Everybody Called Her a Saint

by Cecil Murphey

  After two hours ashore, we returned to the ship to set sail for our next landing.

  As soon as we returned to the ship, we partnered with one or two others to hose down our boots that were packed thick with penguin droppings.

  The captain said it delicately. “Wash your boots carefully after each landing to avoid accidentally transporting seeds or other organisms from landing site to landing site. Your cabin mate and the stewardesses will also appreciate it.”

  The system was simple; it was also efficient. After all the Zodiacs returned to the ship, the captain checked to make sure that all the tags had been turned back to their original position.

  As far as I know, no one counted life jackets on the return to the ship. As long as none remained on the beach, there was no need to count.

  That was the mistake.

  The waters roiled again, and that night was as bad as the first one. This time the wave action was head to toe, producing roller coaster sensations, whereas the first night it had been side to side. That’s the description the other passengers gave me—I don’t know; I slept extremely well.

  Captain Robert had scheduled our second landing to be at Brown Bluff, on the northern tip of the Antarctic continent. The Zodiac trips were a bit rougher this time, and the huge waves sprayed us as we made our way to shore. Jeff Adams said his camera froze, so he bribed two of the other passengers to share pictures with him after the trip.

  Before we left for our Brown Bluff landing, Captain Robert lectured us about a 1902 Norwegian expedition that rivaled Shackleton’s for harrowing drama. The men endured two winters at Brown Bluff. After two years and various rescue attempts, two parties independently arrived from different directions on the same day to save them.

  By then, we had already landed once, and everyone understood the routine. We felt like veterans of the Antarctic; no crew member had to remind us what to do. The killer must have counted on that fact.

  I suppose that sense of rhythm and routine lulled my protective senses. I spent most of my time alone when we landed at Brown Bluff. It was more than avoiding Burton. I continually questioned myself, and I had to be alone to do that.

  I love Burton—I couldn’t get away from that reality. But I couldn’t marry him, knowing what I did about him.

  If only he would confess—I stopped myself right there. I’d argued that one with myself only about 912 times.

  In exhaustion, I would remind myself of one thing: It wasn’t my choice; the decision was Burton’s.

  Eight

  The Brown Bluff landing fascinated me. Besides the remains of the 1902 expedition’s shack made of rock walls about three feet high, penguins were everywhere. While we walked among the birds, the winds increased considerably. Cold hardly describes the effect. My teeth chattered and my fingers became numb, even though I wore thick gloves and my two pairs of liners.

  Two of the Zodiacs had returned by the time the weather deteriorated, but no one hurried back to the third and fourth ones. That implied that everyone left was determined to see the wildlife. The wind soon calmed, and I was glad we had stayed.

  I marveled at the vast numbers of penguins and seals. Perhaps twenty minutes later, without warning, a stiff wind again battered us, followed by hard-pounding snow. And I mean hard—the snow felt like rock granules sandblasting my face. I’d take maybe five steps with my eyes closed, open them quickly for a step, and then shut them again. Other than the Zodiac staff, who wore goggles, none of us could see much of anything.

  I raced for the third Zodiac. At least six people were ahead of me, and others hurried behind me. Our driver helped the twelfth and last passenger in, and we headed back toward the ship.

  The waves utterly drenched us. Despite our rain-repellent clothes, the water got to all of us. The trip back to the ship seemed to take longer than the trip to land, and the weather continued to deteriorate. The wind had subtly blown us somewhat adrift from the ship, and I think our Zodiac driver was lost for a few minutes. He didn’t say so, but the wariness of his normally calm face gave him away.

  When he grinned, I relaxed. I knew he had spotted the ship.

  We got aboard the Vaschenko and hurried through the boot-washing process as quickly as we could. My hands were almost numb.

  Just as I started to go inside, I saw the fourth Zodiac tie up.

  I didn’t look at faces or count the number of people aboard.

  That was a mistake.

  Captain Robert canceled the scheduled landing for that afternoon. He said that if the weather permitted, we would land at Paulet Island the next day.

  The storm didn’t abate for the rest of the day, but I felt incredibly lucky to have enjoyed the spectacular view on Brown Bluff.

  Once we were all on board, the captain carefully checked the tag board, just as he did at the end of every reboarding process throughout the trip.

  “Everyone has made it back,” he said and smiled. He had also done that on the previous landing.

  About half an hour after each landing, we had tea in the dining room. It was much like the English tea with a variety of small sandwiches, sweets, tea, coffee, and hot chocolate.

  After our return from Brown Bluff, the ship pulled anchor and started on the next leg of our trip. As we sat drinking our tea, I realized I hadn’t seen Twila. We weren’t on the same Zodiac going out, and I hadn’t seen her on the island. Unless we were fairly close, it was next to impossible to recognize each other because we all looked alike when we wore our special “uniforms.”

  “Where’s Twila?” I called out. “Anyone seen her?”

  “Yes, she was on our Zodiac going over,” Betty said. “We were the last ones to leave.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” someone else said. “I remember now.”

  “What about coming back?” I asked.

  “I assume she was with us,” Betty said. “I didn’t count—”

  “There was no one left on the island,” Pat Borders said. Pat was a real estate broker who attended Burton’s church.

