by David Jurk
It might’ve been a million inconsequential things, flotsam of any conceivable nature; trash or logs or a dead ocean predator of some sort; perhaps a fragment of dark plastic from the Patch or a shipping container, filled with water and nearly sunk. A million things, no more or less mundane than the countless debris we’d passed by already, a million things that had no more call on us than a grain of sand. But something about this shape, now, did call.
Later, much later, I imagined the call came from within me, an understandable subconscious resistance to that step into the black water, the organism’s drive to go on living, the human’s need to find something to live for. Or perhaps it was Rachel, or perhaps it was destiny, or perhaps it was nothing more than an astounding coincidence. Or maybe I’d been wrong all along and it was God, the God, finally deciding to get into the act.
Whatever it was, I grabbed hold of the mast shroud to steady myself on the ama, reattached the safety harness and walked with wooden legs across the netting to the cockpit.
“Ray, cancel autopilot.”
“Aye, Cap. Autopilot cancelled.”
Did I only imagine a note of relief in his voice?
I took up the rudder, swept us into a tight turn to port and planted Windswept’s bow dead center in that ruby road, heading straight for the red star. I adjusted sails without thinking about it, acting purely by habit. I felt calm, but tired, and whatever rose in my mind was without language and without form. I sailed for what I’d seen in the red light. That’s all.
It lay perhaps five hundred meters from us, rising and falling in the meter-high waves, nearly disappearing in the troughs as water washed over it.
We closed quickly, at speed, and my eyes never left it. As we neared, I began to make it into a sensible thing, began to define it with language and images, began to construct a recognition of what it was. And in the process, I felt sensibility begin to return to me, as though I were waking from a very long, very deep sleep.
And what I recognized was that this thing that had called me, had kept me from stepping into the sea, this thing that could’ve been any dead or trashed thing - was, in fact, a canoe; a trimaran of Polynesian design, perhaps three or four meters long and made of gleaming dark wood. Mahogany, I concluded. The vaka – the central canoe – lay so heavily in the water that it was apparent even from some distance that only the outriggers kept it from sinking into the sea.
And when we’d closed the distance to no more than twenty meters, and it rose again on a wave, I saw that this canoe held more than sea water; it held a human body, a woman, undoubtedly dead. Dead because the canoe was filled with sea water, dead because the only movement I could see was the lolling of a corpse as the boat tilted and rocked in the water. And dead because we were very far from any land, and I assumed she’d gone to sea in desperation; that she had tried to escape the Python, only to find that, already within her, in was inescapable.
I went forward and dropped all sail; Windswept slowed, drifted. I stood on the forward bow, never taking my eyes from her. Each time the canoe rose on a wave we were closer, and I could see more clearly.
Her head was wedged into the narrow stern, and she’d either become tangled or had tied herself to the boat with coils of rigging. There was no sail and no paddle, and I wondered how long she’d been adrift to be this far from land.
I walked unhurriedly back to the tiller and turned us hard to starboard, letting Windswept continue to ease toward the canoe broadside, and seeing that our speed was slow enough, walked back to the port ama and knelt down, bracing myself against a shroud. Windswept’s port ama, huge next to the little outrigger of the canoe, easily rode up over it as we drifted close, pushing it down beneath us. I reached out and grasped the gunwale of the canoe that was now trapped beneath Windswept, the body inside close enough to touch.
She seemed to be young, perhaps early thirties, with the delicate oval face and bronze skin of a Polynesian. She lay face up, her nose and mouth barely out of the water that filled the canoe to its gunwales. The sun and waves had clearly done their work on her; she was badly sunburnt, her face raw with open blisters. Her lips were cracked, spit badly; salt formed a faint ring around her mouth and I wondered if she’d died from the plague or from drinking seawater. Clearly though, she was – or had been - a lovely woman; even in her dreadful state there was a radiance about her, a compelling presence that made it hard to take my eyes from her.
