7
“I thought you may already be dead,” said Forest.
“Almost.”
Becca was already pouring gas into the tank.
I searched the boat looking for a compass, but found nothing. For now it was easy though, pick a tall building on land and head directly away from it. The motor started, and we turned out into the Atlantic, away from the Cape Florida Lighthouse. We saw a shrimp boat in the distance and not much else. The scene in front of us was huge, beautiful, and overwhelming. The waves started to get large enough to rock the O’Day around. I had control of the tiller and sat on the left bench seat. Becca sat across from me. Even in the midst of the intensity and uncertainty I kept getting distracted by her legs. I wanted to slap myself a few times, but it was hard not to look. Forest stood on the front of the boat and held fast to the cable that stretched from the top of the mast to the bow. He looked different. Forest had always carried this blank, intense expression like a dog ready to bite. He seemed much more calm out there than at school.
I thought about the dangers ahead. There was a sense among us that we were fast approaching that place where we couldn’t turn back. Did we really want to do this? No one asked that question, because everyone knew the answer. We knew we were about to get the hell kicked out of us. Back home we would too, just in a different way. We hadn’t been hardened by the sea, but we had been hardened by life. The difference was now it was on us, just us. There was no one staging our shitty environment and shuffling us around. We were focused.
“Joey!”
I snapped out of it and looked up at Forest. “What?”
“What are you staring at, bitch?” Forest walked toward the back of the boat.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
He pointed to Becca. “You’re about to drool on my sister.”
I shook my head and waved my hands in the air.
“No, man. I do that all the time. I start thinking about something and just stare off. Seriously, one time in class I stared at some guys ass for like five minutes. Serious.”
Forest walked toward me and Becca stood up, “We don’t have time for this,” she said.
“The hell we don’t,” said Forest.
I looked around for something sharp. Nothing. I was having flashbacks of getting my head pounded in six months ago and Mr. Peterson screaming like the world was ending. I stood to my feet and wrapped my left hand around a cable and held my right hand in the air.
He stopped six inches from me. I could feel his breath. He was stone faced, and his eyes looked cold.
“Gonna tell you right now. Out here she’s just one of us. If I were you, I’d get it out of your system.”
“Deal,” I said.
Forest walked back to the front of the boat, and things settled over the next few minutes.
“Psst,” I tried to get Becca’s attention. She looked at me and I whispered, “If you notice me looking at you again can you throw something at me? I don’t mean to.” Becca nodded and very slightly smiled in a way that made her look like she felt sorry for me.
“Seriously, throw some water in my face. I don’t care,” I whispered.
“Where is the water? I’m thirsty,” she said.
“Oh shit,” I replied.
Forest overheard me, “What?” he asked.
I put my hands on my head and let out a loud groan, “Waaattteeerrr.”
Forest stomped on the boat, “Nooooo!” he yelled.
“We don’t have water?” asked Becca.
I held my mouth open and slowly shook my head. I just couldn’t believe it. Of all things, we forgot, water. Before, I was about 50% sure we were gonna die, now it was like 99%.
The motor started coughing again. A tiny cloud of smoke appeared, and it shut down.
“Damn it,” said Forest. I pulled the hatch open. It was out of gas. I hopped to the center of the boat and held onto the mast while I looked for land.
“No way. We must be fifteen miles offshore now. Do you guys see Miami?” I asked.
We all started turning around in circles on the deck. Nothing. Just endless water in all directions. That was when the shit suddenly felt very real.
After a few minutes of eerie silence, Forest spoke. “Alone, on the ocean in an old boat. No motor. No water.”
I let out a deep breath and nodded. “And some shitty cafeteria rolls,” I added.
“And some shitty cafeteria rolls,” said Forest.
“How many days can you go without water?” asked Becca.
“Like five or something,” I said.
Forest shook his head, “No like two or three.”
“How long does it take to get to the Bahamas?” she asked.
“It depends on the wind and if we manage to head in the right direction. Anywhere from two days to a week or more. Even then it’s not like someone’s gonna meet us with a jug of gatorade. We’ll be on our own with nothing. We could easily land on a deserted island that won’t even have water. There are hundreds of islands in the Bahamas.”
“Coconuts,” said Becca.
“I guess,” I replied.
Becca grabbed the rope in the center of the boat and began hoisting up the sail. She was right. There was nothing to talk about, and sitting there pondering the massive amount of shit we were in made no sense. We were all in. I locked the boom vang into place. Guaranteed I would never make that mistake again for the rest of my sailing life, no matter how short.
The wind was strong as the O’Day plowed through the growing waves.
“What time is it?” asked Becca.
Forest shrugged.
“We don’t have a watch?” she asked.
I shook my head. “We don’t need one. Where do we have to be? All that matters now is day and night. That’s it.”
The day was bright and beautiful, with scattered clouds floating by. Forest ran his fingers along the cable wires and inspected the rigging that descended from the mast. Occasionally he would turn his attention to a spot on the deck and get down on his knees to clean it off with his knife and spit. The sun was a few hours from setting, but close enough to the horizon that I could make out a broad easterly direction, very broad. Over the next hour or so not a damn thing happened. It was bliss. Near silence. No engine noise, talking, nothing. There was just the sound of the wind and boat easing into each wave. There was nothing like it. I fell under the ocean’s spell and hopelessly in love with sailing.
