The story Leonard was learning to embrace did not mesh with his memory of what transpired after the boys were swept overboard.
A lot had happened in forty-eight hours. The details—some anyway—were still fresh. He’d been at the helm of Fresh Moon, high above the deck watching boys play soccer. Even a lumbering old freighter was easy to steer, which allowed his eyes to keep track of the score. Ahead were miles of golden-sunset water. In the cabinet overhead were a few simple gauges and a radar screen that showed a vessel of some type closing fast from behind. The captain, a likable old guy in a braided cap, had explained it all, and traded a few stories, before saying, “S’cuse me, gotta walk the dog.”
The old Leonard Nickelby might have winced at this crude euphemism for a visit to the urinal, but not now. After battling thugs and winning a fistfight, he was able to appreciate the manly fellowship the remark shared. It was a humorous metaphor. Animals weren’t even allowed on the bridge. Darn right, it was funny, and he’d made a mental note to use the expression himself—see how Lydia reacted.
Variations were playing through his head—S’cuse me, Lady Anne, I gotta unleash the hound—when it happened: A crush of boys went after the ball. A wave jolted the deck, the railing gave way, and the ocean swept the boys in—at least two, possibly three.
Oh my god. Stunned, he’d grabbed for something to steady himself—the gearshift, apparently—and slammed the engines into reverse while the wheel spun out of control. It was like hitting a wall. There were screams, mass panic among the passengers, as the freighter tilted in an impossible turn that flung open the wheelhouse door. Leonard was suddenly stumbling downhill.
After that, details became fuzzy. Only a few facts meshed with what eyewitnesses would later swear was true. What was real, what was fiction?
At first, Leonard tried to be honest with himself. What he remembered was that inertia, not bravery, had tumbled him outside onto the catwalk. It was possible his concern for the boys had sped him faster toward the railing—too fast. The first mate claimed he had looked back to holler orders, then jumped. What Leonard remembered was the rail, waist-high, somersaulting him into space. Horrific long seconds of free fall ended with an impact that had jetted water up his shorts and almost ripped his arms off.
The rest he remembered clearly. He wasn’t proud of how he had screamed for help while watching the freighter steam away. Then he had seen the boys in the water. Their heads had resembled twin coconuts bobbing in the wake, the sun low behind them. They’d found a wooden pallet to cling to. Odd-looking kids he recognized, with wild spiked hair, and both in hysterics, until they saw him wave and swim toward them.
For Leonard, everything changed after that. All decisions were simple because he had no choice. If he surrendered to panic, the boys would die, too.
A cascade of life jackets had flowered from the ship and were left behind. He’d gathered several and got the boys buckled in. For thirty minutes they’d drifted, watching the freighter circle the wrong goddamn area. A black-hulled yacht had joined the search, both vessels visible only when their heads crested a wave.
The tide, he realized, was pulling them toward an island maybe half a mile away. On the highest bluff was what looked like a bunker made of cement. No signs of life, no welcoming lights, and it would be dark soon.
“We’re going to swim for it,” he had told the boys. “Don’t worry, it’ll be fun. With these things”—the life jackets, he meant—“we could stay out here forever, but I’m getting a little hungry. How about you?”
In his previous life, children were noxious creatures best ignored. These two kids were different, which one proved when he replied, “Don’t mind me sayin’, sir, it’s ’bout goddamn time you come up with a plan. Mudder be cookin’ supper ’bout now.”
“Your mother isn’t on the boat?”
“The mailboat? Yes, sir. But not the same mama stays home and cooks.”
Humorous, the boy’s matter-of-fact manner. Like it was no big deal to be adrift as long as there was an adult along to supervise. They had kicked and splashed to within a hundred yards of land, pushing extra life jackets along as floats. A quarter moon had sprouted from the bluff and faced the sunset’s last bronze rays. Leonard remembered smiling, listening to the boys chatter back and forth. Their accents were as different as their looks—Bahamian with a Scottish brogue. Lots of slang he didn’t understand.
