by Chris Riley
My hand thudded against a solid object. I heard a low moan, grabbed, and pulled. It was a body in a survival suit.
“Dave!” I cried out, recognizing him. I pulled him closer. He was limp, offering no resistance, lying on his back and barely conscious. “Dave!” I shouted again, believing that the man might have thought he was on his way out and was now simply letting death take over.
He gave another moan. I saw the features of his face under the green haze of my glow stick. Everything about him looked so heavy. Every wrinkle and pock-ridden inch of his skin seemed grossly cumbersome, pressed together from the hood of his suit. His whole face was swollen, with blood racing to fight off the bitter cold. His eyelids were sandbags, and he raised them in an apparent struggle to come back to life.
“Come on, Dave, wake up!” I looked at the Angie Piper, still believing I could reach her. Somehow, I’d have to pull Dave along. “Wake up, already!”
Dave moaned again and began to move his arms. Lightly, I smacked him on the cheek. Then I grabbed his face and directed his gaze toward me. “Dave! Look at me! We gotta get the raft!” He groaned and blinked. “We gotta swim, Dave. You gotta wake up and help me!”
Our suits kept us buoyant, but the waves were a persistent nuisance. We rode a high swell that rolled over our heads, sloshing water across our faces, and then Dave choked. I gripped him tight as he rasped, his body coiling forward with each hack. When he was finished, he flung his eyes open, swinging his head left to right.
“What the hell happened?” he said. He worked his arms to raise his body, and then looked around. “Where’s the boat?”
I felt a surge of relief. “We got washed off! But she’s over there,” I said, pointing. “We might be able to get the raft!”
Dave turned to face me, the small ember glowing in his eyes almost extinguished by misery. He shivered. “I can’t feel my legs, Ed. It’s fucking cold …. I’m cold.” Then he looked back toward the boat. “Come on,” he said, giving the most sluggish, debilitated attempt at a swim. “Let’s do it.”
Again, I threw everything I had into reaching the Angie Piper. My arms were heavy, like solid lengths of iron. I cut water with my legs, scissoring through what felt like an ocean of molasses.
“Grab my leg,” I shouted. “I’ll pull you.” Dave’s hand clamped down on the fabric of my suit, at the ankle. He went limp again, heaving and coughing. I heard his breathing over my own. “Hang on, Dave!” I cried, swimming toward the Angie Piper. It seemed the boat had shrunk a little. Not that she was farther out, but that there was less of her riding above the waves. Through the dim shadows, I noticed the wave line splashing up against the superstructure, and the door to the inside. My chest stung and my gut hurt.
Exhaustion mounted with each passing minute. We had made little gain against the sea, but I told myself to keep going, to forget the cold and the pain, and to just get back to her. Get back to the boat, before it was too late. My thoughts simmered on Danny and the life raft. It was still possible, I reasoned. Perhaps Danny would be the one to retrieve the raft, and he would be waiting for us when we finally got there.
Dave started coughing again. I felt his hand slip away from my ankle. I stopped swimming and turned toward him. He was flailing, trying to keep his head above the water, retching and groaning. His face was contorted with distress. I grabbed his arms and steadied him, hoping to ease the panic I’d seen flickering in his eyes. He let out a sickening hurl, deep and long, a real gut-buster, followed by a raspy suck of air.
“I can’t do it, Ed,” he moaned. “Just go on without me.”
“No, Dave,” I replied. “Come on! Don’t give up!”
“Forget it kid.” He rolled onto his back. “I, ah … I ain’t gonna make it.”
“Yes you are, dammit!” I looked at the Angie Piper, getting smaller by the minute. But the reality that made me cringe at that moment was Dave. I grabbed him from under his arm and started to swim a sidestroke, pulling him with me. “I’m not letting you give up,” I said. His body went slack, but I kept dragging him through the sea. I swam for our Angie Piper, knowing this was our last chance. I pulled and kicked feverishly, my arms and legs aching with a hot pain. I cramped up, felt a sharp snap down my ribcage. Dave’s breathing quickened and he began to cough again, but I kept swimming, not once letting up, and slowly the gap to the Angie Piper grew smaller.
