Cold Water Burning

by John Straley

  I tried to pull into the lee of the outermost island near the final cape before I launched out to the open sea. I was hoping to find other boats crowded next to this basalt upwelling, but the island was a lathered chaos of white water. I battled the wind at my quarter to get behind the island, and just as I turned near the beach a gust slammed in, nearly rolling the boat over. As it righted, I felt sharp needles of pain all over my body and a clattering filled the boat. The gust was flinging rocks and sticks off the island.

  I crouched down in the skiff until the squall passed. As I stood up, I spotted a small patch of water some fifty yards off the black rocks where the wind seemed to oil the water down and I could hold the boat for a few moments to bail and collect myself.

  Out to the west the sea changed into bright peaks of motion. The wind was a constant rumble in my ears. It picked up elegant spumes of water, twisting them into arcs.

  A swell curled in behind the island. Before I dropped down it I caught the glint of metal somewhere out on the gray sea, just a glint, and then I was down in the trough. On the next motion I looked in the same direction, holding my hands near my eyes to shelter them from the wind. The glint came from the sharp edge of an aluminum boat. It was impossible to tell how far away it was, for the waves built so tall it seemed as if space was collapsing in on itself. I thought of avalanches and the wetted manes of wild horses stampeding over cliffs. I was fighting a strange vertigo but I thought I saw the upturned hull of Kevin’s boat wallowing at the base of a wave.

  I gunned the engine and rode out past the next wave and the next. My only hope was to go upwind of Kevin’s boat and then gradually ease back on its location while bailing hard enough to keep my own boat upright.

  I don’t know exactly how big the wave was that took me down. I just know it made the sun set, and the dark shadow of its trough filled me with a giddy apprehension. I asked more of the engine, and as we went up the front of the wave it felt like I was driving up a long steep hill. Amelia’s engine lugged down as the angle became steeper and we approached vertical. I was locked in fear and inde­cision, but then the storm relieved me of all my responsibility: the wave pitched out into a massive curl just above me.

  It had the strange feeling of a carnival ride. As I passed verti­cal, I heard the roar of water churning toward me. I saw the windscreen break off and felt it hit my face. I could feel the boat falling more than seventy feet to the bottom of the wave. I thought of Todd, underwater, gripping the sinking rail of Kevin’s alu­minum boat. I thought of Jane Marie’s misplaced faith in me, and I thought of our tiny daughter, as my fear gave way to a sickening regret.

  9

  When I came to, I was floating near the skiff, and there were athletic shoes floating in a calm sea. The sun was shining weakly through a high overcast. I was in a sur­vival suit. I had no memory of putting it on, and my vision seemed intensely sharp, as if my whole life up to that point had been a dream and I was just then waking up.

  I dimly remembered the fall and the sharp teeth of the cold water chewing into my body. I remembered thinking that there was something I should be doing as I tumbled over and over through the crush of the foaming wave, and I knew I would get to this important thing just as soon as I stopped falling. I remembered the salt water in my mouth. I remembered the burn of cold water pushing through my nose. I remembered reaching out my hands to grab on to something solid in the world gone to burning water.

  But I didn’t remember anything about the athletic shoes that were now bobbing around me on the easy swells. There were hun­dreds of them, maybe thousands, with knobby rubber treads and fat tongues flopped out like open mouths. The horizon was an etched line of blue, and I was inexplicably hot. I pulled the hood off my head. I looked around and saw gulls circling the tangled mess my life had become.

  The Amelia floated upside down just three feet from me. A loop of the safety line had tangled around my legs, tethering me to the skiff. I found all of this interesting but I kept staring at the athletic shoes. These were brand-new shoes; some were floating on their soles like little boats. Most were tipped on their sides floating half-full as if they were greedily sucking down sea water. They were black-and-white shoes with a red wedge up the tongue continuing back through the heel. Expensive shoes, I thought, for so many of them to be floating out in the middle of the ocean.