“Almost there,” he’d said, then had to laugh. “I’ll be damned, finally there’s a boat—and I think those are people coming down the hill. They must’ve seen us. Wave . . . Keep waving . . .”
A small inflatable was speeding their way. That’s when the other kid had cried, “We be so jumbey-fucked now!” which didn’t make sense until he screamed and pointed to a pair of massive dorsal fins. Like periscopes, they cleaved a track straight for them.
“Don’t move,” Leonard remembered saying. And he might have said, “Pretend like you’re a piece of wood. They don’t give a damn about wood.” But this was another blurry patch. What he knew for certain was, fear had caused his bowels to jettison all the water his shorts had ingested during the fall.
From shore, a woman’s voice had shouted a warning. Men joined, yelling and waving directions to the boat. What Leonard remembered with absolute clarity was tucking a boy under each arm, the oily sheen of dorsal fins as they closed, and the lie he had whispered, which was, “Stay close. I won’t let those bastards hurt you.”
A woman, perhaps the boys’ mother—that was unclear—had provided a hut on a rocky shoreline, where, two days later, Lydia sat and tried to concentrate on a diagram she’d found in the logbook.
She’d been at it a while. Her Spanish wasn’t good, but she knew triangulation. And, although pleased to have Leonard back at her side, she was getting impatient with the newly anointed hero. “Stumbled or jumped, who cares? Lighten up and take a look at this.” She indicated the diagram, then pointed. “Fitzpatrick could’ve been anchored out there. See? A rock pinnacle to the south, the way the shoreline curves—a lot of the elements match.”
“Here and a hundred other islands,” Leonard said, dismissing it as unimportant compared to recent events. “I don’t care if the first mate changes his story. Maybe I did yell an order before I jumped. Yeah . . . it’s possible. All I know is, I was the only one aboard who had the balls to save those kids.”
“Yes, dear. Now please pay attention. Here, written in Spanish—choza de esclavos—a slave hut. It could be the place we’re staying—you said yourself the walls, wattle with lime cement daub, are really old. These stick figures aren’t much of a code. You know better than anyone what these upside-down Vs represent.”
The man thought for a moment. “Dorsal fins—Christ Almighty, don’t remind me. It was hard enough to sleep the last two nights. Have you noticed the people here follow me around like . . . not like they’re scared of me, exactly, more like I have some weird power, you know, magic, that drove those sharks away. You’re the only one who knows the truth—I shit my pants, I was so scared. Capt. León’s mysterious shark repellent—yuck! But it’s probably better not to disappoint them, you think?”
“Leonard, the captain gave you his cap, not a cape with an S on it. Yes, you saved the boys. Be a gracious hero and let them have fun thanking you. While we’re at it”—her eyes moved from the whitewashed hut to the water, then a spire of rock to the south—“we can use this as a base of operations.”
“Those boys adore me, I think.”
“Yes, Leonard.”
“They need a role model, and I’d hate to . . . Okay, let’s say at the pig roast—the ceremony, whatever you want to call it—the men get drunk and order me to prove my powers by getting in the water at feeding time. How do I handle the situation? Me against two or three islanders, not a problem. But a whole drunken pack? You have to admit they’re a scary-looking bunch. Inbred—and that’s not a judgment, it’s textbook. The crooked jaws and dwarfism, the hands twice the size of—”
“For god’s sakes, do you hear yourself? You talk the way people probably talked about us before—”
“Okay, okay,” Leonard cut in. “God, I hate it when you’re right.” He smiled and extended his hand. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
Lydia found this so charming, she kissed his bald head and told him, “Lead on, Capitán.”
He’d found a cache of shell tools near the water. A sharpened clam axe and a pick fashioned from the spire of a whelk. There were several conch shells that had been drilled and fitted with handles long ago.
“Pre-Columbian war clubs,” he said, finally not so serious. “Some variety of the Taino people lived here, maybe fought a battle on this very spot six, seven hundred years ago. Look around. You’re the one with the gift for ancient places.”
