ESSEX WENT WITH JARED to meet the recruiter. He was half hoping something would stop him from doing what he was about to do. Nothing did. With only a few words, he had propelled himself forward; with no one in his way, no circumstances to consider, inertia had taken over. Frictionless, he passed through Kirsten’s neighborhood and then Livy’s on the bus. He didn’t regret giving Cheyenne the money.
The recruiter showed him a video and gave him coffee, doughnuts, and brochures. He was somewhat cheered by the pay and benefits. The idea that he could get financially stable stirred something in him he hadn’t known was there. He owed them, all of them. He knew that he could never pay them back, but also that it would be a freedom to be out of their debt.
The first time Essex saw Cheyenne she was in line at the takeout window of an all-night falafel place on University Way. He was eleven. He was in a recess by the post office where he and his friends went to avoid cops. It was raining and he was alone, trying to stay awake.
He noticed her for two reasons. First, because she was an older teenage girl and he’d been noticing them a lot in the past month. Second, she was telling a dramatic story. He could tell because her gestures were big and people were smiling. They gave her space, stepping back into the rain themselves. He tried to hear but couldn’t, only the single words, which sailed like shots over the street noise—Why? Stupid. Saltpeter. Curry of course. Witch! Dumb ass—then she stamped her foot and, looking skyward, yelled, “I mean who would ever do that?” Everyone laughed. The falafel man handed her a falafel. Someone paid for her. Cheyenne made the appropriate expressions of shock and gratitude, but Essex doubted she was surprised.
Taking a bite, she stepped into the street looking both ways for traffic and walked toward him as if he were a mailbox or a bus stop bench. As she got closer he felt the urge to step out of her way, but two feet away she thrust her falafel in his face.
“It’s gross. Take it.”
He did and she walked off. After he ate, he fell asleep and slept the sleep of the dead. Someone kicked his leg. She was standing over him.
“What is wrong with you?” she asked. “Go away. How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
She laughed.
“Twelve. Mostly.”
Her shoulders sagged.
“Oh fuck you,” she said, yanking him up. “Come on. It’s a long walk.”
He didn’t know where she was taking him but he went. She walked fast and seemed to have nothing to say to him. Crossing the bridge over the interstate he asked her name but couldn’t hear what she said and was too embarrassed to ask again.
It was 3:00 a.m. when he met Kirsten. She opened the door fully dressed, as if it were the afternoon.
“He needs somewhere to go,” said Cheyenne, and ushered him in.
“What’s your name?” Kirsten asked.
“Christian.”
Cheyenne pointed to the couch. “Sit.” She said it like she’d just about had it up to here with him, which made no sense.
Kirsten brought him a plate of spaghetti.
Cheyenne left without a glance in his direction.
He pointed at the door. “Does she live here?”
“Sometimes,” said the woman. “Do I need to call anyone for you?”
“Not really,” he said.
He met Livy the next morning. She definitely did live there because she told him if he touched her shit she’d kill him. According to her, there were already two people too many living in the house. He wasn’t sure which two she meant but knew he was one of them. Periodically over the next few months, Cheyenne would swing by but she ignored him. Livy usually did too, but one afternoon, after a particularly bad set of decisions on his part, Livy ordered him into her room. She waved a paperback with a painting of a ship on the cover.
“I’ve been reading a book about people like you. They’re called whalers. They sign on for anything. Assholes on a ship called the Essex. Every disaster they should have seen coming, they ignored. You’re like that right now.”
“But I didn’t do anything,” he said.
“The hell you didn’t. Look around yourself. You’re fucked. You’re three thousand miles out to sea with no way to get back and it’s all your fault. Now you have to get on a raft and eat your friends. It’s the only way out of the problems you’ve created.”
Every time after that when she passed him in the hall, she whispered, “Essex.”
Then Cheyenne started calling him Essex and he decided he didn’t really mind. He was the Essex. To survive he was going to have to cut loose almost everyone he ever knew up until then and head for land. All these years later, it wasn’t very different. The raft, the sea. He was twenty-seven with nothing. Lost.
The recruiter handed him information on where to go for medical screenings. The process was going to be much slower than he had hoped but was at least a direction and a destination. Some ships navigate by charts and landmarks, piloting through understanding the larger picture and their place within it. Other vessels have to rely on dead reckoning. They know only where they came from and how long it took to arrive at this moment in time. From this they can try to make the thousands of minute calculations and course corrections necessary to reach the shore.