Midnight by Anna Dove (books for new readers .TXT) 📕

sitting back on his haunches by his dead friend, “I sell houses.” His tone was one of shock, and Haley could see his pale skin sweating and his wide eyes. “I sell houses.” The man shook his head, and looked back at his friend, whose chest was now a pool of blood. “I can’t take this, god, I can’t take this. You all are people. You’re real people. I can’t take this, I can’t do this. To watch a child suffer makes you wish you were dead; to watch your own child suffer--it is--it is--I” and he covered his face in his hands and rocked back and forth. “She depends on me, she looks up to me and asks me why, and I have no answers…” he abruptly stopped, and looked up at them.

“Go!” He cried. “Get out of here!”

Haley took a sleeve of crackers from the backpack and a jar of peanuts, and laid them by the man’s feet. He looked at them, and then up at her, with a look that she would never forget, one of desolate despair, a man who is lost.

Carefully they retraced their steps down the hill, Carlos keeping his gun trained on the man, who sat as if in a daze. Around the corner and into the shadow of another building, and they stood facing the Harbor.

“A boat, quick,” said Carlos.

“That one,” said Elizabeth quietly. “I can sail that one.”

A sleek white vessel, with tall mast reaching up proudly and furled sails tied up neatly. She rocked lightly in the water that lapped against her hull, on which was written in sprawling cursive lettering, The Jennifer.

The four travelers filed in quickly, stepping over the bow to sit on the edge. They had just seated themselves when another single shot rang out, splitting the air. Instinctively they ducked, but there was no sound, no returning fire, no shouts or screams, only an awful silence.

“Did that man…” began Haley in a whisper, but then stopped as her throat tightened.

Elizabeth drew out her pocketknife and sawed apart the line that was curled into a mass of knots securing the sailboat to the dock. She pushed them off, and running up the mainsail and the jib and the sailboat began to ease away from the Harbor turning away from the wind, cutting smoothly through the dark water as the sails filled.

“Get down, everyone, until we get out of the Harbor,” Elizabeth said softly, and the others lowered their bodies below deck visibility, sitting on the boat bottom. Carlos kept his gun in his hand, as did Elizabeth.

Sailing was second nature to her. Having grown up in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Elizabeth had spent hours, days, weeks flying across the surface of water in sleek boats, learning to read the wind. She had sailed at night before, navigating by the natural lights in the sky.

Out they moved from the mouth of the Harbor into the Bay, and Junetta, Carlos and Haley moved from below the deck to the thwart, the board that spanned from port to starboard. The wind filled the sails gently from the southeast and Elizabeth directed the bow due east by her compass, guiding them further out towards the middle of the Bay. They all sat in silence, each absorbed in their own thoughts.

The moon had sunk behind the clouds, and the visibility continued to decrease as the cloud cover thickened. Elizabeth estimated that they had gone far enough east, and then shifted north, and the boom swung around in the dark over their heads as they all ducked at her verbal warning.

They had sailed for perhaps half an hour when their speed slowed. The wind had lulled, and the sails struggled to catch it.

“Wind is dying. Might be rain coming.”

“Should we try to go nearer to the shore?” murmured Haley.

“Well, to be honest, I’m not sure how far out it is. There’s no light. I’ve been estimating—and I believe we are decently far from land but I can’t be sure. So it would be dangerous to turn around if I can’t see. At this point—at this point, I think it’s best if we just try to wait it out until morning.”

The air began to cool, and little droplets of water sprayed up into the sailboat as the water lapped against its sides.

“Maybe if it’s going to rain, we should spread the sail over this portion of the sailboat,” said Haley, pointing to the empty spaces on either side of the thwart. “We want to protect our food.”

As she spoke, a raindrop fell on her head, splashing cool against her face. A moment, and then another leisurely droplet on her forearm.

They lowered the sails from the mast as the raindrops began to fall from the sky, small, interspersed raindrops at first, that did not increase in frequency or volume until the sails had been spread like a tarp over the sailboat and all four occupants lay below. They fit snugly, but comfortably.

The rain fell softly on the sailboat for the next four hours, pattering the sail above them. Haley lay on her back with her bag on her stomach, listening to the soft lullaby of the rain. The darkness, the swaying of the boat, the comforting sound of the rain—she fell in and out of sleep, dozing and waking up to listen before dozing again.

In the middle of the night, the rain pattered its last few drops on the sailboat and then moved southwards, and the clouds cleared from the sky, revealing the brilliant half-moon.

Haley awoke to Carlos sitting up next to her and remarking that the rain had stopped. She pushed the sail back and peering out of the boat, saw the bright moonpath reflecting on the surface of the water, the Milky Way galaxy stretching in a grand arc across the heavens, and the distance dark smudge