There was nothing else to put on the little table.
The only other things in the cabin were a metal chair with a seat of cracked leather the color of something his mother would have cautioned him not to step in, a mirror sporting a lengthwise crack, and a sink in which dripping minerals had long since made a rusty trail from the faucet to the drain. He turned the faucet and was pleased when what came out was just ordinary water. He ran it over his hands, cupped them beneath it, and splashed his face. Ordinary water. He could brush his teeth, if he’d remembered to bring toothpaste. And a toothbrush.
He looked at the top bunk and imagined Angela there. She’d have thought of those things. His eyes drifted to the mirror over the sink. She’d have thought of a comb and razor, as well. Still, he would have been enclosed with her in a space so small the likelihood that she would, at some point, breathe in his ear again was almost assured.
Maybe someone on the island would have a toothbrush he could borrow.
There was a knock at the door and, when he opened it, Frenchie poured in, bag in hand. She was out of breath. “You’re in luck!” she said. “There was a fire in my cabin on the way over from the island.” She tossed her bag on the bottom bunk. “Couple of truck drivers got themselves drunk, dowsed the mattresses with liquor—probably that distilled rocket fuel that passes for drink on the island—which would explain why they reckoned such a fool thing would be an entertaining way to pass the night, as well as why there wasn’t enough left of the mattresses to sweep up.
“Anyway, looks like we’re gonna be bunkmates, Al.” She followed this startling announcement by subjecting the springs of the lower bunk to an impromptu stress test, throwing herself full-length with such abandon that they took several seconds, complaining loudly, to conform themselves to her figure, of which there was an abundance.
Albert’s first thought was, “Where’s the burned-out cabin?” and he was just about to put wind behind it when Frenchie continued. “You don’t mind the top, do you? Only, there’s more of me to get up there, and less of you, if you take my meaning.”
“I . . .”
“Only other place on board big enough for both of us is the freezer,” she said with a chuckle.
“Freezer?” Albert repeated. If it was big enough for both of them, that meant it was big enough for either of them. There was hope.
Frenchie, misconstruing the echo, barreled ahead. “Holds a couple dozen sheep dressed out.”
Albert blinked. Sometimes it helped make sense of something that didn’t. Two dozen sheep in tuxedos, though, was a hard image to dispel. He blinked two more times.
“Huge improvement over the ice and sawdust contraption they had on the old boat,” said Frenchie, laboring under the misapprehension that Albert had even the remotest clue what she was talking about. The sheep, having little else to do in the freezer of Albert’s imagination, broke into a little softshoe—which he mentally scored with a few bars that, truth be told, were derivative of Duke Ellington—and waited.
“The toilet’s just out the door and across the corridor,” said Frenchie, apparently tiring of the subject of sheep. “Take care when you open and close doors on this tin can once we’re out to sea,” she said. “Push and pull when gravity will do the work.” She mimed ocean swells with her hand. “Otherwise you could get a nasty bump.”
“Thank you,” said Albert. “I . . .”
“Also, I brought my own grub. Plenty for the two of us, so we don’t have to subject our delicate pallets to the swill the crew eats in the mess. (Truth be told, long as they’ve got plenty of beer, they don’t care what they eat.)”
Albert found he had a lot in common with the crew, and he hadn’t even met them yet. “I . . .”
Frenchie placed her hands behind her head. “Looks like smooth sailing. Anything you need before we shove off?”
At the top of the list of his most pressing needs at the moment, as Albert scanned the list from top to bottom, was the absence of Frenchie. He went quickly to the second. “I don’t have a toothbrush.”
“There’s a shop just across the parking lot and ’round the corner. They’ll have all you need. Come along.”
The shop—one of those magical, overstuffed little cubes staffed by earnest gentlemen of Indian derivation with which the universe had equipped itself for the provision of every imaginable contingent—was as good as Frenchie’s promise and, by the time the second whistle blew, which she told him was the final boarding call, and they were back in their cabin, he was kitted out like a seasoned traveler. Toothbrush and toothpaste. A razor and shaving cream. A comb and. . ., well, there was no and with a comb. Just hair, and he’d brought that with him.
He’d also bought a carton of cigarettes, two six-packs of beer, and, in case of shipwreck on a desert island, some bags of frozen things that were probably food.
“You needn’t have got all that, Al,” Frenchie had said at the checkout. “I’m happy to share what I brought, like I said.”
“This . . . is just in case.”
Frenchie laughed. “In case of what? Shipwreck?!”
She could read his mind! This was going to be a difficult crossing.
“I brought some cards,” she said, somehow removing a deck from the pocket of her voluminous coat even as she shrugged it from her shoulders. She tossed it on the bed. “Ever play strip poker?”
She laughed.
Contrary to his expectations, Albert found himself enjoying Frenchie’s company. They were between two and three hours out of Auckland, crossing what Frenchie said, and what he already knew from his study of maps, was the Bay of Plenty and, as she had predicted, the going was “smooth as glass.” During that time, as she taught him gin rummy—which, oddly enough, had nothing to do with either gin or rum—they discovered that, while both were smokers, neither could abide the other’s brand of noxious fumes, so had agreed not to smoke in the cabin. Frequently, therefore, one or the other would interrupt the game to make their way down the narrow alleys formed by crates, containers, and canisters of flammable materials regimenting the deck to a designated place at the rear of the boat where, said the crewman who’d directed them there, they’d be least likely to “blow us all to hell with your filthy habit.”
