Ocean Burning

by Henry Carver

  I realized I would have to make a kind of jump, water-polo style, up and out of the water in order to snag the railing. My legs coiled up under me, and I sank down into the water, needing as much of it to push against as could be managed. When I had the right position, I snapped my legs out and down, sliced my hands through an incoming wave, and exploded upward. My fingers stretched up through the air, searching for the rail.

  I missed.

  The middle finger touched chrome, and then I was falling back towards the sea. The next wave knocked me into the fiberglass hull, and I could sense it tugging me along with, trying to drag me under the boat.

  Panic reached out from somewhere deep inside and wrapped itself around my stomach. The storm’s tempo picked up; the waves became insistent. Up until now I’d been sure that, worse case scenario, I could turn around and swim back.

  I turned around.

  Saw nothing but a bit of ocean, the distance shrouded in a haze of rain. The Purple was gone. Another wave hit me in the face, and I swallowed water.

  Got to get out of the water, I thought.

  My lungs sucked air and held it. I set up for another jump, said a little prayer.

  On the second try, I timed the swells differently. The first time I had tried to ride a wave up, but of course that same wave had carried the railing upwards the same distance. This time I shot up as the railing came down at me, and managed to catch it with one hand. I’m in fair shape, but one-arm pullups aren’t in my repertoire. I floundered like fish, then swung like a monkey, and finally got my other hand on the edge.

  Treading water and leaping had exhausted me. It took everything I had, but I pulled myself up, got a knee on the railing, and rolled myself over onto the slanted deck. I coughed, pulled myself to my feet, and hunched there, hands stabilized on my thighs, catching my breath.

  A hand grabbed my shoulder, squeezing hard.

  I jumped away, backing up, nearly tumbling back over the edge as the next wave caught us.

  “Que estas haciendo aqui?” a voice shouted into the wind.

  The man in front of me was slight—couldn’t have been over five and half feet or more than one fifty—Hispanic, but with light skin. Part Conquistador.

  “What I am I doing here?” I asked incredulously. “I could ask you the same question, pal. I’m sure this boat has sentimental value or whatever, but it’s time to let it go.”

  “I couldn’t leave,” he said, and gestured for me to follow. I untied the cord around my waist, dropped the life jackets onto the ever-angling deck, and followed him through a narrow door.

  Just inside the small superstructure, propped on a bulkhead to the left, was another man. He was big, thick-necked with a blond buzz cut. A nasty scar dripped down from his temple, across his cheek, down under the collar of his canvas shirt, a souvenir from some other adventure. His body was covered by a thin blanket; his eyes were closed.

  “Rigger,” the Mexican shook his shoulder, “Rigger, come on.”

  “Carlos?” The man’s eyes popped open. They were bulging out of his orbital sockets.

  “Yeah,” Carlos said. “Look, someone’s here. Someone found us.”

  The man called Rigger mumbled something unintelligible, clutched at a curtain covering the port, and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “It’s the painkillers. See?” Carlos pointed to an empty bottle. “I never should have let him handle his own dosage.” He pulled back the blanket. The left arm of Rigger’s shirt had been cut away. His elbow had swollen to the size of a cantaloupe and the color of a plum. The bottom half of his arm jutted sideways at a grotesque angle.

  “Is it broken?”

  Carlos shrugged. “Probably not. Probably just dislocated. But it doesn’t matter, he’s fucked on the pills. We’ll never get him up.”

  I nodded. The man called Rigger looked like he weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds. The boat gave a sigh, like a lover’s pleasure, and sagged beneath us. A hissing gurgle emitted from the starboard bow.

  I peeked my head out into what was now serious, fat rain. The sun was long gone, and I couldn’t see more than a few yards. The drops splattered my head, the wind blew them in my face. I walked three steps and peered around the superstructure.

  The starboard rail hovered inches from the sea. I knew that when it happened, it would happen fast. The second the front right corner went under, a wave would land on it and push it farther down, which would make it easier prey for the next wave, which would sink it still farther—a vicious, exponential cycle.