But then a wave hit us from the side. A white-capped roller sent us tumbling through the sea, and once again we were pushed away from the boat. The distance I’d gained had been lost, with yards to spare. I recovered from the wave, heard Dave coughing just a few feet away, and saw the Angie Piper. Her end was near. I reached out and grabbed Dave. I pulled him closer, knowing there was no way I could make it to the boat with him. I’d have to leave him behind.
He turned and looked me in the eye. “Get the raft, Ed. Go on. Go get it.” Then he nudged his head toward the boat, coughed some more, and passed out.
The sudden need to make a decision came over me. I thought about my situation, thought real hard. I wanted to leave Dave, leave him and his cruelty behind. I wanted to bail out and swim back to the boat, which now looked so far away. I wanted so bad to swim back and find Danny, my friend. He was there somewhere, maybe still looking for the crew and trying to rescue them. But the Angie Piper was pulling farther away from me, pulling down. The sight of her sinking into the black ocean evoked fear and panic. Our beloved Angie Piper was heading for the bottom, possibly with Danny inside, and certainly with the captain and Salazar, and there was nothing I could do about it. At that moment, it seemed as if the darkness of the night, in its entirety, had just laid a finger onto my head and pushed me down.
Maybe, at that moment, I was just too tired to keep going. Maybe I was ready to give up. It was so damn cold. Every inch of my body ached with a dull pain that did nothing but incite misery and sap the life out of me. So this is how it’s gonna end, I thought to myself.
I looked around, determined to take in the last of this world. The Angie Piper was a black dagger buried in the belly of the great ocean, her bow now raised straight and high. Trails of dawn continued to streak the sky above, like red fire blazing a warm path across the night. But my lips were cold and numb. My breathing was thin and fading fast. My eyes were stinging at the sight of that golem of steel, as she methodically drove herself into a sea that would willingly swallow her whole. Sadly, I knew that there would be nothing to show for all the effort put forth on this day. No scar left behind, announcing to the world that for one small measure of time, something, or someone, had put up a fight.
I closed my eyes and lowered my head, and Dave and I rode the waves like a fat, orange bobber. I felt horribly sorry for myself. My mind, now certain that the end was near, toured the burdens I’d slung over my shoulder for those short years of my life—the regrets I’d kept, the pain I’d stowed away. The burden that one man, presently in my arms and almost dead, had so cleverly observed weighing me down like an anchor. Our familiar burden.
“What have I done?” I whispered into the night, my voice lost against the heavy wind and the roaring waves. Once again, I’d let Danny down, and now he was left to struggle on his own. This was not what I had promised him or myself. As if in response to my whisper, Dave let out a moan, but then he went silent again. He was slipping in and out of consciousness. I gripped his survival suit and looked at the sea. Nothing would be left behind, not even me. Soon, it would only be the wind and the water. The Angie Piper was a thin black nail now. Thirty feet of bow brooding over the brim of a vanishing wheelhouse, she was on her last breath of air. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I would not. I had decided that as one of the last remaining crewmembers, I was duty-bound to catch that final glimpse of our vessel before she went down forever.
But then I gasped. A shadow climbed above the window of the wheelhouse from the darkness below. An orange body, someone in a survival suit, lifting up and out of the sinking vessel. The body turned—its bac
k now facing me—and I caught sight of a distinctive outline traced with reflective yellow tape.
The bull’s-eye.
Chapter 28
I shouted at the top of my lungs, “Danny! I’m over here!” I waved frantically. “Come on, buddy! Over here!”
My heart suddenly burned with a livid pain. I realized that this was my one and final chance. I had never told my friend how I felt about him—that I’d felt so damn sorry for the guy when he cried. That I felt terrible for never sticking up for him back in high school.
Yet there he was now ….
“Danny!”
I had never told him how I thought he was the funniest man alive, or that his work ethic inspired everyone around him. And Danny had never heard my apology for that terrible night back in high school. I just let it go, buried it deep under a thick blanket of lies. Danny had never said a word about that night. Then years had passed, and that night was filed away like an indelible chapter in the book of life.
