I scratched a little at the rubber on the inflated rail of the life raft, fingernail rasping back and forth, back and forth, just aimless energy echoing the slap of the ocean. The sound changed with the direction of my nail. North south, scratch scratch. East west, scritch scritch. Small discoveries pass the time.”
Stephen was sprawled wide on his end of the raft, one hand trailing in the water, the other adjusting the wet t-shirt he’d draped over his face.
It was a nice day to be out on the water. A gentle breeze keeping us cool and the ocean alive, high fluffy clouds giving us shade every few minutes, sun warm without being spiteful. Sky and water showing off every blue they had. Turquoise, azure, teal. In fact, if you could pick any day to be out for a quick weekend sail, a quick out-and-back, a day like this would be just about perfect.
Same as yesterday, same as the day before that. It’d really been a great few days, up until the boat sank.
“Hey,” I asked Steve, “tell me again why you sank my boat.”
He exhaled hard and blew a bubble of shirt off his mouth.
“Shut,” he said, “up.”
“Come on,” I said. “Just one more time. I’m bored. Plus, you owe me. For sinking my boat. Tell me a story.”
“Last time was just one more time,” he said.
I spread my arms to the emptiness around us. Dramatic.
“What,” I said, “you have something better to do? If I had my guitar, I’d play you a song. But I don’t. Because it was on my boat. That you sank.”
“I didn’t sink it,” he said.
Hooked! I thought. Fishing for conversation is just as important as fishing for food when you’re bobbing around here. Hard to land it sometimes.
“What?” I said, surprised. I put on a big show of looking around. “Jeeze, dude, I’m sorry. I just haven’t seen it lately. Where’d you put it?”
“I didn’t sink it,” he said. “It sank.”
“Oh,” I said. “I see.”
I let the silence run out. It’s best to let the big fish tire themselves out a bit before jerking ‘em back in.
“Hey Steve?” I asked.
“Fuck off,” he replied from under his shirt.
“Who was at the helm when it sank?” I asked. “Was that you, or was that me? I’m having trouble remembering, because I was down below when it happened. Asleep.”
“Maybe you should have bought a better boat,” he said.
“Maybe you should learn how to drive,” I said.
“Sail,” he said.
“Whatever,” I said. “You probably ran a red light or something. Got us t-boned by a semi. Surprised we didn’t end up dead in a ditch. Do you even have a license?”
He didn’t say anything.
I slapped the side of the raft. “Thank god for these airbags, huh?”
He didn’t laugh. Neither did I. I lay back and looked at the sky.
“Come on,” I said, “lighten up. It’s not a big deal.”
I’d been grinding him pretty hard for the last few days, and sometimes I felt bad about it. Not today, though.
“I mean, all you did was sink my fucking boat in the middle of the fucking ocean,” I said.
He yanked the shirt from his face, sat up, blew up.
“I! Did! Not! Sink! Your! Fucking! Boat!” he yelled. Somewhere below us a fish woke up, glared at the bottom of the raft, went back to sleep. Probably. Steve flopped back down.
“All right, all right, I’m just kidding,” I said. “I’m just flipping you shit.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, “but it still sank on my watch and I don’t fucking like it.”
We lay there under the sun, eyes closed, bronzing. I let him cool down a bit.
“Well,” I said. “What’s your best guess?”
“Same as before,” he said. “Don’t know. Clear night, good conditions, almost full moon. I wasn’t sleepy. Radar was clean. Then there was a bang, a crunch, I nailed the edge of the companionway with my shoulder, and I could hear water coming in. I jumped down, hit the cabin lights, you were sitting up on the saloon bunk pulling your boots on, and we came back up on deck. Empty-handed.”
“That’s where we fucked up,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
I reached into the water, cupped my hand and splashed some cool on my face.
“Didn’t know it’d go down so quick, though,” I said. “Hindsight twenty-twenty morning quarterback and all.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“But next time!” I said, raising my fist to the sky, index finger extended right up into the nose of heaven. “Next time, by god, we’ll nail that shit!”
He laughed, because I’m a fucking clown.
I slapped the bottom of the raft with the flat of my hand and beat it into us. “Ditch bag, radio. Ditch bag, radio.”
We lay quiet, feeling stupid and feeble. The sun scooted away behind a cloud, a child smiling shy from behind mother’s skirt.