  The ocean was about to suck this boat down.

  I backed up carefully, grabbed the life jackets, pushed my way back inside. “We’ve got to go,” I said, calmly as I could.

  “No argument here,” Carlos said. “Bring the boat over.”

  “That’s not going to happen. The guy driving the boat…it’s his first day.”

  Carlos just raised his eyebrows. “And what about Rigger?”

  “Well,” I said carefully, “have you thought about leaving him?”

  Carlos’s face shut down, went cold. “No way, man,” he said softly.

  “If that’s off the table, do you think you can drag him fifty yards through five foot swells?”

  Carlos stared at the beefy man. I was impressed he was actually calculating it, as if there were a chance. “Yeah,” he said, still softly, “yeah, if he were coherent so he didn’t fight me, I could pull him over there.”

  “We’ve got about two minutes if we’re lucky before this boat snaps in half. Here,” I pushed a life jacket at Carlos. He ignored me, stared down at Rigger. The man was thrashing now, fighting some imaginary battle. His arms looked like they were filled with high-tension wires, cords popping out all over the place.

  “If you get in the water with him like that, he’ll drag you both down.”

  “I know,” Carlos said.

  “So we’re going to have to make him not like that,” I said. “We’re going to have to bring him out of it.”

  “How?”

  “Well, pain meds and pain, they balance each other out.” I hooked my arms through a curtain rod above my head, then braced on hip on the bulkhead. “So let’s tip the balance in our favor.”

  I put my foot on Rigger’s elbow, and leaned. He shifted uncomfortably.

  A quick glance at Carlos revealed a stricken look. But he understood what I was up to. He nodded.

  I leaned harder.

  Rigger squirmed.

  I braced myself again, then jacked down hard, fully extending my leg, straightening my leg right into him.

  His elbow bent six inches the wrong way then rotated. Something clicked into place, and he started to scream. “My arm! My fucking arm, mate!” I noticed for the first time that he was Australian. “God, my arm. What’s happened?”

  “I kicked it,” I said.

  “You fuckin’ cunt,” he snarled, and actually came for me, those corded arms reaching for my throat. Then his foot touched deck, and he started screaming again.

  A tiny wave of washed under the door and sloshed up to our ankles.

  “It’s starting,” I said, “Let’s get him out there. Here, put this on him first.” I forced the orange foam jacket over his head, buckled the clasps, pulled the cords tight. Carlos and I each got a side, we me supporting the left, and we got him up and moving.

  I kicked the door open. Rain lashed every exposed inch of our skin. Water was climbing the incline of the deck so fast I could see the level rising right before my eyes. I leaned Rigger against the rail and pulled out the waterproof flashlight I’d zipped into my pants before leaving the Purple.

  It’s beam penetrated into the darkness, but I couldn’t see a thing out there—not even the enormous island we must have been next to—just black water and white foam. I flashed the light, on and off, on and off, right out in front of me. Then to the right. Then to the left. I hoped that idiot Ben Hawking had sense enough to understand what
I wanted, and to find the switch for the boat lights.

  “There!” Carlos said, and pointed.

  The red and green running lights of the bow, rising and falling. As I watched, they flashed back at me. “Good man,” I muttered.

  Carlos faced drained as he made an estimate of the distance. “Should we wait for him to get closer?”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath. This is it. Let’s get him over the rail.”

  I reached down, grabbed Rigger by his leg and started to lift. He didn’t move. I tried again, then saw his hand. It was locked around the rail, bone-white in the knuckles.

  “The bag,” he got out through gritted teeth. “We can’t leave without the bag.”

  “Buddy, you’re going to have to file this one under lost luggage,” I said, and pushed him again. Incredibly, he didn’t move. At this point I wouldn’t have thought he’d have the strength to feed himself, let alone fight off a full-grown man.

  “Get the bag,” he said to Carlos.

  “Carlos is going to have enough to carry. Let it go,” I said again.

