Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  "Take off the jacket."

  Weeping, West obeyed him.

  "The men are your responsibility now."

  "I'll do my best."

  "Tell Christine I still want the boy to go to the Academy."

  "I will."

  Mullenoe let go of the rope and drifted into the darkness. West passed the life jacket to Homewood, who gave it to one of the men clinging to the floater net. Back at the raft, Wilkinson raged at Homewood. "Where's your fuckin' rescue ships, big shot?"

  "They'll be here tomorrow sure," Homewood said.

  "Water," one of the wounded men in the raft cried. "Doc, some water."

  "I can't find the bottle," Dr. Levy said. "Who has the water bottle?"

  There was no answer. "Is there someone here despicable enough to steal the water bottle?"

  Five minutes later, Harold Semple felt Wilkinson's lips against his ear. "Kiss me," he said, "and take a drink."

  Semple obeyed him. Wilkinson spurted water into his mouth.

  It was horrible. He was betraying his shipmates. But Semple swallowed the water.

  It was a bad night. The darkness was ripped by screams and cries and sobs as sharks attacked again and smaller fish, perhaps barracudas, tore chunks of flesh from men's legs and buttocks. Dr. Levy swam out to these new wounded and tried to stanch the flow of blood with tourniquets of cloth ripped from shirts.

  Other men fell asleep and drifted away from the group. Their cries of terror filled the distance as they struggled to swim back in the clumsy life jackets through the choppy sea. Flanagan and Homewood swam out to some of them and towed them back. "Don't sleep. If you can't stay awake tie yourself to another guy with your belt," Homewood shouted.

  In the darkness Flanagan actually swam into a shark. He felt the careening bulk of the monster against his chest. Apparently the fish was as frightened as the human. It vanished into the night and Flanagan dragged his sobbing drifter back to the group.

  As the sun rose on their second day in the water, it seemed to speak a word: thirst. No one had had anything to drink for thirty-six hours. The word expanded in everyone's brain until by noon it was written on the horizon in gigantic letters. What made it terrifying was the omnipresent water in which they floated. The water that was death. The water that yearned to swallow them as much as they yearned to swallow it.

  A small sip couldn't hurt you, Flanagan thought as it lapped around him.

  "Don't drink it," Homewood said, raising his big fist in front of Flanagan's face. "If I see you drinkin' it knock your fuckin' teeth down your throat."

  Dr. Levy climbed into the raft and found that four of the burn cases had died. They stripped off their life jackets and shoved the bodies to the edge of the group. They drifted away like flotsam. It was horrible.

  Maybe it was seeing the dead, maybe it was simply the thirst. By noon men started coming apart. Bob Hansen, one of the Bobbsey Twins, swam up to Flanagan. "Drink the water," he said. "It doesn't hurt you."

  "No," Flanagan said. "Boats. He's drinking the water!"

  "It doesn't hurt you," the twin said and scooped a swallow with his hands. "It tastes great."

  "On the level, Bob?" asked the other twin, Bob Finch.

  "Have I ever lied to you?"

  Finch drank it too. "You're right. It does taste great."

  Homewood reached them in time to knock the next swallow away from Finch's mouth. "Stop it," he shouted. "You're gonna die like a fuckin' blowfish on the beach!"

  In this swirling hysteria, there was a small island of calm. A half dozen men from turret three had gotten off the ship with Johnny Chase. They formed a circle around him, convinced Chase would survive, if anyone did. He talked to them in the same calm emotionless voice he had used in the turret. "It ain't dyin' you have to worry about. That's the easiest thing in the world. I done it. I know what I'm talkin' about. It's a lot harder to stay alive, anywhere, anyplace. You assholes are gonna do it because you owe it to me and Ensign Babyface."

  A different crisis confronted the northern group. Around noon, George Tombs died. He had exhausted himself swimming around their group during the night, chasing drifters. A barracuda had taken a fearful slash out of his leg during one of these expeditions. His last words were "You're in command now, Moss."

  Edwin Moss almost laughed in the dying man's face. Moss was grappling with a terrific sense of doom. His naval career, his life, had been one long slide to this final disaster. He was one of the damned, one of those whom God consigned to hell for reasons only He understood. Perhaps he was already there.

