Long Voyage Back (34 page)

As she began studying the mysterious ship, Neil walked out into the port cockpit where Frank and Tony were looking through the smaller glasses.

Àlter course,' Neil said to Tony at the helm. 'We're going to take a look.'

`What the hell for?' Tony asked.

`There may be survivors,' Neil replied. 'If not, there may be supplies we can salvage.'

Ànybody still alive on that boat we can do without,' Tony commented. 'This close to land the ship's probably been sacked already.'

`We're going over,' Neil said.

In half an hour Vagabond had arrived within a hundred yards of the derelict. The ship's white paint was blistered and peeling, fragments of the mainsail lay loosely along the boom, and a halyard was loose and swinging idly back and forth with the rocking of the boat. There was no sign of life.

Àhoy, I rindsong!' Neil shouted as Tony brought Vagabond so close to the wind all three sails luffed and she became almost dead in the water ten yards short of the forty-foot ketch.

`Hit the horn,' Neil said to Tony, who gave one loud blast from the air horn on the control panel shelf.

Àre you going to board?' Frank asked Neil.

Just then a figure emerged from the cabin into the ship's cockpit. Crouched and blinking into the bright light, a small, unshaven man in his forties wearing only a bathing suit stared at them.

Neil and the others, stunned, stared back.

`Can we assist you?' Neil asked loudly after the shocked silence.

`Water,' the man said hoarsely. He was hollow-eyed. `Water,' he repeated more loudly. As Jim ducked below to get some of their precious water and the man peered down into his own cabin, Frank came up to Neil.

`What are you going to do?' he asked.

`Take him off,' Neil answered, staring glumly at the stricken Windsong. `Back her offa bit,' he added to Tony, 'then bring her up to the port side. Get the fenders.'

`There must be others aboard,' Jim said, arriving with water. 'He can't be alone.'

`The guy's practically dead,' Tony said, easing Vagabond alongside Windsong. Neil and Frank moored the two boats side by side with the fenders cushioning their impact.

`Do you want to abandon ship?' Neil asked. 'We can take you aboard.'

The man, the bones of his rib-cage protruding grotesquely against the skin of his emaciated body, lowered his head and stared at the water.

`We're all dying,' he answered. 'I don't know.' `Radiation sickness isn't necessarily fatal,'

Neil said. 'You may recover.'

The man looked back up at Neil.

Ì know,' he said. 'That's what's hell. But my wife and

daughter ... are almost dead. They'll never make it.'

Jim now handed a plastic jug of water across to the man

who, with sudden agility, grabbed it and hugged it to him. `Let me go below and - decide what we'll do,' he said and

less nimbly made his way down into the cabin of his boat. Neil, Frank and Tony were left in the side cockpit waiting.

`What is this shit?' Macklin suddenly said, appearing beside them, looking sleepy, the hair of his chest glistening with sweat. 'You bringing more people on to raid our food and water?'

Neil didn't reply.

Ìf they're all dying,' Tony said, 'it'll just be a waste. You said yourself that prospects of finding food in the Bahamas don't look good.'

Ì know,' Neil said.

`What happened to your fucking-principle of triage?' Macklin interjected. Neil didn't answer. The four of them stood silently in the gently rocking Vagabond awaiting the reappearance of the dying man. What had happened to triage, thought Neil, was that at sea you didn't abandon a fellow sailor.

The man emerged from his ship's cabin. 'I'd appreciate it if you could take us off,' he said. When they stared at him, he finally added, 'I'll need help.'

`Mac,' said Neil. `Go aboard and give the man a hand.' `Go yourself,' Macklin said and stalked away.

Ì'll go,' said Frank. He boarded Windsong ahead ofJim but suddenly noticed along the coaming and in the cockpit a fine grey ash. He first took it to be sand, but with a stab of fear realized it was radioactive ash. He clambered quickly back on to Vagabond, pushing Jim back ahead of him.

`Jesus Christ,' he told Neil. 'There's fallout on deck.' Neil looked and frowned.

`This is ridiculous,' said Tony. 'Let's get out of here.' Neil hesitated again, then turned to Frank. 'I'll board and help them abandon ship,' he said.

Ì'll help you,' said Jim.

`You stay here,' Frank said gloomily to Neil, grabbing his shoulder. 'With your bum arm you're the wrong man for the job.'

