved the world from death and destruction by way of explosives, thereby freeing Jenks to join Hetta. “We haven’t been off the boat for days.”

“Yep. Cabin fever’s set in. I ran out of norther projects yesterday. The provisions are inventoried, I wrote all the letters home, and I’m sick of sweating to oldies with Richard Simmons. Life’s a beeech,” Hetta deadpanned. “And speaking of beaches, I think I’ll get my stuff right now and you can drop me off for an attitude adjustment stride.”

“Okay. I’ve gotta buy cigarettes anyway.”

Hetta frowned, but bit her lip. No use beeeching. He’d quit when he was ready.

Bob Jenkins, Jenks to his friends, leaned over the transom, grabbed a line tied to the aft rail, climbed down a swim ladder and stepped into their dinghy. Days and nights of unrelenting spray had encrusted
Jenkzy
in a layer of salt. While waiting for Hetta, he wiped the seats clean, squeezed a bulb on the gas line to pump gas into the carburetor, and pulled the starter cord.

Hetta heard the outboard cough, then rumble to life. She quickly smeared number thirty sunblock on her already tanned and freckled face, arms and legs, squinting into the mirror to check for new wrinkles as she did so. Noticing her hair could use a touch of red over some suspiciously graying spots, she wondered what her old hairdresser in San Francisco, René l’Exorbitant, who had once told her he thought she looked like a Rubenesque Shirley MacLaine, would say if he could see her “natural highlights” now. She grinned, grabbed her dive bag, shoes, and water bottle, said, “Who cares?” and left to join Jenks.

Jenkzy
, their heavy nine-foot fiberglass dinghy, had replaced two former rubber inflatables that went terminally flaccid under the fiery Baja sun. Built at a panga factory in La Paz, their pangita was a reduced copy of the ubiquitous Sea of Cortez fishing panga.
Jenkzy
’s gunwales, painted bright blue in imitation of her larger sister pangas, glittered with salt.

Hetta wiped white grit with her finger. “Yuck. She needs a bath.”

“I’ll wash her down at the boat ramp after I drop you off.”

“Great. Why don’t you pick me up at the lagoon?”

“Okay. Need anything from
Gringo
Grocers?” Jenks joked, referring to the tiny, basics-only store behind Hotel Punta Caracol.

“If they’ve got any fresh veggies or fruit, grab ‘em. Can’t think of anything else we can’t live without until we get to San Carlos.”

Hetta left Jenks to his boat washing and cigarette buying and strode along her usual route, following a curve of white sand trimming the turquoise bay. Beach dwellings—some basic, some grand, most unoccupied—clustered above the high water line. Behind graceful palm trees shading the houses, a dusty runway ran the length of the community, ending in a vacant airplane tie-down area. Squatting on the other side of the runway, the modest homes of hotel employees were surrounded by a clutter of clotheslines and rusted vehicles. A bougainvillea-emblazoned hotel slumbered on a bluff, awaiting an influx of guests to stir her rooms and restaurant to life. Here and there the faint hum of a generator could be heard, powering up a home. Punta Caracol had running water, but no electrical lines had made their way out this far. Even the wealthiest residents here relied, like Hetta  and Jenks, on a combination of solar panels, propane,  generators, and banks of batteries to keep creature comforts operational.

In addition to the landing field, fuel tanks, hotel, restaurant, small store, fresh water supply, and a seasonal
Gringo
citizenry, Caracol also afforded a decent winter anchorage. When fierce northers howled from October through March, vessels sought refuge here. And unlike most safe harbors along the Baja, Caracol offered amenities as well as a convenient jumping off point for crossing to San Carlos, seventy miles across the Sea on the Mexican mainland.

Hetta race walked, stopping intermittently to chat with a local resident, pet a dog, or pick up a shell. As she sped by their friend Bud’s house, she saw signs of life; several windows were open and music flowed out through gauze curtains. She knew Bud wasn't around because his boat's red mooring ball was unoccupied.
And,
she thought,
the music ain’t the Texas Playboys. Probably some friends of his. Or Pam’s.
Pam, Bud’s girlfriend, talked him into buying the beach house, but Bud rarely stayed there. When he was at Caracol, he preferred living on his yacht.
Who wouldn’t
?

Hetta shook her head, refusing to have her beautiful day tainted with worrisome thoughts of Bud’s blonde faux pas. She picked up the pace, arms pumping. A seagull yawped and settled on shore to watch her.

“Pipe down, you rat with wings,” Hetta growled. The gull yammered and stared. “And wipe that grin off your beak. So what if I look like that battery bunny? I work hard to stay only twenty pounds overweight.”

The gull, unimpressed, squawked, flew ahead, landed, waited, and then hopscotched ahead again.

Hetta, on the alert for sea treasures offered up by the storm, spotted a particularly nice golden cockle, slowed to scoop it up, inspected it on the move and stowed it in her dive bag.

“Like I need another shell,” she told the gull. After her walks, Hetta’s bag usually bulged with empty oil bottles, beer cans and plastic bags, as well as shells, sea fans, sun bleached starfish and sea urchin remains. Once she even found an entire dolphin skeleton, which now hung from a lakeside scrub oak in front of her father’s Texas Hill Country home. The skeletal remains never failed to provoke comment, and Hetta’s dad was not above leading Yankee tourists down the garden path about its origins.

