by Paul Griffin
Dri and JoJo took turns comforting Stef, or trying to. John and I rotated watch duties every few minutes with Dri or JoJo, two on lookout, one on break. I closed my eyes and the sun still shined. I tried not to think about the fact that a human being can’t go without water more than a few days. But we’d be rescued by then, I was pretty sure. As sure as I was that Stef was a goner if the rescue didn’t happen by tomorrow. Dri had the hardest job, lying to Stef and maybe to herself.
“Why can’t I feel my arm?” Stef said.
“You broke it, Stef. Your brain blocks the nerve signals to spare you the pain.”
“How bad is it?”
“You’ll need surgery.”
“Will I be able to surf again?”
“You will.”
“Why won’t you let me look at it?”
“Because Matthew wrapped it up nice and tight to keep it clean,” Dri said.
Those strips of towel were in no way keeping the wound clean. I’d wrapped the arm so Stef couldn’t see it. So we wouldn’t have to look at it.
“Why am I tied down?”
“We have to keep you still, Stef.”
“I have to go the bathroom.”
“Just go, sweetheart.”
“I really have to go.”
“I’ll clean you up. It’s okay.”
“Just untie me. Please. I’ll scream! Why can’t I feel my arm?” The same conversation over and over. JoJo left his watch post to comfort Stef.
“Matt,” John said. “You’re up. JoJo, give him the binoculars.”
Midafternoon …
The sun burned through our clothes. My arms and face were dark after a summer out in the sun, but I had been careful to cover my shoulders. We couldn’t afford to get sun poisoning out here. The blisters would break and become infected.
I dipped into the ocean to cool off. I kept my clothes on to keep from being burned. I hung on to the towrope and tried to make my body go limp in the water on the shady side of the boat. I couldn’t quite get myself to let go of the tension in my neck, my jaw, my stomach. I wasn’t as thirsty, though, in the water. It felt cooler way out here, however many miles we were from shore, and some spots were plain cold. After ten minutes I actually started to shiver, and I made myself climb back into the boat and face the situation with Stef. There was no avoiding her. She was laid out in the middle of the boat.
Within ten minutes my clothes were dry, even my jeans. I couldn’t remember a day with less humidity. The water had flattened out some, but the wind was as steady as it had been all night. I cupped my hands around my eyes to shade them from the glare coming off the water, and I looked up. The afternoon sky had turned a blue I’d never seen before, except in a computer-generated image, the kind you find in a sci-fi movie where the good guys escape to a perfect world. Most of the sky was clear, but even the one cloudy part was beautiful. The clouds looked like lace. This would have been the best beach day of the summer if we were on land. If Dri were caressing my face instead of Stef’s.
“Thirsty,” Stef said.
Dri rinsed the gas jug and filled it halfway with salt water.
“She can’t drink that,” I said.
“I’m going to distill it,” Dri said. She set the jug on its side. “The idea is the water evaporates. It leaves the salt behind. The droplets condense on the inside top of the jug and drip out the nozzle.” She found a peanut can in the cabinet. The muskrat did us the favor of emptying it. Dri set it under the nozzle.
“Where’d you learn this?” I said.
“Last summer I volunteered with my father’s foundation,” she said. “Before they let me go into the rain forest with them, they made me take a survival class. We did it with muddy river water, to try to get the sediment out of it. It sort of worked, but they said it would work even better with salt water.”
“Cool,” I said. It was, until we hit a pair of waves broadside. The boat rocked and the water sloshed around the container. It wasn’t long before the nozzle started to drip, but the drops that came out tasted more like salt water than fresh.
“Nope,” Dri said. “It’s no good.”
“Just a sip,” Stef said. “Please, Dri.”
“No way, Stef. For every sip of salt water, you pee two.”
“So?”
Dri wet Stef’s lips with her fingertip. We rigged the tarp to shade her. The wind cooled the air under there a little, but it was still oven-like. We took turns fanning Stef and nodding off in the hot gloom. “Thirsty,” Stef whispered. “Thirsty.”
