by David Jurk
Finally satisfied, I trotted back to the cart and for the next half hour, I filled that and a second one with heaping loads; canned goods, a few bottles of juice, several bottles of wine – careful, they’re heavy, don’t over-indulge – bags of rice, dry-packaged meals, flour, some candy, peanut butter. Produce was largely a mess, rotting in the bins, but I thought the eggs seemed OK. I refreshed my coffee supply and added crackers and pasta and a few baking selections; ready-to-mix cookie ingredients in a sealed plastic bag, pizza kits and pre-mixed bread dough. Just-add-water lemonade. The majority of it was simple staples – flour, rice, pasta, dried peas, soybeans. I found lots of useful general items – pressure-seal bags, parchment paper, coffee filters, and paper towels. And with a shout of Hallelujah I found powdered creamer. Not fresh cream, but a damn sight better than nothing; I was very happy to have it.
I finished and sat resting on the windowsill for a moment, feeling the wind buffeting the building and watching the dust billow in through the open doors and knew I needed to get back. But not quite yet, I thought, and walked back to the candy aisle and found a white chocolate candy bar the size of a license plate and ate it right there, wolfing it down, then chased it with a warm bottle of ginger ale. If I could’ve towed the entire store behind the boat, I would have. But it was time to go; I needed to beat the storm and get my treasures packed away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
BACK OUTSIDE THE store, the wind had piped up to a steady twenty knots, peppering my face with sheets of sandy grit. I maneuvered the two carts together side by side and began trying to push them across the parking lot, but the small wheels seemed to catch on every minute crack and bump, careening them off into different directions. It was like herding goats.
I was halfway to the road, cursing and frustrated, when I was pulled up short by a wailing cry, which, for all the world sounded eerily like a baby. It stopped abruptly, then began again, and I realized it was a cat - a very unhappy cat. With the wind swirling the sound around me, it was difficult to know where it was coming from. And what could I do for it in any case? The wailing again stopped, and I continued slowly forward, wrestling with the awkward carts. I made it the length of the parking lot and began making my way alongside the old post office toward the street. The cat remained silent.
Nearly back to the street, and despairing of keeping the carts together all the way back to the harbor, I spotted a strand of coax cable secured to the building. Thinking I could use it as cording, I grabbed it and pulled. It pulled free of the wall easily, and I managed to reel in a three-meter length of it before it snapped apart, using it to bind the two carts together side by side. Pleased with myself, I took a firm grip on both handles and started again toward the street, the carts now meekly behaving themselves.
As I passed the corner of the building, I heard the wail again, much closer this time, plaintive and desperate. I stopped and looked all around, and from behind a rotted wooden lattice under the post office steps I saw a patch of white fur. Squatting down, squinting against the blowing sand, I saw a small kitten, crouched low and watching me intently. It seemed poised to bolt.
“Well,” I said, “what are you doing here?”
It seemed to be exactly the question it’d been waiting for, because no sooner were the words out of my mouth than it stood up and walked straight to me. I reached for it, stroking the little head and neck; it had without doubt the softest fur I’d ever felt. Instinctively - I couldn’t help myself – I reached down and picked it up. As I cradled it against me, it settled into my arms as though I’d followed through on some unspoken obligation. I could feel the deep rumble in the tiny body, and watched it begin cleaning itself, apparently quite pleased with this turn of events. A cat, I thought; of all things.
They are at a lumber company, buying wood for the never-ending remodeling. There is a little sign on the order desk: Free Kittens! The woman, young and attractive, hair tied back in a careless ponytail, nudges the man next to her. He is tall, in dusty jeans and a t-shirt torn at the collar. He looks at her with affectionate eyes, sees her smiling at the sign and reads it; his eyes roll, and she makes a face. He gives her a stern look, shakes his head. She tilts her head, raises her eyebrows; her eyes are asking him to bend a little, to compromise. He shakes his head no a second time and she looks away, but he is watching her and catches the look in her eyes and almost – almost – reaches out to tell her all right then; all right, let’s do it.
They are on the way home, the little black truck heavy with lumber. She is quiet for a long while. He waits, knowing.
“Owen,” she says softly.
“Hmm?”
“Why not?” she asks, “Why are you so stuck about this?”
He sighs. He wants her to be happy; he loves her. But they’re fine, the two of them, by themselves. They have freedom and flexibility. They have a great life.
“You know why,” he says, not unkindly. “A cat is not just about having some cute little furry thing to play with – it’s all the irritating kitten things; the poop boxes, the scratching, the jumping on counters. It’s finding someone to take care of it when we go away, it’s needing to pay for vet bills – sometimes damn big vet bills – and then after all that, you have to go through the grief of them dying. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”
She doesn’t say anything for a few minutes; they are almost home, bouncing up the rutty dirt road.
“You can’t just logic your way through life,” she finally says, so quietly he has to strain to hear. “If you love someone or something, you don’t get to decide if it makes sense.” She turns to look at him. “Or care whether it does.”
He sighs again. They’ve been through this before.
“Raich,” he says, “it’s just a cat.”
