(10)

Even as Wilma put down the telephone and went to find her Bible and begin yet another prayer, the three who lived within the overturned Triton had settled into an almost rigid daily routine. Gradually Bob led the others to accept his hour-by-hour schedule of activities, and now all were dependent upon it to get through the day. The routine was almost inviolate.

At 7 A.M. Bob called out wake-up to Linda and Jim. The agreed-upon rule held that if a person was still sleepy and wanted another hour of rest, that was permitted. But rare was the morning when all were not anxious to be awake and rid of the loneliness of slumber. This first hour of the morning was spent in grooming and personal needs. Each washed and dried his face with a hand towel tied to a rope. The towels could be dipped into the salt water and raised and lowered at will. Then hair was combed, teeth were brushed (toothpaste was spit into the running sea beneath them). Linda put on lipstick, eye pencil, and makeup, then passed her mirror around to the others so the men could peer at their countenances. And all had to inspect carefully the other’s faces to determine if the eyes remained clear and shiny, if the skin tone was healthy. During this hour, they were not required to converse. Each could be alone in spirit, and Jim usually spent the time after grooming in silent prayer and meditation.

Bob filled the remainder of his free hour doctoring Linda’s sores, which continued to improve with daily application of penicillin salve. Some of them were drying rapidly. Others still festered angrily. But her pain seemed less, and the bruises at her elbows and knees were lightening.

At precisely 8 A.M., the breakfast hour began, and it was just that, a full hour, despite the meagerness of their menus. Linda sipped at the milk shakes that Bob continued to prepare, mixing them in the quart plastic container and keeping them cool in the sea beneath their bed. When she grew weary of the same drink at every meal, Bob alternated a cup of what he deemed to be “chicken cacciatore,” which was the chicken bouillon powder mixed with sea water. “A good cook would put salt in the water, anyway,” he said encouragingly. Linda preferred the milk shakes.

The men took a few bites of canned vegetables, or half an artificial hamburger, or a half-dozen English peas, sometimes taking ten minutes to savor, chew, and slowly swallow one solitary pea. If a person professed no appetite, the other two would gang up, forcing him or her to try and eat.

Early in their survival, the realization had come to Bob that the easiest thing by far would be to starve to death. “It’s so strange,” he confessed to Linda one midnight in a whispered moment, “after a day or two of not eating very much, you lose all interest in food. Your stomach doesn’t even growl. You have to force yourself to eat. What you’d really like to do is just lie back and go to sleep.”

Linda agreed. She did not tell him that she perhaps knew this better than he.

From 9 A.M. to 10 came water dispersion hour. Each could draw from the gallon jug tied between their beds an amount ranging from the tiniest of sips up to a full cup, depending upon the person’s mood or need. Because Linda could sustain only liquids, she normally drank most of her full daily cup during this hour. Jim preferred to drink half his cup at this hour, the remainder at dinner. Bob usually stretched his intake throughout the day in sips, always announcing them out loud, saving perhaps an eighth of a cup for the middle of the night when he always awoke, mouth parched and dry.

At 10 A.M., discussion hour began, sometimes enduring, on a lively day, until past noon. It was not always so. When Bob first introduced this period, the others wanted to know what the rules were.

“I don’t know,” said Bob. “I suppose there are no rules. The point is, we should have a definite time of the day when we must talk to one another about specific topics. I can introduce a topic each day, but I don’t want to be the chairman, so you each should bring up something now and then to discuss.”

But they already did talk, Jim pointed out.

Only in fits and starts, said Bob, and with too much time dangling in silence. Only with the discipline of a formal subject could they sustain their interest and pass the time.

But what would the subjects be? wondered Jim, never having been good or comfortable in social chitchat.

“Anything!” said Bob a little testily. “People you’ve known, people you like, people you don’t like, places you’ve been, books you’ve read, ideas you want to explore, politics, hobbies, your kids, whatever.”

“Why should we talk about these things?” asked Jim.

“Because,” said Bob patiently, “it will get us through an hour every morning and because it will keep our minds occupied and because it might even be fun.”

