Making Shore

by Sara Allerton

  The two of them, still easily the biggest men on the boat, stood for a minute, eyeball to eyeball, the furious menace in one counter-balanced by the relatively calm regard of the other. Joe, just the shorter of the two and certainly the thinner, looked easily the weaker man, for somehow his debilitation seemed more apparent. The fury evident in Big Sam’s stance had drawn him up considerably, for now he held his shoulders back and stood squarely, bearing down on Joe. Joe, in contrast, looked shrivelled, physically spent. His shoulders bent forward and the bowing in his back and legs meant that he was forced to look up into Big Sam’s face. He did not, at any point, look down at the knife tip that Big Sam held threateningly, a few inches from his jaw.

  ‘Sam,’ Joe said quietly. He held his hands out, wide apart, palms up in simple supplication.

  ‘I won’t forget it Joe. If you try an’ protect that bastard after what he said about Moses. About us. If you don’t move aside, you ain’t no fucking friend of mine.’

  ‘I am your friend. It’s you I’m bloody trying to protect. If you kill him, Sam, what then?’ I noticed for the first time as Joe spoke that his breath came slightly raggedly and he had to pause to catch it before he could continue. He swallowed with difficulty and winced. Then, indicating the rest of the crew, most of whom were, by this time, on their feet in ready accedence for a fight, he said again, ‘What then, Sam? One of them’d have you for it. You’ll be the black who killed a white because he lost control. As it is, Jim Mackingtosh is just an ignorant low life who should have learnt by now to keep his stupid, bloody mouth shut.’ He paused again to catch at breath, struggling for the words. ‘It isn’t about your colour, Sam. Or his. It’s about respect. Humanity. His has gone, if he ever bloody had any, which I doubt. What about yours?’

  In the quietness and the darkness, we waited, scarcely breathing. We waited for Big Sam to weigh it up. Either way. My eyes, transfixed upon his knife, could clearly make out the four massive bones of his knuckles that protruded as he clenched it tight.

  ‘Ain’t about colour? It’s all right for you to say,’ he sneered, leaning his face in, right up close to Joe’s so that his knife point caught and pinned the baggy material of Joe’s shirt fast against his chest. ‘You’re one of them.’

  He looked up and around then, deliberately taking time to stare down each one of the startled faces which watched him through the darkness. ‘You white bastards. You’ve been holdin’ all the fucking cards, haven’t you? Leavin’ the weight of all the rowing down to us. Rationing the water. Extra if you happen to be white, eh, Clarie?’ His low-voiced fury thickened and expanded, rising in volume as he lost possession of his rage. ‘No wonder Moses chose to take his chances in the sea. You fuckers’ll probably have us overboard anyway in the end to keep yourselves for longer.’ He turned his face back to Joe and through clenched teeth, spat finally, ‘Can’t trust any of you fucking bastards after all.’

  Then, leaning in once more and swallowing tightly, his face twisted up with hatred and he hissed, ‘Don’t you even talk to me again, Joe. Don’t you fucking well come near me. You keep out my way. You ain’t no fucking friend of mine.’ He tapped his knife blade twice, lightly just below Joe’s collarbone and then he turned away, throwing out over his shoulder as he did so, ‘I’ll have you, Mac, you fucking coward, another time.’

  I exhaled deeply at Sam’s retreating back and then looked at Joe. He was rubbing his face with both hands, passing the tips of his fingers in and out of the sockets of his eyes. Mac suddenly barged into him, knocking his hands from his face roughly as he pushed between us. Joe staggered slightly down and sideways, his knees buckling beneath him, and for a moment I thought that he would fall but somehow he did not. ‘Ignorant low life. That about right?’ Mac snarled as he moved past. ‘You just wanna watch yourself, Joe.’

  Staggered by the base ingratitude, I shot out an arm to make a grab at him though Joe’s, just quicker, flicked up again to stop me.

