“Vaguely.”
“Well, everyone was in despair, for it seemed the work could not be finished. And Elisha prayed. He prayed and he prayed and suddenly the ax head rose from the bottom of the river and floated. They got it and put it back on and finished the job.”
Linda applauded lightly, Bob joining her in congratulations.
“Do you know why I think that story is important?” asked Jim.
“Tell us,” said Linda.
“Because,” said Jim, “it shows the power of prayer. It demonstrates to us how faith and prayer can work miracles. Elisha believed and God caused that ax head to float.”
Leaving his sermonette behind, Jim hoisted himself through the hole and went topside. Usually he tried to absent himself when it was time for Linda’s salve applications.
That night Linda prayed before she slept. Bob could not hear her prayer, but he could feel her lips moving rapidly and silently as her body trembled. He wondered if she trembled from illness or from newfound fear of the Lord.
On the morning of August 1, Bob carved the date on the calendar beside his bed. Then he put down his knife and listened to the sea. Rarely did he go outside anymore. It was his belief that he could best conserve his energy by lying still. And, of course, it frightened Linda when she was left alone.
Today the winds must be at least fifteen knots, he estimated, and they were erratic again. Ninety per cent of the time the winds came from the north and west, giving Bob daily hope that the Triton would sooner or later run into shore. But if they ever turned and blew steadily from the east, then the Triton would be expelled deeper and deeper into the Pacific.
“How many days?” asked Linda weakly. She had slept well past the 7 A.M. wake-up, but Bob had not disturbed her. She was sleeping more and more.
Quickly Bob scanned the calendar. “Today begins the twenty-second,” he said, kissing her gently. A bluish cast had come over her skin, and the blood vessels at her temples threatened to push through the taut skin. During the nights, when she complained of her fingers being cold, Bob placed her hands under his armpits to keep them warm and often rubbed them to stimulate her flow of blood. Then during the days he held her fingers in his mouth; they were ice.
Picking up the water jug, Bob poured Linda a morning swallow. The water supply was going quickly, for she required more and more. At first Bob had sacrificed half of his daily cup to his wife, then he asked Jim if, in addition, they could increase her ration. Immediately Jim agreed. Now Linda was drinking from three to four cups a day. On this morning, there were but five gallons remaining from the thirteen discovered in the outrigger. But a pinch or two of powdered milk remained. The eggs were gone. Linda’s milk shakes would be impossible to prepare within the week.
Since both men knew that Linda was failing, Bob worked harder to combat the gloom. Daily he tried to introduce new games. At night he would lie awake, desperately rummaging through ideas, hoping to hit upon a situation he could turn into a game to make the morning hours less long, less silent. One he devised was called Wedding Gifts. It excluded Jim, but he spent more and more time topside anyway, looking out at the empty seascape. In his absence, Bob thought up a certain wedding gift, then challenged Linda to determine its identity, who gave it to them, and where it had been placed in their house. Enchanted by the memories, Linda liked the game best of all, playing it for hours, sometimes falling asleep in mid-interrogation, then coming to and resuming her questions without knowing that she had gone limp in Bob’s arms. Over and over they guessed the set of stoneware and the hand-carved teak fruit bowl and the tie-dyed wall hanging from Africa, and the braided rug her parents had given them.
Once, when they had momentarily run dry of gifts to remember, Bob began to talk of the piece of land they owned outside of Kelso, Washington—three acres of heavily wooded land, on the side of a hill, with a view of the college town and the river that threaded below. They would build their dream house there when they returned. It would be of rough-hewn timber and shakes, with interior walls of stone and wood. As naturalists they were committed to preserving the character of the site so they had agreed not to cut down the trees necessary for a yard. Their house would be settled among the trees as a member of the forest, not an intruder.
When Linda stopped talking for a while, Bob permitted her a brief meditation. Then he broke into her thoughts.
“What are you thinking about?”
“I was just arranging furniture in the house. I have every room all planned.”
