The old man was up top at the controls. I climbed up there and he turned and grinned at me.
“You sleep a little?” he said.
“Yes sir,” I said. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”
I could see a string of lights out in the distance, along the shoreline. They looked like lightning bugs pinned to a display board coated with black velvet.
“I didn’t even know I was sleepy,” I said.
“It is fear, my friend. I do not say you are a coward. But we all have fear. It exhausts.”
“Been there before,” I said. “How bad is he really cut?”
“Not so bad. Not good. Not bad. No cut is good. It did not go deep.”
“I appreciate your help. Can I ask why you helped?”
“Why not? I do not like many men on two. Though, you two do pretty good. I think they not have the machete, the knife, you might have been all right.”
“You saw it all?”
“From my boat. I was coming in, I saw it. I pulled to the dock. I’ve seen them do that before. Take money from tourists. They try and rob me once.”
“How’d that work out?”
“They did not have a knife. I did not have a knife. But I am strong.”
“They’re really police?”
“I recognized them. Cozumel. They come here, do what they like, go back across the water.”
“Won’t they know who you are?”
“I do not think so.”
“Well, I hope not. Are you out here to hide from them? I mean, out this late. It must have been some hours now.”
“It has been a few hours. I went out to sea some. To fish.”
“You went fishing?”
“It is what I do.”
“Catch anything?”
“No. That is sometimes what I do. Catch nothing.”
The lights of the shore grew closer. I started to say something about having a room rented in Playa del Carmen, but then decided to hell with it. It didn’t matter.
As we neared the lights, Beatrice came up the ladder. Other than the fighting chair where Ferdinand sat, there were a couple of deck chairs up there. Beatrice took one of them, and I took the other.
She said, “Your friend is sleeping good. I believe he will be okay.”
“Thanks to you two.”
She made a kind of grunting noise. “My father, he is always helping someone. He gets no help from anyone else, but he is always helping someone.”
“That is what it is about, Beatrice,” the old man said. “Is that not the way of God?”
“If it is, let him do it.”
“Beatrice!” Ferdinand said.
She sat quietly for a while. She said, “I’m sorry.” Then to me: “I fear for my father. The police, they are very corrupt here in Mexico. If they know what he did, he could be imprisoned. Hurt. Here, the police, they do as they please.”
We cruised the water for what seemed like a long time, and though the lights came closer, they did not come close enough fast enough. It seemed as if we were perched on the lip of forever, unable to move forward.
Finally we arrived at the dock in Playa del Carmen. A young, shaggy-haired boy, maybe twelve, in blue jeans and a dirty Disney T-shirt with Mickey’s head faded into nothing, ran out to the boat and climbed on board. He started when he saw me, but Beatrice spoke to him and Ferdinand laughed.
“He has been taught that all Americans are dangerous,” said Ferdinand. “His name is Jose and he works a little for me. He waits for the boat to come in and helps me carry the fish and do little chores. Tonight, I have no fish. Just you two. You are my fish. Go ashore. I will lock up the boat. Jose and his brothers will stay with the boat.”
“What brothers?” I asked.
“They will be along. You best look after your friend. Beatrice will help you.”
Beatrice and I went inside the cabin and stirred Leonard. He groaned when we woke him. We helped him up. He tried not to act like someone in pain, but he couldn’t help it. I said, “Maybe he needs a doctor.”
“That could be,” Beatrice said. “I have some antibiotics. I can give him those. It will be a while before we are where I can get them.”
I considered this. I asked Leonard what he thought.
“Well,” he said. “I’ve felt better. But I’ve had a lot worse. I think if I get some antibiotics, some rest, I’ll be all right.”
Beatrice helped me take Leonard off the boat and onto the dock. I had no idea what was going to happen from there. Neither she nor her father owed us anything. They could have just turned us loose in the night. Fact was, they had put themselves in considerable jeopardy to aid us. But I was relieved when Beatrice said, “We’ll take your friend to our home for tonight. I want you and him to leave tomorrow. Do you understand that?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I am sorry for your friend, but we do not need enemies. My father makes enemies often.”
“I bet he makes friends often too,” I said.
“Enemies seem a little more determined than friends,” she said. “Friends have a way of going away when you need them.”
“That isn’t my experience,” I said. “It depends on who you call friend.”
She had one of Leonard’s arms draped over her shoulder, and I had the other. He was groaning as we walked along.
I followed Beatrice’s lead. We ended up out back of a stucco building where there were cars sitting in a dark lot near a sign painted on the side of the building. The sign was for some kind of Mexican pastry and the moon made it shiny and white and surreal there in the night.
Beatrice unlocked an old white van and we got inside. The interior was well worn, seats ripped up, patches of cloth hanging from the ceiling. The van had no back seat and was empty of possessions, except for some tow sacks in the back. We placed Leonard on those. I made as comfortable a pillow as I could for him out of a spare sack. He said, “I lost my goddamn hat.”
“Just goes to show,” I said, “the day hasn’t been a total loss. But we’ve discussed what happened to the hat.”
“We have?”
“You weren’t feeling too good at the time, but yes, we discussed it. One of our muggers stepped through it.”
“Oh yeah. I remember.”
I climbed in the passenger’s seat and Beatrice started the van. I said, “What about Ferdinand? He said he was coming.”
“He always says that, but he does not come. He stays with the boat with Jose and his brothers. I think he likes it that way. He loves that boat. If he were coming, he would have come.”
The van coughed and sputtered and rolled forward with a protesting lurch, banged into a couple of potholes, crunched gravel, and off we went.
We drove along bad roads for an hour or so. It had grown very dark because clouds had bagged the moon. There was just the van’s headlights on the road, and a little glow from the dash light that shone against Beatrice’s face and gave it a ghostly appearance and made her little silver earrings float about her ears like spectral fish swimming in the ether.
We talked a little, but nothing to take note of. We just rode on into the night until we came to some sparsely wooded hills that swelled on either side of the road, and we were swallowed by them. Somewhere along there, without meaning to, due to the rocking of the van, the kind of day I had had, I drifted off to sleep, and it was the dying of the motor that brought me awake.
