THE edge of a wooden crate. Throat too dry to scream. Each muscle frozen against its ligament. Gun, where is the gun? Anson whips around last second. Grabs wrist. Somebody help. Help for God’s sake. Nobody helps, nobody sees, fists still swinging all over the place, and there comes over me this strange sensation like I am looking upon this scene from somewhere else, I can’t possibly be living inside this present moment, clinging with my one good hand to these wooden crates, standing here on this damned ship on this damned ocean while a pirate fights Anson with a knife.
When a couple of hours ago I drove across a sunlit bridge in a Packard roadster, laughing a little.
My fingers slip against the crate and down I go, crash bump crash, sliding along wood, stumbling to the deck. Gun, where is the gun? Anson struggling. Someone in the way, can’t see. Knife flashes. Big hand grabs my shoulder and whips me around, some mad, grinning, red-faced meaty demon, I go down on my back behind the crates.
The impact knocks away my breath. The man comes down on top of me, fumbling, tearing cloth. God no no no. Gun, where is the gun? Hot stinking breath on my face. Hand forcing my leg. You can’t fight a beast like that on strength alone. You can’t just pitch your feminine muscle against his masculine one. Nature favors the conqueror in these matters; Nature wants the strong to populate the earth. You have but one chance, and that’s what he don’t expect. I force myself limp, gather myself together. Bring my knee up hard and dig my teeth into his neck, I mean I tear his flesh like I am tearing meat from a sparerib, and he screams and falls away, screams a fisher cat scream. I roll the other way, toward the crates, spitting out blood and skin, and there in the crack between two stacks of booze lies the barrel of a Colt revolver.
Snatch it up.
Brace myself and heave up to my feet.
Wheel around the corner of that stack of crates.
Gun in my left hand. Raise it. Find that silver flash, find Anson’s white shirt, still struggling, knife surging toward his throat.
Fire.
THERE ARE two men dead of bullet wounds and another four injured. Anson piles them into the motor launch with the help of the first mate, who jumps in, too. Logan’s left arm and leg are badly slashed, but he insists on staying with the ship. Thanks us profoundly. Tells me I am a damn good shot. I stick the revolver in the pocket of my dress and acknowledge the truth of this compliment.
I don’t believe Anson and I exchange a single word the entire journey back to shore. The first mate has brought a bottle of whiskey, and he and I take turns. Settle our nerves. Anson just pilots the boat and refuses the bottle. I nudge him with the neck of it. “Come on. Not even your nerves are made of that kind of steel.”
“I’m all right.”
“You threw back two full glasses on the ship. Watched you do it.”
Without so much as a blink, he says, “We’re back inside United States waters now.”
And all at once, I am filled with fury. I fling that bottle into the water. Take him by the arm and strike my good left fist against his chest, over and over, while the boat makes this crazy lurch and the first mate dives for the wheel.
“Why? Why? We were safe, Anson, we were safe at last, and you head out to some ship and near enough get us killed!”
He pulls me right up against his chest while I keep screaming.
“Was it worth it? Was it? That fellow nearly killed you, and for what? What the hell did we learn that was so important as that?”
“We learned that the game’s about to change, Ginger. Learned that more people are going to get killed. More blood’s going to spill.”
I have nothing to say to that. Just fall back into my seat. The engine’s roaring, the boat lurches across the water. Blue sea jumps and spins before me. I think I might vomit. I turn my head over the side and I do vomit, heave the sparse contents of my stomach over and over into the horizontal draft. When I’m finished, when I’m collapsed on my seat, Anson’s hand lands gently on my back.
“All right?” he says.
“I’ll live. You?”
He pats my back once more. Caresses my hair swiftly. Returns his hand to the wheel and says, “So long as you’ll live, I’ll live.”
THE SUN’S long set by the time we arrive back at the villa in the blue Packard, and for an instant I’m bemused to see a small figure running from the shadow of the house, calling my name.
Patsy. I plumb forgot my baby sister.
I sink on my knees in the gravel and take her sobbing body against mine. Tell her it’s all right, I’m here, everything’s fine, what’s the matter?
“She wouldn’t go to bed until you came home,” says Mrs. Fitzwilliam, who stands nearby in a pale dressing gown like a ghost, doing her best not to sound reproachful.
I don’t dare look up at her face. The one pressed against mine is bad enough, cheeks all wet and hot, breath coming in tiny, desperate pants. She sticks to me like a burr, like a marsupial, like I am a kangaroo and she is my kangaroo baby enclosed to my chest and belly by some invisible pouch. Her small back shudders under my hand. I keep saying I’m here, I’m fine, I would never leave her, but my words ring hollow, don’t they? Not once did the thought of Patsy enter my head as I took off across the dangerous blue sea with Anson. Not once did I think of her left behind. Not once did I imagine some kindly person telling Patsy that her sister has been split clean apart by a Rum Row pirate, and she has no kin remaining to cherish her.
“W-where w-were you?” she hiccups out.
“I was with Mr. Marshall. Out in a boat.”
“Why didn’t you take me with you?”
“Because …” Because I forgot all about you, cherub. Because it was too dangerous, anyway. Because there is no sister in the world so bad as I am, nobody in the world less capable of looking after you, poor baby, poor darling, I’m so sorry.
I start to pull away from her, because I can’t stand the weight of her terror, and also I’m starting to cry myself, tears leaking out the corners of my eyes at this terrible, terrible day that started out in such peace. My arm hurts, my back hurts. Maybe every bone in my body hurts, every tendon and joint, every fingernail. A weight falls next to my left shoulder. Anson, crouching beside us in the gravel.
“Patsy,” he says quietly, “do you know what your sister did today?”
She peers out over my arm.
“Your sister saved my life.”
“She did?”
“She saved my life, and her own life, and the lives of a shipful of men. In fact”—he takes his finger and carefully parts her damp hair from her face, one side and then the other, so he can look in her eyes—“I
