Man Over Board

Fiction, from my novel Whale View Nights

I was thinking things were going normally and that I’d be down on the mess deck in a few minutes drinking coffee like it was no big deal. When I got to the hatch I kneeled down so I wouldn’t fall from the rocking of the ship and so I could get better leverage to open it. I could barely see Rusty, just a nebulous outline of him on the side of the ship peering back at me through the dark, frothy spray. I started to turn the steel wheel on top of the hatch. Just as I did a rogue wave about thirty to forty feet high, a size I had never seen before, lifted the ship and threw me into the ocean like a rag doll, along with Rusty, who I could hear scream over the roar of the sea. I was screaming too, like the cry of a man falling from the sky without a parachute knowing he was going to die. In that instant I could see everything clearly like someone had turned on a really big light: the back of the ship, the name Ariana, the crane, the upper deck, the back of the pilot house, the communications tower, and my goddam life coming to an end.

Twenty-one

During my shrilling scream I was thinking, I fell off the ship. I actually fell off the mother-fucking ship into the raging Pacific. I couldn’t believe it. If I lived, which I was sure I wouldn’t, how was I ever going to explain it to the XO? Why did I ever leave Roberta and join the Coast Guard without telling her in the first place. I should have stayed with her. She might have gotten her memory back some day. If not for me she’d be okay. Why didn’t I make her were a helmet god damn it. I knew better. We could have gone to college together and started a family.

     Rusty had much more resolve than I did and activated his strobe light the minute he was swept overboard, which allowed me to find him after the wave passed. I was scared out of my mind being alone in the undulation of the ocean and the blackness. I swam for him as hard as I could so I wouldn’t have to die alone, but it was like swimming up a mountain and down the other side. The ship hadn’t turned or even slowed. I kept yelling at it in panic. “Ariana, Ariana, come back goddamn it, come back.”

     When I got to Rusty I put my arms around him in relief, as if being with another person would ease my anguish. It didn’t help enough. “Rusty, are you okay,” I said hysterically.

     “I’m okay,” he said. “Calm down, take it easy, we have to think.” He was a bit freaked out too, and cold already since his insulated suit wasn’t sealed like my dry suit. He needed to get out of these frigid waters as soon as possible. He looked at my suit. “You have a flare on your suit,” he said. “Let it off, before the ship gets too far away.” So I did. It shot straight up and exploded in light, but the ship didn’t turn.

     “Why aren’t they turning for us? Wasn’t someone watching us?” I cried. Hell, I was damn near balling my eyes out with fear.

     “Shit, I didn’t tell them we were going aft,” Rusty confessed.

     “What,” I said shockingly.

     “I figured we’d only be a minute. I didn’t think anything would happen,” he said. He acted regretful.   

     “Then no one knows we’re out here,” I yelled as we were hauled up the face of a monster swell.

     “I don’t think so,” he yelled so I could hear him. “We’re going to have to figure something out fast. You have any more flares?” I looked on my suit.

     “One more goddam it, one more,” I said.
     “Quick, let it go before they’re gone,” he said. So I did and waited for the explosion of light, but the ship continued on. It powered up the coast getting smaller and smaller like our hope until it was just a faint light we could only see when we floated to the crest of a wave. We floated up the wall of one wave and then dropped hard into the trough of the next one, time after time. It was hard to keep from gulping water; the waves were choppy and I kept thinking each trough would suck us way down and drown us, like a giant leviathan swallowing us whole.

     “They’re not coming,” I cried. “They can’t see us out here. We’re doomed.”

     “They’re not looking back. They have no reason to,” Rusty said. I thought for a moment.

     “They’ll notice I’m gone. Eventually the OW will call down for the engineer and realize no one’s on watch, right?” I said.

     “That’s true,” Rusty said. “But by then it will be too late. There will be too much water between us and the ship.” He spit out some water, coughing. “There’s no chance of them finding us out here.”  

