Not Without Hope (8 page)

Corey and Will continued their sad tug of war. Corey would pull Will into the water, and Will would let go of him to get free for a second. Then they would just float behind the boat. Will held Corey with his left hand and tried to hold on to the motor or some other part of the boat with his right hand. Corey pulled on the cushion Will had on his back. He yanked on Will’s arm. Quite a few times, Will floated for what seemed like ten minutes, holding on to the boat, but completely in the water, the cushion still on his back.

I kept looking at the watch I had taken from Corey and saying to him, “The sun’s coming up—they’re on the way!”

Marquis remained limp. I didn’t know if he was alive or not. Corey was the opposite of Marquis. Marquis’s fights had been longer and more frequent, but they died down. Corey’s were more sporadic at first, but as it got closer to dawn, they got more frequent, stronger, and more consistent, with more swearing, more meanness.

He wouldn’t say more than a few words, like “Come here, bitch!” There was a terrible look in his eyes. They seemed completely bloodshot and real wide. He would let out loud grunts.

“They’re going to be here real soon,” I said to Corey, and I would tell Marquis, “Coop, hold on a little longer, just a little longer—we’ll be home soon.”

It was not yet light. Marquis was just laying across me, not
moving. Will checked him a third time. He shook his head. He couldn’t find a pulse.

“I don’t know man,” Will said. “I don’t think he’s here. I think he’s gone.”

I held on to Corey and tapped Marquis’s face, trying to wake him. Corey ripped at me or Will or Marquis. A couple times he got away from me, and Will held on to him. Or I pushed him off of me and then grabbed him again quickly because he was choking me. The strap burn on my neck from my life jacket was getting worse. Corey was really jerking at Marquis now, and I had to squeeze Marquis tighter to keep him on the boat. I was terrified. Waves were still smashing in. Now I thought it might be drizzling. It was hard to tell, because it felt like that all the time.

Facing away from the boat, I continued to ask Will whether the bow was still up and out of the water. Sometimes he said it looked the same; sometimes he said it didn’t look good.

About now, we knew that Marquis had probably died. I was pumping his chest a little harder than before. I put my mouth to his mouth, but the waves were so rough I couldn’t give him CPR effectively. Will couldn’t do it, either. We were trying to hold Corey at the same time, and it was too much. My hope was that Marquis was still alive. They’ll get here, they’ll take him first, then come back for Corey and worry about us later, I said to myself. I guess I was in denial. I couldn’t let myself believe the worst.

The waves were probably nine or ten feet high, coming from every angle. It was choppy, a bad storm. I was freezing. My orange jacket had a drawstring and I tried to pull it tight to my body. But a wave would come from the backside and shoot right up my jacket, from the top of my butt to the top of my neck. It felt like the first time we went into the water, like needles. I would shout, “Oh my God!” with my teeth clinched.

Will checked Marquis again and said, “Dude, I think he’s
gone.” I didn’t want to answer, because I didn’t want to believe it.

Marquis had been unconscious for what seemed like more than an hour. Now it was after six. We were waiting. We knew we had a better chance of being found in daylight.

I told Corey what I had said before: “Hold on, they’re going to be here soon.” And to Marquis: “Please God, stay with us, Coop.”

Corey was jumping again, hurtling from the boat like he was starting a backstroke race in a pool. He kept pulling me, and my endurance was shot.

I told Will about Corey, “You better hold on to him—I can’t.”

Now Corey began catapulting away from the boat at a forty-five-degree angle. Will would have needed another three feet on his arm to hold on—he was already waist-high out of the water now, still trying to keep Marquis’s listless head up with one hand. I didn’t want to believe it, but Will was right. Marquis was gone. We couldn’t get a pulse. There had been no sign of life for more than an hour. He was gone. He was dead.

It was about six fifteen. Corey was either at full throttle or nothing—just floating in the water or fighting and ripping at my life jacket. He was out of Will’s reach, so it was up to me to hold on to him. I thought that if Corey’s life jacket ever came off, we would lose him, too.

