Mr. Bones opened the cabin door and stuck his head out. “You ‘ave it?”
“Where’s Mary?” Edward stood on the pier next to the boat.
“Dey ‘ave ‘er, man. I tell you—”
“You talked to them?”
“No. I doonh talk to ‘em. I talk to someone who know ‘em—”
“Is Mary OK? I’m not giving them anything, unless she’s alright—”
“She alive, but dey angry. Soooo angry. We agree to trade – but, man, we need to get on wid it.”
“Let me talk to them.”
Mr. Bones turned his head up to the sky and shrugged.
“I doonh ‘ave dere number. I call someone. He call someone. Dat man call another country. It take three hour to get one answer. We agree to meet. Place and time. Dat all dere is, man. You wanna change dat? Den you wanna wait another day. Big problem for your girlfrienh.”
Edward was sure he didn’t have any options. If Mr. Bones was telling him the truth and they tried to call just so he could hear Mary’s voice, it would take another day before they made the trade. If Mr. Bones just wanted the drugs for himself, there was nothing Edward could do to prevent that. Mr. Bones could take it today or he could take it tomorrow. Edward had to trust him.
“And you, Mr. Bones? You’re going to help me?” He wanted to look into his eyes.
“I already tell you I help you free your girl. I make a promise.”
He tried to read the man, but Mr. Bones had on his aviator sunglasses, two beige mirrors of the world. All Edward could see was his own dark figure standing on the pier. Mr. Bones must have seen this. He started laughing while the three men in the back looked up at him like bored school boys watching the clock, waiting for class to end.
Edward stepped onto the gunwale and jumped into the trawler, throwing up his arms to stop himself from slamming into the wheelhouse. Mr. Bones laughed again before turning and giving an order to the captain. The motor’s staccato picked up, and the boat moved away from the pier, a cape of ripples forming off the bow.
Edward gave directions, and the captain stopped the boat against the inlet island’s beach. He jumped off, landing in water that reached up to his waist. He climbed out, ran to where the four backpacks were buried and, without a second thought, and clawed away the sand until the straps were exposed. He uprooted two, letting the sand drop off, and took these over to the waterline. He tossed the first one into the air. It volleyed over the rail and landed with a thud. Then he did the same with the next one.
Mr. Bones’ men were now up and interested. They huddled around the first backpack. Barry shook the sand off before carefully unzipping it.
“Oooh! Look at this shit!”
Mr. Bones stepped up behind him. “Dat boy’s all true.” He lightly jabbed the toe of his shoe into the side of the pack.
Edward pulled up the next two packs. He threw them over one at a time before jumping into the water. He waded over to the boat and climbed aboard. It wasn’t until he was standing next to Mr. Bones that anyone noticed he was back aboard. Edward held his breath – he would now find out what Mr. Bones really intended to do. Did he only want the drugs? Would Mr. Bones tell his men to push him over the side? Or worse? It was all up to him.
Mr. Bones looked over the four backpacks. With the packages stuffed inside them, they looked bloated, ready to burst.
“How much you dink dat is?”
His three men argued about their estimates for a minute, and Mr. Bones’ tongue peeked out of his mouth, running along his lower lip. He looked up at Edward, rubbed sweat off his neck. Then he turned and return to the cabin.
Soon, the boat’s motor rattled and clanged and wheezed to full power as they turned around. Black smoke bled out from vents around a center console behind the cabin, to be whisked away in the wind. The noise and vibration of the engine penetrated everything. It tickled Edward’s feet through his sneakers and shook his spine. After the turn was completed, and they had fully examined the contents of each backpack, the three men returned to their seats. The noise was too loud to carry on conversations, so each man eased into his own concerns. One man stared off at the horizon, one played video games on his phone, and Barry cleaned his ear with a pinky, examining the finger after each probe.
After ten minutes Peter Island had shrunk to as wide as a hand’s width. Edward watched it diminish like a thing sinking into the sea. When he couldn’t see it anymore, he walked around and entered the wheelhouse where Mr. Bones and the captain were.
The captain looked to be in his seventies and had a frizzled white beard and a receding hairline over the top of his head. These stiff white hairs made a complete circle around his face and forehead like an ill-fitted Shakespearian neck frill. He stood behind the large wheel of the boat in soiled overalls, staring out the window at the sea ahead with corpse-like rigidity. Occasionally, his eyes drifted down to a bulbous compass on the console before rising back up at what was ahead.
“You can ‘ave a seat ‘ere.” Mr. Bones motioned to the bench he was on. He had his legs crossed and his head back against the wood paneling.
Edward stepped up to face Mr. Bones.
“Where’s Mary? You gotta tell them you got their stuff now—”
“Boy, what you expect me to do? Dah phoon doonh work out ‘ere and I tellin you I doonh talk to ‘em. You best take id easy cuz we gotta two hour ride.”
Mr. Bones tone along with the condition of the boat – weathered and worn, a mass of wires protruded from an uncovered panel below the captain’s feet – made Edward feel helpless and foolish. Everything was out of his hands. He had given up the only thing he had to bargain with, the drugs. And he had given them to a man who was probably the island’s biggest drug dealer. Edward lifted his t-shirt to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The outside breeze at least kept the sweat off, but inside the closed cabin the air sweltered. The only relief was from a single wall fan oscillating across the room every few seconds.
Off to their left, behind them now was Beef Island and the airport where an airliner rose from the ground. The aircraft headed up at a sharp angle, turning north, the roar of its jets barely audible over the trawler’s engine. On their right was the length of Virgin Gorda. He gazed at it, looking for the hill path he and Mary had hiked a month before. There on the northeastern point was the place they had picnicked, where they could see nothing but open sea. Edward struggled to swallow. His mouth felt dry, his tongue like a piece of cloth stuffed inside it.
The captain leaned down and examined some instrument. He flicked the faulty reading with his finger to get an accurate measurement. Edward looked at the compass – they were heading northeast. He knew fifteen miles to the north was Anegada, a boomerang-shaped piece of land where fishermen caught lobsters and tourist dived reefs. Further to the east was nothing for miles, as far as he knew.
“Two hours? Are we going to Anguilla? I thought that’s British territory.”
“Anguilla more than two hour in dis boot,” Mr. Bones replied from behind him.
“So, where are we going?”
“Some place called Sombrero Island. You know it?”
He turned to see Mr. Bones smiling.
“No.”
“Juss a rock in dah ocean, halfway to Anguilla, ‘bout sixty mile. I never go dere, but capt’n ‘ere, he been dere plenty. Columbian juss wanna feel safe, you know? Dey got dat fass boot. If dey see trouble, dey take off like rabbit – ha haa haa! And dat fine wid me.”
With his eyes hidden behind his glasses and his head back, Mr. Bones appeared to be meditating. Edward wiped his brow again and lifted his head to catch the blow from the fan, but felt like he was only managing to lift a few hairs on his head.
Edward sat down beside Mr. Bones. Twenty minutes later, he had to get up and walk around, stepping outside in time to see the northeastern tip of the last island in the BVI sinking below the waves.