The Water Keeper(66)

“‘What’s her name?’ I asked.

“One of the guys flippantly waved his beer through the air. Shook his head. ‘Starts with an M. Mary. Marcia. Something.’

“Three Coast Guard boats appeared soon after. Flashing lights. Sirens. Followed by two helicopters. The water became a choppy mess and no place for my boat. It was also September and the moon was high, which meant there was about twice as much water, so an outgoing tide would be moving about twice as fast as normal in an attempt to get all that water out.

“I asked the guy, ‘What time this happen?’

“He swigged his beer and threw the can in the river. ‘About eight thirty.’

“That was four hours ago. I looked at those people like they’d lost their ever-loving minds. Idiots. They were all looking in the wrong place.”

Ellie had softened. While her shoulders pretended to be doing me a favor, her face told me I was getting through that granite exterior. Summer had moved closer. Touching me ever so slightly with her shoulder.

“I cranked the engine, turned the throttle to full, and made my way by moonlight about three miles toward the inlet where the St. Johns River meets the Atlantic Ocean. The Jetties is a narrow, deepwater shipping canal for both commercial and military vessels, including submarines, and the waves rolling between the Volkswagen-size rocks that make up the Jetties can reach six to eight feet on a calm day. Nobody in their right mind would ever take my boat anywhere near it.

“Twenty minutes later, I reached the Jetties. The waves were over my head. Even if I was able to navigate out of the channel, against the waves, when I returned the force and height of the waves would nosedive my boat and sink it like a torpedo. I cut the engine, felt the pull of the current taking me at six to seven knots, and knew that Marie had already passed through here. She was floating in the Atlantic. Out to sea. I cranked the engine and pointed the nose through the waves. My only saving grace was that I was the only passenger and both my weight and the engine weight lifted the bow enough to soften the blow of the waves. Several waves crashed over the bow, but I was able to bail enough water to stay afloat and still push out to sea.

“Once I broke free of the Jetties, the waves calmed and I could make out the surface of the water in the moonlight. I cut the engine, let the current pull me, and listened. I did this every couple of minutes as the lights of the shoreline grew more and more distant. Finally, with land six or seven miles to my west and a whole lot of really big water to my east, I just sat there floating. Listening. Letting the current pull me. Somewhere in there, I heard a voice rise up out of the water. In the middle of that really big dark ocean, I heard my name. Faint. Then louder. I searched frantically but couldn’t make it out. So . . .”

I fell quiet, shrugged, and acted like that was the end of the story.

Ellie looked at me like I was loco. “That’s it?!”

“Yeah, I just gave up on her because it was hard and I didn’t have enough information to go on.”

She looked at the ring in her hand, then at me, and rolled her eyes.

I leaned in closer. “Would you like me to finish the story, or would you like to throw that ring in the water?”

She feigned indifference. Crossed her arms. “I’m listening.”

“Couple hundred yards south, I saw a disturbance in the water. Could have been anything. But I aimed for it and held the throttle wide open until I reached where I thought it had been, then I cut the engine, coasted, and listened. Marie was screaming at me off my starboard side. That’s the right side. I pulled hard on the tiller and found her clutching a piece of driftwood and wearing a life jacket, which probably saved her life. She was cold, in shock, her head barely above water.

“I knew I’d never make it back through the Jetties, and I wasn’t sure if I had enough fuel to make it back to land, so I pointed the nose at the lights onshore and hoped. We ran out of gas a couple hundred yards from shore. I paddled the rest. We pulled the Gheenoe up on the beach, I built a fire, and we sat there holding each other until the sun rose. We never told anyone what happened. When they asked her at school, she told everyone she’d hit her head on a dock piling and was only able to climb up before she passed out. When she woke up, she walked home.”

I fell quiet again, and Ellie called my bluff. “That’s not the end of the story.”

“Yes, it is.”

She shook her head. “I’m young. Not dumb.”

Summer’s eyes were boring a hole through me, willing me to tell the rest. I stood, walked to the bow, and spoke out across the water. To the memory. “That night on the beach, after she’d finished shivering, she held up a single finger, touching mine with the tip of hers. She said, ‘You could’ve died out there tonight.’

“She was right. I nodded.

“‘Why’d you leave everyone to find me?’

“Maybe I was trying to impress her and maybe I was telling the truth. Whatever. I said, ‘Because the needs of the one outweigh those of the ninety-nine.’”

Ellie frowned. “Seems kind of heavy for a high schooler.”

“Looking back, maybe it was.”

“Where’d you learn that? Self-help book?”

“A friend of mine. A priest. And until that moment with Marie, I really had no idea what he was talking about.”