“I’m over here, buddy!”
I panicked. Danny jumped into the water and began to swim away from me. The wind, the waves, and the numbing cold made for an impenetrable shell of distance. There went my friend, Danny Wilson, headstrong, right into them.
Dave stirred, coughed. I was suddenly reminded of how he had never forgiven himself for his wrongful actions toward his brother—how they had wrecked his life and ultimately tore a hole in him so big that not even love could fill it up.
“No, Danny! No! No! Come back, Danny!”
I choked on a mouthful of sea water and fell still. Danny couldn’t hear me above the raging of the sea. He would have certainly turned back if he had. Instead, he just swam into the appalling black horizon with a dumb courage that even your best Navy SEAL could only pray to possess, while I floated there and thought about myself. I floated in my cold saltwater grave and watched Danny Wilson head off alone to battle the forces of the greatest bully of all: Mother Nature.
Then I wondered, just why am I staying here? Why aren’t I following my friend? We were doomed men, all of us. On my own, I might catch up to Danny. I could tell him I was sorry, and then we’d perish together.
My eyes fell on Dave: the irony of the situation. Him, me, our differences … and similarities. I was riding the passing swells of ice-cold water while clinging to a man who throughout his life seemed to be just as cold and bitter. A man who’d allowed his tragic past to dictate his actions. A man who’d passed his judgment on to others through pints of liquor and gallons of abuse. So this really was how it would end. The coldest I’d ever been in my life.
Still, hope lingered inside me, like the frayed corner of a distant dream, insisting it wasn’t too late. Something about the type of man I wanted to become in this life, never mind how short that life might be.
I pulled Dave closer to me. “I can’t leave you.”
“No,” he said, suddenly awake and conscious. “Leave me.”
Tears welling in my eyes, I shook my head. “Not leaving a man behind.”
“Bullshit! Go get that raft, Ed.” Dave pushed at me, but he was too weak to break my grip. I saw him glance past my shoulder, toward the boat, and then his face went thin and flaccid. His eyelids became sandbags once again. He knew we were too late.
“I’m gonna die,” he whispered.
“And I’m not letting you die alone.”
Several seconds passed, and then Dave said, still sarcastic despite his loss of hope, “Never leave a man behind, eh?”
“You’re damn right,” I replied.
“Shit, Ed.” Dave’s hand squeezed my wrist. “I’ve never been a man. Never in all my life.”
“It doesn’t matter, Dave.” That’s not the answer I wanted to give him. It wasn’t what I meant to say. I wanted to tell him that we were all men—him, me, the whole lot of us, even Danny. Especially Danny. We were all men, and that’s how we were going to die.
I felt Dave’s grip loosen, and his eyes suddenly wrenched open. He looked up into the sky. “It’s kind of funny, Ed. I’m not so cold anymore.” He turned his head toward me. “How ’bout that?” he said, with a laugh. “All the fucking cold is gone.”
“Yeah, it sure is, isn’t it?”
Dave’s smile melted, and he gripped my wrist once again. “Promise me something, kid,” he said. “If you survive this shit, promise me you’ll come out different.” His jaws chattered violently, and he began to slur his words. “Don’t end up like me.”
I nodded solemnly. I knew what he meant.
“Promise me, Ed.”
Shamefully, I nodded again. Then I dropped my head. I didn’t say a word, not until it was too late. I felt Dave’s grip go loose for the last time. I lifted my head and looked upon the man. His eyelids were wide open, sandbags no more, a stare firing up into the heavens. His lips were parted, his body was cold and limp, and nothing about him seemed heavy anymore.
“I promise!” I shouted, in case he could hear me somehow.
Then it was like the closing of eternity. Danny was gone—he had disappeared somewhere beyond the shadows and the waves. The Angie Piper was submerged at last, slipping forever below this world. I lowered my head for the last time, ready to die. Cataleptic darkness swept in and took me away, yet not before I said in a final whisper …
“Please forgive me, Danny.”