  Bushnell divined what Moss was thinking. He understood Moss's Presbyterian soul as well as he understood Flanagan's Catholic soul and Captain Kemble's faithless soul and Semple's Methodist soul and Homewood's Baptist soul. Now Bushnell suddenly knew his own soul. He was ready to give his first sincere sermon.

  He stood on the raft and preached an elegy for George Washington Tombs's honest soul, which transcended sects and churches. "There's a time to live and a time to die. Commander Tombs died as he wanted to live — as an officer leading his men. Leading them, helping them, caring for them. He did not question God or the Navy or his country for our terrible plight. He didn't waste his time, his strength, in such pointless exercises. Let us imitate his example. Let us pray Job's prayer: 'Yea though he destroyeth me, yet will I worship Him.' This is our challenge, our fate — to say that prayer and mean it!"

  Homewood's authority was eroding. It was noon and there was not a sign of a rescue ship or plane. At various points in the pod, other people began drinking saltwater. Within an hour the convulsions began. Dr. Levy could only watch and weep at the futility of science. Others swam away from the thrashing, cursing victims who beat the traitor sea with their fists and howled like dogs at the glaring sun. When they died, they too were stripped of their life jackets and allowed to drift away.

  "Bob, Bob," sobbed the surviving Bobbsey Twin.

  "We oughta say some prayers for them," Homewood said. "Where's the fuckin' chaplain? Did he go down with the ship?"

  "Here I am," Emerson Bushnell said. He had swum down from the northern group, almost a half mile away. He did not try to explain it. He had just begun swimming in response to a sense that these men needed him. He had always been a good swimmer. But he was fifty-eight years old. He did not think he was capable of swimming a half mile with a life jacket on. Strange things were happening in his body and soul.

  From the raft in Flanagan's group, Bushnell preached another sermon on confronting their fate with courage and prayer. Flanagan saw the chaplain was asking them to take a leap of faith — a leap he had finally taken himself. Faced with the absurd, he was the one man on the ship capable of surmounting it. Could he persuade them to follow him?

  A shark attack began within seconds after Bushnell finished his sermon. Wilkinson climbed back into the raft and threw the chaplain into the water. "I always thought you were a fuckin' asshole, and now I know it," he yelled. He picked up the Very pistol in the raft. "Fuck God," he said. "This is what's gonna save us. If the fuckin' Navy ever gets around to lookin' for us."

  The last of the wounded died as the second day ended. Lieutenant West said they would take turns sitting in the raft during the night. Wilkinson announced that no one was getting into the raft who was not a friend of his. He meant it. When Homewood tried to climb in to throw him out, he kicked him in the face. Homewood tried to turn the raft over but it was too big. He tried to rally a team of men to join him, but no one responded. His status as a leader was gone.

  Instead, some men wheedled and begged Wilkinson to let them come aboard. He exacted tributes from them. A potato, a knife, a flashlight, a shirt to protect his head from the sun. Harold Semple huddled in a corner of the raft, more and more appalled, almost berserk from thirst.

  "Hey, Prettyboy, you want another drink?" Wilkinson whispered. "Come and get it."

  Semple got it although the very idea of touching that vile mouth with his lips nauseated him. />
  The chaplain swam back to the other group as darkness fell. He found them in chaos. Men had begun drinking saltwater and were dying in agony. Others were fighting over the water bottles in the two rafts. There had been another shark attack. Moss was doing nothing. He floated in his life jacket like a dead man, staring into the twilight.

  "Commander!" Bushnell said. "You're acting more like a moonstruck divinity student than a U.S. Navy officer. When are you finally going to abandon your ridiculous egocentricity and become a true member of the human race? Even if you're doomed to hell by your ridiculous theology, wouldn't you rather go as a man?"

  "What can I do?"

  "Take command of these men. Give them some leadership, some example."

  "What good will it do? We didn't get off that radio message. No one pays much attention if a ship's overdue. All sorts of things could explain the delay. They won't start looking for us for a week. We'll all be dead by then."

  "Even if that's true, let's die like men instead of sheep. Let's start rotating people in the rafts. Let's try to stop them from drinking saltwater. Let's pray."