There was no mistaking the dubiousness on Jim’s face, but Linda urged him at least to try. “It won’t work unless we all participate,” she said. Jim said he would.

At 11 A.M. came an hour of games—Twenty Questions or a mental version of Probe in which the player who was “it” kept a word in mind while the others tried to identify its letters, a difficult variation of the standard board and cardboard letters. At midday, there not being enough food for lunch, a free hour was scheduled during which the three could nap or remain resolutely silent. That became a privilege, silence, for Bob was almost despotic in enforcing the periods of the day. Unless someone wanted to sleep, he or she was expected to participate in each hour’s activity. Nor was faking of sleep permitted. It was easy to tell whether eyelids were only fluttering or firmly shut in sleep.

During one free midday hour, Bob began fooling with the Boy Scout knife he had retrieved from the water. He had never carved before, but over the days that passed he became adept. The wedge of plywood on which Linda passed the first night became a deck of playing cards for cribbage. Realizing that Jim’s religion forbade anything related to gambling, Bob shrewdly eliminated the jack, queen, and king, carving instead one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven-twelve-thirteen. This made it a game of numbers. Instead of suits, Bob colored the pieces of wood—one group white with the paint he had been using for his messages, one red with Linda’s reluctantly contributed lipstick, one the black of eyebrow pencil; the fourth remained natural.

With the success of the cribbage board and playing cards, Bob moved on to a major effort—whittling a pair of dice and a board game he entitled Bump. This consisted of a Monopoly-like set of squares, over which markers were moved according to the throw of the dice. A series of penalties and handicaps was devised and the idea was to get to the last square, which Bob called Rescue.

After the midday free hour, the afternoon was passed by repeats of the discussion and game periods, with another free hour just before the evening meal. Jim frequently took this time to go topside, paddling around in his scuba equipment when the sea was calm or sitting patiently watching the sky and the horizon for God’s rescue.

One afternoon toward the end of July, Jim returned to his bed exhausted after his swim, his face drained of color. Bob remarked that swimming claimed too much of his energy.

“Let me worry about that,” answered Jim. “It’s a free hour, isn’t it?”

For a week, lasting until almost the first of August, the Pacific was serene, living up, for the first time, to its name. No white froth capped its modest heavings, no winds tormented the Triton. She floated like a child’s toy boat on a lake in a drowsy park, albeit a toy that had turned upside down and remained too far away for the child to turn upright. Now an oppressive sun was the only climatic problem, beating down from mid-morning to late afternoon, turning the inside of the Triton into a steam bath. The men first tried to cope with the heat by taking the hole cover off, but the rays were too intense. When they put the cover back on, their chamber became a pressure cooker. No matter what they did, they perspired constantly.

The makeup that Linda continued to apply ran desolately and streaked her face. Her hair became impossible to comb, twisted as it was in knots and rats. Before they were married, Linda had worn her hair short in a gamin style. When she learned that Bob liked women with long hair, she let it grow until it reached the small of her back. Now, in the heat, Bob took his knife and sliced away his wife’s hair so it would no longer torment her. When he was done, Linda’s tresses were barely more than an inch long, and she turned her head away in sorrow as Bob threw the severed pieces into the sea.

Toward the end of the week, Bob thought he noticed a dullness in his wife’s eyes, an opaque film that was changing their hue from vivid brown to the color of worn-out earth. But the film went away, and Linda, newly boyish-looking, remained cheerful and anxious to play the games and participate in the discussions. In fact, one morning Linda said she had a topic, and Bob, weary of inventing new conversation himself each day, gratefully deferred to her.

“Before we capsized,” began Linda, “I was reading Anna Karenina.” Bob nodded, remembering well the hour he had spent searching the waters of their overturned bedroom for the lost book. He had given it to Linda when she expressed interest in Russian literature. He relished the Russian writers, not only for their mastery in plot and mood and characterization, but also as acknowledgment of his Russian blood and the kinship he felt for them. One of his most prized possessions was a handsomely bound set of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and he felt the easiest way for his wife to begin would be with Anna and her tragic romance.

