The Great Wide Sea

by M. H. Herlong

  Looking down, I saw that we had been lucky. If the rocks had not caught Chrysalis, she would have been dashed onto the shallower coral banks and we would have had to abandon her immediately, launching the dinghy in the dark into the crashing waves. We would have been thrown onto the coral and sliced to pieces. But that didn’t happen. We were past that. We were safe on this island. This island, such as it was.

  I took a deep breath and looked around.

  Now we could see that the island was shaped like a boomerang with the right angle pointing almost due east. The top arm of the boomerang pointed northwesterly except for the tip which curved back due north and then narrowed and sloped into the sea. The bottom arm of the boomerang was much thicker and pointed southwest, ending in the blunt pile of stepping-stone rocks we had just explored. The meeting of the two arms was the highest point, where we now stood.

  From here we could see almost every line where the island met water, and now, for the first time, we could see the southeastern shore. Only it wasn’t a shore. It was a cliff. Straight down into the ocean with no tumbled rocks or coral reef. Just a sheer drop into the crashing waves. Nothing but a dinghy could ever land on this island, and then only on the single beach where we had built our camp. I looked at Dylan and he looked at me.

  Then I looked again at the lonely, breathtaking beauty of where we were. The bushes and trees clung proudly and stubbornly to the thin layer of soil over the rocks. They would not be beautiful anywhere else, but here they were perfect—stunted trees bent by the wind, dull green bushes prickly to the touch, grasses that crunched underfoot, and cactuses stabbing defiantly up at the now cloudless, rainless, infinitely blue sky. And everywhere there were the rocks—the striated wall of the cliffs, the tumble of gigantic boulders, the smaller rocks huddled in the edge of the sea. All a deep, grayed brown mottled with dampness or patches of algae or the shivering slate green of some determined plant growing in a crevice. Around them all lay the pristine beach, the aqua shallows, the ocean-blue deeps, and the sudden, brilliant flashes of colored coral growing silently and steadily under the waves.

  And then there were the creatures that lived here. The seagulls and pelicans and hawks and terns screeching through the sky. The iguanas and snakes and lizards and who knew what else scrabbling along in the bushes. The mussels and sea urchins. The crabs and the conch. The tiny fish flashing across the face of the coral. The larger ones hiding in the crevices and slipping through the seaweed. And just on the far side of the coral reef, the big ones—the silent rays, the graceful tuna, and the slender sharks.

  I tried on words. Majestic. Stunning. Awesome.

  Then I looked down at my brothers, standing small beside me. We were three little pieces of humanity, the only people on earth, standing on the very top of the island, erect, on two feet, with hands at our sides. In a photograph or a painting, we wouldn’t show up. There was so little of us and so much of everything else.

  I was holding Gerry’s hand to keep him from stepping too close to the edge. Dylan stood exactly at my other side, not even as high as my shoulder now.

  The waves crashed on the rocks. The seagulls cawed and spun on invisible currents in the air. The thin grass hissed slightly in the wind. But we were quiet. Only one word echoed in my mind now. Over and over, pounding like the drumbeat of a dirge.

  Despair. Despair. Despair.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  IT WAS ABOUT another week before I let it sink in that we were really going to have to do something about food and water. With careful use, the fresh water left from Chrysalis would last a while, but the food would only last another day.

  I kept expecting something amazing to happen. Maybe we’d be wandering through the sea grapes and—boom—there would be a fabulous plant that contained all the basic nutrients and tasted good. Or we’d be swimming and suddenly discover an oyster bed or a cache of lobster. Or we’d miraculously develop the ability to catch fish with our bare hands. I must have seen movies like that a hundred times. And all those books—Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, The Cay. People did it that way, I knew. So where was our miracle?

  We didn’t get one. We just got hungry. We ate the last can of food for lunch and looked at each other and knew there was not another one in our stash.

