Dead Reckoning (18 page)

We conserved our fuel, let the wind push us, and just tried to stay perpendicular to the seas. The wind blew at twenty knots or greater for the
entire time. We put out the sea anchor two more times over the next week. We were lost, but as best we could tell, nature was pushing us in the right direction.

. . .

DAY 42 AT SEA, SOMEWHERE IN THE GULF OF ALASKA (DEAD RECKONED POSITION: UNKNOWN)

We gave up dead reckoning several days ago, since we couldn’t even estimate the basic inputs. Desperation grew as we became more and more disoriented. We dared not waste fuel motoring anymore, since it could be a thousand miles to the closest land, and we would need that fuel once we got there—
if
we got there.

However, on the night of day forty two, I made a startling observation: stars! They were still hazy, but a couple of bright ones could easily be seen. Not wanting to waste the opportunity with a novice taking our position, I scrambled below to wake Jeff. The seas were relatively calm, and he took quick measurements of Polaris and Saturn. He consulted star charts and then triangulated. He took the measurements again fifteen minutes later, averaged the two, consulted star charts, and triangulated again. He rubbed his scruffy two-week beard and chuckled a little.

“I’ll be damned!” he said, as he showed me the coordinates and the plot of our position on the chart.

54.7°N, 134.5°W.

We had averaged only two knots while drifting over nine days but it had been in the right direction. We were just sixty miles from the southeast Alaska coast. We decided to motor in from there.

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DAY 43 AT SEA, 8 MILES WEST-SOUTHWEST OF FORRESTER ISLAND, ALASKA (DEAD RECKONED POSITION: 54.7°N, 133.7°W)

              At 7:17 pm on day forty-three, we sighted North America.

             
Forrester Island, Alaska rose from the sea like a beacon of hope, and its thousand foot peaks knifed into the low overcast. At a misty thirty-five degrees, with a northwest wind of twenty-two knots, and seas upwards of fifteen feet, the damp, gray scene at any other time and by almost anyone else would have been described as ugly and cold—perhaps not fit for man nor beast. But after a month and a half at sea, it was one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen.

. . .

During the night we motored past Dall Island and rounded Cape Chicon and turned north toward Ketchikan. We saw no lights, but we were not sure if we would have seen lights in that isolated section of Alaska anyway. At dawn, we headed into Clarence Strait, which led to Nichols Channel, which led through Tongass Narrows to Ketchikan. We had our doubts about approaching a populated area through such a constriction, but we needed to repair badly. We felt—or hoped—that maybe this part of Alaska had not yet descended into chaos.

             
Sonny played with his cell phone again and continued to complain about the battery going dead. That was when he and Jill spotted something on a small island to port: smoke.

             
I scrambled across the top of the boat to get a better look at the smoke. I caught my foot on a loose cable and lost my balance. I fell, face-forward, toward the railing of the boat. In that instant between losing my balance and hitting something, my brain made thousands of calculations, determined that I could not avoid hitting my head on the railing, and came up with a course of action—the only course of action that it could imagine which provided a chance to miss the railing. I involuntarily thrust myself up and forward in an attempt to clear the railing. As time slowed and my head seemingly inched toward the railing, the realization set in, and I prepared for the pain, hoping it wouldn’t be that bad. As I cart-wheeled into an upside down position, I looked at the gray sky.

Then everything went dark—and cold, very cold.

. . .

DAY 46, GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, ALASKA

It remained black for some time, but the cold eventually faded. I awakened to a crushing pain in my head and the vision of being on the inside of a cone. Curved sides sloped upward above me to a spot of light at the top. Strange music echoed around in my head. The unmistakable smell of marijuana smoke wafted on the air. It smells like burnt sage, I am told, but al
though I never had an occasion to smell burnt sage, I know marijuana when I smell it.

Very foggy-headed, I groped for some sense of the present, like when you awake from a particularly realistic dream and cannot determine if that was the dream or this is the dream.

I reached for the back of my head near the origin of an awakening pain and felt a bald spot and a ribbed area, like a zipper. What the hell? Swollen and mushy, it felt like a very ripe avocado. Hunger ripped at my gut. I tried to get up but could not. My atrophied limbs refused to move despite my synaptic commands.

             
I called out and produced only a squeak, but it was enough to roust someone near me.

             
“He lives!” the man shrieked as he leapt to his feet.

             
“Hey dude!” he said. “We didn’t know if you were ever going to wake up!”

             
The man came into the light. A long, scraggly beard hung from his haggard face. His eyes were bright but bloodshot, and he smiled at me toothily. His breath smelled awful—and suddenly I knew where the marijuana smell came from. He wore a dirty tie-died poncho—one of those woven woolen kind from the seventies. Darkness prohibited me from seeing below his poncho, but I prayed he was wearing pants.

             
“Peace man. Take it easy,” he said. “I am Jonathan, but my friends call me Jonathan,” he laughed.

“Where am I? And what am I doing here?” I asked.

              “You’re in heaven, man!”

             
“Seems more like hell to me.”

             
“Whoa!” Jonathan said trailing off, as if he had just discovered something earth shaking. “She was right.”

             
“Who? What are you talking about?”

             
“Jill, man. She said you would say that. You just blew my mind!”

             
“I’ll bet it didn’t have far to go.”

             
I tried again to sit up, but Jonathan held me down by the shoulders with little effort.

             
“Whoa there, fella. I wouldn’t do that just yet.”

             
“What happened?” My voice was gravelly and barely perceptible, even to me.

             
“You almost died, man.”

             
“How? Where am I?”

             
“I don’t know man, but when you guys pulled up you were all limp. Blood everywhere. It was a freak show, man!”

             
Jonathan hovered over me and stared into my eyes. I couldn’t escape the stink of his breath, and I gasped for air.

