Chapter Five

No one woke me for my shift.

What did eventually wake me was the sunlight pouring through the orange tarp roof, making it glow and heating me up enough to leave me sweaty and uncomfortable. It took only a moment to remember where I was. I shook the jacket from my shoulders and set it aside under the tarp.

“I wish I had a mirror,” I muttered, removing my wire headband and running fingers through my oily hair before pushing it back on my head again.

And a shower.

And a toothbrush.

And shorts and a tank top, or anything to wear other than this stupid dress.

While I’m at it, I wish I weren’t on this stupid lifeboat at all but back at home safe with my folks. I wish we never stepped foot on that cursed ship in the first place.

I tugged at the bodice to be sure I was thoroughly covered and peeked outside the tarp, immediately noticing Musir at the oars again. They indeed skipped my turn. It had to be Musir or Blue who decided, or both of them―if it was possible for them to agree on something. How long did I sleep? How many shifts did I miss?

My questions dissipated as I scanned the length of Musir’s body. His eyes were closed in concentration, and his shirt lay on the bench in front of him. His broad, muscular chest was tanned gold and glistened from sweat and sea spray. His hair was oily and fell in front of his closed eyes.

He stopped rowing. With his eyes still closed, he brushed his forehead with the back of his hand. He pushed the hair out of his face then dropped his head backward.

I knew I should scan the boat for Blue, Mister Carson, and the woman. However, I couldn’t take my eyes off this golden, strong guy who was mentally in a world of his own.

He suddenly opened his eyes and stared at me through the narrow slit in the tarp. He caught me watching him. My eyes grew wide as I turned my face away, mortified. He simply stood and put his shirt back on.

“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” Mister Carson said. “My turn again? When are we gonna wake up the teeny-bopper? She’s gotta take her turn sometime.”

It was Blue who answered, though I didn’t see him―tucked as I was under the tarp. I was attempting to melt into the ground so I’d never have to face Musir after my spying.

“Let me see if I understand what you’re saying, Mister Carson. You would like to wake up the young lady to row the boat so you don’t have to?”

Mister Carson grumbled and took the oars from Musir with a yank and a scowl.

I pushed out of the tarp and into the bright morning.

“I’m up, guys, sorry!”

Musir remained with his back to me and looked out over the water. I hoped he was just as embarrassed as I was and not feeling violated or something. Blue was instantly at my left side.

“Don’t apologize. You obviously needed the rest. How’s that head wound of yours?”

“Okay, I guess. I almost forgot about it.”

“We can probably take the bandage off now and let it air out.” Blue reached up and touched the edge of the tape before asking, “Um, do you mind if I…”

“Not at all. Go for it.”

He didn’t rip it off but peeled it away with a gentleness I doubt he would have granted even himself. He watched my face for signs of pain the entire time.

“There, all done. Yeah, it actually looks pretty good. Come and have some water,” he said, guiding me over to the bench he’d been sitting on.

“Water sounds delicious,” I said. “Do we have much left?”

“Er…not much. Hopefully we’ll find land soon. Anyway, land won’t do any good if you die of thirst before then. Come on, drink up.”

Kent Carson rowed slowly. He was grumbling.

“Die of thirst in the middle of the ocean. That’s the danged depressing-est thing I ever heard.”

“Depressing-est,” I said but couldn’t help chuckling.

Mister Carson shot me the evil eye, knowing in an instant I was teasing him. To make amends, I agreed with his concern about dying of thirst.

“Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

Blue turned around to face me with a wide smile. His eyes danced when his gaze met mine.

“Rime of the Ancient Mariner!”

“You know the poem.”

My breath caught in my throat. Blue knew Coleridge!

“`He prayeth best, who loveth best, all things both great and small,’” Blue quoted.

I cut in to finish it.

“`For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.’”

“Finding God in Nature,” Blue said.

“God treasuring nature as his creation,” I countered.

Kent Carson stopped rowing and stood up.

“All right, all right. I much prefer your smart-aleck teasing to all this poetry-talk. Leah, it’s your turn and neither of these chauvinists are gonna tell you so I gotta. Finish your water and take the oars, already. Come on…equality and burning bras, and equal pay for equal work, and breaking glass ceilings, and Girl Power and all that.”