Will and I kept trying to calm Corey down.

The helicopter’s gone to refuel, I told him. They would come back when it was light out. I kept telling Marquis to hang on a little longer, just a little longer, but these were just words, as empty and lifeless as he was.

Why, God? I kept thinking. Everything said by everybody seemed to have the word
God
in it as that first night went on. Corey and Marquis were more religious than me, but we all said the same thing: “I don’t get it, God. Why me? Please, God!”

I had never gotten emotional until now. There was too much
going on. I was scared for my life. But now I knew I couldn’t hold on to both Marquis and Corey anymore. Every ounce of muscle in my body was shot.

“I don’t know what to do,” I told Will. “I’m going to have to let go of one of them. Otherwise I’ll lose both of them.”

We decided to take Marquis’s life jacket off because Will was still wearing the seat cushion. He took it off his back and it floated away in seconds.

“Oh shit,” Will said.

He quickly put on Marquis’s life jacket while I held on to Corey, who was still being rough. He got hold of Will again, and Will went into the water. “No, no!” I yelled.

Corey was making grunting sounds, almost like he wanted to wrestle. He would grab Will and try to pull him under. He kept yanking on Marquis, and Marquis’s head kept slipping down, his head falling to my waist. His legs were now completely in the water.

“Stop, stop!” I yelled at Corey. “They’ll be here soon!”

I said to Will again, “I can’t hold both of them.”

Will tried to keep one hand on Corey, but it was hard. Corey would grab him and try to pull himself forward. Then Will would have to let go of Marquis and hold the motor with one hand to fend off Corey.

Will and I went back and forth.

“I don’t know what to do,” I kept saying.

I had to make a decision. It was just a matter of time before I would lose my grip on Corey and he would break free.

“You’re going to have to let Marquis go,” Will said.

“There’s no way,” I said.

“You’re gonna have let him go.”

I struggled with it, but I knew Will was right. I had already lost Marquis. I knew he was dead. Corey was still alive.

Will said again, “You gotta let him go.”

Corey pulled Marquis by the legs with both hands. Now Marquis’s whole lower half was in the water, his body getting slammed by ten-foot choppy waves as Corey tried to thrust himself off the boat.

“I don’t know, man,” I said to Will. “I don’t know.”

And then I told Marquis, “I love you, Coop. I’ll see you again someday. I’ll protect your family.”

I let Marquis slide slowly into the water. I told him that I loved him another five or six times. I held on to his wrist with my left hand while holding Corey with my right. Ninety-nine percent of him was in the water now; he was facing the front of the boat, very limp. I felt his body. It was cold and hard.

I kept telling Marquis that I loved him. Then I let him go. It was by far the hardest thing I ever had to do. I watched his body slowly fall away. His head kind of floated in the water, down and off to the side. I watched him a few seconds as his body slowly sank. I shook my head and kept telling him that I loved him. His body was at a slight angle. He drifted away, and within a few seconds I didn’t see him anymore. My face hurt and my eyes burned as I tried to hold back the tears.

W
ILL DIDN’T SAY
anything as Marquis floated away. Then Corey started fighting again. Even though I no longer held Marquis, I couldn’t get both my arms around Corey, not with the motor in the way.

It wasn’t more than a few minutes later when Corey began trying to take off his life jacket. He seemed confused. He would try to lift it up and pull it over his head. Will would reach over and yank it back down.

Then Corey tried to jump away from the boat probably four
times in ten seconds. Not straight back, but at a forty-five-degree angle—he would bend his legs and catapult himself. I called to Will, “I’m going to lose him!”

Corey positioned himself near the motor and somehow he stood up, grabbed on to me, and pulled himself up. He looked right into my eyes and said, “Fuck you—I’m a kill you!” He said it again. His eyes were wild.

