Long Voyage Back

by Luke Rhinehart

  `He was a marvellous sea man,' Neil rejoined.

  `But unpopular with his crew,' said Jeanne.

  Ì like Neil,' said Jim seriously, and Jeanne and Neil both laughed. A sudden violent snapping and flapping from forward sent Neil rushing 'past Jim over to starboard. The genoa was luffing and Vagabond was veering off-course up wind. He turned the wheel to the right and when he saw her swinging back on course realized that the genoa sheet had come loose.

  `Winch the genny in,' he said to Jim, who had followed him over to help. As he steadied Vagabond's course, he watched Jim pull in the line controlling the genoa, first by hand and then with three wraps around the winch.

  `Far enough?' Jim finally asked.

  À little more,' Neil said.

  When the genoa was sheeted to Neil's satisfaction and with Vagabond once again contentedly galloping southwards through the night, Neil turned the helm over to Jim. Ì think she'll steer herself still,' Neil said. 'But you may have to adjust the genny or mizzen sheets to get it right. Do you remember how I showed you?'

  `Sure. I've got her now.'

  `Good.'

  Neil turned to see if Jeanne was still there and saw her standing next to the entrance to her cabin. He walked over to stand behind her, just touching, their backs to Jim, lookingout to sea.

  `How strange it is,' he heard her say softly after a long pause. 'Here my husband is just dead, millions just killed, millions more doomed, and all I can think of is wanting a man I've known for a few days in bed with me.'

  Startled he turned to her. 'Jeanne . . .' he said.

  `But I can't . .

  `. .. Jeanne,' he whispered again. 'Life doesn't offer us much these days . . . We should take what we can . .

  Separated by only six inches, she turned to look up at him, the moonlight full on her face, his in shadow.

  `No, Neil,' she said softly. 'There are others. And my God, only four days . . . I think I owe it to Bob, and to . . . Frank . . . to you even, to assume it's just . . . temporary insanity.'

  `Would we were always insane like this,' said Neil.

  `No, Neil,' she said and, squeezing his hand once, stepped down her cabin steps and disappeared below. Vaguely Neil thought she might also have whispered a 'goodnight'. He reluctantly slid her hatch closed and, exhilarated and alive, turned back into the wheelhouse. Jim was now sitting on the edge of the other cockpit coaming, staring forward.

  Ì'm going to rest here in the wheelhouse,' Neil said to him. Ànd if you fall overboard,'

  he went on, noting Jim's somewhat precarious perch on the side of the boat, `remember to leave a forwarding address.'

  Àn island in the South Pacific,' Jim responded immediately. Stretching himself out on the cushions, Neil yawned. `You'd better be in good shape,' he commented.

  `Goodnight,' he heard Jim say to him.

  `That's my impression,' said Neil, smiling to himself, until the sudden image of Frank chilled him.

  Vagabond, indifferent to it all, plunged forward through the night. After Neil had fallen asleep on the cushions in the back of the wheelhouse Jim was forced to resume steering. The wind picked up and was heading them more; he wasn't able to get the sails adjusted to permit Vagabond to self-steer. Even though he looked forward to her company on their watch he decided to let Lisa sleep a little longer. He wanted time alone to think.

  Although he had disagreed with his father at the time, Jim admired him for trying to get back to their home in Oyster Bay to try to save his mother and Susie. Jim knew that Frank had a fierce loyalty to his family, a pride in it that often made him too severe on his children. Now that he himself was all the family that his father had left Jim felt a sense of responsibility towards him he'd never felt before. This sense of caring was increased by his realization that more than any of the others aboard his father appeared still in a state of shock.

