The Boat

by Jim Markson

  “You gonna let me take the rudder or not?” John asked, changing the topic to something he was more ready to discuss.

  “Nope,” Mike said, “but you can tug that main halyard a little bit; looks like I didn’t get the sail all the way up. If the wind is good, I think we’ll make Don Pedro Park in a couple of hours.”

  The wind did abide and the small boat moved along, seeming to share the boys’ contentment as she performed the duties for which she was built. It was not a fast pace; you could run faster over a short distance, but she was diligent and persistent. With a squared bow, she was not pretty to the eye, and she did not so much cut through waves as she shouldered through them. But she was a tough little boat, stable at the beam and sturdy as a goat. With a regular breeze she produced a low thumping beat that was a perfect cadence to the whispering air pushing her along, a rocking lullaby that instilled confidence in a sailor. It was not the type of beauty that bedazzled the eye; it was something that took time and experience to appreciate. The boat knew what she was built for, she was confident in her purpose, and she loved to be sailed. There was something rare and pure about the little boat, pushing through waves without question or hesitation, always ready and true to her calling.

  As the boat balanced with the wind, Mike reached under the plank and drew out his last bottle of booze. He twisted open the cap, and it dawned on him that there might not be a liquor store in his immediate future, but he swallowed the thought, along with the bourbon, reminding himself that the future was a figment, a lying and manipulative witch to which he had promised he would give no more. He held the bottle quietly as he enjoyed the view, appreciating the absence of motorboats and the damn jet skis, feeling drenched in the sunshine and the peaceful rocking harmony of the sea, the wind, and the boat. He wished John would share some of the bourbon, but then mocked himself as he remembered the cliché about misery loving company.

  By mid-afternoon they had reached Don Pedro State Park on Little Gasparilla Island at the southern end of Lemon Bay. The barrier island was approximately eight miles long and, as there were no bridges from the mainland, it was obviously less congested than the several huge golf courses that sat immediately to its east. The park was a relatively isolated rock outcropping on the northeast side of the island, and the race checkpoint was located in the middle of this outcropping.

  This northern part of the island, including the check-in point, was protected in double depth, the first layer consisting of a shallow ring of sharp coral, with an inner layer comprised of a seemingly impenetrable lacework of mangrove trees. There was a small point on the southeast side of the outcropping however, where the coral had been ground into sand, and the grasp of the mangroves had loosened enough to allow visitors to establish a small path to the park. Mike sailed parallel to the mangroves and, when he saw the spot, turned the boat into the wind, which was coming in over the island. They floated gently toward the point where the path started and tied the boat up to one of the mangrove trees. They listened as the unique kaleidoscope of noise that came from the mangrove swamps briefly stopped, the inhabitants allowing the visitors to introduce themselves, and then resumed when the boys appeared to have nothing threatening to say.

  “It’s too hot to wear these f’ing dry suits anymore,” Mike said, as he waded up to the path and then began to strip the gear off from the lower half of his body.

  “Amen,” John said, following the same course of action. “I was thinking that if you could also install a fan in the front of the boat it would help my napping experience.”

  “Didn’t look to me like you needed any help in the napping department there Ol’ Man Wriggley,” Mike retorted, as he came back to the boat and put the dry suit under the plank in the front of the boat while also pulling his beach booties out of the same gear bag. At the same time, he opened the bottle back up and took a few mouthfuls as he looked around and said, “It’s pretty now, but in two months, this place will be so thick with mosquitoes they’d be eating your eyeballs.”

  The boys headed up the path for about 100 yards before it opened up into a small sandy patch of about 25 square yards crowded with gnarly old pine trees that had seen their share of hurricanes. This is where the first check-in point had been and, while there was no one there to greet them now, there was a quiet sense of satisfaction in having actually made it that far.

  “What the hell are you doing?” John asked as Mike hummed some barely audible tune and danced with his arms folded on his chest, picking up one leg after the other, bent at the knee, listing to port and starboard, as he slowly moved in a circle.

