by Watt Key
“Why?”
“So I can use my hands.”
Shane took him and I got out the marker and clamped it in my mouth. I reached over and unclipped Mr. Jordan’s empty pony tank. I disconnected the regulator and let the tank drift away. Then I got my dive knife and cut the air hoses from the heavy metal hardware that connects to the tank nozzle.
“What are you doing?”
“Measuring,” I replied.
I took the marker from my mouth and tied the end of the string to what was left of the regulator and dropped it, letting the line spool in my hands. After nearly a minute the line stopped and I tied off the cork. Then I measured out another twenty feet, noted the position of the second hand of my watch, and let go.
I counted to ten before the slack between me and the cork was taken.
“Ten seconds,” I said aloud. “That’s two feet per second.”
“So what?”
“So there’s three thousand six hundred seconds in an hour. Two times three thousand six hundred is … seven thousand two hundred. There’s five thousand two hundred and eighty feet in a mile. Seven thousand two hundred divided by five thousand two hundred and eighty is … about one and a half. So we’re moving at about one and a half miles per hour to the southeast.”
“That’s not very fast,” he said.
“Maybe not in a car, but you left the bottom at about ten-forty-five, which means we’ve been drifting for almost four hours. We’re nearly six miles from where we started.”
“So what happens if we keep going?”
“We might see some fishermen.”
“But no land?”
“It would take a long time to get back to land.”
“How long?”
I didn’t want to answer him. I didn’t want him freaking out. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Guess,” he said. “If we kept drifting?”
“We’re not going toward land,” I said. “We’re headed out.”
“Out to where?”
I began reeling up the marker. “Out,” I said, “to blue water.”
Shane didn’t ask what blue water was. Nearly eighty miles offshore, the emerald-green inland waters of the Gulf meet the jade-blue of deep oceanic water. The two don’t mix; instead, they collide to form a distinct wavering wall that goes straight down for hundreds of feet. Giant fish travel along it: tuna, blue marlin, and swordfish—fish that prefer the clarity, depth, and purity of the blue zone and travel its border like beasts against a fence. It is truly the place where monsters lurk.
I had never been there, but I’d heard Dad talk about it and I’d pulled up pictures of it on the Internet. I’d always wanted to go, but not like this. Now it was the last thing I ever wanted to see.
13
The hours passed with each of us lost in our own silent thoughts, fighting thirst and frustration. We saw no birds, no fish, no planes, no sign of life except for each other. In the distance a storm hung on the horizon, occasionally grumbling rumbles of thunder.
“My neck itches,” Shane said, scratching himself.
“Sea lice,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Baby jellyfish.”
“This sucks,” he said.
“It’ll get worse.”
Shane sighed. “Do we still need the flag?”
“I’ll take it for a while,” I said.
I pulled the speargun off his back and gave it to him. Then I turned and winced as he shoved it into place on my back.
“Maybe it’ll rain,” I said.
“If I could only let a little rainwater touch my tongue,” he said. “It feels like a dried rag.”
“It doesn’t help to talk about it,” I said.
Shane turned toward his father. “Dad?” he said.
Mr. Jordan didn’t answer. He had his eyes closed, but he still coughed occasionally.
“Dad, how do you feel?”
Mr. Jordan nodded slowly.
“Don’t talk to him,” I said. “He doesn’t feel like talking.”
Shane glared at me. “Nobody’s coming,” he said. “And it’s going to be dark soon.”
“The Coast Guard can search at night.”
“Not if they don’t know we’re out here,” he said.
“Look, there’s no way they won’t come looking for us. Somebody’s going to figure out we’re gone. What time did your mom expect you back?”
“She doesn’t even know we went,” he said.
“You didn’t tell her?”
“She’s in Bermuda. We have a house there.”
I felt my sense of hopelessness grow even more sickening.
“What about your mom?” he said.
“My parents are divorced. She’s in Atlanta. She knows we were going diving but nothing about when we’d be back or where we went.”
Shane sighed. “This sucks. Man, this sucks.”
“She could be trying to call me, but she knows cell phones don’t work this far out. And sometimes we spend the night anchored up.”
“Something happened to your dad, Julie.”
It was strange to hear Shane say my name. It was the first time I could remember him using it.
“Before we got in the water he said he wasn’t feeling well.”
“He’s got diabetes,” I said. “That’s all it was. He was queasy.”
“Maybe he couldn’t find us,” Shane continued. “And he radioed the Coast Guard and it’s taking them a while to get their search organized.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s probably just taking them a while.”
I’d already thought about every possible scenario concerning the boat, but nothing made sense. It wouldn’t simply sink. Not that fast. It wouldn’t have exploded from gas fumes in the engine compartment or we’d have found pieces of it. I wasn’t ready to accept that something had happened to Dad, but it was the only scenario that made sense.
No matter how sick he was, he would have called the Coast Guard. Unless he’d fallen overboard … Unless he tried to reset the anchor by himself, fell over, and drowned. Then the Barbie Doll would still be anchored somewhere close to the tanks. And the boat was empty with a raised dive flag. And no one would think to stop and check on it.
