Adrift

by Steven Callahan

  When I look down at my spear, I have more reason to wish I was a fish with no need for tools. It is broken again. I’ve been worried about the flimsy butter knife, but instead it’s the stiff steel blade that has snapped cleanly off. I may be looking at my last supper. Now, don’t be melodramatic; you’ve repaired it before. But what to use this time? The fork has already been used. My sheath knife is too bulky to drive through a dorado. There is nothing else from which to fashion a point. Well, I guess I’ll just continue to use the butter knife. If it breaks, I’ll try lashing on the sheath knife and go for triggers. I’ll worry about it later.

  Tainted canopy water, along with clear water caught in the space blanket, pours through the observation port drain when it rains. I push a piece of plastic tubing into a low point of drainage in the blanket and secure it with sail twine. A cloudburst at night sends water pouring in. I drain most of the foul water off on the kite and let the clean water drain from the tube into the Tupperware box. It’s a gigantic success. I collect two and a half pints of water, still a bit tainted, but drinkable. If my last solar still blows completely, I’m not necessarily done for. I envision the dorado struggling for life on the end of my spear, twisting this way and that, this way and that. It brings to my mind the children’s story of the little train trying ever so hard to puff up the mountain. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can … I know I can, I know I can, I know I can.

  At noon I sight another ship headed north, too far away to see my flare. By now the flare gun is a frozen lump of rust anyway. The last meteor can’t be fired. A handheld VHF radio might be a lot more effective than a flare gun. Many times at sea I have spoken to radio operators while my vessel has remained undetected by the eyes of the ship’s crew. Well, no matter. Maybe the ship is a good sign. It’s in a sensible position to be traveling from Brazil to the United States. Perhaps the lanes that I sketched in are correct. Inside this belt from Brazil to Florida, traffic will be heavier going to and from the Caribbean Islands, South America, and the U.S. Soon I should reach the continental shelf. Soon this will all end.

  But the ocean remains endlessly the same—swimming pool blue, three miles deep, and thousands of miles across, the loneliest place on the planet. The movements of the fish are all reruns. The frigate birds hover overhead as if hung on strings from an immense mobile. I feel as if I am being filmed in an old Hollywood movie with a backdrop slowly moving past to give an illusion of motion.

  I dream that I am home. Everything is calm and smells of spring. Light filters through budding leaves. Frisha, my ex-wife, and I sit on a stone wall. We wave to neighbors. I tell them all that I’m dying. They must send a search party for me.

  My brother Ed and my father have collected as much information from the Coast Guard as they can. They’ve gotten reams of weather information from the Norfolk Weather Service. They send out letters to congressmen and congresswomen—to anyone who might conceivably help. Ed’s fingers ache from whirling the telephone dial. His cigarette butts pile up until they send a landslide across the lip of the ashtray onto the table. My family examines the charts and the weather information to try and figure out where I most likely ran into trouble. Settling on the gale that began on February 3, they plot two probable drift patterns of my raft, using the two possible sailing routes that I would have taken. As a commercial diver and sailor, my brother knows the sea intimately. My father flew search-and-rescue missions in the war. Friends, professional sailors, sailmakers, and nautical journalists, many of whom have experienced disaster at sea, add their knowledge to the equation. My brother Bob and my mother keep the search furnace fired, make food, send letters, do the running. The results are remarkably accurate. One of the two positions they calculate is only one hundred miles from where I am.

  The Coast Guard does not want to hear about any of this. A sailor this long overdue is certainly dead. Even should a search be reasonable, information gathered by a bunch of emotionally entangled amateurs could not possibly be equal to that of Coast Guard professionals.

  Flurries of letters continue to pour forth from my parents’ house. The yachting press keep their ears and phone lines open. Buddies of mine in Bermuda alert shipping across the Atlantic to be on the lookout, an effort the Guard refused to expend. Ham-radio operators spread the word about Napoleon Solo all over the lower North Atlantic.

