Bud first sails Carpe Diem south to Antigua because the wind direction favors a broad reach and he can practice deploying the spinnaker single-handedly. At Martinique, he follows the trade winds west through the Windward Islands to Grenada and then in June north along the Venezuela coast to Curacao to spend the fall at anchor in the hurricane hole of Spanish Waters. In December, he beats against a headwind for two days and nights trying to return to Grenada and then reverses course to follow the trade winds again to Belize.
He pulls sails before reaching the reef and motors through the dark coral heads sprouting under the azure blue water. Ahead, a plank of driftwood bobs, and then he sees the fabric attached, and it becomes a body floating face down. He pulls alongside and the corpse drifts at the same speed as the boat. Shoulder length black hair wafts to and fro around the young man’s head—in his twenties, Bud thinks. Judging from skin color, still pinkish, he has been dead only a few hours.
Climbing onto the foredeck, he scours the horizon for another boat, then the deserted beach a quarter mile away. He spits overboard and watches the current sweep the spittle toward open water. In another hour a cloud of small fish will form under the shadow of the man and by noon saltwater crocs will check out the commotion. By nightfall, the body will be gone.
If left on the beach, someone will find him and at least his family will know he is dead. Bud unlashes the two-man inflatable Zodiac from behind the helm chair, lowers it to the water, and ties it along the port side. With the gaff, he hooks the man’s trouser pocket and pulls him into the dinghy.
Cranking the diesel again, he parallels the beach in water a few feet deeper than his five-foot draft, looking for a good anchorage. Ahead, a pier materializes and then the thatch roofs of a village rise above the palm thicket edging the shore. Arriving at a village with a dead man might be trouble. He should reverse course, dump the corpse, but by the time he decides, people are watching from shore.
Bud drops anchor off the end of the pier and lowers himself into the dinghy, stepping over the crumpled body to the aft seat to run the outboard. When he grounds on the beach, two boys who had been diving off the pier rush toward him, gawking first at his cargo and then suspiciously at him. The youngsters, their features a mixture of Indian, Spanish, and Negro, jabber among themselves then dash into the palmetto surrounding the village. They return following a barefoot, shirtless old man in ragged khaki pants massaging his gray-whiskered chin with one hand and gripping a machete beside his knee in the other. The old man kneels beside the dinghy and twists the head of the corpse. A gap opens in the neck where it had been hacked to the vertebra. He brushes the hair aside to see the face clearly.
“Aah…no.” The old man says to the corpse before crossing himself and slumping onto his butt beside the dinghy. The boys remain quiet and still behind him out of respect.
“¿Hablas español?” the man asks.
“No. Francés o Holandés o Inglés.”
“Inglés, un poco.”
“I found him. I did not do this.”
The man looks from Bud to the body, and then into Bud’s eyes again.
“¿Comprende?” Bud asks.
“Te creo. I believe. I believe, or I kill you already.”
A girl, thick-bodied, no taller than the boys but older, elbows past the boys. When she sees the dead man, her hands jerk to her face. Her shriek sends a chill through Bud.
“My son.” The old man says and then points to the girl. “His wife.”
“I’m sorry.”
The old man turns to the boys. “La tomas,” he says pointing up the path.
The boys take the girl’s elbows and try to turn her away. She jerks free but then acquiesces to being led back toward the village.
“Contrabandistas,” the old man says. “Kill her also. Tonight, I think.”
“No. Smugglers would not do that.”
“My son steal from smugglers. They kill her…example…to others.”
The old man seems sure of it. Bud does not know how to respond.
The man gets to his feet, glances once more at the body, and then leads Bud up the path the boys had used to a one-room, concrete-block house. Smoke seeps out the open doorway. The girl sits on a flat rock beside a fire pit in the center of the dirt floor weeping into her hands.
“Eat?” The old man points to a stack of tortillas in an enamel pan beside the fire.
“No. Gracias.”
“Lolita, vierta el hombre café.”
The girl wipes her eyes and nose on the hem of her skirt, snarls at Bud and then spits words at the old man fast and sharp as snakebites. The old man does not even look at her. She finally gets a cup and pours coffee from an aluminum pot.
“Thank you,” Bud says, “I’m sorry about your husband.”
