Lost!

by Thomas Thompson

  While Jim napped during the midday free period, Bob slipped quietly topside and poured the fluids onto a pile of rags. Now for the flame. Removing the magnifying lens from the binoculars, he held it patiently at an angle through which the sun’s noon rays would pass. He waited for a chemical reaction to occur; the tiniest of sparks would set aflame his makeshift torch. Within thirty minutes, a wisp of smoke was born, Bob blowing anxiously to encourage its growth. Moments later, the rags began to burn. Only now did he yell in triumph for Jim to hurry and see what his ingenuity had wrought.

  When Jim saw the black smoke curling from the wadded rags, he burst toward the torch, hands outstretched, as if prepared to smother it with his raw hands. “No!” he cried, distraught. For a moment Bob thought he feared that the boat would catch on fire, but there was scant likelihood of that. Bob even had a jar of salt water at the ready should a spark begin to smolder on the damp deck.

  But that was not Jim’s worry. He ran headlong into Bob’s grip and fought his way toward the fire. “What’s the matter, Jim?” said Bob, dumbfounded. Jim began to weep, tears coming quickly to his eyes, his face contorted.

  “You’re interfering with God!” he cried. “This is not God’s plan!”

  And Bob understood. In Jim’s mind, the five-day drama was preordained. Every word, every gesture, every action was being played from that master script with which they could not tamper.

  “I’ll put it out!” shouted Bob, seizing the jar of water and dumping it on the rags. But in the extinguishing, a cloud of smoke rose and spread about them.

  Jim watched the cloud in despair, as if it were his life in ruins. Wordlessly, still crying, he descended to his bed and wept for more than an hour.

  “I’m sorry,” murmured Bob. “I was only trying to help.”

  Near dinner, Jim composed himself and forgave Bob. Rescue would still come tomorrow, he said, for his God was forgiving. But Bob must never again try to alter God’s will. If Bob’s fire had lured rescuers, then the thought would have been that they had accomplished the miracle, not God.

  The fifth day. Saturday, August 11. The Sabbath, according to Jim. He was up early, before the 7 A.M. deadline. When Bob awoke, he saw that Jim was busily grooming himself, combing his hair, brushing his beard, now full from a month of not shaving. The beard was dark, in contrast to his blond hair. “By tonight,” said Jim, his fervor once again at the summit it had reached before the incident of the torch, “we will be at a feast.”

  After they had prayed and chanted the texts from John, Bob reached for the jug of water and lifted it. There was but an inch left, enough for two portions. He unscrewed the cap and poured a swallow into his cup. He handed it to Jim, who looked at it curiously. Finally he shook his head in refusal.

  “No,” he said, “I want to wait until the end of the Sabbath.” His holy day would end at sundown.

  “Maybe,” said Jim, “there’ll be time to get to a church. When we get to shore, I’m going to ask to be taken to the nearest church. And I will give testimony to God’s power.” He clapped his hands together in excitement. “Do you think they’ll believe it?” he wondered. “This morning, lost at sea. Tonight, standing in God’s house, praising His name.”

  So consumed was Jim with the passion of his belief, so convinced was he that rescue would come by nightfall that Bob was once again caught up in the ecstasy. It had been his custom to extend his daily cup of water with a swallow or two for breakfast, another portion at dinner, saving a small amount for the middle of the night when he always awoke with a parched throat.

  But today, the fifth day, the day of deliverance, he would wait until the rescuers and their strong arms lifted him.

  “Do you still have the can of root beer?” asked Bob. They were saving the last soda to drink in celebration.

  Jim nodded.

  “Good. We’ll drink it the moment we set foot on land and not before,” announced Bob.

  The hours raced by. Conducting Sabbath services, Jim preached to his audience of one, and Bob listened attentively. During the week he had suffered feelings of ambivalence. I have not really returned to the church, he told himself in the dark hours of quiet. I’m just humoring Jim. It cannot hurt, he reassured himself. It cannot hurt. Once, during the five days, Bob had even wondered out loud what would happen if God did not send rescue. Jim would not answer the question. He had no response to a skeptic.