  I picked up the speargun and waded out into the water. It was absurd. The turquoise pool contained no fish. I knew that. I couldn’t swim out to the coral reef and just hang around in the middle of it waiting for a fish to swim by. I’d drown before any fish would come near me. I needed a boat to fish the coral reef—or I needed to find a fishing hole in the fallen rocks somewhere near shore. I turned around and waded back to the beach where Dylan and Gerry sat watching me.

  I sat down. “We need a plan,” I said.

  Dylan nodded. “There are conch over there.” He pointed to an underwater grassy spot on the northern end of the beach. “I noticed them the first day. We motored over the spot coming in. It’s not deep.”

  “What else?”

  “The prickly pears. We’ve already tried them. They’re all over the hill. You can eat the pear and the big leaves, the pads.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I know a way to make water from the plants—a distillery, condensation thing.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I read about it—in a book Dad had.”

  I squeezed his shoulder. “It’s a start. We’ll have conch for dinner.”

  The fishermen in Nassau would have been rolling on the sand laughing if they could have seen us with the conch. It was a good thing we got an early start. It took us an hour to break into it. It took another hour to get the meat out, decide how to kill the animal—if it wasn’t dead of shock already—and then cut it up. We knew we weren’t going to batter it and fry it, so we cooked it like hot dogs—little pieces on the end of long sticks held over the fire. It was awful, like chewing shoe leather. And there was so little of it. One conch was barely appetizer size for the three of us. But we were worn out by the time we’d finished, and in the back of my mind was the idea that we didn’t have an unlimited supply of conch. We couldn’t just go out and gather them all and have a feast. We had to pace ourselves. As I lay down that night in the tent, I heard my stomach growling. The conch was a good idea, but the best we could say about it was that it would slow down starvation, not prevent it. We had to develop a bigger plan.

  The next day Dylan went up on the hill to forage. It was the first time we had been apart since my solo trips to Chrysalis the first day. Gerry and I went together to the secret beach and searched among the tidal pools. I was hoping for crabs or lobster, but nothing showed up to let us catch it.

  We went back to camp empty-handed and waited under the spinnaker for Dylan. He came back with another pear and a cactus pad. I fished out another conch, and that’s all we ate that day. It was the same for two more days.

  On the third day, I couldn’t do anything but sleep. When I finally woke up late in the afternoon, Dylan and Gerry were busy building something with garbage bags and plastic tubes to make water, and my stomach felt like a hole gnawed through the middle of my body.

  I watched them work for a while, but I was too weak to help. I escaped to the hidden beach on the other side of the rocks. Gerry’s footprints were all over the sand. He must have come searching again, alone. Several tracks led to one of the half-submerged rocks. I followed them and climbed up. I lay there, sunning like an iguana and staring into the pool of water in front of me. The bottom was clear. Along the waterline of the rock were marble-size mussels of some sort. I pulled one off and tried to crack it open. Its round shape just bounced off the rock when I slammed it down.

  I threw it into the middle of the pool. I’d never thought about being hungry before. Now it was all I could think about. I could see a sea urchin’s black spines poking out from a crack in the bottom edge of the rock. I knew sea urchin eggs were edible. But how could you get them? All I could see was spines. I co
uldn’t just reach in and grab.

  I heard footsteps behind me and then Gerry crawled up on the rock beside me.

  “Do you feel better?” he asked.

  “Better?”

  “You’ve been sleeping. You’ve been sick.”

  “I’m not sick.”

  “Oh.” He stretched out right next to me and dropped his fingers into the water. I saw Blankie collected up under his chest. “I like it here,” he said. “I like to watch the fish.” He paused, but I didn’t fill in the gap. “They come swimming in here and I wish I could reach down and catch them. I wish I could just grab them with my bare hands.” He paused again and let both his hands play in the water. “I’m really hungry,” he said, a whine edging into his voice.

  I closed my eyes.

  “I must be growing,” he said after a while. “Whenever I was always hungry, Mom said I must be growing.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I wish we had some milk. And cereal.”

  I gritted my teeth.

  “Or a hot dog. Would you like a hot dog, Ben?”

  I could feel my teeth grinding. I could feel my mouth watering.