  Jim knew he had been hurt by Neil's taking over command of Vagabond and that of course his radiation sickness must be depressing him. Jim could see that Frank lacked his usual dynamic energy. When he had worked with him tearing down the remains of the shattered rear wall of the wheelhouse and designing a sail-awning that could be raised and lowered, Frank had been enthusiastic about the work for half an hour and then lost interest, wandering away and leaving the project to others. The only person who seemed able to bring him to life was Jeanne. When she'd suggested that all the men be involved in kitchen work he had smiled at her and argued playfully, 'What's the sense of surviving if I have to wash the dishes?' but nevertheless cleaned up the galley more cheerfully than Jim had ever seen. When Jeanne had become impatient with Skippy's clinging, Frank had spent close to an hour playing horsy and card games with him. Since he knew how much his father cared for Jeanne's feelings, the closeness of Neil and Jeanne implied by their whispering together earlier made Jim uneasy. For although Jim had been too caught up in the rush for survival over the first four days to feel grief for his mother and Susie, now, when he was aware of his father's problems, he experienced a sense of loss. He would never be able to express his love of and appreciation for his mother; she had been cheated out of receiving the love that both he and Frank would have given her had she survived to be with them. Jim's caring for his father was reinforced by this sense of having failed his mother. But how could he help him?

  Lisa emerged from her mother's cabin out into the moonlight and came into the wheelhouse.

  It's our watch,' she said. 'Why didn't you wake me?' She was wearing jeans and a blue windbreaker, her hair, dark and long like her mother's, tied into a ponytail. Since none of them could wash with fresh water everyone's hair was getting stiff and straggly. Ùntil the wind got too strong Vagabond was self-steering,' Jim replied in a low voice, motioning towards Neil. 'Careful, Neil's sleeping.'

  Òh,' she responded, glancing to her right.

  Jim felt a little burst of happiness at her nearness as she came to stand beside him at the helm. He took her hand in his. Even though they had flirted with each other the previous summer and were even closer now, since the horrors of the war Jim had felt almost asexual, as if anything too pleasant were obscene. But they needed to touch each other and often held hands while on watch.

  `Mom's pacing woke me up,' Lisa said softly. 'She was going up and down the narrow floor space like a subway shuttle.'

  Ì'm glad you're here;' Jim said, thinking of Jeanne and Neil embracing but not wanting to tell Lisa. For a moment they stood silently, Vagabond plunging and hissing through the night.

  `Vagabond's really moving, isn't it?' Lisa said.

  Ìt's great,' Jim whispered back.

  `You want something to drink?' Lisa asked.

  `No, I'm okay.'

  `Did you check on Seth?'

  Òh, no, I didn't.'

  Lisa took a flashlight and went aft to Neil's cabin to see if Seth needed anything. Seth's right thigh had become infected and whether the antibiotic Macklin was administering would kill it wasn't yet determined. Seth had joked to them about the circumstances of his being hit by saying, 'That's the last time I come up on deck to find out what's going on.'

  As Lisa pushed back the hatch and started to descend the short ladder she was startled to see a dim light and the figure of Conrad Macklin sitting in the darkness beside Seth, who seemed to be sleeping.

  Òh!' Lisa said, frightened.

  `Can I help you?' Macklin asked quietly.

  Ì . . . I didn't know . . . I was checking on Seth.'

  `He's alive,' Macklin stated indifferently.

  `What . . . what are you . . . ?'

  `You ever tried sleeping up forward?' Macklin answered. 'I was bouncing like someone was dribbling me.'

  Òh,' said Lisa, noticing now that there was a red glow indicating Neil's radio was on and that Macklin had some papers in his lap.

  Ì'm sleeping back here,' Macklin went on, 'until your boyfriend stops trying to smash my skull against the forward cabin roof.'

  Lisa left with a queasiness from the surge
and sway below and an uneasiness about her encounter with Macklin. On her

  way back to the wheelhouse she noticed a light in Frank's cabin and back with Jim she told him that Macklin was with Seth and that his father seemed to be up.

  `Dad's not sleeping well,' Jim said. 'He's still sick.'

  Ì know,' said Lisa, taking Jim's hand in hers. 'Do you think . . . it's . . Ì hope it'll go away in a few days,' said Jim. 'Neil and 01ly don't seem bad and they were exposed almost as much.'

  `Mom thinks he's a little depressed about losing . . . your mother.'

  Jim merely nodded, staring forward into the darkness. `Do you think she's dead?' Lisa asked softly.

  `Yes,' said Jim.

  `My Dad's dead too,' said Lisa. `. . . Sometimes it seems like he never lived . . . Everything is . . . so changed.' Lisa released his hand and steadied herself against the control-panel shelf.