That wasn’t Corey. I knew it. I didn’t take it personally. A second later, he jumped to my left across the motor as I straddled it. My right arm cut across the propeller. I felt a sharp pain near my wrist, and my immediate reaction was to yank my hand backward. I lost him. I didn’t mean to, but I lost Corey.

I screamed, “Will, grab him!”

Will jumped from the stern into the water and tried to grab Corey, but he was getting away, and Will couldn’t risk straying too far from the boat in rough water. Corey got away a final time, gripped his life jacket, and jerked it over his head. It remained attached for a moment by the lower strap, but then Corey ripped the jacket over his head and let go of it.

“Corey, Corey!” we screamed. At this point, he was probably ten feet away from the boat. It was almost like he did a swan dive. His arms didn’t come out of the water, but his head went down and he did a front roll; his sneakers went straight into the air. He seemed to be ninety degrees vertical. He kicked straight down until we couldn’t see him anymore.

I screamed, “Corey, no, no, no, please!”

I yelled so loud and my mouth was so dry it felt like I was shredding my throat.

Will was screaming, too, “No, no, oh God, no!”

In a few seconds, we couldn’t see Corey anymore. He went under and never resurfaced. For a second, I saw his sneakers, and then I didn’t. Then I saw them again. Finally, they were gone for good.

“Why, God, why?!” I screamed.

About fifteen minutes after we let go of Marquis, we had lost Corey. We were stunned. They were such calm, cool guys. And then they had become someone else, something else, and now they were gone.

It was getting lighter out, about six thirty or six forty-five.

Over the next few hours, Will and I would ask each other, “Why would he do that? Why?”

At 6:38 on this Sunday morning, the Coast Guard suggested that relatives be told to check their missing boaters’ credit cards to see if they had been used in recent hours. It was also suggested that a search be made closer to shore. “Being that these guys are inexperienced, don’t look just at fifty miles offshore,” a Coast Guard dispatch said. “There might be a possibility that they wisened [sic] up and stayed close to shore. At least within visual of land. Find out their departure point. Park? Marina? Home? How much fuel onboard? It might be worth considering getting the story out to media earlier than later—more people on the lookout both on land and water.”

Just after sunrise, at 7:09, the first Jayhawk helicopter was launched. It reached the search area at 7:45. At 7:10, the forty-seven-foot motor lifeboat arrived at the GPS coordinates provided by Marquis Cooper’s friend from a handheld device. Seas were now running eight to ten feet, with some rising to twelve feet. The wind was blowing thirty miles an hour. Visibility was half a mile.

“That’s an E-ticket ride at Disney World,” said Captain Timothy Close, commander of the St. Petersburg Coast Guard station, explaining how rough a trip the motor lifeboat experienced.

The initial search by the boat brought no luck in the battering seas.

“They were looking out the window and a good percentage of the time they were just looking at water moving past them,” Captain Close said of the motor lifeboat. “When they got back, the boat was okay, but the crew was shot. They were in the bag. We had to send them home, probably with a couple Nuprin and an ice pack or two.”

By 9:24 in the morning, a second C-130 turboprop had still not been launched, apparently delayed by the weather. “Our command is very unhappy with the response time,” said a dispatch from an impatient Coast Guard official.

The initial three-hour helicopter search for the missing boat and boaters also proved futile.

I
t was dawn now on March 1, very overcast. There were only two of us now. I sat on the hull, and Will was to my left, standing on the swim platform or a trim tab. I had lost two friends, NFL players, guys who seemed indestructible. If we were to have any hope for ourselves, it would come now with sunrise. In daylight, the searchers should have an easier time seeing us. We watched the waves form in the distance. They were consistent ten-footers, choppy. But at least we were able to see what was coming at us.

A white mist surrounded us, and it started to rain—it was pouring. But in a way that was okay. I turned my head up and opened my mouth to get some fresh water. I kept my mouth open thirty seconds at a time. I tasted salt and grittiness from my teeth. I felt like they were filing down from chattering all the time.

