After a short and troubled nap, Errol rigged a hand line and small jig that he dangled from the side for only a short time before bringing a snapper aboard. He held it in front of him, its fins braced, bright eyes seemingly fixed upon his. He rapped it over the head with his cleaning knife, and as it stiffened, shivered, and died in his hand, tears filled his eyes. He cleaned it, placed the two fillets in a skillet on the single-burner alcohol stove, and, after examining the fleshless frame of the fish and thinking it looked like a good plan for a snapper, he threw it overboard. A seagull flew straight from the Beethoven boat, where it had been working the owner for snacks, and carried off the remains. The cigarette boat was now motoring slowly among the other anchored boats, treating them to the latest urban sounds. The helicopter was gone. “Why do we ‘clean’ fish?” Errol said aloud. “They are not dirty.” He chuckled as though he’d made this remark for genteel company, then grimly contemplated pulling anchor and sailing for Key West. The wind had not come around sufficiently but surely it would; staying in this public anchorage any longer would only put off the help he needed to avoid calamity and, more important, polishing off the beer would make it unavailable for the voyage, when its service to morale in stormy conditions would be invaluable.
Therefore, he raised the sails, pulling the halyards until they squeaked in the jam cleats. They luffed loudly as the boat drew back on the anchor rode, the boom bouncing against the main-sheet traveler, the tiller swinging from side to side as though the boat were being steered by a ghost. The anchor came up covered with turtle grass, and Errol laid it on deck, cleaning the weeds and throwing them overboard before lashing the anchor into its chocks and returning to the cockpit. He sat down and pushed the tiller to one side. The boat drifted backward and swung, until the sail filled and she reversed direction. Czarina then moved swiftly, rail down, toward the entrance to the bay.
As he sailed out the pass, he felt the slight easterly shift of the still-powerful winds. The faces of the waves were still tall but less abrupt and the rudder never lost its bite as it had on his first crossing. The sky was gray, but it was higher and faintly light-shot to the west. He trimmed the sails until, at due south, there was no pressure on the helm and the yawl sailed herself. His only job would be to adjust the sheets to keep this heading as the wind clocked around to the east.
The coast soon disappeared and he found himself making good progress in the open water; the Gulf of Mexico, and the greater regularity of the seas, uninfluenced by tide and shore, made the little boat lope along with a purpose. Errol had a few sips of his beer, but he could already tell he was not going to drink too much. He occupied himself with housekeeping, making up the pipe berth below, folding his oilskins and stowing them in their locker, draining the icebox into a bucket and pouring the water overboard. He pulled the floorboards and sponged out the salt water that had come on deck and gotten through the deck ventilator, which now poured fresh air through the cabin, arousing the smells of cedar and old varnish. On the bulkhead a framed photograph had discolored over time, a picture of himself much younger, a man, and a woman, the same age. Underneath, it said Pals.
Back in the cockpit, he unspooled a hand line with a large silver spoon and single hook over the stern. It danced and dove a hundred feet behind the boat and seemed to raise Errol’s spirits further. He wished he had some sort of flag to raise and then remembered that he did have just the thing. He dug around in the cockpit locker among dock lines, fenders, and life jackets until he found the flag of the Conch Republic, the imaginary nation of Key West from its days of hippie utopianism, an era Errol seemed to have trouble escaping. He raised it to the masthead on the flag halyard and liked seeing its pink and yellow conch and sunburst against an increasingly blue sky.
The compass indicated he was now heading for Yucatán and so further adjustment to the sails would be necessary. This was the result of the steady easterly shift of winds and clearing weather. The seas were ever less violent, and within an hour the skies had cleared entirely and the Gulf had regained its characteristic dusty green placidity under towering white clouds. It occurred to Errol that his drinking days were behind him. Oh, joy! Not another shit-faced, snockered, plastered, oiled, loaded, bombed, wasted minute ever again! No more guilt, remorse, rehab, or jail! Free at last!
Calming down, he remembered that his hope lay in his visit to Florence Ewing, the good witch. She had seen right through him in days past and found something redeeming. She would again. He could have taken the bus and gotten there straight-away, but he had arrived by sea the last time she’d put him right, and though it was decades ago he was sure she could do it again. He knew better than to alter any of the details. His mestizos, trustworthy and industrious, would keep the cracker’s groves in order until he returned.
A frigate bird followed him at a great altitude, a perfect flier that barely needed to move its wings, an elegant black zigzag watching his wake for bait fish. He daydreamed about what it would be like to be a bird like that, a seabird with that great altitude and horizon. No big thoughts, of course, just “Where’s the fish?” Like being a fine athlete, everything vision and muscle memory, Ted Williams watching the ball compress on the bat, no attitude, a simple there-it-is. Roar of the crowd same as wind or traffic, just worthless noise. If I were a bird, that six-pack wouldn’t glow like radium, a screeching come-hither.
The yawl was making wonderful progress. With the slowly clocking wind and more moderate seas, she sped along on a controlled reach that might scarcely need adjustment before Key West. The coast soon disappeared beneath the eastern horizon, and for a pleasant half hour a pair of young dolphins surfed in the quarter wave before peeling off for more interesting games. Huge schools of bait, shadows in the pale Gulf green, erupted like hail falling on the water as predators coursed through and terns dove at them from above. The leeward deck was dark with spray all the way to the transom.
In late afternoon, he sailed through a congregation of Louisiana shrimp boats, nets draped from trawling booms as they awaited nightfall. And at dusk a big ketch rail-down passed a couple miles to the north of him, heading for Yucatán. Errol lashed the tiller and went below to warm some soup over the blue alcohol flame. He ate it slowly, sitting on the companionway step and looking at the clouds swaying back and forth above the cockpit, their undersides pink at the approach of sundown. As he gazed south, he wished he could do this forever. Maybe once he’d been saved, it would be possible. At least he could go to the islands for a spell, which islands it was hard to say. What difference did it make? he thought irritably, as though being cross-examined about the islands. For a moment, he fretted about islands all running together and being required to distinguish between them. Now his ears were ringing.
Then it was dark, a comfortable dark with stars coming up in tiers, and a quarter moon hung outlined in haze. The tiller throbbed gently in Errol’s hand and the lubber line on the compass rested quietly on his course of 180 degrees. It seemed that since his boat went in the water all things were sweeping him gently toward this destination. The hours slipped by until the loom of Key West lit the southwestern sky in a pale glow, calling for a “cocktail,” a cause for celebration even Errol found suspicious. He might have felt misgivings.
Sails had to be trimmed again as he beat his way past the sea buoy and up the ship channel toward the bright skyline of the city. He didn’t feel he had time to go all the way around Tank Island to get to Garrison Bight. Instead, he sailed on until he broke out into the Atlantic, and then broad-reached up Smathers Beach before turning in toward the desalinization plant and a dismaying number of bright lights and even automobile traffic. Dropping the mainsail, he lashed it to the boom, and crept up the channel under the jib and mizzen between small anchored boats backlit on black water. Spotting an empty slip, he dropped the jib and mizzen and glided very slowly to the dock. As he stepped ashore to secure the yawl, he suddenly felt frightened, but the feeling passed. He was briefly without momentum, a situation efficiently solved by one of the beers. Furthermore, last call was still hours away.