“That’s a good subject,” agreed Bob. “What did you think of the part you read?” He was as brisk as the moderator of a television panel show.

Linda brightened. “I loved it. Every word of it. And I understand why Anna fell in love with the younger man. She felt imprisoned. She was unhappy with the stereotype role of wife, she wanted to assert her individuality. And she didn’t care what everybody thought about her. I think she was liberated, in a way.”

“But she commits suicide in the end,” said Bob.

“I know that. I’m almost glad I lost the book. I was dreading that part. I’m such a romantic I wanted her affair to work out.”

Linda glanced across at Jim, listening attentively but in the manner of a man hearing something for the very first time. Certainly he was not prepared to comment.

“It surprises me how really modern Tolstoy is,” said Linda. “Don’t you feel he was writing about the emergence of liberalism, of people who flout convention? What do you think, Jim? Did you enjoy Tolstoy?”

Bleakly, Jim shook his head. “I haven’t read him,” he said, a little shyly. “I’ve heard of him, but to tell the truth, I thought Tolstoy was a figure out of mythology.”

“Mythology!” exclaimed Linda. “He was one of the greatest novelists of all time.”

Jim nodded knowingly. “Then that explains it. He wrote fiction, didn’t he?”

“Novels are fiction,” said Linda, dispatching a discreet can-you-believe-it glance at Bob. He did not respond, for at this moment he felt sympathy for his brother-in-law. Here was a man who had endured the strict formal education of his church school, who had spent a year in Europe studying German, who had graduated from a religious college, and who most recently had served in the administration of both a college and a high school. Yet he was so confined within the boundaries of his faith that novelists, even the greatest novelists, dwelt in a land that was forbidden to him.

“I don’t read fiction,” said Jim. “It didn’t really happen, it isn’t the truth. Therefore it is a lie.”

He sat back, as if waiting for the next topic. But now Bob was roused; he had a point to make.

“But there are moral and ethical theories propounded in the great novels, theories every bit as interesting and challenging as those in your Bible and religious books.”

Jim would not have it. He frowned. “A man could read his Bible every day of his life and never absorb it all,” said Jim. “It’s worth all the novels in the world.”

“The Bible is a good book, but it’s not the only book,” pressed Bob. “In fact, I personally feel that parts of the Bible are fiction.”

Stunned by this blasphemy, Jim held up his hands, surrendering, not wanting to pursue the line any further.

“No, wait,” said Bob. “I’m serious. I can name fifty stories right now from the Bible that some good novelist probably made up two or three thousand years ago.”

“Parts of the Bible are parables,” said Jim, giving in a fraction. “But they happened. At one time or another, they happened.”

“Exactly!” said Bob, feeling he had made the move to get his opponent in checkmate. “Fiction is much the same. It is a record, an interpretation of something that happened, or may have happened, at one time.”

But Jim found a move, at least one under his rules. “You’re wrong, Bob,” he said quietly. “The Bible is the Divine Word, the message from God, and therefore immune to challenge. I need no fictional lies in my life.” Case closed.

In the days that followed, Bob tried to steer the discussion topics away from religion, for such talk always tottered on the edge of exasperation if not anger.

One morning passed with pleasant talk of hobbies. Bob spoke of his great love of the outdoors; he told how he and Linda had bought hiking boots in Salzburg on their honeymoon and climbed the Alps, how they had spent two enhancing weeks on the hundred-mile Wonderland Trail around the slopes of Mount Rainier. Interrupting, Linda told of her fear of bears and of a book she had read in preparation for the hike. “It said to carry a bell and a whistle, and if one saw a bear, to ring the bell and blow the whistle.”

“So what happened?” asked Jim, impressed by her preparations.

“The third day out I saw a bear and I rang my bell and blew my whistle, and he loved it so much he came running right at me. I yelled to Bob and he came over with a branch and shooed him away.”

Bob began to laugh at the memory.

“My husband,” said Linda, feigning annoyance, “also fell down on the ground and laughed for approximately two hours. I should have rung the bell and blown the whistle to get rid of him.”

