(3)

Shortly after midnight Tuesday, Jim tried to ease his Triton into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a notorious bottleneck that links Puget Sound with the Pacific Ocean. But sudden heavy winds from the west hurled the boat back. Treacherous currents swirled about her, thwarting Jim’s attempt to tack. Wisely, he sailed to a secluded cove out of the wind’s way and dropped anchor for the rest of the night.

The next morning Bob took over and, though the winds still behaved contrarily, guided the trimaran to the port of Quinella where the last-minute purchases were to be made. Linda hurried to the pay telephone and called her parents in Kelso, Washington. Her report was cheerful and hurried: weather warm and cloudy, the Sound fairly calm except for the winds of the night before, the Triton performing beautifully, everybody getting along well.

“Are you all right?” demanded Mrs. Elliott.

“I’m fine.” Linda did not mention her minor bout with nausea.

“You can get off at Los Angeles. You know that, don’t you?” said Mrs. Elliott. “If you don’t like it, if you don’t feel safe or good, then get off. Promise me you’ll get off at Los Angeles.”

“I won’t promise that, Mother. If anything goes wrong, then I promise I’ll get off.”

Her mother’s voice broke, tears beginning to fall at her end of the line. “I have a bad feeling about this trip, Linda. Why won’t you listen to me?”

Annoyed, Linda made a rushed good-bye, reminding her mother that she would talk to her in two days—on Friday morning—via the radiophone patch. She hung up. Never had she heard her mother so worried before, so near hysteria, not even when she and Bob had disappeared inside Eastern Europe and Russia for a six-thousand-mile honeymoon trip in their VW camper.

The admonition hung over Linda as she prepared dinner—salmon again, Bob having caught three that afternoon in his free time. As she melted the butter to grill the fish, Linda had to drop her stirring spoon and run to the toilet and vomit. The attack lasted longer this time, five minutes, and did not completely go away until she went topside to take a steaming cup of Japanese tea to Bob at the wheel.

She found her husband bathed in the reflection of a spectacular northwest sun, aflame at the Triton’s prow. His face was somber, filled with such seriousness that Linda quickly forgot her illness and the worry that her mother had planted within her. She sat beside him, grateful for the brisk winds. She put her hand across the shadow of worry that cloaked her husband’s face.

“Okay, skipper?” she asked.

Nodding, Bob pointed to the expanse before them. “That’s the pond,” he said. Respectfully, Linda looked at the Pacific, stretching forever beyond them, devouring the sun, melting the scarlet fire and spreading it evenly across the horizon. At that moment Bob was transfixed less by the beauty before him than by the serious challenge of their venture. The Triton was very small, and the sea was beyond imagination.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Linda.

“I guess I’m thinking about a line from ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’” he answered in a voice so contained that Linda moved closer to hear him over the wind. “The one that goes, ‘Alone, alone, all, all alone … alone on a wide, wide sea.’” He had only dreamed of the sea when first he learned those lines. A boy of twelve, working the hard earth of Montana on his father’s tractor, Bob had read Coleridge and imagined the wind and the spray. The poetic fantasies evoked by the seascapes helped the farmer’s child get through a dozen tedious hours a day dressing the soil for wheat.

Linda interrupted his reverie. “Did the Ancient Mariner eat?” she asked.

Bob smiled. “I imagine so. Else he wouldn’t have gotten ancient.”

“Then tell him dinner’s ready in ten minutes.” Linda disappeared through the hatch.

Pleased at the easy manner in which Linda could usually lift his mood, Bob began preparations for a southwesterly tack. With the newly brisk wind from the west hitting the boat abeam, the result—called a “reach” in sailing terminology—would provide great speed for the trimaran. If the winds held, and they were expected to at this place at this time of the year, the boat would fairly race to Los Angeles, chewing up the sea at better than a hundred miles per day.

But by the time Bob turned the wheel over to Jim, the winds abruptly eased, fell silent for half an hour, then, almost arrogantly, began anew, this time from the south. Once again they seemed to be challenging the Triton, forbidding her progress, shoving her defiantly back to where she had come.

On the fourth day, Thursday, July 5, as they sailed about seventy miles off the coast of Washington, the two men decided to test their respective skills. It was agreed between them that Bob was the better sailor, having a seat-of-the-pants feel for the Triton, how she handled, how she accepted and rejected winds, how she best contended against the currents. On the other hand, Jim was far more sophisticated with sextants and compasses and charts. They complemented one another well.