  On this, the fifth day, in the final hours, Bob felt no such pinpricks of doubt. His commitment, for the moment, was total. In his lap he even held the souvenirs he would take ashore from their ordeal—the carved house, Linda’s purse, the cheap compass, the knives.

  Near 5 P.M., when the air grew cool and the winds turned chill, Jim stopped praying and fell silent. He raised himself through the hole, and Bob followed, ready for the most important moment of his life. Slowly Jim lifted the water jug and with ceremony removed its cap. Pouring carefully, Jim held it upside down so that every last drop drained into their two cups.

  With the solemnity of communion, the men drank, Bob sipping slowly, Jim throwing back his head and almost greedily consuming the water, precious drops splashing on his beard. When he was done, Jim lowered the cup and smiled. Had the whistle of the rescue boat shattered the silence, Bob would not have been surprised.

  Now they waited.

  They sat on top of the overturned trimaran and they waited, their eyes sweeping to the far corners of the horizon. Until the sun slipped away and blackness fell on the sea to end the Sabbath, they waited.

  Finally Bob felt the cold and began to shiver. He went below, saddened. But Jim stayed on top, waiting, waiting, his lips moving in prayer. Waiting. Waiting for God.

  (15)

  “August 13, 1973.”

  When Bob finished carving the thirty-fourth day on his calendar of survival, he went topside to paint the fourth—or was it fifth? he had lost count—piece of wood to set afloat on an errand of emergency. He painted carefully the now familiar legend—the name of the trimaran, the date it capsized, the fact that as of this day there was still life in its survivors. What is happening to these? Bob wondered, as he flung the board out to the waves and watched it ride the swells until it could be seen no more. Are my others still afloat on the sea, or have they washed ashore at some foreign beach where a native who cannot read English has nailed my cry for help on the wall of his hut? Or is one being studied this very moment in the command room of some Coast Guard station, with admirals and marine scientists analyzing the water content in the molecules, deducing what special kind of salt can be found only in this one special patch of the Pacific Ocean?

  Bob smiled ruefully. What does it matter? he decided. My messages are more likely sinking a thousand yards from here, their layers peeling and decomposing, even as the tissue and cells of my flesh slough daily and fall away. But painting the boards gives me something to do for an hour. They fill the minutes. Aren’t I thinking about them now? Fantasies for a dulling head. What else is there to think?

  When he went below, Bob told Jim the news of the morning—that he had painted another board and thrown it into the sea, that the ocean was calm, that the wind was less than five knots, that the sun would break through the haze by midday.

  Jim gave no sign of hearing. Curled into a fetal position, he lay facing the wall. He had scarcely moved since the failure of the five-day drama of the water jug. He had neither expressed his apologies to Bob nor shown any emotion at all save the silence that was beginning to rot Bob’s nerves.

  Yesterday, Sunday, Bob had tried to cheer him with chatter, jokes, songs, but everything he attempted was met with cold silence from a man suffering from acute disconsolation.

  “I can’t take this from you much longer,” he said now, pouring himself a swallow of water no larger than a teaspoon. It was their next to last jug. “I’m taking a sip of water, Jim.”

  Silence.

  “I want you to know that I am taking a sip of water, Jim. That’s our rule, remember
? We have to tell each other every time we take a drop out of this container. I won’t take another one until dinnertime. You hear me, Jim? I don’t want you looking at the jug later on today and accusing me of taking an extra sip. I’m telling you that I’m drinking a sip.”

  Silence.

  “By the way, in case you’re interested, Jim, I’ve discovered that if you put a tiny dab of toothpaste in your mouth, it relieves your thirst. It works. It really does. You ought to try it.”

  Silence.

  “If you get tired of toothpaste, you can try a drop of vanilla extract.”

  Silence.

  “Listen, Jim. It’s …” Brusquely, Bob reached over the dividing line between their mattresses and grabbed Jim’s arm, limp and unresponsive. He held it up so that he could see Jim’s watch. His had quit on him the week of Linda’s death.

  “It’s almost ten o’clock. I put up with this silence of yours Saturday night and all day yesterday because I know you were disappointed. But I’m not going to take it another day. I’m sorry God didn’t come through for us, but, like you said, He has His own game plan. Maybe you pushed Him too hard.”