  “Are you hungry, too, Ben?”

  “Hungry!” I exploded. I stood and felt myself towering over him. “I’m starving!” I shouted. “We’re all starving.”

  His eyes were big now with fear, and I was afraid I would kick him. Why did he have to be so close?

  I turned away and jumped off the rock into the shallow water. I splashed to the tiny beach and then tripped and fell, smacking my shin against one of the small rocks on the beach. There was a cut and it started to bleed.

  I turned back to Gerry and yelled, “Now look what you did! I’m bleeding.”

  Then Dylan was standing close beside me, reaching out his arm. I beat it back.

  “Go away,” I shouted, still beating at him. “Both of you. Just leave me alone.” I stumbled again and fell to the sand to sit. “I don’t want—I just want—” I didn’t finish.

  Then Gerry was sitting on one side of me and Dylan was on the other. Dylan picked up my hand and held it, and I let him. Gerry bundled up Blankie and stuffed it in front of my face. I took it and I buried my face in it and started crying. I pressed Blankie against my eyes and my nose, and I let Dylan hold my hand, and I cried. I cried and I cried and I cried.

  When I finally stopped, Dylan walked with me back to camp while Gerry stayed on the rock, hugging Blankie and peering into the pool. Dylan held me by my elbow, as if I were an old man. The air between us felt tender and broken. He told me to sit in the shade, and I sat. He brought me a cup of water, and I sipped it. He explained his evaporation and condensation apparatus for making water, and I listened.

  “You’re a genius,” I said.

  “I didn’t make it up. I read about it—in a book.”

  “You’re still a genius. You remembered it.”

  I wanted him to stop talking. I wanted to go back to sleep. Then Gerry’s figure topped the pile of rocks and stood silhouetted against the sky. It was too much to see how skinny he looked. How long his hair had gotten. I turned away. Beside me, Dylan started laughing quietly.

  “What?” Gerry asked as he got closer. There was something different in his voice.

  “What have you got under your shirt?” Dylan asked.

  “What do you mean?” Gerry asked.

  “I mean what are you hiding under your shirt? You look pregnant.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I said.

  “Look.” Dylan pulled on my arm. “Turn around and look.”

  I didn’t have to turn. Gerry walked around and stood right in front of me.

  His shirt was all pushed out over something he was hiding underneath it. He held a long stick in one hand and cupped his arms underneath the bulge in his shirt. He looked ridiculous.

  “Stupid,” I said. I was still quivering inside from what had happened on the secret beach, and they were acting like idiots.

  “Oh!” Gerry said. “It’s coming!”

  Dylan had started laughing out loud and Gerry had lost his mind. “Stop it, you idiots,” I said, and pushed Gerry away.

  He stumbled, laughed, and lifted up his shirt. Out dropped a fish—a huge fish—a flounder at least two feet long and fifteen inches across. Slap. Thunk. Onto the sand. Right side up. Two eyes staring blankly at the sky. A flounder. Food. Lots of food.

  Dylan whooped and jumped up and slammed Gerry in the shoulder. “A fish! Gerry, you got a fish!”

  “Where did you get a fish?” I asked, just sitting there, staring at it like it was a prop that had washed up on the shore from a TV show.

  “I stabbed it,” Gerry said. “I stabbed it with my spear.”

  “Your spear?” I asked.

  “Yep.” He showed us his spear, a stick with a sharp point. “I lay there on the rock after you guys left and watched the water and then it came and when it was still, I put the spear in the water and waited again. And when the water was still, I shoved the spear into the fish and it died and here it is and I killed it—all by myself.”

  Now Dylan was hugging Gerry.

  I slapped my knees. That’s what I did. Just like an old man, I slapped my knees.

  “You’re crazy,” I told Gerry. “You are a wild thing!”

  Then Gerry lifted his spear into the air, yodeling like Tarzan and shouting to the sky, “Let the wild rumpus start!”