“It’s nice to see you back at work.”
“Archaeology? Yeah, the timeless thread.” He rinsed sand from another clam axe head. “The last person to touch this might have been the first to spot three strange-looking ships. And stranger-looking men who wore armor. It’s possible. But instead of using this”—he hacked the air with the clam—“they welcomed Columbus and his men as gods. Lydee, I’m not going to blow it like the Spaniards did.”
The good vibe vanished. Lydia said, “Of course not—my Lord. Let’s split up and see what we find.”
It was one of those crystalline tropical mornings, sea and sky fused by a soundless ringing of aquamarine notes. White-crowned pigeons fled the low harsh light while the sun orbited on a meridian of deeper and timeless blue. A good day to ply the shallows for evidence of previous lives. Lydia waded, stooped, and inspected a bone that resembled a fish gorge, aware that Leonard was trying to make a point that had yet to gel.
The logbook was on her mind. A more pressing concern was the owner of the yacht that had joined in the rescue two nights ago—Efren Donner, the man dressed in white. He had caught her alone last night and insisted they talk privately. A boat would come for her in the afternoon. She hadn’t shared this with Leonard.
“Are you listening?” he asked. The man was in teacher mode.
“You were discussing the indigenous Taino, professor,” she replied.
“Or the Arawak, the Caribs—all considered tribal divisions of a single people. It was accepted as academic scripture that they migrated from Siberia to the Americas about thirteen thousand years ago. The theory began to change in the last decade, largely based on archaeologies—artifacts, human bones—found in Argentina. Some date back—arguably, of course—fifteen, some claim sixteen, thousand years, which is before the Siberian land bridge existed. Isn’t that wild?”
“Just crazy wild,” Lydia said with a gentle sarcasm that he, of course, missed.
“Yep. Near-simultaneous dual migration. That’s the new theory, meaning the Taino and others traveled by boat from Polynesia to South America. Later, filtered north to the Bahamas, possibly even Florida. When I was teaching, I refused to grant the theory more than a mention. The evidence is so flimsy.” He shrugged to indicate something, she wasn’t sure what, but was interested when he said, “Let’s keep walking. There are some unusual petroglyphs on a stone I want you to see—and it’s not the only thing that doesn’t make sense about this island.”
The main village was up a footpath, across a ridge, and down a sandy road. On both sides, rock crevices had been burned to expose the only fertile soil around—potholes planted with corn, gourds, pumpkins, beans. Gardens in a trash heap, is what they resembled. Most were marked with bits of rag or straw figurines.
“On any other island,” Leonard said, “I would think they’re Santería totems. To invite good luck or ward off evil. Voodoo, you know? But here, it’s probably a mix of Gaelic and African.”
“How do you know?”
Again, the secretive shrug.
From atop the ridge was a view of the sea and the village. A scattering of houses embraced the shoreline. They were tiny, whitewashed, and thatched like the house where they’d slept after getting a little drunk the night before with the islanders.
“The water, the varieties of jade, it’s so incredibly clear,” she said.
“The more coral, the fewer the nutrients to murk it up,” Leonard said, an expert on that, too.
Built out from the shoreline was a commercial pier. A crane linked the pier to a warehouse. It was a barn-sized building where lobster and fish were weighed, iced, and transported to populated areas such as Nassau. A sign on the building was too far away to read
MARL LANDING FISHERMAN’S CO-OP
NO VISITORS, NO WHOLESALE, NO TRESPASSING
“Buyers can’t dock here,” Leonard said. “Outsiders aren’t welcome. No foreigners—it’s the way they refer to all outsiders, Bahamians included. Last night, one of the boys’ uncles confided in me. He said I was sent here for a reason, they believe. That I can be trusted. And, by god, they might be right.”
Lydia thought, I’ve created a monster, but asked, “What else did he say?”
“Others took me aside after the uncle gave his okay. I’ve been accepted as one of them, you know. That’s what yesterday’s ceremony was all about.”
