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The outboard motor died three miles out from the Cape. We had only planned an evening venture—just a short run out along the tip of an outer-lying island and then back. Saul managed a rare weekend from his usual work building and installing cabinetry. I didn’t work weekends, or tried not too—we were trying to get pregnant, and the doctor said stress might hinder the process.

Tonight, though, I wasn’t thinking about that, or much at all. The sun was spectacular, gradually soaking the gently bloated clouds with vivid purples and yellows as the wind swelled from the northeast. I watched the light define the contours of Saul’s back and arms as he stood adjusting the stern wheel to our course. The trip would have been different if we had sails.

It was a Saturday night. Most ships were docked or being docked, fishermen and sailors congregating at the local pub or hurrying home to families with gunny-sacks of sea-scented clothes. We weren’t the only pleasure-boaters—a couple small yachts were heading out-port as we were. None with similar courses, though. The Cape’s tip isn’t exactly a popular spot to sail around—lots of thick coral run near it. Boaters are forced to navigate the reef because going farther out to sea would be foolish in a small boat like ours, which has only one deck and no cabin.

But the privacy after the reef is worth the energy spent maneuvering, and that was what we were looking forward to. Clandestine moments are vital to our relationship. Between the incredible demand for skilled woodworking, the time involved, and my evening hours developing pictures, we discovered early on that we needed to escape together often. To stay sane. Moments don’t create themselves, and relationships can die easily.

Saul had checked the engine before we left—he’d never done well with mechanicals, but the engine just had a tune-up a week or two earlier. When it began to cut out he shut it off and tried restarting it. It only ran for another minute, then wouldn’t respond at all to his fiddling, pleading or banging. He wasn’t ever one for cursing, so he just tipped his head back, eyes squinted closed and exhaled, trying to think.

Hours passed. Then it started raining. Not a little or a lot, just steady and for a long time. Neither of us had noted the gathering clouds in the deepening dusk while Saul had been tinkering with the engine. Soon our tiny wood-planked cruiser bobbed, rain pinging hollowly off the mahogany deck and low windshield, surrounded by an ocean roiling with raindrop depressions.

Water began trailing thick through our hair and from our clothes and both of us hunkered under our thick wool blanket, bodies tightly pressed together. Nothing was said. Our heat mingled between our bodies, conducting thoughts and emotion. Everything that could have been described in words was communicated by touch and feeling.

We forgot to cover the radio. The rain stopped about a quarter after twelve—we were lucky that it was brief and mild compared to most Caribbean storms. The radio was shorted out. Saul tried every frequency for two hours as I watched from the aft cushion-seat, swaddled in the blanket against the growing chill.

Finally he was forced to quit—shaking so hard from the cold and sniffling that he couldn’t talk—and joined me in the relative warmth of the blanket. Neither of us slept well. Dawn came too soon, yet not fast enough, and with elation and apprehension we greeted the morning.

It was Sunday. Really a sunny day. No clouds littered the indigo sky or flocked at the end of the horizon in preparation for a journey over us. The Cape was nowhere in sight, only pensively cresting waves. Neither of us had given attention to which direction we were drifting during the night. We still had instruments and plotting charts, but no reason to discover our location with a numb engine and flooded radio.

Nonetheless, hope nags at the mind. Saul spread the maps over the still damp deck, placing the compass and his watch atop them to hold against the wind. The sun had wandered a good way to the top of the sky, when Saul, sat back, chin resting on chest. In his best guess we were at least ten miles from the northeast tip of the Cape.

The cooler held four bottles of water and a bottle of champagne we’d not opened yet. There were only two boxes of granola bars for food. The temperature rose swiftly with a soft wind, a warm salve to our damp bodies, but ominous nonetheless—we knew what midday would be like. Noon crept around slowly. We began to ration the water, allowing ourselves just enough to stave away dehydration. Water would not likely be the problem. We kept our clothes on though we could scarcely bear it. The sun’s searing fingers stretched down, cooking us through our summer linen. Sweat evaporated almost as quickly it formed. Saul tried to construct a tent with the blanket but by early afternoon the wind had bulked up to severe breaths that lifted the salty spray onto our gradually burning bodies and tore away the woolen shelter, carrying it beyond our reach, momentarily graceful as it tiptoed over the undulating waves.
Clouds started to brush across the sky, but none eclipsed the sun to relieve us. Our clothes were soaked and briny from the saltwater mist and every fold stung our tightened skin. Movement became painful. Night came slowly to our relief, but when it had fully darkened and the red mercury in the thermometer dipped far past the halfway mark we shivered and longed for the warmth of day again.

Monday broke the long night with a rising crescent of pink. The sky, again, was of the bluest hues and the sun reached high heat quickly. There were no shadows, no nooks to hide under on our ship. We tried to create our own shadows, but standing over each other, blocking the sun and balancing against the yaw of the deck was difficult. We were growing drowsy.

Up to then I hadn’t allowed myself to see this as anything but a huge inconvenience. But Saul was looking at me differently. Staring, the wrinkles in his forehead and squint lines white and bloodless against the inflammation of his skin—I knew he wanted to hold me.

Touching hurt though, and there was too much heat still. There was bleakness in his eyes that scared me and when dusk finally came he pulled me against his chest with a gentle fierceness and held me as we lay awake all night. I was acutely aware of the discomfort of contact, but did not attempt to break from his embrace, fearful that I would be swept away by whatever marauding wind and eager current carried us to nowhere.

Sleep took me unaware, quivering despite the warmth of Saul’s body, and it was not until late afternoon the next day that I woke. Saul had moved me from the cushion to the deck and pressed me into the paneling at the cushion-seat’s base. His shirt shaded my head and he lay stretched over me, not heavily, but tenderly, shielding my body from the obtrusive sun. His coarse cheek rested near my neck and a curious mix of saltwater and the smell of his skin caught my attention. Locks of hair clung in flattened spirals falling around my ears and across my face. I was sweating but did not want to move. Hot but didn’t want to disturb him. I felt each rasping breath through his chest and pressed my splintered lips into his damp hair.

“Saul.”

It was Thursday before a trawler chanced upon our sun and salt-bleached boat. The captain said the reflection from our windshield caught his eye. We had drifted over fifty miles from the Cape after more than ninety hours. That someone had found us defied astronomical odds.

I almost began to wish we hadn’t been found.

The trawler’s first mate, who had carried Saul, threw up afterwards. Saul’s back was lined with thick, glaring cracks that exposed dried muscle between blistered layers of skin that peeled away easily on contact. None of the sailors had ever seen anything comparable. When we finally reached a port, the doctor determined that Saul had died sometime Wednesday from sunstroke and trauma. His water level was near nonexistent—he’d not taken water since Sunday.

The whole time I had faded in and out of feverish consciousness. Most of the water bottles were empty. Saul had given water to me often. I had taken it, and in my fever hadn’t realized that he was having none himself. In three days, though we’d hardly spoken ten words, much had been said. His shadow had been my shelter. Only days afterwards, laying in a starchy hospital bed, hydrated and whole, was I finally able to cry.