  So I jumped up and I screamed and I beat on my chest and I picked up Gerry and rode him on my shoulders. Dylan marched behind us, blowing an invisible trumpet, and Gerry laughed and called orders to me in his tiny, high-pitched voice. And we all screamed and chased in circles and tore up the sand and scattered the dead leaves like confetti and ran up the hill and down again. Then Gerry stood on the rocks, waving his spear, and Dylan and I howled like dogs and then we were tired. We put our arms around each other and walked back to where the fish lay in the sand. It was our dinner and we were about to cook it, but first we stood and looked down at it and wondered at the miracle of its being there in the sand and waiting at our feet.

  I squeezed Gerry’s shoulder.

  “Good work, buddy,” I said, and he poked his tongue around in his mouth and almost smiled.

  So we cooked the flounder and ate every single bite. It was huge, and we were stuffed. It was worse than Thanksgiving. I mean it was better.

  I felt my stomach would explode. I felt that while I was sitting there shoving it down my throat, my arms and legs were shouting, “More! More!” And my blood was pumping it to them as fast as it could. I felt three inches taller when I stood up from that dinner. Three inches taller and about twelve inches bigger around.

  Dylan didn’t even bother to stand up. He just lay back flat on the sand and crossed his hands over his chest. He didn’t look at the stars, either. He closed his eyes and groaned.

  Gerry sat hugging Blankie, of course, and licking his fingers. One by one. Carefully. Then he gently wiped them on Blankie. Then he lifted Blankie to his face and breathed in the scent.

  “You think we should have saved some?” I asked them.

  “No,” they both said at exactly the same time. We barely had the strength to laugh, and anyway laughing hurt too much.

  “Some bunch of wild things we are,” I said.

  Dylan groaned again.

  “I’m going to roll on over to my sand hole and curl up with my life jacket,” I said.

  Dylan sat slowly. “I’ll waddle over with you,” he said.

  Gerry followed, and in the dark of the tent we slowly lowered ourselves to our beds. We were quiet, listening to the waves and the gentle breeze in the sea grape leaves. I remembered lying in bed at our old house and listening to cars on the street and trucks on the highway and even the train that went through town, blowing its whistle late at night. Now those sounds seemed like ones from a movie. Now I listened for wind and waves and sea grape leaves and the skitter of lizards outside our tent. I closed my eyes.

&nb
sp; “I wish I had a story,” Gerry said.

  I started out of a half-sleep. “I’ll tell you a story. Once upon a time there were three brothers shipwrecked on an island, and they were so tired, they went to sleep. Bam. End of story. Now go to sleep.”

  “Ben,” Gerry whined.

  “Shhh,” Dylan said. “I’ll tell you a real story. Once upon a time there was a mom named Christine.”

  “Dylan,” I hissed.

  Gerry didn’t move in the dark corner where he lay.

  “A mom named Christine,” Dylan went on. “And she had three sons.”

  I could tell Gerry was breathless in the dark.

  “When she nursed the littlest boy, who was a tiny baby, she held him in a white blanket. And then when he was bigger and started using a bottle, she always held the Blankie right next to his face while he drank his milk. She looked down at him and said, ‘Are you my Noogie? Are you my sweetest Noogie in the world?’ And he looked up at her and didn’t say anything because he couldn’t talk. The other two brothers wondered what a Noogie was, but they never asked. And that’s the end of the story.”

  I realized I was as still as Gerry, that Dylan’s voice had been holding me taut.

  Gerry breathed loudly and slowly. “Dylan,” he said accusingly, “that was a sad story.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s a happy story. It’s about a mom who loved her baby very much.”

  “But she’s gone,” Gerry said in a very little voice.

  “That doesn’t mean she loves you any less,” Dylan said.

  Gerry was quiet.

  And I was too. What was there to say? The present doesn’t change the past. Is the fact that the past happened enough to make the present good? Is the past real? Was it still real anymore? Was Mom still alive somewhere? Was Dad?

  I sat up, punched my life-jacket pillow, then lay back down. Sometimes I found it really hard to fall asleep.