Found in a Bottle
by Sheila Connolly
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Jenny and me, we’d been seeing each other for over a year. She’d been hinting that maybe it was time for some changes, so I figured, why not go on a romantic weekend somewhere (that we could afford, and maybe it wouldn’t involve airfare or fancy hotels), and I’d pop the question. Thing was, I hadn’t exactly decided which question. Marriage? I didn’t think we were ready for that. Or at least, I knew I wasn’t. I mean, Jenny was great, and we were good together, but marriage? That was what people our parents’ age did. Not our friends. Not us.
Okay, take it down a notch: living together? That could work if we split the rent—but on which place? I lived alone in a studio that barely had room for me. She lived with a couple of roommates that she’d have to kick out. And a cat. And there were three of them splitting the rent. The cat didn’t chip in. Heck, maybe he cost extra, in case he peed in the corners.
But still. I thought I’d be a sensitive caring guy who was paying attention and ask her if that’s what she wanted. At least it would get the idea out in the open, so we could beat it to a pulp and go back to the way things were. Which was fine with me.
So I booked us a room at a quaint B&B in Maine, in a place called Raven Harbor, mostly because the pictures on the website looked pretty. Okay, quaint meant cheap, but it was a nice location, far enough away from Boston, and it was on the water. Not that we planned to use the water for much of anything. I’d always heard it was too cold to swim in Maine, and we weren’t about to rent a sailboard or a canoe. But we could sit and admire it and breathe in all that clean air.
I hadn’t counted on the rain. Friday we drove up separately from our jobs in Boston. That was fine—easier to take two cars than to try and work out where to meet and where to leave one car and all that. It was summer, so it wasn’t even too dark. We found the place easily enough. By twilight it didn’t look too bad. Inside it smelled a bit mildewy, but I figured that was because it was close to the water. Weren’t all waterfront houses damp? Besides, Jenny and I were in love, weren’t we? So little things like mildew shouldn’t matter.
We had dinner in a place down the street, which closed at nine. (What kind of a resort town was this? It was Friday night!) Then we walked back to the B&B, hand in hand. The wind had picked up while we were inside eating and now it was throwing sand in our faces.
Once inside we did what couples in love were supposed to do at a romantic getaway, and then we went to sleep, despite the skimpy pillows and sheets that didn’t feel exactly dry.
When we woke up in the morning it was pouring rain. Buckets of water lashed against the rattling windows; wind pushed the water around the loose sashes. The one light in the room didn’t do much. Jenny decided to take a quick shower before breakfast, but backed out fast with the double-whammy report of no hot water and a very large centipede in the prefab metal shower stall. We decided to eat breakfast first.
Our breakfast didn’t do much to improve our mood. Cute little boxes of kiddy cereal, a couple of dried-out English muffins and bagels, and a pot of coffee that smelled like it had been sitting on the warmer since the night before. Jenny’s expression was not what I’d call sunny. We made the best of the pathetic meal and retreated to our small damp room, which didn’t look any better than when we’d left it (but at least the centipede was gone—I checked, being chivalrous and all that).
“Now what?” Jenny demanded. “Is there anything to see in this backwater town? You picked it.” Even I could tell she wasn’t happy.
“I don’t know. Look, here’s a pamphlet that might help.” I picked it up and realized I wasn’t the first person to have handled it. Couldn’t this place afford to print any more? I started reading out the assorted delights to Jenny. “Well, there’s the fishing museum, but it’s been closed for renovation since 2003. There’s an outlet mall about twenty miles from here. We could go watch the boats come in or go out or whatever it is they do at nine o’clock in the morning.”
Jenny got off the bed and stalked to the window. “I don’t see one damned boat out there. If they’re smart, they’ll stay where they are until it stops raining.”
“Well, what do you want to do?” I asked. I shouldn’t have.
“Jason, we have to talk.”
Not the words any guy wants to hear. “About this place? Because we can try a different one for tonight, if you want.” Thereby sacrificing one prepaid night of lodging I couldn’t afford, but I was clinging to the hope that we could salvage this weekend.
“No, about us. You and me. I don’t think this is working anymore, Jason.”
“I can change,” I said, and tried to look like I meant it. “At least, I can try.”
Jenny shook her head. “I don’t think it will make a difference. I’m just not feeling it anymore. Can’t you tell? Isn’t that why you planned this stupid weekend? Like, you wanted to fix things?”
“Well, it wasn’t supposed to be stupid. I wanted it to be romantic.”
“By dragging me to a dump like this? If that’s your idea of romantic, then there really is nothing left to say.”
Ten minutes later she was out the door, on her way back to Boston. In a way, it was a relief. I didn’t have to worry any longer about how clueless I am, which was apparently plenty clueless.
I lay on the rumpled bed for a while, feeling like a jerk (and I might have taken a nap), but by eleven I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I decided to go out and look for real food and maybe some company. It was still pouring rain. And I hadn’t brought an umbrella.