Shyly at first, but warming to his subject when he discovered that the others were genuinely interested, Jim talked at length of his beekeeping and tropical fish. When he was a child, Jim remembered, his parents had taken him out of school and traveled to Florida for a time, his education consisting of Adventist correspondence work. A neighbor boy kept bees, and Jim became fascinated by them. Later, as a man, he tended his own hives and became immune to bee stings.

“Really?” asked Linda. “Can that happen?”

“I guess so. I got bit enough, but they never bothered me. When I lived at Battleground, the fire department used to call me when somebody reported a swarm of bees in their yard.” What happens, Jim explained, is that when there are too many bees in a hive, the queen flies off to establish a new domain, and the workers follow obediently. It takes a while to find a new place to live, and the bees meantime swarm about and scare people. “I was always happy to get a call like that,” he said, “because it meant new hives for me. You wouldn’t believe the honey we got. I collected honey for everybody I knew. We even gave it away as Christmas presents.”

Rambling on and on, Jim considered bees well past the cut-off hour for discussion period. But Bob let him talk. The most important point was not the content of the hours—Bob knew all he wanted to know about bees within ten minutes—but that they remain filled with words. Something to listen to! As long as talk crowded the clock, then there was less chance of melancholy and depression settling over them.

The next day, Jim was almost eager to tell of his tropical fish. “Wilma and I used to tell people that our aquarium was our color TV,” he said, in a rare attempt at humor. So accomplished did they become in breeding and raising rare species that Wilma sold surplus fish to pet stores in Auburn.

Over the years, the Fishers had raised at least twenty thousand fish, and as Jim reminisced about them, Bob had the feeling that each and every one was going to be discussed. He closed his eyes and listened intermittently, happy that he had found a way to spur Jim into talk of something other than the Lord or their survival.

But Linda inadvertently resummoned Jehovah.

The fish were interesting, she said, but why was Jim opposed to having a television set? Did his religion forbid it? No, came the answer. Then, pressed Linda, were there not at least a few programs of quality—news specials, men walking on the moon, even religion discussions and sermons on Sunday morning?

“Sunday is not a holy day,” exclaimed Jim, a little shocked that she would think so. “The Sabbath is on Saturday. Read the Bible and learn that truth. Moreover, television is a thief—stealing time that could be used more fruitfully in service to the Lord.”

“After dinner,” said Jim, closing his eyes in the reverie of remembrance, “we enjoyed one another. We talked. Wilma sewed. I read the Bible out loud to the children. And we prayed together before going to sleep. Just as I pray here, every night, that God will watch over all of us during the darkness and wake us with His love each morning. If that is His will.”

Nodding, Linda fell silent. She had no more questions that morning. In Jim’s eyes, when he opened them, was the glow of contentment, and Linda felt envy. Besides, she told Bob later, the idea of families communicating without the hypnotism of a television set appealed to her. To each his own, said Bob.

It was growing slowly, but already Bob was troubled. On nights when none of them could sleep, or during the free hours, Linda began asking Jim questions about his religion. She wanted to know the history of the church, why such a severe moral code was imposed on its membership—what was wrong with a cup of tea?—and why the Adventists spoke of Catholics so harshly.

What if she falls in with him? wondered Bob. What if Jim convinces her that all of our problems are because I do not believe in his church anymore? He could challenge Linda on what she was being taught, but for the time being he would not. He would bide his time and eavesdrop on her religious curiosity and education.

On the first Saturday after Bob introduced his schedule of activities, Jim spent the morning free hour wrapped in his private worship service, “private” meaning that he kept it to himself. Previously it had been routine, and Bob and Linda had gone about their lives without attention to Jim’s devotionals. But on this day Linda paid abnormal heed to Jim’s silent prayer, his reading from The Great Controversy, the clenching of his hands and the raising of his head in summons to his God. At one point Bob even noticed her praying silently herself, in fellowship with Jim.