“Queen of diamonds, ace high,” Mr. Jordan mumbled.
Both of us looked at him. He still had his eyes closed.
“What’d you say, Dad?”
Mr. Jordan didn’t answer. A moment later he mumbled something else we couldn’t understand.
“He’s not making sense,” I said. “He’s talking to himself.”
“He likes to gamble,” Shane said.
I looked at Shane. He had a strange look on his face, like he’d just realized something horrible.
“I think he’s about to die,” he said.
I started to disagree, but stopped myself. “Keep holding on to him,” I said.
14
The sun set below the horizon, behind the storm that rumbled and pulsed with lightning. I dropped the marker again, made my calculations, and shoved the spool back into my pocket. Then I checked my compass. We were still drifting to the southeast, but slower now. And I started to question why I was even bothering with navigation. There was no chance we were going to survive in the water long enough to get to land. But it was something to break the monotony. To make me stop thinking that the worst was yet to come.
“You want me to take the flag for a while?” Shane asked.
I was tired of pretending things were going to be okay. I didn’t have the energy to both try to survive and make him feel better about our situation.
“I don’t care,” I said.
“You think it even matters?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s almost dark,” Shane said. “I don’t see why we need it now.”
“Take it out,” I said. “I’ll hold it.”
Shane pulled the speargun out of my BCD. It felt so good to lose that bulky rod down my spine. I worke
d my shoulders in a circle and loosened up my bruised and tight back muscles. I saw Shane studying his dad.
“What do you think?” I said.
“It doesn’t even seem like I know him,” he said. “He works all the time.”
“My mom does the same thing,” I said.
Shane grew quiet for a moment. “How long do you think we have?” he said.
“How am I supposed to know?”
“You know more than I do about survival out here,” he said.
“Are you talking about dying? I’m not planning on dying.”
“How long can we go without drinking water?”
“You hear that thunder? You see that storm? We’re headed right toward it. We’ll have all the rainwater we want.”
“What about the lightning?”
I looked at him. “Do you really want me to tell you what I’m worried about? Do you really want to know?”
Shane nodded skeptically.
“Fine,” I said. “I’m worried about lightning. I’m worried about sharks. I’m worried about hypothermia.”
Shane took a deep, nervous breath. “But you don’t think we’ll die?”
“And I’m worried about dying.”
* * *
The Gulf water turned black with the onset of nightfall. We saw no stars, no moon, no light at all overhead except for the approaching storm that flashed like a glowing jellyfish in the sky. The waves were growing taller, and each time we rose onto a crest I felt a strong wind against my face.
For a while it seemed we might never reach the storm, but I was certain we were getting closer by the minute. And soon the thunder was no longer a faraway rumble, but an explosion I felt in my chest followed by an electric crack of light I felt in my teeth. The lightning flashes lit up the black surface like they were searching for something.
“What do we do?” Shane asked me over the building noise of the storm.
“Hold on,” I said. “Don’t let go of your dad. I won’t let go of you.”
The wind howled across the tops of the waves, white-capping them and rolling them over us. There was so much spray already pounding our faces that it was hard to tell when the rain started. I noticed Mr. Jordan turning sideways, coughing water.
“Spin him around!” I shouted over the noise. “Keep his back to the waves!”
“I can’t! He keeps turning!”
“Get him between us!”
We swam around until we had Mr. Jordan squeezed between us. After only a few seconds I realized how hard it was to steer his limp weight and keep myself positioned at the same time. And suddenly I was angry at him again.
You tried to kill us once and now you’re trying to kill us again. Why can’t you go ahead and die?
I knew it was really just as much Dad’s fault that we were in this situation, but Mr. Jordan was easier to dislike and a lot easier to blame. I couldn’t let go of him, but I was starting to think that maybe I should only be concerned with myself. After all, if it wasn’t for the Jordans we’d never be out here. If Mr. Jordan hadn’t left me and gone down the anchor rope in such a hurry, I could have told them to resurface and we could have reset.
The rain started coming down harder and we saw it slanting sideways in the blue flashes of lightning. At the wave crests it stung our faces like blown sand, and even the little bit that found its way into the edges of my mouth was tantalizing as my tongue sponged it up. It was all I could do not to open my mouth and bite at it.
I looked at Shane and saw him with his head tilted back and his mouth open.
“Don’t do it!” I yelled.
He rolled his eyes at me with his mouth still gaping wide.
“There’s too much spray!”
He closed his mouth and stared with a look of desperation.
“Wait!” I yelled.
A contorted look of agony came over him and he rolled his head and coughed and nodded and it looked like he was crying.
The air exploded like someone slamming a steel door, and lightning blinded my eyes like a thousand camera flashes in my face. The water went from black to a deep translucent blue and I saw suspended jellyfish glowing in the depths. I clenched my teeth and braced myself for an electric shock, but felt only the embrace of cold water.
