Change of Course

by Joseph T. Klempner

  “You want to know something, Jack?” I asked, without pausing to hear if he wanted to or not. “For the rest of my life, to the day I die, I’ll be left with the knowledge that - as far as you were concerned - I wasn’t worth living for. How do you think that’s going to make me feel?”

  “Really terrible,” Jack said, “if that’s what you’re going to reduce it all to. But we both know it’s not about that.”

  “Oh? Maybe you know,” I said. “Me, I have no idea what it’s about. Not really.”

  “Then you haven’t been listening to me.”

  “Fuck you” I shouted. “I’ve been listening to you till I want to throw up!”

  “Hey,” Jack said, “save your strength. You’re going to be needing it for the trip back.”

  For some reason, the thought of sailing back alone didn’t terrify me as much as it should have. Perhaps the storm had knocked all the terror out of me, I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I never did get around to playing that particular card, accusing Jack of leaving me in actual physical danger. But I sure played every other card in the deck.

  “Maybe I won’t go back,” I told him. “Maybe I’ll just throw myself in right after you, see how you deal with it.”

  “You won’t do that,” Jack said calmly.

  “And why not?”

  “Because, when it comes right down to it, you and I are different. I’m a quitter, we now see. All this time, I’ve only been here for the good times. Now that the heat’s about to get turned up, I’m getting out of the kitchen. You, you’re a survivor, Joe. You’re on board for the long haul.”

  “I’ll never forgive you, you bastard,” I swore at him at one point.

  “Yes you will,” Jack said. “Anyway, last I checked, forgiveness was somebody else’s department.”

  “Don’t get pious with me, you hypocrite!” I shouted. “You who don’t believe in anything!”

  “That’s not fair,” he said. “I believe in all sorts of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like love,” he said. “Like living.”

  “Then live!” I screamed. “Live for me, for my sake, if for nothing else.” By the time I’d finished spitting out the words, I’d gone from railing at him to begging him. I collapsed into a sitting position, holding my head in my hands. A moment later, I felt Jack’s hand on my back. Again I felt tears welling up, trying to surface, but I fought them off. I was still far too angry to give Jack the satisfaction of seeing me break down. And I was still determined to win this war of wills. I had to, I told myself: Nothing less than my brother’s life hung in the balance, and - or so it felt at the time at least - so did mine.

  The day wore on without Jack showing any signs of relenting. He seemed relaxed and at peace with his decision, and perfectly content to continue sailing on, quite literally, as though everything were just fine. As for me, with every passing hour, I grew more and more agitated. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and I finally reached a point where I refused to engage my brother in the kind of small talk he seemed to expect of me. By evening, I was a wreck, totally exhausted and physically ill, too strung out to lie down, too upset to eat or drink.

  “Keep it up,” Jack said at one point, trying to coax me to sip some iced tea he’d made, “and we’ll both end up dead.”

  “Good” was all I said, and I meant it; I swear I did.

  “I guess you’ve finally figured out a way to make me feel guilty.”

  “Good,” I repeated. “You’ve got plenty to feel guilty about.”

  When you’re on the ocean, there’s almost always a breeze, and you can easily be fooled into thinking it’s pleasantly cool on even the hottest of days. As a result, you’ve got to be constantly replenishing body fluids, or you’ll grow dehydrated before you know it. By that nightfall, I’d developed a fever and was experiencing intermittent bouts of chills and sweats. I remember Jack’s face appearing over mine at one point, threatening to pour a bottle of water down my throat if I wouldn’t drink it on my own. I gave in finally, not out of thirst or any desire to live, but because, by that time, I was simply too weak to resist him.

  I spent the night drifting in and out of delirium. If Jack woke me once, he must have woken me twenty times, on each occasion lifting my head and forcing me to drink before he’d lower me gently and allow me to drift off again. I dreamt wild, violent, vividly colored nightmares - of my brother being carried aloft in the talons of some giant bird of prey while I screamed in protest from the spiraling vortex of a powerful whirlpool that sucked me ever deeper and deeper under the water.

  I awoke the next morning with my clothes and covers drenched from my own sweat. But my fever had broken, and my delirium was gone. Once again, as he had during the night of the storm, my brother had come to my rescue. Once again, his strength had saved me from my weakness,

  Obediently, I drank juice and even ate some breakfast that was put before me, the first real food I’d taken in several days. I knew full well that Jack was nursing me back to health so that I’d be strong enough to turn the boat around when the time came and head for home, but I complied anyway. The thought occurred to me that by continuing my hunger strike, by again refusing to drink, I might force him to abandon - or at least postpone - his plan. But I was beyond protesting by then; I was beaten.

  I spent the day staring out over the ocean, wondering how something I’d once regarded as incredibly majestic and soothing was soon to be turned into an agent of destruction - to my only brother’s watery grave.

  Once or twice I succumbed to my old self, momentarily convinced I could still talk Jack out of his plan. “How about let’s keep right on sailing?” I begged at one point. “We can make it clear to Africa, I bet.”

  “Stop being the lawyer,” Jack told me gently. “Stop trying to negotiate a settlement. It’s over. Let me go.”

