Walt (3 page)

V

W
alt remained under
the bed for the rest of the day. Periodically, whenever his boredom made him think that the sun had set already, he very gently and quietly stuck one toe out from under the blankets. He felt that if his toes sensed cool, it would be night and he could escape from the house without having to see, or be seen by, Mrs. Wilkins.

At last his toe gave him the impression that the earth had turned. He lifted a corner of the blanket and risked a peak. It was indeed dark, he did not know how late. His eyes were well adjusted from the hours spent in hiding, and the fresh air was a tremendous relief. He breathed deeply, but quietly. He located his pants and pulled them on as quietly as possible.

Has it yet been noted that Walt did not so much as own a pair of underwear of any sort?

Like a child, he put on his socks with exaggerated care. He carried his boots, which he had found under the bed giving off an unfamiliar odor, in one hand. He slid his feet across the floor rather than step, so worried was he about making the slightest noise.

He tried to raise the window gently, but the wooden frame was stuck. Walt pushed harder and harder until the window finally flew up with a resounding bang that rattled plates in the parlor. Panicked, he jumped through the window head first instead of climbing. The windowsill hit him in the stomach and he hit his head on the porch. Somewhere in all the confusion, he had dropped his boots. One had landed inside the house and the other outside. He gathered them up hurriedly and rushed off towards his shack.

Walt arrived at his own door carrying his boots, his feet hurting from all the rocks he had stepped on along the way. Before going in, he stopped to put his boots on. This was the reverse of his usual routine. He normally took off his wet seaboots before coming inside, setting them just inside the door. This movement was unconscious to Walt, it was in fact instinctive to all Tristanian fishermen. To do the converse now was just a reflex action.

It was a reflex for which he was very grateful as soon as he opened the door. The vomit, which had lain so deep on the floor when he left, had not gone away of its own accord. The thickened puddles made it difficult for him to walk. He shuffled his way over to the trunk and took out a few of his possessions. These he placed carefully on the bed. He selected several favorites from his pile of sweaters and put them on his cot as well. He stuffed all these things into his small duffle bag and waded back to the door.

He had made up his mind. He was leaving Tristan.

VI

I
n the first light of dawn
he walked down to the beach, turned his boat right side up and pushed it across the sand to the water. He gave the boat a shove and jumped in. As soon as he had unshipped his oars and started rowing, he was on his way. It was as easy as that. Less than a week ago the possibility of leaving the island, even for a visit, had never even occurred to Walt. Now here he was leaving Tristan behind him.

It was as easy as that.

Well, actually, it was not quite as easy as that. In making his rather quick preparations for leaving the island, Walt had neglected to bring along food or water. Tristan, as you no doubt recall, is more than two thousand miles from any other landmass. It might seem apparent that this was not a well-prepared or provisioned journey.

Since oars were the little boat’s only means of propulsion, Walt was compelled to look continually over the transom. He had no choice but to look back at Tristan all the while as he rowed away. Walt was not sentimental, but he became aware for perhaps the first time in his life of the enormity of the unknown.

For some reason he also felt no fear. Walt had spent his whole life in this small boat, but that was only in the waters immediately surrounding the island that was his home. He was aware of the dangers of the sea, but now felt no concern for them. His own survival had not occurred to him as an issue in getting ready to leave.

He had rowed for less than half an hour when the boat became caught in a strong current. Not seeing any reason in fighting, he let go of his oars and abandoned himself to the will of the sea.

At this point one might well consider Walt a goner. His chances for survival must seem very slim indeed.

After three or four hours at sea, just about the time Walt began to get his first real pangs of hunger and thirst, even he began to experience a dimming of his hopes.

Soon a squall blew up from the south. Walt’s little boat was tossed by the sea. The rain began to fall. Here Walt made what was perhaps the best decision of his life. Deciding to sacrifice comfort for a better chance of survival, he took off his rubber boots.

He set them in the prow of the boat. By the time the rain cleared, after about an hour of heavy downpour, he had almost three inches of potable water in each boot. Walt realized that this would be enough water to keep him alive for at least a day. With the frequency of rainfall in this part of the ocean, he supposed that with some care he might well be able to catch enough water to keep him alive.

That left only the problem of food. This problem, too, solved itself in an unexpected manner. After some twelve hours at sea, when Walt was beginning to get very hungry indeed, a sixty pound Albacore tuna jumped into the boat, very nearly capsizing it.

Walt was surprised at having a creature so large suddenly decide to be his companion. He put out the oars to add stability to the tiny craft. He then pulled a rusty fishing knife from the bottom of the boat and stabbed the fish repeatedly until it stopped thrashing.

It never once crossed Walt’s mind during this encounter that he might be manifesting incredibly bad manners by killing the only seagoing companion he had ever had. It also took a moment for him to realize that the fish, which he had thought of to that point only as an intruder, could also be a source of food.

Thus was established the pattern of Walt’s life that would continue for the next five days. He kept his boots at all times ready to catch rainwater and sliced off a portion of the tuna whenever he became hungry. At night he lashed the oars in such a way that they acted as outriggers to give the boat more stability. He slept only fitfully.