“I believe you’ve mentioned it a time or two,” she replied.
“Sarcasm,” he said. “It’s quite an honor, okay? This place is a real study in sociology. They told me stories they’ve inherited to keep foreigners away. Ghosts, blood rituals, typical voodoo stuff. The most interesting is that a rich man owns the island and lets them live here in return for taking care of a house he built years ago—you can see it only from the water. The place is actually on a chunk of rock that’s connected to this island by a bridge.” He paused, made eye contact. “Sound familiar? I learned a lot after you went to bed last night, dear.”
Lydia sensed a trap that had to do with Efren Donner. “Are you saying it’s the same house that what’s-his-name bragged about owning? I warned you, didn’t I?”
“Not just him. They’ve told the same story for decades. The house—a villa, they call it—isn’t for rent unless the right person comes along. I’m not sure of the criteria. Could be someone they want to keep an eye on. Over the years, they’ve become experts at protecting themselves from outsiders. Keep that in mind,” he added, then swept a hand along the coast. “Tell me what else doesn’t make sense in a village inhabited by poor fishermen.”
Lydia felt her stomach tense. She did a quick scan, seeing rickety buildings, a truck parked in the shade, a couple of tractors, a backhoe, no cars, no paved roads. Bicycles were common property, abandoned wherever the previous rider had gotten off. The island was not postcard idyllic. Trees on the ridge were wind-sheared, the landscape knobbed with limestone bluffs. No welcoming beach among the coconut palms below. Just rock . . . except for a cove in the far, far distance, where there was a splotch of golden sand. A person was there—a woman, possibly.
When Lydia moved to get a better angle, the woman was gone. “What am I supposed to see?”
According to Leonard, what she hadn’t noticed was the village medical clinic with air-conditioning. There was a dirt landing strip, a general store. The most incongruous was a small desalinization plant. Nearby was a building roofed with solar panels.
“A generator,” he said, “that powers the entire island. The Bahamian government didn’t build it. The police, public officials, they’re not welcome either—and don’t press the issue. I didn’t. They appreciated that, I could tell.”
“How does it feel to be so popular?” she asked, an affectionate jab with an edge.
“You still don’t get it,” he replied. “Everything here is different, the way people look, the language. But think about it. It took more than wild stories to stop the big-money syndicates from bribing officials and turning this island into a theme park like over there.”
Twelve miles away, Little San Salvador was a misty knoll on the horizon. A few miles farther was another landmass. It resembled a bank of clouds girded to a single low peak.
“They haven’t spoiled Cat Island, either, from what I’ve read, but only because the economy’s doing okay. There’s tourism, the healthy sort, and commerce with other islands, but not enough to tell the government and everyone else to stay the heck away.”
Lydia reacted as if a light had snapped on. “Ambergris,” she said. “How else could a fisherman’s co-op afford solar power and the rest of it? That airstrip—on an island that doesn’t have a road? Or drugs. Or both.”
“No,” Leonard said. “It took me a while, too. What I think is, these people are rich.”
Lydia took that as a metaphor for happiness, then realized. “You can’t be serious.”
“How else do you explain it? I think they have more money than God. They own the island and everything on it.”
“Someone told you this?”
“Not in so many words. The people know they don’t fit in with the outside world and they don’t give a darn. So they bribe the right officials and spread rumors to protect what they don’t want anyone to know. Whatever they need, they build or buy themselves. What else makes sense? I don’t know where the money comes from, but there’s been enough to keep them isolated for generations. It’s only a theory, but . . . Come on.”
She followed him uphill. The structure she’d seen from the mailboat materialized from a tangle of brush, but it wasn’t concrete. The walls were rough-hewn rock covered with faded lime cement. Windows were as small as gun ports. The door was heavy planking bound with brass that had turned green.
“Don’t bother, it’s locked,” Leonard said. “It used to be a church. Last night, she took me inside and showed me the stone. Symbols, some of them she knew I would recognize. The trust that shows, do you have any idea what it means?”