Realizing that the dream of their house sustained Linda better than any of their talk or games, Bob found a piece of styrofoam and quickly whittled a rough model. When that was done, he pulled off a bracing beam from the Triton and began to carve the model in wood.
As she watched the rooms emerge from the block of wood, her dulling eyes brightened. She reached out to touch the house, and Bob let her hold it. Later, as he worked, Linda began considering an architectural problem that had been of concern to both of them. They did not want to cut down trees for a yard or a patio, but how would they create an outdoor area with lawn furniture and a barbecue pit, a place to watch the sunsets?
“I’ve got it,” she finally said weakly. “Couldn’t we build a deck on top of the garage and put in a funny spiral staircase? It would work, wouldn’t it, Bob? Couldn’t we do that?”
Bob immediately agreed. Privately he had no idea if the garage could support a deck, but he would not extinguish the faint light that danced in his wife’s eyes. For he knew, as he carved, as he held her, as he struggled to sustain a pleasant face when within him there was fury and fear, he knew that unless rescue came soon, the time left to Linda could be counted in days, if not hours.
(12)
A yellow-finned tuna, weighing perhaps thirty pounds, swam into their chamber the next morning, idling beneath the rope beds in what appeared to be curiosity. Seeing the great fish, Bob lunged for it, almost rolling off the bed in a vain attempt to seize it with his hands. But the tuna flicked its tail and darted easily out of reach, streaking to freedom out of the central hatch cover.
Previously the men had spent several hours trying to catch the tiny silverfish that swam by the thousands in schools about them. Perhaps these were the bait that lured the tuna into the bedroom. But even with makeshift nets and seines rigged from pieces of cloth, not a single one was caught.
In his explorations immediately following the capsizing, Jim had found a spool of 150-pound test fishing line, and half a dozen metallic leaders with tuna hooks. He had affixed the hooks to the line and thrown them eagerly into the sea, with no bait. Promptly a ferocious strike from an unidentified sea creature almost tore the line from his grip, but as he struggled to stay with the fish, the cord went loose. The fish had snapped the leader. Tying another leader on more securely, Jim tried once more, only to pull in the same empty line. He kept trying until all the hooks and leaders were gone, and all that remained was the cord. That had been three weeks ago.
“I wish we could catch that tuna,” muttered Bob, imagining the supply of fresh meat, liquid, and protein for Linda.
Jim had been sleeping when Bob made his lunge, and now he turned on his side, peering into the water lapping at his mattress. He watched silently for a time, then he suddenly sat up with an idea contained in his expression. “The antenna!” he said, climbing through the hole and working his way to the submerged cockpit of the Triton. In a few minutes, Jim dropped back into the chamber, carrying the radio antenna. About five feet long, it resembled an automobile whiplash antenna.
Jim asked for the file. Bob kept it under his mattress, daily honing his knife for carving.
As Jim began working on the antenna, Linda stirred, waking suddenly with a startled look. During the night she had screamed again, waking Bob and in her hysteria insisting that the Triton was disintegrating. As he always did, he rocked her back to sleep, murmuring protection and love.
“Good morning,” said Bob cheerfully. “Jim’s promised t
o catch us some breakfast.”
Holding up the antenna, Jim showed how he had quickly filed one end into a razor-sharp point. It had become a slender makeshift harpoon.
Linda looked at the harpoon, then asked suddenly, “Where are we?”
Bob grew worried. Had she lost her sense of time and place? “What do you mean?” he replied. “We’re still on our vacation cruise.”
“I know that,” she said, smiling normally. Her rationality was very much intact. “I mean, approximately where are we? What part of the ocean?”
Bob’s guess, and it was little more than that, would position the Triton somewhere off the coast of southern California, perhaps out from Santa Barbara. Linda nodded, digested the information, and then spoke authoritatively.
“I read a book on fishing in the waters of the West Coast,” she began.
“Of course you did,” said Jim, continually struck by the thoroughness of her life.
“The book said there are sea bass in these waters, giant ones. They get up to seven hundred pounds.”