  I wondered if she had gotten sick on the return trip. I asked, but no one seemed to remember. They were so busy taking pictures of icebergs, penguins, skuas, and seals that no one paid attention to other passengers.

  “That’s odd that she’s not down here,” I said. “Perhaps she’s not well.” I excused myself and left the dining room. Oh no, I thought, the cancer. She said there would be no pain. Maybe she was wrong.

  “May I go with you?”

  Without turning around, I knew Burton’s voice. I didn’t want to be alone with him, even to walk up two flights of steps with him. “I’d prefer to go alone.” I hoped he caught the frosty tone in my voice. I’m good at frosty tones.

  I knocked on Twila’s cabin door, but there was no answer. None of the rooms had locks on them, so I pushed the door open. Her room was empty. She had reserved a private room, and it was truly luxury quality—with a double bed, two lamps, and a large closet.

  “Maybe she’s up on the navigation bridge,” I said aloud to myself. We were welcome there at any time. They had three or four chairs so we could sit and get a marvelous view or simply stand at the window that stretched the full width of the room.

  I walked up the final flight of steps and entered the bridge. The captain and two other officers were there.

  No Twila.

  I left abruptly and hurried to the lounge and the theater-lecture room where we watched films and the staff lectured on the days when we were unable to land.

  I opened the door to what we called the sick bay, but it was empty. I braved the freezing wind and took a few steps on the deck to make sure she wasn’t there. I knew it was useless, because no one would have been able to stand on the deck at that time. The snow had stopped, but the wind hadn’t decreased.

  I rushed back to the bridge and approached Captain Robert. “Excuse me,” I said, “this may be nothing, but Twila Belk doesn’t seem to be around.”

  He said nothing but gave me a skeptical loo
k as if to ask, “How can that be possible?”

  I explained that no one had seen her on the Zodiac for the return trip.

  “There must be a mistake,” the captain said with his thick Indian accent. “All tags have been turned back. No life jackets were left on Brown Bluff.”

  “I’ve been everywhere on the ship except for the others’ cabins. They’re all having tea, so I’m sure she’s not in any of them.”

  He sent someone to the lounge and someone else to the theater.

  I went back to the dining room. “Has anyone seen Twila?”

  No one spoke.

  “She has to be around,” Pat Borders said. “On a ship this small—”

  I cut him off and walked away. I went back to Twila’s room, and I didn’t find her. I was frantic. Even though I knew that the weather on the deck was too bad for any of us, I searched again. Was it possible that she had walked out there, felt weak, fainted, and been swept overboard? I took three steps out the door and let my gaze sweep slowly over the entire deck from the starboard side. I went to the other side of the ship and did the same thing from that door. No one. A fine skin of undisturbed snow covered the deck, so it was obvious no one had been there.

  I went back to the dining room. As far as I could tell, no one had moved. No one seemed concerned. Jeff told a funny story about his trip to Alaska, and as soon as he finished, Jon had one about being lost in Bhutan.

  I poured myself a cup of tea and sat alone. Where is she? Where could she disappear to on a small ship like this?

  Twenty minutes later, most of us had finished our tea and were ready to go to our rooms to read or nap. The captain walked into the dining room. Behind him came Ivan, a tall, blond, Swedish-looking man, who claimed to be a Russian from Kiev.

  “One minute, please,” the captain said. “We have a problem here. We are missing one passenger.”

  “Twila? Where is Twila?” Betty called out. “Is she sick or—”

  “She is not aboard the ship,” the captain said.

  Nine

  Everyone seemed to talk at once. The captain finally raised his voice. “Please be seated, everyone. We need to be quite clear about whatever has happened.”

  I had already told him that Twila had gone over to Brown Bluff with the fourth group. “Those of you who left on the fourth Zodiac,” he said, “please to raise your hands.” He counted eleven.

  “On the Zodiac trip across to Brown Bluff, who was near Mrs. Belk?”

  They talked among themselves, and Pat said, “I think she was on my right. You know, we have different groups each time, and—”

  “Yes, I know, but of course,” the captain said.

  “Who was on the other side of her?” He grabbed a sheet of paper from the bulletin board and drew a rough sketch of a Zodiac. “The engine was here,” he said. “Ivan drove the fourth Zodiac.” He held it up and asked the eleven people to come forward and tell him where they stood on the way out. He said stood but the sides are rounded with ropes, and most people sat on the sides and held on to the ropes.

  It took several minutes of discussion, but they finally agreed that Twila had been seated between Pat Borders and Jeff Adams, an elder in Burton’s church.

  “Very good,” the captain said. He turned the paper over, drew another crude picture, and said, “We shall now see where you stood on the return trip.”

  “I—I was on another Zodiac,” Jon said. “My stomach was heaving a little, and I wanted to get back.”

  “You are all right now, are you?”

  “Not wonderful, but I’m okay,” he said. “That is, after I vomited twice.”

  “I am sorry—”

  “So I decided to go on the other Zodiac. They were getting into the boat right then. I sent word to Ivan that—”

  “You did not tell him yourself? You told someone else?”

