Plumbelly by Gary S. Maynard

Author:Gary S. Maynard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2018-06-12T17:36:52+00:00

CHAPTER 18

I lay awake for much of the night, listening to Plumbelly laboring northward and watching the drips of deck leaks where seawater worked its way below. The decks had shed the Ma’atean rains well enough, but under the constant strain at sea the old wooden boat wept a little here and there. Tanya rousted me at four, and I relieved her at the tiller for the dawn watch. She was exhausted after four hours of struggling with the helm and dodging sheets of spray. I didn’t blame her for ducking below and sliding the hatch closed without pausing for conversation.

I held the tiller in both hands, feeling the boat tugging hard as she pitched into the head sea. I sensed the rush of water under her lee bow and the lift as it passed under the turn of the bilge, felt the smooth flow of current tucking into the hollow of her stern and over her rudder blade. Plumbelly navigated the interface of two worlds, her mast and sails reaching up to grasp the winds of one, her hull gripped in the deep currents of the other. I eased the mainsheet a fathom or two and hardened up the jib, and the force on the tiller lessened and the boat steadied out on her course.

The moon had long set, and the stars glittered fiercely in the black dome of the sky. I recognized the Southern Cross and the Scorpion near the zenith and the Big Dipper low down to the west. It had been over a year since I had taken a star sight. My tongue felt for the chipped corner of my front tooth, the tiny gap in my smile that had been missing since that night.

One calm evening just south of the Galapagos, I had shot seven stars before the horizon faded in the dusk, and five of them reduced perfectly, lines of position crossing in a pinwheel on the chart. There was no way to make an error and have five lines plot like that: it was a first rate fix. I was fourteen years old. I brought the chart and a flashlight up on deck to show my father. He looked at the pinwheel penciled on the chart, studied my columns of figures.

“What about the other two stars?” he said.

“I couldn’t get them to reduce,” I said.

“So what the hell are you so proud of?”

He folded the chart and handed it back to me. I turned off the flashlight and we stared at each other in the dark.

“It’s the only real fix we’ve had since Panama,” I said.

His backhand caught me hard across the mouth, smashing my lip, his wedding ring chipping the corner of my tooth with a metallic clack. I ran my tongue across the sharp edge, spat blood and bits of enamel.

“Prince Gabriel the fucking Navigator,” he said.

Plumbelly was working hard. At dawn I fitted the T-handle to the bilge pump and began to pump. The pump drew a prime and rhythmic spurts of clear water streamed from the through-hull over the side.

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