The Sinking of the Angie Piper

by Chris Riley

  My laugh was nervous, thin and shallow. “Sure thing, buddy. How’s Loni doing?”

  Danny nodded. “Good. We’re almost done now, I think.” He closed the door then walked toward me, his mouth gaping, his face drained. My friend looked tired.

  “You doing okay?” I asked, patting Danny on the back as he passed on his way to the head.

  “Hooyah,” he replied, without much conviction.

  I watched my friend walk down the hall. I inhaled real deep, taking in a chest full of air. I was close to tears. Conflicting emotions were roiling in my stomach and giving my legs the shakes. Like a father, or an older brother, I felt proud. Proud of that kid, that young man, who played his dealt hand with the kind of courage few could ever hope to muster. But the guilt …. It thrashed in my core like a chained demon, awoken by Dave’s history. The fucking asshole was dead on, I realized. About everything he’d said—the inner turmoil, the jealousy, and how, deep down, every bully is a coward. That’s what Dave had been telling me this whole time—that he and I were too much alike. Our propensity for fear, and the pressures resulting from that emotion. And our capacity to react accordingly. Even the dreadful account of him beating the crap out of his brother … those words were like the low toll of a bell ringing from inside my gut.

  It could have been the same night, the same incident, for that matter. Danny, he never understood the politics of teenagers. Impressing popular girls, fitting in with social cliques, establishing a reputation—none of these machinations were on Danny’s radar, and sometimes this infuriated me. I took him to a party one night, a mistake in itself, and then he got on my case for drinking beer. Some of the other kids were smoking pot, and I wanted to try that as well, but Danny stood his ground. He became Sitting Bull, loudly told me, “No,” and grabbed me by the crook of my elbow. The pain from his grip shot up my arm like forty-thousand volts. I snapped. I reacted. I punched Danny in the face. He let go of my arm and went to the floor, in a seated position, his hand pressed against his cheek. His eyes accosted me, filling me with guilt and shame. Betrayal. I could have stopped there, but I didn’t—someone had laughed. I jumped on top of Danny and started banging my fists into him, punching head, ears, and nose, afflicting him worse still with profanities. He curled into a ball, after which I stood and began to kick him in the ribs. A few seconds of that and Danny gave up. He stretched out on his back, flat and catatonic, staring at the ceiling, a remorseful sinner accepting his due punishment. And that ended it. Not anything spurred within me. No sudden thickening of guilt. No brave intervention of some poor, sympathetic soul from the crowd. No, it was simply Danny. His unwavering, dog-like loyalty doused the flame of my anger.

  Too much alike, Ed … you and me.

  While these memories of the past haunted me, the awareness of my surroundings within the Angie Piper suddenly heightened, as if my senses had grown more acute. Dark pockets of shadow, various surfaces, and previously unnoticed ordinary “things” surrounding me—all stood out as if under a spotlight. I felt gooseflesh crawl up my legs and body, releasing a shiver. I walked back to check on Dave, observing that the air in the stateroom smelled earthy and sour, and tasted like brine. And then, I heard something in the far distance, something barely audible.

  “Hey,” I said, as I stepped farther into the room. Eyes closed, Dave acknowledged my presence with a grunt. My ears locked onto the sound he made and followed it as it passed me, and the ship, and then beyond, into the clouded void of night and sea, where it changed.

  The sound was now a distant rumble. A rumble that was active, and perhaps contriving. Working, and proceeding. A rumble that grew.

  I looked at Dave, whose eyes flew open. Panic hung heavy in the air. My hands clenched into fists, I heard the captain holler something from above. Another rogue wave was on its way.

  It struck the Angie Piper portside.

  “Ahh!” someone shrieked. Dave’s bunk swept up and over my head. The floor lurched out from under my feet. My body slammed into the wall and then the ceiling, and then the opposite wall, the floor, and the wall again. I heard glass explode and a low rush of sound reverberate from the wheelhouse, bringing with it a great flood of icy water. Lights flickered, the Angie Piper continued to roll, and my body was slammed once again into the hard steel, the jagged corners, the unforgiving features of the stateroom.