  Finally Jim stirred.

  “Maybe you put it to God the hard way, Jim. I mean, after all, a fellow could say, ‘I believe in You, Jesus, therefore I ask You to give me a million dollars, and I challenge You to do it.’ That would be pushing the old boy pretty far. We’re going to be rescued, Jim. I believe that. We’ve got to believe that. But we can’t put a deadline on it. It may happen at four fifteen this afternoon. But if it doesn’t, we’ve got to make it through tomorrow somehow, and we’ve got to help each other.”

  Finally Jim turned and showed his face. He resembled a man who had just been given the sentence of incurable disease. Shadows of pain and bewilderment had come suddenly to his eyes.

  “I really believed,” said Jim in a voice turned weak and old. “I really believed we would be rescued.”

  “But we weren’t,” said Bob, shocked at how quickly Jim had aged. “And it’s not fair to take it out on me. Now pull yourself together. The topic this morning is how socialistic nations are similar to the capitalist society.”

  Jim shook his head sadly.

  “Or,” hurried Bob, “we could talk about baseball. I wonder who’s winning the pennants.”

  Neither baseball nor the political structures of world powers were of interest to Jim. In his depression, a more weighty personal matter had enveloped him.

  “We’re going to die,” said Jim.

  Bob pretended not to hear the condemnation. In pedagogic fashion, he tried to move the discussion off the dead center of Jim’s despair. But for the better part of an hour, the men spoke in alternating currents, one of life, the other of death, neither relating to one another. They could have been two people conversing in separate languages.

  Finally Bob stopped. This is absurd, he reasoned. I am the one who should be lying with my face to the wall in melancholy. I am the one who lost a wife. But if I do not pull Jim out of this, he will die. And I will be left alone. And then I will die. But before I die, I will probably go insane. I will be a madman adrift at sea. I need Jim. I must keep him alive. I cannot lose him. But how can I save him?

  “What shall we do then, Jim?” he asked sarcastically. “Just lie back and fold our hands across our chests and wait to die? Is that what you’re suggesting for us now?”

  The silence again.

  “Is your life so meaningless that you’re giving up?”

  Nothing. Nothing but the song of the waves beneath their beds.

  Bob chewed his lip. It occurred to him that one positive act might be to slap his brother-in-law, slap him so viciously that the pain would sting him into sensibility. But if that act failed, then there would be nothing left to try. Moreover, once he started hitting Jim, perhaps his grievances would not let him stop. No, he had best fight fire with fire. Holy fire.

  “Do you remember the story of Job?” asked Bob easily.

  Jim nodded.

  “Well, tell me, what happened to Job?”

  “You know,” answered Jim. “He suffered a lot.”

  “Exactly,” said Bob, exactly as he would praise a pupil in his history class. “Satan accused God of favoring Job, of giving him too much wealth and fame and happiness. So God decided to see if Job was a true believer. God caused his cattle to run away and his field hands to be killed. He sent fire to burn up Job’s sheep and bandits to murder his servants. He sent a wind to make the roof of Job’s house cave in and kill his children. And finally, if I remember it all, God covered Job’s body with boils. The old guy sat there in the ashes, in the ruins of a good life.”

  Jim nodded in tribute to Bob’s telling the story correctly.

  “Wait,” said Bob. “That’s only act one. Then Job finally broke down and went into a black funk and cursed God. He wanted to die and be rid of all his trouble. He sat around moaning and bitching and waiting for the end. But the Lord spoke to Job, from a cloud, I believe—”

  “From a whirlwind,” corrected Jim.

  “From a whirlwind, and he told old Job that it had all been a test. Job had been getting too comfortable, too set in his ways. And Job realized that life was pretty good, that there were a lot of things left to be done, and he got his faith going again. And he lived another hundred and forty years. Had a couple more wives. Maybe more, I forget.”

  Not surprisingly, the allusion worked. Propping himself up on his elbows, Jim was suddenly renewed. As he watched, satisfied with his application of instant medicinal faith, Bob thought to himself, I wish it were this easy for all of us. Find the answer in the Bible. Whatever balm you need is there.

