by Watt Key
Shane nodded greedily.
Mr. Jordan turned back to Dad. I saw his weasel brain working.
“I’ll give you five thousand dollars for the coordinates.”
I looked at Dad. That kind of money could solve a lot of our problems. Minutes before, I would have told him to take it. But if it was really this easy to get two thousand per trip, we’d make even more than that in a week.
“No deal,” Dad said. “My only offer’s on the table.”
Mr. Jordan stared at him, and I could imagine him using that same look to scare people in the courtroom. For the first time in a long while I felt myself swelling with pride for Dad. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him stand up to someone with such confidence.
“Fine,” Mr. Jordan finally said. “We’ll do it. Remind me how this works. Pay now or later?”
“You can—”
“You pay us now,” I interrupted.
Mr. Jordan looked at me.
Dad smiled. “That’s my daughter, Julie,” he said. “I suppose she’s the boss when it comes to the money.”
I could tell Mr. Jordan didn’t like the idea of me getting into the middle of things. He turned to Dad again and pulled out his wallet. As he thumbed a stack of cash onto the counter I brought him a pen and a waiver form. He glanced over the paper and signed it. I picked it up with the money and counted the bills. When I saw that it was the right amount I looked at Dad and nodded.
Dad slapped his palms on the counter. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get you boys out there.”
I thought I would have felt better holding that money, but I didn’t. It all seemed too rushed and thrown together from the beginning.
23
“Julie?” Shane said.
“What?”
“I see a light.”
“A light?”
“Yeah,” he said, like he’d already studied it for a while.
I thought he was imagining things. I put my face against his cheek again and tried to line my eyes up with whatever he was looking at.
“It’s red and flashing,” he said.
I didn’t see anything at first. Then I picked out a soft red glow just above the horizon.
I was flooded with hope as I considered that red light had to be connected to civilization in some way. Then I reasoned that no land would be this close to blue water. And a boat would have more lights and would never see us even if we could swim to it fast enough.
“It’s probably a plane,” I said.
“A plane would have other lights, too,” Shane said.
I thought about that and decided he was right. Planes showed red and green and white like a boat.
I kicked my fins and raised my head a few more inches above his shoulder and saw the light glow again.
“How far away do you think it is?” Shane asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s hard to tell.”
The light blinked again.
“If it’s moving,” I continued, “it’s not moving very fast.”
“I can’t swim that far,” he said.
“It seems like we’re moving toward it … Hold on.”
I let loose of Shane and got out my compass, which still glowed enough for me to read it. I got a bearing on the light and saw that it was south-southeast of us. Then I pulled out the marker and dropped it. I watched the line unspool until the end of it was yanked from my fingers and for a moment I watched the cork trail past the jellyfish into the depths.
“It’s too deep,” I said.
“Too deep for what?”
Shane hadn’t noticed that I’d lost the marker. It didn’t seem to matter.
“We’re probably still drifting to the southeast. So we need to alter our course to the southwest to intercept it.”
Shane didn’t answer.
“We need to swim crosscurrent,” I said. “We might be able to make it.”
“My legs are so numb I don’t think I can get them working again.”
“We have to try,” I said.
I dove under and grabbed one of his legs, bent it, and straightened it. Then I did the same to the other and resurfaced.
“Anything?” I asked.
“A little,” he said.
Suddenly I couldn’t stand the thought of us losing more valuable time. I grabbed his arm and began to kick. “I think I can pull us awhile,” I said. “Keep trying.”
I put on my dive mask, kept my face down, and paddled us silently along. When I wasn’t catching a breath or glancing at my compass I stared past the jellyfish into the endless dark. I imagined moving above the corduroy ripples of the seafloor hundreds of feet below, and this thought gave me a sense of progress. After a while I stopped and got another compass heading on the light. It seemed like we hadn’t moved at all. I felt panic begin to grip me.
“You’ve got to kick, Shane,” I said. “I can’t do this alone.”
“I’ve been trying,” he said.
“You’ve got to try harder! We can’t make it like this!”
24
I saw that Shane wasn’t going to be able to get moving on his own. I got in front of him, went under, and lifted his legs until he was floating on his back.
“Grab them with your arms,” I said. “Try to pull your knees to your chest.”
He began to move his arms slowly toward his knees. I grabbed his hand and helped him. I watched him clutch the neoprene of his wetsuit at the knees. He tugged at it until the rubbery material popped loose. I became frustrated. I put one arm behind his neck and one behind his knee, cradling him like a baby, and folded his left leg up to his chest.
“Now straighten it,” I said.
He slowly straightened the leg and a wave of hope passed through me. I swam around to his other side, did the same thing, then let him bob upright again.
“Try now,” I said.
I put my face into the water and watched his legs as he was able to slowly bend and straighten them. Afraid of losing more time, I grabbed his arm and began pulling him.
“Keep working them,” I said.
Gradually Shane was able to start kicking enough to take away some of my burden. But the red light still appeared an impossible distance away, and I began to doubt that we’d actually make it. Current direction changes all the time, and I was basing our heading on information that was over a day old. But at least trying got us both moving again and warmed us up.