“Submerged container,” he said.
“Yeah, probably,” I said.
“We weren’t going that fast, though,” he said. “For it to hole the hull that much we must have come down off a peak right onto the corner of it.”
I didn’t say anything.
“And if we landed that hard on it,” he said, “we should have been stuck. Wedged right on that fucker.” He made a corner with one hand and a boat with the other, smacked them together, held fast.
“Dammit, dude,” I said, “don’t sink my boat again right in front of me. What the fuck.”
His hands fluttered apart. “Woah, hey,” he said, “sorry, brah. My bad.”
“That’s some cold-ass shit, nigga,” I said.
We lapsed again. I rearranged myself against the edge of the raft, my back sticking and squeaking against the rubber. A dog turning in circles to find just the right position to curl up in.
I poked at the bottom of the raft.
“Is this the deck?” I asked Steve.
“What?” he said.
“The deck, you know,” and slapped it. “Does a raft have a deck if it doesn’t have a below?”
“Huh,” he said. “I don’t know.”
“Can’t call it a floor,” I said.
He didn’t say anything.
“That’d be lame,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
He sat up, busied himself with a hook and line from the emergency kit. No real ditch bag, but I’d stashed a few things in the raft just in case. Fishing line, flare gun, couple cans of water, energy bars. “Be prepared,” my scoutmaster always told me before rolling on the condom.
“What were you listening to?” I asked.
He looked up from the hook. “What?”
“In your headphones. When we hit.”
He looked back down. “Sabbath.”
“What song?”
He squinted into the sun. “Uh… ‘Black Sabbath.’” He bent back over the hook.
I waited.
He knotted the line.
“Don’t you think that might have had something to do with it?” I asked.
He looked back up. “I only had one ear in, dude. I could hear fine.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said.
He shrugged, his shoulders saying “and?”
“Don’t you think maybe listening to a song about satan in the middle of the night under the full moon might have something to do with all this?”
“Probably,” he said.
He held up the line, hook dangling askew from it. He’s good with knots. I just tangle everything the hell up until it’s permanently attached, then cut it apart with a knife later if I have to.
“Could have been worse,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“Another ten minutes and I would have been listening to ‘Leviathan.’”
I laughed. “Dude, you shouldn’t even have brought that shit on my boat.”
“I know,” he said, “it felt wrong.”
I thought for a minute.
“Actually,” I said, “I loaded up on all the salty tunes I could find for the trip, and I had ‘Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ on mine.”
“Duuuuude,” he said.
“I knoooooow,” I said.
He broke a pea-sized piece of energy off the bar and put it on the hook.
“Did I ever tell you how I’m related to that song?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Probably. I don’t know.”
“Edmund Fitzgerald was the president of the company my dad worked for.”
“Oh yeah?” he said, pinching the bait into a little ball.
“Yep.” I said.
He tied the line to his left index finger, flung the hook into the water, and leaned back against the raft.
“What’d your dad’s company do again?” he asked.
“Life insurance,” I said.
He didn’t say anything for a moment, then he laughed. “Damn,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “That ship was hauling a heavy load of irony when it went down.”
He twitched his finger, jerking the line around.
“Foot,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“Lightfoot. Gordon Lightfoot, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I couldn’t remember if it was him or Jim Croce.”
“Yeah,” I said.
We lay back on our rails, shirts on faces, sweating and fishing. An idyllic day marred only by the lack of beer. I’m tempted to say “and tits,” but those always complicate things. Right now we’re just Tom and Huck floating downriver, and that’s just fine. In fact, forget the beer, too.
“Where do you think we are now?” I asked, voice muffled under wet shirt.
He said something back, but I had my shirt over my ears, too. I lifted up one side and said “what?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “Can’t be more than a degree or two from where we went down.”
“Any idea where the shipping lanes are?”
“Not really,” he said. “Close enough to leave us that container.”
“Probably don’t want to be in them at night anyway,” I said.
“Got the flare gun,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t want to fall asleep, then.”
“Yeah,” he said.
I peeled my shirt off my face, dunked it in the water, wrung it out and reapplied it.
“A beer would be all right,” I said. Look, I know I said forget the beer, but I didn’t say forget it forever.
“Yeah,” he said. “And some tunes.”
“A radio,” I said.
“A sail,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “all that stuff was on my boat before you sank it.”