When it was time for the discussion hour, Bob almost hurriedly introduced Watergate as the subject. The hearings under the chairmanship of Senator Sam Ervin had been stirring the country on the day they left Tacoma, and now Bob wondered what had happened. Perhaps Nixon has resigned, he said. Perhaps we are lost on the ocean, and the country is collapsing. “Today’s topic is Watergate and its effect on our society,” he said. “What do you think we can learn from it?”

Linda shrugged. Not overly interested in politics, the scandals contained little fascination for her. But she was willing to throw a coal on the fire.

“I suspect all politicians, do it at one time or another,” she said. “They just happened to get caught.”

In part Bob agreed. Though he had opposed the Vietnam war, he considered himself a political moderate, certainly not a knee-jerk liberal who cried “fascist” at everything attempted by Richard Nixon. “I think,” said Bob, “that Nixon did not know about the cover-up. The executive branch of government has eight thousand people in it, and I can’t give Nixon the credit of knowing the machinations of the little men under him.” Bob paused, looking at his brother-in-law. “What do you think, Jim?”

The subject could have concerned the eros centers in Hamburg for all it interested Jim. He grimaced in response. “I have no thoughts at all about politicians,” he said. “They’re corrupt, they’re worldly, they don’t really matter to me. I’ve never even voted.”

“Never?” asked Linda, incredulous.

“I’m not represented by politicians,” he said. “I am represented by the Lord.”

“What does matter to you, Jim?” asked Linda. “I don’t mean this rudely, I really want to know.”

Accepting the question, Jim was quiet for a few minutes, putting his thoughts in the best possible order. He seemed grateful for the invitation to explain himself.

“My wife,” he began. “My children. My family. You. Bob. And, most of all, service to God. I’ve wanted to be a missionary since I was a little boy. I believe the only thing that matters is to live the kind of life that God will approve of, and I pray that Jesus will raise me into heaven when He comes again.”

“And what or when is that?” wondered Linda.

“The date is unknown,” said Jim. “But the end is near.”

“You’re not the kind of people who sit on a mountain-top and wait for the end of the world, are you?” said Linda.

Definitely not, said Jim. The Adventist church was formed by people who believed, through examination of biblical dates and prophecies, that Jesus was returning to earth in 1844. But when the Second Coming did not materialize then, further theological research by Adventist scholars determined that Jesus moved into a holy place in 1844, where he has since been studying the books of every soul who ever lived on earth. When that task is completed, Jim explained, then Christ will come again, opening the graves, raising the sanctified to heaven, leaving the others to hell. It is not so much fire and brimstone, this hell, but denial of paradise.

“Will only Adventists go to heaven?” asked Linda with unconcealed fascination. No, answered Jim. Others would gain admission to God’s kingdom. But Adventists, he made clear, held priority tickets.

Having listened quietly to Jim’s sermonizing, Bob prepared himself. He felt it was now necessary to interrupt. He would not tamper with Linda’s stirrings, whatever they were, for he considered man’s right to think and question and determine for himself to be the most sacred of abilities. But before he would witness his wife’s foxhole conversion, he wanted her to have another point of view.

“But don’t you think,” questioned Bob, “that a person can be a good Christian—can lead a moral life, can be saved—without belonging to formal church?”

“No!” said Jim firmly, but his negation dangled, his sentence was incomplete. More would surely come. The stirrings of new tension leapt up between the two men as they half-sat, half-lay on their rope beds, shoulders hunched and heads bent to avoid the ceiling above them. An awkward place for a face-off, an unreal setting for a duel of souls.

Crouching against the wall to watch the men and hear them out, Linda drew the sheet tighter to her nude body. Not until her legs and thighs healed from the sores could she bear to wear clothes again. She waited. Turning, Bob looked at his wife, seeing the dark shadows arcing like quarter moons beneath her eyes, eyes deeper set now in a face become gaunt. She weighed perhaps ninety pounds, twenty less than the day they set sail.

This is an impossible position, Bob thought. I must challenge Jim’s beliefs, I must expose them, yet I cannot destroy them because my wife wants to know them. Linda is concerned for her immortal soul, she is terrified of the unknown, she will accept any hand that is held out to her.

Even Jim’s.