Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover's Soul (22 page)

I’d baked a huge lasagna and brownies for Alan and his crew. There was no time for cooking or sleeping on these twenty-four-hour openings. Every moment would be spent either setting or hauling gear. I walked down the wooden ramp to the dock, baby in a backpack and food in arms. The harbor was full and every boat lively with last-minute chores. Decks were piled with gear, and crewmen called to each other as they cut bait, sharpened hooks and coiled ground-line. At our boat, Alan’s two young crewmen sat surrounded by tubs of salted herring, cheerfully bopping to their music as they baited two thousand shiny new hooks. If things went well on this trip, we stood to make a lot of money, of which they’d earn a hefty crew-share. It was hard not to tally the imaginary pounds of fish in my head. If Alan filled the boat, we could make as much as fifty thousand dollars. Even after expenses, that would be enough to make the boat payment and pay off the hospital bills for the baby’s somewhat difficult birth. I was excited and nervous, especially about the weather.

As I stepped on the boat I saw Alan through the window, his head bent over a chart. He looked worried. The National Weather Service marine forecast scratched over the VHF radio, a flat voice repeating the local conditions: Area 3A, winds Easterly at fifteen knots, increasing to thirty-five by Tuesday night. Not good.

When Alan saw us his face transformed. His furrowed brow and intense concentration melted into an open and affectionate smile. He always had a wonderful smile for me, but it was even more wonderful for the baby. I loved the unaffected joy that flowed from him in her presence.

“Well, I guess we’re ready,” he said.

“Knock ’em dead, honey,” I said, then more softly, “. . . and be careful.”

Two nights later I lay in bed at home listening to the wind howl at the predicted thirty-five knots. Our cabin was nestled in tall spruces a half-mile from the sea, but I could still hear the buoys moaning off the point. I wondered where Alan had chosen to go. Knowing him, he’d find his own patch of ocean to fish and wouldn’t follow anyone’s advice. The baby cried out in her sleep, and I murmured not to worry. I thought about all the boats scattered off the coast at this moment, working through the night in the waves and wind. All out in the same ocean, yet each one alone and vulnerable to an indifferent sea. I fell asleep praying for all of them to come home safely.

The next evening I walked to the high bridge that spanned the channel entrance to town to watch for returning boats, but only a few came back. The
Valiant
wasn’t among them. I went home and waited another night. The storm was still with us, and I comforted myself with the knowledge that they weren’t out fishing in it. They were most likely anchored, safely waiting out the weather.

In the morning I went looking again. Boats offloading fish lined the cannery docks, and the harbor was nearly full. But still no
Valiant.
I went to the cannery where we sold our fish and saw one of Alan’s buddies in the middle of unloading. Bags full of huge fish were being lifted out of his hold with a crane. I called down to him, had he seen Alan?

“Saw him the morning before it opened, up by Black Cape, but I don’t know where he ended up. He’s not back yet?”

I shook my head, no.

“Oh, you know Alan. Don’t worry. He’ll turn up.”

But he didn’t turn up all that day, and I was beginning to worry. I spent a sleepless night waiting for the phone to ring and imagining my own call to the Coast Guard. When the baby woke in the morning, I headed back to the bridge. The sun flared over the edge of the sea. A light fog wisped between the islands to the east and turned golden as sunlight spread horizontal across the sea. I was filled with sudden hope that Alan would be safely in the harbor, that my nightmare would be over instead of just beginning. But when I got there I saw that the slip was empty. The last empty slip in the harbor.

I walked back to the bridge and breathed in the cool sharp air carried in on the tide. It smelled of salt and kelp and an ocean full of life. The baby must have smelled it, too, and laughed, squirming in the pack. On the horizon was a boat, too far away to identify. I watched it until I noticed how it zigged and zagged its way slowly up the bay and toward the channel. There was only one boat like that in the fleet, and my heart was on it.

I could see that the
Valiant
’s waterline was as high as when she’d left port, and I knew what that meant. There was no load of halibut from this trip. No fifty thousand or thirty or even five thousand dollars. While I was disappointed, I could only imagine what Alan and his crew had been through during the last three days. Three days of fighting wind and tide, equipment failure and God knows what other disasters.

I waited until the
Valiant
was tied up before approaching the slip. I stepped quietly onto the deck as Alan emerged from the engine room, and we stood much as we had three days, a lifetime, before. He looked exhausted, shell-shocked, his face streaked with grease. He wiped his hands with a rag and managed a small smile. “Bad weather out there,” he said, unable to hide his disappointment. He’d wanted this load as bad as anyone. “We tried everything we could, but . . .”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”

He didn’t answer. There was nothing else to say. He’d made it through his three days of hell, and I’d made it through my own. The harbor was calm, and the boat was still floating. The baby reached out, laughing, for her father. “Are you ready to go home?” I asked.

“More than you can imagine.”

Leslie Smith

Sea Turtle Reef

Original painting by Wyland © 2003.

7
ON COURAGE
AND
ADVENTURE

A
life on the ocean wave!
A home on the rolling deep,
Where the scattered waters rave,
And the winds their revels keep!

Epes Sargent
Life on the Ocean Wave

Lost in the Atlantic

“Matthew, see how the water is lighter around the island, where it’s shallow?” Mike Sperber said to his fourteen-year-old son. “In a while the bottom will drop off, and you’ll see a color change.”