“Fuck off,” he said.
“Okay, look,” I said, “we filed a float plan saying we’d be out seven days, right?”
“Right.”
“We got nailed on the first night, and we’ve been in the raft three days, so we’ve still got three or four days before anyone thinks we’re missing, right?”
“Not if the EPIRB went off when it hit water.”
“I don’t think it did. We would have seen a helicopter within, what, twelve hours? We were maybe a hundred miles off shore. So now we just to sit tight until someone calls us in missing, right?”
“Right,” he said, “unless you have a sail tucked away somewhere.”
“Just makes me antsy,” I said. “Hate not being able to take action, to be able to do something pro-active.”
“Yeah,” he said, adjusting the wet shirt on his face, “me too.”
“In four days we’re not going to be anywhere near where we’re supposed to be. You’ve seen charts of the current between Florida and Cuba, right? We’re going to be northeast into the Atlantic a few hundred miles, and they’re going to be looking for us in the gulf.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but.”
“But what?” I said.
“But I think the Coast Guard has probably done this sort of thing before.”
I stuck my tongue out at the inside of my shirt. Salty.
“You don’t seem too worried about it,” I said.
I could hear him shifting around.
“Look,” he said, “we only have one job here, and that’s to stay alive. Nothing else. No, two things. Stay alive, fire the flare gun. That’s a lot less than I usually have to do.”
“Buh,” I said. “I suck at that job. I can barely manage to think of reasons to stay alive on land. That’s why I bought the fucking boat.”
He laughed. “Maybe you just needed more focus,” he said. “No distractions. Just some intensive time with the important job: staying alive.”
“And firing the flare gun,” I said. “And keep the Bee-Gees out of it.”
“Hey,” he said, “shit happens.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Still, a couple of beers, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said, and sighed loudly, making his shirt flap over his mouth. “Some tunes. I’m thinking AC/DC, but I’m feeling Jimmy Buffett.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Highway to Margaritaville.”
I paused, trying to think of how to mash up “Back in Black” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” but it stopped being worth the effort after a second or two.
“At least the weather’s holding,” I said.
A cloud passed over the raft.
“Uh oh,” I said. “Foreshadowing.”
“Probably,” he said.
We drifted.
“Whole Lotta Cheeseburger,” he said.
“God dammit,” I said. “I almost did Cheeseburger in Black.”
We drifted some more.
“I don’t know any more Buffett songs,” he said.
“Me either,” I said. “And that’s why we’re friends.”
The sun went down, the stars came up, the moon played coy under the horizon. We pointed out the things we knew in the sky, which wasn’t much. We each knew about four, and they were the same ones. Dippers, both Big and Little, Orion, the Pleiades, Polaris, Jupiter, Venus, Mars.
I pointed at the red one in the Big Dipper and thought it might be Aldebaran. Then I pointed at the red one in Orion and thought maybe no, that was Aldebaran. Or Betelgeuse. I posited that we were part of a rich history of lost mariners staring at the sky and wondering where they were. He responded that real mariners would be staring at the sky and knowing where they were. I conjectured, then, that we were just a couple of dicks in a boat. He made a minor correction and stated that we were just a couple of dicks in a raft, and there we came to an agreement. The moon rose, put out the stars, and relieved us of showing off any more ignorance.
I awoke just before dawn, and he was facing the morning twilight, cross-legged, chin in his hands, elbows on the rail.
I rubbed my eyes and sat up, peeling arms and legs from the rubber.
“Anything?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said.
I didn’t say anything. I especially didn’t say what I said the last couple of days upon waking, which was “hey! Thanks for not sinking the raft, too!” The jokes start to both come harder and land harder after a few days.
“Well,” I said, “fuck it. I’m going down to the coffee shop. You want something? Bagel?”
He straightened up and stretched.
“Hell,” he said, “I could use a walk. I’ll come with you.”
“Sure,” I said, and reached over to start putting on my socks. “Ahh, shit, wait, do you have any cash? I can’t find my wallet.”
“Damn,” he said, “I lost mine, too.”
We both slouched a little. He leaned forward against his rail, I leaned back against mine.
“Well,” I said, “bagels make you fat anyway.”
“Yeah, and caffeine’s bad for you,” he agreed, and we watched the sky lighten in silence. Purple, indigo, rose.
