Jasper Ridcombe's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

For three months Jasper Ridcombe rowed out at dawn to find the friend who drowned. He rowed the same stretch of water every morning, alone. His companion had gone down where the seabed dropped away into deep, dark water. But Jasper's little rowboat could not reach it. The oars caught in weed. The hull scraped sandbars. His search stayed stuck in the shallows, and each morning he turned back with nothing. This dawn he crouched in the tall saltgrass on the shore. Pale blades hid him from the fishermen who called him mad. He waited until they launched and were gone. Then he gathered stones and dropped them into a sack. He had a plan. If the boat rode lower, the wind might stop shoving it back to the flats. He stripped off his stiff canvas coat and looped his frayed rope belt through the sack of stones. The coat he left on the sand, folded, salt-white. He tied the rope to the bow cleat and let the weighted sack hang over the side. Then he rowed. The boat sat deeper now. It cut through the shallows without catching. Sweat ran down Jasper's sunburned neck. He pulled hard, past the last sandbar, out to where the water turned black and cold. His arms shook. For the first time the deep water opened beneath him. Then the weight worked against him. The heavy sack dragged the bow down. A swell rolled in and slopped over the rail. Water filled the boat fast. Jasper grabbed the rope to cut the sack loose, but his knife stayed in the coat on the shore. The boat tipped. Jasper went into the cold, mouth full of salt. He clawed at the rope belt around the sack and finally freed it. The stones sank. He hauled himself onto the swamped hull and clung there, gasping. His boat floated low and useless beneath him. A current took him. It pulled him not toward shore but along the edge of the deep, where his friend had gone down. He kicked and held the hull and let it carry him. The water there was clear. He looked down. Far below, on a pale shelf of sand, something dark rested. Not weed. Not stone. A shape with the outline of a man, caught where no small boat could ever reach. Jasper found what he had searched for. He could not touch it. He clung to a sinking boat with no coat, no belt, and no way down. But now he knew exactly where his friend lay. He kicked toward the shore, marking the spot against a bent tree on the cliff. His rowboat would never take him that deep. He needed another way down, and he needed it before the current shifted the sand and hid his friend again.