Straits of Florida, 1995
He was starting to think they wouldn't make it. While their mish-mash of tires and pallets that formed a floatation device got battered by waves taller than buildings, he pleaded for his little brother to hold on to the rope. Just nine, the wiry child nodded through tears as his hands bled onto their only hope of leaving the oppressive island for a new home with an uncle they'd never met.
What if all his candy-coated promises didn't come true? He'd described all the food you could eat in America - anything you want and you can have it your way. This distraction was beginning to look like more of a mask that covered a gaping uncertainty.
The uncle had already been wrong about the storm. Instead of triumphant and sparkling blues, the sky brooded a heavy gray and the sea stretched between misery and destiny in inky black.
He couldn't think of that. He had to focus on this marathon race against time, crossing the miles of agonizing ocean before they could rest their water-logged feet on dry land.
He'd explained about the motor oil they would have to be slathered in, to ward off sharks in case their craft capsized in the swells, but nothing could prepare him for the circle of silver light that held his brother captive as his tiny body let go of the tattered stained rope and sunk into the black abyss.
Atlantic Ocean off Miami, twenty years later...
"Check out that beauty," James whistled. "She's a real catch!"
"Ju mean a ketch?" Hector corrected in his squeaky accent. "As een type of sailboat."
"That too."
The elegant craft glided across the current, cutting a path through the muck of worker boats. Her shellacked wood frame was accessorized with every kind of fancy rigging money could buy, and the crew looked equally put together. A photographer on board steadied his professional lens on the ocean race while a gray-haired guy - whose picture could qualify under the definition of Captain - stood at the helm.
Like girls who could pull off sexy fashions without looking like dress-up time in Mom's closet, ego dripped from these sails. The name bolted to the side reeked of authority: Royal Flush. She sliced through yards of lashing waves like those "it" girls breaking hall chatter. "I bet whoever owns that's worth millions of dollars," James suggested.
"Meellions and meellions." Hector spoke as if in a trance from behind binoculars.
Royal Flush didn't stick around to see a reaction. She slipped past the traffic now clogging the route. Flags snapped as hulls dipped precariously through the choppy waves, all vying for position to view the race.
Bambino jolted to a stop as ships crowded around, blocking the path. "Okay, I think this is good," Captain Luis shouted.
"Can't you get closer?" James asked; nothing was ever dangerous enough for him. The tour aboard Bambino had promised close viewing of the ocean race and he wanted his money's worth.
Luis elbowed his way up a notch in traffic. Bambino swayed and jerked as a sleek hull bobbed above them. They had made it to the lunch table where Royal Flush held court.
The storm and all the wakes spun massive waves. Bambino tilted precariously, careening at a sharp angle. Each time they swung high to the left and right, like a boarder in the half pipe about to smack the edge.
James' seventeen-year-old daughter, Star, stood and grasped a metal pole that up to this point had seemed in the way. A rhythm began but then changed so she had to keep track of it to know which way to throw her weight. Weaving from side to side, she focused on her bizarre pole-dancing routine as Luis steered the booty-shaking machine into heckling waves.
The sky had settled on a color, Dementor Gray, and the sea accented the choice with a bold flooring of Black Abyss. Boats appeared like new furniture. One stained-wood vessel displayed a yellow and blue Swedish flag. A large tour boat ironically promised tranquil waters, and a yacht bullied its way onto the scene. Like a junky family heirloom no one dares get rid of, their Bambino was noticeably the wimpiest ship.
The bobble-head pony ride teased toward its mark as Star worked the pole to thumping Miami hits blasting from the radio. Amid the involuntary gyrating, she noticed Hector was the only stationary object on the boat; he seemed almost asleep, hunched in his tan hat, quietly peering through binoculars at the race point while the world throbbed around him.
The boat swayed hideously with each wave from the wake of larger ships knocking them around. The horizon went up and down, up and down, up and down like a maniacal see-saw.
The ocean pumped with vessels all vying for position in a race to view the actual race. Other radios clashed. Captains tried to control their boats in the violent swells as passengers flailed, shouting conversations and sipping drinks around each bump and jarring jolt.
Star grabbed the pole tighter and could feel calluses form. Adrenaline set in. Would they keel over? What then? Her crazy dad was always taking her on these kinds of adventures in whatever weather happened to be brewing.
But something stranger than waves moved in the water near the race sails. A serpent-like stream of glistening pulsed. Could it be a mirage? Star wasn't delirious from scurvy, not yet. She blinked and it was gone.
"Did you see that?" she nudged Hector.
"Soddy?" The binoculars were glued to his eyes.
"Surrounding the racers. A circle of light." She pointed.
"Here, ju try these," Hector offered the binoculars and Star reached for the strap, then fumbled with the complicated lenses to focus on the crimson octopus sail. The sleek vessel still struggled but the water around it was black like the rest of the ocean.
"Must have been the light playing tricks on the water." The sun brightened for a second and then the clouds swooped over again. She handed the binoculars back.
