“By the time I was a senior in college, I had decided against becoming an Adventist minister—if, indeed, I had ever had that real desire. But I was still undecided about the church itself—whether I could, in all honesty, remain a member. I was racked with indecision. I literally stayed awake nights, going nuts with unanswered questions. So even though I had ruled out the ministry, I took a job teaching at an Adventist college. I stayed there two years, right amidst them, listening to them, watching them, talking to them. I even became an elder and you know that’s no easily achieved position in the church. Didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t dance, didn’t cuss, didn’t go to the movies. I did absolutely everything they demanded, but it simply did not work for me. I had always imagined college to be a place where ideas were discussed, issues were debated, where you could stretch your imagination. But at this college, high intentioned as it was, I became a prisoner again. You can’t enchain a mind, Jim. I can’t live inside walls. I’ve got to ask questions. I’ve got to stimulate myself.”
Jim pondered this. He seemed absorbed by the story, even though he often shook his head in disbelief at what Bob was saying.
“And so you dropped out?” Jim asked.
Bob nodded. “I wrote a very formal letter to the church headquarters asking that they remove my name from their rolls. It was deliberate. I didn’t want to just drift away, like some members do. And I never even got a reply from them! I didn’t have the heart to tell my folks about the letter, but somehow they heard. I knew this because our relationship suddenly turned cold. We didn’t get back together again until Linda appeared in my life.”
And that, thought Bob as he watched Jim digest the biography, is the first time I ever put all the pieces of my life together for anyone, even myself. He hoped he had been convincing, for he was a careful man and he wanted his actions understood, if not accepted. Often he had prepared himself to explain his beliefs at a family gathering, but in confrontation with the thick and towering fortress of God that surrounded their lives, he fell back to pleasantries. He could not cross their threshold with his soul exposed.
Now Bob waited for a response from Jim. He felt he was due one. But none came for several moments, long moments with nothing to intrude on the vast silence around them. Finally, softly, Jim spoke.
“Do you believe in God?” he asked.
The bottom line, thought Bob. I could answer a thousand questions, and he asks the one for which I do not yet have an answer.
“I don’t know,” Bob said simply.
“You don’t know?” Jim was incredulous.
“I’ve thought about it out here. I’ll admit that. But all I can conclude is that I neither believe in God nor disbelieve. Can we let it go at that?”
“I feel a little sorry for you,” said Jim, not unkindly. He moved to climb through the hole and go topside.
Bob threw out his hand in urgent need. “But didn’t you ever waver?” he demanded. “Weren’t there ever any private moments when you asked yourself some of the questions I did?”
“No.” Jim firmly shook his head. “Oh, maybe at the Academy there were some difficult times. The rules did seem hard. But I was just a kid struggling against discipline. I never questioned what was taught to me. I certainly never questioned the existence of God.”
Bob dismissed the subject, silently pronouncing its benediction. If they did not know and respect one another now, they never would.
The afternoon free period had been lengthened to two hours by mutual consent. Usually Bob carved or napped or tried to remember the plots of novels he had read. Whatever, he remained quiet on his bed, trying to ration his strength as carefully as the water in the next-to-last jug tied beside him.
But Jim grew restless in the long afternoons, and, more often than not, lay quietly for only a few moments before bolting up through the hole and to the outdoors, where he sat or watched the schools of silverfish or paddled about in his scuba suit.
On the day after Bob’s long explanation of himself, Jim dressed in his scuba suit. Bob frowned. “I don’t think you should do that,” he cautioned. “It wastes energy.”
“Exercise is supposed to be good for you.”
“Not when you’re eating three teaspoons of food a day and drinking half a cup of water.”
Not answering, Jim went through the hole. Presently Bob heard him drop into the water, calm after the previous day’s rain. The one precaution he took was to tie a rope as safety link between himself and the Triton.
An hour dragged by. Drowsing, Bob heard Jim cry out. Excitedly.