     We looked at each other in horror as we rose and fell in the infinite ocean and all its concealed depths. Who knew what lurked below us? Even though the earth was mostly water and my ancestors came from the sea, I was ill equipped to function upon it. I was about to lose my mind completely. “Who the hell falls off a Coast Guard cutter in the middle of the Pacific,” I yelled. Rusty was in the most danger of succumbing to hypothermia. With his suit he could probably last two hours at most before his body started shutting down. In my thick dry suit, I could probably last the entire night. Rusty was quite aware of the danger, but he didn’t panic, even though he was already shivering.

     I knew that the coast was about ten miles away, but I didn’t know what direction it was exactly. Once the ship was out of sight it was hard to keep any sort of orientation, but then I saw the North Star peeking through the clouds. There was more severe wind than rain so occasionally a gap would open up in the sky and I could see the stars. With this in my mind I calmed down a little and started thinking rationally, like I had to do something super human to get out of this. So we decided to try to swim toward shore using the North Star as a reference point, which wasn’t easy since we had to stop often to find it again and reorient ourselves. “You think we can make it with these currents?” Rusty asked me, his teeth chattering. He wasn’t much of a swimmer in the best of conditions. I was almost certain we wouldn’t be able to make it, not with the swells and the ocean currents, and I didn’t tell him I was sure he wouldn’t make it in that Mustang. He probably already knew he was a dead man. The only thing I had going was that I was in really good shape and worked harder the grimmer the situation became. I think it was from fear.

     “We have to try. It’s our only chance,” I said.

     “Agreed,” he said. “There’s no other way.”

     Then we started swimming. I thought if he started swimming he might warm up a little, but I think he already knew he couldn’t last until we got to shore. We both had lights on our suits, but it was still difficult to keep track of each other. We couldn’t see the coast or any lights because the waves were too high and choppy and the air in the distance too hazy; we were just too far out. I had to stop every few strokes and make sure we were heading inland, not out into the wretched abyss of the sea. It was hard to trust a star in the cold blackness. My mind kept telling me turn around and go back where the ship was, but logically, I knew if we did that we’d die for sure, be lost in the boiling and tumultuous sea until we froze or died from exhaustion and dehydration. At the city pool in ideal conditions I could swim a mile in twenty-five minutes. But here, wearing a cumbersome dry suit, in almost total darkness, with ripping under tows and swells the size of mountains, a mile would take at least an hour, maybe more. So to swim to the mainland would take over ten hours, and that was if we never stopped, which I knew was impossible. Each time we stopped, the currents would drag us back out to sea and take away some of our progress. 

     After what felt like about two hours I thought I could see the faint glow of a light along the coast, maybe a lighthouse or something. That gave me a hint of hope. I wasn’t sure if my mind was playing tricks on me in my panicked state. Everywhere else along the coast looked dark, since the wilds of Olympic National Park extended along the coast for many miles. “Rusty look, a light,” I said. He was half out of it with hypothermia and not able to swim much farther.

     “I don’t see it,” he groaned. I lost sight of it.

     “Maybe a cloud bank rolled in,” I said, but then I doubted I had ever seen it. “I thought I saw something.” I tried to make myself believe it.

     “I can’t go anymore,” Rusty told me.

     “You have to Rusty, you just have to,” I said. “Keep moving.”

     “My arms won’t work. I can’t concentrate,” he mumbled. He looked weak and garbled his words.

     “Swim twenty strokes at a time. Short goals.”

     “I can’t I’m telling you, I can’t,” he moaned.

     “You got to. Now swim,” I yelled in his face. “You can’t give up. Now swim.” He swam a few more strokes but had to stop again. “Twenty more strokes,” I yelled. Then he swam four or five more and stopped. I couldn’t get him going after that. He just floated in the big rolling ocean with a face full of fear, and shivering out of control. I thought for a moment that I could give him my suit so he could warm up. “I’m giving you my suit,” I said. I started taking off my hood, but upon seeing this Rusty found some reserve energy and started protesting.

     “Morgan, stop. You can’t do that,” he said.

     “I have to try,” I said.

     “It won’t do any good,” he said. He grabbed me to make me stop.

     “You’ll freeze if I don’t give it to you.” I kept taking off my hood despite his feeble attempt to stop me. Then Rusty shouted at me. It was the first time I had ever heard anger in his voice and it startled me enough to stop me in my tracks.