“Hey,” I said, “you ever been with someone witnessing something beautiful, like a sunset, and they just keep saying how beautiful it is instead of shutting up and letting you enjoy the beauty?”
“Shut up,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “me too.”
And we watched the sky lighten in silence.
Just as the sun broke the horizon, there was a noise. A big noise. Hard to say if it was loud, exactly, because it was everywhere, inside and outside my head at the same time.
Go out to the garage. Get a file. Not a nail file, but the file you use for sharpening the lawnmower blades every spring before the first cut—or each fall after the last cut, if you’re anal like that. Clamp down on that file with your molars, right up next to the handle. Now get a friend to put his or her foot on your temple next to that handle, grab that handle, and pull it out as fast and hard as he or she can while you’re clamped down with those molars as fast and hard as you can. That’s what the noise was. I can only call it a noise because that’s the closest word I can think of, but it fired on all the senses, not just the ears.
Steve slapped his hands against the sides of his head and turned around, yelling “what the fuck?” at me. Mouthing it, anyway. Then the sound was gone, and the sun was up a little more. I thought I was going to throw up, but it passed quickly. We were still. Breathing. He was curled over his crossed legs, I was laid out flat, just looking over the rail at the rising sun.
“Horn!” he said, and looked at me. “Tanker horn!”
We both jumped up to our knees, all four of them thudding painfully into the solid bottom of the raft. That was when something in the back of my mind said “hold on now, that shouldn’t hurt,” but then I looked over his shoulder and forgot all about my knees. I looked at him, and he was looking over my shoulder. I looked all around.
“What do you see?” he asked, still staring straight ahead.
“No,” I said. “You say first.”
He didn’t say. He looked around, tipping back and forth and turning a full three sixty on his knees.
“No ocean,” he said.
We didn’t talk for a few minutes. We were on a flat featureless plain. Far in the distance, scattered around the horizon, jagged mountains. From my kneeling position, I drew one leg up and put my foot down on the raft. Solid. Not springy, not a waterbed. I crawled my toes around, feeling the grit of the—well, land, underneath the raft. I took a chance and stood up. Don’t ever stand up in a raft, you’ll flip it. Everyone knows that. Except the rule is missing a few words: don’t ever stand up in a raft, you’ll flip it, unless you’re on dry land in the middle of a desert.
I turned full circle, making shuffling little steps, crouching slightly, hands out to catch myself, just in case I was hallucinating.
Steve slowly stood up, too.
The ground around us was blindingly white and almost perfectly flat. He took a step towards the rail.
“Woah woah woah,” I said. “Hold on. What’re you doing?”
“It’s land, man,” he said, “we’re on land.”
“Just wait a minute,” I said. “Think about how we got here. You don’t know what that land is. If it’s land at all.”
He slapped his foot on the bottom of the raft.
“Feels like land to me,” he said.
“Well, about ten seconds ago it felt like the Atlantic. Maybe we shouldn’t, you know, rush into anything.”
“Yeah,” he said, “okay,” and squatted down next to the rail. He reached over and rubbed the ground outside.
“Looks like salt,” he said. He held up his hand, palm white with tiny grains. He pulled his hand to his face and licked it.
“Dude!” I yelled, and grabbed at his arm, but I was too far away.
“Salt,” he said, and showed me his hand again, one clean pink dot where his tongue had touched it.
“Fuck, man, you call that not rushing into anything? What if it was,” I flapped my arms around feebly, trying to think of something poisonous and white, “rat poison or something?”
“I don’t think they make deserts out of rat poison,” he said. “Mostly they’re made of sand and salt.”
“Still,” I said, calming down, “can we agree this situation is really fucking weird, and maybe do a little thinking, here?”
“I guess,” he said. He pointed to what looked like the closest range, “best case we’re still a week from getting out of here. How far are those mountains, and what’s behind them? Fifty miles, maybe?”
I leaned over my rail and touched the ground. I scratched at a slab of salt, split and cracked by the heat, and came up with a salty finger. I scratched in a crack, and came up with dirt. I spat on the ground, and, well, now there was a bubble of spit it. I was out of ideas.
“Where’s the ocean?” I asked. “We were in the ocean, now we’re not in the ocean. You’re seeing this, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, scratching a little more salt out on his side. “I’m seeing this.”