After nearly an hour of steady swimming I was exhausted. I got a final compass bearing and saw that it was now mostly southeast of us. And until we narrowed the distance some, and really saw how we were drifting, there was no sense in wasting more strength.
“You okay?” I said.
“My teeth are chattering again,” he said, “but at least I can swim a little. That thing doesn’t seem any closer.”
“I think it is,” I said. “It certainly isn’t any farther away, which is good.”
“What if it’s land? What if it’s an island?”
“I don’t know how it could be,” I said. “There’s no way. So don’t get your hopes up.”
“How can I not get my hopes up? It’s probably the last chance we’ve got. We’re dying, Julie. If that light doesn’t help us, we’re finished.”
“Let’s rest and save our energy,” I said. “We’re going to have to swim some more when we get closer.”
“You may have to work my legs again,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him, but now my legs and arms were getting stiff, too. If we were going to make it at all, we needed to make it fast.
* * *
For two more hours we paddled steadily while the red light appeared to rise very slowly above the horizon. Gradually I discerned a patch of darkness beneath it. We were probably a mile away when I knew what it was.
“An oil rig,” I said.
Shane didn’t respond.
I felt myself become overwhelmed with hope.
“Shane, I t
hink it’s a floating oil rig!”
“I’ll bet they have ski jackets,” he mumbled.
“What are you talking about?”
“And beach towels.”
I realized he was delirious, in the advanced stages of hypothermia. I grabbed my compass and got a reading.
“It’s a little bit more to the west,” I said. “We need to swim harder. Can you do it?”
“Sure, I can do it. I’m on the cross-country team.”
I cradled him and tried to force his knees to his chest, but his muscles were much stiffer this time. I couldn’t even get him into a sitting position.
“Ugh,” I groaned, frustrated. I grabbed his knee and shoved it hard, but it only pushed him away from me until he came tight against the line. I watched him bob upright again.
“Let’s call a taxi,” he said.
It was all I could do to stay calm. I pulled him to me again and began rubbing his legs, but my arms were stiff, too, and I couldn’t apply much pressure.
“Get my cell phone,” he said.
“There’s no taxis or phones,” I said. “You have to swim, Shane! You have to try!”
“It’s in my pocket.”
I started shaking and coughing. As dehydrated as I was, it was as close as my body could come to crying. I grabbed him by the straps of his BCD and shook him. “We came too far for this, Shane!”
He stared back at me quizzically. I thought about the consequences of leaving him, and I was forced to consider something about the rig that had been bothering me. There should have been more than one red light on it. It should have been lit like an amusement park if there were people working and living on it.
“What if there’s nobody on that thing?” I said. “I can’t send anybody for you!”
“It’s okay,” he said.
“No, it’s not okay.”
I turned him on his back, grabbed his arm, and began kicking, dragging him like a log. My legs were so stiff and numb that it seemed like my fins barely moved. I didn’t know if it was possible to make it, but I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I left him.
* * *
It rose before us like an abandoned steel city supported nearly a hundred feet above the surface by four enormous floating columns and a crosswork of beams connecting them. As I struggled to pull us closer I began to hear water licking and slurping through the massive beams of its understructure. Otherwise, there was no sound coming from it at all. Only the soft red glow of the hazard light from the top of the derrick.
My body was about to shut down. I had to force every kick, all the while fearing I couldn’t make it. We were going to pass within a hundred yards, but that hundred yards might as well have been a mile. It wasn’t possible.
“I can’t do it, Shane,” I sputtered. “I can’t make it.”
But Shane wasn’t answering. He hadn’t said a word since I’d started dragging him. Part of me wanted to stop and check on him to see if he was still breathing, but I reasoned that it didn’t matter now. And I really didn’t want to know.
I stopped swimming and let go of Shane and floated there, staring at the black wall towering over us. I had never felt such helplessness. I could only watch myself drift from the last chance of ever seeing my parents again. Continuing on into complete darkness. A final goodbye to life.
25
I felt something tap my side. I immediately thought of sharks and spun and kicked. In the faint light of the sky glow I saw a long seam in the water next to me. I reached out and touched a rope as big around as my arm. I grabbed it and felt it move heavily atop the surface.
A mooring line.
“Shane!”
I shook him.
“Shane! I’ve got a rope!”
He muttered something I didn’t understand. I began pulling myself along the rope, towing Shane behind me. Slowly I drew us into the dark night-shadow of the rig. When we were about fifty yards away the rope began to curve up into the air to a lower platform about twenty feet overhead. I was facing a crosscurrent swim to make it the rest of the distance to the understructure, where I hoped to find something to climb onto. There was no way I could do it towing Shane with me.
“Listen, Shane,” I said. “Can you hear me?”
He didn’t answer.
“I’m going to have to tie you off to this rope while I try to get up there. Then I’ll figure out a way to get you up. Okay?”
No answer.