“Can you guys cut me a piece of tarp?” Dri said. “Say four-foot square?”
JoJo and I stretched a section of it over the top edge of the boat’s side. John scored the tarp with the flat-head screwdriver. The tarp was plastic-coated canvas. To cut what we needed took twenty minutes that felt like two hundred under that sun.
Dri emptied the wrenches and rope and hammer from the plastic milk crate, and then she lined the crate with the patch of tarp we’d just cut to form a sort of bowl. She poured in an inch of seawater. She put the peanut can in the middle of the bowl. To keep the can from floating she weighed it down with a wrench.
She stretched a flap of tarp over the top of the crate and tied it down with an elastic cord from the hem of JoJo’s sweatshirt. She placed a dead flashlight battery on top of the tarp, directly over the peanut can. The top of the tarp, which was dark green, sank a little where the battery weighed it down.
“Dark colors absorb light and heat,” Dri said. “That seawater is going to get hot fast. When you put plastic wrap over a bowl of hot soup, you see the steam condense into droplets on the plastic, right? If you press your finger down into the plastic, the droplets will run toward that spot, the way the droplets in our little distiller setup here are going to run toward the depression the battery is making in the tarp. They’ll condense into bigger drops until they drip.”
“Except the peanut can is going to catch the drops,” I said. “You’re awesome.”
We leaned back to let the sun bake the box. John studied the setup and nodded.
“Do I take that as a compliment?” Dri said.
“Even if it doesn’t work, it’s reasonable,” he said.
“Reasonable,” Dri said. “Gee, thanks.”
“It’s a solid try.” John went back to his watch post.
JoJo kissed Dri’s forehead. “Would it be unreasonable of me to call you a genius?”
I nodded at the box. “How long?”
“Let’s check in an hour, if we’re not rescued by then.” She squeezed my hand. “Thank you,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said.
She smiled. “You’re crazy.”
“Hey,” John said. “Check it out.” He pointed toward the horizon. I didn’t see anything until he gave me the binoculars. It was a sailboat, a big one, with two masts, but it was sailing away from us. In ten minutes it was gone from view.
“Guys, wait,” JoJo said, pointing to the opposite side of the ocean. He had the binoculars now. He handed them back to me. A speedboat was flying full out.
“How far away, you figure?” I said. I handed John the binoculars.
“I’d say two miles. We’ll never catch it.” He nodded to JoJo. “Try.”
JoJo flashed the SOS. The boat zipped toward the horizon and out of sight.
“Even if they saw it,” John said, “it’s just one of a billion glints on the waves.”
Dri tapped up JoJo’s compass app, but it didn’t work. “John, let me borrow your wristwatch,” she said. She pointed the hour hand of John’s Timex at the sun. “Midway between the hour hand and noon on the dial is south.” We looked down into the water. Faint wake lines trailed the boat. They pointed southeast, out into the Atlantic. “I was hoping the wind had shifted and we were blowing west toward land.”
“Or at least some commercial boat traffic,” I said. “The watch trick. Survival class?”
“They dumped us into the middle of the woods with noth
ing but a wristwatch and told us to find our way out,” Dri said. “Why do you think we’re not headed for commercial boat traffic?”
“I haven’t seen any birds all day.” I pointed for her to look into the water on the shady side of the boat. There wasn’t any glare and you could see down pretty deep. “I haven’t seen any fish either.”
Dri nodded. “No birds, no fish, no fishing boats.”
“You guys?” Stef said. Her voice startled us. Except for a little moaning she’d been quiet the last few hours. “Don’t hate me,” she said. “Please don’t.”
“We love you, Stef,” Dri said.
JoJo spoke to her in Portuguese, and I kept hearing the word amor.
“Where’s John?” Stef said. “Please, I have to talk with him. John? I’m so sorry. JoJo, please, make him understand I didn’t mean for this to happen.” Then she spoke to JoJo in Portuguese.
