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Lost at Sea

Jim Meirose

    The choppy sea sparkled with a million points of light reflected from the setting sun which now hung below the higher clouds, which all day had veiled it. Mary decided to sit abovedecks and watch the sun sink below the waves. It was a gentle time for her; it was a tender time, the end of twilight; the darkness would settle over her raising goosebumps, and then she would be ready for bed. John would go to bed first, before sunset, in the cabin below, having had a tough day of sailing, there having been a strong warm breeze. A day of cranking and pushing and pulling and stretching and raising his face to the overcast sky, which should have told him what kind of night it would be in the end; the clouds being a shroud, not lying but hanging, under the beauty of the blue sky which wasn’t really there anymore because it couldn’t be seen anymore. The blue sky was a shade, a wraith, a symbol of death, hiding above the clouds.
    Good night, he told her gently.
    Good night.
    The kiss.
    Like a snake slithering into its den he slipped belowdecks into the tiny cabin. Stay on the boat, is the first rule, always; she didn’t have to be told any more than he had to be; there are rules to boating, as there are rules to everything. She sat cross legged near the bow as he slipped onto the firm mattress of the bunk, below her; clean sheets and blankets and a cozy pillow and the faint sensation of rocking, in the pitchblack; the pitchback where everything was safe, because there was nothing there; foolish are they who fear the dark. And he knew how far it was to the bottom and felt the weight of all that water in between, filled with creatures that he would never see and which didn’t know he was there, nor did they care. Outside of their watery home, there was nothing to them, they with their fins and teeth and scales and gills.
    The boat rocked far above them, in a light chop. The sun sank below the waves. John fell off to sleep curled up under the covers, snugly. Swathed as a baby is swathed in a crib, his mind less than a baby’s mind because it was gone asleep. Up above, she remained sitting, under a wide canopy of stars. Quiet is was, with just a chop—but at last a great snarling wave came out of the dark washing over the boat. Something called a rogue wave found its prey. Mary went off into the water. Slid off the deck by the water in a flash, just like that. Below decks the sound of rushing water came from above and a light clatter and the faintest sound of a splash off of the boat, that John didn’t hear because he was asleep-and the wave didn’t rock the boat enough to wake him; just slid across it enough, to take her.
    Wear a life vest, is the second rule, which they broke as a matter of course. Having no such thing as a life vest, Mary passed through the surface of the water; the surface which is the exclamation point between the air and the water; between the words of the sentence and the emptiness after, the whiteness of the page, the blankness. The same exclamation point as between the air and the solid ground which, if you traveled far enough, would replace the water as you plunged through the second exclamation point into the silt and next to the basalt, and further, to the molten core. On land Mary would have just taken a bad fall; she’d have lain there on the solid exclamation point with some chance to survive. But what would have knocked her down, on the dry land. Great blue foaming waves don’t come on the land; and the land does not rear up and slam down on a person, washing them to God knows where. The water is evil, John had often thought, but without knowing it. He knew the water was just too alive. This is the real reason he liked to sail the deep water. He had a touch of the sea evil in him. And as she went into the water he just lay like an undead corpse in the coffin of the boat, swathed in his shroud, hands clasped in the pitch black black as within a sealed coffin. The wave just rushed on, having done its work; it sought the next thing to wash over, the next thing to take.
    Learn to swim, is the third rule. Mary had never learnt this skill; so she cleared the exclamation point and went deeper and held her breath but at last, at the end of her rope, she began to breath water. It felt good flooding in; what a great, great relief; no more need to hold her breath. No more need to feel her brain pushed to bursting. The horrible tension of waiting for the moment she could hold her breath no longer immediately dissipated. The weight of her lungs full of water sank her deeper and her consciousness became fluid, heavy, slow.
    Learn to recover someone whose fallen overboard, was the fourth rule; but John was not there to recover Mary, instead belowdecks where he lay he dreamed a strange dream of having to fight something huge and something horrid, to struggle to regain a lost love, caught somehow in some web woven by some terrible spider, the lost love’s name being unmentionable for him, because of the sorrow it would invoke; he just knew the name had a strange ring to it; now where could such an odd name have come from. She was someone he had known long before, on some summer night that magically lasted fourteen years; but finally they were like two skeletons, sitting together in a glider on the porch in the moonlight, and that was the last night. Their bony hands finally parted, and now he strained to recover those lost times; the dream overlapped Mary and John for a few moments and then was his only and shrank like a sheet of paper being balled up tight and disappeared painfully into his heart, but not painfully enough to wake him.
