The Water Keeper(38)

Having stayed afloat for the better part of a minute, she let her fear begin to take over and her hands returned to mine. But her legs kept kicking. I could work with that. Summer’s problem wasn’t that she couldn’t swim. She could. Her problem was fear, but I knew she’d figure that out soon enough.

I pulled her to the shore where her feet found purchase on the sand, and she walked up the beach to the sound of Clay clapping. She looked like a soaked kitten, smiling and proud of herself. The next lesson wouldn’t be as fun, but she didn’t need to know that.

Yet.

We loaded up, pulled off the beach, and started the journey to Stuart. The no-wake zone continued another half mile, so Summer sat next to me while Clay resumed his perch on the beanbag. Summer caught me looking at my hands. She was smiling, apparently having enjoyed her lesson. Feeling like she’d accomplished something. She thumbed over her shoulder. “That reminded me of dancing. Back when I could really dance. On the . . . on the stage . . . my partner—depending on the show—would hold my hips the way you did and then throw me into the air.” She paused. “Sometimes, when all the world was right”—she smiled—“which wasn’t often, I’d catch a slow-motion glimpse of the audience somewhere in my spin. I can still see those pictures. Dim now, but I can still see them.”

I was extending my fingers and then making a fist, stretching my hand. She asked, “You okay?”

I’ve used my hands for lots of things, but a tender touch on a woman’s hips was not one of them. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Truth was, it was the first time I’d touched a woman with tenderness in a long time. She put a hand on my shoulder. “You’re a good teacher.”





Chapter 15


I needed to get to Stuart, and having made the turn across the canal, we now had a bit of a tailwind. I pushed the trim tabs down, forced the boat up on top of the chop, and moved across the water at thirty-five mph or better. One of the beautiful aspects of my boat is that it’s a little heavy for its size, which produces a Cadillac-smooth ride in choppy water. That has its downside in skinny water, but I’d face that when the time came. Gone Fiction was made for water like this, and so we churned across the top of it, eating up the miles.

We entered the waters of the Indian River and the no-man’s-land of mudflats north of Cape Canaveral. Mars on earth. For several miles the channel is marked by twisted poles stuck at odd angles into the soft earth. The remains of an enormous tree and its massive root ball lay resting in the water a hundred yards south of us where the water depth shrank to two feet across a two-mile-wide mudflat. The wind picked up and Summer felt it. As did the sideways chop, which pushed ocean spray over the side of the boat. It’s difficult to talk near forty mph, so I motioned for Summer to stand on my other side—back in the safety of the eye of the hurricane. Moving from my left to my right, she twirled. Unconsciously.

Clay, meanwhile, sat without a care in the world. One hand on Gunner, the other flat across his chest. Occasionally he would cough, but somehow he held the spasms at bay. As the sun fell off to our right, my attention turned to Angel and the satellite phone. Normally I kept it stowed until I needed it. I used it more for making calls than receiving them. But coverage in the Keys, which is where I figured her boat was headed, was spotty, and if she had coverage and tried to call, I wanted her to connect. I made a note to dig it out when we stopped.

We crossed Mars, turned south, and passed through the bascule span of the Florida East Coast Railway Bridge. The bridge sits low to the water and remains in the open position, flashing green lights notifying boats that entrance is permitted. When a train approaches, green changes to flashing red, a siren blasts four times, pauses, blasts four more times, and after an eight-minute delay, the bridge lowers and locks.

I saw the bridge some two miles distant and watched as the green light flashed to red. I also saw the train on my right. It was a long one, and I could not see its end. That train could delay us thirty minutes or more while we floated like a bobber in a thirty-knot crosswind and the engineer picked his teeth. That did not sound like my idea of fun.

Knowing I had about eight minutes, I pushed the throttle forward, bringing the engine to six thousand rpm’s, and moved across the top of the water at more than fifty mph. Approaching the bridge, Clay raised both hands and sang loudly. I had no idea what he was singing, but I knew the tone and it sounded like freedom.

As we approached the bridge, the horn blasted again. The bridge tender must have seen my intention to sneak through, because he sat on that horn. If we didn’t make it, Gone Fiction’s T-top would contact the bridge span and rip it off at about shoulder level. I thought we could make it. The bridge tender thought differently. Summer squeezed my arm. Tightly. As I closed the distance, I pushed the throttle to full and aimed for the center of the span. I had trimmed the engine so that only the propeller and lower unit were in the water.

We passed through the span as the bridge started to descend, clearing it by well over twenty feet. On the other side, with the bridge tender still communicating his distaste for my theatrics on the radio, Summer released her white-knuckle grip on my arm. Her face was flushed with excitement and she was breathing heavily. Up front, Clay sat lounging with his legs crossed and both arms raised. Fingers’ lunch box sat unmoving.

Knowing I could refuel in Stuart, I threw fuel conservation to the wind and maintained forty-plus mph. To our left, the Kennedy Space Center morphed into Merritt Island. With the city of Cocoa appearing on our starboard side, I pointed to our port side and brought Summer’s attention to a small, almost imperceptible barge canal. She leaned closer and I said, “That cuts across the island and into Port Canaveral, where they dock the Trident submarines.”