  Ìt's strange,' Jim said, putting his arm around her waist. Èverything I used to be interested in, you know, sports, music, cars, seems sort of far away. I tried listening to some of my favourite tapes and I started to . . . you know, I felt like crying. It was pretty funny.'

  Lisa didn't reply, gently moving closer against him. She wanted to put her arm around him but felt awkward and left her hands on the moulding.

  Ì'm glad you're here, Lisa,' Jim went on very softly. 'I get kinda lonely with my Dad . . . sick and Neil all wrapped up in the boat. You're about the only part of the old world that seems . . . all right.'

  Ì . . . I'm glad you're here, too,' she said, letting her head fall against his shoulder. 'We will be all right, won't we, Jim?' There was a wistful quality in her voice which Jim felt viscerally.

  He hesitated, all the horrors, past and still possible, clamouring for his attention.

  `Yes,' he replied simply, pulling her more tightly against him, and ignoring the clamour. Tut not unless we take down the genoa and reef the main.'

  She looked up at him puzzled.

  `The wind's too strong,' he went on. 'I think the number one watch team better reduce sail.'

  She smiled and without further command took over the • wheel from Jim who, smiling back, left to get his safety harness and go forward.

  By mid-morning of the following day Neil's midnight romance had become unreal. Reality was upon him in the form of a crowded wheelhouse and thirty-knot winds out of the east-southeast.

  After breakfast he and Frank had listened to another appalling news summary. Refugees were flooding southwards all over the world and being resented and rebuffed by the local populations in the traditional ways of treating war refugees. Cuba, the Panama Canal, and Venezuelan oil installations had all been struck by some sort of nuclear weapon; the Caribbean too would be a disaster area. It wasn't even clear which nation had hit Venezuela, since she, like all the rest of South America, had loudly declared her neutrality and was refusing to sell oil to the United States. And later, at eight A.M., with the wind now beginning to screech through the stainless steel rigging, and Tony injuring a rib in a fall while trying to bring in a torn jib, reality was fully back. In the crowded wheelhouse under an overcast and darkening sky, Skippy was whining about the taste of fish, Lisa vomited her breakfast on the wheelhouse floor, and Jeanne, queasy herself, was trying to deal with them. For Neil, battling the helm, there was no room for romance with a torn jib, an injured crewman, rising winds and seas, and Frank and Tony arguing with him about their course. By dead reckoning from their noon position of the day before Neil calculated that they were about a hundred miles east-southeast of Cape Lookout, North Carolina, a spit of land that ended the long sand barrier that stretched south of the notorious Cape Hatteras. Without consulting the others, Neil had been maintaining a southerly course, partly because he was considering a run to the Bahamas and West Indies rather than trying to put in again to the US mainland. Frank had complained the previous afternoon that they seemed to be staying unnecessarily far off the coast and suggested they angle more westward. Now with large angry swells sweeping up against them from the south and the wind still rising, a choice was being forced upon him. They could either continue to work their way south, or they could turn and run back towards land. They had been unable to pick up a radio station in the Morehead City-Pamlico Sound area of North Carolina and . thus had no way of knowing what conditions would be like there.

  Reports from the Bahamas about the West Indies were discouraging.. The Bahamian government had declared a state of emergency and martial law, warning Bahamians that the food imports on which they had depended for more than eighty per cent of their normal food had been cut off by the war. Foreign ships, by which Neil knew must be meant American ships, were urged to go elsewhere. As panic buying had eliminated most of the island's stores of food, the Bahamians were not welcoming the sudden influx of sick, injured, and foodless Americans fleeing from the two nuclear explosions over Miami and Cape Canaveral.

  Radio Nassau had implied a racial incident in reporting that five American 'yachtsmen'

  had been killed by several unapprehended black Bahamians 'in a streetlight'. If Vagabond had to by-pass the Bahamas they would run quite short of food and water before they could hope to reach Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands. Jim's and Lisa's success the last two mornings hooking three big fish was encouraging, but they were in the Gulf Stream now; if they continued south, in another day or two they'd be east of it and the fishing less dependable.