“Wait,” I said, rolling over and looking at him. “Are you even real? Did you maybe drown a while back, and I’m dying of thirst and making all this up?”
He turned to look at me.
“We were only out for three days,” he said. “And we still had plenty of water.”
“I’m just trying to figure this out,” I said.
He made a fist and pounded on the salt pan a few times.
That’s pretty much our relationship in a nutshell. I try to figure things out before taking action, he takes action until he figures it out. It’s a good mesh, generally.
“Rat poison?” he said, “Seriously?”
“Well.” I said.
“How come every time something weird happens it’s gotta be bad? I mean, what if we were in a desert made of cocaine? You could have said that,” he said.
“Huh,” I said, and licked my hand. Then I rubbed a little on my upper gum and sniffed and pinched my nose. “Nope,” I said, “salt.”
“Wait,” I said, and stood up, looking around again. “I think it’s worse than we thought. I think it’s worse than just being stranded in a desert after being lost at sea for days and not knowing how we got here.”
“What?” he said, “how?”
I turned around, scanning the horizon.
“I think,” I said, “we’re in Utah.”
He laughed.
“That is bad,” he said. “How you figure?”
“Bonneville salt flats,” I said, “I’ve been here before.”
He stood up.
“Wait, so have I,” he said. “Speed Week. You recognize any of the mountains or anything?”
“No,” I said. “But, you know, salt flats, mountains, where else could it be?” I asked, pointing at each as I said it.
“Yeah,” he said, “I dunno.”
“Me either,” I said.
It was getting hot. The reflection from the salt was intense, blinding, and there was no ocean breeze to take the edge off.
“On the upside,” I said, “if someone happens to come by, they’re going to get us out of here a hell of a lot faster than a tanker will. Land speed rescue record.”
“Hope it’s not a motorcycle,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “We have to get out of the sun.” I put a fist up to the horizon. “If we’re at the same latitude as before, I put it at, what, 7:30? And it’s already this hot?”
He held his fist up and said “7:45.”
I held my fist up in his direction and squinted.
“7:42,” I said, “dick.”
“We could flip the raft,” he said, “prop it up with something.”
“Well,” I said, “two problems: one, we have nothing to prop it with. Two, what if we end up back in the ocean? We’ll be underneath the raft.”
“So we flip it,” he said. “We can handle that.”
“In good conditions,” I said. “What if we end up in the ocean in a squall?”
“Well, what if we end up on Mars?” he said. “You gonna pull a space suit out of your ass?”
I reached around behind me and pretended to dig around in my ass. “Nope,” I said, “no space suit.”
I paused, pretended to dig a little deeper.
“Wait,” I said, “hold on. There’s something… nope, that’s not a space suit.”
I thought for a minute.
“How about this,” I said, “we prop up the raft right-side up, and tie ourselves to it. That’d be pretty safe. Except we still don’t have anything to prop it up with.”
“Look,” he said, “we need to get ourselves out of this situation, not worry about some other situation that may or may not happen.”
I frowned.
“We need,” he said, “to get to those mountains,” and pointed off an impossible distance away.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess. Coast Guard doesn’t get out Utah way very much.”
I kicked all our stuff to the center of the raft. A mean little pile.
“Might as well take everything,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Steve. He put everything in the stash bag and zipped it up.
We stepped onto the flats and looked at the mountains.
“Fuckers look black,” I said. “Like teeth.”
“Black teeth?” he said, “what has black teeth?”
“Black like looking back out of a shark’s mouth on your way down its throat.”
He looked.
“Yeah,” he said, “they do.”
He took a step forward. I didn’t. He looked back.
“What?” he said.
“I want to drag the raft,” I said.
“Dude,” he said, exasperated, “that’s—“
“I know, I know,” I said, waving my hand. “Just let me get over this for a second. I moved around a lot as a kid. It’s always tough having to leave home, you know?”
He didn’t know if I was joking. I didn’t either.
“All right,” I said, and took a deep theatrical breath. “Let’s do thi—“
And there was a noise. Might have been the same noise, might have been different. After being crushed to death by a car falling on you from an overpass, would you be able to tell if it was a Toyota or a Ford? If, while blindfolded, you were knocked out, could you tell if it was Ali or Tyson that threw the punch? The only thing that mattered about experiencing that sound was the end. It was the pain and relief of the last turn of the workbench vice, finally rupturing the testicle, now there’s nothing left to ruin, now we can just go home.