  ‘Leave it… don’t take him on,’ he whispered and he moved away to sit down heavily on the ledge. My face must have registered my frustration and surprise, for looking up at me, he said suddenly, in a voice so low and thin that I had to lean down to hear him, ‘Thing is, Cub, we none of us are who we were. None of us can be sure of what we’re gonna do. No one’s safe. Like Murack said, it’s each man for himself. Won’t be long before someone gets killed. For water. For arguing. For anything. As dangerous in the boat as out of it.’ He folded his arms and, hunching forward, leant his elbows on his knees. ‘You need to keep your head down and your mouth shut from now on. Share my knife. We need to watch each other’s back. Take it in turns to sleep. Seems there’s nothing left.’

  I sat down next to him but he continued to stare ahead, fixed on nothing. My eyes moved slowly up the boat, over the dark forms of our companions. Some men were still standing up, whispering to one another. Others had gone back to their oars and were waiting to resume. Big Sam had returned up to the prow and was sitting down, though Wallace stood before him and seemed to be talking at him earnestly. When it came to it, I wasn’t sure of any of them. Extremes of thirst and hunger, fear and pain, had brought some of us to abject weakness, to instability. Others had turned aggressive, selfish, uncompassionate. And now, some would go as far as bloody murder.

  Slowly, I nodded my understanding but Joe, if he saw, did not acknowledge it. He got up stiffly and looked down at me, ‘Come on,’ he said flatly. ‘We’re meant to row.’

  ‘Were you scared – just then?’ I asked him, as I got up. Somehow, it was important to me that I had not been the only one to respond to Sam’s fury and the prospect of such a fight with the spine-knotting pitch of fear I had felt.

  ‘I was bloody petrified,’ Joe replied grimly.

  Looking back, I know now that by this time, he had understood instinctively that we were close to the end. Any end. Whichever one it was, he knew it to be near. On the very cusp, it could not now be much longer before we tipped and fell. Dried to death, starved, drowned, stabbed, saved. One of them lingered close at hand.

  He was trying to tell me that the threadbare bonds of our humanity, snagging only slightly still, had all but worn through. They would hem us in no longer. He knew that there would be murder. Someone would be stabbed or thrown overboard and there would be retribution. And there was nothing that he or I could do about it. He was preparing me.

  If not that, then our bodies and our minds would no longer be supported by the tiny drops of water afforded to them. They would shrivel up and die. They would fail. And if not tomorrow, then it would be the day after.

  Or we would, by some final quirk of unreliable fortune, chance to make a landfall in the tiny slit of time we might have left. It would be close. There was little margin now for error. The edges of the narrow gap between an unacceptable life and a horrific death had almost closed. And it had to be tonight. Tomorrow. Because there were not going to be any more tomorrows thereafter. It could not be borne, physically, mentally. At all. We had almost done.

  And so when finally the land came into view, it was quite literally not a day too soon.

  I did not understand what it meant at first and yet I was the first to see it. The boat was silent at the bidding of the sun’s savagery. Our bodies lay disordered, transfixed beneath her steady, unremitting stare. It was better not to move. Once in a while, a limb jerked in reflex, flinching from her searing brand. My head rested on the boat’s rim on Joe’s old pullover, but I was awake, open-eyed and staring into nothing. Half-dead but taking unconscious comfort from the somnolent rocking of the swell, I lay unblinking and unseeing.

  Eventually, my eyelids closed involuntarily, seeking once again to sooth the irritation that raged beneath, but waterless, they worked in vain. When I opened them again, I had found some focus. My eyes, by force of habit, petitioned the horizon. And then, then I saw it. A thin, grey line; short, but thicker than the blue. I gazed at it, uncomprehending. I did not even try to move my head. A thin, grey line:
surely thicker than the blue. I watched it waver with the boat, rising and falling in my eye line, and with every gentle undulation my thoughts settled slowly to coaxing out a meaning. Land.

  I sat up straight and squinted. There it was. I put my hands up to shield my eyes and winced into the blaring blue. A thin, grey line. I struggled to my feet, my head spinning with the effort. I stared at it, to see if it would shift within the corrugated shimmerings of the heat. It did not move. We must have reached the land.

  ‘Land,’ I whispered, ‘land.’ As if the word would make it definite. I passed my tongue across my lips in a pointless attempt at lubrication. ‘There’s land.’ My disaccustomed voice broke and, quavering, rose, throwing off its arid inhibition and getting louder and more strident with every effort. ‘Joe. Mick! Jesus Christ! I see the bloody land!’