  But as each day passes, those who know the sea are increasingly aware of my slim chances for survival. Only one other man in all of history has survived this long alone at sea. Frisha has turned inward and buried her fears in her studies in plant science. My family is not yet aware that their energy will never result in a search, that at best their work keeps them occupied and their faith from being cast adrift. Those who still believe I’m out there alive are looked upon with increasing pity.

  APRIL 4

  DAY 59

  Oblivious to it all, I see only the same empty horizon that has spread out before me for two months. My limbs and eyelids are weighed down by fatigue. Even in the cool of day, when I must command myself to move for any reason, bitter arguments break out among the crew in my skull. Everything in the raft is saturated with salt, which draws moisture straight out of the air, even when conditions are relatively calm. This salty solution is smeared into every wound. Only at high noon does everything really dry out, and then the salt forms crusts that abrade my sores. The only position that is not agonizing is kneeling. Then, with the sun high overhead, I collapse in the intense heat. It would be so easy just to close my eyes and let go, so easy … Stop it! Get to work, I tell my scum-bucket crew. Work or she’ll hang your hide for bird feed. Work, ‘cause you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

  Using what’s left of the stiff steel blade, I reinforce the flimsy butter knife on my lance. I pull the whole affair farther back on the shaft to stiffen it, but the shattered point appears too weak to withstand much strain. I will try a mild shock first. I jab at a trigger. I cannot drive the point through, but I am able to flick the poor fish aboard.

  I am close now. I can feel it. I know how Columbus must have felt trying to keep his crew in order for each long day as they seemed to be sailing into oblivion, while he knew land was just over the horizon, always just over the horizon. The breasts of the birds overhead are dullish white, not red, but they must still be frigates. Two others have joined the ranks. Two terns flutter about. A gull-like brownish bird briefly flies across the water.

  I have the nagging feeling that I am accompanied by someone. As I doze off, my companion assures me that he will keep watch or work on a project. Sometimes I remember conversations that have been shared, confidences, advice. I know it could not have happened, but the feeling persists. Fatigue is growing dangerous. My invisible companion assures me that I can last until April 20.

  There is no fresh food left. The ocean is too rough for me to take good aim. Hard fish sticks soaked for several hours become soft enough to be chewable and salty enough to have some flavor. At first light, just before sunrise, I hold a piece of the hardtack in my mouth, the spear in my hand. Aim, strike, splash. Aim, strike, splash. I’m too slow, too weak. After hours of grueling patience, I have torn holes in five fish. The sun rises. My arms tremble and seem to melt. I collapse on the wet floor of my raft. Failed. Again in the evening. Failed. Again in the morning. Failed.

  In these temperatures, survival time without water is as short as three days. Do I have ten days’ strength? I try to tend the still. Another fish bites through the distillate collection bag, draining more fresh water back into the sea. I sit calmly downcast.

  APRIL 6

  DAY 61

  For days the Atlantic has been barren, but now I see a huge clump of sargasso weed riding the waves. As it comes nearer, I dog paddle over and pull the weed onto Ducky’s bib. There are things crawling and fishing line tangled in it. Another bundle bobs up ahead. I throw the first onto Ducky’s stern and grab the second, then a third, and a fourth. The ocean begins to get thick with the weed. I hurry to pick through
the layers of vegetation, finding an abundance of the usual fare of flexing shrimp, flipping fish, and clicking crabs. I throw the sargasso onto the back of the raft for later and grab the next clump. A black crust appears on the horizon ahead.

  We drift through a line of weed piled up like autumn leaves. The sargasso is laced with trash. For sixty days the ocean has been pristine, a world that might never have been touched by man. Ships and a single chunk of Styrofoam have been the only evidence that humans still inhabit the earth. Suddenly my surroundings are full of their excrement—our excrement, I remind myself. Old bottles, baskets, clotted clumps of oil, bobbing bulbs, flasks, fishnet webs, ropes, crates, floats, foam, and faded fabric. The highway of trash stretches from south to north as far as I can see. For hours Ducky wades through one lane of rubbish after another. The highway is miles wide.

