Beyond the Sea

by Paul Lynch

  Who knows what you hear.

  He roars again into the radio but does not tell Hector what he soon knows.

  That the radio is beyond use.

  That they are truly on their own.

  * * *

  Bolivar studies the lashed sea. It is from there they will come, he thinks. Seeing in his mind men powering through the waves. Paz will volunteer. The Cruz brothers. Maybe Angel will turn on his phone. He will be the first in a boat. He will know where to find you.

  He shouts to Hector and points towards the coast.

  Do not worry, they will come! The Cruz brothers, for sure! They are the best of men. If they can find Angel, they will know where to find us! Only he knows where I hide out.

  Hector’s sorrowful, weighted eyes are the eyes of a man watching his own life from some remote place without capacity to shout warning. And yet as Bolivar shouts the head rises and the eyes narrow in alarm. He reaches and takes hold of Bolivar’s arm.

  He shouts, what do you mean only he knows where to find us? Do they not know where we are? Isn’t there GPS or something?

  Bolivar bends under a wave and Hector blurs under the wash. Then Bolivar wipes his narrowed eyes with his wrist, surveys the boat a long moment, then slides off the seat. Hector’s mouth falling open as Bolivar throws the petrol cans overboard. Then he moves towards the cooler and grabs hold of a young bluefin tuna, throws it into the sea. He roars at Hector.

  We are too low in the water. Quick, empty the boat.

  Hector it seems cannot move. He stares in horror as Bolivar throws a shark overboard with a laugh on his face.

  They will come for us, you will see! I have done this myself for others. Many, many times. You spend a few extra days at sea then you return and cook a huge barbecue. I will buy all the drinks.

  * * *

  Every bone shouts for sleep. His eyes are stung shut. He forces his sight upon the perpetual dusk but there is nothing to see but the coming night. A full day spent within the storm, bailing the water out of the hull, emptying the body of strength. He has taken what remains of the line and cut it in two, tied one half to each side of the boat, let it out with the floats for ballast.

  Now he rests with his eyes closed again, his head upon his arm. It is then in his mind he sees the cooler. He lifts his head and stares at it. Then he hauls himself up, roars at Hector for help.

  Hector refuses to look.

  Bolivar leans into the cooler’s dead weight. He roars at Hector again until the youth crawls towards him. Together they lift the cooler and turn it onto its side. Bolivar climbs in and shouts for Hector to join him.

  Inside the cooler the sea throws them together. Hector’s elbow in Bolivar’s face, Bolivar holding his head in his hands. Hector talking incessantly to God, begging for protection, asking to be spared, the hands wringing, clasping in prayer.

  Bolivar meets a feeling of fate coming upon him.

  He thinks, so it has come to this.

  He climbs back out and bails furiously, then climbs back into the cooler. Feeling the spent arms and legs. Feeling the void of how many hours of night ahead. Moving blind through this shrieking dark. Lying in this cooler with Hector. It is then Bolivar begins to laugh.

  He thinks, for sure, he is no Rosa.

  * * *

  A feeling of sleep without sleeping. Or maybe sleeping without sleep. Asleep maybe and yet the body listens. The body listening with an almost seeing. The senses alert to every motion of the boat. He knows a larger vessel would have been smashed by now. Instead the panga rides each mountainous wave like an insect. Now and then he climbs out of the cooler with his body hunched, his arms bailing heavily in the dark. Seeing by the dying headlamp. A deepening sense the storm is blowing itself out. Without words he understands that the true meaning of a storm is what it reveals, how chaos describes itself, gives form to what no eye can see. What he knows now but does not tell Hector. That this north-easterly is blowing them far out. We must be a hundred miles out into the Pacific. No one will look this far.

  * * *

  A dream of silence. He wakes to a clear sense of things. Water lapping the boat. A still light. He inhales the cooler’s in-baked smell of brine and fish. For two days and nights he has watched his life from within some dark cell of the mind. Eternity within each waiting moment. Climbing out of that dark to bail water. Snatching at sleep. Now he can hear Hector asleep with a rasp in his chest.

