Lost!

by Thomas Thompson

Jim shook his head. “Fill the cup,” he said.

  “That’s your whole five days’ worth,” answered Bob.

  Jim nodded. “Fill it. I want it all.”

  “Do you know what you’re saying, Jim?”

  “I know. I’m rational.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Fill it.” Jim was impatient.

  All right, thought Bob. Your ration belongs to you. Do with it as you will. But he must warn him one more time. “You know,” he said emphatically, “that there won’t be any more water for five days. Until …” Bob counted rapidly on his fingers. “… until Wednesday morning.”

  Jim nodded his head in understanding. “I don’t care,” he said. “Give me the water.”

  Bob hesitated.

  “Give it to me!”

  Quickly Bob filled the cup. Reluctantly he extended it.

  “I don’t care anymore,” said Jim, closing his hands around the water. “I’m thirsty. I’m not going to fight any longer.”

  Throwing it to his lips, Jim drained the cup in one incredible swallow. For the first time in days, he seemed at peace.

  “I’m giving up,” he said. “It’s too painful to keep going. Besides, if I live, I might think it was my will and stubbornness that kept me alive. If God wants me to live, I’ll live. If God wants otherwise …” Jim stopped. He breathed heavily for a few moments. Then he completed the sentence in a coarse whisper. “… then I’ll die.”

  At the nadir of his desperation, Bob racked his numbed mind to find something—anything!—to sustain the life in Jim. True, he thought, as he had thought before, in the dark part of his soul, if Jim dies there will be more food and water for me. But even with the additional nourishment, I will be left alone. And only then will survival become impossible. The ghosts of Linda and Jim will torment me until I join them.

  He cursed Jim again. But this time it brought no response. Jim would not even raise his head from the mattress.

  He pleaded with Jim to stay alive so as to fulfill his obligation of missionary work in Costa Rica. But Jim did not answer.

  Finally, Bob asked quietly, “Are you ready to die?” And, after a long time, Jim raised himself. With eyes that burned into Bob, he held out his hands in supplication. “No,” he said. “I have to tell you two more things. You must forgive me …”

  “I’m tired,” Bob lied quickly. “Wait until tomorrow.” That would drag Jim into another day.

  “No, I have to tell you now.” The words fell out of Jim in a great rush, pell-mell, spilling over one another, as doomed men would hurry to freedom if the door of a prison were opened.

  “Once,” he said, “when I was in the Academy, I broke a specimen slide for the microscope. The teacher asked everyone who had done it, and no one confessed. The teacher asked me directly, and I denied breaking it. I never told anyone. I can’t die with that lie.”

  In his fear, Bob almost smiled. Was this a sin worth carrying half a lifetime?

  “I don’t think anybody will hold that against you, Jim.”

  “Wait. There’s something else. Once, when I was in school in Germany, a bunch of us went to Vienna for a holiday. The other boys took the train home. I rode my bike instead. I told them later I beat them back to school by riding my bike faster than the train went. That’s … that’s not true. It was a lie. They beat me … only … I wouldn’t admit it.”

  “What do I do with these?” Bob asked gently.

  “Nothing. I’ve confessed them to you. I just had to tell somebody.”

  “I heard you. If it means anything, I forgive you.”

  During the night, Bob tried to stay awake in death watch. Until well past midnight, he listened intently to Jim’s breathing, ready to fall on him and give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation should his lungs’ stop pumping. But finally the blackness covered him and Bob slept. Near dawn he awoke in panic and looked at Jim. He was still alive, thrashing in his bed. Watching, Bob thought of another possibility to extend Jim’s hours.

  “Where’s your will and testament, by the way?” asked Bob.

  “My what?” All Jim could manage was a rattling whisper.

  “Your will. I presume you left everything to Wilma and the kids.”

  “I never wrote a will. I’m only thirty years old.”

  “I know. But you’ve got an estate. Everybody does. What about your estate?” Bob had his questions rehearsed. He hoped they sounded convincing. He, too, felt weak this morning, but he could not worry about that. He had to keep Jim alive.