The sound was everywhere, but I instinctively threw myself backwards, hands over my ears, and tripped over the raft rail, falling, falling, right into the soft, wet, undulating rubber of the bottom.
I lay there, stunned. The sun gave me a wink, and pulled a cloud in front of it, a geisha behind her fan. Hey, I thought, that’s better. Back in the ocean. Just how I left it. I lay there, stunned and sweating and overjoyed that the noise had stopped. Then I sat up and started yelling, turning around on my hands and knees like a dog chasing its tail.
“Steve! Steve!”
“Yeah!” he yelled back. “Over here!”
He was bobbing around on his back, ten feet off the starboard poop deck.
“You all right?” I called.
“Yeah,” he said, “just glad I’m in the water. I think I pissed myself.”
“You sure you’re okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m good,” he said. He rolled over and breast-stroked towards the raft.
“Well,” I said, “in that case, let me just get in a quick ‘I told you so.’”
He reached the raft and hung lazily off the side.
“Like you knew,” he said.
“I fuckin know everything,” I said, and offered my hand.
“Nah,” he said, and pointed to the far end of the raft. “Go over there, balance me out.”
I scooted over, he climbed in.
He sat there, dripping.
“Well,” he said. “This is stupid.”
“Yeah,” I said.
We sat.
“You know,” I said, “this stupid is better than that other stupid. Fuck being in the desert, know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Didn’t ever think I’d say it, but it feels good to be adrift in the ocean again. Like coming home.”
“See?” I said, “that’s what I was saying back there. I’d miss this old gal,” and I slapped the raft on her ass. She squealed a little, I like to think.
We kept our own counsel for a while. It felt a little like being sick, or being on drugs, or any of those times when reality decides to add or remove a few angles from your vanishing point just to see what you’ll do. It’s all really important and serious, and you want to tell someone about it, but when you try to explain, it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
The sun made the top of the hill, started to roll down.
I threw out the anchor.
“Still,” I said, “couple of beers.”
“Yeah,” he said.
The anchor and chain snapped off the rode and sank to the bottom. Hard to make conversation when you’ve gone from fucked and knowing it to fucked so badly you don’t even know how badly you’re fucked.
Clouds came and went, the sun sliding behind, the sun sliding back out, a burlesque queen doing a slow-motion bubble dance.
“Hey,” he said, “were you going to rename her?”
“What?” I said, “who?”
“The boat,” he said.
“No,” I said.
“Superstitious?” he said.
“Fuck no,” I said. “Well, a little. Superstitious about me not naming it something completely stupid just to be an ass. I’d do something like the S.V. Butt Pirate, and then the first emergency I’d have I’d be thinking about having to call the Coast Guard, mayday mayday mayday S.V. Butt Pirate mayday mayday mayday, and there’d be just a part of me saying ‘oh, man, I can’t say that…’ and that second of hesitation would maybe cost the boat.”
“Not this time,” he said.
“Huh,” I said. “You’re right.”
“It’ll be one of the girls calling in, this time,” he said.
“Oh man!” I said, and slapped my forehead. “I should’ve! They’re all getting them on the phone, saying ‘um, yeah, we want to report a missing vessel,’ and they’d be all ‘yes, ma’am, what is the name of the vessel?’ and they’d have to say ‘uh… Butt Pirate’ and then the guy would be ‘excuse me, ma’am?’ Shit. I blew that chance.”
I paused.
“Really, though, it was a lot more likely that I’d be calling. Don’t reckon too many boats sink on their delivery cruise.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Plus, Gadfly’s a pretty good name. Part of the reason I bought her. There were two or three others that were pretty close, but that name spoke to me for some reason.”
“Can’t imagine,” he said.
“Better than Blue Goose, anyway,” I said.
He extended a middle finger to defend the honor of his boat.
“Seriously,” I said.
The finger remained unfurled. He soon reefed it.
“Hey,” I said.
“What?”
“You know if a gadfly is a real fly, or just a metaphorical fly?”
“Stop bothering me,” he said.
“Touché,” I agreed.
The sun sank, the sky darkened, the stars bloomed, the moon dismissed them. It was my watch. Steve slept. It was his watch, I slept.