“It means we walked a hell of a long way for nothing,” Lydia said, then softened up. “Look, I know she’s an important person and all, but only here, nowhere else. I’m starting to wonder if she slipped something in your drink.”
She was the woman who had looked too old to be the boys’ mother yet had taken charge of them and every detail since their rescue. Then later, when a fire was built, had wrung Leonard’s hand and addressed the villagers in a language that sounded foreign because of her accent and wording.
A passage recorded on Lydia’s phone had taken them both time to decipher. A lilting voice with a brogue saying, “Dis gentl’man be sent us by Heaven, peoples, and dis be where he stay. Cap’n León, the man who gobsmacked dem shark. Jumbied ’em bad, he did, so us owes him two lives. Understand you me?” A dwarf of a woman, she and Leonard encircled by islanders, a hundred ashen faces suspended above a fire.
Mudder, the children called her—“Mother.” The confusing part was the word was also used to address other females of childbearing age. To adults, she was Kalik, also confusing. It was the name of a Bahamian beer.
Lydia, in weeds near the building, referenced the recording and said, “Don’t get carried away with all this, Leo. You weren’t sent by Heaven. We flew coach out of West Palm Beach, remember?”
“Anthropomorphic signs of godly powers,” he replied patiently. “It’s common in isolated cultures. You probably learned about it in my class. On the other hand, a culture that has survived this long has to have something going for it. Right?”
“Oh come on.”
“No. Think about the timing. Every person on that boat was in the right place at the right time. But only one of us had the courage to jump overboard and save Kalik’s grandsons.”
“You didn’t jump, you fell,” Lydia reminded him. “Why’d you really bring me here if you knew the place was locked? Did she tell you to do that, too?”
“In a way,” he said, and motioned to the east. “Turns out, it’s the perfect spot to ask about him.”
Far below, on the island’s windward side, was a black-hulled yacht Lydia had been trying hard to ignore.
“Oh,” she said. That’s all, putting it together—the old woman and other inhabitants on an island where nothing went unseen.
“Efren Donner,” Leonard continued. “Last night was the second time you refused to set foot on his boat. Efren felt slighted. I got the impression he’s more interested in you than me.”
“That’s just plain weird.”
“Is it?”
“Of course it is. I said from the start he wants something. For all we know, he sent those gangsters to rob us. The gold Tricentennial is probably what he’s after.”
“You really believe that?”
Lydia surprised herself by replying softly, “No, Leo, that’s not what I believe.”
Leonard seemed equally surprised. “Thanks for admitting it, darling. Whatever the truth is, you can trust me.”
“I do. The coin’s part of it, maybe, but I think he wants to get me alone and pump me for information on Benthic.”
“Ahh,” he said. “So that’s it. Something to do with the great Jimmy Jones. How long have you and Donner known each other?”
“We don’t. I recognized him, that’s all. He was an investor, not part of the crew. I know, I should’ve told you, but—”
Leonard’s fingers found her hand. “It doesn’t matter. You and me, we’re a team, right?” A gentle squeeze communicated a bond. “I wish you would’ve come aboard last night. It’s quite a boat. The guest suite is huge, nice shower, and there’s satellite TV. And it’s all ours for a week or so if you want. Donner made the same offer he made at the resort.”
“I don’t want anything to do with the man. Why didn’t you just ask me before hiking all the way up here?”
Leonard had something else on his mind. “I’ve never pried into your personal life because I don’t give a damn about your past. After those sharks, knowing I was going to die, the only thing in this world that scares me is the thought of losing you.”
Lydia felt her tension fade, until he added, “That’s why I need to ask you about last night.”
How much honesty could her new love handle? “I don’t want to lose you either, Leo,” she said carefully. “Maybe I wasn’t as sure as I should’ve been, but I am now. So why risk it?”
“Because it’s how these people survive,” he said. “She notices everything.”
What did you and Donner talk about when you snuck off alone? is the question Leonard finally asked.