Continued from...

...gentle and exuded a grace she did not know a man could possess.

She loved to go rowing with Armando in their, and when no other boats were in view, she leaned against his back as he pulled them through the water. Often they would stop for a picnic that she had prepared. They would drift, tugged by wind, waves, and tide, each trying to claim their little boat for its own until Armando lowered the stern anchor in a spot he seemed to know. She wrapped sandwiches in waxed paper, and Armando always ate with the paper embracing the sandwich, and she always ate with the paper removed. When they were finished, Armando would sing Portuguese ballads, and she would often doze, feeling the warmth of his back on her own, his body shielding her from the cool ocean breeze.

It was Friday in July, and Ralph would arrive in time for evening cocktails on the veranda overlooking West Bay. The weekends with Ralph tugged at her like unwanted chores.

During a pause between ballads, Beatrice asked, “What do you think about you and me when you take Mr. Swift and me out for a sail? Do you resent him?”

“No, no. It is not a problem. I keep you safe and comfortable,” he said.

“But you must have some feeling about him,” she protested.

“I am glad he bring you to me and that he go away every week for me to have you for my own to be,” Armando said quietly.

“Do you like him?” she asked, unsettled by curiosity.

“He is very nice to me.”

“But do you really like him?” she insisted.

Armando turned his head so that his cheek touched ear. He laughed softly. “He is my boss, my benefactore. No matter how much he try, he cannot be friend to me. I cannot be friend to him, hees friend, neether way.” Armando wedged his harmonica from his pocket and began to play.

She wondered if the same distance applied to her. Could they be lovers but not a couple, not in her world, not in his?

“Armando, what if Mr. Swift died? Would you ask to marry me?”

She could feel Armando quake at her question. He looked skyward and traced a cloud’s shadow racing darkly across the water. “Ees time to go. Big wind come,” he said, pointing to a vast shroud of dark ripples rush toward them from the west.

The next day Ralph insisted they sail despite strong winds and small craft advisories.

“I’ll pass. It’s much too rough,” she said.

“Oh, come on,” he scoffed. “Armando, my good fellow. It’s not too rough, would you say?”

“Ees good boat,” Armando said, shrugging. “Ees okay for me.”

“Come, Bea. Don’t be a spoiled sport,” Ralph said. “Besides, Armando and I need you, don’t we Mando? Such beauty and such brawn.” Ralph winked at Armando who smiled with the faintest derision.

They did need her, though, as the wind built to a light gale. Ralph’s 45-foot sloop Guilty Pleasure shuddered as she plunged into eight-foot waves dousing them with spray. It was a dry storm with brilliant blue sky and sun-blazed seas, the boat heaving and bounding forward, heeled to her buried rail. Ralph stood at the wheel glistening wet in yellow storm pants, his lips set in a tight grimace that alternated between pain and a maniacal grin. He was a big man with a barrel chest, an ex-football player from Yale starting to go soft, but to Beatrice, he was huge, powerful and fearsome. He lurched and staggered about like a giant grizzly drunk on berries.

Armando darted around the boat barefoot and in shorts, always in a crouch. He scooted, hopped, scurried and leapt, always sure-footed despite the slippery decks and treacherous angles. He seemed to anticipate each heave and swoon of the roiling seas, the waves splashing effortlessly over him whereas they struck Ralph like blasts of blue-green glass exploding into thousands of shards and gleaming bits, knocking him off balance, requiring all his force and strength to hang on.

Beatrice moved like a climber, always attached somewhere, securing herself, hugging shrouds and halyards, grasping lines, testing her footing, and swinging cautiously and quickly to the next position. Unlike the men, she used the safety tethers in winds like these, clipping herself wherever she moved, tucked securely in her life jacket, following the orders of her childhood sailing teacher so many years ago.

By mid-afternoon, the wind was howling in a full gale, and Armando advised coming about and heading home on the storm jib. So loud was the wind he shouted in Ralph’s ear, and Beatrice—curled up on the windward cockpit bench—could see Ralph nodding yes, then no, and then shouting back, waving and pointing in a pantomime of urgent commands. Then Armando darted toward her, signaling with his hands to drop the halyard, and then he was against her face, his breath hot, and arm over her shoulder, “We set storm jib, yes, and reef the main,” and then leapt to the cockpit and worked his way forward in a tight crouch as Ralph pointed into the wind, easing the pressure on the sails.

Armando did not patronize her on the boat, which meant he did not help her any more than he would help a man. So she followed and grasped the storm jib bag, pulling it up from the hatch, straddling to keep it from blowing into the sea. Armando gathered in the genoa headsail and jammed it down the hatch as she worked the jib halyard. They labored with feverish intensity as the boat heaved and wallowed in the growing swells, green water blasting over the windward bow. They raised the storm jib which fluttered frantically until Ralph quickly trimmed the sail, and then Armando scurried to the mainmast. Beatrice crawled, attaching her tether to the safety lines as slabs of green water lurched over the forward deck trying to grab her legs and pull her back. They worked again as a teamed pair, she at the halyard to lower the main, snapping a safety line onto Armando’s belt as he hung on the trembling boom, barely hanging between sail and sea, as he tied the reef lines to reduce their sail. Then without warning, a huge rogue wave hit them broadside and knocked them down.

Beatrice was flung down into the cockpit, held beneath the cold water in momentary darkness, and just as she was certain she would now drown, the boat heaved upward, and she found herself hung upside down by the tether, draped over the cockpit hatch. She gasped for air, coughed up saltwater, swung her legs around and down, and discovered she was bruised, dazed, alive, and alone.

The boat wallowed for a few moments turning back into the wind. As she recovered her bearings, Beatrice tossed the man-over-board buoy into the swells and searched the near water for Armando and Ralph. Huge waves undulated about her, exposing new surfaces, new troughs and swelling crests. She squinted into the wind and spray, and then the main sail filled with a huge thud, the bow swinging up, then tossed away from the wind, threatening another knockdown. Beatrice staggered to the wheel and turned hard toward the wind.

Armando pulled himself back up over the rail, rushed to her side and grasped the wheel, turning on a hard starboard jibe to fetch Ralph somewhere in their wake. Armando circled the man-overboard buoy over and over, but there were no signs of Ralph. They soon radioed the Coast Guard, and the afternoon turned into an ordeal of frustrating search and rescue, growing horror, and deepening shame.

Three days later Ralph’s body was found washed up on a Chatham beach, and the autopsy revealed a badly fractured skull and such severe facial contusions and neck fractures, they concluded he had been crushed by the boom as the boat tipped into the roiling sea. Ralph was dead of massive trauma before he hit the water, removing any doubt of foul play, not that anyone suspected anything of the sort.

But Armando was so guilt-ridden by his own failed seamanship and his sordid affair with Beatrice Swift that he could barely watch the funeral. A few days after the burial, he fled to New Bedford where he disappeared into the dreary red-light district and became a two-bit drug dealer and heroin junky. Three years later he was dead, a John Doe overdose, buried in an anonymous public plot.

Beatrice never knew what happened to Armando but was relieved that he disappeared, leaving her alone with her regrets and her confused mourning for husband Ralph. She sold Guilty Pleasures but kept her little pulling boat, which today she rows and sails on her own, sometimes thinking she can hear a harmonica whining mournfully on the nearby shore.

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Last revised: 1-26-2005

Copyright Peter Owens 2005