I woke up, the sun peering over the eastern like Kilroy in a truck stop restroom. Muzzy. Stretched. Rubbed eyes, turned head each way until neck cracked, taking in the morning.
Steve was gone.
I sat up, completely awake now, raft wobbling underneath me, scanning the empty ocean.
He was bobbing around about ten feet away.
“What the fuck!” I yelled at him. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Taking a dip,” he said.
“How about a little warning next time, huh?”
“You were asleep,” he said. “I’m right here.”
The adrenaline was draining, and I was settling back into just waking up again.
“Okay,” I said, “but—“
“Ah!”
He held up his hand and cut me off.
“Before you say it,” he said, “I’m tied off, Mom.”
He held up his other hand. A line trailed out of it on both sides.
“All right,” I said, “but don’t stay in too long or you’ll spoil your appetite.”
I leaned back against the rubber. The fear dissolved. I watched the clouds shimmer pink and orange in the dawn.
“Steve!” I called.
“What?”
“Put on a sweater, you’ll catch a cold.”
He laughed, and I closed my eyes.
Still.
Stilllll.
Dammit, what was it. Something’s not right here.
I shot upright again and yelled “Stevegetinthefuckingraft!” but it was too late, and the noise, the vibration, the steam hammer on my sternum, the sledges on each rib, Steve hauling himself up onto the raft rail, arms pushing down, triceps sharply defined in the horizontal sunlight, centipedes ripping through my sinuses.
I felt the salt pan through the rubber under my back. Steve said “woop!” and toppled over backwards off the raft like he was on hinges.
Can’t get no beer here, I thought, This is a dry county.
I sat up and didn’t throw up.
“Dude?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Steve said, from outside somewhere.
“I can’t handle this shit.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Least we’re still okay, I guess.”
“Not so much,” he said.
“What?” I said, and crawled over to the rail. I pulled myself up and looked over.
Steve was… well, Steve was missing the lower half of his body.
“Ohhh fuck,” I whispered.
“How’m I doin?” he asked. His hands were crabbing back and forth where his thighs should be.
“Lost some weight,” I said. “Lookin good.”
Yeah. I really did say that. When things are fine, I pretty much don’t know what to do, so I tie myself into knots about trying predict possible eventualities. When things finally go completely fucked, I’m the coolest character you’ll ever meet. “Hey,” you’ll think, “things must not be as bad as I thought, because he’s acting like it’s no big deal.” That’s my rationale, anyway. Could just be that I go into shock at the drop of a pair of legs.
He tried to sit and take stock of the situation, but was missing the necessary ballast, and just sort of curled up like a pillbug for a second, then flopped back down onto the salt.
“Can’t feel m’balls,” he said hoarsely.
He had been bisected at a jaunty angle directly through his hips. Balls were part of the missing inventory. He’d also been completely closed up. It wasn’t like he’d been cut in half. It was more like he’d never had the lower half at all. Just his stupid rainbow striped belt, a couple inches of white pants, and then smooth, hairless skin from top to bottom, front to back.
“I, uh,” I said.
He tried to prop himself up with his arms, and didn’t do very well.
“Got some bad news,” I said.
“What?” he said. He looked scared. At me.
“I think you’re going to live,” I said.
“Guts comin out,” he said. “No fucking legs.”
“No,” I said, and pointed at his… well, for lack of a better word, his bottom. “Feel.”
He did, and expressed “what the hell?” with his face.
“Yeah,” I said.
He tried muscling himself up again, fell over, and said “will you help me the fuck up?”
I climbed out of the raft, got behind him and lifted his shoulders so he was balanced on his hips.
He looked down at himself. From where I was standing, he just looked like he was buried to the top of his ass in the ground, and was just going to pull himself up out of that hole and we’d get the fuck out of there, maybe walk down the road to get that bagel and coffee after all.
“Feels like I keep going,” he said. Then he made a weird twisting movement and fell over on his side.
I helped pull him up again.
“You okay?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I was trying to climb out.”
He looked up at me. Real sad.
“Do you think my legs are down there somewhere?” he asked. “Think we could dig down and find them?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I’m not saying I could put them back on,” he said, “I get that, I just wonder if they’re down there.”
The way he was talking reminded me of when I was a kid, and I’d done something wrong and was about to take a beating, but my dad would let me sit there and try to talk him out of it. That false hope was the worst part of the punishment. The desperation, the pleading, the failure. Nothing I say is going to change anything, but I still have to try. That’s how Steve was talking.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know why we’re here in the first place.”
