by Chris Riley
Danny Wilson. I turned over on my side and began to cry, not able to stop, not even trying; I just let it all out. I couldn’t get that last image of him out of my mind—alone, swimming into the dark horizon, swimming toward the abyss. I wondered if Danny had been afraid, and if he had felt miserable and burdened with despair, the same as me. It was my hope that he hadn’t—that the salvation from wretchedness could be found somewhere in his simple mind, and that Danny suffered little before he succumbed to the will of the sea. Better yet, perhaps he imagined himself in the midst of a SEAL mission, loaded down with gear, leading the way, his teammates trailing behind him. He would’ve liked that, I’m sure—a dream come true. My friend—he was worthy of that esteemed title, and he’d been proving it to me his whole life. All the way up until the end, Danny was the man I needed to be.
What would I tell Danny’s father? He’d arrive at the hospital soon enough, along with my own family and other families. There would be a mess of tears, an unlimited number of questions.
The notion of explaining my ordeal to others got me thinking real hard, pushing a few hours fast ahead. I thought about myself, of life, and of my eternal quest. I wanted so badly to own the title of someone who would never hesitate to do exactly the right thing, at exactly the right moment. Looking back on my recent tribulation, a part of me doubted myself. There were too many what-ifs, should-haves, and could-haves plaguing my thoughts. It became painful to think about “the man in me.”
Dave certainly had me pegged. Knew my face in perfect detail, as if looking straight into a mirror. He knew what kind of man I was. But also, he knew what kind of man I could become. In Dave’s final words, I had heard a note of optimism: don’t end up like me. There was hope. And since I was still alive, I had a promise to keep, the one I’d made to Dave.
A vague sliver of relief crept out of me by way of a deep sigh. Had Danny been lying at my side just then, I think he would have been proud. I never left Dave behind, so there was hope for me yet.
Then I remembered Dave’s words about never forgiving himself over what he had done to his brother, and once again my heart was filled with despair. It was too late to apologize to Danny. And the very notion of this “lateness” summoned a terrible regret, deep inside my gut. As for forgiving myself—well, I wasn’t so sure how a person went about doing that.
I closed my eyes and rolled back over, exhausted, mentally spent, physically beaten. I fell asleep for a few hours, eventually waking to a nurse checking in on me. She told me that I had a few “eager” visitors, and she asked if I was up for company. I nodded, then closed my eyes once again, my mind racing. Only this time, I began to consider something much deeper than the slippery surface of defining my character.
I thought about the life a person gets in this world—never a significant amount of time, no matter how long we live. Remorseless, this life sweeps by like a southern updraft, stirring nothing more than a few whitecaps on the boundless sea of the Universe.
Swallowing hard, I heaved a deep sigh.
Then I cocked my head up at the white ceiling panels of my room. It suddenly occurred to me: how much time does a person need, after all? How many years does it take to be a rare human being, to observe Life as the single most challenge yet, and to tackle its obstacles with insurmountable courage? How long until a person learns to accept and then reject the notion that we all have our own form of disability? I wondered: how much time does it take to be like my friend, Danny Wilson?
I left it at that. I wasn’t ready to die anymore. I was ready to live. I was ready to laugh, and to cry, and to tell my story. And maybe one day I’d be able to forgive myself.
Chapter 30
The next day they found Danny. I was still at the Kodiak Medical Center when Les Sherman walked in to give me the news. There had been a stir of voices down the hall minutes before. I was surrounded by my family as well as Danny’s, and we all looked at one another, curious. Then, as Les entered the room and I saw his face, my heart sank into my chest.
He told me where they’d found my friend—on the eastern point of Sitkalidak Island. I remember looking away from Les just then, staring into the folds and creases of the sheets I lay under, thinking about how Danny must have looked when they found him. And also worrying if Danny had been overcome by terror while in the grip of what must have been the coldest and loneliest of all deaths.
Les’s voice trailed off into the background. I barely heard him when he told me that they didn’t find Danny on the beach, tangled up in seaweed. Nor did they find him facedown, snagged between a few rocks with that yellow bull’s-eye beaming skyward.
“Our helicopter came around a rocky outcrop,” Les began, “and that’s when I saw the orange spot on the shoreline. I knew it was a survival suit.” I gulped, as Les continued with the news. “I was pretty tired. We’d been searching all night. But as we got closer, I realized that no, I wasn’t hallucinating after all.” Les’ face suddenly broke into a wide grin.
“What the hell are you saying?” I asked.
“I’m saying that when we flew down on that island, our pilot froze with shock and almost crashed our ride. Danny Wilson was doing jumping jacks on the goddamned beach!”
Danny had been found, all right, and he was very much alive. He slept for twenty-four hours after they picked him up, but later the next day, he and I were reunited amid a crowd of reporters, our families, a bunch of nameless fishermen, and just about the entire population of Kodiak Island. It was one of the greatest moments of my life.
They tried to push me over to Danny’s room in a wheelchair, but I refused. I wanted to walk. I turned a corner then saw my friend down the hall, walking toward me as well, surrounded by people. He was wrapped in a blanket and looked ragged as hell—until we made eye contact. Then Danny’s entire face beamed with life, and we ran to each other.
I ran to Danny, knowing that I would get another chance to tell him everything he deserved to hear. I ran to him, feeling pure and whole in my own mind, knowing that I would never again leave him alone to endure the brunt of some bully, or to battle Mother Nature. I ran to my brother, Danny Wilson, happy to be a man, ready to ask him for the forgiveness that I should have begged for years ago.
Our bodies crashed together into a huge hug of sobs and laughter.