  “It isn’t obvious? I’m dancing a jig. I wasn’t sure we would make it this far, and it is an accomplishment worthy of celebration. Think of our mother, up in Heaven, smiling down on this beautiful day, watching her two boys play nice together and doing manly things. Damn, I wish we’d done this sooner.”

  Without saying a word, John linked his arm through Mike’s, recognizing the tune as an old Irish ditty their father used to sing, and joined in the jig. Time is a hard thing to comprehend if you ever give it any significant thought, and somehow, the boys’ little jig spanned thirty years of victories and regrets, love and losses, time spent well, and some just pissed away.

  “That was fun. Thanks,” John said as the jig came to an end.

  “I’d toast your seamanship, but the bottle is down at the boat, and besides, it’s my last bottle and I don’t want to waste it on someone as sober as you,” Mike replied.

  Instead, Mike pulled out the navigational charts and laid them on the sandy ground. The next leg of the trip would start with approximately ten nautical miles through a narrowing stretch of the Intercoastal that paralleled Little Gasparilla Island before opening back up into Placida Harbor and then Gasparilla Sound. There would then be a significant stretch of deeper open water as they crossed the mouth of Port Charlotte before returning to the shallower water of Pine Island Sound.

  Staring silently at the map, both brothers focused on the crossing of Port Charlotte. In terms of size, the harbor was inconsequential, only eight kilometers wide at its broadest points. What concerned the boys was that the narrow mouth of the harbor, an approximate one kilometer, cut through the barrier islands of Gasparilla on the north and Cayo Costa on the south. The depth of the water in this channel grew quickly to thirty-five feet as, four times a day, half the liquid contents of the entire port swept through the cut in racing fulfillment of lunar obligations. In the process, anything close to the vortex of this fast-moving stream generally went the way of the tide, and there was no wind strong enough to allow the little boat to resist the force of this tidal pull. Further complicating matters was the fact that the harbor had significant commercial maritime business, big boats that would be navigating the same cut with no room to make allowances for a little sailboat bobbing on the waves like a leaf in the breeze. It was no Tampa Bay, but it brought back bad memories. And in the far back of their minds was the knowledge that every significant predator in the sea considered the outgoing tides to be a loudly ringing dinner bell, providing a smorgasbord of delights swept along the currents into the Gulf of Mexico.

  “It’s getting late, but if I’ve been reading the water right, I think we should hit the gap pretty close to slack tide,” John said. Then, giving voice to what they were both thinking, he added, “But it always seems to come back to timing, and after our debacle in Tampa, I sure don’t like the thought of being anywhere near that cut in darkness.”

  “Oh, the naysaying and nail-biting … there is no worthwhile reward without risk. Think of it as an opportunity for redemption. An opportunity to correct the course of events, to make our mark with intent rather than by happenstance, to stand and prove ourselves worthy of life’s challenges,” Mike said.

  “Oh boy, here we go again,” was all that John could say in response.

  VIII

  There was something about trying to survive in a small boat that lessened your need to go to the bathroom
, but both men took the opportunity to evacuate their bladders and bowels on firm ground before returning to the boat. They walked back down to discover that a raiding party of two raccoons had boarded the boat. When Mike saw one trying to open the bottle of bourbon, he charged with rage, waving his arms and shouting, “Let go of my hooch you little bastard.” But the raccoon, not impressed, stood up on two legs, extended his own arms, and hissed back in preparation for making a launch at Mike. The unexpected resistance not only silenced Mike’s shouts of rage, it scared the crap out of him. While he tried to make a hard right to buy some time and avoid an immediate physical confrontation with the raccoon, his booze-soaked brain told his knees to simply buckle, causing him to fall ungracefully into the shallow water and coral rock on his right side. Humiliated but not defeated, he summoned back his manhood and stood up, eying the hissing raccoon carefully.