  “There isn’t any estate. We sold all our furniture … and our car … before we left. You know that.”

  Bob nodded. “But you had traveler’s checks, didn’t you?”

  “They were lost … when we capsized.”

  “How much?”

  “About one thousand dollars’ worth.”

  “Wilma can get a refund. If you leave a will. If you die intestate, probate will take everything.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means dying without a will. The court takes over then and divides up your property and collects a big fee.”

  Jim thought on this briefly. Never had he earned more than $400 a month, and matters of the law did not concern him.

  “I don’t know how to write a will,” he finally said.

  “It doesn’t matter. There’s no need for legal terminology. Just write whatever you want and sign it. I’ll make sure that Wilma gets it.”

  Again Jim fell silent, pondering this newest obstacle. Time passed. Perhaps minutes, perhaps hours, for both men were at the point when intervals were blurred and impossible to measure. The sun beat cruelly on the Triton, so intensely that Bob imagined they had missed California, sailed beyond Mexico, and drifted near the equator.

  Later, Bob asked, “Have you written your will yet?”

  “No.”

  “I was just thinking,” said Bob. “When you do write it, you should tell Wilma to remarry.”

  Jim’s voice took on a sudden edge. “I couldn’t do that.”

  “The boys need a father.”

  The suggestion shocked Jim. He began to move in his bed, rising and turning so that he could stare at Bob and read his eyes. The two men faced one another as arm wrestlers, sprawled on their stomachs.

  “The boys will remember me,” insisted Jim.

  “For a while,” said Bob. “But later on, they’ll want a father. It’s true, Jim. If Wilma makes them live on your memory, the boys will grow to hate you.”

  For a moment Jim grew angry, as if he were going to lash out at Bob. Then he sighed. “What can I write on?”

  In Jim’s hand, clutched tightly, was his copy of The Great Controversy. “Use that,” suggested Bob. He found Linda’s purse, took out a Bic pen, tossed it to Jim.

  Jim read from the book for a while, Bob trying to act uninterested. Occasionally Jim dropped his head onto the cover of the book and closed his eyes. Then he shook himself to clear his thoughts and he began to write on blank pages at the end of the book. Writing quickly, taking less than a quarter of an hour, his words were filled with eloquence and love and undiminished faith.

  He dated the page July 11–Sept. 15, 1973, and he wrote in a coherent but spidery scrawl:

  Dearest Wilma, Todd, Bradley, and all the family:

  Bob and I are about done.

  We have hoped and prayed that rescue would come prior to this, but twelve ships and several airplanes failed to see us. We are thankful for the time the Lord gave us to put our lives in complete harmony with His will. We look forward to that great resurrection day when we will be brought up incorruptible. It is my earnest prayer to see all of you there. If you study this book carefully and put into practice what you learn, we will be together again in the earth made new.

  Wilma, take all the money here plus $1000 which I had in traveler’s checks. They were lost when we capsized. You should be able to redeem them from the bank in Auburn. $112 go to tithe. The rest is yours. It is hard for me t
o say, but please find the boys another daddy soon. They need one at this age. I know that the Lord will bless you in anything you do for Him. Just remain as true to Him as you were to me, and all of us will meet in the earth made new.

  I trust you will forgive me for the horrible thing of leaving you. Only the Lord knows the end from the beginning. We must always trust His ways even though we may not understand them. Read opposite page (527) of The Great Controversy.

  Linda died on August 6, since then Bob and I have tried to stretch our lives as far as possible. Lately, down to ¼ cup H2O/day and ½ tsp. food. Just can’t go much longer than this. I can hardly hold this pen to wright [sic].

  I am deeply grieved not to have had the chance in mission work. I hope you can find someone who will give you this chance.

  Just make sure you love Jesus each day and die for him each day and we will soon meet where there will be no separation and laws. Be sure to bring the boys and (?) I’ll be looking for you on that Resurrection Day.

  Love, Hubby & Daddy.