She wore a native wrap of some sort, brightly colored, that lay bound in a soggy spiral about her waist and legs. Her upper body, clearly visible in the water, was livid with burnt and bruised skin. She had small, but full breasts with dark aureoles, the skin of her nipples as badly cracked as her lips.
I held the gunwale of the canoe tight against Windswept and watched without a thought in my head as the two boats rose and fell together in the waves. The moment became something that wasn’t time, something still and solid, an immovable object in an unfamiliar universe. The wan light of the early sun, the poor dead woman in the dark canoe, the sea rolling and rolling. And the light from the red star, fading as it traced its way higher in the sky. And still the moment stayed outside of time, stayed solid and unmoving. Something was clearly hanging in the balance but what was it? What was there to be decided, to be determined?
No thoughts came, no words formed. There was just my hand holding the side of the wretched canoe as we rose and fell, again and again, the rhythm of the sea. Up and down. I felt nothing; I had no emotions, I had no feelings. No, I was crying. Tears streamed down my face in a torrent, falling into the sea. The salt of my body became the salt of the sea. But why, oh fucking why in fucking hell was I crying? Oh Rachel, I thought, I’m losing my mind. I knelt and dropped my head, watched as the poor, goddamned dead woman lolled like a rag doll, shrugged with the movement of the damned, doomed canoe as if they danced in some final, forlorn minuet. This poor, wretched, lovely dead woman. This elegant creature.
Why? Why was she here? Why had I found her? Why was she dead? Why had the plague come? Why had everyone died? Why hadn’t I? Why me? For the love of God, any god, why me?
I had to release her, I never should’ve come to her. I should’ve stayed the course, stepped into the sea. She was where she ought to be; on her way to Valhalla or wherever the fuck lovely young women went that shouldn’t be dead in the middle of the ocean. I stared at my fingers wrapped over the gunwale of the canoe and willed them to open and at last they did, and the movement broke this endless moment open and with it, time flowed again. The noise of the sea and the wind came back to me with the quickness of my breath and I reached out and pushed the canoe, pushed it hard, freeing it from under Windswept’s ama, releasing it back on its way.
And as the outrigger came free, as it slipped out from beneath us, a sound came to me faintly; a whisper, no, a moan, soft with pain. I lunged, grabbed the outrigger and stared as the tiniest flicker of movement creased the reddened skin around her eyes. And waited, not breathing, and again, the softest sigh escaped her, full of pain, then another flicker of movement, then stillness.
And it became just too overwhelming, the madness of this wretched, awful world. The face before me became Rachel’s face, the ravaged face of her last days, her dying face. I would have given anything – anything – for that face to become whole again, strong again, have a future again. And hadn’t I offered to God, phony God, a deal? Take me, not her. Oh liar, Owen, coward. You were as afraid to die then as you are now. You said you wanted the deal, but did you? You claim you didn’t step into the water because you this canoe and this woman called, but would you have, really? Liar; you were just afraid. Your whole life is fear. You’re going to push this canoe away, let it become her crypt, because this woman inside it may have the plague. She’s almost dead anyway, isn’t she? I stared at the face, at Rachel’s face. No, I thought, no, no, no. I had one last moment left in my life, one final act, and I would at the end be like Rachel, here now, at this very, very end be good like her. And i
t all fell away, the weight of the decision, this endless moment, the wretchedness of the world. There was only this woman in need, within reach of me.
Without further thought, I sat down on the ama and leaned into the canoe, gently reached out my hand and held it just above her mouth and waited. In a moment, I felt a faint damp exhalation and straightened, staring at her face. It was true, she was alive. So, there it was then; death was here. And I didn’t care; I truly, with certainty, with fullness of understanding, didn’t care two goddamn cents worth. Energy flowed into me like light.
I pulled a length of line free from the snarl within the canoe and tied it off to a cleat on Windswept’s ama. I contemplated the situation for a moment, then rose and went to the cockpit and found my rigging knife and returned, carefully cutting her free of the lashings that held her in the canoe. Her shoulders and arms were covered in bruises and abrasions; as the ropes came free, some openly wept blood.