  Bolivar climbs out of the cooler and has to pull at his stung-shut eyes.

  The sun soaring over emptiness.

  * * *

  The panga is low in the water, the water in the boat sits past his ankles. The bailing bucket is still tied by the stern. Behind him Hector climbs as though broken-backed out of the cooler. His frame shrunken, his pallor grey, the under-eyes swollen and black. He cannot see yet, keeps rubbing at his eyes with his fists. Bolivar sits huddled and blinking. For a long time they do not speak.

  Then Bolivar mutters something, his voice a scratched whisper. Hector tries to focus his eyes on Bolivar. He winces and continues to rub them.

  Bolivar begins to knuckle the boat with amusement.

  He says, this thing is indestructible.

  He leans forward and points to a pomegranate bruise above Hector’s left eye.

  He says, what happened your head?

  Then he slaps the hull and laughs loudly.

  It looks like Hector is forcing the eyes to see into the laughing mouth before him, the bronzed teeth, the tongue lolling. Bolivar clapping his hands again as he stares with amazement at the cooler. Then he turns and sees in Hector’s eyes the panicked look. The youth climbing to his feet, the youth turning around to take in a smooth and single plane of ocean. The world containing nothing but its perfection.

  * * *

  Bolivar fishes the two-way radio out of the water between his legs. He thumbs at the button, stares at the blank screen. Then he smacks it against his knee. The GPS screen is also dead. He puts the two devices on the seat and stares at their plastic shapes, the electrical life dead inside them, their buttons beyond use.

  The small bilge pump is dead. He spends time quietly bailing water, Hector watching with a half-turned head, his arms long on his lap. He has become aged in posture as though looking back on a life, hateful and bent. Then he stretches his body across the seat to dry in the sun, a crimson sickled gash along the length of his ankle.

  For a moment Bolivar stops bailing and studies the youth. The draped arm. The half-risen knee. The sighing mouth.

  He thinks, it is something within the spirit, the spirit always against the doing thing. Here we are half-dead and still he has no use.

  * * *

  So many things are lost. The petrol cans, the plastic bags with food and clothing. The lines that gave ballast torn from the boat. Bolivar counts eight floats that can be used to cup water. He finds an eight-inch gutting knife and a wrench. Sees that his watch has stopped working. He pulls from under the two seats a four-foot plank used to clear debris before the propeller. There is a five-gallon container full of water. Bolivar uncaps it and takes a look in. They each measure the other’s sip.

  * * *

  With a grunt Bolivar places the motor’s cowling on the deck and bends to examine the powerhead. After a while, he shakes his head and looks up.

  He says, I thought maybe there was a problem with the fuel pump or that water got into the fuel line, that is usually the issue. But I’m not sure. You could not have predicted so many things would happen at once. I just cannot believe it.

  Hector turns and stares at Bolivar as he leans back, his legs and arms splayed out as though idling on the strip, the wrench on his lap, he is almost smiling. The way he leans forward to loosen something between his toes.

  It is then with a shriek that Hector rushes at Bolivar, knocks him off the seat and grabs the wrench, begins with a howl to smash the motor, Bolivar lying astonished on his back. He sees an engine part spin into the air, another fall overboard. He
cannot move until he hears the shout within him to move, the mind moving past disbelief to enter the body. He finds himself upon Hector. He grabs the youth by the throat and drags him, Hector releasing a sob and then a choking sound, his hand rising up as he throws the wrench overboard. Bolivar slams him onto his back, sits his weight on top of him. Then Bolivar’s fury cools when he sees the spirit of the storm brought to boil in Hector’s eyes. The swollen eyelids that do not blink their look of savage hatred.

  Bolivar clears his throat then speaks in a low voice.

  I should kill you right now.

  Hector’s mouth pulls a mocking smile.

  You already have, Porky.