  “All right, you little fucker, you’re tough, I’ll give you that. But that is my whiskey, and it’s my last bottle, and I’m more than happy to fight to the death right here and now.” He approached the raccoon slowly, deliberately, but without any specific plan of action. He was no longer shouting in rage, but the raccoon quickly sensed that the quietly approaching human had more than a few loose screws and was much more dangerous than the ones who shouted and jumped around. With a head nod to his buddy, the two quickly scampered out of the boat and into the mangroves, empty-handed.

  “Never, never ever, is there a dull moment with you, my brother,” John said.

  “I can’t believe that little bastard was going after my booze. Take the fucking granola bars … or the MREs. Hell, I’ll even heat them up for you. But no, he had to go for the one thing I give a shit about. Come on out here and settle this like a man, you little pussy!” Mike yelled as he searched the mangroves. “Well, to the victor belong the spoils,” he announced as he opened the bottle and took a large mouthful, swishing it around in his mouth before tilting his head back and letting it slowly trickle down his throat.

  The afternoon was getting late as they untied the boat from the mangroves and headed south. John had once again sought the helm, but Mike asserted his privilege as master-planner and had taken the rudder in one hand and the bottle of Wild Turkey in the other. There was a strong breeze, and the dark clouds building over the mainland revealed thunderstorms that were unlikely to make it to the Intercoastal. In three hours, they had made it past Placida Harbor and into Gasparilla Sound.

  The sandy beaches at the southern end of Gasparilla Island were on their right as they began to enter Charlotte Harbor and, with the sun close to the horizon, John could not help but comment hopefully, “Damn, those beaches sure look like they’d be a lot more comfortable place to camp for the evening than this little boat.” Mike said nothing as he worked his way past the halfway mark of his bottle.

  The wind and the waves picked up as the boat slowly worked its way into the bay. Inevitably, the thunderstorm to the east, the one that should have stayed over the mainland, drew closer, and a soft rain began to fall, limiting visibility in the waning light. But Mike remained silent, his humor giving way to a darkness that seemed to match the approaching thunderstorm. Reflecting back on the capsizing in Tampa Bay, and his thought at the time that he wished he had drunk a lot less or a lot more, he chose the latter, and worked at the bottle with the same blind determination that was apparent in his drive to move the boat forward in spite of the circumstances.

  The sun was setting just to the north of Gasparilla as they reached the cut between the two barrier islands. The channel was still discernible, however, marked by a change in color associated with the deeper water. They had missed slack tide and the water was beginning to increase its tempo as it funneled the bay’s contents out and into the Gulf. The storm moved closer, providing needed propulsion for the boat, but increasing the height of waves to the point that Mike could not see the channel markers when he was in the troughs. Other than having a large commercial fishing boat bearing down on them, there seemed little else that could possibly go wrong.

  He sat drunkenly at the rudder, smiling and softly humming a tune while forcing the boat forward. He seemed able to comprehend the dire nature of the situation, and it wasn’t that he didn’t care; he seemed to be enjoying the unfolding events. He pushed the little boat beyond her limits and smiled as the rain struck so hard he thought it might have turned to hail, pulling as much as he could from the bottle before its miserable end.

  A third of the way through the channel, the boat began to slam up and down in the waves hard enough that gear began to break free, jumping into the sea rather than staying in the boat with a maniac at the helm. The darkness of the storm and night melted into the colors of the water, the border imperceptible to mortal vision. He willed the boat forward into waves he could not see, silently hoping for that violent pinnacle that would send the boat into splinters and provide him relief from his grief. Drunkenly humming the old ditty of his youth, he commanded her forward, dizzily feeling the world spin at full velocity, confident that he was finally about to find deliverance.

