Depth Charge by Jason Heaton (carter reed .txt) 📗

own and then bent over and kissed him. He put his arm around her and pulled her down. She laid with her head on his shoulder and draped her arm over his naked stomach. His skin was cool and she could feel the dried salt on it. The smell of his sweat excited her.

“You need a bath,” she said in a scolding whisper and feigned pushing him away. He pulled her tighter and she giggled. Tusker could feel her breasts against his side and her soft hair on his shoulder. He closed his eyes. They laid like that, clutching each other, for a long time.

When he awoke, Sam was still draped across him, breathing deeply. He held up his arm and squinted at his watch. 6:20. Day or night? He had lost all sense of time. He could only vaguely recall being hauled out of the sea in the morning, but he couldn’t be sure which day.

He gently lifted Sam’s arm, laid it down on the hard mattress, and stood up. His legs ached, cramped from being in the water for so long. From the next room, he could hear a TV or radio playing. Hindi music. He was suddenly ravenous. When was the last time we ate? He slipped across the cool concrete floor to the doorway, which was hung with a simple rod and fabric curtain. He peered out. A small woman was standing at a two-burner gas cooker, stirring something. His sudden appearance startled her.

“Hello!” Tusker said and smiled, hoping to put her at ease. She nodded and bowed slightly, avoiding eye contact. She could have only come up to his chest and weighed maybe 85 pounds. In this tiny house, where his head nearly reached the ceiling, Tusker must have seemed a giant.

She spoke. “Tea?” She held up a chipped cup.

“Yes, please,” Tusker replied and nodded exaggeratedly. She didn’t seem to speak English, but lifted the pot from the burner and poured it expertly into the cup. It was pale with powdered milk already added, and when she handed him the cup, it was scalding hot. “Isthuthi,” he said, hoping she spoke Sinhala, though he suspected this was a Tamil household, judging from the Hindu shrine in the bedroom. She looked at him and smiled.

She said something to him in Tamil. He shook his head quizzically. “Badagini?” she repeated, this time in Sinhala. Hungry? He nodded again and she smiled and gestured for him to sit at the small table in the room. It was a tiny house. The dining table sat opposite the tiny cooking space and beyond it, a sitting room with a simple rattan bench, some pillows, and a few plastic chairs. In the corner of the room was a rolled-out mat and some sheets. This is where she had slept, presumably with the fisherman who’d rescued them. They’d given up their own room for him and Sam.

The woman scraped at some pots in the kitchen and turned to hand Tusker a plate heaped with rice and some curries. He sat at the table and without a word tucked into the steaming food with his fingers. The food, a few vegetables cooked in coconut milk, lentils and dried fish was spicy and delicious. Tusker wiped the sweat from his brow with his forearm between bites. The woman stood and watched him from the kitchen. When he finished, he sat back in the chair and exhaled. She set a small bowl of lime water in front of him to wash his fingers. “Hari hondai.” He grinned, his face flushed. He felt human again. The woman smiled back at him.

“Oyage nona?” she gestured to the room. She thought Sam was his wife. Tusker nodded and stood up. He exaggeratedly tiptoed to the room and held back the curtain. In the light from the other room, he could see that Sam was awake. She was sitting up, rubbing her eyes.

“I just had the best meal of my life,” he said to her. “I don’t know who these people are, but they gave us their room and she just fed me enough food for an entire family.”

“That’s the way it usually is here,” Sam replied. “The ones with the least to give, give the most.”

She stood up and brushed past Tusker, letting her hand linger on his chest as she passed him in the doorway. It was now 7:30, a full day since they’d been brought ashore. They’d slept an entire day and the following night. Where they’d ended up he didn’t know but it was a stroke of luck that the fisherman happened upon them.

“Pottuvil,” Sam called out to him, as if knowing what he was wondering. She’d been talking to the woman while sitting with her own plate of food. “My Tamil’s not great, but she says her husband and son brought us in yesterday. Her name is Devika and her husband is Chandin. Their son is Ajith.” The woman smiled and nodded at Tusker as she heard the names. “They’re still out fishing now.”

“Wow, we drifted a long way!” Tusker exclaimed. “Your father must be worried sick.”

“Yeah, I should call the Deep Blue and at least tell him we’re alive. They don’t have a phone, but apparently we’re not too far from a guest house and we can walk over and make a call there. I can ask Thathi to send someone to pick us up.”

“Good point,” Tusker said, “I hate to impose on these people any further. Any chance there’s a place we can have a bath before we set off?”

“She said they’ve got a small outdoor tap we can use and some soap,” Sam said. “It’s not much, but like I said, you could sure use it.” She winked at Tusker. He grinned back at her. Devika walked to a small dresser and opened the top drawer. She pulled out two cotton sarongs and handed one to Sam and one to Tusker.

“Make sure you tie it correctly,” Sam said to Tusker. “She’ll