Thick as Thieves

45

Carr is badly wrong about the bay: there is no protection-not from wind or wave or hungry currents, or from the constellation of debris that swirls and collides just below the angry surface. The lights from shore dim with the first swell, and disappear altogether with the second, and suddenly he’s fifty meters out. Or is it a hundred and fifty?

The sea heaves in every direction, and the wind makes shrapnel of the whitecaps. Carr’s feet tangle in what feels like plastic netting, and something hard-a fence post swept from somewhere-glances off his thigh and leaves his leg numb and useless. A sheet of drywall-peeling, dissolving-shatters across his back. There’s a roll of carpet, a shipping pallet, chicken wire, and a drowned chicken. It’s like swimming through a landfill, or in Dorothy’s twister, though actual swimming is all but impossible. Carr flails and twists and tumbles, coughing, spitting, wrestling for breath, and the only thing louder than the wind and rushing sea is his hammering heart.

Bessemer vanishes immediately, carried off without a cry, and Carr doesn’t see him for what seems a choking eternity-until he spots a white arm rushing past, struggling vainly against the riptide that he himself has just escaped. Carr sees him spin away-the white arm, the benign, round face, the sad, thin hair like sea grass-and then he calls Bessemer’s name, fills his lungs, and kicks out after him.

The rip takes hold of Carr again-shoving, pulling, twisting him around-and he loses Bessemer behind a wall of water. He manages a sloppy breaststroke, but can’t keep the ocean out of his mouth. He calls out, but the wind tears the words from his throat. He sees a shape that may be an arm, or a leg, or a tumbling body, and he lunges forward, through a breaking wave.

His fingers hook on something and he takes hold of an ankle. Bessemer is floating facedown. He finds his belt and flips him over. Carr slides an arm under Bessemer’s arm and across his chest, and Bessemer’s head rolls back against Carr’s shoulder. Even in the dark, through the spray, Carr can see the ashen face, the blood flowing down his cheek, and the deep, depressed gash at Bessemer’s left temple. He puts his ear to Bessemer’s mouth and hears faint, uneven breathing.

“Howard,” he yells, again and again over the wind, and Bessemer mutters weakly. The rip is pulling them out and under, and pulling Bessemer from him. Carr strikes out perpendicular to the current-to what he thinks is the east.

The current is twisting them, and he fights to keep Bessemer’s face out of the water. His legs and shoulders are cramping, and his fingers, wound in Bessemer’s shirt, are numb. He closes his eyes and concentrates on his breathing, on coordinating it with his kicks and his sculling arm, on ignoring the lead in his thighs and the weight clutched against his chest. And finally he finds it-the metronome he’s been straining to hear, the rhythmic four count that silences the wind and the flailing sea: his heart, his lungs, in, out.

Carr loses himself in the cadence and loses track of time, and then, suddenly, the outbound surge is gone. They’re free of the rip. Carr keeps kicking and realizes that another current, a lateral one, is pulling them slowly eastward. He lets it carry them, lifting his head to look for lights or land or anything at all, but he sees only darkness. They’re well out of the bay now, he’s sure-well beyond the reefs-and the waves are larger here and even more chaotic. One lifts them up high, and for an instant Carr sees a light, or thinks he does, and then another wave breaks across them, nearly tearing Bessemer from his grasp. Carr catches his arm, pulls him close again, and gets a better grip across his chest, and it is only then he realizes that Howard Bessemer has died.