Free The Boat by Christine Dougherty

boat. In the dream he bent over to try and pull them into the boat but then they reached up, their mouths opening and their eyes deadly empty, and they pulled him over into the water. He’d wake shivering from that one.
    Steve jet skied off and Denny and Brian carried the guy into the salon to wait for Steve to come back with the two man jet. At their entrance, Jade faded back down the stairs to her stateroom, taking Babygirl with her.
    Maggie stayed on deck, tidying and wiping blood from the teak deck boards. The guy had bled a lot. Head wound , she thought, they bleed like crazy . It had been a clean cut–surgical, almost–and straight across his forehead. He was lucky half his face hadn’t folded over on itself.
    “Maggie, this is Steve, you there? Over.”
    Maggie sat on the bench that curved around the inside of the hull and picked up the walkie-talkie. “I’m here, Steve, what’s up? Over.”
    “Listen, Maggie, we’re having some problems over here, will you guys be okay for a bit? With your passenger? Over.”
    “We’re fine; take care of business. Over.”
    “Over and out.”
    She sighed and looked across to Big Daddy . Big Daddy, what a name , she thought. But fitting, I guess, for its purpose. Tugging and nudging, putting boats where they were supposed to be. Keeping them from harm. Providing.
    She smiled.
    A gunshot echoed across the water. Maggie recoiled in shock, almost as if she had been hit.
    Someone had fired a gun on Big Daddy .
     
    ~ ~ ~
     
    “ Big Daddy …Steve, what happened? We heard a gunshot. Over.” Maggie’s voice from the walkie-talkie on his belt, trying for calm, but Steve heard the panic that wanted to break through. He felt Maggie’s panic himself, but was trying to quell it.
    He stood with his hands up, looking at Sujon, Mohammed’s aunt. Tears coursed down her cheeks and her teeth were bared in rage. She held a gun in thin, trembling arms. Her entire body shook. The gun was pointed at Steve. Light smoke curled from the barrel.
    Carl rolled on the deck between them, cursing and holding his leg.
    “Where is Mohammed?” she said. Her voice was shaking, choked.
    “Sujon, you have to put that gun down. You don’t want to hurt anyone else.” Steve said but he didn’t move, not yet.
    “Where is he? Where is his body?”
    “He was…he was…left behind; Sujon, they had to leave him behind.” Steve hears the despair in his own voice, the guilt. They should not have had to leave Mohammed behind because Steve should have done more to stop his going.
    “Who?” she asked and her gun traced the line of men who stood behind Steve on the deck. “Who left him? Who left a little boy to be torn apart by the dead?”
    A man’s head fell as a sob escaped him. Sujon’s gun swiveled to him as levelly as if she were a twenty year sniper veteran. “It was you? You left him? You left a child ?”
    Steve heard the loathing in her voice. He stepped neatly between her and the man she’d targeted.
    “It’s not his fault, Sujon, don’t aim that gun at him. You know it isn’t his fault.”
    “It’s your fault,” she said, her voice a shaking ruin in danger of imminent collapse. “ Your fault.” Tears coursed steadily from her red-rimmed eyes. Steve had a distant twinge of surprise that she could even see. Everything must be a blurred swirl to her.
    Her hands shook and her finger gripped and relaxed reflexively on the trigger. If he didn’t do something quick, get through to her, she was going to shoot again. This time, it might not be a grazing leg wound.
    “Sujon, it isn’t my fault, it isn’t anyone’s fault. It just happened. It’s terrible. No one wanted it to happen but it did; it did happen. We’re all upset about it, Sujon, but no one is responsible. No one is at fault.”
    Sujon blinked rapidly. Steve noted how slack her clothes lay against her skin, how dry and malnourished she looked. We all look like that now , he thought. We are all like the sinkers except just