  A gull flew close and dove at one of the shoes. I saw a small scoter beating the air with her stubby wings just above the water. As she passed me I could hear a slight squeak with each of her quick wingbeats. Then she was gone over the lip of the next swell.

  “Strange,” I said out loud, for no discernible reason other than the strangeness I felt at being alive and being able to see every­thing so clearly for the first time.

  I heard the faint buzz of an engine. I splashed the surface around me, turning and leaning back in the water, but I could see only the angry gulls.

  The overturned yellow hull floated stern-down, so I could slide up until most of my torso was out of the water. My suit bulged with water at the feet and the heaviness of my body pressed in on my bones. I felt bruising pain everywhere I had feeling. I unzipped the neck of my suit. I stretched my neck and looked around. The air was cool on my clammy skin and I noticed that I was shivering.

  Far off, away from the direction of the sun, I saw a helicopter on a straight-line course running parallel to my position. It was so far away it could have been a dragonfly. With my hood down, I could hear the buzz and flutter of its rotors drifting away.

  “Hey,” I whispered in a voice that didn’t sound like mine, “hey, come back.”

  I found the shoes comforting. They were all the same kind, all the same style. Floating there, they were just as lost and im­probable as I was.

  I couldn’t untangle the line wrapped around my feet but was fi­nally able to rig myself under the armpits so I could lie against the overturned hull. Most of my chest was above the water and I was able to rest my head back on the bunched-up hood and close my eyes.

  When I opened my eyes, the light on the sea was more intense and the shoes had fanned out around the skiff like a widening puddle. Everything—athletic shoes, seabirds, even the rippled sur­face of the gentle sea—sparkled as if lit by stage lights.

  I heard a blast of breath somewhere around me, the explosive wheeze of a large animal. My body was stiff with pain and I could not stand up or crane my neck to see, but a huge mammal was swimming close. I heard the breath again, then again. Fifteen feet toward the sun, a massive head broke through a wave and a gray blocky form dabbled the surface. As it sank away I could hear water rushing in on its wake. There was another breath and an­other. Pure white gulls with black feet wheeled above me and the massive backs of the whales pushed toward me like islands magi­cally being pulled along.

  Four sperm whales tipped to the surface with great forward jets of vapor from their bulbous heads. They circled the skiff once, then dove. I looked down into the milky gray-green water. I saw animals the size of tractor trailers passing twenty feet below. It seemed to take minutes for them to pass: great long backs, fur­rowed and blunt. The water was alive with a snapping sound, and then the push of car-sized flukes. Water pushed up all around me, oiling over the surface. Then they were gone, and I closed my eyes again.

  I awoke in the dusky light of a red sky. I didn’t know if it was a sunset or sunrise. Black clouds flared crimson at their edges and the clouds on the horizon were streaked through with color. Something bumped into my leg and I was able to lean over to see what it was.

  A blue heron floated in the water, her yellow eyes open and alive. She was twisted unnaturally on the surface of the water, unable to lift her wings, unable to fold them against her body. Splayed out on the water, she looked like a broken chandelier. Birds can be caught unaware by the intensity of a storm. The heron had proba­bly been knocked down into the water by a gust and then flailed against the wind, una
ble to make her wet wings work. Her eyes flamed. The plumage on the back of her head fanned out in the water as she tried to kick away from me. I thought that if she could get on top of the boat at least she would dry out and perhaps be able to fly. I lifted her gently with my clumsy gloved hand and could see one of her long legs was broken like a twig. She hadn’t the strength to lift her head as I held her body, but in one jerking mo­tion I felt her rise up and then go slack.

  Even through the thick rubber mitts I knew she was dead. “It’s all right . . .” I said lamely. I tried to wipe the tears out of my eyes but the rubber mitts made it ridiculous. Then, as a slight gust broke on the top of a swell, I let the heron go downwind.

  A helicopter buzzed a long way off over my right shoulder. I lifted a mittened hand and waved halfheartedly as if to a passing acquaintance in the hall.