  Later that morning, while playing the Bible game, Jim stumped Bob with the character of Jonah.

  “Oh yes,” said Bob. “Jonah and the whale.”

  Jim shook his head. That was not the Jonah situation he had in mind.

  What, then?

  Before the whale incident, Jonah had been on a boat and was considered such bad luck to the other passengers that he had to get off in the middle of the voyage.

  “Well,” said Bob, “if there is a parallel to this story, I’m not going to get off. And I hope you don’t, either.”

  Jim laughed. “I won’t jump off,” he said. “I promise you that.”

  One afternoon Bob occupied himself by thinking of sex. Actually it was the lack of sex, more specifically the absence of the mildest stirring, that he thought about. He and Linda had spent twenty-six barren nights together, sharing a space eighteen inches wide and six feet long, and her illness had not been the factor in their abstinence. The sex drive goes away first when survival is paramount, decided Bob. On a list of his priorities, he could not even position the craving for a woman. What would Dr. Freud say to that? he speculated. Rescue is more important. Food is more important. Water I might even kill for. Warmth. Dryness. Safety. At this moment, an Orange Julius is more important.

  He glanced over at Jim. For a perverse moment he considered introducing sex as a conversation topic, but he put that one away quickly. Wilma was certainly the only woman in Jim’s life, past or present. Jim on sex would be as stimulating as Jim on Picasso’s satyrs. Of all the people in the world to be shipwrecked with, how did he draw his brother-in-law?

  The discussion periods were growing increasingly one-sided, more monologues from Bob than anything else. With the broad spectrum of topics seemingly available to two college-educated men forcibly thrown together with nothing—nothing!—to do but talk, one of them was fluent in none save religion. With his depression seemingly concluded, Jim once more spent most of his hours in the company of God.

  Bob kept trying. He rambled daily through books he had read, museums he had explored, people he had met. But though Jim listened attentively, Bob received little in response. He was a man sitting on one end of a seesaw, with the other stuck in the air.

  When he grew a trifle exasperated one afternoon, Bob said, “If you had the chance, wo
uldn’t you like to talk to Hitler, or a pornographer, or a guy who writes weird poetry, just to get a different point of view?”

  Jim shook his head. “I’d listen to them out of politeness,” he said, “but I wouldn’t pay any attention to what they said.”

  “Well, why not, for Pete’s sake? Aren’t you ever interested in broadening your outlook? Doesn’t a person ever get bored with nothing but the Bible?”

  Sighing, annoyed at having to remake a well-established point, Jim shook his head again. “I’m not interested in worldly matters. All I want to do is live the kind of life that will bring me sanctification, so I will obtain a greater life … after.”

  Bob let it drop. But presently he gave the subject one last try. He opened the jaws of a small trap.

  “One of the things you told me that really shocks me,” said Bob, “is that you’ve never even voted.”

  “Why so?”

  “Well, you’re a citizen of the community. You have a responsibility to be informed and to take an interest in what goes on around you.”

  “But I don’t.”

  “I’ve got a Bible situation,” said Bob, apparently in abrupt change of subject.

  Jim brightened, always eager to dip into his knowledge of the only book. “Old or New Testament?”

  “New,” answered Bob. “In fact, I’ll give you a clue. This particular situation defines a person’s responsibility—both to worldly matters and to God.”

  Modestly intrigued, Jim rummaged through much of the New Testament. Near noon he surrendered.

  “Do you remember the Sadducees and the Pharisees, when they were taunting the disciples?” asked Bob.

  Certainly, Jim remembered that.

  “Well, they asked the disciples if their Master paid tribute to Caesar. The disciples said, ‘No, Jesus doesn’t pay taxes because he doesn’t own anything.’ The disciples were troubled by this, so they went to Jesus and told him the story and asked if they should pay taxes. Jesus said, ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.’ Then Peter, I believe, said, ‘But, Master, we don’t have any money.’ So Jesus told him to go down to the seashore, throw in a line, and catch a fish. When Peter did this, the fish he caught had a coin in his mouth. Jesus said, ‘Now give this to Caesar. Go pay your taxes.’”