Chapter 29
Captain Fred Mooney saved my life. Not long after he activated the Angie Piper’s EPIRB, the Coast Guard base in Kodiak sent out their search and rescue team. I felt as much as heard the rhythmic whop-whop-whop of rotor blades over my head when they found me. I remember looking up and seeing a helicopter hovering under a purple sky, its lights shining bright like bug eyes. Then the rescue swimmer jumped out, splashing into the water not twenty feet away from me.
I was in a state of numbing fear, delirious from my ordeal and barely conscious when Petty Officer First Class Les Sherman swam over to me.
“You gotta let go!” the man cried, attempting to pry my hands off Dave’s body. My grip was the only thing I had left. In my delirium I was not letting go of Dave. “Let go, already!” he kept shouting, his words mixed with the sounds from the helicopter and the choppy water. Then I passed out.
There was nothing after that. I was lifted out of the water by the rescue litter, then sent back to Kodiak Medical Center via helicopter—none of which I recall. I only remember waking up in a soft bed, confused yet indescribably grateful for the warmth that surrounded me. The lights of my hospital room shone with a dull, almost polite brightness. The smells of clean sheets and bleach, and a sterile, medicinal odor lingered in the air. There was a muted television sitting high in one corner of the room, and on the table below, a vase of flowers. It all seemed surreal.
For those first several minutes of consciousness, I kept still, savoring the heavenly touch of cotton and wool against my face. I wiggled all my fingers and toes, thankful that I still had them. I mentally surveyed the many cuts and bruises spread across my body, then took several deep breaths of air. Each exhale carried a long sigh of relief, liberating me from residual tension. I embraced the warmth, and I relished the absence of that bone-chilling cold. For those first several minutes, I did nothing but “catch my breath,” so to speak.
A shuffling sound passed the door to my room and I caught a glimpse of a janitor pushing a cart down the hall. He looked like Danny, and I was immediately reminded of my friend, the Angie Piper, the nightmare, everything. Half a ton of concrete collapsed onto my chest just then, bringing with it too damn much to think about.
I imagined a possible headline for the Kodiak newspaper: JAMES EDWARD THURMAN: SOLE SURVIVOR. The thought was damning, despite all that I’d been through.
And, like other sole survivors, I faced the painful guilt that came with the situation. I felt guilty for being the only crewmember to survive the sinking of the Angie Piper. I felt guilty for coaxing my best friend into taking a job that would eventually kill him. The guilt just went on a
nd on.
Continuing with this newspaper theme in my imagination, I went through the obituaries. Danny was certainly the first one who came to mind, but I pushed him out of my thoughts briefly. I guess I wanted to save him for last.
I saw Fred’s face on the day he first welcomed me aboard the Angie Piper: a jovial smile preceding a strong handshake. He called me “son” and gave me the tour, and gradually I learned that I could have taken everything about that man at face value. There was nothing complicated about Fred Mooney—that’s why he was such a damn good captain. Our last supper—duck breast, pasta and lamb, red velvet cake—would make his brother proud. I made a silent vow to track that man down and tell him about our feast.
Perhaps Salazar’s cat, Georgina, could be permanently adopted by the woman who had been caring for it. I would try to arrange that somehow when I let her know. If she asked for details, I’d simply tell her the truth: Salazar went down with the ship.
The cold lingered with me in that hospital room. I shivered when my mind suddenly flooded with several dozen images of Loni’s trademark smile.
What a man that Poly was. A bright man, in every sense of the word. A man who, although small for a Samoan, was as big in heart and strong in soul as all seventy of his cousins. An exaggeration, I supposed, but I knew there would easily be four times that many people at Loni’s funeral. His heart and soul were all that would represent my fellow crewmember on that day. In the end, Loni’s body would never be found. Nor Fred’s, nor Salazar’s.
I thought about Dave. They had his body, and I felt grateful for that much. The fairness of this particular outcome never weighed heavily on my mind. I was beyond stewing over the fact that better men should have been spared such bleak fates as becoming “lost at sea.” Dave wasn’t the worst of men. I like to think that he did the best he could with his life, given his circumstances. But more importantly, he was one of us. They had his body, so there would be closure for his family. When I saw those people, I would tell them how much of a hero Dave had been.