    He slept on.
    The night wore on.
    At last Mary’s soul rose from deep below; her soul and body had bloodlessly ripped apart soon after her lungs had filled and killed her brain; the night wore on further and the morning approached and John woke and reached for the light, and switched it on, and he saw she was not there beside him. He threw off the covers and rose and went abovedecks into the emptiness of the space between the surface and the sky, clad only in his underwear, in a great rushing hurry, to find her sitting there, where she had been all night, for some odd reason, he hoped upon hope. He stood tall on the deck and scanned the horizon—he rose, but only so far, while unseen to him her soul rose up from the water past the boat on its way to someplace much farther.
    The fifth rule; have life preservers on hand. But for what, if there’s no one to throw it to, when it doesn’t matter how tangled the rope is, tangled from disuse, as ropes tend to become. John stood on the swaying deck, alone, nobody in sight to see. Her soulless body slowly still sank toward the bottom, sluicing in spirals down through the heavy water toward the silty bottom far below. Miles deep it was out here; it took a long time to fall. She fell farther and farther away from him, her memory already blurring, her remembered face a pale mask in his panic.
    Always have a safety boat, was the sixth rule. A smaller boat tied to yours to trail behind. He didn’t obey this rule because he just had a twenty five footer and it made no sense to him. It was a rule for larger powerboats mostly, but it made a lot of sense—roar across the open water dragging the safety boat; it would be like plunging forward being chased by all the rest of life packed inside that safety boat. To be way out front, alone, before the future, strangely—not following the future, but leading it. Dragging it forward— plunging forward into the past; this seemed like somewhat of a revelation, and it hit him in the head so fast and hard he didn’t have a chance to really think it. He just felt it as he felt the sun on him. The sun had been up a half hour now. John continued to scan the far horizon, around, and around, and around, spiraling down with her. His mood sank. His mood sank with her, unknowing.
    Mary! he cried out, at last realizing.
    The emptiness of the bottom sucked her down further. Further from her soul now, further by the moment; her soul was up away far out of sight. Even if a soul could be seen, it was now too far away; farther even then her body was away down in the black water. He stared at the choppy black water, trying to see her. But she’s gone, his gut cried.
    Mary! he cried at last realizing.
    Mary!
    The seventh rule; first aid equipment is the next thing to have. But what good is it for this? If he were not so panic stricken now, he would have dashed belowdecks to find the lousy first aid kit. He’d fling the useless redcrossed box into the sea. It too would sink. It was only good for when you had the person there stretched out before you to be treated, to be bandaged or splinted, when the person was alive and could be helped. It would sink down toward her where it might have been of use, but there is nothing in it for lungs filled with water, and no one to use it anyway. For lungs full of water you have to pound and press the chest with the person lying on the solid ground; nothing was right to save her; first aid kits were useless; no dry land lay under her; she was out of reach, dead; his head spun.
    Mary, he sighed, realizing more deeply.
    Powering up the boat, he mindlessly headed to the dock on the island they’d come from. His hand was on the wheel but the wheel guided his hand.
    Three hours later, at the dock, he leapt from the boat and went and told the first man he saw.
    My Mary’s gone overboard.
    As though he could bring her back.
    And to the next man.
    My Mary’s gone.
    As though he could produce her, somehow magically.
    And the next.
    My Mary.
    Pleading.
    My Mary.
    Pleading.
    My Mary.
    Pleading.
    Finally, a policeman stood there, all in blue.
    What happened, he said.
    John pointed violently toward the sea.
    My Mary’s lost overboard three hours out.
    Come on.
    Tell us about it.
    They went to the police station and he sat in a small square yellowpainted room at a bare table facing a policeman with a great wart on his cheek. He examined this defect and his look spiraled into it, just as her body had spiraled toward the bottom, and her soul had spiraled up out of sight, but he saw nothing but filth in the wart; no clean silt, no clear space, no God. The wart moved with the motion of the policeman’s jaw, filthily.
    So what happened, he asked.
    John quivered inside but his voice was steady as he let what happened come out, flow out, like a river.
    She decided to sit on the deck and watch the sunset, he said. I was tired and went below to bed. I came up in the morning and she was gone. Something must have happened in the night; something came and took her; a slip of the foot, a rogue wave, and trip and a fall and a bang on the head. Doesn’t matter, could have been anything. What’s the difference, she’s gone. Mary’s gone.