Albert couldn’t help but notice that the crewman—whose name, according to the little rectangle sewn onto the sleeve of his jacket, was 1st Mate Clarence Cuthbertson—had a lit cigarette in his mouth as he delivered the sermonette. “There you go,” he said. His hands were stuffed into his pocket, and his collar turned up against the bitter wind as he nodded at a triangular appendage overhanging the ocean, just big enough for one person to stand on, that seemed to have been affixed as an afterthought. Albert decided they must have had a little left over after building the boat and chose to weld it there rather than going to the trouble of taking it to the dump.
In any event, the outcrop was surrounded by a sturdy railing, and it was upon this he was leaning and smoking and thinking when the rhythmic vibration of the deck was suddenly augmented by a shudder that made him reflectively grab the rail with both hands. The next moment, the ship’s stern rose violently, until the tops of the propellers were clear of the water, clutching and grasping as frantically for the depths again as a drowning man for the surface. Albert stared wide-eyed into the frothing maelstrom below, tightening his grip on the rails.
His brain chose this moment to remind him of something he’d heard once in Sunday school about the world coming to an end one day. Blowing up, or something. This was probably that.
His first thought was to get back to the cabin, rescue Frenchie and, if there was time, the bags of frozen food, and, together, strike out to find the lifeboat, or flotation devices of some kind, like those the stewardess on the plane had assured them were beneath the cushion of their seats. Strange the same assurance hadn’t been provided on the boat. As a matter of fact, the only seat he’d seen since coming aboard was the metal one in the cabin, and he was pretty sure there wasn
’t a flotation device under that. Even if there was, he’d have to let Frenchie have it. He was raised that way.
Of course, if this was the end of the world, where in the world could they go to get away from it?
By the time he’d finished thinking these thoughts, the ship had recovered from its fit and had settled down again. For some reason, now that the danger had passed, an alarm bell went off, nearly shocking him out of his skin. At the same time, a small herd of crewmen was rushing toward him, and they seemed very agitated. Perhaps they thought he’d been responsible for whatever had just happened and, if events were anything to go by, they were about to throw him overboard.
“Back to your cabin,” said 1st Mate Clarence Cuthbertson. He had one of Albert’s elbows by the hand, and another crewman, whose name tag Albert couldn’t read, had the other. “There’s been an earthquake.”
Had they been on land, Albert understood why this would have been a cause for concern—but they were at sea.
“Don’t know if that was the big one, or just a samplin’ of things to come,” the 1st mate continued as he and his companion squeezed, pulled, and pushed Albert toward the deck house, where they stopped. “Could be bad. You strap yourself in good an’ tight, just in case.”
That admonition was punctuated by the opening of the door, in the opening of which Frenchie stationed herself like a large, female X. “Quake,” she said.
“Too right,” said Clarence. “Big one.”
“Worse to come?” said Frenchie.
“Never know with the buggers, do ya?”
“Too right,” said Frenchie. “Any guess where from?”
Clarence shrugged. “Not sure. Not far away. That wave was a new one, no more than fifteen feet, so not far from the epicenter.”
“Good thing we’re not out ahead of it, then,” said Frenchie. She pulled Albert into the cabin, the wall of which she slapped with the palm of her hand. “This old girl will ride thirty-or-forty footers without breakin’ stride.”
“Fair go,” said Clarence. “Hope we can say the same for you lot. Best stow your movables under the bunk, climb in and hold tight. Better safe.”
“Better safe,” said Frenchie, shutting the door on Clarence. She began grabbing anything within reach that wasn’t fastened down and shoving it under her bunk. “That push came right up her ass,” she said. In reference to what, Albert had no idea. “Took it easy. But if the next one’s bigger, and athwartships, we might get tossed about like dolls, unless we’re stowed away.”
She stood by the bunks, and slapped his bed. “Now, what’s best is if you climb up here. Your blankets are tucked tight. Crawl in, pull ’em up under your chin, grab the rails, and hold on tight!”
Albert had to go to the bathroom, and that is where he was sitting when the second wave hit. The sensation—being silently lifted sideways, toilet and all, until he was vertical to the floor, rather, the floor was vertical to wherever “down” was—was surreal. Clinging to the toilet seat, rather than the toilet itself was, he soon discovered, a mistake. Not only was his relationship to gravity indefinite, but he was flapping back and forth.
Once again, the boat, the toilet, the toilet seat, and Albert settled but, he noticed, the deck was definitely listing. The alarm was sounding again, and the door of the head flew open. “All hands!” the second mate shouted into his face. “On deck. Now!”
A split second later, but for the residue of engine oil and sweat, the second mate was a dim memory, but his words hung in the air, seeming to repeat themselves. “All hands on deck!”
What did it mean?