I untied the line from my BCD and tied it to the mooring rope. This time I doubled the strength of the line for safe measure.
“I’ll be back, okay? Float here until I figure it out.”
I kicked toward the understructure. Fortunately there were no tall waves. In rough seas there would be no way to approach the steel beams without getting slammed and cut to pieces on the millions of barnacles cemented to every part of the lower structure. I could already hear the beams clicking and snapping as the Gulf swells rose and fell over them.
I pulled both of our sun masks out of my BCD pocket. The swells were gentle enough that I figured if I protected my hands from the barnacles, I might be able to hold on to something. I stuck my fists inside the cloth and tucked the edges into the wrists of my wetsuit.
As I drew nearer, the swells lifted and dropped me before a massive grid of iron that slurped and glistened in the shadows. On the next uplift I reached out and touched the steel and let my hands slide lightly down the barnacles before drifting away again. On the next approach I moved over a few feet, rose up, and ran my hands over the steel again. This time I felt a ledge that I could hold on to. I gripped it, feeling the barnacles press sharply into my makeshift gloves.
When the swell dropped I was left hanging there, barely able to hold on. The weight was too much for my gloves, and I clenched my jaw in pain as the barnacles pressed through the cloth and cut into the soggy skin of my palms like glass shards. Then I realized there was no way to climb with my fins on. I waited until the next swell supported me, then let go with one hand to work my fins off with the other. The barnacles cut deeper into my palm and the pain was excruciating.
I tore the fins off, let them fall into the water, then grabbed the steel with both hands again. Scraping my feet around, I quickly found a foothold below me. My booties protected my feet from being cut, and I had to keep as much weight on them as I could. Once I was supporting my weight, I grabbed higher and pulled myself up with what felt like the last of my strength. And finally I was out of the cold water for the first time in nearly forty-eight hours. But I was exhausted and clinging to a thin lip of steel with shredded hands and trembling knees. I couldn’t hang on for long, and I was certain I didn’t have the strength to do it again.
To my left I saw a steel beam angling up toward one of the columns where it was welded to what appeared to be a low platform about four feet wide. I reached out, grabbed the beam, and fell over onto it, feeling more barnacles cut into my hands and through the legs of my wetsuit. I crawled up the beam, out of the barnacle zone, and under a railing. I rolled across the steel grate of the platform and I was suddenly lying on my back and free of the cruel salt water.
* * *
As I lay resting, the waves rose and fell beneath me like snapping dogs. I began to study the underside of the rig and saw more of the small platforms ascending the outside of the column and connected with ladder rungs. I wanted more than anything to lie there and rest, but I thought of Shane drifting alone and I forced myself to get up again. I left the cloth on my hands to offer what little protection it could for the deep slices on my palms. Then I started up the ladder into the bowels of this mysteriously abandoned superstructure.
* * *
The underside of the rig was enormous. As I climbed higher, sky glow reflecting off the water illuminated the steel in pale hues of wavering light. I must have ascended a hundred ladder steps, my footfalls echoing dull and loud under the lonely place. My hands felt sticky and oily with blood and I told myself it was a good thing I couldn�
�t see them, since it would only worry me more. They were going to have to work for me no matter how they felt and what shape they were in.
At the last of the platforms beneath the rig I found myself looking down at the Gulf swells a hundred feet below. Overhead was a confusing network of pipes and metal catwalks crisscrossing in the faint light. One of the catwalks led to a staircase that descended to the mooring dock where Shane’s rope was tied. I still didn’t have any idea how I was going to get him up, but I decided to start off by inspecting the area and seeing what all I had to work with.
I made my way over and down to the dock, where I found the rope fastened to a giant cleat. I looked over the water and saw a dark lump against the rope that I assumed was Shane. The way it was drifting perpendicular to the current told me it must be tied off or hung on something beyond the rig. There appeared to be enough slack in it to pull Shane to me, but even if I’d had all my strength and my hands weren’t cut, the rope itself was too heavy to lift twenty feet, much less with Shane on it. Then another crushing thought came over me.
What if the line tying him to the rope didn’t hold?
I remembered that I’d doubled the strength of it, but in his condition Shane wasn’t going to be any help, and all of his weight would rely on only two strands of that thin line.
But I didn’t see any other options. I had to somehow try to pull him up and hope the line held.
26
Except for some short pieces of sun-bleached line, the dock was empty of anything I could use to reach Shane. Then I saw a thinner rope and a cable dangling from above. I looked up to see the cable attached to a crane near the top of the rig. The rope had a hook on the end and seemed to lead to what looked like a smaller winch. I started up the stairs again until I was standing on the first level of the rig. Judging by the rope spools and barrels and other equipment, I guessed the space was some sort of staging area for supplies. There was even a gate in the railing designed to swing open and accept materials transferred from below. I examined the winch and saw that it was electric, but it also had a manual crank that operated much like the ones we had on boat trailers. I flipped the cog lock on it and began spooling off-line. When the hook at the end was below the mooring dock I relocked the cog and hurried back down.