I went down the stairs and stood in the overhang of the front door, considering my options. There weren’t many. There was the place we’d eaten the night before, which didn’t look like it was open yet, and a little farther down, on the opposite side of the street, was a dingy bar. I saw a couple of guys pull open the door and go in. There were lights on inside, so either the guys were early bird patrons or they were renovating the place. I decided to find out.
When I reached the bar, dripping, I tried to see through the grimy front window and thought I detected signs of life. Why not check it out? It wasn’t like I had anything better to do, so I went in. Yes, there were people in there, although in the dim light they kind of looked like zombies. But the bar was warmer than the pathetic room at the B&B, and there were guys here, and a couple of middle-aged women who were talking to each other. And there was alcohol. I had some money in my pocket and nowhere else I had to be, and I didn’t feel like driving back to Boston in this weather. I decided I might as well take part in the well-known ritual called “drowning my sorrows” over a dame. When a skanky waitress with unreal coal-black hair wandered by, I ordered a beer.
It was the first of many. The beer wasn’t bad, and it was cheap. Every time I emptied my glass, the waitress would show up with another one to replace it, without exchanging a word. Fine with me. I kept sitting, and I kept drinking. I wanted to stay drunk enough so I didn’t have to think about Jenny. It wasn’t hard.
Next time I looked at my watch it was after five, and already getting dark outside. The windows were so dirty that it was hard to tell. Not that it mattered. It would be hard to get lost in a half a block in this one-road town. The next time the waitress appeared with a full glass, I mumbled something about food. I think she said something like “sammiches” and I nodded. A sammich appeared three minutes later, with a pile of only slightly soggy chips. Fine dining.
Around six this guy comes up and kind of looms over the table. “Using this seat?” he asked.
I tried to focus. He was tall (well, he looked tall, but I was sitting down), dressed pretty much like everybody else I’d seen in Maine, in jeans and thick-soled shoes and a dark jacket that buttoned rather than zipped. Score one for me: if he dragged me out and mugged me in the alley, I’d be able to describe him to the police. If there were any in this town. “All yours, if you want it,” I said with a generous
sweep of my hand, which barely missed my half-full glass. He sat, with his drink, and held out a hand. “Jonathan Edgar.”
It took me a bit to realize he’d just given me his name. “I’m Jason Thatcher.” We shook, like manly men do, then went silent. I munched on my chips. Time passed. It could have been a half hour later before he volunteered a word. “You’re not from ’round here.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Nope,” I said. “My girl just dumped me.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“You from here?” I thought it was polite to ask.
“Not lately. Once.”
“Ah,” I said. I’d heard that Mainers or Mainiacs or whatever they called themselves didn’t like to waste words, but this was ridiculous. I was surprised when he actually volunteered some information—in a complete sentence, no less.
“I used to be a sailor,” the guy said, looking over my head. Maybe he was seeing the bounding main, or maybe the beer sign behind me was fascinating.
His statement seemed to call for an answer, so I said, “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Them big merchant ships, when they still had people on them instead of computers, you know? Went all over the place.”
I’d used “yeah,” so I thought I should change things up. “Like where?”
“All over. Asia, Alaska, South America. Didn’t see much of them places, though. Mostly stayed on board, saved my money.”
“You got family?” I asked.
“Used to. Not now.”
“Too bad.”
“Been a while. I can tell you stories...” Which he proceeded to do, at great length. I didn’t mind. I had nothing better to do, and in fact, the guy was a pretty good storyteller, although I suspected he’d told most of these stories before. Well, I hadn’t heard them, so I listened. And I kept buying rounds.
Along about eight, I think, he looked at me sideways. “There was this one time, see, I was shipping out on a boat—the Discovery, it was—that was headed south from Malaysia, and we got caught up in this godawful storm after a couple of days. I guess you could say we’d had it easy for the first leg, so we weren’t being real watchful, like. Now, I wasn’t the navigator, but I kept my eye on the clouds, when I was above decks, and I didn’t like what I was seeing. Captain didn’t seem bothered by it, though. But after nightfall the waves started getting real big, until one just plain washed right over the ship.”
“Really?” I said. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but I knew almost nothing about boats or sailing. It could have happened. Maybe. “Then what?”
“Hell of a lot of people got washed overboard, is what. Then the wind kicked up. I don’t know what happened to the engines—flooded with seawater, maybe? Sails long gone. Nobody told us.”
Wait—sails? What kind of a boat was this? “How many people survived?”
“Two. Me and this other guy, who didn’t speak English real good. We didn’t get washed over because we got stuck in a couple of tight places. Dumb luck.”
“You telling me everybody else was gone?” I asked.
“Sure were. Just me and this guy. Swedish, I think he was, but it was kinda hard to tell. So we didn’t know how to steer the damn boat, and the seawater had wiped out all the communications gear, so we couldn’t even tell anybody about all them guys who went into the water. We knew we was headed south, but that was about all. Man, it just kept getting darker, and the seas kept getting bigger, and I thought we was goners for sure.” He stopped. Did he want another drink? I waved at the waitress, or maybe it was a different waitress because the shift must have changed hours ago. My new buddy didn’t say anything while we waited. He must have known he had me hooked.
