I closed the notebook and dropped my head. I cried so hard my chest hurt, but my eyes stayed dry as dust. This is how empty I have become, Annabelle. I have no water left for tears.
That was yesterday. When I told Geri, she took the notebook, read the words herself, then handed it back and went straight for the ditch bag.
The fish was large, as Jean Philippe had promised. “A dorado,” Geri said. Using her knife, she quickly dissected it into the edible, the useful, and the rest. The five of us ate some right away. (The five of us? Can that really be true?) Then Geri used a piece of line to hang the remaining fleshy pieces. They will dry in the sun and feed us for another day or two.
I was staring at those pieces and grieving for Jean Philippe when the Lord slid over and leaned against the raft edge. His mop of hair was wet and shiny, and his dark beard was now quite thick.
“Did you know about Jean Philippe?” I whispered.
“I know all things.”
“How could you let him take his life? Why didn’t you talk him out of it?”
He looked me straight in the eyes. “Why didn’t you?”
I began shaking with rage. “Me? I couldn’t! I didn’t know! It was something he decided to do on his own!”
“That’s right,” the Lord said, softly. “He decided to do it on his own.”
I glared at him then, this haughty, deluded stranger who enjoyed acting as if he manipulated the world. At that moment, I felt nothing but contempt.
“If you were really God,” I seethed, “you would have stopped him.”
He looked to the sea and shook his head.
“God starts things,” he said. “Man stops them.”
Land
LeFleur sped down the island’s main road in his jeep. The car with Sprague and the man in the blue blazer followed. Behind them was a truck carrying the raft.
Again, LeFleur’s cell rang.
“Yeah, Katrina?” he barked, expecting his office.
“Inspector, this is Arthur Kirsh with the Miami Herald. We spoke the other night?”
LeFleur exhaled. He didn’t need this now.
“We didn’t really speak,” LeFleur corrected him. “And I don’t want—”
“We have it confirmed that a life raft from the Galaxy was found on Montserrat, and that you were involved in its discovery.”
“That’s not true! I just got a call.”
“So it has been discovered?”
Damn it, LeFleur thought. Why did these guys always play tricks?
“If you want information, you should speak to the police commissioner.”
“Were there any remains? Of any passengers?”
“Like I said, Mr. Kirsh, call the police commissioner.”
“You’re aware that the Sextant people are sending a team to your island?”
“Who’s that?”
“Sextant Capital. Jason Lambert’s company. And if I were to arrive there tomorrow, where would I find you?”
“Find the police commissioner,” LeFleur snapped. “And don’t call me again.”
He hung up and checked his watch. Three o’clock. Three hours later than he’d told Rom he’d meet him. It couldn’t be helped. LeFleur first had to stop at headquarters and explain to Sprague why he hadn’t immediately called him with the news (“It was Sunday, Lenny!”) and how he’d discovered the raft in the first place (“A drifter found it in Marguerita Bay.”) Sprague wasn’t happy. He said reporters would want to talk to that drifter, so LeFleur had better produce him quickly.
“Don’t screw this up, Jarty. It could make a big difference to Montserrat.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tourism is in the crapper. Who’s coming here now except creepers who want a death tour of the exclusion zone? This is our chance to change that.”
“How?”
“By changing the story. Let Montserrat be known for something besides the volcano. This guy was rich, Jarty. All his friends were rich—and famous, too. There’ll be a lot of eyes on this.”
LeFleur was taken aback. “People died in that raft, Lenny. You don’t build tourism off of that.”
Sprague tilted his head. “How do you know people died in that raft?”
“I … don’t,” LeFleur stammered. “I assumed—”
“Don’t assume, OK? Just bring me the guy who found it.”
When LeFleur pulled up to his office, he was thinking about the notebook and the pages he had read. He thought about the stranger on the raft refusing at first to save the others.
I can only do that when everyone here believes I am who I say I am.
LeFleur balked at that part. But then, he’d stopped relying on God right after his daughter died. There was no place in his mind for a benevolent force that wasn’t benevolent when it came to a four-year-old. Praying was a waste. Church was a waste. Even worse. It was a weak-
ness. A crutch that let you dump your misfortune on some make-believe scale that would balance when you died and reached a “better” Heaven. What crap. The way LeFleur saw it now, you either ran from a volcano or you stayed and shook a fist at it.
As he entered his office, Katrina was hanging up the phone. She seemed upset.
“There you are. I’ve been trying to call you!”
“I turned my cell off. A reporter was bugging me.”
“The man is gone.”
“Rom?”
“He never told me his name. He sat on the porch for two hours. I offered him some ginger beer, and he said OK. But when I brought it out, he was gone.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know, Jarty. He was barefoot. Where could he go? I tried to call you ten times!”
LeFleur raced out the door. “I’ll find him,” he hollered over his shoulder. Katrina got worked up easily; he didn’t need that now. He hoisted the briefcase into the passenger seat and hopped into the jeep. Rom. He was beginning to wish he’d never met the guy.
Sea
We saw an airplane today.
Geri was the first to spot it. We are so weak that most of the day we just lie under the canopy, drifting in and out of sleep. Geri had dragged herself to the rear of the raft for another futile check on the solar still. She looked at the sky, guarding her eyes with her hand.
“Plane,” she rasped.
“What did you say?” Lambert mumbled.
Geri pointed up.
Lambert rolled over and squinted. When he saw it, he tried to stand, something he hasn’t done in days. “Hey! … I’m here! I’m here.” He tried waving his arms, but they dropped like heavy barbells.
“It’s too high,” Geri rasped.
“Flare gun!” Lambert croaked.
“Too high,” Geri repeated. “Never see us.”
Lambert flopped across the raft bottom toward the ditch bag. Geri threw herself in his direction.
“No, Jason!”
“Flare gun!”
“It’s a waste!”
I was too exhausted to move. I kept glancing from the two of them to the sky. I could barely make the plane out. It was like a spot shifting through the high clouds.
“They’re here for me, damn it!” Lambert yelled. He knocked Geri backward and dumped out the bag.
“No, Jason!” Geri yelled.
But Lambert had the flare gun now. He swung his arm wildly and fired off-balance and the flare shot out sideways across the ocean surface, a hot-pink light that fizzled in the water maybe forty yards away.
“More!” Lambert yelled. “Give me more!”
“Stop it, Jason! Stop it!”
He was on his knees, his fat hands rifling through the items on the floor, knocking them aside in search of another canister. His belly was heaving.
“I’m here, I’m here,” he kept babbling. Geri spotted the two remaining flares and dove for them. She pulled them to her chest and scrambled back to the raft edge.
“Give me those!” Lambert bounced on his knees, coming after her. “Give me them now—”
Bam! Out of nowhere, the Lord smashed into him and knocked him backward with the full force of his shoulders. He moved so fast, I never saw him coming.
Lambert groaned in pain. The Lord lifted Geri to her knees, then turned to me calmly and said, “Benjamin. Put the things back in the bag.”
I raised my eyes to the skies. The plane was gone.