I would catch quick glimpses of Becca and freeze those images in my mind like pictures. It could last for several minutes while I looked at something else. Truly, I wished I wasn’t attracted to her. At school we would have these god awful plays and bullshit assemblies. The only positive thing was they combined both campuses. In a room with hundreds of girls, guys, fat old people, movement in every direction, and everyone talking over each other, I could somehow always find her. I wasn’t a freak or anything. At least I didn’t think I was. I wouldn’t just sit there and stare, but I knew where she was, and my eyes always drifted back to Becca.
And now she was so damn close. Becca continued to sit on the bench across from me. Leaned back with her right hand resting on the stern rail. Between her, the escape, and the likelihood of death, everything had violently shifted from mundane to freakishly exciting. I felt like I could hardly think straight. The scene that unrolled in front of us was remarkable. In that moment it made sense that a sailboat in the middle of the ocean was the most amazing place on earth to watch a sunset. Damn.
My mind drifted, and I pulled the tiller a few inches closer to me to return our course to due east, or at least what I assumed was due east. It was close quarters and Becca’s foot was suddenly touching mine. I noticed it immediately. The sensation surged through my body, and I started getting goose bumps on my forearms. I felt like such an idiot. She quickly moved her foot away as if it was an accident or annoyance. Probably both. Her foot touched mine for no more than two seconds. It made me wonder. How could I experience so much exh
ilaration from something as small as our feet touching and her experience nothing at all? I already knew the answer. Life. Most of the time it just plain sucked.
The unmistakable sound of thunder rumbled in the distance.
Forest pointed east with his eyebrows raised. The cool blend of colors was shifting to grey and going dark. It was a big storm. The clouds were growing into stone gray mountains, and the air had a new chill.
“Ever sailed in a storm?” asked Becca without looking at me.
“No.”
“We just go straight through it,” shouted Forest.
I nodded and clenched my fist around the tiller. What else could we do?
Lightning struck the water a mile or two off of our port bow.
“Son of a bitch! Did you see that?” yelled Forest. The storm was getting loud and intense. The base from the thunder was pulsating across the surface of the ocean, and I felt the O’Day rattle. We had a mile or two to go before we would be in the thick of it. Beautiful and intense lightning bolts repeatedly struck the water.
“Wait!” shouted Forest.
“What?” I asked.
“There’s a fifty foot tall metal pole on our boat,” said Forest.
“Yeah, sucks,” I replied.
“What are we supposed to do?” asked Becca.
“Pray. Shit I don’t know,” I responded.
“I’ll tell you what we do,” said Forest. Oh no.
“Lower this big ass pole!” he shouted with his finger in the air.
I looked up at the towering mast in the center of the O’Day. It was a mysterious thing, like a skyscraper on our boat. Instinctively I knew it wanted to be left alone.
“You can’t do that,” I replied loud enough for Forest to hear me from the bow.
“The hell you can’t. Look, the cables unhook.”
I asked Becca to take the rudder while I stumbled to the bow where Forest stood. The good thing about the O’Day was there were wires and rails everywhere. White caps caught my attention on the surface of the water. That’s what Sam called them anyway. When the wind picked up the sea enough to make the waves slightly break at their highest point.
“See,” he pointed to an odd looking metal contraption. There was a clip on the end where each cable that held the mast upright could unhook.
“You unhook the cables and it lowers to the back of the boat,” said Forest.
I scratched my head. “Yeah. But man, I don’t think you are supposed to do that, at least not out here. Look how tall it is. It must be heavy as all hell,” I said.
Forest knocked on it and a high pitched sound followed, “It’s hollow. Can’t be that bad. Of course you lower it. We’re about to be surrounded by lightning with a huge metal pole sticking straight up in the air and not a damn thing around us for miles. Why the hell would lightning strike the water when it could strike that?” Forest pointed to the top of the mast that looked like it could almost touch a cloud.
“We don’t lower it, and this boat goes down in flames with us in it,” said Forest.
“Is that what happens?” asked Becca. Her bangs blew over her face, but she didn’t seem to care.
“I have no idea,” I replied.
Forest was done talking. He grabbed the rope running down the mast and lowered the sail.
Forest unhooked one of the cables from the starboard side of the boat. It swung wildly in the wind and would have whipped me in the face had I not ducked.
“Those,” said Forest. Becca nodded and unhooked the cables on the port side. There were now two left that prevented the mast from coming down like the last swing of an axe at the base of a huge tree. The difference was, we couldn’t run away when someone yelled ‘timber’. I sure as hell wasn’t going to jump in the ocean. He unhooked the cable connecting the mast to the stern and left one remaining at the bow.
The storm was getting close. It looked like we were about to sail into a black hole. Big raindrops were falling. We were running out of time.
“Now what?” asked Becca.
“Go to the front,” shouted Forest as the wind, waves, and rain added to the chaos. There were less cables for us to hang onto now as the three of us made our way to the bow. We held onto the rail at tip of the O’Day while trying not to bust our asses from the intense rocking.
“We hang onto this last one and lower it down slow,” said Forest.
I looked up at the towering mast that now seemed really unstable. Screwing the mast up was not an option, there was no other way to move the boat forward.
“This doesn’t seem right,” I said.
Just then we felt the deck rattle from a series of pounding thunder and our faces brighten from a lightning bolt that touched the water in the shape of a spider web.
“Shit that was close,” said Forest.
“Let’s lower it,” said Becca.
The Less Fortunates Page 7