I blushed and finished my water bottle quickly but not before Musir turned back to face us. He descended on Mister Carson, full of annoyance. Musir didn’t speak but just yanked the oars from his chubby pink hands and shouldered him out of the way.

Blue stood then too.

“No. I can take a turn. You just did your shift.”

“I can go again.”

“I’m ready to go,” Blue said, climbing over benches to make his way over.

Kent Carson went straight to the tarp and crawled underneath with no shame. I could see him grabbing my father’s jacket and forming it into a little pillow for his sweaty head. Yuck.

“Thanks, both of you,” I said, following Blue over the benches. I was careful not to take a spill on my long dress. “I can take over. It’s my turn anyway.”

“Don’t let that schmuck make you feel guilty,” Blue said.

“Schmuck?” Musir asked.

Blue said something in Arabic, which ended with “Kent Carson.”

Musir nodded. “Yes. He is that schmuck. We can row.”

“I won’t feel right about it. Come on, guys, just let me paddle a little while. I need to get rid of some energy anyway after being cooped up on this boat for so long. Of course, ‘equality, and burning bras, and equal pay for equal work, and breaking glass ceilings, and Girl Power, and all that.’” I quoted Mister Carson with a wink.

Then I held out my hand and was reluctantly handed the oars.

* * * *

Musir tended to the nameless woman off and on while I paddled. Blue sat across from me the entire time. I was surprised by how at ease I was talking to him. Maybe it was because he could engage me on subjects that actually interested and challenged me. Our Samuel Taylor Coleridge discussion highlighted the differences in our world view and philosophy, but the conversation flowed naturally and made the time pass quickly. Though I didn’t agree with Blue’s emphasis on nature and the earth, I appreciated the depth of the discussion, his quick thinking, and his eloquent articulation.

I could tell he was enjoying the conversation too. It also seemed he was the slightest bit annoyed with my taking the environment so lightly. He was offended when I asked if he “went green” in response to much of the media attention the Green movement received in recent years. He argued that, while he was glad people were starting to see the detrimental effects humans were having on our environment, the Green “fad” didn’t go nearly far enough. He abided more by what he called Deep Ecology, saying the environment was entitled to the same right to thrive as people had.

“You asked if I was ‘green.’ I’d argue that I am, but much more deeply than you’d see in your mainstream life. I’m deeply ‘green,’” he said.

I couldn’t help but bring up the obvious.

“You know that cruise we were on?” I tested the fragile friendship we started, like pointing out the burger on the plate of an anti-fur friend. “It probably wasn’t the most-green tourism around―environmentally-sound tourism around, I mean.”

Blue wasn’t insulted by my slip toward the green fad. He smiled, missing where I was going with the statement.

“I’m glad you see it. I wish more people could realize that. It’s like the poem, to, um, bring it full-circle I suppose. Everything matters, great and small, and that includes the life harmed by ships waste dumping and spewing exhaust.”

But you were on vacation on a cruise ship! I thought but stopped short of saying it.

He surely must have come with friends or family. To have him tell me his parents or someone dragged him on the vacation…well…that would just bring up the sad fact that we didn’t know the fate of our loved ones. It would bring us back to the retched little boat and our desperate situation. All I wanted was a good philosophical discussion, not to bring us down with reality.

Reality was about to hit as it turned out, regardless of what I said or refrained from saying.

* * * *

Kent Carson was the only one of us with a watch. It had long-since stopped working, after his dip in the ocean before Musir and Blue rescued him. Even if it were working, he was sleeping under the tarp. His loud snores broke the peaceful sound of water lapping against the boat.

It had to be really late though.

Blue started out lying on a bench and announcing to me and Musir that he wanted to sleep under the stars. He said he wanted to, as in Walt Whitman’s, Learn’d Astronomer poem: “In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, look up in perfect silence at the stars.”

However, it wasn’t long before the ocean spray hit him in the face one too many times. He decided to retreat under the tarp too so he could get some shut-eye.

I realized these were the contradictions about Blue McCree after talking literature, poetry, and philosophy with him much of the day. He was moved by the world, worshiped nature, and was inspired by the beauty around us. However, at the same time, he was an American college student used to having his fill of food, warmth, comfort, and cleanliness. He really loved and missed those things.