  As the wind freshened further and storm clouds gathered on the southern horizon like thick black smoke, Neil had to admit that he was also worried about Vagabond's being badly

  overloaded: A good trimaran normally sails faster than a good monohull because of its lightness, which permits it to skip over the water rather than plough through it. But Vagabond was now almost two thousand pounds heavier than the ship they had sailed north and was sailing two or three knots slower. It made her pound heavily into the huge seas which were rolling at her.

  Although altering course to run before the storm would end the slamming that was the greatest danger and discomfort, Neil knew that even then the wind and seas would continue to drain energy from those aboard. In his own experience thirty-five knot winds and twelve-foot seas were bearable, but for most of the others they represented a danger far more immediate, palpable, and unpleasant than anything on the mainland. All were seasick except Neil, 01ly, Tony and Elaine, and since none of those were the types to go cleaning up other people's messes, most of the cabins were beginning to stink of vomit. With Seth's bullet wounds, Tony's cracked rib and general seasickness, their crew was considerably weakened.

  But despite the problems, he hated the thought of turning back towards the fallout and explosions and people-evil of the land. A storm at sea was something he could deal with; the effects of man's madness on land were not.

  As he made the rounds of the ship before meeting with Frank, Tony and Macklin to discuss their course, he knew that to continue southwards against these seas would create serious morale problems. It might be exhilarating to escape from explosions, pirates and radioactive fallout, but with those dangers now distant and remote, the endless slamming, slamming, slamming, the awful whine of the wind in the rigging, the woeful roll, pitch, and plunge of the trimaran, the seasickness, and worst of all he knew, no indication of any safer haven south than west, was depressing most of the ship's company. Only Elaine and Tony had complained directly, but the averted gaze of Jeanne, and the sardonic humour of

  Frank and Seth revealed similar feelings.

  He, Tony, Frank and 0lly gathered around the dinette table at eleven-thirty that morning, the four of them swaying and bumping in their seats as Vagabond plunged and smashed forward through the huge seas. Jim was at the helm while an almost useless Conrad Macklin sat in misery on the little seat in the corner of the cabin. Everyone else was below in a berth. Frank, pale and weakened from vomiting, and Tony, seeming as energetic and healthy as ever, had both been urging Neil to change course for several hours.

/>   Even before they could begin their discussion, Vagabond struck a big roller with a savage smash that spilled silverware out of a drawer and toppled half a dozen books out of the dinette bookcase. Neil went immediately up on deck and instructed Jim to bring Vagabond around ninety degrees to head due west while they had their discussion. As he watched and instructed Lisa in adjusting the sheets of the storm jib and double-reefed mainsail, Neil felt immediately how much easier the motion of the boat became. Vagabond now began surfing along and down the big swells instead of having to plough through them, and though the noise of the water and wind was little diminished, the actual strains on the boat had probably been halved.

  When Neil returned to the main cabin Frank and Tony looked pleased.

  `What a different feeling,' Tony announced triumphantly. `Thank God we didn't wreck poor Vagabond before we changed course.'

  `Yes,' Neil commented dryly. 'How lucky.'

  Àre we going to hold course back to land?' Frank asked. `Not necessarily. That's a decision that I've decided should be made by the four ship's officers,' Neil replied.

  `What about the rest of us?' Tony interjected. 'Don't Seth and me and Jeanne count for anything?'

  `That's right,' said Frank. 'I'm not sure it's fair not to include all the adults.'

  Neil glanced at Oily, who was leaning back with his eyes closed holding his unlit pipe in his mouth, and at Tony, also opposite him, who was flushed with excitement. Àre you prepared, Frank,' Neil countered, 'if outvoted by Tony, Seth, Macklin, and Elaine, to surrender the ship's fate to majority decision?'

  Rubbing his big hands in front of him, his face wet from the sweat of his nausea, Frank scowled.

  `No, I guess not,' he answered slowly. 'We should consult with everybody, but the decision should be made by the four officers.' He didn't look up at Tony opposite him.

  `Well, Tony,' Neil said neutrally to Tony, who had flushed at Frank's betrayal. 'What do you advise?'

  `You know what I advise,' Tony answered angrily. 'That we stop beating our brains out and get back to land. You promised us in the Chesapeake that we'd be landing back on the US coast. You can't go back on that.'