“She says she wanted to get to know you,” JoJo said. “She feels a kinship with you, John, yet she doesn’t know why.”
John stared at her. He nodded the slightest bit, more to himself than Stef, I think. His eyes caught mine, and then he went back to his watch post.
“Will you take the picture today, Jo?” Stef said. “Make it John and Matt. Make John smile.”
“She takes a picture to commemorate every day,” JoJo said. “You know, an image that defines what that day was about for her.”
“Please?” Stef said.
I stood next to John. He didn’t smile. JoJo took a picture. John got back to his binoculars. Dri and JoJo cornered John in his watch post, out of Stef’s earshot.
“You can’t acknowledge her, John?” Dri said.
“I’m acknowledging her,” he said. “Or I’m acknowledging her pain anyway. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
“Then can you let her know that?” Dri said.
John kept his voice low, so Stef couldn’t hear. As soft as his voice was, the words came out hard. “What do you want me to say to her? That I feel bad for her? Like that’s going to help her? My pity? It’s only going to make her feel worse. She knows she made a stupid mistake, and there’s nothing I can say to fix that.”
“John, c’mon now, man,” JoJo said. “Your grudge goes so deep?”
“I don’t have a grudge against her. We are where we are, however we got here, and I’m dealing with it. The only thing I can do to help her is keep a lookout, and that’s what I’m doing. Coddling her isn’t going to save her or us.”
“It costs you nothing to tell her not to worry, that it’s okay,” Dri said.
“It’s not okay,” John said. “She’s not okay. I’m not lying to her.” That was the one time he looked a little edgy out there. Stef had him pegged, and he didn’t like that at all. They did have something in common. Her mother and his father were gunned down. The difference was, Stef’s mom’s death was accidental. Mr. Costello was targeted.
“Spell me, Matt,” John said. “I have to rest my eyes.” He gave me the binoculars and slipped into the water.
Late afternoon …
Dri took the peanut can out of the water distiller box she had made from the tarp and milk crate. She sipped from the can. “Blehk. Tastes like hot plastic.”
“Better that than salt,” I said.
“It tastes like that too, a little, but it’s not even close to as salty as ocean water. I actually think it might be working, our little distiller here.”
“Your distiller,” I said. “You saved us.”
“Don’t get too excited yet,” Dri said. “Look.”
John, JoJo, and I looked into the tin. After an hour of collecting evaporated water, it wasn’t half-full. I could have emptied it in a gulp, and I wanted to. Dri held the water to Stef’s lips. She drank most of it and spilled the rest when she started gagging. We rolled her onto her side and held her like that while she threw up. After she vomited the water she didn’t have anything left in her stomach, but she dry heaved for a long time.
John didn’t seem to notice Stef was hacking her guts out. He set up the distiller to catch another half cup of water before the sun went down. We had two hours before dark.
Dri slipped over the side of the boat into the water to clean herself up. She was the one who held Stef’s head while she was throwing up. Stef had vomited into Dri’s chest and neck and maybe her face, but Dri never flinched.
JoJo and I got Stef settled. She moaned in her sleep. “Matt,” JoJo said, “I don’t know if you should tell me what I want to hear or what I need to hear. Or is there any possibility they can be the same thing?”
“It’ll be okay,” I said.
“But will she? Will Stef lose her arm? I can’t imagine the doctors will be able to fix it. It’s turning gray, Matt.” He hid his face in his sweatshirt collar. “I feel that this is my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “It’s nobody’s.”
“It’s mine.” His eyes flashed when he pulled away his sweatshirt collar. “She told us yesterday morning that she was going out onto the water that night, and I didn’t do anything but laugh, even after she said she was serious. I think this provoked her, you see? She saw my laughter as a dare.