No one could blame him for it. Most people struggle with the same kind of thing. No one quite lives up to the ideals they believe in. The point of an ideal is to have something to strive for, right? So, even if you couldn’t quite be that person, you were at least part-way down the path to it and heading in the right direction. Anyway, I liked him for trying.

I knelt next to the nameless woman, who Musir hoisted onto a bench as soon as the sun set. She was thus no longer in danger from the sun’s heat and UV rays. She’d stay on the bench through the night until sunrise. I offered to keep watch over her to be sure she didn’t roll off the bench while Musir paddled.

I tilted the woman’s head up onto my lap and put a water bottle to her cracked lips. A few drops rolled over her slightly parted lips, but they pooled in the corner of her mouth and dribbled down her cheek. I couldn’t see much in the dark with the moon obscured by clouds as it was, but I could feel that her breathing was erratic and shallow. She was barely holding on.

“Come on, miss. Drink a little. It is cool, fresh water. We don’t have much left, but you’re welcome to what we have.”

I tried a few more drops―no reaction. I couldn’t risk wasting anymore if she wouldn’t drink it. I wondered if she could even hear me.

I stroked her short red hair and pulled it off her face. Who knew if she could feel anything? If she could, this would be much more comfortable than having it stuck to her cheeks and forehead.

“Sure hope you pull through,” I whispered to the nameless woman.

I couldn’t see Musir rowing in the pitch dark but could hear the oars cutting through the water. I could hear his deep, rhythmic breathing. He spent much of the day tending to the woman’s wounds with the sparse first-aid kit. Nothing really went our way today. The water was almost gone, and we were paddling with no direction and no sight of land. Musir in particular seemed utterly desperate for some kind of hope, hope especially that the woman they risked their lives to pull from the water would survive.

It had been a long time coming. When it happened, it happened suddenly.

Her head was on my lap when she suddenly convulsed. Her body tensed. She gagged and coughed. At first I thought she was waking up at last.

Musir leaped up. He tossed the oars on the ground and climbed the benches to us. He was clumsy in the dark of the night. The moment he appeared next to us, she became still.

So very still.

Deathly still.

“Musir,” I said, “she’s not breathing.”

He flung himself down, poised to administer mouth-to-mouth. Then he stopped and looked at her mouth for a millisecond. He motioned at me.

“You do it,” he said.

“I don’t know CPR. If you know how, then do it!”

This approval was all he needed. He put his mouth down on hers and breathed into her lungs. I saw her chest rise and fall, but only with his breath. She didn’t take over.

Blue climbed sleepily from the tarp.

“What is it? Is everyone okay?”

“No, she’s not breathing!”

Blue fell over the first bench in the black night. I couldn’t see him but I heard him go down and swear on impact. He regained his footing and felt his way in the darkness to where I stood over Musir. He was still breathing into the lungs of the nameless woman.

“Is it working?” Blue asked, suddenly panicked.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Oh, my…oh my…” he muttered.

I touched his shoulder but didn’t have words. He didn’t pull away the way Musir did when I tried to comfort him on the ship. Blue instinctively leaned against my hand and settled into my touch.

Minutes passed slowly until Musir shot up and stepped back from the woman. He gulped in the night air, shaking his head in disbelief.

“She is dead.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. I dropped my hand from Blue’s shoulder and pulled my jacket tight around me.

Blue fell to his knees and barely missed smacking his chin on the bench in front of us.

“No…no…no…she can’t die. I didn’t think she would die…I didn’t think anyone would die…oh my…” he said.

He didn’t see me. He didn’t see Musir. All he saw was the nameless woman in front of us, the dead body of the woman he and Musir risked their lives to save.

Musir said nothing. He walked to the edge of the boat and stood facing the water with arms crossed.

I backed away and climbed a few benches back. The sound of Kent Carson’s snoring faded. The sound of Blue’s agony, shock, and words filled with madness faded. Even the sound of the ocean around us faded.

I sat alone, staring at the dark pools of water on the floor of the boat move from side to side with the waves. The three of us each pinned some hope on the woman. If she could survive, then the efforts and care we gave would have meant something and not been in vain. If she could survive, then so could we…but she didn’t.

We were all in the depths of loneliness, sitting in a boat just meters from each other.

* * * *

Hours passed. The oars lay untouched. We drifted on dark tides, unable to see one another or anything around us. The air became thicker and denser as a marine layer crept up to surround us. It was there in the darkest hour that a sound altogether new hit us like a strain of music.