Another explosion, the blinding light so close that it felt like we were inside it, and I couldn’t even tell where it was, penetrating the rain-tattered swells like a flashlight dropped into a bathtub. I heard Shane yell and I looked at him. He was hugging his father, clamped to him like he’d crawl inside him if he could. I wanted to yell, too, but something told me that if we floated quietly maybe the storm wouldn’t see us. Maybe it’d sweep past us and move off into the night, searching for someone else.
The light exploded and flashed again and I drew my knees up and shut my eyes and braced myself. I felt the energy of it like ice on my teeth. Then I realized that if I was considering it at all, I must still be alive. That its electric fingers hadn’t found me yet. Shane yelled again and I saw him squeezing his dad tighter. Suddenly I didn’t want to be alone, tossed about and exposed at arm’s length. I pulled myself close to Mr. Jordan and hugged his back.
15
The storm rumbled past, leaving the water beaten into high, smooth swells. We caught the rain in our mouths and held out our masks to collect more. It took a few minutes to catch a quarter inch, not nearly enough to satisfy our craving, but enough to give us hope and to make us believe that we were going to survive a little bit longer.
To our surprise Mr. Jordan was able to move his arms enough to hold one of the masks of water and tilt it to his lips. It seemed we were all so happy to be alive that we’d found new energy. Mr. Jordan drank silently and then I gave him his own mask and propped his hands near his chin so that he could collect water.
“Please keep raining,” Shane said to himself.
I was thinking the same thing.
“Just no more thunderstorms,” he said. “I thought we were dead.”
I drank what was in my mask again and held it out for more.
“You need some help, Dad?” Shane asked.
Mr. Jordan shook his head. He lifted, tilted, and sipped.
“Did you see all the jellyfish?” Shane said. “They were everywhere.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I wonder if the lightning kills any fish?”
“I hear they go deep,” I said. “I think they know.”
“Man,” Shane said. “I don’t see how it gets scarier than that.”
It was the scariest thing I’d ever experienced, but I knew things could get worse.
Sharks, I thought. Lightning is nothing compared to sharks.
* * *
In the early-morning hours the rain stopped and the Gulf was calm and still. I found myself nodding off, so I cut three short lengths of line from the marker spool and used one to tie the speargun to my waist. Then I gave Shane one and told him to tie himself to his dad on one side and I would do the same on the other. We connected ourselves loosely so that we couldn’t be separated by more than eight or ten feet if we drifted apart.
I told Shane to try to sleep before the sun came up and while the seas still lay in a post-storm calm. Then I shut my eyes and drifted off.
* * *
Light came against my eyelids and I opened them to see the sun, cool and orange, peeking above the eastern horizon. Like it had been looking for us all night and was now coming back again.
“Where do you think we are?” Shane asked.
I looked at him. Like me, he was no longer holding on to Mr. Jordan but drifting a few feet away.
I took out the marker and dropped the regulator. This time it took a lot longer and spooled nearly all the line. My calculations revealed the current to be about two miles per hour, still to the southeast.
“Drifting faster,” I said. “But it’s too complicated to figure out. That storm could have blown us in another direction. And I don’t know when the current sped up.”
“Guess,” he said.
“Fifty miles, maybe,” I said. “It’s too hard to know. But we should be reaching blue water soon.”
“What’s that?”
“The water will turn clear and blue as a swimming pool. It’s where you go to catch billfish and tuna. Deep water. Hundreds and even thousands of feet deep.”
“Is that bad?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it. But I’ve heard about it.”
“There’s no way they won’t find us today,” Shane said. “Dad won’t show at work, and they’ll know we’re missing for sure.”
“I can’t believe we haven’t seen anything,” I said. “No search planes. No ships. Not even a fisherman.”
“I hope they hurry up and get here. I don’t think I can take another day in the sun. My face feels like a big scab and my lips are cracked.”
“We’re going to need some more water,” I said.
“How?” he asked.
“And we have to figure a way to keep from getting so sunburned.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” he said.
“We need to take off our skinsuits. We can wrap them around our heads.”
“I’m too cold.”
“You do what you want,” I said. “I’m taking mine off.”
I swam close to Shane and gave him the speargun and my fins. Then I worked myself out of the BCD and passed that to him, too. He watched as I held my breath and struggled underwater to get out of my wetsuit. When I finally had it free I balled it before me and floated on it in nothing but my skinsuit. I felt the cool salt water caress my skin and considered the consequences of what I’d done. The sea lice would soon be trapped inside my wetsuit and feeling like flea bites. But they would have gotten inside eventually. I was just speeding up the process.
After I caught my breath I told Shane to turn around. It felt tiresome and silly being modest in such a situation, but I wasn’t going to strip naked in front of him.
Shane turned away. When I was sure he wasn’t looking I put the wetsuit in my teeth, went under, and peeled off the skinsuit. Then I surfaced, hugged the wetsuit to me, and caught my breath again. Shane was still looking away and Mr. Jordan had his eyes closed.