Leaning out over the canoe, I put my hands beneath her shoulders and as gently as I could hoisted her up into a sitting position. Her head slumped forward, chin to her chest, and I swiveled her around, her back to my chest, and leaned back as far as I could, pulling her with me. Her head fell back against my shoulder, the long dark hair cascading down. I managed to get my feet under me, readied myself and slowly stood, my arms under her breasts, holding her limp body up against me. Then bending my knees and letting her body collapse against my leg, I found better purchase and lifted her into my arms.
She was quite light – perhaps fifty kilos at most – yet with the pitching deck, I twice had to go to one knee to keep from dropping her. Through all of this, she lay without movement in my arms, making no sound. The companionway steps almost stopped me, but I eventually laid her down in the cockpit and climbed down first, then pulled her to me. I went as slowly as I could, fearing the damage the cockpit floor would do to her tortured skin. Finally getting her into the cabin, I laid her gently down on the starboard settee, and stood for a few moments recovering.
It was the thought of the canoe loosely tied against Windswept that finally roused me to the effort of climbing back out of the cabin, and I went out to it as quickly as I could, rigging knife in hand, intending to cut it loose and set it adrift. But as I began sawing at the line holding it to Windswept, I was caught by the beauty of the it, as if seeing it for the first time. I saw the skill and painstaking detail that had gone into its construction, and in the end, just couldn’t condemn it to that most inglorious of fates for any boat. Muttering profanities at myself, I pulled a spare length of line from the locker in the ama and tied it to an ingeniously carved wooden cleat at its bow, then walked it around to the stern and secured it to Windswept. Heavy with water, it would slow us significantly as we towed it, but it was the quickest, easiest way to deal with it without just letting it go.
On the way back to the cabin, I stopped for a moment and looked around. The red star had risen high enough off the horizon that the red glow on the water was entirely gone. The sun was rising in a glorious blue sky, the wind there for the taking, the sea still wild with white caps.
“Ray,” I said, “maintain two hundred degrees.” I felt the autopilot alter the rudder, felt Windswept respond, swinging back onto the southerly course.
“Aye, captain. Course at two hundred.”
I took one last look and turned and went below. The die was cast.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
STANDING ON THE narrow cabin sole, I stared down at this half-naked woman lying unconscious and focused everything within me on keeping her alive. In those first moments, as I stood marshalling some semblance of a plan, I recognized that in some way this dying woman had come to be linked to Rachel for me, and I was determined not to be helpless this time; the outcome must not be the same. She had to live.
Her complexion under the burnt skin was sallow and her breathing almost imperceptible. It occurred to me that she must be in shock from sunstroke and obviously, suffering from severe dehydration. I tried desperately to remember what the steps for treating sunstroke were; get out of the sun, cool the body by any means necessary, get fluids in. Well, she was out of the sun. I bent to the rest of it.
I had a small amount of ice in the little freezer that served the galley, so I started there, and carefully wrapped the cubes I had in three washcloths, set them inside plastic bags, and placed them on the edge of the settee next to her. The words from the class suddenly came to me; groin, underarms, neck. I grabbed a fourth washcloth and plastic bag and redistributed the ice. I stood looking down at her, hesitated, then carefully unwrapped the soggy skirt from around her hips and pulled it away, leaving her naked. Her body, despite the obvious ordeal she’d undergone, had a quality of sinuousness and sensuality despite the damage that had been done to her. I tried to recall the last naked woman I’d seen – it must’ve been Rachel; not something I wanted to think about.
The front portions of her thighs were covered in a light sepia tattoo; a mesmerizing geometric pattern of delicate lines and light shadings that ran from just beneath her groin to just above her knees. I put my hands on the inside of her legs and gently pulled them apart, then took one of the bags of ice and pressed it against the dark wedge of pubic hair, then drew her knees back together, the pressure of her legs holding the ice in place. Then I repeated the process with her underarms and finally, lifting her head, placed the last bag beneath her neck. Through all of this she never stirred, lying limp and silent.