  These are the longest hours. This the longest day. They sit in an imprisoning sunlight, silence massing between the two men. Bolivar leans slowly out of the cooler sucking on his tongue. A great exhaustion has spread within the body. The body pulling at the eyes resting upon the sea. Watching and watching until the sky and the ocean seem to flatten, become one thing. He closes his eyes and opens them. Soon again the sky and the ocean begin to flatten, distance falling away. Colour and space merging now into a single vertical plane.

  He can feel it closing in.

  He closes his eyes and tells himself, it is an illusion, a trick of the sea. He wonders why it is happening now to him. For how many years have you been a fisherman? You are not a beginner like him.

  He fixes his sight upon Hector. The youth sits in a stoop by the bow with his back turned, his hands playing at something. Bolivar leans farther out of the cooler, then edges forward without sound, but Hector turns as though he can feel Bolivar’s eyes upon him, his hand putting something away.

  Bolivar sits and closes his eyes and listens to the ocean. When he opens his eyes he tries to teach his mind to see the ocean as it is. Sunlight wrinkled upon the water. Pilot fish scurrying the clear waters by the boat.

  He lifts his eyes towards the horizon but again the waters and the sky begin to meet, his eyes now seized by what he sees – a wall of single colour closing in, a wall rising until it seems he is trapped in the bottom of a hole, a prison of single colour risen above him, towering towards infinity.

  * * *

  Bolivar will not watch the waters. For hours he sits in the cooler with his hand over his eyes, aghast by what he has seen. Watching the shadows crawl along the hull. Watching the dark grow complete. Then he lifts his eyes. There is the North Star. There the gibbous moon. The world again as it has always been. It is then he sees in Hector’s hand the glow of his phone. The youth flicking through photos, it seems. That phone useless out here.

  Bolivar slides out of the cooler, moves soft-foot towards Hector. He steps on a screw knocked loose from the motor, howls and grabs his foot. Hector stirs and turns, then stows the phone in his pocket. From his darkened corner he gives Bolivar a wary half-look.

  Bolivar climbs back into the cooler with the screw in his hand. He rubs at his foot and pretends to chew at a fingernail. He rolls the screw and thinks about the wrench.

  When he climbs out again he moves without breath, his back hunched, his feet silent upon the hull. Hector does not hear until too late, Bolivar reaching over the youth to grab hold of the phone, Hector turning, rising out of the seat with a hand outstretched, a sound in his throat like a sob cut short.

  Bolivar says, say goodbye to your sweetheart.

  A dark mouth of sea opens and closes around the phone.

  * * *

  They huddle together in the cooler trying to keep warm. Hector refusing to speak to Bolivar. Instead he pleads with God in urgent whispers. Again and again he shifts position, his torso turning this way and that, his knees wriggling under his chin. He is trying to scratch some place beyond reach, Bolivar pushing against him, nudging with his elbow, muttering curses under his breath.

  In his mind he is sipping a beer. He runs the malt over the tongue, leans against the bar talking with Angel, the man laughing as he listens. You would not believe it. He was like a child. He didn’t stop crying—

  Something heavy brushes the hull.

  Hector leans quickly forward.

  He whispers, what was that?

  Bolivar says, it’s nothing. A shark, maybe. Who knows.

  He notices how Hector sits very still. The listening mind riding the passing breath. The passing breath expiring unseen into the night. What the night does not reveal, an answer to give rest to the reaching mind.

  Bolivar sits listening. He can hear the youth’s exhaustion drag the breath down into the body. Soon Hector is asleep. He begins to snore and Bolivar tries to sleep but cannot, the sound of Hector’s breathing boring into his ear until finally he roars out and elbows the youth in the ribs.

  Hector startles awake.

  Hey, kid. How can you snore like this? You are not at home in your bed.

  * * *

  They wake into a profound indigo silence. A world without answer. Hector reaches for the water bottle. Bolivar stops him with a hand to the wrist. He points to the floats and says, pass me two cups. He pours a splash of water into each. Then he says, put a little salt in your mouth before you drink. He watches Hector as though father to the child, the way the child drinks with two hands to the cup.

