The love of his life buried beneath the palm tree where they first had kissed, his living daughter now sleeping in the coconut-wood cradle, Barry at last found himself alone on the beach, expelling the sobs he had stored for so long. Keening of the sort one hears only once or twice in a lifetime. The splitting heartache, the indescribable sorrow, the crushing guilt of being unable to save her—those would stay with him for quite some time. A lifetime, in fact. But the gagging, chest-rattling sobs came pouring out, until at last, depleted, he had nothing left to give, and in the void, his thoughts regained some semblance of clarity. The reality of the situation, and the responsibilities of a father, began to take hold. His vision may have bordered on legal blindness, but his options were clear.
Two paths, white and shimmering as a summer day in Macoupin County, appeared before Barry. Amid his immense terror, depthless loss, and visceral sadness, a choice took shape. Suddenly his life was a fork in the road, a binary system both horrific and beautiful in its simplicity. One path was as follows: He could close his eyes, cease his struggle, and let his body go limp. He could stay on the island and watch with horribly compromised vision his child—their daughter—wail in pain and waste away without breast milk or formula, and then finally cease to breathe altogether. He could linger on, slowly succumbing himself to starvation or madness, until the day came when he no longer had the energy or will to rise from his sweat-stained pallet and face the growling incertitude of the day. At which point he, too, would give up the ghost.
Or he could gather up his child, stock the canoe, and paddle like a motherfucker.
Bartholomew Bleecker chose the latter.
The preparations took the better part of the day but passed like a strange and floating dream. It was as if he were outside of himself, watching these events unfold despite his imperfect vision. He watched as he inflated the life raft, his aching lungs bringing the craft to life. He looked on as he loaded it with bananas and bags of freshwater—except the one bag he filled with coconut milk, knowing an infant could not survive upon it, but hoping it might keep his child alive just a little bit longer. He gazed with bleary eyes as this other, more certain version of himself placed his sleeping daughter, bundled in a threadbare Charles Tyrwhitt dress shirt, beneath the small survival blanket tent he had made for her in the Askoy III. And he stood silent witness as this man hitched the supply-laden raft to the back of the canoe with a six-foot length of salvaged nylon rope.
All that remained was to say good-bye. Barry had no flowers to leave for Sophie and their stillborn child, buried together in the same shallow grave; he brought bananas instead, the freshest, greenest bunch he could find. He spoke to them quietly for some time, his tears leaving a cluster of wet dimples in the upturned sand. He told them how much he loved them, how much he already missed them, and he begged their forgiveness for having to leave them. But he had made his decision—and he knew that Sophie would understand. When he was finished, he laid the kindest of kisses on the driftwood cross, wiped his eyes, and rose to his feet. But before he left, he made two promises:
That he would take care of their living daughter until his dying breath, no matter when that day came, and that one day, god(s) willing, he would come back for them both and take them home.
Ready at last, Barry stumbled and tripped his way back to the beach. It was time. He did one final scan of the radio to search for nearby transmissions, and just as he had expected, there were none to be found. There were no more ships, there were no more flares, and there was no turning back. He had to go all the way. He would make it to the islands or he would die trying. There was no other option. They were leaving for good.
Barry peered inside the canoe’s foil blanket tent to check on his daughter, kissing her gently and whispering in her ear. He prayed quickly and calmly, hoping but not certain that a compassionate deity might be in earshot. And finally, although it was nothing to him at that moment but a blur, he took one last, lingering look at the island he had once cursed but now knew had saved them: the frayed hedge of palms, the silent skirt of sand, the inscrutable stone core that rose from the waters like a castle—
One in a million.
And then he pushed off.