The Closer Read Online Free PDF Page B

completely.
    Pacheca is off in the distance, maybe eight hundred feet away. It might as well be on the other side of the earth. I am on the right side of the lifeboat. It is sitting so low with all of us in it that now it starts to take on water, too.
    I look out toward the lights of Pacheca. I wonder if I am going to have to swim for my life. I wonder how many of us—or if any ofus—will make it. The swells are one thing. The sharks are another. We have fished these waters many times. Hammerheads, reef sharks, tiger sharks: We have seen all kinds.
    There are sharks everywhere.
    The best hope for us is to get to shore via the back side of the island, where there is some protection from the wind and the seas figure to be much less rough. That is exactly where my father tries to take us. It is slow going. Up and down the swells we go. The big boat is already gone. Is this one going down, too?
    I can’t stop staring at the churning sea. It looks so angry. I don’t scare easily on the water, but I am scared. We are getting a little closer to the back of the island, but it still seems hopelessly far away. The wind and water continue to pound us. Nobody on the boat is saying a word. I am so racked with fear I can barely breathe.
    I can’t believe I might die because of a faulty water pump.
    I knew I wanted no part of being a fisherman, and this is exactly why. I think about my uncle, and what the fishing life has cost our family. I think about my mother and brothers and sister. Most of all, I think about Clara. She is my best friend, the person I want to spend my life with, even though I’ve never told her that. The thought that I might never see her again is almost too much to bear.
    A wave of water soaks me as I hang on to the side of the boat. Do I want to drown to death, or get eaten by a shark? Nineteen years of age, and these are my options.
    Somehow my father keeps the lifeboat creeping forward, plowing and dipping through the waves. I try to steer my mind away from the options. He is actually making progress somehow, even in a glorified dinghy that is far from the ideal vessel in such harsh elements. Maybe he will get us to the calmer water, after all. Maybe we aren’t going down.
    Is it five minutes later? Ten minutes? I don’t know. I just knowwe are much closer now, probably three hundred feet from land. The wind is subsiding and the surf seems to be in retreat. We pick up a little more speed. We are heading toward a sandy beach.
    We are going to make it to Pacheca.
    My father lifts up the motor and guides the lifeboat onto the beach. I jump out and shout with joy.
    Land! We’re on land. Land has never felt so good!
    We begin hugging each other. I even hug my father—that’s a first, as far as I can remember—and thank him for doing such a masterful job navigating us through. My father had radioed ahead, so the police and Coast Guard are waiting for us and check to make sure we are okay. They take us to a hotel—Pacheca is a tourist island, so it has plenty of nice places to stay—where they let our whole shivering and grateful group get a hot shower and dry clothes. It’s sad about the boat sinking, but this ending beats any scenario I could’ve imagined even a few minutes earlier.
    Eventually my father gets a new boat from the company he captains for, but for the time being, our fishing season is over. We spend our time repairing the net. It’s tedious and time-consuming, but I am in no rush to get back out on the water. And I am happy to be doing anything, alive.
    The near-calamity brings one other positive result: Without our six-day excursions on the boat, I get to play more ball with my team, Panama Oeste. I play ball all the time as a kid, but in a place as poor and remote as Puerto Caimito, it’s much more likely to be a pickup game on the shore than anything remotely organized. I am one of the stronger players from our village, and at thirteen I begin to travel around Panama as a member of our