Therefore Jim plotted a test course that required Bob to tack east, then back west, then east again, and if the calculations were correct, the Triton should, by nightfall, be near a town called Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River on the border between Washington and Oregon. Most of the day, Bob ran the course, and at its designated end, both men were elated to see a Coast Guard lighthouse ship at the river, meaning that their navigational and sailing skills were less than a quarter of a mile off calculation.

“If you were a drinking man,” cried Bob exuberantly, “this would call for a glass of champagne.”

Jim’s expression turned quickly serious. He would not tolerate even a jesting intrusion on the severe code that governed his life.

Linda was up early the next morning, anxious to prepare breakfast and get it out of the way so she could talk to her parents on the first Friday radiophone patch. She wanted to reassure her mother that the voyage was progressing beautifully, that she was in the hands of excellent sailors. All week long she had watched and listened as Jim tapped out his Morse code messages to Wes Parker, the liaison in Auburn. That Jim had never used voice transmission did not occur to her as unusual.

When Jim finished his cereal and a bunch of fresh cherries, he went directly to the radio shelf and began transmitting—in Morse code. Joining him, waiting tactfully for a moment when she could intrude, Linda watched his fingers dance lightly on the transmitter key. But Jim did not look up or acknowledge Linda.

In a few minutes he shut down the radio and looked at his watch. His shift was not due to begin until 9 A.M., more than an hour and a half away. But he made to climb the hatch.

Puzzled, Linda touched his arm and stopped him. “Aren’t we going to call Wes and put in the phone patch? My parents are standing by.”

Jim shook his head. “I’ve already talked to Wes,” he said.

Now Linda was confused. She had heard no words, only the rat-tat-tat of the code. “But it’s Friday,” she persisted. She pointed to her watch. “It’s all arranged.”

“Well, it can’t be done today,” said Jim, hurrying topside.

Linda climbed after him. She followed him into the cockpit, where Bob was guiding the boat. He looked up, catching the concern on her face.

“Jim says we can’t call our parents,” said Linda.

“Why, Jim?” asked Bob. “Radio on the blink?”

Jim refused to answer, turning his face from the others and looking out to the morning sunlight sparkling on the swells. Clouds were moving in and before long the day would turn gray.

Bob pressed for a response. “Something wrong with the set, Jim?”

His face reddening, the face of a child forced to reveal a hidden truth, Jim slowly turned. For a time there were no sounds other than the waves slapping against the Triton’s blue hull, and the wind slicing through her. Finally he cleared his throat and, with difficulty, spoke.

“I don’t have a license,” he said bluntly.

Bob’s mouth fell open. Jim was not a man for jokes. “But you said you did. You’ve been studying all spring. You said you’d passed the Morse code test and were about to get the voice transmission certificate.”

“I did pass the Morse code test,” said Jim in a voice strained and dry. “But I didn’t get the certificate in time to leave. So I—I—borrowed someone else’s number.”

“What about the voice transmission license?” demanded Bob, disbelieving what he was hearing. In a minute Jim would surely laugh and reveal the charade that he and Linda had concocted for breakfast.

Jim shrugged. He pushed his fingers together like a child forms a church steeple, only he pushed them so hard that they drained of blood and turned green-white. There was to be no laughter.

“I know you’ve got a voice number,” insisted Bob. “I heard you and Wes Parker using it the day we left, when you were checking out the radios.”

Now Jim buried his face in his hands. He was close to tears. “I guess I just made up a Costa Rican number,” he said, his voice hidden and muffled. “I’m sorry.”

Linda was puzzled. She did not grasp what it all meant. “But you know how to use the radio,” she said brightly. “Can’t we call my folks anyway?”

“It’s against the law,” said Jim. “It’s a federal crime. You could get two years in jail.”

Taking his hands off the wheel, Bob rose in anger. “You know that was the condition,” he said, “the number one condition for our coming on this cruise. You think I’d be out here risking my life—and Linda’s life—if we didn’t have a radio, and somebody who had a license to operate it? This isn’t Lake Washington, for Pete’s sake.”

“I’m sorry, Bob. I really am sorry.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before?”

“I never said I had a license.”

