“I didn’t really move to Canada, I just said that. I didn’t move anywhere. I moved my body several times but nothing else moved. I was like that four-hundred-pound lady bouncer at the Anchor they called Tiny. We were there a thousand times and nobody ever saw Tiny move. I’m kind of like old Tiny, but in my case the body is the only thing that did move. Let me clear that up: I went to Canada, I went to Red Deer, Alberta, but it just didn’t work out, and anyway Canada won’t let me back in. It’s not like I meant to mislead you about that.
“By the way, it’s sure nice nobody smokes in here. I can smell all that longleaf pine just like the day your granddad nailed it up. When you used to get us to do a little work around here, we’d run into those gumbo-limbo joists and break our tools and you’d just laugh. I think me and Raymond pretty much covered that old turtle route in that black Nova Scotia ketch we had together, a real little ship. We probably saw as much of the tropics as anybody.”
He looked off to one end of the room where the tall windows had darkened and a breeze lifted the long curtains. The four live bulbs in the chandelier were little help and Errol was at the point of thinking Florence had passed away.
“That last trip, coming across the stream in a northern gale, a big wave took Raymond right off the helm and away. I came up for my watch and there was no one at the wheel. Not a soul.” He delivered a hearty laugh but there was a scream buried in it. “I realize there are plenty of people who said it didn’t exactly happen that way, and I hope you believe me. But I got the boat home, got her tied up at the desalinization plant, and walked to Caroline’s house. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t going to be there. Well, what do you know about that, Florence? I’ll bet you imagined you were through with all that. I kind of wish you’d answer me or say something. I’ll bet you figured we had used you about up. Surprise, surprise. You know what? Just goes to show you, Raymond is the legend we all knew he would be. I can tell you that I have failed to make — uh, to make an appropriate accommodation. I am a drunkard and I really felt I better get back down here for a little visit, see what you had to say about all this, help a person more or less sort of stand it.”
Florence Ewing did not say a word. Errol could feel her opal eyes enter his soul. He knew that if he did not tell the truth she would not offer him absolution, and even then there was no certainty, no promise, no assurance that her powers would work or that he would ever be whole again. It had been half his life since he’d known what hope felt like. In Florence Ewing’s face it seemed everything was accepted as morning accepted light. He was joyous that he’d had enough mother wit left to make the trip, to place himself in the way of this illumination.
“Florence, you don’t have to talk.”
He rose from his chair and sat at the corner of her bed and thought. Carter and Castro were going to show the world we could be friends and they declared a race from Key West to Cuba. Errol and Raymond entered the race with no hope of winning, and they agreed they wouldn’t try to bring any souls back with them. The manifest showed just the two of them in both directions: Errol Healy and Raymond Fitzpatrick.
Errol couldn’t tell if he was talking or just thinking. Florence’s eyes took him in with even greater opalescence, and he wondered whether she was reading his mind. He thought he could hear himself speaking, maybe just part of this dream, a disquieting dream that suggested the possibility that he wasn’t even here at all, that he would be awakened by an attendant of some sort, someone he would be unable to recognize. He never wanted to be in any form of custody.
All the boats knew a gale was predicted. Everyone leaving the ship channel at sundown thought they would reach the middle of the stream sometime after midnight. There was a crowd by the coast guard dock, all the sunset watchers and dogs and jugglers there to see them off, grand prix yachts and cruisers and local dope captains in anything they could lay hands on, from J24s to backyard trimarans. It had the feeling of a big parade, with Errol and Raymond’s the only ship customarily dedicated to profiteering at the misfortune of refugees.
They were going to Cuba! The sun set behind them kind of cold, and for a few hours right into the darkness they were on a beam reach in fifteen to eighteen knots from the north, and the ketch had her rail right at the water, pulling a quarter wave higher than the transom. They had an overlapping jib that was almost too much for her, but this was perfect sailing for a heavy English ketch, and her rock-elm ribs creaked under her. They had a bottle of Courvoisier to sip, and Errol chattered about all the good things in their lives, all their tax-free money, and about Caroline and sailing forever and someday settling down with her, with their own crabbing pier for the kids, with a flounder light and maybe a picture album of the days when Raymond and Errol were young in a dangerous trade, when everyone they did business with had a gun.
At some point, Errol realized that Raymond hadn’t said a word. He was a very direct man, an honest man. He never spoke for effect and Errol had long ago learned that something was coming when he was quiet like this. Well, something was coming. Raymond said that he had never intended to join this race. He came so he could talk to Errol man-to-man. And what he had to say was that when they got back to Key West, he and Caroline were moving to New Orleans. That by the time they got back she would already be gone.
“Raymond was at the helm and I was sitting in the foot well with my back to the companionway. I could see all the way to the last glow on the horizon, and Key West was under the western horizon except for the loom of its lights. I felt I should say something. I actually felt I should say something out of our friendship. But nothing would come. I kept trying to picture Caroline, and she would come to me all outlined; it’s hard to explain. But I couldn’t say anything. I guess I thought we should go back, but if I said we should go back, that would really make it. . really make it official. So I never said, Let’s go back, and we pushed on toward Cuba.
“At about two in the morning, the gale was rising and we put a double reef in the main, a real adventure because she had an old-fashioned boom that overhung the transom by ten feet, and getting the bunt tied in all the way to the leech was dangerous.” Again, the thought returned that he was not actually speaking and this was only a dream, but Florence’s gaze seemed to indicate absorption and whether he was thinking or speaking seemed not to matter. In fact, this is how he remembered it was with Florence Ewing. It was what they’d all looked for: the trance she’d cast from her past mysteries.
“The wind really came up fast, and since it was blowing against the direction of the stream the seas were bad. At first we could see the spreader lights of the other yachts, and then we couldn’t even see that and all around us it was just the black wave faces in our running lights. Without saying anything, I changed places with Raymond and took the wheel. He went below and stayed there for a long time as the seas built and the ketch began to groan under the strain and yaw worse and worse, especially as we came down the faces. Several times I could feel her try to broach, but I was able to head up and keep her on her feet. I later heard the seas had been over twenty feet. Boats were dismasted and Black Magic, a Great Lakes yacht, killed her helmsman in a standing jibe. One of the dope captains on a Stone Horse disappeared entirely, the only boat out there without a self-bailing cockpit. No one ever found the tin cans full of money he’d buried all over Key West, but his girlfriend went around in a haze, carrying her shovel and knocking on doors, trying to get in people’s yards.