“Bob!”
He reared quickly and shoved his head through the hole.
Five ships were coming directly at them. A fishing fleet. One mother canning boat and four children flocked about her. If these did not find the Triton, thought Bob, then nothing ever would.
(17)
The fleet cut through the waters, five abreast, like a bread-slicing machine. The two survivors shouted and leaped and waved the orange life jackets and blew the whistle and flashed the mirror and implored and prayed. But the five fishing boats did not see the overturned trimaran, even though the mother ship passed within a few hundred yards.
That night Jim curled in his bunk, wrapped once again in depression. Bob tried to be practical.
“I don’t think we can be seen,” he said, although he wondered privately if they were being ignored, like that woman in New York, the one murdered while people watched from their windows, not willing to tamper with their own well-being.
“And I don’t think it does any good for us to do this big yelling number every time a ship passes,” said Bob. “It just wears us out.” Exhausted himself, he had watched Jim’s body tremble in the silence. Whether it was in fear or pain or discouragement, he did not know.
“If you can stand it, Jim, just lie here quietly. One day a plane or a ship will see us. That’s the only way it’s going to happen, Jim. There’s no use in killing ourselves with exertion, after we’ve lasted this long.”
Jim nodded. But during the long night, Bob heard him sob.
Little of note marked the next ten days. Once, sticking his head through the hole to get a whiff of fresh air, Bob noticed a box bobbing on the sea a few hundred yards from them. Fascinated, he watched the box, remarking to Jim that it was too far away for them to retrieve.
“What do you suppose is in it?” asked Bob.
Jim shook his head. He was never fanciful.
“Maybe it’s a crate of French wine. Wouldn’t that be something, Jim? Would you drink a bottle of good burgundy if it was inside that box?”
“No. I told you I tried it once.”
Three more ships passed during the week of August 25–September 1, but they were on the far horizon, and the men did not bother to call to them. Ten Ships have passed us by, noted Bob to himself. If I ever get out of this, I’d like to ask them why.
The only thing he had learned from watching the ships tempt them and leave them was that ships usually appeared either at ten in the morning or five in the afternoon, and that it took an agonizing forty-five minutes to cross from one point on the horizon to the other.
On the last day of August, Bob saw three small birds—like seagulls, only smaller—wing over, dip in curiosity, and then fly off to the east. He told Jim of their appearance, and the news cheered him but slightly.
On the morning of September 1, Bob painted and threw overboard the eleventh message. Then he carved the date on his calendar. Fifty-three days. He fell asleep during the morning free hour, murmuring the astonishing figure to himself.
When he awoke, slimy with perspiration from the humidity inside their chamber, Bob saw Jim putting on his scuba suit. After Bob’s admonition, Jim had not ventured into the water for several days.
“I’m going to take a little swim,” Jim explained hastily. “It’s a nice day.”
“I don’t think you should.”
“Maybe I’ll find something.”
Fixing his
mask in place, Jim disappeared through the hole. Bob, still drowsy, fell back asleep.
Jim tied one end of the safety rope around his waist and the other to the piece of steel rod Bob had erected as a makeshift flagpole. Then he eased into the cool water and paddled idly about, a few feet from the boat. He was always careful not to venture more than ten feet away. On this day the depths were startlingly clear and through his mask he could see great distances. Transfixed by the beauty, he plunged deeper, following a school of gaudy, orange-striped fish.
But as he swam, the other end of the rope strained against the flagpole, and it loosened. Then it fell away. Unknowingly, Jim was adrift beneath the sea, without a cord to hold him to the boat. When he surfaced, the Triton was more than one hundred yards away, drifting quickly in a new wind!
Instantly Jim screamed for help, but Bob was asleep and out of earshot. Against waves that suddenly loomed large and punishing, Jim fought his way back to the boat. He pulled himself onto the Triton and collapsed. When he had strength enough, he crawled inch by inch to the hole and fell down onto his bed.