"Never underestimate the power of water," her dad said. It was the same thing he had told her when she was little and got sucked under the rip tide: following a sparkling lightness deeper into the ocean; swallowing waves of salt that slammed her down; surfacing to yell only to get knocked back below; tumbling in slow motion until she whammed into the sand; clinging to James as he carried her to the warm beach.
There it was again - the silver circle meandered in the waves. But unlike before when she'd seen it around the racers, it wasn't far in the distance. It slithered steadily from the race area toward them and pulled her in, like a rippling hypnotic charm. She wanted it to come to her, to surround her in light, to drown in its depths.
"Whoa, what the- " Captain Luis shouted, breaking her trance.
Royal Flush cut too close.
Time slowed under pressure. They were suspended in animation as something horrific flashed. Luis turned to get away from Royal Flush, but she swung hard. Bambino thrashed as her nose headed straight into the polished wood hull.
Her captain shouted and waved his arms from the helm. "Get that thing away from my boat!"
Luis was straining with "that thing" as passengers called out helpful suggestions. James smiled. This was exactly the kind of white-knuckle adventure he'd hoped for.
They were about to get royally flushed.
Impact was not optional; they braced for the inevitable. The perfect-looking captain of Royal Flush was running on the deck directly into the point of contact. He continued to shout like a snob having a tantrum over poor service, but this time he used his body as a blockade. He stuck out his leg and pushed Bambino back with an arm. There was a crunch of hulls and maybe bone as the rigging hit his head. He pulled back in pain.
"Dude!" James yelled. "What the hell are you thinking?!"
"Freaking idiot!!!" Star shouted louder.
Luis was backing Bambino away as far as possible in the churning mess of vessels, to the fringes of society.
"Hey-where'd the reporter go?" James asked. Hector's perch was empty.
They scanned the boat.
The little guy in the tan hat had vanished.
Luis shook his head, "No, no - not again."
Star didn't mean to judge, but had Luis lost passengers before? This could not be good. "Maybe he went down; I'll check the cabin," her dad said. Holding on as Bambino thrashed, he opened the hatch and peered in. "Yo, Hector?!" he called, securing the door behind him as the fierce wind fought to slam it. James disappeared down the ladder.
In a few minutes he popped back up.
"Is he there?!" Star yelled.
"No answer and no sign of him." Her dad looked stunned.
They called into the wind, like Hector was a dog who hadn't come home for supper. "Hector?"
"He-ctor!"
"Heeector?"
"Hector, where are ya buddy?"
"You don't think he was thrown overboard?" Star asked the question they were all thinking.
"Naw, no way," her dad said. "We would have seen him. I mean, he was sitting right there in the middle, and he's an experienced race reporter, probably used to hanging on in a pinch."
"Then where the hell is he?!" Luis asked. Sweat covered his face and a puddle had formed on his T-shirt. Every lick of wave looked like a tan hat, every buoy a floating body.
The slippery silver thing Star had noticed, whatever it was, had vanished. She pulled Hector's backpack out from under the reporter's shady perch. The binoculars were in it. She could see guilt eating Luis like a shark and would bet he'd never dealt with this kind of carnage on a tour before. An accident and a missing passenger.
Luis worked the wobbling Bambino through the crowd and back to the scene of the accident. They shouted to nearby vessels and asked if anyone had seen him. No one had. And they were busy with news that the race had been called off from the storm, so most of the boats started heading back to the bay. Royal Flush was nowhere in sight.
Luis called in Man Overboard on his radio while James hoisted a yellow and red flag. They waited. Nothing surfaced in the three hundred and sixty degrees of black abyss.
Luis looked back toward the wicked sea and his mouth turned down at the corners. He blinked furiously. "Long time ago, my little brother and I, we were sent to America on a - well, I wouldn't call it a boat." "There was a storm - we capsized and - lost him."
"That's so - sad." What else could she say? Star faced the ever-moving floor of the boat as a sign of respect, her hair whipping over her face.
"It was a long time ago." Luis shook his head. "Anyway, I promised him I would make our dream come true. That one day I would own a real boat, one that couldn't be sunk."
"And you have," James said. "You did it. No one can take Bambino away."
"Bambino, that's what I called my little brother." What he didn't share was that if Bambino had lived he would look a lot like Hector. Even though they had only met this morning before the race, Hector's eyes pulsed with the familiar color he hadn't sensed in twenty years. "I don't care if that captain sues me and takes away my license, but if we lose Hector I'll never forgive myself - all over again."
"We'll find him," Star said with conviction, but she was beginning to wonder if they ever would. A terrible truth whispered down deep that no matter how long they searched, Hector wouldn't be going home.
(Word count: 1995, the year Luis lost Bambino)
A/N: This is my entry for the To the Seas! Contest hosted by the Adventure Community. I switched to third person narrative to share the back story of Luis and his brother's harrowing journey to freedom, one many people take every day. This story is dedicated to these brave souls who risk it all. The title hints at the dual meaning of abyss as not just bottomless depths, but "a wide or profound difference between people". Thanks for your reads, votes and comments!