Chapter 32
Chapter 32
“Y ou remember when I gave that to you?”
She nodded.
“Want to hear the whole story?”
Another nod.
We’d made it back to the slave chapel, and she sat on what had been a pew, the burnt sticks of what remained of my barn just over her shoulder. I did not hurry. Didn’t rush the story. I had a feeling this was why we’d come.
“I worked at a tire store. Got off at nine. Your mom was a bit of a partier. I was not. She had this crazy group of friends. Actually, they weren’t friends. Friends don’t do what they did, but anyway, they hung out. I owned a Gheenoe. Sort of a canoe with a motor. I knew she was at this party, and I had no interest in the party but I wanted to see if she was okay. Just hear her voice. So I cranked the engine under a full moon and a flood tide. Which meant there was a lot of water everywhere. The marsh was flooded. The big reds love it in there, so I was casting beneath the moonlight, wishing I could pull her away from that party to be with me.” I smiled. “Maybe I was having a little pity party.”
She smirked. “Seems like I’ve heard a version of this before.”
“You have. Want me to stop?”
“No way.” She tucked her knees back into her chest as if she were hugging herself.
“Midnight found me toward the mouth of the river, where the IC meets the St. Johns. It’s big water and no place for a Gheenoe, but the reds were there, so... About 12:30, I heard a helicopter. Then I saw a boat motoring slowly downriver. Two large spotlights searching the surface. Never a good sign. Then the helicopter passed overhead, a larger searchlight, and then the boat. I heard loud, frantic voices. I flagged them down. Several guys from school, the guys with letterman jackets and college offers. They told me they’d gone night tubing and one of the girls had been thrown off. They couldn’t find her. ‘What’s her name?’ I asked. One of the guys flippantly waved his beer through the air. ‘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. That flood tide was about to turn and head out, and I knew it’d be moving fast. Which meant whoever they were looking for would be moving fast too. ‘What time this happen?’ I asked. The guy swigged his beer and threw the can in the river. ‘’Bout 8:30.’ Four hours had passed. I looked at those idiots like they’d lost their ever-loving minds. They were all looking in the wrong place.”
When I had first told this story to Ellie, I’d just found Casey in the shower and taken her to the hospital. She was touch and go. Summer was looking for Angel, and we weren’t sure if she had been sold or not. Add to that Ellie’s granite exterior, and we were swimming in uncertainty. Back then Ellie wasn’t sure she liked me, and she certainly didn’t trust me. If her life had taught her anything up to that moment, it was to never trust men.
Here in this moment, sitting on that charred pew, wrapped in the arms of my island, her castle walls had crumbled, granting me unfettered access to her heart. Proving that love is and always has been the most powerful weapon in this universe or any other.
I continued, “I cranked the engine and made my way by moonlight about three miles toward the inlet where the St. Johns River meets the Atlantic Ocean.”
She interrupted me, nodding. “‘The Jetties.”
“Correct. When I got there, 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 had cut the engine, felt the pull of the current taking me at six to seven knots, and knew your mom had already passed through. She was floating in the Atlantic. Out to sea. So I cranked the engine and pointed the nose through the waves. 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 farther and farther 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 clasped my hands together and acted like that was the end of the story. She knew better, as I’d done the exact same thing the first time I’d told it to her. She smiled and rolled her eyes exactly as she had before. “Hey.” She tapped the ring. “At least I didn’t throw it in the water.”
I continued, both of us wrapped in the warmth of memory. “Couple hundred yards south, I saw a disturbance. 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. Your mom was screaming at me off my starboard side. That’s the—”
She raised an eyebrow. “Dad. I know it’s the right side.”
“Just making sure.”
She laughed.
“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. When 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 paused, letting the images settle. “But 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 could have. Shaking her head, she asked me, ‘Why’d you do it? Why’d you leave everyone to find me?’ I’m not sure why I said what I did, but whatever my reason, I told her the truth.”
I pulled the worn coin out of my pocket and turned it. “Bones gave me this as a kid, not far from here in a diner. He’d had it inscribed with the eleven words that had become the window through which I saw the world.”
Ellie thumbed a tear, smiling. Even nodding. And spoke them from memory. “Because the needs of the one outweigh those of the ninety-nine.”