Charles Williams - Gulf Coast Girl

Time passed somehow. The reach, pull, reach became monotonous, and then mechanical, and at last eternal. I had never done anything else; I’d been born swimming through warm water toward a shore that receded nine miles ahead as fast as I advanced. Ursa Major wheeled over and down in the northwest and Cassiopeia swung up like the other arm of a giant counterbalance turning around Polaris. It would soon be dawn.

My arms began to grow heavy long before I would admit I was tiring. My breathing was ragged now, and sometimes I inhaled water and choked. I looked around once and the sky was pink in the east. Then, suddenly, it was full daylight. I looked ahead. There was nothing but water, and the sea running, and far off to our left the bare mast of the Ballerina . Land didn’t even exist any more.

We couldn’t have covered much more than a third of the distance, and I knew I was almost done. I let my feet down, treading water, and she came up against me with only her head above the surface. Her face was drawn with weariness, and there were blue circles under her eyes. She put a hand on my arm under water and tried to smile. A sea picked us up and threw us together. Her face was only inches from mine.

“I’m sorry about the life preserver,” she said, her voice thin with exhaustion.

“It’s all right,” I said. There was a bad pain in my side and my breathing was labored. I knew it was stupid to waste breath talking, but suddenly I wanted to tell her.

I put a hand on each side of her face. “I couldn’t tell you before,” I said. “Even—if he had run out on you. But it doesn’t matter now. Have to tell you. I love you. More than anything—in the world. You’ve never been out of my mind since you walked out on edge of that pier—”

She didn’t say anything. She brought her arms up very slowly and put them about my neck. We went under, our lips together, arms tight about each other. It was like falling endlessly through a warm, rosy cloud. I seemed to realize, very dimly, that it was water we were sinking through and that if we didn’t stop it and swim up we’d drown right there, but apparently there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t want to turn her loose long enough to swim up. We went on falling, through warmth and ecstasy and colors.

White water crashed about our heads. We were right on the surface and hadn’t fallen anywhere. We gasped for breath and I held my face against hers. “Shannon—Shannon—” I said.

“Don’t talk,” she whispered.

I held her, and kissed the closed eyes, and we went under again with that sensation of falling through infinite rose-tinted space. We came up. I saw the sun rising out of the sea. I didn’t want to die. They couldn’t take it all away now.

I started to swim again, but the stroke was ragged and uneven and she seemed to be a heavier weight pulling at me. Suddenly the drag was gone. Panic seized me. I thought she had gone under and was drowning. I turned. Her head was still above surface. She had let go deliberately.

“Go on—” Her face went under and she choked.

I caught her arm and pulled her up and toward me, and held her with her face above water. I saw the Ballerina going by again to seaward. They were too far away. They wouldn’t see us. I wondered if I wanted them to. I couldn’t think; it was all mixed up. Being willing to die in the future, even in a future measured in hours, was one thing; dying now was something else. But it didn’t matter what I thought. They’d never see us. They were nearly a mile off.

“Go on—” she gasped. “Maybe you can make it. Leave me. I’ve ruined everything for you—”

“Hush,” I said. “Don’t waste breath.”

We went under.

I pulled her back to the surface. It seemed to take a long time. Once more, I thought. Maybe twice . But the panic hadn’t started yet. I hoped we wouldn’t fight each other when it did. Maybe there wouldn’t be any panic. No, there always was, when you took that first mouthful and your throat shut off automatically to keep it out.

My eyes opened. We were on the surface again, and I saw that the sloop had turned and was bearing down directly toward us. But they couldn’t have seen us. Then some detached part of my mind figured it out as calmly and analytically as if I were working out something with a slide rule in a classroom. It was those glasses. It was those 7 by 50 binoculars I had bought in New Orleans. They were the reason they’d kept on searching. Barclay had known he could locate us as soon as it was light.

Somehow we were still afloat. I could see Barclay standing on the boom with an arm around the mast, directing Barfield at the helm. They cut the engine and drifted down on us.

I watched them helplessly, unable even to struggle any more. We had failed. But we were still alive. Barclay climbed down into the cockpit and tossed a line. I caught it and he pulled us over. When the sloop rolled down, he and Barfield caught her arms and lifted her over the side. I heard Barfield whistle, and then laugh. I stared up at him through the mists of utter exhaustion, tried to curse him, and couldn’t.

They hauled me in. She was on her knees in the cockpit, unable to rise, her head bowed and water running out of her hair. The red rays of the sun coming over the horizon splashed against her body and the two wisps of underclothing were stuck to her like wet tissue. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and the most completely beaten. I took a step toward her, stumbled, and fell myself.

“Some dish, Manning,” Barfield said. “A wet dish, but a dish.”

I tried to get to my feet. He put a hand on my head and pushed gently, and I collapsed like a column of building blocks.

Barclay’s voice lashed out, the first time I had heard anger in it. “Help her below, Barfield,” he said.

They helped her down the companionway. I lay for another minute in the cockpit, fighting for breath, and then managed to get to my feet. I went below, staggering weakly and holding onto anything I could reach. They had put her in the starboard bunk in the forward part of the cabin, the one she’d been in before. I pulled the curtain aside and leaned against the door of the head. Barfield stared at me with amusement and went out.

Barclay was pulling the sheet up over her nearly nude body with the impersonal efficiency of a nurse.

I looked at him. “Thanks,” I said.

“Not at all,” he replied. “Best fall into the other bunk yourself. You both look a bit done in.”

I indicated the sheet. “Why?”

He shrugged. “Why not? Gratuitous brutality is for fools.” He went out.

That was it, I thought, lost in a sea of fatigue. That was as near as I’d ever come to figuring him out and he’d said it himself. Gratuitous brutality was for fools. He was a pro, and was brutal only for pay. Why give away something you could sell? To Barfield this half-clad girl was a peep-show and a snicker; to Barclay she was an investment.

I stood beside her bunk, swaying a little, staring down at the lovely, wide-cheekboned, Scandinavian face and the long lashes on her cheek. Her hair was a sopping ruin.

I knelt a little and started taking out the pins, and when it was loosed I spread it across the pillow. Maybe it would dry a little.

Her eyes opened. They looked up at me and her lips moved. “You could have made it alone.”

“I can’t think of any place I want to go alone,” I said.

“Neither can I,” she whispered.

I bent and kissed her, and everything caved in on me. I fell into the other bunk and was asleep before I could straighten out.

* * *

I awoke. Barfield was shaking my arm. “Rise and shine, Manning,” he said. “Barclay wants to see you.”