When Frank boarded Windsong, Jim quickly followed. Ducking below into the main cabin Frank saw that there were two women lying under dirty sheets on opposite sides of the main salon on what normally would have been settees. The cabin was a jumble of pails, towels, open cans of food, dirty dishes, clothing, blankets. The stench of sweat, urine and excrement was stifling. The small hollow-eyed man stood apologetically next to his wife.

`They can't walk and I can't lift them,' he said.

Frank pushed himself forward to the older woman, bent_ over and tried to force himself to smile. But when he saw the grey-faced, frozen apparition that stared up at him the 'Hi'

he had been about to speak froze in his throat. He gasped. Without further effort at sociability he leaned over and picked her up and headed back towards the gangway. The woman was almost dead. She was wearing nothing under the sheet and the contact of his hands with the naked flesh after seeing death on her face horrified and disgusted him. He wanted to run up the stairs, but Jim appeared, descending.

`Bring the girl and get out quick,' he said sharply to him. Teeth gritted, his face showing his fear and disgust, Frank climbed the cabin steps, went quickly over to Vagabond and, refusing Jeanne's offer of assistance, thrust himself from one boat to the other.

`Where are you putting her?' Jeanne asked.

`Frank's cabin, I'm afraid,' Neil interjected. 'All three.' Frank carried the woman down. Jim meanwhile suffered the same sickening shock at the sight and smell of Windsong's cabin as, with face averted, he gently slid his arms under the daughter and lifted her up. She was small and light. As she came into his arms, he noticed her turn her face away from him.

`Come on,' he said to the man, and began his return to Vagabond. Àre there things we can salvage from Windsong?' Neil asked Frank, who was coming out of his cabin after placing the

woman up on his double berth and instructing Jim to put the girl beside her. Macklin stood nearby, glaring.

`No,' Frank snapped back. 'Let's get away now, fast.' The skeleton of a man, standing slightly bent over in the starboard cockpit a few feet away, grimaced.

'We've got a few emergency rations that you can have,' he said. 'It's stored . .

`Let's go!' Macklin said sharply to Neil. 'That ship's contaminated. Everything on it may be carrying death. Let's go.

He himself brushed past the man and untied the aft line that held Vagabond rafted to the other ship, and then hurried forward to get the other. In just a few seconds, Vagabond fell away, her sails filling, then surged forward and past the stricken Windsong. The owner turned and looked at her as Vagabondsteadily but slowly sailed away, then the man moved slowly to the hatchway to go below.

Frank stepped trembling into the wheelhouse to deposit the fenders Macklin was bringing back under the settee seats. `Take it easy, Frank,' Neil said.

`We've brought death aboard,' Frank said grimly.

Neil, staring forward past the little transistor radio which lay on the control panel shelf, was as tight-lipped as Frank. Ì know,' Neil replied. 'But when was he not aboard?'

The presence of the three apparently doomed refugees upset the occupants of Vagabond. Having three dying people aboard was a disturbing reminder of their own danger and created among some a guilty resentment of the new burden of stricter rationing and more limited space. Frank now had to sleep in the wheelhouse, Jim aft with Neil. Frank found himself resenting mild Sam Brumberger as if he were a boorish guest who'd crashed a previously enjoyable party. He was naturally appalled by his resentment. He realized that if they had abandoned Sam and his family, he world have felt badly. He was annoyed too with Jeanne for showing so much solicitude for the refugees, seeming to spend the whole afternoon in endless trips down into the hellhole of his cabin to minister to their needs. None of the men had any appetite for such service, although Olly went down and spent an hour talking with Sam.

`Wife's just about dead,' 01ly said to Frank when he emerged. 'The daughter's not going to make it either. Sam now thinks he should have scuttled his ship.'

`Sam looks pretty bad, too,' Frank commented.

Yep. Tough way to go,' Captain Olly said. 'Prefer a quick sinking myself.'

`Me too,' said Frank.

The rescue of the Brumbergers had cost them more than two hours so that when the wind fell away to nothing at dusk they were still fifteen to twenty miles from land. Sam Brumberger told his story after dinner that night.