Albert looked at the deck and was in the midst of squatting to put his hands thereon when, like the second mate before her, Frenchie appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing, Al?! Didn’t you hear the mate? All hands on deck!”
“I was . . .”
“No time to pray,” said Frenchie, impatiently. “The cargo’s shifted forward! All hands are needed to get some of it back amidships before the bow goes down! Come along!”
Albert had little choice but to “come along” as Frenchie had him by the collar and was dragging him across the deck which, as if by a huge, unseen hand, had been swept clean of the crates and canisters. These, Albert saw at a glance, were piled in a heap at the bow, the deck of which, because of their weight, was perilously close to water level, and awash with waves.
Deep in the bowels of the ship, the engine was idled, waiting to be called upon.
One of the sailors climbed up behind the winch controls and fed out the cable to others who pulled it across the deck. Frenchie joined them. Albert joined Frenchie who, above the din of confusion and machinery, yelled into his ear. “If the next wave comes before we get this lot back on center and tied down, it’ll be Davy Jones for the lot! Us included!”
As they dragged the cable forward, Albert noticed that some of the sailors had wrapped the nearest of the crates with a cord of interwoven material, which joined, on the side facing them, through a ring. This was fortunate, he thought, because the cable ended with a hook.
Serendipity!
“You go aft!” yelled 1st Mate Clarence Cuthbertson, unnecessarily since his face, stressed with strain, was no more than three inches from his own. “You see another wave comin’, you let us know!”
He thrust a little can at Albert, who took it and looked at it. It was cold in his hands.
“Back there!” said the 1st mate, pointing toward the stern. “If you see another wave comin’ blow the horn, right there.” He pointed at a red plastic button. “That’ll make a noise to wake the dead.”
His hike to the stern was alarmingly uphill, and the deck—spotted with oil here and there—was slippery, so that he was on his hand(s?) and knees most of the time. Behind him, he heard the winch grind to life, following by the scraping of the first crate across the deck.
Once at the stern, he crawled to the little smoking proscenium, wrapped himself around the railings, and turned his eyes toward the horizon.
The most unsettling thing, at first glance, was that everything looked so normal. There was land in the distance, looking exactly like land in the distance should look, though a little bluer. Smudges of smoke dotted the landscape here and there. Otherwise, everything was perfectly normal looking. The ocean was, if anything, placid. Looking down, he could see that the propellers were, once again, more out of the water than in. But they were still.
Raising his eyes again, he was surprised to find that land was no longer visible. New Zealand had sunk! His next thought was of Jeremy Ash, and Angela, Wendell, and Mr. Sweetman, and Colonel Rivens’ piano. Perhaps that would float, and if they could make their way to it . . .
It was then that Albert realized the horizon wasn’t stationary. That, in fact, it was moving toward them, and rising exponentially as it came. In panic, he seized the horn and pushed the button.
Chapter Nine
Nothing happened.
He pushed it again.
Nothing.
He punched the glasses up his nose and scanned the mechanism frantically. There was a tiny plastic spur on the cap that seemed to have been designed for the purpose of preventing use of the horn. He caught the edges of this appendage with his fingernails, tore it off with trembling hands, and pushed the button again.
In church one day when he was young, someone quoted from the Bible about an angel whose job it was to blow a trumpet to announce the end of the world. What the writer of those words had in mind must be the cacophony that followed Albert’s pressing of the button. In shock, he dropped the canister and his hands flew to his ears. As a result, a good thing happened; the noise stopped. This was also a bad thing, because the noise was what was needed. Fortunately, the horn had fetched up against a coil of rope not three feet away. On his hands and knees, he crawled to it, picked it up and, sticking a finger in the ear nearest the horn, pushed the button again.
The blast was long, loud, and left no one in doubt that the next wave was coming.
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“Lifeboat!” someone called, and immediately the crewmen and Frenchie abandoned what they were doing and ran across the deck, forming a noisy, agitated cluster of frantically groping arms and hands in the vicinity of the gimbals holding the lifeboat in place.
Frenchie was yelling indistinctly, gesturing wildly at him to join them. He was running to do so when, nearing midships, he slipped in a pool of oil. He struggled to his feet, slipped again, and again, and again, and with each slip, due to the declination of the ship, was being swept toward the bow. He was unable to gain his feet again until, only feet from the vessel’s foremost edge, he reached out and grabbed the mammoth strap that—tautly spanning the open bows—was the only thing holding everything in place. It creaked loudly with the strain of the massive weight bearing down upon it.
As he righted himself, his eyes fell upon an axaffixed by a bracket to the hull. He grabbed it and, getting the best foothold his oil-soled shoes would allow, swung at the strap.
He missed, nearly amputating his leg in the process.
The force of the motion threw him once again to the deck and nearly overboard. It was the ax which he was holding over his head—through nothing more than reflex—that caught on the strap. He used it to pull himself up again.
This time, he wrapped his left arm around the railing and, with his right—holding the handle at the mid-point rather than the end of the shaft—took a more modest swing.
Nothing much happened, but he managed to remain upright, and the ax actually came into contact with the strap, even if the strap failed to acknowledge the event in any meaningful way.
Improvisato Page 11