  At last she settled. Capsized, swaying, the sounds of straining steel were unabating in the background. Someone hollered again. And the lights continued to flicker sporadically, ominously. I saw Dave lying in front of me, on the ceiling, his hands reaching out toward me, his mouth forming words that failed to register anything remotely intelligible within my brain. The one thing I could focus on at that moment was the twisted absurdity of our environment, the unforgiving shock, the release of sanity. And lastly, taken as whole: our seemingly inevitable death from these things that should not be.

  Another flush of cold water dumped onto my head, jolting me back to reality. “Ed!” Dave shouted, his hands still reaching out. He caught hold of my jacket lapel, pulled hard, and then I reacted by crawling forward. “Ed! We gotta get out of here!” The lights dimmed. “She ain’t gonna make it!” I thought I heard bilge alarms ringing, but my focus tunneled onto Dave. I blinked rapidly, concentrating, as the fierce instinct to remain alive finally prevailed.

  “Okay!” I replied, frantically looking around. My thoughts were on the survival suits contained in the chest above us. “Hold on,” I shouted, struggling to stand up.

  “She ain’t gonna make it!” Dave repeated. “She’s going down, Ed … we gotta hurry!”

  I ignored him and reached for the door clasp on the chest. I got a hand on it, but then slipped, crashing down onto Dave.

  “Oh!” he hollered. He reached for his broken leg, moaning, pain searing across his face. “Oh, shit!”

  “Sorry, Dave!” I replied, hands stretching, hoping to comfort him in some way.

  “Forget about it! Just get up there and get those suits. We don’t have much time.”

  I struggled to find my footing, grabbed at corners and ledges that were unrecognizable. Confusion surrounded me, with this upturned version of reality. It was even difficult to think straight. I wrapped an arm around the top of the bunk, pulling myself up, at last gaining control of my balance and my perception to a passable degree. Inching my way farther up, I got a hand on the chest once more, reaching for the clasp. My fingers were numb from the cold, making surfaces feel vaguely formless. The sharp metal corner of the clasp felt like a smooth rubber ball, but I gripped it nonetheless.

  The Angie Piper swung hard to port, but not before I yanked down. The door dropped open, raining its contents on top of us—an assortment of flashlights, gloves, batteries, matches, and survival suits.

  “Get in one!” I shouted. “Get yourself in a suit, Dave!” I heard more screaming, only this time from below us, it seemed. It was hard to tell. My mind still struggled for clarity. I struggled to comprehend the state of having my whole world flipped literally upside down.

  Dave fumbled for a suit, his face flinching—undoubtedly from the excruciating pain of his broken leg. I pushed aside all the gear and began to separate the suits. “Here,” I said, handing him one. I made a move to help him into it.

  “No, no!” He pushed me away. “Get yourself in one first. I’ll be all right.”

  The water, killing cold, bit at my skin, and it rapidly leeched away my breath and energy. Quickly, I reached for a suit and searched for the open end.

  “Hurry and get in, Ed!” Dave repeated. He knew the gravity of our situation. Not just that we were going down, but how little time we had left. “Hurry the fuck up, kid!”

  As if his words were a syringe injecting fresh adrenaline into my body, I scrambled. I forgot about Dave, the upturned ship, and the cold, cold water. Eyes sharpened on orange fabric with its zippers and sleeves, and my hands moved swiftly and accurately. My training took over as I went through the motions of donning
my survival suit. I heard the words of so many captains and deckhands over the years: less than one minute! I watched myself splay the suit open. I watched as my feet rushed in and down. I wriggled like a worm in the mud, on my back, up to my waist, pulling and yanking and tugging. Then I thrust my left hand in, my weak hand, leaving my strong hand to affix the hood and pull the main zipper. I did those last steps with seconds to spare, vaguely aware that the boat seemed listless and dead.

  I looked at Dave, his suit barely on. He was struggling to get his broken leg into it, the pain writhing across his face, tormenting and dreadful, sending his body into sporadic jerks. “Oh, shit,” he murmured.

  “Hold on!” I shouted, rolling onto my side. “Let me help you.” I shimmied along on my stomach, then got up on one knee. I looked up at Dave, stretching a hand toward him. “I’ll help you get in.”

  But then—and for the last time—the lights went out.

  “Mother of God,” Dave gasped, a hopeless chill ringing in his voice.

