An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant (18 page)

“Tamarind,”
Tamarind told her between gulps of broth.

Ana
looked surprised. Then she smiled, the first smile to curl the corner of her
single eye and lift her whole face upward.

“Yes,
Tamarind. That’s what we’ll call you.”

John waited for Tamarind
in the gathering dark at the
bottom of the hill next to the service road that led to Tamarindo Estates.
Since returning to Culebra two weeks ago, he’d driven nightly to the same spot
and waited for her silhouette to descend toward him, the last of the day’s
sunlight her aura. Tonight, he’d waited for twenty minutes and still she hadn’t
appeared. To the northwest, sooty terns streamed toward their nesting grounds
on the tip of the Flamenco Peninsula, their black oblongs parting and merging
in a fast flow against the lemon-orange layer of sky above the treetops.

He
drummed his fingers along the steering wheel and then picked up his flashlight
and checked it again to make sure the batteries still had enough juice. He
popped the glove compartment and verified again that there were spare
batteries. On the floorboard of the Samurai rested his backpack with water and
soda bottles, chips, sandwiches, mosquito repellent and a copy of
The Lion,
The Witch, and The Wardrobe
.  He switched on the radio, leaned against the
driver’s side door, and closed his eyes. A new guest had arrived mid-morning at
Posada La Diosa where he’d rented a room since his return from the Trench
mission and he’d been unable to sleep until nearly noon. If Tamarind didn’t
arrive soon, he might fall asleep.

Humming
reached his ears before the sound of her feet on the pavement. Stirring, he sat
and looked up the hill. As usual, she skipped barefoot toward him, her
corkscrew hair jouncing with each little leap. She wore the mermaid t-shirt
that he’d bought her from The Mermaid’s Purse and a pair of shorts that were
too big for her. Every fifth skip she stopped and hitched them up. When she
reached him, he saw that she sucked on a Popsicle. Orange stained her upper lip
and tongue.

“It’s
about time you got here. We’re going to be late.”

She
shrugged. “So? The turtles won’t get there until it’s dark. We’ve got time.”

She came
around to the passenger side and got in. Hearing the music, she leaned forward
and began pushing buttons on the radio.

“Please
buckle up so I can go.”

“Oh,
yeah, right.” She stuck what was left of the Popsicle into her mouth and
reached around her right shoulder for the belt. After she’d clicked the belt
into its slot, she reached for the radio again. When she found a station
playing Lito Peña’s
Yo Vivo Enamorado
, she stopped jabbing, turned the
volume up and began singing along. John smiled to himself as she rocked in time
with the music, the Popsicle dripping everywhere as her arm swung wide.

“I bet
you’d be fun at Isla Encantada.” He started the Samurai and u-turned south onto
251. An image of Tamarind dancing around the restaurant’s worn floor teased his
inner eye. All at once, he knew that he wanted to hold her. Would it feel as
though he held a will o’ the wisp? Or danced to the music of the spheres?

“Isla
Encantada? What’s that?”

“You
don’t get out much do you? Your father must keep you on a tight leash. It’s a
bar that has live music on the weekends.”

“‘Tight
leash’? What’s that mean?”

Mentioning
her father made him squirm. He couldn’t take Tamarind into his arms as he
wanted if she was as young as he feared she was. “Never mind. It’s just a
figure of speech. But that reminds me. Are you twenty-one?”

“Twenty-one?”

“Twenty-one
years old.” An image of Zoë slithered into his thoughts, but he shoved it into
oblivion. She’d tried to insist that they were taking a break, not breaking up.
What would she think about him hitting on a girl who looked and acted younger
than his sister?

“Oh, I’m
way older than that. Why?”

“You
have to be twenty-one to dance at Isla Encantada. Do you have some sort of ID?”

She
stopped rocking. “ID? No, I don’t have any ID.” She sounded as if she didn’t
know what he was talking about, though.

