Adrift (20 page)

For days the butcher shop's cupboards have been bare of any fresh food. Only a few dried fish sticks remain. They seem fine, even though they've hung for a month. The rock-hard amber sticks sit in my mouth for a half hour before they soften enough to be at all chewable.

Two Beatles songs begin to plague me, rolling around in my head again and again. Like the first song says, I am so very tired, and my mind is definitely on the blink. Okay, sure, why not just get up and fix myself a drink? Drink ... drink ... Humph. As if in answer to my frustration, the second song bursts out. Help! Yeah, sure, I need somebody, but I'd settle for
anybody.
Yes, I sure could use someone's—oh, universe, do you hear me?—Help! None comes, of course, no drink either; but the songs won't stop.

Food dreams become more real than ever. Sometimes I can smell the food; once I even tasted a dream. But it is always without substance. Even in reality, after I eat I am still hungry.

Once again I try for a dorado. I must be more particular than ever about my shot. The knives are too frail to drive through a fish at any angle or through its muscular back. I must somehow get off a gut shot. These piscatorial targets sometimes move at over thirty miles an hour, and I must hit a bull's eye of a few square inches. It seems beyond my feeble powers. However, the dorados have slowly developed identifiable styles of bumping
Rubber Ducky.
Some still stiffly punch the bottom or whack the perimeter with their tails, but some rub their sides against me, sliding against my knees and out in front of me on their sides. I am so close that I can see details of their eyes, tiny scars, and their pinprick nostrils.

Knives flash in the sunlight.
Ducky
makes rubbery groans, as if frightened. I spread out the sailcloth, sleeping bag, and cushion to protect as much of the raft as possible, particularly the tubes. I fire and hit a dorado perfectly under the spinal column, a large hole through her. I grab the spear with my left arm and lift the thrashing fish from the sea, keeping the point high in the air. I frantically try to pin her down on my sleeping bag. By the time my knife cracks her back, fish eggs and blood are spewed everywhere. So what? I have food! I make little hobbling jumps and yell, "Food! Food!"

My improvised spear works. I can rebuild my strength.
Ducky
is moving well and her patch is holding. With the stores in hand, I can last at least eight and maybe fifteen days. I'm being used up, but these past few minutes have given me a second wind ... or is it an eighth or ninth? A month and a half ago I thought my chances were one in millions, yesterday less than one in ten. Now they're fifty-fifty.

From lessons learned while cleaning the triggers, I discover new areas of meat in the head of the dorado. More important are the new wells of fluid, from the fatty liquid eye sockets to the mucous deep in the gill cavity. By the time I throw out the skull, the bone is scraped clean. The stomach is greatly distended. I cut it out, carefully drain the stomach juices overboard, slit it open, and find that it is full of prey. A huge fish lies lodged from the back of the mouth to the top of the intestine. It's incredible that the dorado could have swallowed something that large. It would be easier to believe someone had ramrodded it down her throat. I wash it in the ocean. Only the skin has been digested. The dark meat is only slightly tangy and tastes quite like mackerel. I think of it as having been pickled. What a bonus. An extra pound of flesh. Two complete table settings of organs, including the eggs. I feel full for the first time in a month. This good fortune comes at a critical time. I have desperately needed a break. I feel as if this fish is a good omen, just as I felt the killing of the big dorado that I lost was a bad omen. Last time the omen proved valid. I hope that this time it will too, that things will now brighten up.

By now the habitat in which I live, Duckyville, has become a neighborly suburb. The fish and I are familiar so I can chat with them individually, spread gossip and rumor. I recognize a dorado's nudge, a trigger's peck, or a shark's scrape the way you recognize different neighbors' knocks on the back door. Often I know which individual fish is whacking the raft with its tail or butting it with its head. I can tell when the fish are around even when they don't knock or flap. I love my little friends and their tight little town. No plague of politics, ambition, or animosity. Simple, unmysterious, unapprehensive life.

But there is a mystery in this town nonetheless. I failed at catching the dorados by line and they came close enough for the spear. The range of the spear was shortened when I lost the power strap, but they bumped and swam even closer. Now, with my range shortened even more and my power declining, they lie on their sides under my point. It is as if they are trying to help me, as if they do not mind mixing their flesh with mine.