  The triggers go crazy and dart off this way and that, pecking at the various bits of life trapped within the waste. In a strange way, I feel revived, at ease, untroubled. The sea thrives on the garbage. Crabs and barnacles abound. Nature’s nurseries lie in the most unlikely lands. To us decay is death, but to Nature it is another beginning.

  I fill my mouth with the crabs and shrimp that have been squirreled away within this oceanic dump. It seems ironic that this pollution should serve as a signpost of my salvation. I’m on the oily brick road to Oz, and food, shelter, and clothing are just off at the next exit. The new birds and fish that I have been seeing are signs that I’ve made significant progress. And this road of trash is a major demarcation of some kind, a billboard that indicates major upwelings or changes of current.

  Night falls as Ducky and I continue to drift through the pollution. In the morning the water is lighter blue and sparkling clear. I’m convinced that I have reached the shallower waters of the continental shelf. My destiny lies directly ahead.

  THE DUTCHMAN

  APRIL 8

  DAY 63

  THE SEA RUNS BY in its usual form, five-foot, maybe six-foot rollers ribboning westward. The wind is a steady twenty to twenty-five knots—lively but not dangerous. Rubber Ducky rises to each surge and softly falls again. I stand, wobbling, my brain stuffed with images of food and drowned by dreams of drink. They are all I can think about, that and the rolling waves that snap around me. I divide the horizon into six segments. I scan one segment while balancing as best I can. Then I carefully turn, get reacclimated, and scan the next. When it’s stormy, I often have to await an ascent to a large peak before I can see very far, but in these conditions nearly every wave top will do. A ship squats, five to eight miles off. She’s heading west northwest; might come a little closer. I await the right moment and pull the pin. My last parachute flare pops, sizzles skyward, and bursts. It is not as bright as it would be at night, looks more like a star poking its head through the murky sky. Ship number seven shyly slinks away. Only three flares are left, all handheld. A ship will have to run me down before it sees me now. Reaching the islands is my only hope.

  Hesitantly I chance the final destruction of my spear and manage to impale another dorado. Mechanically I cut it up, slice the thick fillets into strips, poke holes in the strips, and hang them. It seems barbaric. I don’t want to kill any more. Please let me land soon. When I am gone, how will my fish feel? How will I feel without them?

  Now that I have fresh fish, I won’t have to work as hard for the next couple of days. It’s a moment’s respite, though I know that I will never be able to rest until the voyage ends. It’s almost unbelievable to think of how much time I had to spare in the old days, back before my equipment was failing regularly and before I became half starved. Now each job takes longer and longer to accomplish. I continually wonder how much more a body can take. I don’t consider suicide—not now, after all I have come through—but I can understand how others might see it as a reasonable option in these circumstances. For me it is always easier to struggle on. To give myself courage, I tell myself that my hell could be worse, that it might get worse and I must prepare for that. My body is certain to deteriorate further. I tell myself that I can handle it. Compared to what others have been through, I’m fortunate. I tell myself these things over and over, building up fortitude, but parts of my body feel as if they are in flames. The fire from the sores on my back, butt, and legs shrieks upward and the flames burst forth into my skull. In a moment my spirit is in ashes and tears well in my eyes. They are not enough to even dampen the conflagration.

  Kneeling in front of the doorway, I can raise my wounds from the salty cushions. The sun beats down on my head, and I slump across the bow. Dorados are drawn to my protruding knees and wheel around the raft all day long. They know I am not hunting. The triggers too seem to know when I have my spear in hand. I drag my arm through the cool water, as clear as glass. As the dorados slither out from under me, our eyes are only a foot apart. I sweep my hand toward them. I have never seen them touch one another, though I suppose they sometimes do, yet they let me stroke their slippery bodies. As soon as my fingers touch down, the dorados flip away as if irritated, but they return time and again. They have me trained, you see-successful wildlife management. How easy it would be to let go and die, to undergo the transformation into other bits of the universe, to be eaten by fish, to become fish. A dorado slips out and I graze the feathery flip of her tail. The little flirt immediately returns. But I can’t let go. People are my tribe. It should be easy to surrender to the dorados or the sea, but it is not.