“El ofrece simpatía,” the old man tells her; she nods and sits on the rock again. “I tell her. She no talk Inglés.” The old man points to a wooden bench and they sit side by side. “Te vas rapidamente.” He looks away searching for the English words. “You go now. The smugglers…regreso. Kill you.” He walks to the doorway looks out toward the pier and the sailboat at the end. “Take my son.” The old man looks back and Bud sees how hard this is for him to say. “Take him to the ocean.”
“No. This is not my business. You should bury him.”
“Mi hijo asesinado. My son murdered. You know. I know. Pueblo…the village know. They kill all who know. It better he never found. Nobody know.”
Bud’s face must show he does not believe the smugglers would kill a whole village. The old man nods his head to assure him it is true. “My son estúpido. The smugglers estúpido. If you as much estúpido, we die tonight.”
Bud stands, looks down at the man’s pleading face, then to the girl watching them. “No, I’ll go now.” He strides down to the beach, eager to dump the body and get back on his sailboat. The boys are still there and stand aside.
The old man follows, pulling the girl by her hand. “Save la niña; you take.”
The girl, her face a rage, bends into the Zodiac to close her husband’s eyes. Bud sits on the nose of the dinghy with his palms pressed to the sides of his head. All this is coming too fast. He can’t think.
The old man grabs the two boys by their arms. “No viste nada.” He looks each boy in the face. “No viste nada.” ¿Entiendes?” He waits for each of them to nod. “Escapada!”
The boys scamper away without looking back.
The old man rushes to the girl, who is still leaning over the dinghy, and jerks her to her feet. He twists her toward the house and pushes her along while talking urgently in her ear in Spanish. Before they enter the palm thicket, the old man turns and calls back. “Un momento por favor” and vanishes before Bud can answer.
The old man returns with a black garbage bag over his shoulder, pulling the girl by the hand. She compliantly stumbles behind, looking at her feet as if in a daze.
“I pay you. All I have…in bag.” He tosses the bag on top of his son’s body then guides the girl onto the middle seat. “Go. Go,” he urges Bud.
Bud wants to stop this, but he cannot think of the words to protest in Spanish or what else to do. He climbs in the back and lowers the outboard’s foot into the water as the old man pushes them away.
When Bud cuts the motor at the yacht, he hears a wail from shore. The old man is on his knees at the water’s edge, hands stretched to the sky, head tilted back in an anguished lament. The old man has finally given in to his pain. The memory of this horrendous day will dim over time, Bud thinks, but the cry of the broken man will return to wake him from sleep.
≈≈≈
Past the reef, Bud pulls the throttle back and sets the autopilot on a heading away from shore. He goes aft and hand-over-hand pulls in the Zodiac. As he lifts the nose of the inflatable onto the transom, the corpse rolls out, sinking at first and then bobbing up in the wake.
Bud hesitates before pulling the dinghy on deck and looks to the sky. The wind has changed to blow from the north—both good and bad. Two days and nights with the wind at his back would get him back to Curacao. If he sets sail, the dinghy should be aboard. But a north wind also means a storm. Already the clouds are building and turning dark. Best to get back inside the reef and find a sheltered anchorage. After the tie line plays out through his hands, the dinghy jerks and then skips along as before.
Back at the helm, he sets Carpe Diem into a sweeping turn. Through the cabin doorway, Lolita lies facedown on the bench against the starboard bulkhead, only her filthy bare feet visible hanging off the end of the cushion. An undocumented passenger would be trouble in any port. The sooner he puts her ashore the better.
≈≈≈
The girl comes up when she hears the anchor chain playing out. She ignores Bud and studies the shoreline.
“No.” She shouts to him and motions for him to move farther down the coast.
Bud reverses the transmission and backs Carpe Diem to set the anchor. When she rushes to grab his arm, he roughly pushes her onto the stern bench. Jumping back to her feet, she squalls a protest in rapid-fire Spanish. When Bud turns, hand raised to backhand her across the face, she sits down and draws a thumb across her throat as she points to the shore. Bud studies the coast. The beach is undisturbed; the jungle behind it like the rest he had passed. What does she want? Like him, he finally decides, she wants to live through the night.
