The Killing Sea by Richard Lewis Page A

one. Just a bite of one. The remembered taste of that filled his mind as he kept walking, walking, walking. The hills of Calang didn’t seem to get any closer.
    Cresting a sand hill, he saw a small fishing boat with a blue plastic sail tacking back and forth. He kept an eye on it as he walked. An inexpert sailor at the helm, that was for sure. Whitecaps from the stiffening sea breeze slapped the small hull. The sailor turned around and headed for shore, where the beach came to a small point, catching the bigger waves.
    â€œNot there,” Ruslan said, “not there!”
    But the boat didn’t change course. A big wave rose up behind the boat. That irrational panic seized him again, urging him away from the sea, but he could see what was going to happen, and he forced himself to sprint down to the point. Thewave tipped the boat, catapulting the stern. Three people and a cat flew out of the hull. The orange cat and the white boy and white girl were in the air for only a second, but Ruslan recognized them at once. He had no time to wonder what they were doing here. Racing into the rushing wave, he first picked up the blob of orange washing past his thighs and threw the cat as far as he could onto the beach. An Acehnese woman in a head-dress bounced toward the shore. The white girl struggled to get to her feet. He grabbed her arm to help her, but she jerked free, fighting through the swirling foam to the overturned boat.
    â€œPeter!” she yelled. “Peter!”
    The boy hadn’t come up. The girl tried to right the hull, but the next wave sent the boat crashing into her, and she lost her balance. Ruslan grabbed the edge of the hull and lifted it. The boy pushed out from underneath, spluttering and crying. Ruslan dragged him up to the beach and plopped him onto a piece of broken bamboo matting. The white girl raced up and grabbed her brother. “God, Peter, are you all right?”
    He was coughing and crying. “I don’t ever want to be on a boat again, I don’t ever want to swim again, I want to go home, I want Mom and Dad, I want to go home, please, I want to go home.”
    The girl hugged him.
    He stopped crying with a loud sniffle. “Where’s Surf Cat?”
    The cat was licking its belly. Ruslan picked it up and gave it to the boy.
    â€œThank you,” the boy said.
    The girl looked at him then with her blue eyes, the color fracturing the light. “Yes, thank you.”
    Ruslan waited for her to recognize him, but she didn’t. His disappointment seemed outsized. What did it matter? Besides, the few minutes she’d been at the café she’d been fighting with her mother, not paying attention to who was serving the cold Cokes.
    The Acehnese woman who’d been in the boat held her wet headdress tight under her chin with clenched fists, gazing out at the sea with a thousand-yard stare.
    Green coconuts bobbed in the water, the swish of waves rolling a couple onto the sand. Ruslan chucked them higher onto the beach and waded out to get the others.
    The woman broke out of her trance and called out in Acehnese, “There was a machete on the boat, but I suppose it’s lost now.”
    The thought of the delicious meat in the coconuts made Ruslan light-headed with hunger. After taking off his shoes, he waded out to where theboat had tipped over, feeling the sand with his toes. Waves smashed into his chest. He knew this was a futile effort, that the chances of finding the machete were next to nothing, so perhaps that was why on the next step he felt the flat blade. He ducked into the water and plucked it, waving it triumphantly in the air.
    Back onshore, he began hacking open a coconut. The woman grabbed the machete away from him. “You city boys are useless.”
    â€œHow do you know I’m a city boy?”
    â€œBy the way you cut a coconut.” Within seconds she handed him the sliced coconut, the exposed shell neatly holed. Ruslan’s mouth