When yet another glass was delivered to each of us he picked up his tale again. “And then we started seeing icebergs.”
Seriously? “You’ve got to be kidding! Where were you?”
“No clue. South of where we started, and that’s all I could swear to. No land in sight, any direction. Seas kept rising. And then out of nowhere we seen another ship.”
“Way down in whatever? Did they pick you up?”
“Hell, no. They didn’t even see our ship until they landed on top of us.”
I was beginning to have serious doubts about this story. I mean, the guy could have been a seaman once, but now he was a teller of very tall tales. “So, you’re saying this ship came down on top of yours?”
“Sure did. And it was way bigger than ours.”
“But you survived.”
“Well, here I am, ain’t I? Happens that when the ship hit I was flipped clear off on that ship I started on, and damned if I didn’t land on the other ship. My Swedish buddy didn’t make it, though. Never saw him again.”
Might as well play along, I thought. “Okay, so there you are, in one piece, on this other ship. What did they do?”
“Nothing. Not one damn thing. It was like I was invisible.”
“What nationality?”
My table companion shrugged. “I think most of them spoke Spanish, or maybe Portuguese. I was never good with languages. In the beginning I was worried that they’d lock me up because they thought I was a smuggler or something, but nobody bothered me. After a while I got real hungry, so I wandered around until I found something to eat. Real crap, it was, but it kept me going. When I got braver I went looking for the communications room, thinking maybe I could call somebody and have them come and get me. Or maybe find out where they were headed so I could get off, but I could never find anything I could use. That was one big ship.”
“How long were you on the ship?”
“Hard to say. Time kind of ran together, you know? Nobody noticed me, so I kind of got used to it. Sometimes I felt like a rat, creeping around, but nobody cared. I did finally find some ship’s logs or something, but they didn’t look like anything I’d seen. Never did find out the name of it. Hey, I gotta take a leak,” the man said. He stood up and lurched off toward the bathrooms.
I didn’t see him come out of the men’s room but he never came back to the table. I wasn’t too broken up: my watch, when I could make myself see only one of it instead of two, read midnight. I should go use that paid-for bed at Mildew Manor down the street. I signaled the waitress and made a universal check-scribbling motion. She came over quickly and handed me a sticky slip of paper.
“Hey, wait a minute—didn’t the other guy pay for his?”
“What other guy?” she said.
“The older guy who was sitting here for half the night. Something Edgar, he said.”
“Never saw him, don’t know him. This here’s your bill.” She stood there waiting while I fished out the right combination of bills and handed them to her. I counted: there were more than a dozen beers on the tab. I knew damn well that I didn’t have that kind of capacity—not my head or my bladder. She must be in on the scam with the older guy, who’d had an evening’s worth of free drinks. At least he’d been entertaining.
I stumbled back to the B&B, managed to get the front door open after the third try, climbed the stairs and fell on top of the bed fully clothed. Jenny had not miraculously reappeared to apologize, but then, I hadn’t expected her to.
The next morning the sun stabbed me in my right eye: I’d forgotten to close the ratty curtains the night before. I rolled over and tried to ignore it, but my bursting bladder wouldn’t let me go back to sleep. I did what I had to do, and then wondered if I could eat breakfast for both Jenny and me. After all, I’d paid for two. I took a quick, tepid shower, bravely ignoring any multi-legged creatures, as a man should, then dressed and went downstairs, where the breakfast was no better than it had been the day before. I pocketed an extra bagel for lunch when nobody was looking.
Now what? Did I want to drive home? Not yet, not until my headache quit. I figured I’d just have to chalk up the price of the crappy room to experience. Note to self: ask for a friend’s recommendation if I ever wanted to plan another romantic weekend. Which at the moment seemed highly unlikely.
After breakfast I decided to stroll down the main (and only) street. At least the sun had come out, and the town looked slightly less shabby than it had the day before. I could smell the sea, and hear the clinking of...whatever the heck clinked on boats, like sparbuckles or something. I could see a typical old white church with a tall pointed steeple, so I headed for that—not that I planned to go to church, but I figured I should see whatever there was in this town. The walk to the church took four minutes. Nothing else was open.
When I reached the church I could hear an organ playing inside. There was an old cemetery on the uphill side of the church, one of those with thin slate stones slanting every which way, with a few white marble ones stuck in for variety. What the heck. I might as well say hello to the dead. At least they wouldn’t expect me to make conversation. I went through the rusty iron gate and wandered up and down the rows, reading the stones that caught my eye. It’s always sad to see how many people died, back in the early days, and so young. Whole families sometimes, or bunches of kids in some epidemic that passed through fast. If I’d thought this would cheer me up, I was wrong, but at least I could tell myself that other people had had it worse than me. At least nobody claimed to have died from a broken heart, at least not on their tombstone. Actually, I decided, mine wasn’t broken either, just kind of bruised. I’d survive.
At the end of one row there was a stone that stopped me dead in my tracks. Not one of the earliest ones; when I read the dates I saw that this one was from the early nineteenth century.
Edgar Allan Cozy Page 3