“You never said you didn’t have one, either. Isn’t there anything in that moral code of yours that prohibits lying by omission?” Bob was shouting now and not even the winds could carry the strength of his words away.

Linda touched her husband’s arm, her sign for him to cool off.

But Bob would not have it. “You’re nothing but a hypocrite,” he cried, “a religious hypocrite! You and your no-smoking, no-drinking, no-dancing, no-movies, no-new-ideas, no-nothing way of life!”

Crying now, Jim bowed his head and worked his lips silently in prayer.

Bob would not tolerate a prayer. “You really think God listens to a liar? Why waste your time? If this is the kind of hypocrisy your church teaches, then I’m glad to be out of it. I only wonder why it took me so long!”

“Bob, please. I said I was sorry.” Jim turned begging to Linda, imploring her to make the torrent of invective cease.

“Let’s have a cup of tea,” suggested Linda. Bob did not acknowledge the idea.

“I’ll tell you one thing, Brother Jim,” he said instead. “I don’t belong to your church anymore. But I do believe in one thing. And that’s in telling the truth. By your standards, I’m a lost soul. But I wouldn’t do what you’ve just done. My code is more moral than yours!” Bob turned his attention back to the wheel, not really caring what the Triton’s position had become in in the moments she sailed unattended.

His condemnation so violated Jim’s being that he was unable to marshal any articulate weapons of rebuttal. He tried instead to elaborate on his explanation. “I guess I thought that after we got outside the twelve-mile limit, then we’d be in international waters and the federal laws wouldn’t apply,” said Jim.

“That’s crap and you know it. That’s another lie, Jim. You know damn well the laws are international as applied to radio transmission. What were you going to do if we sprang a leak and started to sink? Gather us around the radio and pray?”

“Bob, please.” Linda’s voice was stern. She felt her husband had gone too far. Jim was in deep distress.

No one said anything for a time, an awkward time. They all watched the grayness settling over the day.

Then Jim began to plead. He urged Bob to put away his anger and stay on board the Triton until Los Angeles. There, if Bob still wanted, he and Linda could get off, and perhaps Jim could find a substitute crew to continue on to Costa Rica.

“If there was a port over there,” said Bob, gesturing with an outflung arm in the direction of unseen land, “then I would take us there and we’d be off in about fifteen seconds.”

Bob took a cup of Linda’s tea and fell across the bed. He had finished his shift in the middle of the morning and wordlessly turned the wheel over to Jim. Now Linda sat beside him, not familiar with her husband in this troubled condition. The quarrel between the men, one-sided as it was, had raged for almost two hours. Above their heads, the winds were rising, punctuating the mood that had so suddenly settled over their voyage.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Bob, quieter now. “I think we should get off.”

Linda giggled. “I don’t think I can swim that far.”

Bob smiled. She always had a way of turning down the flame under a boiling pot. “I mean,” he said, “get off at the first possible port. We could probably make Coos Bay tomorrow.”

“Can’t we at least go as far as San Francisco?” asked Linda, making it sound somehow important.

Bob shook his head. “We have no business being out in the Pacific Ocean without a usable radio. It’s insanity. Any sailor would tell you that.”

“But how far is San Francisco? A few days maximum?”

“Are you being the Great Peacemaker, or is there some important, unknown reason for your wanting to go to San Francisco?”

Linda pursed her lips. She had a story to tell. “Have I ever mentioned the time when I was a little kid, first or second grade, and all the children were supposed to tell about places they had been and things they had seen?”

Bob shook his head.

“Well,” she went on, “everybody’s stories were so interesting, and I didn’t have a place to compete with theirs—and you know how competitive I’ve always been—so I remembered seeing Disneyland on television, and I told the teacher I had just been to Disneyland. I had it all down, too, the way the castle looked, the rides I went on, the junk I ate, the cap with the mouse ears my daddy bought me. I guess I’ve always felt a little guilty over that big lie, especially since my teacher later complimented my mother on how well I told about my trip. So, I figure now that if we get off in San Francisco, I’ll at least touch ground in California. Then maybe I can persuade you to go on to Los Angeles and I can visit the scene of my great imaginary triumph. And …”

Linda hesitated. Bob urged her on. “And what?”

“And Jim can probably pick up a new crew …”

“And everybody will live happily ever after.”

As they laughed and touched one another with happiness, the Triton lurched in the sharpening new winds.