At this point, we had been in the water about fifteen hours. We had been awake more than a full day. I was starving and thirsty. My mouth was nasty, dry. I was nauseous. I felt my stomach. I felt thin already. I weighed 240, and was in great shape, but I could tell I was getting thinner. I had thrown up breakfast the day before when I got seasick. I couldn’t hold anything down after that. The last real
meal I ate, Will’s mother’s pasta recipe, had been on Friday night, about thirty-six hours ago.

By eight in the morning we had been thrown off the boat a couple times. I was getting plowed. My body would go flying off, a complete 360. My legs would slam against the motor, and my back would pound against the hull.

Will and I decided to position ourselves on the hull. I straddled the motor, and he bear-hugged me from behind. It was like we were riding a Jet Ski, but there was nothing for him to hold on to but me. When we’d get thrown off, we’d climb back on and switch positions. The person in the front did 99 percent of the work, holding on to the motor and gripping with his feet. Soon I was in excruciating pain. A wave would come from behind and nail us and we would rocket forward, more than 450 pounds between us, and my balls would slam against the motor. They were the hardest hits I had taken, way harder than on a football field. It happened so many times, over and over. We would pound against the motor and I would feel a sharp pain in my crotch, then a nauseous feeling, like I wanted to vomit.

A lot of time we were coughing and gagging from the water. My nose was running. We both had colds. We were spitting, and the one in front would get hit with loogies, or one person would put his finger to his nose and blow a snot rocket. We didn’t care. The waves washed it away in a minute.

When we sat like that, one guy bear-hugging the other, there wasn’t a whole lot of talking. We would watch for the waves and yell, “Hold on, hold on!” and we would lean in and brace ourselves.

“Hey,” Will said at one point.

“Hey,” I said. “You all right?”

His reply was tinged with fear. There was a sad tone to his voice, which was choked up. “I’m not going to make it through another night,” Will said. “No way.”

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “You won’t have to. They’re going to find us today.”

I tried to brush it off, but I got scared, too. I felt sick to my stomach. Will always had an idea or a plan. He was the one who swam under the boat to get the life jackets. We were best friends. If he didn’t have hope, how could I? There had been four of us, and the cold and the salt water had gotten to Marquis and Corey. Now it was just me and Will. We could climb a little more out of the water, the two of us, bear-hugging each other, creating some heat. Still, we were worried about dehydration and the cold. We hadn’t eaten. Even after I saw two pro athletes not make it, even after one guy died in my arms and the other guy got away and died minutes later, I still never thought I was going to die. Then Will said what he said, and it began to sink in. Death had just happened in my lap. And it might happen again.

I
T WAS STORMING
. The rain felt like it was coming horizontal. It was painful, like BBs to the face. The sky was the color of dishwater. It almost looked foggy. Our visibility was very low. We knew we were drifting in a strong current, but we had no idea if we had drifted five miles one way or ten miles the other way. We felt like the current was pulling us every which way.

Will and I worked well together when we could see the waves in front of us. “Hold on, hold on!” we would yell. If a swell came from the side, we would scream, “One-two-three, lean, lean!” and we would shoulder into the wave to help us stay on the hull, almost like we were on a motorcycle taking a turn. Sometimes, even if we leaned in, it didn’t matter. Thousands of pounds of churning water would collapse on us and we couldn’t hold on. Or we would lean left or right and a wave would surprise us from behind and send us flying over the motor.

As before, the waves swamping us from behind were the worst. We couldn’t always see or anticipate them, and then we would be thrown off the boat. You would come up and take another wave in the face and start choking on water. Sometimes it was a full minute before you could grab the boat again. This happened for hours.