  “Hey,” I said to myself, “I’m over here.” My throat burned as if my vocal cords were scabbed over. I rested my head back down on the deck and listened to the sound of the rotors thinning out into the hiss of the wind.

  I turned and looked opposite the sun and saw the even horizon of the sea in a hazy gray light. Just beyond the tip of my foot I saw a distant hump on the horizon. The hump had a light emitting from it. The light was a strong beam as thick as a tunnel sweeping across the waves. The light seemed very near.

  Without warning or flicker the light went off. I could see nothing on top of the waves except a few tiny dots I assumed were athletic shoes. I knew I was going to die. Surprisingly, I wasn’t panicked, just a little disappointed. Then disappointment sank into a kind of relaxing melancholy as the cold clamped down harder on my bones. I decided to close my eyes again.

  But before I could, as if from the very interior of my head, I heard the faint tangled rhythm of Latin dance music. I closed my eyes to listen. There were conga drums rattling, and the churning of guitars, then the urgent pleading of a trumpet. I could feel light burrowing into my body, and I felt a lifting in my chest as if I were being pulled out of a deep, deep hole in the ground.

  10

  I could hear water slapping a hull just under the blare of music. I opened my eyes. The hull of the Naked Horse was lunging toward me. She had lost her masts, and her rigging was a snarl of loose hardware and wire rope. She had a short piece of broken spar propped up and lashed upright on the foredeck. A small square of sail billowed out from this rig.

  In the stern, a figure stood at a tiller. The tiller was a broken piece of oar lashed to the rudder post. The figure held a bright spotlight and the Latin dance music seemed to issue straight from this light. Blinded, I shaded my eyes with my hand. The light clicked out, and I could clearly see Jonathan Chevalier standing in the cockpit, his hair flailing from his shoulders as he danced to the music blasting from the speakers he had propped up on top of the cabin of the crippled wooden sailboat. He was naked except for a belt with a sheath knife hung around his skinny white waist.

  Much of the rigging on the Naked Horse had been sheared away. Sprung ends of wire rope dangled over the side. The storm rig was lashed with black nylon cord. Sailcloth lay on the deck, torn and bunched into awkward bundles. One corner of sailcloth was held full by a long wooden oar. Heaped on the deck were dozens of ath­letic shoes.

  Jonathan waved to me as his boat eased up and around into the wind. The forty-foot hull came gently to a stop less than fifteen feet from me.

  “You don’t look so scary to me now.” Jonathan smiled and reached over to turn down the music. “Little windy last night, don’t you think?” The music was now turned low, but Jonathan was still rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.

  “Hey,” I finally managed to say.

  Jonathan moved quickly around the deck, jumping and lashing things together. As the boat rolled in closer, I could see that he wore a pair of fingerless gloves and a scarf around his neck.

  Jonathan tied a line to his belt and climbed down a narrow rope ladder in the stern. He dove into the water and swam to me. I thought he was going to beach himself like a magical seal right on my overturned skiff, but instead, he swam under and attached a line to a cleat, tethering Amelia to the Naked Horse. Then he pulled himself up on the skiff. He was shivering, but he seemed to be pulsing with energy.

  “Cecil, I’ll get you up on board. It’s a mess down below, but we’re pretty warm. You didn’t come out here looking for me, did you?”

  I gaped up at my savior. His hair dripped in the sun; his fore­head was bruised, and I could see dark spots of purple on his shins and forearms. His skin was fish-belly white and rough with goose bumps, but he seemed strong as any wild creature.

  “You looking for me?” Jonathan asked again.

  “Yes,” I croaked. Jonathan hooted with a wild bubbling laughter.

  “Well, you’re a little late, I suspect.” Jonathan kept laughing as he pulled out his knife.

  I pulled back from him but he leaned forward and cut the lashing away from my chest so I slipped down toward the water. Eventually he got me out of the suit and pulled the two boats close together. He nimbly passed a line under my armpits and pulled me aboard by using his hand winch and running a sheet through a block on the end of his makeshift boom.