    That was the gist of the story repeated again and again, the words in different sequences and sometimes added to and sometimes taken away from, but the words came more quickly to push back the pressure; the pressure of accusation coming back at him from the policeman’s filthy writhing mouth.
    How do we know you weren’t responsible?
    How do we know you didn’t get rid of her?
    How can you prove it didn’t happen that way?
    Words filled the air, pressing in.
    But there was the eighth rule; that firefighting equipment is the next thing you must have aboard. The fiery words about him licked at him hotly. It made sense to follow the rule, but he hadn’t. Pressure, pressure; the pressure of the water all about her, the pressure of the words all about him, all three hours out and three miles down; the pressure of sitting in school searching for the answer that would satisfy and make the questions go away and bring out the words they desired to hear—and at last, he must have said them, though they weren’t known to him. The words had become a flow of vomit. But they were at last satisfied.
    All right. We’re sorry for your loss, they said.
    Vomit.
    You’re free to go.
    Vomit.
    But before you go, what else do you know?
    What kind of question was this? What else is there to know—
    Anything that could help us find her body.
    Vomit.
    A void lay before him that no words would fill. He sat at the table knowing that when he finally rose, he’d be on his own. He’d have to face her parents. He’d have to tell them.
    Your daughter is gone—
    Or would the police do this? The police should do this—
    No.
    He had to do this.
    Before he rose, he looked down at the slatted floor of the police station, through the boards, to the grass below. The knife lay there again in the coarse grass of the cemetery. They had found the knife in the cemetery in Bermuda, the last time they had stopped there. It was a sunny Sunday morning; the knife was what was left of someone’s night before.
    Look, he said, pushing it with his foot.
    A kitchen knife. A steak knife.
    Something common found in every kitchen.
    How did it get here, said Mary.
    I don’t know.
    A story wrapped tight around the knife. The cemetery vaults were silent all about them. There were no bodies because they couldn’t be seen. The knife’s story couldn’t be unwrapped because it couldn’t be gripped, torn away, to expose the truth, any more than the slabs of the vaults could be ripped away with his bare hands.
    What more truth was there?
    She was gone.
    The slatted floor covered the knife over again. He sat in the police station again.
    That’s all I know, he sighed.
    She lay deep. On the bottom. Too deep for weeds; the bare silt of the bottom.
    It was all he knew any more.
    The ninth rule had been broken also. They had no jacklines on the boat. You’re always supposed to have jacklines to rig when there’s a chop. A chop, a bounce; like bouncing and grunting happily in a wheelchair during the parade, filled with the moment, one moment after the other, no past, no future; the solution is to be that way.
    Live. Just live. In the moment.
    Like the ill. Like the very, very ill.
    Finally, there being no evidence against him, John was let go, to be alone. He remembered the show he’d seen on TV about the hippos swimming in their long wide pool, and the masses of dung clouding the water.
    You mean I have to go in there, said the new zoo worker.
    It won’t hurt you. Nobody can hurt you. Nothing or nobody can hurt you any more. The hippos swam clouding the water with a constant flow of feces. And the older zookeeper was right; it didn’t hurt him. The water where she was would not be like that, but it was water holding a corpse now, not her, just a corpse like those in the vaults in Bermuda, the three milesof water being the vault, that body that would slowly decompose as the fishes ate it. He went down the steps of the police station and out into the light.
    Lastly, the tenth rule had been broken; you’re supposed to have running lights on your boat, for the night. Lights to sparkle far away in the black signalling there’s life out here, though you can’t see it, it’s out here with blood coursing and heart pounding and hands clenching, standing firmly on deck. But John’s running lights were burnt out, burnt out with grieving over the lack of hands folded in a coffin to kneel by and pray over. He went down to the dock, in the twilight, to his boat, and he took it out, to go over the spot where she went down. He needed to do this before seeing her parents; he needed to do this before seeing anyone. In three hours flying far above he would be, to her, if she were alive and standing down there, arms reaching up toward him.
    Come, she would say.
    Come, she could say.
    Flying far above on the chop, with no jacklines, or running lights, he leapt from the great height as though from a great building, and slowly fell to the hard dry ground at the bottom, and took her by the hand again to start all over, made ecstatic by her regained touch.

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