     “No, no you damn fool, stop. You’ll get water in it and then it’s no good to either of us. Leave it on,” he yelled. “Leave it on you fool.” I came to my senses and put my hood on. Then I grabbed hold of him so I wouldn’t lose him in the raging sea. I took the lanyard that had held my flares and tied it to his suit so we’d stay together. We floated for a few minutes and then he stopped shivering, which was a bad sign. 

     “I was going to go to Australia Morgan. I wanted to see the warm beaches,” he said, half delirious. “I need the warm beaches.”

     “You still can,” I said, looking at him, but his eyes seemed to have lost focus, like white buttons.

     “You’re going to have to go on without me,” he mumbled.

     “No way. I won’t do it.”

     “Go on while you still can.” It took him a long time to say a sentence now.

     “I can’t leave you,” I begged, but I knew he was right.

     “I’m done for. You, you can make it to the coast,” he said.

     “How do I find my way, Pope? I’m scared. How do I find my way?” I was nearly crying.

     “Swim east as hard as you can. Look for the lights.” He was hard to hear over the waves.

     “What?” I said.

     “Look for the lights on the coast. Swim east, you can make it.” He gave me a feeble pat on my shoulder. “You can make it buddy.” It dawned on me that he was a brave man.

     “You sure you can’t swim anymore?” I asked, but he didn’t answer, just floated with a droopy head. I started doing the side stroke for the coast, but I wasn’t making any headway. It was the only way I could swim towing him. I needed a longer rope, but I didn’t have one. I tried again, but it was the same. Eventually I just stopped and floated with him, waiting. We sat in the ocean for about another half hour, but there was nothing I could do for him. “Rusty,” I kept saying while tapping his shoulder and face. “Rusty, can you hear me?” My hands were shaking like you wouldn’t believe, from fear. His breathing became rapid. I panicked and started towing him again as hard as I could, desperate to get him to shore, but it was too far. “Rusty hold on buddy, hold on, please hold on,” I pleaded, but his eyes were starting to dilate. I could see them by holding my strobe light up to his forehead. I was terrified that he’d die and leave me out here alone.

     I begged him to help me, for him not to die first and leave me by myself. “Wake up Pope, wake up. You have to help me.” After an hour his head started jerking in convulsions and his mouth looked like it was gasping for air. Then after a minute he was still, and I was mortified with shock and couldn’t move for several minutes. I was certain he was dead, just a corpse now tied to me like a lifeless sea anchor, drifting over high rollers in the miserable, chilling darkness. “Oh my god, oh my god,” I kept muttering. I wanted to keep him with me because I was so afraid of being alone out here. His lifeless body still held a tiny bit of comfort for me but it was dragging me out to sea with the prevailing currents. I tried to calm myself so I could think straight and figure things out. “I got to do something, I got to do something,” I kept stammering.

     It took me a long time to make the decision to cut him loose, but finally I yanked on the lanyard three times until it broke. I held the lanyard for a long time, like an eternity. Then, as if I was reaching out to gently drop a handkerchief, I let him slip away down the trough of a wave and into the gloom. I started crying. “Rusty, Rusty,” I cried. “Jesus, Rusty.” Then he was swept up the face of a massive swell and over the top and was gone. I was shaking like a son-of-a-bitch, not from the cold, but from desperation. I was so afraid; I just wanted it to be over. Once I started to swim for Rusty’s body, but stopped myself. Maybe I could kill myself, I thought, but I didn’t have any way to do it quickly. If I had a cyanide pill or something, I thought. “Might as well swim inland until I die,” I said to myself. I was going to die trying, that was what I decided after I let Rusty go. I figured it was hopeless, but there was nothing else I could do. The loneliness was unbearable – suffocating, like a cement block on my chest.

     On the next wave crest, I took a bearing off the North Star again, with my hands shaking and my eyes twitching and wide. Then with all the fiber in my body, I swam as hard as I could. “All that swimming, all that training you’ve done,” I yelled at myself. “Now put it to good use for once in your life and save yourself, because you sure as shit can’t save anyone else. Now swim shit head, swim.” I swam like I was Hercules for crying out loud, and I started preaching to myself. “You can do anything. Do you want to live or do you want to drown, now swim.” I was getting angrier at each stroke, like I was turning into a tremendous machine, unstoppable and impenetrable. “Swim you no good piece of shit,” I yelled at myself like I was my own drill instructor.