Gasping, his body convulsing, Jim spilled out what had happened to him. So punished was he by the experience that Bob could not say, I told you so.
The frightening swim sucked both Jim’s strength and his will to live. On the next day, September 2, he grew incoherent during the discussion hour and Bob called it off. During the game period, Jim could not even conceive a five-letter word for Bob to guess. In the week after capsizing, ten-letter words had come easily. All Jim could do was stare off blankly at something unseen. He fell asleep, thrashing in his bed.
At the evening meal, Bob opened the next to last can of sardines and handed one to Jim. Blankly he looked at it, slowly shaking his head in refusal.
“You’ve got to eat,” said Bob.
“I can’t. I don’t think I’m going to make it, Bob.” His eyes were hollow, opaque, hidden behind a film, the same cloud that had come over Linda in her last days.
“Of course you are. Now eat this terrific sardine. Play Like it’s trout amandine.”
Jim held the tiny fish to his mouth, tasted it, dropped it uneaten onto his chest. “I think I’m going to sleep,” he said.
Worried, the panic building within him, Bob moved closer to Jim. Did he mean “sleep” or did he mean “die”? Often the fantasy had tormented Bob of being left alone on the sea, and now the possibility seemed real. He searched for something to stimulate Jim.
“You can’t give up now,” pleaded Bob. “You’ve got everything in the world to live for. What about Wilma? And the kids? And there’ll be the new baby pretty soon. Elder Fleck is waiting for you in Costa Rica …”
Shaking his head, Jim tried to raise himself from the bed, but the very act of lifting his head and shoulders wore him. He fell back. However, he had something he must say.
“I’ve got to tell you something,” said Jim. “I can’t … go … without telling you something.”
Bob moved to Jim’s bed and lay near him, his ear at Jim’s face.
“I drank a can of root beer,” blurted Jim in confession. “That first day, after we capsized, when I was swimming around finding things. I was so thirsty and I found this can of root beer, and … I just drank it. I never thought we’d be here so long.”
“That’s okay,” murmured Bob. “We still have a can left. Remember? We’re going to drink it when we get to shore.”
The confession was not done. “And I took an extra sip of water. I wanted to tell you and Linda about it, but I was ashamed. And the peanut butter. I ate a little of that, too, without telling you.”
Bob patted Jim’s arm as if to say the confession was made and accepted and forgotten. He wanted to ask about the cheese balls and the water distillation kit, but it seemed unnecessary. He knew the answers.
“That’s all right,” Bob finally said. “We’re still alive. We’re going to make it, Jim. I swear it. But we need each other. I couldn’t survive without you, nor you without me. It won’t be long now.”
Just before he went to sleep, Jim made one more confession. The boom. The sail. Bob had wished for a piece of each to rig up somehow to keep the Triton from being pushed westward, away from land.
“There was a piece of the mast, and the sail, underneath that day when I first went down in my scuba suit,” Jim said, his words broken and pained. “But … but I cut them off. I didn’t think we should interfere with the Lord’s will.”
There was no shock for Bob. He understood. Had he been newly come to the awesome hold of Jim’s God, he might have screamed in fury and railed against him. But Bob knew this God, he had known Him from as far back as he could remember, and he could do nothing now but nod.
The next morning Jim refused food again. There was either sardines of peanut butter or Kool-Aid. Nothing else remained on the menu. Jim could not eat them, he said.
“You’re committing suicide, you know that, don’t you?” Bob’s voice was harsh.
“No, I’m not. I’m simply obeying the will of God.”
“Oh, I see.” Bob’s words were sarcastic. “Did Jesus come to you during the night and whisper, ‘Give up—check out’? I didn’t see Him.”
Jim did not answer. His eyes remained shut.
Bob felt helpless. He could reach over and shake Jim, shake him so angrily that perhaps the run-down mainspring might begin to tick again. But there was a risk, the risk that he might shake what tiny bit of life remained, shake it until there was no more.