“I know,” she replies, and puts her soft hand on his thigh as he turns into the drive. “It’s just a cat.”
I stood buffeted by the wind, watching it wash itself. I was far away from this place, hearing again her soft voice, the regret so strong in me, so familiar; it was like slipping on an old suit of pain that found every point of pressure. Redemption, I thought. It’s time.
Well, shit.
Cradling the little white ball of fur in the crook of one arm I made sure the carts were lodged against the wall, so they wouldn’t roll into the street, and walked back to the Big Save. With the kitten clinging to my shirt, I found a large bag of cat food, a plastic bin that would serve as a litter box, and a ridiculously heavy bag of litter and dumped it all into yet another cart. Returning to the carts against the post office wall, I piled everything – and the cat – on top of the two carts I’d wired together. I half expected her to bolt, but she hunkered down without complaint, apparently confident in her decision to adopt me.
“Goddammit,” I said aloud. “Double goddammit.” But the words belied what was in my heart.
The little head raised, blue eyes found mine.
“Merrow,” it said. You’re mine.
For two days, we waited out the blow, the little cat and I, snug in the cabin. I managed to figure out ‘it’ was a ‘she’, and it seemed I’d found a special beast (or was it fair to say that she’d found me?), for she was wise beyond her four or five weeks of life. She took to the protocol and the rhythm of life on a boat at once, instinctively adjusting to the constant small motions and the limited space. I sat the makeshift litter box next to the compost toilet in the head and was grateful to see how fastidious she was. She was careful not to invade the galley, even when I was cooking, and scratched nothing more than the pair of socks I’d given her to play with. Most importantly, somehow, she seemed to be free of fleas. All in all, I told myself, it could be a lot worse.
Restless as we waited out the storm, I tried creating an ersatz shortwave antenna by running an entire fifty-meter strand of wire in multiple loops around the interior, using duct tape to hold them in place. Amazingly, it worked – after a fashion - and while we waited for the weather to break, I spent an
hour or two each day scanning through the various frequency bands, praying to the gods of atmospheric conditions and the vagaries of radio reception.
What I was most interested in was any kind of live official broadcast, anything that would demonstrate that some semblance of government still remained, but I never found one. It was entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that my antenna was simply too crude, and I tried to convince myself that the problem was with the antenna and not the authorities. But in my heart, it was hard not to come to the conclusion that I wasn’t picking up any word from the government – any government – because they simply didn’t exist anymore.
But there were others out there – I heard them. Twice I picked up faint single side-band transmissions between two boats apparently sailing together. It was terribly exciting – there were others like me, alive and sailing! I tried transmitting, wanting desperately to make contact, but perhaps it was the storm or just the crude antenna; I never managed to make contact. I wanted to know where they were, where they were headed, but it was just two people talking to one another.
Still, the joy of hearing live human speech was undeniable. I would’ve thought it impossible to feel this way – I was a loner, completely asocial; I hated crowds, despised social gatherings. And yet, hearing these people chatting – it was a return to a world in which I was one among humans, instead of the last man on Earth. I listened, rapt, as they exulted over a recently caught jack tuna, feeling the joy some nameless woman felt as she described to her friend how she’d prepare it, how much her son and husband were looking forward to it. It was all so bloody normal it broke my heart.
But before the voices succumbed to static, talk turned to the plague and these two friends asked the same questions I had asked myself: Has the Python run its course? What is safe? How do I survive, and if I do survive, is there anything to survive for? Is there a future anymore for the human race, or is this the end, no matter what we do?
They spoke tantalizingly of a rumor they’d heard; a government-run safe zone in New Zealand – referred to as the ‘Auckland City Sanctuary’ – supposedly a controlled area near Mission Bay, running south to the Tamaki estuary. According to rumor, they had a test; you showed up and submitted a blood sample. If you’re clean, you’d be admitted into the sanctuary; test positive and you’re sent packing. There was no antidote and no cure.
As the voices faded away for the last time, I was almost breathless with wonder. Could it be true? It represented the first – the very first – ray of hope. It was incredibly compelling; of course, I wanted to believe it.
The devil’s advocate in me scoffed. Did it seem reasonable that New Zealand could develop a test for the virus when a country with the resources of the United States apparently hadn’t? Was it plausible that some group of citizens had the wherewithal to implement an effective sanctuary when no one else had? Probably not. But maybe?
Considering it all, trying to keep a rational mind about it, I got out the small-scale chart of the South Pacific that I kept stashed below and did a rough calculation of distance. With the kitten batting at the paper in front of me, I plotted a course that worked out to more than seventy-five hundred kilometers; nearly twice the distance I’d sailed from San Diego to Kauai. And worse, it was across far more challenging currents and seas and through far more regions of challenging weather. It might take six weeks if all went perfectly or it might take months if it didn’t – and when did things ever go perfectly? It was sobering, looking at the penciled line as it ran across the equator toward the bottom of the world; leading from early summer where we were to Autumn there. It was the Southern Hemisphere - constellations were upside-down, we would sail into a completely different night sky. And the fact that the GPS was now questionable added further risk – terrible risk, really - to that faint penciled line.