  And, God help me, I obeyed him. I did as I was told: I stopped. And in my stopping, by the very act of my wordless acquiescence, I acknowledged that it was over; I agreed to let him go. I gave my younger brother my blessing, my permission for him to take leave of this life.

  And Jack saw all this, I know, and somehow understood it, because he held my eyes with his and spoke but two words to me, almost in a whisper.

  “Thank you” is what he said.

  Then, finally, did my tears come: great, huge body-racking sobs that threatened to suck all the air from my lungs and dry up all the water from my blood. I doubled over in agony, I writhed on the cockpit floor; I broke capillaries in my eyelids and tore blood vessels in my throat. I have no idea how long I cried, it seemed like hours. I cried until I had no more tears, and still I cried. Jack held me, he let me go, he held me again. He cried with me, he let me cry alone. But he knew enough to say not a word; there were no words to say.

  Eventually, I reached the point where I was cried out, where I’d simply arrived at a place beyond crying. And then we sat, my brother and I, in each other’s arms, still saying nothing, and we watched the sun slide down the western sky behind us.

  And that evening, when by the last of my sextant readings we both knew full well that we’d finally come to that spot in the ocean where Walker Island was supposed to have been, if only there had been a Walker Island, Jack kissed my mouth with his and placed his hand lightly on the side of my face. After a moment, he let his hand travel slowly, softly, ever so softly down my cheek, almost as though he was trying to commit to memory the very shape and texture of my face. Then he rose from my side, stepped to the starboard rail, and slipped silently into the water.

  If you were to ask me how it was that I managed to turn Sea Legs toward home, I could not tell you. After I watched Jack slip into the water, I must have taken the wheel, brought her about, and set a course to the west, as though in some futile attempt to chase down the last of the fading twilight. But the truth is, I have no recollection whatsoever of doing any of those things.

  First light found my hands glued to the wheel. For all I kn
ow, they’d been there all night. I know I could just as easily have left things to the self-steering system, but I imagine I felt the need of something to do, some activity to keep me going through the night.

  And in that same first light, I came to notice that Gawk was nowhere on board. I searched the sky for him all that day, hoping to spot him circling effortlessly overhead or diving toward the rise of a cresting wave. But I must have known he was gone for good. Had he simply taken off on some sudden whim? Had he been a purposeful hitchhiker, determined to find another vessel as he made his way ever east to the Old World? Or had some internal compass told him that we’d finally reached the longitude of the Bermudas, where land lay, over the curve of the horizon, some 200 miles to the north? Then I remembered Jack’s comment that perhaps the bird had been sent as some sort of an escort for him. The rational part of me rejected the notion outright, just as I had when Jack had first suggested it. Still, I couldn’t ignore the fact that in a single night, both of them had been taken from me. I just didn’t know whether I should be consoled by the coincidence or feel doubly devastated.

  I know I resumed the business of dead reckoning: I have the log to tell me that. At first, I wrote little more than a few lines a day. I find, for example, the following complete entry, a day or two into my return trip:

  Sailed due west, 180 mag., all day and all night. Made 157 naut. miles.

  Several days later, I’d become only slightly more expansive:

  Continued on heading 175 mag. Made 163 naut. miles. Spotted giant whale 100 yds off bow. Think it was a blue.

  I know I ate and drank and slept and steered, but I know these things only because I survived, not because I have any real recollection of them. I remember hitting some weather though it was nothing like the storm Jack and I had encountered on the way out. I do recall seeing a giant waterspout at one point, a seagoing version of a twister. Spouts are not all that uncommon on the ocean, where there’s nothing in the way of topography to slow down winds or break up turbulence, but neither Jack nor I had ever seen one before, and this was a beauty. For a moment, it looked to be headed directly at me, but I felt no particular sense of panic: I suppose a good portion of me would have welcomed death at that point. Instead, my only reaction was how beautiful it was, how absolutely spectacular, and how terribly painful it was that Jack wasn’t there to share it with me.

  If I ate and drank and slept enough to survive, I barely did so. By the time I reached land, I’d lost almost thirty pounds, though I don’t know how much of that had happened before I’d turned around. I was badly burned, not having remembered to guard against the summer sun. My teeth were rotting from eating poorly and forgetting to brush them. My clothes were dirty and, I’m told, foul-smelling.

  About a week offshore, the wind shifted until it came out of the west and into my face. I tried tacking for a while, heading first northwest, then southwest, but it proved dreadfully slow. I gave it up, and instead set a course to the southwest, figuring I’d put in wherever it took me.

  Two days off, I began seeing other boats, and many of them approached to hail me, evidently thinking I was some kind of hero who’d sailed clear across the Atlantic. But I waved them off, determined to bring Sea Legs in myself, under sail. Jack would have been proud of me, I figured.

  I made landfall down the coast of South Carolina, not too far from Port Royal Sound, at a little spit of land named, ironically enough, Journey’s End. I paid in cash for a week’s stay at a boatyard, packed up a duffel bag, and hitched a ride into Savannah, where I holed up in a third-rate motel.