             
“Jesus! Get the hell off me!” I yelled, my voice returning.

             
The throbbing in my head kept me from being able to force my way free.

             
“Hey, Victor!” he said to the darkness. “Get the other dudes. He’s awake!”

             
“Take it easy, man. They’re all here, your crew. Jill fixed you up good, man. She’s something else. You’re all cool, man!”

             
I relaxed and hoped he was right. I was sure I would wake up at any moment and be back on the RY, all of it just a bad dream. There had been so many bad dreams that, while this was definitely up there on the strangeness scale, it was not surprising.

             
Jill was the first one in. She walked over to me and gave me a kiss on the cheek and grasped my head with both hands. She stared into my eyes, just inches from my face.

             
“Do you know who I am?”

             
“Of course. What the hell is this?”

             
Jill followed up with a cacophony of questions. “What year is it? Who is the president? What is your name? Where do you live?”

             
I must have answered them to her satisfaction because she let out a relieved sigh.             

             
Sonny scrambled in, followed by Jeff.

             
“Hey, I think he’s going to be ok,” Jill said.

             
“Oh man, you gave us a scare,” said Sonny.

             
“It’s nice to see your eyes open,” said Jeff.

             
“Well, now that the gang’s all here, would you mind telling me what happened? Where are we?” It hurt to talk, and I winced. I lifted my hand up to shield my face from the light above. “What’s the matter with my head?”

             
They proceeded to tell me how I hit my head on the railing on my way over the side. How I nearly drowned.

“How did I get back aboard?” I asked.

              “How do you think?” Jeff asked, motioning to Sonny.

             
“My hero,” I squeaked lamely.

             
Everyone laughed. I tried to laugh too, but it hurt.

“You really went in after me?”

              “Yeah, but don’t look forward to that again. That water is freakin-assed cold!”

             
Jonathan walked back in and whispered something in Sonny’s ear. They slapped right hands, clasped them, and then made that half-hug thing than guys do.

             
“I’m pretty sure you have a cracked skull,” Jill informed me as I looked back to her. “We stitched you up—well, I did—and it looks like it’s healing up without any infection. I think saltwater is a good disinfectant. You had a bad concussion, and I was worried about a brain injury. You were unconscious, but as far as I could tell, the light was still on. Sometimes it just takes time for the body to respond and heal up.”

             
“Jill has been quite an attraction around here,” Jeff said with a smile. “They have medics, but she is their first real doctor.”

             
“I don’t think she’s sat down for five minutes since we’ve been here,” Sonny interjected.

             
Jill couldn’t suppress a radiant smile.

             
Sonny jumped in again: “She wasn’t worried about pressure on your brain from swelling, you know, because of your cracked head. Relieves the pressure I guess. I didn’t believe you had a cracked skull. Too thick, I told them.”

             
Everyone laughed but me—it still hurt too much.

             
Jill put her fingers on my left eyelids and forced them apart. Then she checked the right eye. I couldn’t help but notice a spark in her eyes. It was beautiful.

             
“Looks good. Feeling dizzy?”

             
“A little.”

             
“I suppose so. When that goes away, you can get up. But make sure one of us is here when you stand up for the first time.”

             
“Yes, ma’am.”

             
“Where are we?” I asked.

             
They explained to me that we’d landed on an island along the coast of Alaska. A large group of people lived there and they called it Gilligan’s Island. They were working on fixing up the RY.

             
My surroundings began to come into focus as my senses returned. The cone shape I noticed when I first awakened was now obviously the top of a teepee. Smoke from a fire rose out through the opening. I was warm and save for the pain in my head, quite comfortable.

             
Some smart looking fellow rushed in and whispered something to Jeff. Jeff turned to Sonny and said: “Come on. We need your cell phone.”

             
I drifted back to sleep.

             
When I woke the next time, it was either still light or light again. I was immediately able to focus this time, and my head felt better. I called out, but no one answered. Just as I was about to get myself upright, the flap in the teepee opened, and a girl walked in. She was skinny as a rail and had a rather homely, freckled face. Her long red hair hung wildly, and she wore the same poncho as Jonathan. Her hair was a little cleaner and she didn’t smell like anything. It is funny how some people always stink and others are able to smell utterly like nothing.

             
“I’m Krystal. Let me help you.”

             
She grabbed my arm to steady me.

             
We stepped out into the light, and it was raining lightly. Occasionally, a fat snowflake survived all the way to the ground. A line of females, perhaps thirty in all, stood waiting for us. They ranged from young girls all the way up to old women. Their skirts varied in length and color, but each wore that same poncho. Krystal led me to one of many campfires and sat me down in a wooden Adirondack-style chair. Hewn from fir, as far as I could tell, and the chair had obviously been built on site.

One-by-one, they filed past and hugged my head from behind, careful not to touch my wound. Then they went back to whatever it was they were doing before I woke up.

              A young girl approached me from behind and handed me a bowl of soup.

             
“Fish stew,” she said. “With herbs.”

             
“What kind of herbs?” I asked skeptically, thinking back to my encounter with Jonathan.

             
“Black Cohosh,” she said. “Squawroot for pain. We have other medicines, but Miss Jill thought we should try this first. Don’t take pills if you don’t need them. That is what she said.”

             
I appreciated that Jill would say that, since I had the same philosophy about synthetic pharmaceuticals, but yet I hesitated.

             
“It’s all natural!” she exclaimed in a bubbly voice. I thought about how arsenic is also all natural, but Denver and his natural cures popped into my mind, so I just thanked her instead. I took a heaping spoonful, and just as I was about to shove it in my mouth, she stopped me.

             
“Miss Jill said that you should sip the broth first, before eating the rest.”