“That’s encouraging,” said Jim. “I’ll make the point a little sharper.”
Linda giggled. “Catch us one of those seven-hundred-pounders, Jim. That should do us for a while.”
“What would you do with it if Jim got one?” said Bob.
“Well,” said Linda impishly. “We could eat just its ear.”
Dressing in his scuba suit, Jim took the harpoon and dropped into the water beneath his bed. He would try his handmade spear here before using it in the open sea. As he disappeared, Bob and Linda leaned off their mattress, watching the murky water. Several times within the next half hour Jim emerged, grabbing air, shaking his head negatively, plunging down again. Then, suddenly, a dozen feet from their beds, the water began to churn. Jim came up thrashing, trying to lift his harpoon above water. But it was bent in half, like a bamboo pole. Presumably Jim had hit an enormous fish, one which was struggling to expel the antenna buried in its flesh.
Clapping excitedly, Linda cried encouragement. “Stay with him!” Bob crossed his finger, hoping, hoping.
The battle endured for another minute, Jim forced to dive again and follow the creature toward the bow hatch. Then the water stopped churning. Jim surfaced, ripping off his mask in disgust. He had even lost the harpoon. “I had him good,” he said, climbing wearily onto his bed and breathing hard. “But the copper wire inside the antenna started unraveling.” The harpoon had disintegrated in Jim’s hands, and the fish finally yanked it away, fleeing through one of the open holes in the Triton.
The three sat silently and dejectedly for a long while until Linda broke the morose spell. “Somewhere out there is a very funny fish,” she said, and all managed to smile at the image of the creature trailing a long copper antenna wire.
The flurry over the lost fish soon wore Linda down, and she fell back into bed, her body racked with dry coughs and the rattling noise that had become so familiar to Bob when she had trouble breathing. Now he felt it best to cancel the morning talk and games so she could rest.
But Linda would not have it. She wanted the discussion hour this day.
“Okay,” said Bob. “What’ll it be? Politics? Tolstoy? Wedding gifts?”
“A new one,” said Linda. “It’s called People.”
“People?”
A simple subject, explained Linda, but one that could well occupy them. The point was for each of them to roam through their lives and remember people whom they admired and to tell why.
Instantly Bob understood. Even though Linda could not bear to look at her face in the mirror anymore, she knew how ravaged it had become. She knew her condition was desperate, and she did not want to die without saying a figurative good-bye to those who had enhanced her life. Today she would line them up and embrace them all.
“That’s an interesting subject,” said Bob. “You want to start?”
Linda shook her head. No, she wanted Jim to be first.
Still angry at losing the fish, Jim was not in a mood for games. But he recognized that Linda’s need must be attended.
“Okay,” he said. “People. Wilma, first of all. She’s the most wonderful woman a man could wish for. She works so hard, she never complains, she keeps a good home. She’s given me two children, and there’ll be another one if—when we get home.”
Then he stopped. Jim was not adroit at description. Moreover, the memory of his family and the expected child made his eyes cloud. He turned his face away.
Linda prodded him gently. “Go on,” she said. “Where did you meet her?”
“At college,” he replied. “We were both working in the cafeteria. She was on the food line, I was sort of a cleanup boy. I noticed her and I got up my courage and I asked her out and fell in love with her and we got married and I’ve never regretted a second of our life together.” Thus delivered of his instant biography, a smile crossed his face. “I remember one more thing. She told me her parents were from Russia, so I wrote my parents and told them I was going out with a Russian girl. But don’t worry, I told them. She doesn’t look like Mrs. Khrushchev. Wilma has never let me forget that.”
Abruptly Jim terminated his talk and he rubbed his eyes. When he spoke again, he fought against sobs which threatened to break. “I—I just wish I could tell her right now …” he said haltingly.
Linda reached across and touched his arm. “You are telling her, Jim,” she said. “Wilma knows. She feels your love this very moment.”