“You made it, buddy!” I said, crying with astounding relief. “You made it!”
From under our embrace, and amongst his own stream of joyful tears, Danny shouted in return, “Hooyah, master chief!”
Epilogue
In the winter of 1980, crab fisherman Rick Laws survived the longest stretch of time adrift in the Gulf of Alaska, wearing nothing but a survival suit. He rode the waves for twenty-seven hours before a fishing vessel picked him up—at which point, Rick was barely clinging to life.
Danny Wilson missed Laws’ record by an estimated thirty-eight minutes. Although no one is certain exactly how long Danny was in the water, including Danny himself, a study taken by a team of scientists pinpointed the time to twenty-six hours and twenty-two minutes.
The measured data began with the approximate time Danny had jumped into the water, as taken from my account of the subsequent events that occurred after Fred had set off the EPIRB, and it ended with the time Danny had staggered ashore, based on his best estimate as to how long he was there before his rescue—he told them how many jumping jacks he’d performed.
The Angie Piper sank roughly seven miles east of Sitkalidak Island. Prevailing winds, currents, and the tide were factored in as well—Danny’s body mass and buoyancy were provided from the survival suit. The missing link, of course, was Danny himself. Or more accurately, his will to survive. This unknown factor was mathematically represented by the letter X, and when matched against the combined data, it ultimately accounted for six hours of time—the time he made up with his swimming.
Regardless of how long Danny was in the water, he became an overnight superstar. It’s not every day that a person swims to shore
from a sinking vessel in the Gulf of Alaska, and in the dead of winter—let alone a person with Down syndrome. The press loved it, and they ate Danny up. Like the tide, he was swept off Alaska’s shoreline to tour across the Lower 48. Bedazzled with glitter and flashing lights, my friend made the cover of several magazines before he finally realized the significance of his miraculous feat.
Danny rarely went on about his achievement, though. Or his sudden stardom. And that’s because what mattered most to him, since the day of his rescue, was the day his dream had come true.
Four and half months after Danny staggered onto the shores of Sitkalidak Island, he stood at attention on another island. On a weathered blacktop in Coronado, California, Danny was surrounded by people once again—the media, family, friends, and military personnel. As the embodiment of courage—lauded as having an unmatched, tenacious will to never surrender—Danny Wilson was made an honorary Navy SEAL.
When they pinned that SEAL Trident onto his chest, Danny never even smiled. I think he was so overcome with pride that it was all he could do to stand there and hold it together. Quite frankly, it might have been the toughest day of his life.
That was the moment when things changed for me, seeing Danny there on that blacktop, representing to the whole world the purest form of honor, as crafted from triumphant glory and staggering fear. Ironic as it seems, I discovered on that day a much deeper bond to my friend. Before, Danny had already been a superhero in my mind. A creature in the wrestling booth who sipped soda and chewed peanuts while he tore men down. A kid who shrugged bullies off his back like they were nothing but mild chills. A man who conquered the sea. To my greatest surprise, I realized that Danny was nothing like how I’d pictured him. Now … well, he was just like me—a simple human being.
In time, something about this newfound perspective changed my attitude about people, and I suppose about life. Eventually I saw Danny not only as a person capable of accomplishing his dreams, but more importantly, as a man capable of taking care of himself. And capable of fear. I finally observed the human qualities that we shared, and because of this, I developed the deepest respect for my friend. Seeing the full weight of his character, there on that blacktop, with its strengths and weaknesses … I guess it helped validate my own self-worth.
As for now, many years later—well, I no longer worry about some of the things I used to. My thoughts are almost never interrupted by all the bullshit I used to think about from day to day. Such is the good life of being a captain of my own fishing vessel. I still live in Alaska, though, and she’s more of a bitch than she ever was—but she’s a beautiful bitch. When I fish for king crab in the Bering Sea, I never take for granted the serenity cast in her silver horizon. It is an endless yawn that pulls at the bow of my ship as well as my heart, and it acts as the leader to my soul. When I haul opilio crab near the Aleutian Islands, I often catch myself staring at a distant, snow-capped volcano—just one massive link in a rising chain of land. And every time I run gear in the Gulf of Alaska, there’s a certain route I take on my way back to Kodiak. A certain island I pass, and a certain spot a few miles away where my crew and I pay our respects to our fallen brothers—and where I hold myself accountable for a promise I made long ago.
I run a crew of six hardworking deckhands, most of them permanent members. There’s the occasional drifter, yet most of my guys know a good job when they see it. But I will never have an opening for a greenhorn, as my bait-boy is the best damn worker Alaska has ever laid claim to. He wears a ball cap embroidered with the SEAL logo, and he sets the pace down on deck like nobody’s business. His name is Danny Wilson, and he’s a brother who will always have a place at my side.
My home is a one-hundred-and-thirty-foot twin-screw commercial crabbing vessel. The wheelhouse is located at the stern, so I have a good view of my crew when we’re hauling gear. During the off season, I occasionally tender for salmon runs, but most of the time I hole up in Kodiak to catch my breath. Standing outside McCrawley’s, that’s where a person is likely to spot my vessel, my home, moored in the harbor. She’s the blue-on-black beauty, rightfully named the Master Chief.
* * *
Chris Riley lives near Sacramento, California, vowing one day to move back to the Pacific Northwest. In the meantime, he teaches special education, writes awesome stories, and hides from the blasting heat for six months out of the year. He has had dozens of short stories published in various magazines and anthologies, and across various genres. The Sinking of the Angie Piper is his first novel.
For more information, got to www.chrisrileyauthor.com.
