Robert Stone - Bear and His Daughter

The men steered their boat carefully over the reef and sat with their outboard idling. They could not stay too long, Blessington thought. Their gas tank was small and it was a long way out against a current.

“Well,” he asked Gillian, “who’s got the overstanding now?”

“Not Honoré,” she said.

A haze of heat and doped lassitude settled over their mooring. Movement was labored, even speech seemed difficult. Blessington and Gillian nodded off on the gear locker. Marie seemed to have lured Freycinet belowdecks. Prior to dozing, Blessington heard her mimic the Frenchman’s angry voice and the two of them laughing down in the cabin. The next thing he saw clearly was Marie, in her bikini, standing on the cabin roof, screaming. A rifle blasted and echoed over the still water. Suddenly the slack breeze had a brisk cordite smell and it carried smoke.

Freycinet shouted, holding the hot shotgun.

The boat with the two islanders in it seemed to have managed to come up on them. Now it raced off, headed first out to sea to round the tip of the reef and then curving shoreward to take the inshore current at an angle.

“Everyone all right?” asked Blessington.

“Fucking monkeys!” Freycinet swore.

“Well,” Blessington said, watching the boat disappear “they’re gone for now. Maybe,” he suggested to Freycinet, “we can have our swim and go too.”

Freycinet looked at him blankly as though he had no idea what Blessington was talking about. He nodded vaguely.

After half an hour Marie rose and stood on the bulwark and prepared to dive, arms foremost. When she went, her dive was a good one, straight-backed and nearly splash-free. She performed a single stroke underwater and sped like a bright shaft between the coral heads below and the crystal surface. Then she appeared prettily in the light of day, blinking like a child, shaking her shining hair.

From his place in the bow, Freycinet watched Marie’s dive, her underwater career, her pert surfacing. His expression was not affectionate but taut and tight-lipped. The muscles in his neck stood out, his moves were twitchy like a street junkie’s. He looked exhausted and angry. The smell of cordite hovered around him.

“He’s a shithead and a loser,” Gillian said softly to Blessington. She looked not at Freycinet but toward the green mountains. “I thought he was cool. He was so fucking mean — I like respected that. Now we’re all gonna die. Well,” she said, “goes to show, right?”

“Don’t worry,” Blessington told her. “I won’t leave you.”

“Whoa,” said Gillian. “All right!” But her enthusiasm was not genuine. She was mocking him.

Blessington forgave her.

Freycinet pointed a finger at Gillian. “Swim!”

“What if I don’t wanna?” she asked, already standing up. When he began to swear at her in a hoarse voice she took her clothes off in front of them. Everything but the Rasta bracelet.

“I think I will if no one minds,” she said. “Where you want me to swim to, Honoré?”

“Swim to fucking Amérique, ” he said. He laughed as though his mood had improved. “You want her Liam?”

“People are always asking me that,” Blessington said. “What do I have to do?”

“You swim to fucking Amérique with her.”

Blessington saw Gillian take a couple of pills from her cutoff pocket and swallow them dry.

“I can’t swim that far,” Blessington said.

“Go as far as you can,” said Freycinet.

“How about you?” Gillian said to the Frenchman. “You’re the one wanted to stop. So ain’t you gonna swim?”

“I don’t trust her,” Freycinet said to Blessington. “What do you think?”

“She’s a beauty,” Blessington said. “Don’t provoke her.”

Gillian measured her beauty against the blue water and dived over the side. A belly full of pills, Blessington thought. But her strokes when she surfaced were strong and defined. She did everything well, he thought. She was good around the boat. She had a pleasant voice for country music. He could imagine her riding, a cowgirl.

“Bimbo, eh?” Freycinet asked. “That’s it, eh?”

“Yes,” Blessington said. “Texas and all that.”

“ Oui, ” said Freycinet. “Texas.” He yawned. “ Bien. Have your swim with her. If you want. “

Blessington went down into the stinking cabin and put his bathing suit on. Propriety to the last. The mixture of ganja, sick, roach spray and pine scent was asphyxiating. If he survived, he thought, he would never smoke hash again. Never drink rum, never do speed or cocaine, never sail or go where there were palm trees and too many stars overhead. A few fog-shrouded winter constellations would do.

“Tonight I’ll cook, eh?” Freycinet said when Blessington came back up. “You can assist me.”

“Good plan,” said Blessington.

Standing on the bulwark, he looked around the boat. There were no other vessels in sight. Marie was swimming backstroke, describing a safe circle about twenty-five yards out from the boat. Gillian appeared to be headed hard for the open sea. She had reached the edge of the current, where the wind raised small horsetails from the rushing water.

If Freycinet was planning to leave them in the water; Blessington wondered, would he leave Marie with them? It would all be a bad idea, because Freycinet was not a skilled sailor. And there was a possibility of their being picked up right here or even of their making it to shore, although that seemed most unlikely. On the other hand, he had discovered that Freycinet’s ideas were often impulses, usually bad ones. It was his recklessness that had made him appear so capably in charge, and that was as true in the kitchen as it was on the Raging Main. He had been a reckless cook.

Besides, there were a thousand dark possibilities on that awful ocean. That he had arranged to be met at sea off Martinique, that there had been some betrayal in the works throughout. Possibly involving Lavigerie or someone else in Fort-de-France.

“Yes,” said Blessington. “There’s time to unfreeze the grouper.”

He looked at the miles of ocean between the boat and the beach at the foot of the mountains. Far off to the right he could see white water, the current running swiftly over the top of a reef that extended southwesterly, at a 4 5-degree angle to the beach. Beyond the reef was a sandspit where the island tapered to its narrow southern end. On their left, the base of the mountains extended to the edge of the sea, forming a rock wall against which the waves broke. According to the charts, the wall plunged to a depth of ten fathoms, and the ocean concealed a network of submarine caves and grottoes in the volcanic rock of which the Pitons were composed. Across the towering ridge, completely out of sight, was the celebrated resort.

“I’ll take it out of the freezer,” Blessington said.

A swimmer would have to contrive to make land somewhere between the rock wall to the north and the reef and sandspit on the right. There would be easy swimming at first, through the windless afternoon, and a swimmer would not feel any current for the first mile or so. The last part of the swim would be partly against a brisk current, and possibly against the tide. The final mile would seem much farther. For the moment, wind was not in evidence. The current might be counted on to lessen as one drew closer to shore. If only one could swim across it in time.

“It’s all right,” said Freycinet. “I’ll do it. Have your swim.”

Beyond that, there was the possibility of big sharks so far out. They might be attracted by the effort of desperation. Blessington, exhausted and dehydrated, was in no mood for swimming miles. Freycinet would not leave them there, off the Pitons, he told himself. It was practically in sight of land. He would be risking too much — witnesses, their survival. If he meant to deep-six them he would try to strike at sea.