  I measure my latitude with my sextant. About eighteen degrees. How accurate is it? I know now I will never last another twenty days. If I am too far north, I am done for. If I could manage the wind, I would make it take me south.

  APRIL 10

  DAY 65

  In the morning the dorados are gone. Several of a new type of triggerfish appear. They are almost black, with bright blue spots, puckered mouths, and fins like chiffon collars rolling in a breeze. They look to me like oceanic starlets. I call them my little coquettes.

  Two long fish torpedo under the raft. They are even faster than the old blue dorados, though they must be a type of dorado. They’re smaller than the blue dorados—two and a half to three feet—and their skin is a mottled green and brown, like army camouflage. One of them looks badly damaged: raw, pink skin shows where most of the camouflage has fallen away in large sheaths. I think of it as having ichthyofaunic mange.

  Tiny black fish, maybe an inch or two long, sweep along before the raft, contrasting sharply with the Atlantic’s topaz blue. Their bodies wiggle as if made of soft rubber. Ducky’s slow forward progress creates small ripples, what could jokingly be called a bow wave. Just as porpoises ride the pressure waves that are created by a ship’s bow rushing through the sea, so these tiny black fish swab little arcs just ahead of Ducky’s backwash. I try to scoop them up with my coffee can, but they are always too fast.

  Since the long battle to repair Ducky’s bottom tube, I’ve been pretty wiped out, but I feel a little stronger this evening. For the first time in over a week, I return to my yoga routine, first spreading out my cushion and sleeping bag to cushion the dorados’ blows. The hemorrhoids are purred out again, and my hollow butt provides little protection. I sit up, bend one scrawny leg until my heel rests firmly in my crotch, and then touch my head to the knee of my straightened leg, while grasping the foot of that leg with both hands. I perfect a twisting exercise while hanging on to the handline. Then I lie on my stomach and lift my head as if doing a pushup, but I keep my legs and hips on the floor and bend my spine back into a wheel. I scoot forward, lie on my back, raise my legs over my head, and bring them around until my feet hit the floor behind me. My body weaves about like a stock of kelp swaying in the currents. I have not only sea legs but sea arms and a sea back, perhaps even a sea brain.

  My head is struck hard. I wiggle my jaw to see if it is loose. The new camouflaged dorados are very powerful and aggressive. They bombard the raft all day long, ramming it with their bullet heads, slapping at it with their bullwhip
tails, and blasting off with incredible speed. I leap to the entrance and grab the spear, but they are always long gone. Sometimes I glimpse their tails as they shoot off into the distance. Sometimes I see them racing by, several fathoms below. They never move calmly like the big blue dorados. They always move frantically, like they’re hopped up on speed.

  As the sun sets, I hear squeaking again and spy some big black porpoises, purposefully cutting their way to the west. They do not come close, but I feel touched by the graceful ease with which they glide through the Atlantic’s swell.

  The frigate birds, three of them now, are still frozen in position, riding the invisible waves of the sky high above the water. I’m impressed that their delicate long wings survive the power of the sea. They are often above me at first light, or they drift up from the west soon after. Another snowy tern shows up; it is unbelievable that this tiny bird migrates eleven thousand miles every year.

  A dark gray bird swings back and forth, approaching from where the clouds go, slowly getting closer. It flies like a crow. I tell myself that it must come from land. More important, it is a flying lump of food. It nears. I duck behind the canopy. I can’t see it, but I hear it fluttering at the entrance to my cave, contemplating entry. It flaps away. I wait. A shadow flickers on the canopy, grows, and a slight weight puts an imprint on the tent peak. Cautiously I bend forward and see the bird perched, looking aft, its feathers rustling in the wind and then falling back into place. I shoot out my arm. Instantaneously the bird’s wings spread. My fingers close on its straw legs. It squawks and snaps its wings down to gain lift, wheels its head around, and madly pecks at my fist. I grab its back with my other hand, drag its claws free of the tent, pull it into my den. In one quick move I twist its head around. There is a silent snap.