Hetta smiled, thinking of her daddy’s trophy tree and her own Texan roots. “I sure fooled that bunch of naysayers, bird.” For most of her life her family politely referred to Hetta as a bachelorette, a term far more diplomatic than “old maid.”

Eschewing the Southern Belle tradition, she opted instead to follow her father’s  steel toed bootsteps into the heavy construction industry. Hetta followed her own worldwide career while her cousins, sister and friends chalked up marriages, children, homes, and then divorces, child custody battles, and new spouses, ad nauseam. Hetta Coffey remained single, viewed as an eccentric by some, a spirited adventurer by others, and a bossy old maid by many. Hetta liked to think of herself as assertive and independent.

Hetta had worked in several countries, traveled to even more, and due to several inauspicious love affairs had all but given up on meeting a suitable companion, much less a husband.

Seven years before, when her dog died, she decided to simplify her life. No longer needing a yard for her beloved yellow lab, she sold her house and bought a boat. Had she had any idea how much more trouble a boat could be than a house, or how incredibly expensive it was to maintain, Hetta might not have made such a drastic move. But that boat changed her life. At thirty-seven—an age, she read in a women's magazine, when she was more likely to be assassinated by a terrorist than find a man—she met Robert “Jenks” Jenkins.

Jenks was forty-five, divorced for twenty years. Following his Viking ancestors to sea at eighteen, he retired from the United States Navy, had a second career in the fire protection industry, and traveled and worked in several countries. After the failure of his marriage and then a long-term, long-distance affaire d’coeur that slowly dwindled, he had no intention of finding a permanent companion, suitable or not.

Then, over a smoky Bay Area yacht club bar packed with Liar’s Dice players, Jenks’s blue eyes met Hetta’s brown ones. It was love at first sight.

“Well, not quite,” Hetta told the seagull. “Old Jenks made a run for his life.”

Much to the amusement and amazement of her family and friends, short plump Hetta went after the long lean Jenks with the dogged determination of a Redbone hound. When finally treed, Jenks surrendered his bachelorhood for domestic bliss. If one could call living on a boat all that domestic.

Hetta and Jenks sold both their boats, pooled their resources and were married aboard their newly acquired forty-two foot powerboat,
HiJenks
. Hetta’s only regret was that her mother didn't live to see her transformed into a much belated honest woman.

The growl of an outboard motor broke into Hetta’s woolgathering and she saw
Jenkzy
streaking flat out towards the lagoon a quarter mile ahead. Jenks loved to open the throttle on the fifteen-horsepower Evinrude, get up on a plane, and “blow the soot out.” He would doze on the warm sand near the lagoon until she arrived.

Almost stumbling over a dead gull, Hetta turned her attention back to the beach. Her pesky companion was pecking haphazardly at a piece of glistening plastic at the water’s edge. “Dammit bird, why don’t people clean up after themselves,” Hetta groused. Being a dedicated self-appointed beach sweeper, she resented any human originated flotsam on her beach.

The gull scolded the package as if in agreement, annoyed that something so inviting to the eye should prove inedible. Hetta made a beeline for the intrusive object, shooed the bird away, picked up the plastic bag, shook loose most of the damp sand, and looked inside.

“Wow!” she whooped, startling her feathered escort airborne, “wait ‘til der Jenkster sees this.”

“The water’s plenty warm,” Hetta later wheedled from
HiJenks
’s swim platform. When Jenks failed to respond she splashed him.

Jenks, distracted, mumbled, “Yeah, okay,” and smeared a couple of salty drops on his glasses.

“Hey, in this lifetime, Jenkins. Right now there’s no wind and the water’s warm. You know damned well that can change in a heartbeat.”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” he said, still scrutinizing the Global Positioning Satellite receiver Hetta found on the beach earlier in the day. “This is the best thing you ever hauled back from beachcombing.” He hit a button and the little handheld GPS displayed their present longitude and latitude on its liquid crystal display screen. “Even the batteries are still good.” He wanted to play with it more, but Hetta intervened.

“I’ll whine soon,” she warned. “Come on, let’s snorkel to the reef. It’s more fun if you come.”

“Yeah, right. You just want some frontline shark fodder,” Jenks teased, then regretted his words. Hetta was afraid of the water and worked hard to overcome her fear. She had progressed to swimming and snorkeling near the boat, but only in shallow water where she could see bottom. And never without her body suit.

Already sheathed from neck to foot in turquoise and black Lycra spandex, Hetta sat on the platform, swim fins dangling in the water, dive mask pushed up onto her head. She knew that a thin covering of shiny fabric afforded little protection from any sea creature hell bent on doing her harm, but it gave a modicum of confidence. At Jenks’s shark comment she jerked her fins from the water and shot him the finger. “Just for that you go first, fish bait,” she growled, then hummed the ominous two-note theme the whole world now associates with
Jaws
.

“Aye, aye, Jackie Cousteau. You know, you look cute in that body suit.”

“Yeah, right. I look like a Jimmy Dean sausage dressed for a Venetian harlequin ball. All I need is a jeweled mask with feathers and I’d qualify for a Fellini film.”

“I think you look cute,” Jenks insisted, pulling on his own extra long suit worn more for warmth than protection. His lanky frame harbored not an ounce of extra insulation.