  “No,” he said, and threw himself down on the deck.

  “Carlos?” I said.

  “I won’t leave without him.”

  I stared at him, then back at the running lights in the distance. “God, you’re a pair,” I said. “Okay, I’ll get the damn bag, how about that?”

  Rigger wheezed something at me, the last of his strength fading.

  I took it as assent. Carlos and I each got an arm and we pulled him up, folded him over the rail, held him in place. I pushed the other life jacket at Carlos. “You’ll need this,” I shouted into the wind. “Get away from the boat, or the suction will take you both down with it.”

  “The bag,” Carlos said. “It’s just behind where Rigger was laying. It’s a black duffel. Please get it for him.” Then he shoved Rigger over the rail, and vaulted after his tumbling body.

  I ALMOST JUMPED right after him, but something I had seen in Rigger’s face stopped me. The gurgle at the front of the boat started to sound like a jet engine, a roaring, bubbly exchange of air and water. I ran inside, looked behind the bulkhead where Rigger had been laying.

  Nothing there.

  Water started to squirt in through the cracks on the bow side. As I traced the boat’s progress towards vertical, I saw the duffel. It had slid downhill, towards the front.

  I waded into the slopping, dirty water. It sloshed again me, waist deep, at the front of the compartment. Just as I got a hand on the bag’s strap, the electrical system shorted out, plunging the cabin into darkness.

  Every instinct told me to turn and run, before the blackness sucked me down. I took a breath, pulled hard on the canvas strap.

  “Jesus,” I said out loud. The bag was water-logged. Either that, or it had weighed fifty pounds when it was dry. I pulled it to me and pushed the strap down over my head so that it ran at a forty-five degree angle across my chest, then pulled it tight so the bag sat snugly atop my shoulder blade and ran straight down my spine.

  I pivoted, and found that walking towards the door wouldn’t be enough—I needed to climb.

  I dragged myself up by the rims of portholes and torn bits of carpet, and forced my way back out into the whipping rain. My arms latched on the rail. In the distance, very faint, were two orange splashes in the black, and just behind them the Christmas-colored lights on the Purple.

  The roar at the front of the boat stopped. It was a bad sign. The exchange of atmosphere for brine was complete; the bow of the boat was now completely filled with water and enough other material to jack up our relative density somewhere above that of sea water.

  Dense things sink, as simple as that. This was it.

  On cue, the rear keel lifted up into the air, ready for her curtain call.

  Everything tilted crazily. Anything not attached tumbled down toward the water line. I clutched the rail for dear life. A locker on the wall popped open as the superstructure flexed in ways that had never been intended. Something flopped on on top of me, heavy and cloying.

  For the second I thought it was huge bag of sand, heavy and flexible. Then I managed to turn my head, and I realized the thing had a face.

  The air slid out of my lungs like water across ice, cold and fast. I yelped, and tried desperately to roll the heavy thing off of me. I grabbed it by both shoulders and pushed.

  It turned half off of me, and I pulled myself out from under it, scrambling to my feet. I stood there for a second, confused, unable to see in the darkness. My hand found the flashlight. I leaned forward, clicked it on.

  The face was a man’s, a man with a bristly black mustache. He was dressed in a three-piece suit. As the light scanned down his length, I paused to study the hole through his vest. It was the size of my fist and had been opened up through the center of the chest.

  As I watched, it wept blood and tissue. I reached out, touched a finger to it. Even in cold rain, I could feel the heat radiating out of his core.

  It didn’t take a pathologist to figure time of death; this man had been walking and talking just hours ago.

  I shoved the body away from me, and it caught in some loose ropes. It swung away from me and back towards me, the lips fixed into a terrible grin. The stern of the fishing boat lifted still higher, the nose of it went under. The boat started to slip into the sea like an arrow into flesh.