  “Here, Dave, here!” I shouted. “I’m right here!” I pulled up next to him, hands scrambling over his body. I found his busted leg and blindly tried to work it into the survival suit. He let out another heavy moan, and then a shriek.

  “Forget about it, kid.” He tried to push me away. “Just get out of here. Leave me. I’ll catch up, don’t worry.”

  I looked around in the darkness, my thoughts now on Danny. Was he still in the bathroom across the hall? I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Danny! Danny, where are you? Get in a suit, buddy! Get in a suit, and get outside!” My breathing was out of control, rapid and short. My entire body shook from the cold and the ungodly fear. The obscuring blackness surrounding me was a brutal, taunting whisper from Death itself.

  “Go on, Ed,” Dave said.

  “Fuck you, Dave. I’m not leaving you here.” I remembered the glow stick attached to the front of my suit. I snapped it, releasing a flood of green light, shoving back a smidgen of darkness and fear. Looking down, I worked my hands into the pant leg of Dave’s survival suit, and then squeezed, making fists, pushing against the fabric and his tortured leg. “Now get your fucking leg in there!” I shouted.

  Dave grabbed me with both hands, wailing as he pushed, until finally his leg sunk into the suit. “Motherfucker!” he cried, his body jerking in pain.

  “Get in!” I repeated, pulling his suit up toward his waist. The muscles in my body protested, already fatigued from moving within my own suit. “Get your ass in here, Dave, right now!”

  We got Dave’s suit up to his waist, the eye of Hope now shining down on us, when suddenly the Angie Piper rolled again. The room churned like a washing machine. Everything flopped, whirled, and crashed against the walls. “Oh shit!” I hollered. Dave howled. I saw his arms swimming in pockets of shadow and green haze from my glow stick.

  “We gotta get out of here!” he repeated.

  The Angie Piper settled once again, a lolling mass of groaning steel. Frantically, I looked around. “How’s she sitting?” I hollered. I spotted the door nearby. It seemed “normal.”

  “She’s upright!” replied Dave. “Come on! Let’s move!” He started crawling toward me, his suit half on, dragging behind. I put a hand out, caught his, and pulled. Like a rat, my mind still gnawed furiously over Danny, but there was nothing I could do at the moment.

  We pulled ourselves up and out of the stateroom, into the hall. The floor pitched downward to our right, a path of darkness leading to the door outside. I wondered how far the Angie Piper sat below the surface. Would that door open to a flood of ice water and death? To our left, the wheelhouse loomed like a mountaintop. Wet stairs climbed up into a black hollow, their surfaces slick and steep, demanding skills certainly beyond a man with a broken leg.

  “How far down is she?” I asked.

  “I don’t know!” Dave replied. He motioned forward. “Guess we’ll find out.”

  On bellies, hands and knees, we slithered “down” the hall. I shuddered, picturing how our beloved Angie Piper now sat: her bow raised high above the waves, dripping water, her keel exposed to the hideous laughter of the wind, and her stern … submerged into the freezing mouth of the Gulf of Alaska—one step closer to the grave.

  “Ed!”

  I swiveled around, hearing Danny’s voice. He had just crawled out of the stateroom near the bathroom, survival suit on. Tears of joy welled in my eyes. Thank the Heavens, I thought.

  “Danny! Good job, buddy!” I slapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here!”

  The three of us crawled down the hall and into the ready-room. There was a knee-high pool of water near the door leading to outside. “Let’s get the rest of your suit on, Dave,” I said. “Help me out, Danny.” Dave’s face grimaced as we finished suiting him up. And when we were done, I turned toward the door, reaching out with a hand.

  “What about the captain?” Danny suddenly asked. “What about Salazar, and Loni?”

  I stared at my friend. “We don’t have enough time, Danny. The boat is sinking.” I looked back toward the wheelhouse, thinking about Fred, and Salazar, and the probability of rescuing them. “Captain!” I shouted. “Can you hear me? Captain! Salazar!” And then I thought of Loni—standing out on deck when the wave hit. I dropped my head, the cold sting of reality running a dagger straight through my heart.

  “We gotta save them,” Danny said.

  Dave dropped to the floor, moaning and exhausted. As if echoing in response, the Angie Piper let out a deep groan—the strain of steel—followed by a metallic crack so loud, it resonated throughout my body. “No, Danny!” I replied. “We gotta get the fuck out of here!”