Still, there was undeniably a part of me that was excited, that longed to be passage making again, longed for the simplicity of life at sea. And in truth, I realized all too well that I had gained a level of confidence that was based to some degree on pure ignorance; there would be risks on a voyage like this that I wasn’t even aware of. But they were, at the end of the day, risks I’d prefer over those I’d encountered on land.
I wondered how much of this was just wanderlust – thinking about this immense trans-ocean passage. Hanapepe had been safe so far; even comfortable. There was food for the taking, and we were far from any real population centers. Further west, there was the Navy base at Barking Sands – I’d been thinking about it, wondering. It was a secure facility, maybe they’d managed to keep the virus at bay somehow, maybe just a few miles up the road I’d find our own version of Auckland.
Yet, I couldn’t believe it – Barking Sands gave access to the base for tourist groups on an almost daily basis. Surely, they’d been infected and were in the same shape as all the others, and if by some miracle they’d maintained their viability, wouldn’t there have been word?
In the States, we were so arrogant, so sure we had the solution to everything, that other countries comprised a distant second place to us, to our national zeitgeist. Yet here we were – and it was tiny New Zealand I was hearing rumors about, not somewhere in the States. And perhaps it made perfect sense that a place like that, with all the ‘number nine wire’ mentality that drove them to be so self-sufficient. Perhaps we’d needed what they’d apparently had – agility, an ability to move quickly and decisively, to come up with practical solutions.
And the more I thought about it, the more sense it made to me. We were now well provisioned – thanks to the Big Save – and had stores for two months at least, assuming I was careful. And now, even an emergency water supply in the form of the solar still. I was feeling rested and more confident in my sailing abilities than I’d ever been. And looking over at the tiny white ball of fur sleeping on my chart, it occurred to me – and not without some sense of fondness - that I’d have company this time.
And like that, somehow the thinking about it became a decision and the decision became preparation and the next morning, as we were greeted with sunny skies and steady trades, this fourth day in Hanapepe became our last.
The food I’d gathered up at the Big Save had been stowed, all the lines checked and rechecked. I’d walked the amas, followed by the graceful little cat, and assured myself they were intact, dry and watertight. I checked the systems, and despite losing another satellite, Ray declared us to be nominal.
I felt a tension then, a silence in the air charged with expectancy; the feeling that Windswept herself stood poised and impatient – set me free, she called. To sea, to sea.
I pulled anchors. We were head-on to the wind, and there was nothing more to do than unfurl the jib, raise the main and wait for that moment that the trades caught her. And then they did, and she leapt forward, speed building quickly, and the tiny white cat and I sat in Windswept’s cockpit and watched Kauai become an emerald diamond far behind us on the northern horizon of the sea.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I FOUND MY way back into the rhythm of voyaging with relative ease; despite some discomfort from nausea the first two days out, it was nothing compared to what I’d encountered in the swells off San Diego. And as for the cat, she adapted to life at sea as if born to it – eating with gusto from the very first and catapulting herself about the cabin after every bit of fluff she encountered. She was demonic toward the flying fish that landed on us, though some of the larger ones must’ve greatly outweighed her. I swept most them overboard before she could get to them just to keep her from spreading her carnage all over the decks.
We were sailing with the northeasterly trades, on a course of two hundred degrees, south-southwest, making generally toward New Zealand. With our speed, it was a heading that kept us sailing fairly close-hauled, the main nearly at mid-ships. For Windswept this was a point of sail that gave her the driving force and inexorable swiftness of a freight train; she reveled in it, throwing her triple wake behind us in mindless aban
don. I never tired of watching it.
At night, ever cautious, I’d put a reef in the main, slowing us and providing a margin of error. Two worries consumed me when I went off-watch; first, that we might hit something – most likely some sort of ocean trash, and less likely but not impossible, a whale. Trash, in the middle of the Pacific? Rachel hadn’t believed it, so I’d shown her the sad numbers. Each year ten to twelve million shipping containers crossed oceans, most on open-deck cargo ships. One percent fall off along the way, and no more than a handful are ever recovered. That’s ten thousand boxcar-sized containers added to the ocean, year after year. Most of them don’t sink. So, yes, a very real worry. I wasn’t at all sure that my radar could pick up an object that low in the water, and if we hit one squarely enough while we were traveling fast enough? At a minimum, we put a hole in the boat. Worse case, we destroy it and end up – if we’re fortunate – in the liferaft.
It wasn’t lost on me that the end of humanity and its technology meant the sea might at long last have a chance to recover her purity.
But it wasn’t just collision; if a sudden squall hit us with the mainsail fully deployed, we could be overpowered, flipping us upside down. This was the great vulnerability of a boat that used multiple hulls for stability and not a heavy keel – once capsized, getting back upright without mechanical assistance was nearly impossible. Still, we had a potential hedge; Windswept was outfitted with an auto-release, a tiny computer that measured the angle of the mast and the force being applied to the boom. It used a formula that calculated the likelihood of capsize given those two measurements. If a threshold was reached, a solenoid released the main sheet – spilling the power of the wind and keeping Windswept upright.