How excellent is this woman, thought Bob, as he watched her console the strange man who was his brother-in-law. Here she is, trapped in an upside-down boat, wasting away, hungry, thirsty, gravely ill, and she reaches out to comfort a man who is distraught because he cannot be with his wife.
“Bob?” Linda turned to her husband, indicating that it was his turn. Had he yielded to temptation, he would have spent the hour if not the day telling Linda of his love for her. But he would save that for the next time Jim went topside, when they were alone, in each other’s arms.
“Let’s see,” said Bob. “People I admire.” Quickly he listed several—a horticulturist and his wife at whose home he had boarded during college, a teacher who had challenged and inspired him, assorted friends, relatives, brothers, sisters. With each new name, Linda agreed enthusiastically, for she had heard her husband speak favorably of them before. Hearing the names on this morning contented her.
Bob paused. “And my dad, of course.”
Looking up, Jim appeared surprised. “You told me once that the two of you were never very close.”
Bob shook his head. “No, I didn’t mean that. There was a long time when I didn’t understand him. When I was a little kid, I looked up at him and all I saw was this very hard man, a disciplinarian. He plowed the fields, he stored the hay, he expected me to sit on a tractor without complaint for ten hours a day. He set the pace, you see, and he felt a kid should keep up. There didn’t seem to be much else in his life. Hardly any humor. He slept a little, he worked a lot, he went to church, he prayed, he tried to put God into me and my brothers and sisters. I guess I felt he was a cold, emotionless man who didn’t care about me very much.”
Jim understood. His own father was from the same hard-working, God-fearing mold. And Jim himself, though displaced from the country to the city, held much the same values.
“What made you change your feeling about him?” asked Linda. She knew the answer, but she wanted to hear it again.
“You,” answered Bob, gazing at his wife with tenderness. “And Mother Russia.”
The story began pouring from him. After he decided not to pursue the ministry in the Adventist faith, after he decided to go even further and resign formally from the church, there ensued four or five years of coldness with his devout family. Only on two or three occasions during these years, for less than an hour each time, did he even speak with his parents. And these difficult moments had been filled with their exhortations for him to reconsider. Always Bob refused, always the far
ewells had been chilled. Discomforted, he worried about the estrangement. But even exile from his family would not change his decision to live outside the church.
When Bob met Linda and proposed marriage, he felt it necessary at least to introduce her to his parents.
“Dad’s face just lit up,” said Bob, happy in the recollection. “I don’t think he had ever seen anything so pretty.” Shortly after that, Bob had an idea. He and his bride-to-be had decided to go to Europe for their honeymoon, a journey of several weeks. They had thought about including Russia in their itinerary. Would his parents like to join them? Both had been born in Russia, both had left as small children, neither had ever returned to the soil of their birth. They would enjoy such a trip, thought Bob, and perhaps the wounds could be healed.
“Well,” Bob went on, “much to my surprise, Dad jumped at the chance. We had the marriage. It was beautiful; Linda and I flew immediately to Amsterdam. There we rendezvoused with the folks, who had come over separately.” In a Volkswagen camper which Bob bought there, they all drove to the Russian border in Finland.
“The first thing we saw was this big sign in several different languages, very clearly warning ‘Do Not Get Out of Car.’ Well, Dad was so excited at finally setting foot in Russia again that he jumped out and began jabbering at this guard. When the guard answered him, Dad turned to us and cried, ‘Imagine that! He speaks Russian!’ Dad started telling the guard all this news—how he had left Russia as a kid, how he grew wheat and cattle in North Dakota, how he had always dreamed of coming back someday. The guard just stared at him, totally perplexed, a little happy at Dad’s elation, but annoyed that the rule was being broken. Finally he just pointed, sternly, at the warning sign. Dad read it again and got back in the car, still talking, not the least bit sheepish.”
As he reminisced, Bob picked up the scale model of the house and began to carve. Linda moved closer to him, finding warmth in his work and his story. Her eyes closed now and then, and she would come to suddenly, with a start, but she wanted Bob to continue.
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