“I’ve known her since we were ten years old, when she cut me in the line for the diving board at the club pool where our families were members. We were fast friends, best friends. I told her I loved her that same day we met, over a plate of french fries, and do you know what? I meant it. I just knew she was the person for me, or that I was born to be hers. Do you know what I mean? It was in her eyes, her smile, something I had not seen before. I don’t know the words in English—or in Portuguese either. She just had magic about her, the kind you feel when you jump from a height, the top diving platform, you know? Except you never hit the water. You keep falling and screaming and laughing, terrified not so much of the fall as the fact that it must end. I pledged my love to her every day we hung out together after that first day too, and I meant it more each time. And then one day two years ago, when we were doing homework together, she said, ‘Hey?’ ‘Yes, meu amor?’ I said, figuring she wanted me to do her homework for her again. But she didn’t at all. She said it back. She told me she loved me too. But I don’t deserve to be with her now. I let her down. Promise me she’ll be all right.”
“We’ll keep her as safe as we can until she gets to the hospital,” I said. I tried not to look out at the horizon. We were the only living things in view.
“You can’t promise me, can you?” JoJo said.
The best I could come up with was, “It’ll all work out. You’ll see.”
He wasn’t listening anyway. He kissed Stef’s forehead. “If she hates me after this, I don’t know what I’ll do,” he said. “Truly, without her I wouldn’t be the same person. I couldn’t possibly be. She defines me.”
At dusk we spotted a tanker. It wasn’t that far away, but it was moving too fast for us to catch it. Its wake lines were bigger than the waves. We flashed SOS with John’s and JoJo’s phones, but it kept going.
“How can they not stop?” JoJo said.
“The tankers are on autopilot this far out,” John said. “Even if they saw us through the glare, they wouldn’t be able to pick out the phone flashes from the flashes off the waves. There’s no reason for them to think we’re in trouble without something like a flare. And even if they did think we were in trouble, you know how much it costs in time lost and fuel to stop a ship like that and turn it off course? If we were in its way, it would have to run us down.”
“Maybe they saw us and called in our position,” Dri said.
“Sure,” John said. He didn’t bother tracking the ship anymore. He turned the binoculars to a different part of the ocean. It was empty all the way around except for that vanishing tanker. Just before the ship disappeared its stack blew reddish smoke. It hung on the horizon like blood spray.
The air turned cold quickly, even before the last bit of sun disappeared. In the opposite part of the sky the stars were a
lready sharp. John and JoJo took the first watch while Dri and I tucked Stef under the tarp. JoJo was reluctant to give up the job of comforting Stef. He spoke to her in Portuguese and pointed toward the back of the boat, where he was headed. Stef grunted and said, “I know,” and from that I figured JoJo said he’d be right over there if Stef needed him, that she didn’t need to worry. She didn’t seem worried anyway, not anymore. She wasn’t shivering as much, but her skin was cooler, bluer. Dri stroked Stef’s cheek and whispered a lullaby to her.
I gave the two of them a little space and tried to get some rest in the front of the boat. There was no room to lie down, so I sat back against the wall and closed my eyes. I was too hungry to sleep anyway. Pretty soon Dri sat next to me. “She’s asleep,” she said.
I nodded. Stef looked more than asleep, nearer to comatose. Her face wasn’t tight around the eyes and mouth the way it was until sunset.
Dri rested her head on my shoulder. Even though the situation we were in was crazy and horrible, I couldn’t help but feel awed. The water, the sky, the way Dri’s eyes caught the twilight and turned green-gold … the colors were surreal, movie-like. The moon was coming up and the ocean looked like the desert, wave after wave of shifting silvery dunes. “Ever see Lawrence of Arabia?” I said.
“It was one of those movies that everybody told me I had to see, but I just never got around to it. Was it good?”
“Perfect.”
“A boy who likes old movies. Interesting. Most dudes your age are into Grand Theft Auto, no? Kill as many people as you can over four slices of pizza?”
“Not me. No way. I’m serious.”
“I definitely see that,” she said. “Anyway, that’s good news for me.”
“Why?”
She held my hand. “I read Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” she said. “Hello, the book that Lawrence of Arabia was based on?”
I nodded, like of course I knew the movie was based on a book. “It was one of those books everybody told me I had to read—”