Matthew obediently pressed his face against the window of the twin-engine Aero Commander 500 and watched the Atlantic Ocean below change abruptly from light blue to almost black. He’d enjoyed fishing in the Bahamas with his dad and his dad’s friend, J. B. Stephens, but he sometimes wished his dad wouldn’t push so hard. Everything was “see this” or “do that.” Still, he wasn’t ready to go home to Florida yet.

“That’s where the really big fish are,” Sperber continued, pointing down. “Tuna, marlin—even sharks.” Seated next to pilot Jerry Langford, Sperber glanced back at his son. It was 5:20 P.M. on Sunday, August 4, 1991.

Suddenly, a loud bang made them jump. “Dad?” Matthew said. “What’s—”

A second loud bang drowned out his voice. The plane’s engines fell silent. Matthew gripped the sides of his seat as the plane shuddered, then started dropping.

Langford desperately turned to the radio’s emergency frequency. “Mayday! Mayday!” he shouted. “We’re going down!”

The stunned passengers strapped on life jackets. “Matthew!” his father said. “When we hit the water, don’t wait for me. Get out fast. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” Matthew’s heart pounded, making it hard to breathe. His seat was dropping out from under him like a runaway roller coaster. Seconds before the plane hit the water, he screamed, “Dad, I love you!”

At home in West Palm Beach, Florida, Betty Sperber was baking a chocolate cake. The dark-haired nurse expected Mike and Matthew for dinner around five-thirty.

Six o’clock came and went. Just before seven P.M., a friend of J. B. Stephens called with the news: “Their plane went down in the ocean!”

Betty listened in disbelief. When she hung up, nightmarish images rose before her eyes. She moaned and covered her face. “Don’t let them be dead,” she sobbed.

The plane hit the water with an explosive roar, smacking across the surface like a skipping rock. Matthew was tossed forward as the fuselage ripped apart and water rushed in.

“Get the door open!” Sperber yelled to Stephens, who was closest to the exit. Stephens, a big, bearlike man, began shoving outward with all his strength.

“It’s jammed, Mike!” he yelled. Sperber struggled back through the rising water to help. Matthew reached down to unfasten his seat belt. To his horror, it, too, was jammed. “Dad!” he screamed. “I can’t get my seat belt off.”

As Stephens continued to ram his massive shoulder against the now-submerged door, Sperber turned to help Matthew. The pilot was out of his seat, his life jacket hanging loosely around his neck. He was holding the back of his head. Only a small pocket of air remained near the cabin’s ceiling. If they didn’t find a way out within seconds, they were all going down with the plane.

Water was lapping over Matthew’s chin when his father’s desperate effort to free him finally worked. At the same moment, Stephens punched the door out against the pressing sea, then reached back to grab his friend’s son. Without hesitating, he dived out, dragging the teenager
along.

The swim to the surface seemed to take forever. When Matthew finally burst through the water, he drew a deep, gasping breath. Air!

Stephens pulled Matthew to the plane’s wing. “Hang on!” he said, and started back to help the others. Seconds later, Sperber popped up in the water and joined his son by the wing. Finally, the pilot surfaced. He looked dazed, and his life jacket was gone. Stephens grabbed his arm and helped him over to the others.

The plane was slipping below the water. “We need to get away from here!” Sperber said. They dog-paddled furiously, taking turns helping the injured pilot.

About twenty feet away, the four looked back. The plane was hovering just beneath the surface. After a long moment’s hesitation, it tilted down and slid through the crystal-clear water into the black depths.

Soon Sperber took charge. “Let’s hook our life jackets together,” he suggested. “The current here is strong. We
don’t want to get separated.”

Stephens was still supporting the injured pilot in his arms. “Jerry here is bleeding pretty bad,” he said. “He’s going to need some help to stay afloat.”

Matthew looked over at the pilot, noticing that his hair was matted with blood. His father glanced over, too, then asked Stephens quietly, “What about the graycoats?”

Matthew frowned, puzzled. What was he talking about? Then, with a chill, he understood. Sharks! Sharks could sense blood in the water.

“Uh, Mike,” Stephens said, “I think we’d best not talk about that. What can we do about Jerry?”

After trying several arrangements, they used Langford’s pants to make a kind of hammock, tying the legs to Matthew’s and Stephens’s life jackets. The pilot lay between them, resting his head on Mike Sperber’s jacket.

The sun edged lower in the sky, sending brilliant orange and red reflections across the water. The four drifted in silence, pushed along by the Gulf Stream. Finally, Matthew heard a faint, rhythmic
thup-thup-thup.
“What’s that sound?”

The others heard nothing. “Look!” Matthew said excitedly, pointing south. “A helicopter!”

Flying at low speed, the helicopter made a beeline for them. They yelled and waved, then watched in stunned disbelief as it kept going. “Why didn’t they see us?” Matthew demanded. “They were right on top of us!”

“From the air, we’re just little specks,” Sperber said slowly.

The night passed slowly. Searchlights from aircraft and boats crisscrossed the dark water to the south and east, but none came close.

Matthew was growing sleepy when his father said quietly, “Try to stay awake, Matthew. Your eyes and ears are sharper than ours. We need you.”

Matthew was surprised, but pleased. “Okay, Dad. I’ll do it.” The water grew cool, then cold. Matthew shivered, fighting to keep his eyes open. It took an effort not to think about the huge predators that moved through those dark waters.

Dawn brought warmth and light. But as the morning wore on, they all began to blister in the sweltering sun. To shield themselves from the sun, they ripped off their T-shirt pockets and plastered them across their foreheads.

Matthew licked his dry lips. He was thirsty and hungry. His life jacket had rubbed the skin on his neck till it was raw.