Then he found another idea. A long shot. But nothing else came to mind.
Bob leaned close to Jim and cursed him.
“You son-of-a-bitch!” he yelled. “You mother-fucking, low down shit-assing, cunt-licking bastard. How dare you give up, you fucking coward?” The obscenity poured from Bob in waves, a broken dam. Jim opened his eyes quickly to look incredulously at the man abusing him. Shaking his head, Jim begged for the curses to stop. But Bob refused, the tempo of his tirade swelling and building to a scream: “God damn you!”
Jim shuddered. Terribly. He flung out his hands. “Please,” he cried. “Stop! I’ll try! I’ll live! Don’t curse me again!”
It worked. Proud of his cleverness, almost smiling, Bob moved back to his bed and turned his face to the wall.
By his confessions, Jim had prepared himself for death. But Bob’s profanity had soiled his state of grace, thrown up a roadblock on the path to death and the wait for salvation. Jim could not die now, before Bob died, because there would be no one left to cleanse Bob of his profound sins.
Moreover, Bob had used God’s name in vain. Jim could not depart this world with that resounding in his ears.
(18)
In the aftermath of Bob’s curses, the two men endured still another two weeks, albeit fourteen days in slow motion. Bob tried to keep the game period going, but Jim lacked even the energy to shake the dice and move the marker on their Bump board. The final square, the one marked Rescue, seemed as unreachable as the dark side of the moon.
Further, Bob insisted that they continue to examine one another’s countenance each morning, to mark the tone of the skin and the life in the eyes. Usually Jim muttered, “You look okay.” But Bob could not respond in kind, for he saw clearly that Jim was very ill. Gray sand was filling the hourglass of his face. He was beginning to resemble a character from the Sabbath school books, his beard dark and scraggly, eyes like ashy coals in a fire about to go out. At the beginning of the voyage, he had been blend, of the sun. Now he was of midnight.
On September 4, a butterfly appeared beside their beds, suspended in dazzling orange and black beauty, perhaps a monarch. Darting about for a few seconds, it vanished through a crack, as if a magic spell had suddenly been broken. But neither the previously seen flies nor birds had delivered them the sight of land, so this newest creature was observed with neither excitement nor hope.
Tuesday, September 11. Bob carved the date and remarked that it was the two-month anniversary of their life in an
upside-down boat. Briefly he considered painting one more board and throwing it into the sea. But he lacked the will even to look in the paint can to see if there was enough left to illustrate another useless plea for rescue.
On September 14, at 7 A.M. promptly, for he still attempted the semblance of their daily schedule, Bob called to Jim and woke him. But Jim only stirred restlessly and fell asleep again. Bob left him alone until eight, when he cried his name sharply. When that brought no response, Bob physically raised him from the mattress.
From the can of sardines, opened three days earlier, Jim picked one and handed it to Bob. He began to eat, slowly, trying not to smell the rancid morsel, trying only to fill the sixty minutes of the breakfast hour.
But Jim regarded his sardine with hate. Not only did he dislike them in another time and place, the one in his grasp was rotting. He put it back in the can. His eyes closed and he fell back asleep.
Being Friday, it was water dispersion day. Under their newest agreement, in effect since September 1, one cup of water had to last each of them for five days. There was only one jug left, with approximately nine cups remaining.
It can be done, Bob assured himself as he unscrewed the cap. He had repeated the promise to himself so often that it was possible to believe it now. A swallow now, another at night, a sip of seawater in between. All that is required is a drop or two of water, and the determination to live. Survival!
“Jim,” he called out. “You want your water now or later?”
“Now.” Roused from his half-sleep, Jim held out his hand, clawlike, shaking.
Pouring the few drops, watching them hit and bounce and barely cover the bottom of the Tupperware cup, Bob handed the portion to Jim.
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