Anne Bonny's Wake. Dick Elam

      “Hi. You want to come aboard?”

      “Yes.” She spoke in a quiet, resonant, alto tone.

      “I’ll get the boarding ladder. Just a minute.” I opened the seat cover and brought out the aluminum folding ladder. I hung the ladder over the stern. Wondered just how smart I had been to invite a total stranger aboard.

      She raised her other hand and confirmed what I’d seen in the murky water. She was topless. I tried not to stare at her bare breasts. I diverted my eyes toward her foot on the second rung.

      I grabbed her hand and pulled.

      She rose from the water, an Aphrodite emerging from her lover Poseidon’s ocean parlor. Both feet on the transom, she balanced above me, looked down into my eyes. My jaw dropped. I hadn’t seen an exposed female chest for over three years.

      She ended the dance, grabbed a metal stanchion, and stepped into the cockpit. She turned her back to me. I retreated as she brushed water off her shoulders, down her jeans. With her toes, she mopped water into the cockpit drain. She shook her hair. Then repeated her brushing.

      Watched. Asked myself: What do you say to a half-naked beauty? Produce a towel? Offer clothes? I decided to introduce myself.

      “Welcome aboard. I’m—” I began. Then quit when she placed an index finger over her lips. She listened intently. I listened, then followed her look toward the Sound.

      I recognized the distant noise as an outboard motor. The motor whined, then diminished to a purr. Then, I heard the sound increase.

      She pushed past me, placed her arms atop the hatch, and swung down into the cabin. Reaching back, she lifted the three opaque hatch panels and inserted the boards into their slot. She pulled on the cabin hatch top. When it didn’t budge, she shrugged her shoulders.

      We listened to the motor sound coming closer. I looked at her crouched below the open hatch. She frowned, then went forward into the head and closed the bathroom door behind her.

      The sun rose on the Pamlico Sound as a motorboat entered Bear Creek. The driver revved the engine and aimed toward my anchored Anne Bonny.

       CHAPTER 2

       Whine . . . whine . . .

      The outboard motor sound rebounded off trees.

      A burly man who resembled a bear—standing on hind legs, forepaws clapped around the steering column—drove the motorboat. I could see he was a large man.

      He throttled back the motor. The boat settled onto its bow wave.

      You often saw that make of fishing boat on the North Carolina Intracoastal Waterway. The driver controls throttle, gear atop the steering column. The fisherman can stand high and spot crab and fish trap buoys, or watch his net if he trawls.

      The boat slowed, coasted. The bow wave intruded upon feeding fish ripples. I saw North Carolina registration numbers on the bow. The boat needed paint, but the motor sounded well-tuned.

      The driver wore red foul-weather pants, overall-style. They were the Atlantis, lightweight type that you would expect a yachtsman to wear, not a fisherman. I had priced a similar pair at my friend Bill Havins’s marina last week. Red suspenders crossed large shoulders encased within a dark blue T-shirt. The Bear wore no hat. Black hair and a black beard framed his ruddy face.

      His eyes raked the Anne Bonny from stern to bow. Then the Bear aimed his black eyebrows at my chest.

      This morning, I wore my faded orange T-shirt with the boat name silkscreened over my heart. His stare targeted those black letters. My T-shirt color also matched the orange stripe that ringed the gunwale. The orange stripe at her waterline separated her white beam from the blue anti-fouling paint on the bottom. With a new sun reflecting our colors in the water, you couldn’t hide either the Anne Bonny or me.

      The driver’s muscled arms turned the wheel. His boat coasted inshore, glided past so he could read my stern. He stared at the words painted on the stern:

       Anne Bonny

       Wrightsville Beach, NC

      The Anne Bonny was a documented vessel registered with the US Coast Guard. Meant you could refuse the state wildlife service permission to board and inspect, even in these inland waters.

      Bill Havins had once told me he was glad a documented boat could deny locals the right to board. “In some of these counties,” I remembered him saying, “county police write up all kind of offenses: improper fire extinguishers, not enough lifejackets, motor leaking oil. Reminds you of a small-town speed trap. Of course, if a lawman finds drugs on a boat, that justifies boarding. Pays off. A tiny police force down in Florida made $120,000 last year by auctioning off a couple of confiscated marijuana boats.”

      I didn’t think the grizzled Bear looked like law and order. As he drifted behind the Anne Bonny’s stern, I glanced down the open hatch. The door to the head opened enough for me to see Aphrodite’s face. She eased the door shut. I looked back toward the motorboat. Decided not to stare and indicate that someone hid below. If she didn’t want the Bear to know she was aboard, okay by this Hersh.

      When another waterway boat approaches, my natural reaction is to wave a greeting. So, I waved.

      He raised a hand, an answering salute. Boats on the Intracoastal Waterway pass with a hand wave. You even wave friendly to the “stink-potter” motor boater who powers a five-foot wave into your “rag boat” sailboat beam.

      The Bear’s boat drifted a couple of boat lengths astern. He appeared to want a look into the cabin. When I turned to watch him, I reached up and held the boom. Wanted to look natural, but I had placed my body between him and the partially open cabin hatch.

      He shifted into gear. At slow speed, the Bear crossed the stern, and then drove slowly up the port side of the Anne Bonny.

      I watched his boat, but also sneaked a look down into the cabin. I saw her stretched across the cabin floor. She rolled onto one shoulder, lifted up her arm and rummaged through galley drawers. The woman removed a butcher knife from one drawer. She took a can of fiberglass putty out of the bottom drawer.

      I watched her arm herself with a butcher knife. She’s bare-breasted, wants to hide, I thought, and then I remembered that the woman had pirouetted into my cockpit, not the least self-conscious about her naked breasts.

      What’s the Bear to her? I asked myself. Not a chance acquaintance; that appeared certain. A threat? Indeed, but on what authority? Family? A father, or a husband, or lover? Police? Whichever, this woman was afraid of this burly, bearded man. Or was she a stooge for him?

      I discarded the likelihood of police. But when the Bear motored closer, I saw a gun atop a yellow life jacket. I guessed a shotgun, maybe a rifle.

      If not police, why armed? A father bent on a shotgun wedding, or a husband who came home unexpectedly, or she took something that belonged to him?

      Or was the Bear a pirate? These waters had once harbored the notorious Blackbeard, a pirate named Edward Teach. Blackbeard had seized lightly armed merchant ships, buried treasure, bribed officials, drank grog, wenched. The Bear didn’t match my image of the handsome, dashing, had-to-be-thin Blackbeard, but the Bear could pass as one of the Pirate’s infamous crew.

      When I sneaked another look below, she wasn’t visible. Hidden, probably, behind the closed head door. She could watch from the porthole. I wanted to warn her: don’t look out the porthole, because the Bear’s motorboat was coming alongside.

      Stand by to repel boarders, I thought, but what I said was mundane:

      “Hi. How’s fishing? Whatcha catching?”

      “Harummm,” he growled. The Bear’s gruff voice matched his belligerent body. His large chest stretched the foul-weather pants between the suspenders. His arm muscles expanded the sleeves of his T-shirt.