  When he was done, Jim read once more the passage of the book to which he referred to his wife. “Our Father in heaven orders everything in wisdom and righteousness,” it went, “and we are not to be dissatisfied and distrustful, but to bow in reverent submission. He will reveal to us as much of His purposes as it is for our good to know, and beyond that we must trust the Hand that is omnipotent, the Heart that is full of love.”

  With that he tore the pages from the book, folded them carefully, and put them in his wallet. Cleansed, every corner of his life swept and tidied, almost happy, he closed his eyes and waited for whatever his God had in store for him.

  “I’m thirsty,” said Jim, three long days later. He had not died, nor had he taken a drop of water. Dried blood caked his lips. He could not have weighed more than 130 pounds.

  “I warned you …” Bob moved his head so that he could watch the water jug. Reassuringly, its level was exactly the same as it had been the last time he looked. Rarely did three minutes pass during the daylight hours that Bob failed to examine the water. He did not really expect that Jim would steal a swallow now, not after he had cleansed himself with confession. But Bob looked anyway. The water was more precious than his blood.

  Above them, the skies rumbled with thunder. Through the hole, Bob could see a mist blown by a sudden wind. He would not give Jim any of his water, but perhaps he could trap a little if it rained.

  After putting up the rain funnel, Bob fell asleep from the effort. When he awoke, almost a full cup of fresh cool rain had dribbled into the jug. He took a sip and handed the rest to Jim. The dying man looked at it curiously, as if it were a gift wrapped in treachery.

  “It’s rainwater,” said Bob. “Drink it. Or save it.”

  All Jim could manage was to stare blankly at the offering.

  Bob moved to him and pried open his mouth and dropped the water slowly into the dry throat.

  “Thank you, Jesus,” murmured Jim to Bob, his dark-bearded benefactor.

  At the dinner hour, Bob ate his half sardine and offered the same portion to Jim.

  Jim did not even bother to refuse, only stared dully at the boards above his face.

  Bob had no weapons left to fight Jim’s anticipation of death, but the reality of its imminence filled him with terror. Throwing his hand onto Jim’s chest, he felt the heart. The beat was constant—dim, but constant.

  During the night, Jim convulsed, his body torn by spasms. He banged his head repeatedly against the wall beside him.

  Awakened, Bob cried out his name. “Jim!”

  “What?” Jim stopped thrashing.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  In his half sleep, something had come to Bob. He had to speak of it. “I was just thinking,” he began slowly, “what happens when one of us dies? How would you … or me … get the other’s body out? We’re both too weak to lift a body through this hole. If one of us dies, Jim, the body would decompose and swell up and start to stink. It’s hot, Jim. And the other person would die from the smell and the rot.”

  The grim vision settled over the two men.

  “Just cut the ropes,” said Jim. He was right. When the rope bed was severed, the person lying on that bed would fall into the sea beneath him.

  “But both beds would fall,” said Bob in alarm. Jim did not respond.

  In the quiet blackness of midnight, what Jim had said gnawed at Bob. Now that the idea of cutting the ropes had been spoken, now that it was in the open, it was possible that Jim, thrashing and convulsing and on the brink of delirium, might actually do just that. I may die of starvation and dehydration, said Bob to himself, but I will not die of drowning, not after seventy days in hell.

  He must somehow get Jim’s knife away from him. He could not let a potential madman possess a knife. But Bob lacked the strength to leap onto Jim and forcibly take the blade from him. Somehow he must talk the knife away.

  “Jim?” Bob tried to keep his voice casual. No inflections of fear could dance upon it.

  Jim grunted in his semiconsciousness.

  “Can I borrow your knife?”

  “What for?”

  “I want to carve.” Bob gestured to a new carving he had begun on the wall beside him. When finished, it would read, “Triton: Capsized July 11, 1973. If found, please notify the U. S. Coast Guard, San Francisco or Los Angeles.” He was half done with the legend.

  “Where’s your knife?” Jim asked.

  “I dropped it in the water this afternoon,” Bob lied. It did not sound convincing, he decided. He must embellish the lie. “I did. I really did. I told you about it. You must have forgot.”

  “It’s night. You can’t see to carve.”

  “There’s a moon, Jim. I can’t sleep. Loan me your knife.”