As Bud winches up the anchor, she climbs onto the foredeck and holds onto the mast, her arm outstretched pointing the way. For another half hour, they motor inside the reef until the overcast sky begins to darken at sunset. In another fifteen minutes, it will be too dark to spot the coral heads. Just as Bud makes the decision to anchor and take his chances, Lolita points to a dip in the jungle canopy. A darker blue streak in the water indicates a channel leading to an opening in the lush green palmetto. Bud studies the girl, looking for doubt or fear. She adamantly urges him on.
Bud anchors in the middle of a lagoon the size of a soccer field as the shoreline fades into darkness. After the engine dies, he hops onto the foredeck. The moorage is ideal to wait out the coming storm—if he does not get boarded in the night. Already he cannot see the shore; there are only the undisturbed jungle sounds and no flicker of a campfire.
The faint form of Lolita gropes through the companionway into the cabin. Bud follows and flicks on the cabin lights just long enough to see her stretched on the bench behind the table again. His night vision is ruined, but he knows the cabin like an extension of his own body. Bud pulls the bed cover from the aft berth and tosses it at Lolita before going up to the cockpit.
From a side compartment, Bud retrieves a bottle of DEET and the Luger. If trouble comes, he won’t be able to run. Even if he cut away the anchor, he would never find the lagoon opening in the dark. Carpe Diem would be a white plastic duck puttering around in a barrel, an easy target. He stretches onto the aft bench with the pistol on the deck beside him. No one can board without shaking the boat or making noise, he convinces himself. But if the bandits are as stupid as the old man said, they might try it.
≈≈≈
At first light, Bud wakes to the roar of the dinghy motor. When he jumps to the rail, Lolita is speeding to shore—not looking back when he yells. She pulls the rubber dinghy beside a wooden skiff half-hidden under overhanging bushes and then vanishes into the jungle. This is why they are here, Bud thinks. She knows someone within walking distance and this is where she wants to be left. It is then, when he turns to put the Luger away, he sees the gun is missing.
The storm starts with a downpour. Carpe Diem lurches at the anchor line like a frightened animal. Bud watches out the porthole to see if the dinghy blows away. At dusk, the nose of the yacht rotates about the anchor to face the south and the rain slacks. Bud goes onto the foredeck and searches the shore. He could swim in to retrieve the dinghy, but without the Luger, he would be at the mercy of anyone waiting. The dinghy is a small price to pay to get rid of the girl and leave Belize alive.
Going back below, Bud’s toe catches the black garbage bag Lolita had thrown under the table. Her clothes. Why would she leave without her clothes? He dumps the bag onto the table and stirs through Lolita’s wadded dresses until he finds a zippered banker’s pouch—inside, dozens of Ziploc sandwich bags of white powder. The old man’s payment. Probably why his son had been killed.
“Damn,” he whispers between his teeth when he realizes Lolita is going for the police. A murdered man, a kidnapped girl, and now drug smuggling. He scampers up on deck and looks where Lolita had disappeared. “Damn you,” he yells and it echoes back from the far end of the lagoon.
If he can only make it through the night. A faint gibbous moon shines through the clouds. By morning the sea will be calm again and he will run as fast as Carpe Diem will carry him out into the Gulf, put all this behind. If he can just make it through the night…
With only a fillet knife as a weapon, there is no point standing guard; so Bud sleeps fitfully in the bunk below. In the gray half-light of morning, he is opening his last can of fruit cocktail when he hears an outboard motor. Through the rain-streaked cabin porthole, he watches Lolita, ochre hair matted around her face by the drizzle, cotton dress clinging to her stocky body, maneuver the dinghy toward the swimming platform at the stern. He goes topside to catch the tie line. She hands up a woven wicker basket mounded with food. On top is the Luger.
While Lolita showers in the head and changes into dry clothes from the garbage bag, Bud checks the contents of the basket—cans, cellophane pouches of beans, a moldy slab of bacon. When he sees the magazine of the Luger is empty, his eyes jerk to the head door, cracked open enough to see a sliver of her torso reflected in the vanity mirror. What happened in the jungle? Every scenario he thinks of ends in death—maybe deaths. The man found adrift has been avenged.
≈≈≈