  Lying on a piece of sailcloth, I felt my skin begin to warm in the sun. Pain eased up out of my body into the atmosphere.

  “Night soon,” I said mournfully. I felt I couldn’t bear the thought of darkness coming back.

  Jonathan jerked around and stared at me as if he were thinking of eating me.

  “Night? It’s morning, man. Morning of the first day. You know what I’m saying?”

  I didn’t argue. It was morning. That was fine with me, if Jonathan could change the rhythm of the sun. That was fine with me.

  Looking back on it, I realize I had been drifting in and out of consciousness and the entire day I’d experienced was probably just a few minutes of dawn.

  “A container ship dropped some vans into the drink; I guess one burst open and spread shoes all over hell and gone. You know how much these shoes are worth, man?” Jonathan was sitting next to me.

  My hands were soft and wrinkled from being in the suit; so soft, in fact, that I thought my hair was going to slice my fingers open. There was a lump just above my right ear. When I pressed it I felt a light crunching, as if there were a layer of dry paper under my skin.

  “I’ve been netting up these shoes,” Jonathan went on. “This is better than fishing. I mean, these are one-hundred-dollar shoes.”

  Shoes were scattered like dead birds on the deck: dozens of them of various sizes, but apparently all of the same style. “Do you have any matched pairs?” I was finally able to ask.

  I realized I was still shivering even though the sun was a de­lightful balm on my face. Overhead a large bird with a short neck and long crescent wings drifted on the currents of air.

  “Albatross,” I muttered, and followed it out of sight.

  Jonathan hopped around the deck. He had tied off a tiny tri­angle of sail by lashing the oar he was using as a boom straight up to the snapped-off piece of spar he was using as a mast. He was rig­ging to get under way. He prattled at me as he tied off lines and cut some away with the knife he kept on his belt.

  “Why don’t you have any clothes on?” I asked him dreamily.

  “I wanted to feel it. You know what I’m saying, Cecil? I wanted to feel every ounce of that storm’s energy. It was a rush. I was in it, you understand. It was a perfect way to go back to the beginning.”

  “Aren’t you getting cold?”

  “A bit. But I go below. We’re really pretty toasty there. I can’t start the engine because I fouled the prop when I lost the rig. I had lanyards and all kinds of shit wound around the wheel. I thought I had it cleared away, but when I started the engine I bent my shaft and sprung the only leak of the night. Right up through the stuffing box. But I had a big can
of pine tar and I soaked a blanket and some other stuff and plugged up the holes. I was able to jam the goo down and stop the leak. Then I tacked some lead flashing over. We are tight again, but I can’t use the engine. Doesn’t matter now anyway.

  “Why don’t you go down and warm up a bit? Like I said, it’s a mess, but we’re doing good. We’ve got lots of fuel for the stove now that the engine’s down. Lost the stack, of course, but I was able to rig it a bit.”

  I could see the open end of a soup can sticking up through the cabin of the boat near where he had his music speakers propped up. A fine diesel smoke came shooting into the air.

  “It’s pretty hot down there. You’ll want to get out of those clothes and get dried off.” He opened the hatch leading belowdecks and welcomed me down, but I was unable to stand. In my first attempt, I swung my legs underneath me as if they were newly carved prosthetic devices, and I clattered down on the deck. I pulled myself to my knees. Instead of trying to help me, Jonathan smiled patiently as if I were very drunk and he didn’t want to em­barrass me by drawing attention to my condition. I crawled over the deck and over more of the bundled sailcloth to the hatchway. Jonathan was fussing with the sound system mounted on the ceiling of the house near the top of the hatchway. He moved out of the way and let me crawl headfirst down the ladder.

  I fell the final two feet and found myself in a heap on the floor. Jonathan turned on the music and closed the hatch. Below, I could hear the hull of the Naked Horse lapping into the swells and from above came the blaring sounds of Jonathan Richman’s band, The Modern Lovers, launching into a live version of “Roadrunner.”