  Bolivar sits staring at the water bottle. He thinks, three or four days of water and then we are in trouble. He imagines how it will be when the water runs out, the very thing every sailor fears – the mind giving in to the sea’s whispers. The hand dipping the cup. The water passing the lips and sating the thirst with salt to burrow the blood and deepen the thirst until you dip your cup again—

  He puts some dried salt on his tongue then puts the cup to his lips, sees that Hector is watching him. He allows the water to sit in his mouth a while before swallowing.

  He chews a little lip skin.

  The taste of salt in the cracks of his mouth.

  * * *

  The hours grow empty and pass by. Then Hector leaps to his feet and points eastward. Over there, he shouts. Bolivar rubs his knees and climbs out, stretches his upper body. For a long time they rest their sight upon a light aircraft catching the amber sun, a spark loosened by fire. Bolivar drops his visored hand and squeezes Hector’s shoulder.

  He says, it is searching for us.

  Hector wiggles free of the grip.

  Bolivar reads the plane’s unreachable distance, a stretch of sky that could be ten miles. He shouts until his voice is hoarse, his cheeks surging with blood.

  Then the plane is gone.

  Bolivar turns fiercely upon Hector, grabs him by the arm.

  He says, what is wrong with you? Why wouldn’t you wave and shout?

  Hector pulls free, sits down and shrugs.

  What is the point? he says. A boat this size is invisible to a plane that far away.

  Bolivar begins to rub his eyes with his fists. When he lowers his eyes to the youth they are red-rubbed and bloodshot and narrowed with scorn. The eyes addressing the meatless frame with a single unblinking look. The way Hector slumps on the seat with the long hair curtaining his face. Then Bolivar puts his head in his hands and sighs.

  Look, he says, I am not saying this isn’t bad, but they are looking for us. We will be rescued. That is a fact. There is procedure, protocol, rules to be followed, the coastguard goes out and that plane goes out, how many times have you seen it? Arturo’s men, they drop everything and keep searching. I have done this myself. Many, many times. We brought Memo and Herman back last year. Think of that. Their motor broke down just like ours. They were at sea for four days. Memo was giving out because he ran out of crackers. I am telling you, we will be on the strip by tomorrow night. Drinking beers. That girl of yours, what do you call her?

  Lucrezia.

  Yes, she will be waiting for you. Think of the things she will do for you then. A-ha! They will have taken measure of the wind and the current. Worked out our drift. So keep your spirits up, eh? We will figure this out. In the meantime, we can try and catch fish.

  H
ector’s face pulls into wrinkle. He moves his hair out of his eyes, his gaze travelling throughout the panga.

  He says, catch fish with what? You are such an ass, Porky.

  Bolivar sees the youth’s eyes lit with defiance.

  Again he shakes his head.

  He says, what is it always with you? Have you no spirit? Do you want us to die?

  Hector puts his hands to his face and weeps. When he lifts his face he stares at Bolivar with a long and earnest look.

  He says, listen, Bolivar, I am sorry about the motor.

  Bolivar shrugs. It is OK, it was useless anyhow.

  They fall silent. Then Bolivar rubs his hands and speaks.

  I would cut off my two ears to get back soon. If I don’t, that Arturo will send somebody else out with Angel. That bossman is cruel. I will be out of a job.

  Hector says, I need to get back also. If I don’t get back, I’ll miss the play-off for the cup.

  * * *

  Hector awakes panicked into black night. He grips Bolivar by the wrist, then leaps with a scream out of the cooler. I am blind, he shouts. I cannot see. They are never going to find us.

  Bolivar’s mind passing out of some dream. He reaches after Hector, seizes the youth from behind, can feel the breath wild in Hector’s lungs. The storm of thought let loose throughout the body, the blind and searching fear passing through the blood, the hands reaching for the trim, Hector trying to pull free from Bolivar.

  Bolivar keeping hold of the youth till he is calm.

  He stares at where the moon should be.

  Look, he says. Over there. Behind that cloud. You can see the moon. It has begun to wane now. The North Star is behind that cloud. It will be bright in a couple of hours.