And now I needed to get water in her.
I dug out my fifth, and last, washcloth, thoroughly wet it with fresh water from the tap and sat on the settee next to her. Squeezing a few drops against her lips, I watched as they dripped into her mouth. Worried that she’d choke, I could see an awkward, presumably involuntary working of her throat, which was encouraging. I dripped more, which again caused the muscles in her throat to contract, but she seemed to gag this time, a soundless cough that briefly contorted the muscles along her neck. Worried that she would vomit, and perhaps aspirate, I waited and was relieved when her breathing resumed its slow steadiness. As I watched her face, I saw the many blisters and reddened patches where the saltwater had split her skin and suddenly remembered the first aid kit. I quickly went and found it, brought it back to her and sat down again on the edge of the settee. Rummaging through until I found the burn ointment, I spread it quite liberally over her face and neck, the edges of her ears. Looking down her body, I hesitated, then spread some on her ravaged breasts feeling more than a little uncomfortable.
Twenty minutes later she had not moved, but her breathing seemed somewhat stronger. The bags of ice had melted entirely away, so I pulled them free. I had no more ice, so I took one of the wash cloths and soaked it in cool water from the tap and wiped her face and arms down with it. I noticed that her chest was now noticeably rising and falling, her breathing strengthening and for the first time I began to feel some degree of confidence that she’d live. Well, I reminded myself, she’d at least survive her ordeal in the sun; it was doubtful that either of us would live very long.
She seemed stable – or at least out of danger - and there didn’t seem anything more I could do for her in any case, so I decided it was best to let her rest in the coolness of the cabin and went up into the cockpit to see to Windswept. The wind had freshened to nearly fifteen knots steady, gusts to twenty, so just to be safe I put in a second reef, immediately regretting the loss of speed, but leaving it in because I just didn’t want to worry about it.
Looking out over the sea, it occurred to me that I probably ought to compensate for the currents of the Gyre which were drifting us westward, so I changed our heading to one ninety. Satisfied, and preoccupied with the state of affairs in the cabin, I went below, having been gone less than twenty minutes.
She lay as I’d left her, but her body seemed, in some way I couldn’t express, to have relaxed; for the first time she looked asleep rather than unconscious – or dead. I thought perhaps she should have more w
ater and filled a small cup. Putting my hand behind her neck, I held it to her lips and gently lifted her head off the cushion. As the water touched her mouth, she responded with willfulness for the first time; a rapaciousness seemed to come over her and she gulped wildly at the water. Again, worried that she’d choke, I held it back from her, giving it to her only in sips. She drank all of it, without any adverse reaction, so I refilled it and she finished that as well. During all of this, she never opened her eyes or made any sound.
“Hello,” I said softly. “Can you hear me?”
I waited, watching her face. There was no reaction at all. Again, I watched her breathing and felt her pulse; there was no question now; she was stronger. I stood and seeing her nakedness, thinking of Rachel’s strong sense of personal privacy, imagined how she’d react, finding herself naked before a stranger. I grabbed a light sheet and covered her, laying it softly over her battered skin. Better to have to deal with the pressure of the cloth on her skin than waking naked and exposed.
She’d consumed, I calculated, perhaps half a liter of water since I’d brought her aboard. Her body seemed less flushed and her breathing was much better. Again, I had the feeling the best thing for then was just to rest, so I went back out into the cockpit and settled down for a bit of a wait. The sun was brilliant and the day warming nicely. I felt an odd combination of detachment and happiness. I was content, light inside; I felt I’d done something that would’ve made Rachel pleased with me. Had I ensured my own death in doing it? I couldn’t seem to find it within myself to care too much.
“Well, Raich,” I whispered out loud. “Now I’ve done it, hey?”