  He was trying to rip Moss's undeveloped soul out of his body, trying to whelp it into this world of murderous sun and deadly water. Trying to create impossible faith in an invisible improbable god. Exultance rang through the chaplain's being. This was what he was born to do!

  Another night of horror — of struggling against sleep, which had become the precursor of death. Of waves slopping oil and cold water in the face. Of realizing that the kapok life jackets were beginning to lose their buoyancy.

  On the raft, Wilkinson continued his program of barter and revenge. No one got on who did not pay some form of obeisance to him. He had a knife and he made it clear he was not afraid to use it.

  As the third day began, Flanagan's tongue was too swollen to move in his mouth. His chin was only inches from the water. Almost everyone else was in the same condition. He noticed the group had grown smaller during the night, even though there had not been a shark attack. People were just giving up, slipping out of their life jackets and drifting down into the darkness.

  Flanagan thought about the chaplain's proposition. He thought about dying. Did it depend on his faith in a god?

  No, the answer to not dying lay in his life, not in faith in a god who had condemned him to this agony. He thought about his reasons for living. He had promised Annie Flood he would not die. He was in love with Martha Johnson. She was waiting for him. She needed him. If he died she would take to the sauce and never stop. He thought about Martha's vibrant body, her confident passion. Woman. She was his reason for living.

  Bullshit, Jack Peterson whispered from somewhere beneath the sea. Woman's your reason for not living, kid. She'll drive you nuts just like your mother drove your old man. Just like my mother drove my old man. They want to remake you their way, kid. They want to cut your balls off. Why not come down here with me, where it's cool and quiet and we can sit in main forward and roll the dice and shoot the breeze all day?

  "Flan," one of the mesquiteers said to him, "she's down there. She didn't sink after all."

  "What's down there?"

  "The Jefferson City. She's right under us, only about ten feet down. Everything's goin' full blast. The gedunk stand's open. They're servin' six different kinds of ice cream. Coca-Cola. The cooks're makin' gallons of iced tea. Come on down with me.”

  He slipped out of his life jacket and dove down. He did not come up. The two other mesquiteers swam over to him. "We saw it too," they yelled. "We're goin' down."

  "No," Flanagan shouted. "You're nuts. There's nothing there. So help me. Don't go. Boats!"

  Homewood was swimming around shouting at them. So were Lieutenant West and Dr. Levy. They couldn't stop the crazies from diving. Almost all of them were young like the mesquiteers. They seemed to be looking for an excuse to swim down into the sea's murderous embrace.

  A few came up looking scared. Most of them stayed down.

  In the northern group, madness was the island. They had spent a relatively peaceful night rotating men on and off the rafts, giving them and their kapoks a respite from the water. About ten o'clock Ensign Brownmiller swam over to Commander Moss. "Sir," he said, "I request permission to take twenty-five men and swim to that island."

  "What island? We're five hundred miles from land."

  "That one," Brownmiller said, pointing toward the horizon. We've been drifting toward it since dawn. It's got a big resort hotel on the beach, just waiting for us."

  "I see it too," shouted the quartermaster who had been on the bridge when the torpedo hit. "I'll go with you. It looks like an easy swim.

  "Let us take one of the rafts," Brownmiller said.

  "There is no island, Ensign," Moss said.

  "Don't call me Ensign," Brownmiller screamed. "My name's Herbert. Herbert Brownmiller. I'm never going to let anybody call me Ensign again. When I get to that island I'm quitting the fucking Navy. I'm going to marry a native girl and spend the rest of my life letting her suck my cock."

  "There's no island there, Herbert," Moss said.

  "Yes there is." He smiled exultantly at the men in the water. "Everybody smart enough to see an island out there follow me.

  At least twenty-five men swam after Brownmiller. Moss watched them go, weeping. "Why did you give me this fucking job?" he screamed at the chaplain.

  "I didn't give it to you. It chose you. You chose it."

  "They both can't be true!"

  "Yes they can," Bushnell said.

  "Oh, Jesus, Chaplain. Pray for us."

  "I am," the chaplain said.