“Don’t
worry.” John patted her head, letting his fingers linger just long enough to
feel the surprising softness of the tangles. “I’ve never seen them check. I
just wanted to be sure for my own peace of mind.”

“Piece
of mind? Which piece of your mind needs to know how old I am?”

John
laughed. “The biggest piece.”

They
drove along without speaking for a while, listening to more
boricua
jazz. John turned north after they reached Laguna del Flamenco. The road ended
short of Playa Resaca; they’d have to leave the car and hike over the same
hilly terrain that John had first hiked over in late March. He turned the radio
down before they reached the place where they’d park the Samurai.

“I
brought a book that I want to read to you while we wait.”

Tamarind
looked at him. Even in the growing darkness, the blue of her eyes astounded
him. Hair fell into her eyes, but she didn’t seem to notice. “You brought a
book? Where is it? Can I see it? What’s it about?”

“Whoa,
whoa! All in good time. Let’s just say it’s a classic of children’s literature
and I’m looking forward to reading it to you.”

Tamarind
hummed a bit and looked out the window. Without warning, she leaned over and
kissed his right hand. “Thank you.” Her voice sounded thick.

Fifteen
minutes later they’d caught up with the four other volunteers and the National
Wildlife Refuge park ranger who all sat as far inland as they could on
blankets, talking quietly. All but Jesus smiled and waved John and Tamarind
over to join them. When he’d found himself skewered by Jesus’ hot glare the
first night that they’d watched for leatherbacks, John braced himself for the
inevitable angry confrontation. Jesus said nothing, however, about their first
meeting and John stopped worrying about a destructive scuffle among the
sea-turtle nests. Even so, he often caught the other man’s eyes watching him.

In the
deepening twilight, everyone brought out sandwiches and chips and listened to
Pablo describe the time a nesting leatherback dug several holes before finally
laying her eggs.  When he finished, no one spoke for a while. The last of the
sun’s light faded from the horizon and the sky gradually deepened from a
honeydew melon to pale blue and finally, deep blue. Stars extruded through the
velvety backdrop of sky like diamond studs in a jeweler’s display.

John
snapped on his flashlight and pulled out
The Lion, The Witch, and The
Wardrobe
. Although he read quietly to Tamarind, the other volunteers
clearly listened in and refrained from speaking. He’d read only two sentences
when she interrupted him.

“‘War
raids’? What are those?”

“This
book is set during World War Two when the Germans bombed London, kind’ve like
when the U.S. Navy used to bomb Culebra.”

Next to
him, she shivered. “I remember that.”

John
looked toward her, but the darkness obscured her features. Her wild hair
appeared black against the royal sky, the stars crowning her with a glittering
diadem. He laid his hand on top of hers where it rested on the blanket. “So I
guess you can relate to the children in this book, huh?”

Tamarind
shifted. “I guess.” She spoke so quietly that John strained to hear her.

He
waited, but she said nothing more and no one else spoke about the bombing or
one of the former targets, an abandoned tank now rusting on Carlos
Rosario—along with unexploded bombs amidst the island’s largest nesting
grounds. So he picked up the book and continued reading. After a while, he lost
himself to the reading, to the story of the children playing hide and seek in
the strange old country house to which they’d been sent. Underneath it rode the
rhythmic wash of water on white sand and the taste of salt on the air. He’d
read a third of the book when one of the other volunteers spoke in a low voice.

“Our
first mother has arrived.”

Everyone
turned toward the beach, now illuminated only by moonlight. A leatherback—a
large one, perhaps fifteen hundred pounds—emerged from the water and heaved
herself across the sand toward them. They melted back into the tree line and
waited until she found the spot she wanted and dug furiously at the sand. When
she finished digging the tear-shaped egg cavity, Pablo came forward and lifted
her rear flipper so that the rest of them had a clear view of the eggs as they
dropped into the sand. Serena counted the large, fertile eggs and Inez counted
the small, infertile ones. John and Tamarind measured the turtle after she’d
finished laying her eggs. As she held the tape measure next to the
leatherback’s beak, Tamarind wiped the salty tears from the sea-turtle’s eyes
with reverent fingers. Jesus documented everything and took a picture of the
leatherback—at six and a half feet from beak to tail, she was the largest seen
on Culebra in several years.

