Red Sea by Diane Tullson Read Free Book Online Page A

slamming of the boat, the crunching sound my shoulders make as I launch into one cockpit bench, then the other. It’s the waves breaking over the boat that make me attempt to move, to escape the icy green water. Each new wave flattens me to the cockpit floor.
    I raise my head and open my eyes. The sky has collapsed to black, the sun indiscernible. I can’t tell how long I’ve been laying here, but I’ve lost all feeling in my hands and feet. The wind shrieks through the rigging, flogging the remains of the mainsail as if it were a manic bass guitar. Beyond thestern, the sea is endless waves, seamless gray with the sky. Wind rips the tops from the waves in white flumes, flings the sea in horizontal blades against my face. Wind twists my hair to wire and snaps it across my cheeks and mouth.
    Farther back in the cockpit, crumpled against the wheel post, my mother is a tumble of yellow.
    â€œMom.” I take a breath, then another, and struggle to my knees. Black dots dance in front of my eyes. I force myself to breathe. The dots clear. Pain knuckles me at the base of my skull, then radiates over my entire head. More black dots. Then I take a wave full in the face. I duck another wave so that it hits me in the back. My jacket hangs heavy, dripping water. My pajamas cling like wet tissue on my legs.
    I’m aware that I’m not tethered, that a rogue wave could wash me right through the open transom. The waves pitch the boat in a drunken roll that drives my hip and shoulder against the cockpit with a crack. Scrabbling from one hand-hold to the next, I pull myself to my mother.
    Her eyes are closed. Her lips are lined in blue. Behind her, the sea gapes great open jaws. “Mom?” I put one hand on her face. She’s cold, like the storm water, like my hands. Frantic, I set my cheek against her mouth. I feel a small warmth. The storm steals each tiny exhalation, but she’s breathing.
    When I was really young, if I woke up in the night, I’d stand beside my mother’s bed, watching her sleep, waiting for her to wake. Even asleep, my mother’s face was animate. Now, she doesn’t look asleep. It looks like she’s dead.
    â€œI need to get you down below, out of the storm.” I unclip her tether, holding on to her by the hood of her jacket. Asthe seas lift the stern of the boat, I cross my mother’s arms over her chest and yank her by her elbows toward the companionway. Her VHF radio still hangs on her wrist, and as I pull her it bangs on the floor of the cockpit. I’m aware of a slick of red that trails one boot, but I’m not looking at my mother’s leg. Not yet. Now I just want to get us below, away from the waves.
    I struggle to reach the handholds at the companionway. I’ll have to ease my mother down first. As the boat rolls into the trough of the waves, I fold her onto the steps, then, grasping her tether to slow her fall, I let her slither to the cabin floor. A wave follows her down the companionway.
    Over my shoulder, I look to the back of the boat. Duncan can’t still be there. That’s why we wear a tether, so that if we go overboard, we stay with the boat. He didn’t have a tether; he won’t be there.
    I have to be sure. Still on my hands and knees, and pulling myself with my hands, I inch my way to the back of the boat. Seawater pierces my eyes and I blink. For a second, I think I see him, his white head bobbing on the waves, but it’s just foam from the waves. In every direction, all I see is the storm. I know he’s gone. I just hope he died before he hit the water.
    My feet are slippery on the companionway steps as I scramble down to my mother.
    HANGING ON WITH one hand, I reach up to haul closed the hatch. Now the screaming wind doesn’t steal my breath and drill into my ears. I make my way down into the boat.
    With every step the floor pitches and disappears under my feet. It’s louder being inside the boat, like