“So?” asked Jonah.
“So he’ll help us. I told him my husband accidentally set our ship on fire, and we were forced to abandon it. He says he’ll bring us to his home, but he can’t guarantee his village is safe for westerners.”
“Thanks for making me look like a moron,” Jonah said with a laugh.
“My pleasure,” said Klea with a sly smile. “Thanks for playing the part so ably.”
The fisherman navigated his boat to the side of the raft, using its mass to shadow against the intermittent ocean breeze. Jonah grabbed a waterproof bag, stuffed his pistol inside, and climbed up first, standing to reach the scuppers, then pulled himself up like a rock climber. It felt good, wonderful even, to stretch and use his muscles after three days of virtually no movement.
Fighting off a wave of hunger and dizziness, he brought himself up to his full height on the deck, easily dwarfing the father and two boys. The sons laughed and poked at his neoprene wetsuit with their fingers, amused at the sponginess of the futuristic material.
Jonah wondered what he was supposed to do now. Shake hands? Bow? Hell, he’d dance an Irish jig for the fisherman if thought that would help. The father just smiled at him, offering no clues. Jonah pressed his hands together like a prayerful child and bent slightly. “Thank you,” he said with every ounce of earnestness he could muster. He hoped his appreciation translated, but couldn’t tell for certain. The father, still smiling, waved Jonah away. It’s nothing, the gesture seemed to say.
“Here,” Klea called, stretching to hand over the remaining water bottles to Jonah, who took them and handed them to the boys. The two boys scampered away to secure the bottles in some unseen corner of the painted wheelhouse.
Plumbing his last reserves of energy, Jonah reached down and lifted Klea out of the raft, pulling her light frame to the safety of the wooden deck. The father clicked the wheezing engine into gear and the life raft slowly fell by the wayside, bobbing in the waves, as the fishing boat pulled away. Jonah knew the life raft would someday wash up on shore of some distant coastline, be it days or months. It’d be pushed against some sharp rock or branch and puncture, deflating like a cast-off skin. The bright orange would fade to a gentle pink and eventually to a dirty white. Sun damaged, it would slowly disintegrate into strips. And then there’d be nothing left of the proud Horizon.
The father, still smiling his wide nearly toothless smile, slapped himself on the chest gently and said, “Burhaan.” He pointed at Jonah and Klea.
With a glance at Klea, Jonah patted his own chest and said, “Jonah.”
Klea repeated the process and then pointed at the boys. Burhaan beamed as he introduced his sons, Qaasin and Madar, and then he took Jonah by the hand and led the two Americans into the wheelhouse. It was then that Jonah noticed the man had only one arm — the other, which Jonah initially thought was hidden behind the man’s back, was missing from the shoulder joint, without so much as a stump to indicate where it should have been. Still, with deft movements, he opened a clean wooden box to reveal a slab of thick, doughy lahoh bread covered in lamb and onions and swimming in a dark red sauce that smelled of basil and sweet tomatoes. Jonah’s mouth started watering, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Burhaan spoke to Klea, pointing at the food.
“He’s asking us to eat,” she said.
Jonah didn’t need to be told twice. He and Klea dug in with their bare hands polishing off half the contents, but making sure to leave enough for their rescuers.
Soon the food settled and Klea nodded off, her body fatigued with the effort of digesting an unexpected meal. Jonah lifted her into a hammock in the wheel house just as she was about to fall out of her chair, and then joined Burhaan and sons on the rear deck.
The fishermen cast their nets overboard with a skillful twist. Jonah watched as the nets spun open and sank into the light blue waters. With another twist, the fishermen drew the nets back, empty more often than not, but occasionally with a host of wriggling, flopping fish. There was a casualness to the affair, a simplicity. The brothers each pointed out their larger catches and laughed when the other brought up an embarrassingly small catch or drifting plastic from a far-away land.
Qaasin, the older of the two boys, saw Jonah watching and gestured for him to take his net. His father scolded at first, but then allowed to attempt to duplicate the elegant twisting, flinging motion. With his first try, Jonah managed to dump most of the net directly overboard. When he drew it back, it was a hopeless, tangled mess without so much as an errant piece of seaweed trapped within. Jonah aped helplessness and sent the boys into peals of laughter.
The next two casts were minor improvements, until the fourth, when Jonah mastered the exact twist of the wrist and the angle of the cast. The net flew out beautifully and dropped into the water. He retrieved it with the reverse motion. A single panicked fish flopped within. Jonah removed it and tossed it in the bed of the boat, the fish landing on a small but growing pile. His rescuers nodded in approval.
The manual labor allowed the stress of the past few days to slough off Jonah’s shoulders. He practiced the precise motion of casting the net, enjoying the reward of a successful retrieval. In what felt like minutes, Jonah noticed the sun was now low in the sky. The father retreated to the wheelhouse, steering the fishing vessel towards the distant Somaliland shoreline, drawn in by a restless sea breeze. They were going home. The fact that it was not Jonah’s home didn’t seem to matter.
Sitting in a hammered-copper tub with his bare knees nearly touching his chin, Jonah let Qaasin and Madar gleefully pour an entire bucket of fire-warmed water over his body. He ascertained he was in the men’s side of the fisherman’s family compound. The home itself was some Soviet bureaucrat’s vague notion of a coastal dwelling. What was left of the mummified structure with its crumbling façade, broken windows, and peeling paint stood surrounded by traditional-style huts and a timber wall ringing the perimeter.
The two boys scrubbed at his scalp and face with fierce thoroughness. Their small hands were better than the high-pressure shower nozzles on the Fool’s Errand. His thoughts briefly drifted to Klea, to the gaggle of smiling young women that had taken her by the hand and lead her away. To the sly smile she shot at him as she disappeared. To her dark brown eyes and smooth pale skin. To her mouth on his, hot with desperation, with the need to feel alive.
Behind Jonah, Burhaan prepared a pan of mysterious, sweet-smelling oil. Orange hair blazing in the cool courtyard, he poured a small amount into his palm from a repurposed bottle of engine coolant. He rubbed his lone hand against his own bare chest, warming the oil. Suddenly, his hand was on Jonah’s neck, shoulders, and back, nimbly finding each tight muscle, each bundled cluster of nerves.
Jonah slumped in the tub, eyes closed, air leaving his lungs in a long, relaxed sigh. Finished, Burhaan motioned for Jonah to stand up. He shooed his two sons away, and they ran off, laughing and pushing each other.
“Okay,” said Jonah, shrugging. He stood up, dirty water flowing off his naked body and into the copper tub.
Burhaan held two small white ceramic bowls in his hand, each with a hinged ceramic cap. He flipped opened the first, revealing a foul-smelling yellow liquid. Before the American could react, the father dabbed two fingers in the bowl, quickly covering Jonah’s slashed shoulder and stitched abdomen with a thick layer of yellow animal fat.