Sam, his wife, and daughter and two male friends had left Miami to bring their boat north for the summer. On the night the war started the ship was shaken by a tremendous blast. With his two friends on watch, Sam was with his family below. He was thrown off the settee berth on to the floor. Recovering, he staggered up and hurried topside. Although there was a terrifying brightness to the southwest which lit the night he couldn't at first see anything wrong. He called to his friends and got no reply. Then he saw one of them lying across a seat in the rear of the cockpit. His friend's body was smoking. He had been literally fried to death.

The other friend had disappeared, presumably thrust overboard by the blast. His wife, sleeping in an upper berth forward, had been badly burned in the stomach region and upper thighs. He and his daughter had escaped direct injury from the blast. That morning when fallout began to fall on to his deck he got his engine going and motored northeast for eleven hours skirting north of Grand Bahama Island until he ran out of

fuel. Meanwhile, he, his wife and daughter had begun to vomit. On the fourth day Sam spotted a fishing boat and fired a flare and the boat motored over. It was a beat-up, twenty-five-foot runabout with an outboard on its last gasp. There were two black Bahamian men aboard and one white man. They looked shocked at the sight of Sam and his boat and Sam's wife. At first Sam was afraid they were just going to motor away. But they decided to stay. They locked Sam in the forepeak, looted Windsong, and took turns raping his daughter • on the settee berth three feet away from her dying mother. Since then Windsong had been drifting helplessly.

Listening to Sam tell his story, Frank found it strange to listen to a man who knew he was dying, accepted that he was dying and who handled everything with emotionless objectivity. He was also strangely apologetic in what he said and did, as if the needs of a man who was going to die were futile and irrelevant. Commenting on the war, Sam seemed to speak from some other world that he alone, because of his condition, had moved into. 'I never thought we could spend a trillion dollars on something without sooner or later demanding our money's worth.'

Later that night, after everyone but Neil, Frank and Jeanne were in bed and Vagabond was wallowing in a dead calm, there was a strange scene. Jeanne, having just returned from another visit to Frank's cabin to clean up after one of the sick, had stopped, after washing out a towel in salt water, to take a look at Neil's elbow. Frank was steering, and Jeanne sat beside Neil on the wheelhouse settee and adjusted the kerosene lantern in order to get a good look.

The swelling of Neil's elbow had gone down considerably. He could move his lower arm about forty-five degrees without pain, although there was still redness over a three square-inch area. They had not used antibiotics and were depending on Neil's body to handle the infection by itself.

Neil, happy to have Jeanne near him, tried to joke lightly

with her about his arm and her ministrations, but she seemed solemn and withdrawn.

`You're sure you want to keep trying to do without the sling?' she asked after they'd finished the examination and wrapped the elbow again with gauze.

`Yes. I think that's the best way to put pressure on myself to use the arm more normally.'

Àll right. But the infection's still there.'

`For Christ's sake,' Frank suddenly interjected. 'Put some mercurochrome and a bandaid on it and let him be. People dying all over the world and you're worrying about Neil's sore elbow.'

Jeanne looked up towards Frank, who kept his back to

-them, and then glanced fearfully at Neil. She moved away

from him and stood up.

`She also spent half the day with the Brumbergers,' Neil said to Frank's back. Àt least they're dying,' Frank shot back, half-turning. `Can't you take care of yourself anymore?'

In the awkward silence that followed, Jeanne gathered up the medicine kit and hung the lantern back from the roof.

Ì promise either to heal myself or to reach a dying state as soon as possible,' Neil finally rejoined.

Ànd you, Jeanne,' Frank said, ignoring Neil's remark and stopping her on her way down to the main cabin. 'Don't waste so much time with the Brumbergers. You've got your own life to live.'

Ì thought I was living it,' she replied coolly.

`You're not,' Frank countered loudly. 'You're spending all your time with Lisa and Skippy and cleaning up vomit and mothering Neil and not a second on yourself.'

Neil saw Jeanne watching Frank closely, seeming to study him. Ì'm sorry, Frank,' she said. 'I suppose I am compulsively doing things whether they need doing or not. I'll try to relax.'

Frank stared at her, seeming as surprised as Neil by her abrupt acquiescence.

`Well ... It's just that I want you to be happy,' Frank finally said. Ì know,' she replied. Th en she stepped down into the main cabin. Later, after she'd gone over to her own cabin to sleep, Frank stopped Neil as he too was headed to bed.