High in the sky, long, thin, highly arched wings trail a delicate forked tail. Frigate birds do not venture so far from land, do not sleep at sea, and do not fish for themselves; or at least that is what I have read. Yet the shape of the bird—its pointed wings locked into position, its slim body and tail—certainly fits the description. I am still six hundred miles out, and the bird appears to be eyeing the same flying fish on which the dorados feed.

Night comes, and the weather turns more foul. I hear the patch bubbling and seething as the bow dips and rises in the waves. Pumping more frequently, now every half hour, I realize that I will not last long with such a workload.

Whitecaps occasionally break upon the canopy and crash through the opening about my head. Quarts of water drain down over me. The raft lurches up and down, so I hang on to the handline with one hand, just in case
Ducky
is knocked down again. I can't possibly sleep, so I calmly await the warming sun. Suddenly loud flaps rattle the canopy just above my head. I leap out and hijack the flying fish before it has a chance to flop back off into the sea. As sunlight peeks into
Ducky,
I clean my beautiful catch. A flyer's head is shaped in cross section like an upside-down triangle. Huge eyes look down and to each side to keep predators in sight while the flyer glides over the water. I scrape the large round scales off of her flat indigo back and slender white stomach and then remove her long translucent wings. The tail blades form a V aft, and the bottom one sweeps down almost twice as long as the top. Flyers can soar over a hundred yards, and by flicking this little rudder they can get some extra yardage or change direction. Blind flight at night sometimes carries a whole school straight into the side of a passing boat; when they hit, it sounds like machine-gun fire. A number of times, late at night or early in the morning, I have been jolted awake by a painful direct hit in the chest or the face. The flyers' tasty flesh is soft and pinkish white.

At first light, I spot a frigate bird overhead. So much for the idea that they never spend a night at sea. It sits almost motionless, as if painted there.

Warmth never comes. The sun remains hidden, the black waves break noisily all around me. I would like to remain wrapped up in my sleeping bag, but a wave crashes against the bow, and even above the terrible racket of the tumultuous sea, I hear a hissing eruption. Ducky's bottom tube becomes flaccid, the floor bubbles up, and we settle again deep in the water. It's no use bailing. The top tube gives only a few inches of freeboard. Water flows in and out of my territory at will.

The entire foam plug has been shot out of the hole. I must sew it in place and try once more to relieve the pressure that tries to pull the tear's lips out flat. Since the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, I decide to warp the shape of the raft so that, when viewed from above, it will look like a doughnut with a bite taken out of one side. I tie long lines across the bow from one handline anchor point to another, then tighten the lines by twisting them until they pull the raft into the warped shape. Next I string a line from bow to stern on the inside and pull until the raft folds up in half. This lifts the bow enough that I can see the tear. With my awl I cut small holes in the lips of the tear and the foam plug. I force through codline and tie the plug in place. As I have done so many times before, I lash it up, add external pressure lines, tourniquets, the works. When
Ducky
is afloat again, I can still hear a high whistle of escaping air echoing through her tubes.

Again the night is miserable. Choppy six- to ten-foot seas are on the attack. The canopy dribbles its sour water over me. Intense, stabbing pain from salt water sores mixes with throbbing aches that run through my muscles.

MARCH
27
DAY
51

At 9:00
A.M
. the patch blows again. The stock of dorados droops against the wet floor of the raft, turning rancid. Hundreds of sores now fester and eat into my nerves, more breaking and oozing each hour. I've slept for only four hours or less each night of the past week, eaten less than two pounds of food a day, and worked almost nonstop. I'm beginning to panic.