  “But the captain,” he responded, seemingly unperturbed, “and Salazar.” Danny turned and looked toward the stairs, then back at me. “Never leave a man behind, Ed,” he said. “The SEALs never leave a man behind.”

  “Christ, Danny!” I hollered. “We’re not fucking SEALs! We’re just men. And we’re gonna be dead men if we don’t get off this boat. Now come on!”

  Danny ignored me and turned again toward the wheelhouse. He stood and began stumbling back up the hall. My eyes focused on the bull’s-eye on his back, the one he had taped onto his survival suit that first day onboard. “You goddamn Sitting Bull,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Fine then. I’ll be right back, Danny. I’m gonna get Dave out first!” I grabbed Dave by the arm and pulled him up. “Come on, let’s go,” I said.

  With Dave behind me, I braced myself for what waited beyond, and then I opened the door. I flinched, expecting a rush of icy water. But we were greeted by only a cold blast of wind.

  Stepping out onto the deck, I hesitated, unsure of what to do. The Angie Piper’s stern sat low in the water, but not as deep as I had expected. Beyond her rails, the sky was a slate of midnight blue, infused with veins of orange fire. It seemed that the black night was slowly giving way to the grip of dawn.

  Dave slumped to the deck, his back against the superstructure, eyes closed. His face looked sallow and withered.

  “Dave,” I shouted, shaking his shoulder, “you wait here, okay? I’m gonna go and help Danny!” He nodded in reply, and I turned to go back inside, but then I heard a sudden roar of thunder coming from beyond the starboard rail.

  There was no time to react. Out of the darkness, a massive wave punched the deck. It swept me clean over the rail, and far, far away from the Angie Piper.

  Chapter 27

  The rage of black foam and black water tumbled me off the boat and beyond. It pulled me down below the surface. Fingers of ice greedily plunged through the seams of my suit and onto my skin. It was the coldest I’d ever been in my life. I gagged as bands of saltwater rushed into my mouth. I flailed, arms swinging madly to gain stability, to swim through the maelstrom. I choked and retched and rolled aimlessly through a bitter draft of mind-numbing cold. Not a damn thing was in my control. I was a helpless rag in the sea.

  When the wave finally released me, I lay fac
e up on the great belly of the ocean, eyes to the sky. Thin trails of dawn spread across the heavens, but the darkness of night still reigned. Where was the Angie Piper? I struggled, paddling through the water, rousing myself to look around. My lips were numb, my breathing short and tight, and my eyes stung. Where was she?

  A passing swell lifted me high, and then I spotted her shadowed bow roughly thirty yards away. I swam toward her, fighting against the current and waves. Eventually I rolled over and attempted the backstroke, which I had heard to be the more practical approach to swimming while in a survival suit. My shoulders burned, and my breathing raced, but the Angie Piper never seemed to grow any larger. It seemed I wasn’t getting any closer.

  “Danny!” I shouted into the night. I looked around for Loni, hoping that he might be floating near me. The chances were dismal, knowing that he had taken that colossal wave sometime before. With only raingear on, he couldn’t have survived long.

  I cut through the water frantically, stroke after desperate stroke, fighting with all my heart to get back to the boat. There was an inflatable life raft mounted on the fo’c’sle. It should still be accessible, if I could only get there. The current was strong, but it wasn’t running completely against the direction I needed to swim. Yet the water was choppy. Six-foot swells undulated from every direction, as if the sea couldn’t make up her mind where she wanted to go. I threw every ounce of energy in the direction of the Angie Piper, my thoughts focused on that life raft. And I thought about Danny, and the surviving crew—whoever they might be. I threw every muscle into getting back on that boat, and I felt those muscles burn, warming my body. Seeing that I was finally getting closer, I felt a bloom of hope grow inside my gut.

  “Danny!” I shouted again, battering the waves with my hands. “Anyone! Over here!”

  I judged that with enough time, I could make it back before she went down, and then I’d inflate that raft. I’d get Danny, Fred, and Salazar, and pile everyone in, safe and secure. And with a slice of astounding luck, perhaps I’d even find Loni, floating somewhere nearby, his fingers gripping tight onto the final thread of his life ….