Early in the morning, the waves definitely changed form. They were choppy at first, eight to ten feet, and as the day went on, the waves came together into swells that were fifteen feet tall. I had been in big waves before in Lake Erie, seven-to eight-footers, but when you are in fifteen-foot waves, you have a completely different view. It’s one thing to be in a boat that’s upright in the water, and another thing to be on a capsized boat or floating in the water in a life jacket. When you can see, feel, taste all fifteen feet, it’s a lot different. When a wave comes at you, it’s a lot bigger. You see it like a dark mound. We would go up and up and up and then it seemed like we were at the top and it would flatten out and then we would seem to go up more. And then the wave would pass and you could see the back of it. The front was not as steep as the back. You would fall and fall and fall into the pit of the wave. The valley. You could feel it in your stomach. It was not as fast as a roller coaster, but it was like the first drop on one.

Why is this happening to me? I asked myself all day. Why me? Please, God!

Every time the boat came down off one of those big waves, particularly in the afternoon, it would go completely underwater. We had to brace ourselves. We knew we were going under and that the boat was going under. We would take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds. This happened consistently for hours.

Will and I would have little conversations about the waves or food or wanting something to drink.

“I’m so thirsty,” I said once.

“I could go for a milk shake,” Will said.

“I could go for a smoothie, my Cavaliers, and my bed,” I said.

When a wave came, it wasn’t like you got hit by a short burst. It felt like a five-second push and you were just torn off the boat. It was like throwing a bowling ball at toothpicks. Whichever one of us was sitting in the back would turn around to see if a swell was coming. We would try to brace ourselves. But if it was too big or it came from behind and you didn’t see it, you would be slammed off the boat in a second. You hit everything, bone against metal, your knees, your head, your whole body bouncing like a ball off a backboard. I was ripped up from my belly button all the way around to my lower back. My groin was raw. My skin was so sensitive from the salt water. My balls were killing me. I was so scared and tired and sick and cold. It was hard and discouraging.

Then you would go from that excruciating pain to being thrown in the water. Sometimes, when a wave came from behind, Will and I flew over the prop—there was nothing to stop us. My stomach would be right on the propeller, like I was body surfing or riding a Boogie board. My hands and the insides of my legs were bleeding from hitting the motor. I hit my head quite a few times.

We must have fallen off the boat fifty times. A wave would come and throw us one foot away or fifteen feet away. Then we would be in the water and another wave would come and I was going, Oh shit, if this one breaks on me, I’ll be even further away.

We would go underwater still sitting on the hull, or sometimes we would go off the side and fall even deeper underwater. Quite a few times, I thought the boat might go down and stay down. Constantly, I worried about what would happen if it stayed down and I was still attached to it. Could I get away? Would it suck me down with it?

It was hard not to think, What’s the point of getting back on this boat? We had already lost two guys, and the weather was getting worse. Sometimes we went in the water and, exhausted, we
didn’t attempt to get back on the boat right away. The waves were pounding and we stayed near the boat and tried to keep our heads above water as much as we could. Other times we would get one foot back on the boat, getting a perch, and another wave would come and rip us right off. Sometimes one of us stayed on the boat and the other one flopped in the water. If Will fell in, he would grab my shoulder and pull up, or I would grab him and give an explosive yank. Sometimes I pulled so hard, he would fly over the hull and back in the water on the other side—everything was so slick, there was nothing to grab on to. Other times, I would yank him up and he ended up pulling me in the water with him. It was a constant struggle, hardly a second to relax or catch your breath. Countless times, one of us would get halfway up the boat and fall back in the water, pounded underneath by the wave, and then rise to the top, choking, trying to spit the water out of his mouth.

Getting back on the boat was like trying to throw your leg over the saddle of a horse, except that it was a sharp, jagged, moving, bouncing saddle. And the horse’s head wasn’t smooth and furry, it was the motor, and it was sharp, metallic, cold, and bucking.

The majority of the work was done by the person sitting in front of the other, grabbing the motor, holding on with his feet. I was working out every day, since it was my job to be in shape, and I was stronger than Will. It felt warmer now that it was daylight. The sun wasn’t really out, but it helped Will and me create some kind of body heat as we bear-hugged on the hull. At first it was weird, but there was no other way to hold on. My face felt like sand from being salty.