  Mick was first beside me. I pointed with a trembling arm out across the miles of water, willing him to see what I could see. I watched his eyes, scanning, darting, eager and impatient. They stopped and fixed. The muscles in his face relaxed. He’d seen it. There was land.

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ he whispered. ‘Sweet Jesus. Cub. It’s land. It’s the bleeding land.’ He grasped me round my skinny shoulders and shook me, hollering hoarsely and laughing, shouting to the others that there was land, that we were saved, that it was over now. Disorientated, men got up and, squinting, blindly stumbled to the port side. Mick grabbed on to them and shoved them forwards, directing their heads and eyes towards the tiny slit of hope, then danced along the line behind them, unable to contain his joy. Some got up upon the seats and stared and stared, unable to believe that there, at last, lay the thin, grey point of our deliverance. They couldn’t tear their eyes away for fear of losing sight of it. Some knelt, some laughed, some, tearless, wept at our relief. I saw Fraser raise his fists up to the skies, as though declaring us victorious. Clarie took the skipper’s hand and pumped it, before yanking the vestige of his body forwards and enfolding it in an exuberant embrace.

  I looked around for Joe. Slow, too slow, he was the last to join us. He had made it to his feet and coughing hard to catch his breath, he was shuffling towards me. Head and shoulders bent, he staggered slightly just before he reached me and put a hand out to steady himself. I caught him at the elbow and, taking his forearm in my other hand, I shook him jubilantly, far too eager and excited to take much note of the pain it seemed to cause him. His body tensed but then he caught my eye and smiled. ‘We bloody made it, Cub. Always knew we would!’

  Later, in the cool of evening, the skipper granted us a double ration of water each to celebrate. It would not now be long and finally reprieved, we felt we could afford extravagance. There was talk and laughter among us now, enmity forgotten for the moment and an eagerness to start the rowing. But what I most remember of that night, bubbling up and frothing over, was the gloriously enlivening, intoxicating sense of imminent release.

  I pointed to Joe’s notches. ‘Nineteen days!’ I said to him, barely able to keep my splitting lips from stretching wide. ‘There’s only eighteen here. One more now and tomorrow, there’ll be no need. Nineteen notches. You were right. We’d never have kept count.’

  He didn’t answer me but, flipping out his knife and still shaking slightly, he knelt to carve it out.

  CHAPTER 9

  JOE. OF ALL PEOPLE.

  The next morning, Joe was quiet. Around him, there was laughter. The first tinted glimmering of the sun had brought relief; separate, secret sighs. We had not dreamt it.

  The long, thin slash of grey separating sky and sea had fattened slightly overnight and men, old friends again, with sudden strength, attacked the rowing. The tantalising thought of fresh, clear water trickling between our fingers, over crevassed faces, between crusty lips and on to soothe our tiny, aching splits of throats, spurred us on. Water. It was unimaginable and yet surely, it was within our reach. We would try to row today despite the throbbing heat and we would talk of how we’d drink when we got to shore. But Joe was quiet.

  The gradual reduction of his movement had not alarmed me greatly. For days now, though not inactive, he had been slow and more latterly, at rest, I had seen him still. Unconsciously perhaps, I had begun to measure our collective weakness by the lessening of his physical activity. As his body slowly stalled, I had begun to recognise the fading likelihood of our general survival, though somehow not my own. Not his. And, I told myself, it was only natural. Our bodies, now withered husks, had been sapped, sucked dry. Movement was a painful luxury.

  His silence though. It stunned me.

  ‘You OK?’ I sat down beside him.

  There was no warning. ‘Cub, if you get back. If I don’t. I need you to go see Maggie.’

  I started to interrupt him but he stopped me with a heavy hand held up between us. He sat up and leant towards me. He was trembling.

  ‘You need to tell her that I did not love her. Tell her she was one of many. She knows what I was like before. Tell her I was not worth the waiting for.’

  ‘Jesus, Joe!’ I stared at him, swallowing hard against the lightning shaft of panic that rose up suddenly, widening and tightening across my chest. ‘Why the hell would I do that?’ I asked, absolutely incredulous.