Got to stop it! I've got to get it sealed! Can't. Arms too tired to move. Shut up! Got to. No choice. Move, arms, move! I try to order my beaten and bedraggled body back into action. I crawl forward, relash the patch. She blows. I lash it again. She blows! Time and again the sea throws the raft down. Water smashes against me, flinging me into the torrent that sloshes in and out. Stabbing spasms, twinging, throbbing, convulsive cramping, piercing pain. I cannot take it, I won't make it. Stop it!
Harder, got
to pull the strings tighter. Got to try. World is reeling. Words echoing. Forgotten memories. Hands trembling, skin breaking. Pull harder,
harder!
Groaning, gasping.
Pump.
How many? Don't know, can't count. Three hundred maybe. Top tube, too, another ninety. My arms are being torn from their sockets, and I am being flayed alive. A wave crashes in. My world jumps and shakes. She blows. Tie her up again,
harder.
Get it to stick. The still hangs lifeless over the bow. Pump up the tube. So long, now, ever so long. Two hundred eighty. Rest. O.K., squeeze. Two eighty-one ... She blows!

Collapse, can't move. My left arm is searing. With my right, I drag it up onto my chest. Night is here. So very cold, but I do not shiver. I'm lifeless, floating like a wet rag along the top of the sea. Can't move any more. Numb. The end is come.

Breathing hard. Gasping! Yes, I guess I am. Eight days I've been trying to patch the leak. No more, please, no more. The ocean rolls me about, sloshes over me, beats me, but I do not resist, hardly feel it. Tired, so very tired. Heaven, Nirvana, Moksa ... where are they? Can't see them, don't feel them. Only the dark. Is this illusion or real? Aah, word games of the religious and philosophical. Words aren't real. Hours? Yes. Fifty-one days gone and some hours left. I've stumbled, fallen, lost. Why, why, why? Eternity? Yes, the ocean rolls on. I roll on. No. Not I. Carbon, water, energy, love. They go on. Skin and bones of the universe, of God, flexing, always moving. I am lost, lost without trace.

An immense energy pulls at my mind, as if I am imploding within my body. A dark pit widens, surrounding me. I'm frightened, so frightened. My eyes well with tears, pulling me away from the emptiness. Sobbing with rage, pity, and self-pity, clawing at the slope, struggling to crawl out, losing grip, slipping deeper. Hysterical wailing, laments, lost hope. I scrape to catch hold of something, but nothing is there. Darkness widening, closing in. How many eyes have seen like mine? I feel them, all around me, millions of faces, whispering, crowding in, calling, "Come, it is time."

MARCH
28
DAY
52

T
HE GHOSTS
reach from the darkness and pull me down. I'm falling. It's come.

"No!" I yell out. "Can't! Won't!" Can't let go. Tears stream down my face and mix with the sea swilling around my body. Will die, and soon ... Find the answer. Want to ... yes! That's it, want to live. Despite agony and horror. Despite what lies ahead. I convulse, sobbing, "I want to LIVE, to LIVE to LIVE!"

Can't.

Must! Damn it, open your eyes. They blink, heavy with fatigue. Try to focus.

Not good enough.

Quit your bitching! Do it! Grab ahold, arms. PUSH! Now again, PUSH! Good. Up a bit. Won't drown now. Breath is heavy. O.K., steady, boy. Head sways, eyes blur. A wave comes in. Cool. Keep your own cool, too. Stop that whining! Get that bag over you. Do it! All right. Rest now. You're out of it, for now. You're O.K. You hear me?

Yes.

O.K.

Now what? Next time it won't be so easy.

Shut up! You've got to come up with something. Got to get warm, got to rest, got to think. Maybe one chance left. Maybe not even that. It's got to work first time. If it doesn't, you WILL DIE!
Will Die,
Will Die, will die. Yes. I must make this one good.

Go back. Identify the problem. Use what you've learned.

My mind wanders, coherent at times, then stumbling like a drunk into a babbling stupor. Die, lost without trace ... The ultimate question, death ... Damn it, concentrate! O.K. Old problem: plug coming out. Solved by sewing it in. Current problem: lashings working off. I have to keep them on. What equipment have I got? Space blanket, flare gun, useless lighter, plastic bag. Maybe I can pull the bottom of the raft tight by yanking up on the bottom tube all around and tying it to the upper tube. Not much better than what I've done before, and it's too complicated. I'll have to cut holes in the bottom tube; but then there's no going back. The answer has to be simpler. What else have I got? First aid kit, bandages, scissors, twine, line. And all the stuff I've already used—spoon, fork, radar refl ... The fork! Of course! Why you stupid bloody idiot! "It's the fork!"