  Flan, why ain't you listenin'? Jack Peterson crooned as the sun went down in a blaze of red and purple. Still hung up on that dopey dame? Flan, a real man don't depend on a woman. He fucks one here another there. Come on down, Flan. No women to worry you here. No worries.

  "Boats, I can hear him. Jack. He's talking to me."

  "He's dead. No one's talkin'," Homewood said. His voice whistled in his swollen throat. It seemed to be coming from a terrible distance. Even his strength was dwindling.

  "What happened? Why don't they come get us?"

  "Somebody's fucked up. Somebody in the goddamn Navy's fucked up."

  The confession was a kind of weight. It seemed to sink Flanagan another inch into the darkening water.

  The men are your responsibility now. Bob Mullenoe's last words tolled in Montgomery West's brain as he swam through the darkness after a man who had floated away. Insanely, exultance alternated with fear in West's soul. He was in it now, all the way; he had broken through the last barrier. He was part of this real world he had entered so halfheartedly, this great whale called the U.S. Navy. He was in its belly, accepting the ultimate meaning of the part he had chosen.

  Why did he feel exultant, free, instead of trapped, doomed? Maybe Gwen was the difference. Maybe it was Gwen and Mullenoe, wife and friend, both with the sea in their blood. Maybe it was the knowledge that they had accepted him, the B-picture star, the spoiled semi-celebrity, as their equal in this special fraternity.

  "Help. Oh, please help," the drifter screamed.

  "It's okay, sailor. I'm here," West said. "Hang on to my neck."

  He began swimming back to the men around the raft. "I'm sorry, sir. I fell asleep. Are they ever comin' to get us?" the sailor sobbed.

  "Tomorrow— for sure," West said, almost sinking under the extra weight. He did not believe it. He was playing the officer's part in this tragedy. Lying, keeping up hope, was part of the job.

  Something bumped against his flailing legs in the dark water. At first he thought he had kicked the sailor. It bumped again and this time he felt pain race up his right leg into his belly. He felt the leg and discovered the bottom half of the trouser was gone. In a moment his fingers found a deep gouge in his calf.

  By the time West got the sailor back to the group around the raft, he was so weak he could not swim another stroke. "Where's Levy?" he asked.

&n
bsp; "Here," the doctor said, swimming toward him.

  "A shark or some goddamn thing got me in the leg."

  "Let us into that raft, Wilkinson," Levy said. "I want to dress Lieutenant West's wound."

  "Fuck you and him," Wilkinson said.

  Flanagan held the leg and Homewood supported West's head and shoulders as the doctor applied a tourniquet "It's a bad one," Levy said.

  "Doctor," West said, "I'd like to apologize to you for something. I never defended you against MacComber. My mother was Jewish."

  A few feet away, Fire Controlman First Class Bourne burst into tears. "Oh, Jesus, Lieutenant," he sobbed. "I wish you hadn't told us that."

  "You're going to make it, Bourne. I guarantee it," West said. The men are your responsibility now.

  In the other group as night fell someone screamed, "A Jap. There's a Jap trying to pull my life jacket off"

  Hysteria annihilated their dwindling sense of fraternity. Men smashed at each other with fists, slashed with knives. Everyone became an enemy. Commander Moss and Chaplain Bushnell swam among them, trying to restore order. Moss assigned everyone a number, and when they got called they were supposed to swim to the raft for fifteen minutes out of the water. Half the numbers did not make the trip. They no longer had the strength to swim even a few feet.

  By dawn, many life jackets were in terrible shape. A few feet away from Marty Roth, a Marine began to drown in one. He could not untie the strings. He choked and gurgled and finally died. Moss decided to give those with the most waterlogged jackets more time on the raft. This ignited a terrible quarrel. Men showered him with curses. Someone accused Moss of spending more time on the raft than anyone. He declined to go on the raft at all, even though his jacket was in very bad shape.

  Marty Roth was one of those who qualified for extra raft time. His mouth was only an inch from the water. He could feel the jacket dragging him down. When he climbed onto the raft, one of his old enemies from the forward engine room, the Throttleman, shouted, "You're givin' that fuckin' Jew more time on there than anyone."

  Roth saw hate glaring from a half dozen other seared blackened faces. "Shut up," Moss said, in a croak that had only a vestige of authority.