“Maybe they’re back in the ocean,” he said.
“Maybe they are,” I said. He was talking like me, I was talking like my dad.
“Let’s get back in the raft,” I said. “You don’t want to be there when… you know, whatever. The noise.”
“Yeah,” he said. “No.”
“Okay,” I said, and moved to help him over the rail.
“No,” he said, “I mean no I’m not getting back in the raft.”
“What?” I said, “Why the hell not?”
He gestured downwards.
“It’s enough,” he said. “I’m done.”
“Right,” I said. “Just quitting, huh?”
“You remember before we went climbing that time, and we both got it out in the clear that if we were in a situation where one of us was going to have to cut the rope to save himself he’d do it?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You gotta cut the rope here, man,” he said.
“You gotta shut up here, man,” I said, and squatted down next to him, sort of embarrassed about having my legs right in his face like that.
“Here’s how it’s going to work,” I said. “We’re going to get in the raft. We’re going to sit there until we’re back in the ocean. We’re going to wait another couple of days. We’re going to wave at the rescue helicopter when it flies over. We’re going to get in that little basket and they’re going to haul us up. Then we’ll go home. You were the one telling me we only had one job out here not too long ago.”
He just looked at me, thinking, chewing.
“You ever think of coaching Little League or something?” he asked. “You got motivational chops.”
“God dammit, dude, shut the fuck up,” I said. “I’ll tell you this: if you’re not dead by now, you’re going to be fine.”
“Yeah,” he said, “and I’m Santa Claus.”
“I can tell from the gut,” I said.
He looked down again. We’d been on near-starvation rations for the better part of a week, so we were looking pretty good.
“Doesn’t really work,” he said.
“Wait, do it again, but with the Easter Bunny,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, “and I’m the Easter Bunny.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I can tell from the back hair.”
He nodded thoughtfully, swishing my response around like a complex wine.
“Yeah, okay, that works,” he said.
We hove him back into the raft and leaned him against the rail, stash bag at his hips. He had to hold on to the line running around the top of the rail to stay upright, but we were on a flat solid surface. Once we got back into the wet, he was going to need a harness.
So we got busy. I took one length of line over to my side of the raft and started weaving together a chest strap. I had to promise not to tie it up with one of my “granny fucker knots.” He dug around in the stash bag for another length of line and uncoiled it in front of him.
I bent over my line, strategizing.
I heard a click, a hiss, a muffled bang, and everything got turned down to half speed.
I looked up and his head was on fire, the flare gun falling slowly, slowly from his right hand, his left hand relaxing on the rail line, his body falling slowly, slowly to the bottom of the raft.
I wanted to be a good friend right there, I wanted to run over and hug him and yell “no! no! no!” but the fact is that his head was going to burn a hole in the bottom of the raft, and I reacted without thinking and lifted him up and threw him out onto the salt. No heaving, no dragging, just picked up ninety pounds of dead weight and threw it. I know it was the right thing to do, I know it, but I’m never going to stop feeling bad about it.
He lay out on the white, smoldering. The flare came out when I threw him, and it danced around the ruins of his head, spitting, bouncing, laughing, blinding metallic red.
“Okay!” I yelled at him, “you can have one flare! One!
Hey lay there, ignoring me.
“But I get the rest of your food, you fucking fuck!” I screamed at him, and I screamed some other things but I don’t remember what. I screamed at him until the flare went out, embarrassed for me, then I screamed at the sky and the sun and the sand and the mountains and then there was a noise and I was screaming at the ocean and I sat down with a slap and Steve’s body was floating, Steve’s body was floating, and Steve’s body sank.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“I don’t know, dude,” he said.
“Why’d you sink my boat?” I asked.
“There was never any boat,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“There was never any boat,” he said. “You’ve been on the raft forever. You’ll be on the raft forever. We’ll be on the raft forever.”
“You’re not here,” I said.
“No,” he said.
“I had a boat,” I said.
“No you didn’t,” he said. “You’ll be on the raft forever.”
“Nah,” I said, and pointed to the east, where black clouds were boiling, clotting, falling. “I won’t.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “See you in a bit, huh?”
“Yeah, okay,” he said.
The breeze freshened.