  “No.” The answer, cold and final, chilled Bob.

  “Please, Jim.”

  The response, a rattling gasp for air.

  After more eternal minutes crept by, Bob raised his head and looked at Jim’s bed. The knife, gleaming in the moonlight, rested in its customary place, wedged next to a beam beside Jim’s head.

  Bob called out softly, “Jim, are you awake?”

  A sigh.

  Bob waited. He counted to a thousand. “Jim?” This time, nothing.

  “Jim? Are you alive?”

  Jim’s chest rose and fell, almost imperceptibly.

  Holding his breath, clenching his teeth together so they would not chatter, Bob inched his hand toward the knife. The journey of less than three feet took an hour, until the moonlight was faded and the knife turned the cold steel hue of the stormy predawn. For as long as ten minutes at a time, Bob held his hand frozen, worried that its alien position would wake Jim and frighten him and send him into an act of violence.

  Finally, cautiously, his hands pressed around the handle. Now! In a frenzy of movement, Bob seized the knife, yanked it from the wedge, flung it to his own bed where it fell safely and muffled at his feet.

  Instantly Jim awoke, as if he had witnessed the theft in his dream. He went for his knife. His eyes, in the last light of the moon, were crazed.

  “Where’s my knife?” he demanded, surprisingly strong.

  “I borrowed it,” said Bob. “I asked you. I want to carve.”

  “Where’s your knife?”

  “We already went through that. I told you. I lost it.”

  Jim nodded, fell back asleep.

  The food.

  As the morning sun crept into the chamber spreading the September heat across them, it occurred to Bob that he had never actually seen the food supply. From the beginning, Jim had been superintendent of the food, and when it had been time for a meal, he had produced it, from the unseen storage place at the foot of his bed.

  Thinking on that, a new worry ignited within Bob’s jagged consciousness: If Jim dies today, I won’t be able to find the food! What if Jim has hidden it? I have no strength to spend in searching. Or, worse, what if he goes
into a religious frenzy and, while I sleep, drops the food into the sea and tells me it was a divine command?

  He must take the food away from Jim. Now.

  “Jim?” Bob touched the sleeping man’s shoulder and shook him lightly. “Are you awake?”

  Jim shuddered; his eyes flew open reflexively.

  “Can I have the food, Jim? All of it?”

  With enormous effort, Jim raised his head an inch off the mattress and looked halfway at Bob. “What for?”

  “You’re giving up, aren’t you?”

  “Why do you want the food?”

  “Give it to me!” Bob almost screamed, startled that his lungs held the power.

  Jim sounded puzzled. “Why? Do you think I’m dying?” he asked, almost pleasantly.

  Why did I wait this long? Bob said to himself. He cursed. How can I negotiate with a man slipping in and out of sanity?

  “Well,” said Bob, “you keep telling me you’re waiting to die. If you die, why leave the food—wherever it is you keep it? I don’t have much strength left, either. I can’t waste my energy trying to find it.… Your body will be in the way.… Please, Jim … give me the food.”

  “I can’t.”

  “But I want to live.”

  “I just can’t.”

  “Oh, God. Help me, Jim.”

  “I can’t give you the food.”

  Angered, but too weary for argument, Bob let the subject drop. He turned in his bed and saw the calendar. He had not yet marked the date. His hands trembled as he chipped at the dampened wood, digging out a mark for September 19. Then his eyes fell across the house he had carved for Linda. It was finished now, with windowsills and flower boxes and intricate shakes for siding. The emotion of its memories filled him.

  Hugging the house to his breast, he wept. This is all I have, he said to himself. This is the sum of my thirty-five years on earth. A toy house. At that moment, he teetered once again on the edge of surrender. Desperately hungry, so thirsty that his throat seemed lined with leather shred-dings, afraid even to glance at his face in Linda’s mirror, he permitted the temptation of death. Now it embraced him more seductively than when he had pushed Linda into the sea. How easy it would be to give up, to lie back, like Jim, and wait. Better still, he could slip off his bed and drop into the sea. How quickly it would cover him, consume him.