  ‘Because I love her. Because I want her to have her life. I want her to be angry, not broken altogether. Anger fades and when it does, she’ll teach herself that she should not have cared. I want her to survive it. Better that than be bereft, than have to mourn.’

  I felt annoyed with him. It was ridiculous. The land was there before us. We were saved and he chose now to doubt that he could make it. His sudden misgiving rubbed me at the quick, chafed against my reignited hope.

  ‘You’re very sure of her,’ I said. ‘Or of yourself.’

  He looked away from me a moment, away across the brightening water to the land and then came back to me.

  ‘I believe her,’ he answered quietly.

  ‘Joe, you’re mad.’ I began to talk too fast. ‘What are you talking about? She won’t believe me. Why would she believe me?’

  ‘Because she’s honest. She thinks other people are like her. So you will do it?’

  ‘No. I won’t.’ I sought for words. ‘I can’t. It’s wrong. Anyway, it’s nonsense. We’ll both get back…’ I tried to lighten it, to push it from me but he cut me off.

  ‘Promise me you’ll do it, Cub.’ He was frightening me now. He’d felt a sneaking coldness steal across his soul and it had scared him into speaking. It scared me too. I searched his face, looking for his reassuring grin but it was gone. His skin was taut across protruding bones, cracked all ways like clay baked in the sun. His eyes were on me, pleading but determined. He would not let it go.

  I tried to laugh. ‘Joe…’

  ‘Swear you’ll do it. I need you to swear to me you’ll do it.’

  ‘All right, all right, I swear, but it’s ridiculous. We’ve made it, look,’ I gabbled, pointing at the widening line, increasingly apparent on the horizon. ‘Almost. And when we’re home, you can ask her and I can meet her and we won’t have to remember this.’

  But he had stopped listening to me. The minute that I said that I would do it, he pushed himself back away from me, slumping down against the boat’s side, his head lolling at its rim and he had closed his eyes.

  By mid-morning, he had begun to mumble. I thought at first that he was humming and, given that he had got up on his feet, I felt relieved. This morning’s gravity had been an aberration. A delayed reaction to what we had been suffering, which had surfaced now that we were almost safe. He had been unruffled up till then but such a horror-ridden journey was bound to take its toll on even the strongest ones among us. But humming, he was Joe again.

  But then he called her name, loud, as if in fear. It stopped us all and all eyes turned upon him. Body shaking, oblivious, he went back to his heedless muttering. I left my oar despite protests from Tomas and went towards him. He backed away from me, fending me off at first with flailing arms. Then he trip
ped, stumbling backwards over the side of the fuel tank, and gave way to me, slumping down in the water on the bottom of the boat. I put my hands upon his shoulders and shook him slightly. Called his name. His eyes, raw and rolling, could not focus. I called his name again and put my hand up to his face. He batted me back, flinching, but not before I’d felt the angry heat pulsing, almost an inch away from his flushed cheek and jaw.

  My chest constricted. I had seen this all before in Pat Murack. Joe lay inert now, where he had fallen, though as I leant down to try to help him, he convulsed away from me, curling up his body tightly, bringing his knees up towards his chest and bending his arms about his head. He looked as he had never looked to me before: small. He could have been a child. As I stood above him, the fever suddenly grasped at his body, clenching it, forcing it to twitch and twist, each painful spasm that passed across it causing him to breathe in sharply, interrupting momentarily the garbled flow of words.

  I tried to make him comfortable. I wet his old pullover in the sea and tried to lay it on his head but he snatched at it impatiently, throwing it aside. I tried to talk to him but he would not hear me, so I sat with him in the pooling water, my arms around my knees and watched him. I watched him, rigid-backed and straining, terrified to take my eyes even for an instant from the pain clawing at his face, lest I should miss some change, should miss some significant moment of lucidity, which might preface his return.

  ‘For fuck’s sake! I can’t row on all day like this, on me own.’ I became aware that Mac was starting to complain. ‘It’s too fucking hot. Can’t we stop and start again this evening. Jesus! It’s gonna take us longer than we thought and we’re two men down again now!’ I felt him glance at me and the other rowers, grateful that someone else had been the first to voice his objection to rowing under the brutal scrutiny of the sun, let up willingly. They sagged over their oars, unspeaking and exhausted, thankful for the chance of any meagre respite.