  All this time, I’d had no radio contact with family or friends. I knew I had to check in with my wife, who, I assumed, by this time must have been frantic with worry. But I also knew I couldn’t call without telling her of Jack’s death, and for some reason I dreaded that more than anything. It was almost as though it was my secret, my private shame; but once I reported it, it would be out there for the whole world to know, and, in knowing, to judge me and blame me.

  I bought a quart bottle of dark rum; it seemed an appropriate-enough selection. I drank half of it, sitting on the bed in my room. But I got sick before I got drunk, and when I finally reached for the phone to dial home sometime after midnight, my hand still trembled visibly.

  My wife answered on the first ring, with alarm in her voice. I managed to say hello and tell her I was safe and on dry land. We talked for a moment, each of us saying how good it was to hear the other’s voice. Then there was a pause, during which I waited for the inevitable.

  “How’s Jack?” she asked.

  And the tears came flooding back. In torrents they came, in oceans. I could not speak; I could not utter a single word. Finally, I simply gave up trying. I placed the receiver back in the cradle of the phone.

  Somehow my wife managed to find out where I was, and she flew down to meet me. Over my protestations, she had me driven to a hospital, where I was admitted, diagnosed with exposure, dehydration, malnutrition, and assorted other ailments. They kept me three days, during which time my wife never left my side, feeding me, bathing me, and sleeping each night in a cot beside my bed. The violent nightmares returned, and I’m told I did my share of ranting and raving.

  When they discharged me, we flew back north, leaving Sea Legs behind in the boatyard. I spent another month recuperating at home. There were visits from my children, and from Jack’s daughters and ex-wife. His girls seemed to accept the story of his being washed overboard during the height of the storm; his ex-wife was a different story. She came one day when I was sitting downstairs in the sunroom. I still wasn’t ready to venture outside. She sat opposite me, the sunlight falling across her in horizontal lines created by the window blinds. For a long time, she just looked at me, and I tried my best to look at her. Then she asked me a single question, the only thing she said to me the whole time she was there that day.

  “Was he afraid, at the very end?” is what she asked.

  I forced myself to look her in the eye. “No,” I said. “He wasn’t afraid. He was never afraid.”

  The people from the boatyard down in Journey’s End called, asking if someone would be picking up Sea Legs. For a while, my wife tried to talk me into flying down and bringing her up the Intracoastal, or hiring someone to do it, or even renting a trailer to haul her north. But as much as I’d once loved the boat, I no longer wanted anything to do with her; I knew my sailing days were over. We arranged with a broker in Savannah to sell her and ship us what remained of our belongings.

  I have not been to sea since. To this day, I am unable to step aboard a commuter ferry. I cannot take a rowboat out on a pond, or paddle a canoe across a lake. Sailing was once one of the great loves of my life. It’s not a matter of missing it now, or not missing it; it’s simply something I no longer do, and never will again.

  I know full well that everybody who lives also dies. I lost my grandparents growing up. Both my parents died when they were still in their sixties. And when my children first learned to drive, I became obsessed with their mortality, and my heart stopped each time the phone rang in the middle of the night, when one of them was out. But in my wildest dreams, it never occurred to me that my own kid brother would die before I would. Nothing prepared me for that. Nothing.

  A year or two ago, I was leafing through a magazine, a National Geographic, it may have been, and I came across a photo of a giant seabird. I found myself staring at it, without quite understanding why. Then it hit me: I was looking at Gawk. I read the caption.

  The Wandering Albatross (Diomedea exulans) The largest member of the albatross family, the wandering albatross reaches a length of four feet and a wingspan of twelve feet. It mates for life and, if separated, is said to wander over the oceans forever, in search of its lost mate.

  Not a day of my life goes by that I don’t think of Jack. I still dream of him often, though the dreams are no longer violent. Perhaps that’s progress of some sort. But to this day, I’ll be walking down the street, and I�
��ll spot some wiry young man with touches of gray in his hair, and my heart will stop. Then he’ll turn my way and reveal to me that he’s not my brother after all. My brother is dead, I have to remind myself. He killed himself.

  Was he right to do what he did, when he did it? To this day, I don’t know the answer to that, any more than I did fifteen years ago. I know it was wrong for me, horribly, excruciatingly wrong. But I also know that in the fifteen years since Jack’s death, nobody has come up with a cure for the disease that surely would have killed him by this time. No UFOs have landed that I know of. And the Sox haven’t even come close to winning a World Series.

  I’ve spent a lot of hours and a lot of dollars listening to some very educated people telling me that it’s time for me to stop thinking I let Jack down and to begin to realize that it was the other way around. I understand I’m supposed to be angry at Jack for that. But how can I be angry at him? I love him too much. I miss him too much, still.

  My own life goes on. I practice law; I write my books. I have a wonderful wife and three terrific children. I’m even a grandfather these days. By all accounts, I should be the happiest man alive. And the truth is that I am, in many ways. Until the end of the day, that is, when I close my eyes. Then do I feel his mouth on mine, his hand moving ever so softly down the side of my face. And once again my only brother rises from beside me and slips silently into the sea.

  Published by New Word City LLC, 2016

  www.NewWordCity.com

  © Joseph T. Klempner

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-61230-982-8