  But it was not to be. As the rushing tide diffused out into the Gulf of Mexico, pushing the sturdy little boat along for the ride, the fury of the waves subsided, and the storm surrendered to the cool waters. Mike tilted his head back and noticed the rain had stopped and a canopy of stars hung over the boat. Feeling his eyes start to close, his back and stomach loosened, and his butt slid toward the center of the boat, his torso slumping against the side of the boat as his hand fell away from the tiller.

  “Did you hear that?” John asked.

  In his drunken stupor, Mike could barely lift his eyelids. But his brother had asked a question, and he felt compelled to answer for as long as he was conscious. “Hear wha … you say?” he responded as best he could.

  “It sounds like a girl,” John continued as he looked around the boat.

  “A girl … wha’ da fuck? No … I don’t … no shit … no girl.”

  “Shut up and listen you drunken asshole. I heard a girl yelling.”

  Mike did not respond. But neither did he pass out. He burped and he listened, disgusted with his consciousness. And then he heard it. Or at least, he thought he heard. It sounded like a woman yelling “help.” But it couldn’t be; they were out in the Gulf of fucking Mexico in the dark of night. There was no chick yelling for help; it was just the booze.

  “Help me!” Mike heard it again.

  Amused, he yelled back, without lifting his head up, “I can’t … I’m too fuckin’ drunk.”

  “Nice,” John said. “Get your ass up and find her shithead.”

  “I jus’ fucking tol’ you … I can’t; you fucking save her,” John slurred. “I haf’ go nighty-night now.”

  John kicked him hard in the thigh, prompting a howl from Mike. “Jackass, this ain’t about you right now. Do the right thing.”

  Mike dragged himself back into sitting position and looked into the blackness around him.

  “Hey, anyone out dere?” was all he was able to manage.

  “Over here,” a female voice responded. The sound was clear enough that Mike turned his head around and felt a tinge of sobriety. You gotta fuckin’ be kidding me, he thought in his dizzying drunken stupor. This can’t be happening.

  As he looked behind the boat, he saw what appeared to be someone swimming after the boat, which was now again moving south under its own command. He pushed the tiller hard away, and the boat came about and then sat still with the sails luffing in the wind.

  He watched listlessly as the figure swam toward the boat, and finally, a hand appeared on the toe rail. A second hand quickly followed, and then an elbow. Mike tried to hold his head up to watch the events. The boat tilted hard to one side as the figure threw a leg over the rail and then hoisted itself into the boat. He watched numbly as the small figure came to rest mostly on the bottom of the boat but also draped over the center plank. With his head still hanging down loosely, he made out two bare legs stickin
g out of a pair of cutoffs. It was a woman, and she wore nothing but the shorts. He made eye contact with her but said nothing.

  The woman looked at him hard and long, saying nothing, but assessing the situation. Mike’s head fell back down, and his eyes closed.

  The woman was kicking him and talking. He tried to pick his head back up.

  “Was there somebody else with you? I heard you talking to someone,” she asked.

  Mike looked in her eyes and shook his head no, mumbling, “Just me.”

  He took in a big breath, slowly and with great effort, as if every one of his ribs were broken, and then let it out in a heavy sigh. With all his strength, he forced himself to ask, “You sail?” She nodded yes in response. He raised a heavy hand, wobbly pointing east toward Cayo Costa, and said, “That way.” Then he fell on his side and slid into the numb blackness of unconsciousness.

  IX

  Lieutenant Colonel John Rudyard Kelly was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on the morning of October 18th, approximately six months before he would have returned home and gone on a small sailboat endurance challenge with his younger brother, Michael.

  Mike had received the news at work. Upon returning to his office in the afternoon, he was advised he had visitors, and when he saw the formal and somber-looking military uniforms, he immediately started to feel dizzy; he had never contemplated how such a situation might unfold, never contemplated that his brother would precede him. After suggesting the need for privacy, they had gone into one of the interrogation rooms and relayed the profound condolences of the Secretary of the Army. His knees shook for the first time in his life, and he was unable to speak. They provided reference materials and paperwork, but it was almost as if he had gone deaf.