     I don’t know how long I swam like that, possibly several hours. Finally I could see the faint lights along the coast getting larger. I was making progress, I couldn’t believe it. For once the waves seemed smaller. It was getting light out too, ever so gradually. Oh the light, I was thinking. “Thank you,” I said. The light really helped ease my fear to a manageable level and I started getting hopeful. I had a view of a whale, surfacing a hundred feet away spouting water out his blow hole, and that made me feel a lot better, like he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me and was guiding me toward shore. I began pacing myself, swimming a hundred strokes and then resting for a few seconds. I was able to make out cliffs along the mainland. Then a few hours later I could see breakers. I was making it. “Jesus Lord, I’m making it,” I said, but I was becoming exhausted and had to stop and rest a lot more. But at least I had land in sight.

     It was rocky everywhere along the shore, and I didn’t have the will or the energy to swim up the coast to look for a better place to come in. I could see some animal on the beach, like a small bear or big dog. I wasn’t deterred one bit from coming ashore here. I felt if I stayed in the ocean, the currents would pull me back out to sea. I had to get on land no matter what happened, even if the rocks mashed my flesh to a pulp. At least there was a chance I’d live, but if I stayed in the ocean I’d die for sure, and there was no way in hell I was letting the tides take me back out.

     It was strange; the waves breaking over the rocks didn’t scare me, because I had already beaten such terrible odds of staving off hypothermia, swimming through monstrous waves in the dark, and finding land. I didn’t even stop to consider the safest place - just swam straight in. For a while I was swimming over swales increasing in steepness the closer to shore I got, rising up and over one after another. Then I hit the first breaker and tried to dive under it, but with my dry suit on I couldn’t submerge myself, so I rolled in it like a big washing machine. Then it let me loose and I was behind it, hacking up water and trying to clear my head. The next one hit and pushed me onto the rocky shore. I felt my shin break on a boulder and yelled out in pain as I washed up onto the beach. As the wave went out I held onto a slab of rock so it wouldn’t drag me back out. With all my strength, I crawled farther up on shore before the next one smashed me to smithereens. Two more waves hit me but I had gotten far enough up on shore not to get pounded on the rocks. I crawled until I was mostly out of the wave zone and then collapsed on my face in some pebbles.

     The animal I had seen from the ocean was a dog. He was waiting for me at the water’s edge, his feet in the surf and his eyes glued to me like he wanted to play fetch. He didn’t jump on me or attack me in my haggard state, but looked at me like he was in need of something - a friend. He looked like Murphy, my dog who had died, a cross between an Airedale terrier and a Lab. He was big and tall, maybe eighty-five to ninety pounds and around two and a half feet high at the shoulders. I kept expecting his owner to come rushing down to help, but no one came. I was too worn out to pay anymore notice of him, at least until I got some rest. “Good boy,” I said as I crawled past him. He kept about five feet away the entire time, shadowing my every move.

     My leg hurt badly, but I was so relieved from being out of the ocean that I could deal with it in my state of euphoria of being alive when I thought I was going to die a hundred times. I was out of the maelstrom of the Pacific, but I still wasn’t out of danger, especially with my injured leg. I kept waiting for someone to come get their dog and help me. Surely people had been looking for me, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. I couldn’t walk at all, so I had to drag myself across a small patch of sand just past the rocks and up onto the bank where the forest began. I didn’t want to pass out in the tidal zone and get swept away. It was a pristine forest, with fir trees five feet in diameter. I lay beneath one for quite some time in my survival suit and fell asleep from exhaustion. When I woke, the sun was going down and I fell asleep again. The wind was whipping down the shore and across the tree tops, and the air was so cold that if it weren’t for my suit I would have probably not survived the night, since I didn’t have the strength to make a real shelter. But damn, I slept with so much relief of being alive, that nothing else seemed to matter.