  That was enough of a sign for me. Without looking, I flipped myself over the rail, bounced off a wave, went under, then bobbed to the surface and started swimming. The black duffel threatened to drag me down, but I was in a frenzy, scooping water with my hands and shoving against it with my feet. I could feel the suck of the boat at it took the water nearby down with it.

  At the last possible second, I stopped and turned. The stormed pulled me up to a wave crest, lightning cracked, the universe gifted me a moment with a perfect view. The grinning rose-chested man in the ropes piloted the boat down down down until it slipped between two waves and disappeared.

  Chapter 7

  MEMORIES OF THE swim blurred in my mind. That lead weight of a bag must have been dragging me down; the waves must have thrashed me; the wind must have buffeted me off course. And I must have kept attacking the water until I slammed against the Purple’s hull.

  I couldn’t remember any of that, but it must have happened, because I lay sprawled on the deck, alive.

  The first thing that registered was Carmen’s face right above me. She grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard. A combination of sea water and bile spilled out of my throat. The image of it staining the white deck a sickly brown stuck out vividly in my mind.

  Carmen was shouting something, but someone had pressed her mute button.

  I pulled myself up on her shirt, pushed towards the ladder, started climbing. The hand-holds carried me up and across the thin carpeting of the bridge. I flopped into the captain’s chair, searched out the two ends of the airplane-style seat belt, clicked them together, and cinched the strap across my waist. The deck rolled from side to side. The urge to vomit again felt overpowering.

  Rivulets of water cascaded endlessly down the glass windows. Visibility was zero. We were sitting in open water, and the ocean was in open revolt.

  “What now?” The voice came from behind me.

  I didn’t turn my head, couldn’t possibly turn it without throwing up. Ben Hawking must have followed me up the ladder.

  “No choice but to make for the island. We head south, get a bit on the lee side, see if we can get close and find an inlet.”

  Ben must have sensed some small bit of equivocation in my voice. “So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is if we too close, the waves will smash us on the rocks and we’ll all die.”

  Ben went silent, and I didn’t say I word. The throttle lever ratcheted smoothly up to three-quarter power, and the dual props began to push us across the hills out there. Riding across a stormy sea is a bit like riding an old-fashioned roller coaster—no lo
ops, just ups and downs, drops followed by trembling anticipation of the drops to come.

  I got us headed south, judging the distance based on dead reckoning.

  After fifteen minutes the tenor of the whitecaps began to shift. Their height and ferocity decreased, and I knew we must be close. The throttle lever clicked into the one-quarter power slot. I turned on the spotlight attached to the side of the boat, scanned from side to side. My mouth had gone dry; my tongue stuck to gums.

  “There.” Ben pointed into the murk.

  My eyes barely detected wet black rock shining against the matte black background of the night. I nodded at him.

  I forced the Purple to come about, drifted her through the gap in the shoreline and into a very small inlet, then dropped every anchor she had. The waves still battered us—no escaping that—but we were well-placed to weather the night. I could feel the anchors bite, and a breath escaped my lips.

  I hadn’t realized I’d been holding it.

  Ben didn’t need to ask. I answered before he could. “Now we wait,” I said, slipped past him, climbed shakily down the ladder and the stairs to get below. Carmen said something about taking care of our new arrivals. I mumbled my assent, pushed past her into the captain’s quarters, closed and locked the door behind me.

  The bed beckoned. I swallowed a handful of ibuprofen tablets, and let the satin sheets swallow me up.

  MY SLEEP WAS deep, but not restful. Dreams skittered furiously into and out of my head like tiny stones skipped along the surface of my mind, the ripples interacting, the images mixing into turbulent unreality.

  Bars clamped down over my vision, and I was back in that Mexican holding cell from five years ago. My telling of the story to Carmen had left out the worst parts. I had excluded the cigarette burns and the tiny razor blades and the rubber truncheons across the soles of my feet until I cried and cried and would have told them anything.

  In the dream, the jail cell was just as I remembered it except for a picture window in one wall. There had been no window in my cell, no light at all. Even if there had been, certainly there would have been a dirty alley on the other side of the brick.