The
leatherback buried her eggs and turned toward the sea, throwing sand behind her
to cover her tracks. They all watched her go. Tamarind stood away from John as
she did every time a leatherback struggled back across the beach, her lips
pursed and her eyes unfocused. She hummed faintly and the air around her seemed
to vibrate slightly. When the sea turtle gained the wet edge of beach and
seawater reached to embrace it, Tamarind sighed and relaxed her stance.

“She’s
safe again,” she always said to anyone listening.

***

Nightly
turtle watch lasted through June. John picked Tamarind up every evening on 251
near Tamarindo Estates and dropped her off before dawn in the same place. Even
though he urged her to let him walk her home, she always said no. The one time
that he’d ignored her and followed her up the access road, she’d disappeared
almost in front of his eyes. When he finally turned to head back down to the
Samurai after calling for her for fifteen minutes, she jumped out of the scrub
along the roadside, shouted, and laughed when he yelled out in surprise. Then
she dashed up the road and out of sight still laughing. Tonight he just waited
until she’d bounced up the hill like a schoolgirl and then followed a ways
behind until he saw her approach a squat cinderblock building a hundred yards
off the road to the southeast. It was an odd place for a house, so far from
town where most of the Culebrenses lived. As far as John could tell, Tamarind’s
only neighbors besides the resort were wild horses and lizards. He never saw anyone
greet her.

During
their weeks watching for turtles, he finished reading
The Lion, The Witch,
and The Wardrobe
and then the five successive books in the Narnia series.
Pablo, Serena, and Inez huddled close, listening, but Jesus prowled along the
edge of the beach as a panther paces near a water hole, waiting for quarry.
While he read, John watched the flashlight beam that bounced among the acacia,
wary at the other man’s restless energy. As long it wasn’t directed at him, he
wouldn’t worry.

Besides
straining his eyes on dim text, John spent a small fortune on batteries for his
flashlight over the course of their turtle watch. One night, when only a single
turtle braved the trip from shallows to sandy beach, he drained two sets of
spare batteries.

“I’ll be
glad when I can read to you during the day,” he said after the flashlight
dimmed so low that he had to shut it off or they’d be forced to wait for
sunrise to walk back to the Samurai. “This is becoming expensive.”

Tamarind
sat so close to him that long spirals of her hair rested on his bare upper arm.
The toes of her left foot, powdered with sand, brushed his whenever she dug
them into the beach. She smelled salty and earthy at the same time.

“Don’t
you have to leave soon? I think maybe this is the last leatherback we’ll see
this season.”

“I’m
thinking about staying longer. I wrote a research paper based on my experience
from the Trench mission. My advisor’s okay with me staying as long as I keep
getting work done.” But Zoë was
not
okay with it. She’d found out where
he was staying from Stefan and started leaving him phone messages with Valerie,
the owner of the guesthouse where he’d rented a room. She’d written, too. He
just couldn’t bring himself to be as blunt with her as he should be.

“Oh.”

“Still
working on reading
Green Eggs and Ham
?”

She
didn’t answer right away. In the dark, John felt her swaying and guessed that
she still traced her finger through the sand at her side.

“Yes,”
she said finally. “All the letters looked like bird scratching in sand for a
while, but two days ago when I looked, the scratches rearranged themselves in
front of my eyes. Some of the words look just like themselves now.”

“You’ll
have to read to me then.” He looked out toward the horizon, which lightened
toward dawn. Fifteen feet away from them on the beach, the other volunteers sat
talking quietly. “I haven’t taken you dancing yet. The first Friday after the
watch ends, I’ll pick you up at the same time and we’ll go grab some dinner
first. How’s that sound?”