  “Certainly,” Jon said. “I was too miserable.”

  I watched him for some sign to show that he was lying. I saw nothing.

  “To whom did you speak, sir?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I felt too miserable to pay attention. Someone was walking toward Ivan’s boat. I grabbed his arm—or it may have been a woman—and said, “I’m sick. I’ll go back on this Zodiac. Tell Ivan.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I climbed into the Zodiac and said, ‘I’m sick. I’m going back early.’ I leaned over the side of the boat and barfed. That was the first time. It happened again before we reached the ship.”

  “Can someone verify this?”

  “Oh yeah, all of us on boat three can,” one of the men said.

  The captain turned to Ivan. “How many people were on your Zodiac on the return?”

  “Ten, sir.”

  “But you went out with twelve.”

  “Yes, sir, but someone told me that two of them had become—” He spoke with a heavy accent, and it was obvious he searched for the correct word. “Sickness—two of them had become sickness and would have make their return on the third Zodiac.”

  “Who told you?”

  “I do not remember, sir. I was speaking to you on the VHF radio.” He dropped his head, unable to look at the captain. “Someone—and who it was I do not know—said to me, ‘Two of them have return the other boat.’ ”

  “Did the person explain?”

  “Yes, sickness.”

  “Sick. Two people sick? Is that what the person said?”

  “Yes, sick. That is the word. Yes, sir.”

  “Two of them?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Most absolutely.”

  “You have no idea who spoke to you?”

  “Sir, on this voyage, everyone in this group wears the same, do they not? So I could not be to know. The wind blow heavy, snow fall. They come, all of them from forward to the Zodiac with their heads.”

  “Bent forward? Lowered?”

  “Yes, Captain, that is what I meant.”

  The captain was obviously displeased at the lack of precise information, but Ivan added in a defensive tone, “I had but not yet finished speaking on the VHF radio to you, sir. And, sir, I was upset because—”

  “Yes, I see,” the captain said. He turned to the rest of us. “It was a small matter and not significant here. I had spoken some rather harsh words to Ivan about something quite unrelated to passengers.”

  We accepted that statement. Ivan hung his head while the captain talked, so we were all convinced that he had received a severe reprimand for something. He must have felt bad about the call then and even worse that he had not been attentive on the return.

  The captain finally asked the obvious question: “Who gave the information to Ivan that two people would go on the other Zodiac?”

  After a long silence, he said, “I see that we have no answer.” He stared at us for a few seconds and made his next decision. One by one, Sunil Robert questioned all ten of the passengers on the fourth Zodiac. He asked Jon Friesen twice to tell him about being sick. There seemed no question about his vomiting.

  As I listened, I thought he would make a good detective. He was obviously assured of himself and in control of the situation. Everyone seemed compliant.

  Even after he had questioned the ten people, no one admitted talking to Ivan. No one noticed Jon get on the other Zodiac.

  “Ivan just said something like, ‘All here. Others on different boat,’ ” was the way Heather explained it.

  “That’s right,” Donny Otis said and imitated Ivan’s voice.

  “I didn’t notice anyone being gone and I didn’t count,” Betty Freeman said. “It was obvious that everyone else had left Brown Bluff, so we took off.”

  “But every tag faces the correct way, including hers,” the captain said. “Her number was seven. The tag was turned to show that she went ashore. It now faces the correct way to say that she has returned.”

  “I’ve searched everywhere for her,” I said.

 
“So have I,” Burton said.

  The captain stared at me and then at Burton. He said nothing, but both of us knew what he was thinking.

  “Twila is still on the island,” Captain Robert said.

  Ten

  “The weather will not permit a Zodiac to land, so we shall stay anchored until the conditions have improved enough for someone to go back,” the captain said.

  He turned abruptly and left the room. About an hour later, we could feel the ship make a turn. Four hours later, the weather calmed sufficiently and a Zodiac left the ship. It was nearly 10:30 p.m., but no one had gone to bed. Because of the many hours of daylight, it wouldn’t be a problem to get back to the island and look for Twila.

  “Surely she wasn’t left on the island,” Pat said as we stood on deck and watched Ivan and two others take the Zodiac. “Why would anyone want to stay behind? There’s nothing there—”

  “There must be some other explanation,” Thomas Tomlinson said. He was a baritone in the choir, and for a long time he had been one of Twila’s most devoted admirers. He was in his late thirties. He once told me that his family was unable to send him to college. “My family was always poor,” he had said. “I had five siblings, and neither of my uneducated parents ever made much money from their jobs.”

  When Twila learned that he was an exceptional student, she paid his total college expenses. He had returned to Clayton County and taught math in the Jonesboro High School. Only two years earlier he had become the assistant principal and next year would become the principal.

  He could never say enough kind words about Twila. “She would not allow me to repay her. She told me that if I were truly thankful, I would find someone like me who needed help.” His eyes watered when he said that. “My wife and I have decided to pay tuition for two students each year.”

  Thomas walked over and stood beside me. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I’m sure no one was left. I stood on the shore, and I was the last one to get into the Zodiac. I thought it was such a sad, desolate place.”