…Scrape…

The boat pulled back and then lurched forward again with the next wave.

…Scrape…

The three of us leapt to our feet in one simultaneous movement. Even Kent Carson finally stopped snoring and shuffled to the opening of the tarp.

“What was that?” he asked.

No one answered. We didn’t dare hope. We searched the air around us, looking for a view or something visible in the night.

Scrape…

“Well?” he asked. “Did we hit land or somethin’?”

It was Blue who responded quietly, fearful of giving in to hope.

“We’re hitting something but can’t see anything immediately close by. We’re certainly not on a beach. The tide is pulling us in and out. There’s something under us where there wasn’t before.”

Musir and I must have shared the same thought because we both made for the oars at the same time. Dawn couldn’t be far away, but we couldn’t wait and hope the tide would not take us back to open sea. We needed to stabilize the lifeboat in its current location.

His shoulder brushed my arm as he reached down. In this proximity, we could see each other’s faces when he turned to look at me. His round moon eyes were wide with anticipation. His lips, while not smiling, were partly open and soft. They were poised to smile. Try as he might to be cautious, he couldn’t hide his hopefulness.

We each grabbed an oar and leaned out opposite sides of the boat.

“Reach,” he said, just as he followed the command. “Can you touch anything?”

I thrust the oar over the side of the boat; water, and deeper? More water. I leaned. A wave pushed us in again.

The bottom of the boat scraped again just a half-second before my oar caught on something then dragged through the surface.

“Yes, I have something!”

Musir was beside me immediately, reaching his oar into the water. His oar hit the ocean floor easily because he was so much taller. He wedged the oar in with a grunt.

“Sand,” he said before leaping over the side of the lifeboat into the dark water.

“No, you don’t know what’s down there!” I said.

He was standing shoulder deep in the water next to the lifeboat, reaching up to hold my oar so we wouldn’t float away. He took a few blind steps one way and went under. I tugged the oar and Musir to the surface.

“Drops off this way,” he said without fear and found his footing again.

Blue was next to me now, watching Musir in the water.

“A sandbar?” he asked, then repeated it in Arabic.

“Yes,” Musir said as he stepped in the opposite direction.

I held tight to the oar, ready to fish him out again. He emerged from the water with a couple of steps. His shirt was soaked through. He continued on and pulled the lifeboat by the oar until the boat was no longer floating freely. Musir was chest-deep ahead of us.

He grasped the side of the boat. He accidently brushed my hand in his haste but did not respond in his usual dramatic way. He was either too excited by finding a sandbar, or just over it. I didn’t care at this point either for that matter. Musir gave a sturdy tug at the side of the boat then yanked it further onto the sandbar. He couldn’t go far as the boat came further and further out of the water. It was no longer buoyed by the ocean.

Kent Carson joined us at the side of the boat. If we were still free floating, we might have tipped the thing as all of us were hanging off the side.

“So, what’s that? A sandbar, you said?” he asked. “Does that mean we found land? Hey, Aladdin! See any islands?”

Blue translated out of habit, though I assumed Musir understood the gist of it.

“No, too dark,” Blue said.

“I imagine you’d rather not stand in the dark water all night. Does anyone know how close we are to the morning?” I asked.

“My watch is broken,” Mister Carson answered, telling us what we all already knew.

“We’re close to morning,” Blue said. “Look over there. That must be the east. You can see the black night cut through with a slice of brilliant blue.”

Mister Carson muttered, “Even now, you’re being kinda froufrou, kid. Be a man and just say the sun’s rising.”

Blue didn’t have a chance to counter, though certainly he’d have something to say. Dawn was upon us by divine intervention. The sky was dark blue then dark violet within minutes. I could soon see my companions in the boat, though I couldn’t trust my eyes in the dim light to see much further.

The sky was dusty rose. The three of us in the lifeboat all saw it at the same time. Musir, facing opposite, saw only our faces. He focused on my face. He trusted my response most of all.

He saw my face light up.

Musir turned and saw what we did.

There was crystal-clear water over a shallow sandbar, leading far and long to a sandy coast lining deep-jade vegetation in the distance. I couldn’t tell if it were a half a mile or more away. However, it was there and within reach because it was within view. The sandbar glistened in the new light like a pathway to safety.