In his survival, Walt felt for the first time in his life fortunate. He congratulated himself several times every day on his imagination in gathering water and in small things like tying knots. He had no vision for anything beyond surviving each day. He did not even get around to questioning his reasons for leaving the island, even though he had plenty of time to do so.

For practically any other human, those days alone at sea would have been torturous: drinking the fetid water from Walt’s none-too-sanitary boots, eating slices from the decaying tuna, bits of rust from the knife embedding into each slice. The solitude alone would have tried the sanity of most.

Walt, however, was not like most people. He felt relieved by the solitude. For the first time in his memory, there was no one around to taunt him or make him feel uncomfortable. He felt no compulsion to hide or run from other people.

The diet was not so much different from what he had eaten on Tristan, except that the tuna was not cooked, of course. His piles of sweaters kept him reasonably warm. Most of all he enjoyed the sensation of spending all day alone on the water, where he had always felt most comfortable, without having to return to the Plant to drop off his catch. He realized that he had always hoped in some small way to sail off into the sunset, to leave Tristan far behind.

It is axiomatic that fishermen somehow long to be possessed by the sea. Walt had no way of explaining the slight disappointment he had always felt when he took his first step onto dry land after a day of fishing. He had now, in abandoning himself entirely to the ocean’s will, actualized the symbiotic trust that fishermen have in the sea. He would endure because he was one with his boat and the water.

The reader will no doubt have noticed that the preceding bit of intellectualization came not from Walt, but from me. Forgive me if I intrude.

One other thing: Walt had no idea where he was or which way he was going. He had never had any occasion to go out of sight of land fishing for lobsters. As one might expect of the residents of the most isolated spot on Earth, Tristanians did not go about visiting other islands very often. Consequently, Walt knew absolutely nothing about navigation. He did not even know from what direction the sun rose, and into which it set. All he was aware of was the current that carried him along.

Walt was very fortunate to have strayed into this current, for it was reliably strong and steady. Important for Walt’s future survival, it was also known to the captains of some ocean-going ships who used it to increase their speed and cut their fuel consumption.

It was for this reason, and this reason alone, that on the afternoon of Walt’s seventh day at sea, he was spotted and picked up by the freighter
San Geronimo
.

Walt was of mixed feelings about being rescued. He knew that his precious solitude was at an end, and for this he was sorry. He also knew that the remains of the tuna would be totally inedible within one day. As it was, while on board the cargo ship, Walt would come down with a serious case of amoebic dysentery.

Walt’s most pressing emotion as a skiff from the freighter was dispatched and drew near was one of incredible fear. He vaguely remembered from school on Tristan that people around the world spoke many different languages. Communicating was so difficult for him under any circumstances that he dreaded to think of what another language might be like.

One thing that bears mentioning before Walt is rescued: during his week at sea, Walt continued to hear the Easybeats playing in his mind. The sound was in a way comforting to him. He now enjoyed its regularity and dependability. Along with the motion of the waves, the music was a constant in his life on his tiny vessel.

Another thing: even though Walt was only barely aware of it at the time, the music was already becoming louder and more distinct. If he thought about this phenomenon at all, and he would not have thought of it in such concrete terms, he probably attributed the increased strength of the signal to his familiarity with the music. If in fact that was what he thought, he was wrong.

In any case, the
San Geronimo’s
tender soon drew near. As a heaving line was thrown, Walt had time for one last thought alone. He wondered if he would be received with the same revulsion that had been a constant part of his life on Tristan.

As it was, he was treated very warmly and civilly. He was brought aboard the freighter and his own little fishing skiff was hauled aboard and lashed to the deck. Walt was introduced to the Captain and given quarters to use until such a time as the freighter reached land or encountered authorities who could be of assistance to him.

In his bunk, Walt pondered the Captain’s offer of assistance. For the first time he realized that, if he did not know what he was trying to accomplish, it was very unlikely for anyone to be able to help him achieve anything. He remembered that he had had an irresistible compulsion to leave the island and that this drive was somehow involved with the Easybeats. Riding along on the
San Geronimo
did not seem in any way contrary to his current mood, so he reasoned that it must be the appropriate thing to do.

He became even firmer in this reasoning when he considered his alternatives.

As has been previously mentioned, in the days following Walt’s rescue by the freighter he was stricken with a severe case of dysentery. The ship’s complement was too small to include a doctor, but the Second Mate had some interest in medicine. He treated Walt as best he could with the limited medical facilities aboard the ship. The Second Mate was a dedicated man and he cursed himself and his ship’s provisioning when Walt did not respond to his treatment. The Second Mate was a kindly man and refrained from cursing Walt for failing to get better.

There was of course a reason why Walt was not getting better. The Second Mate had assumed that the source of Walt’s intestinal parasites was the tuna. In fact, the microbes that now flourished in Walt’s abdomen had originally come from his boots. They grew in the sun-warmed water of Walt’s boots, which he used for drinking.

If the Second Mate had had access to a decent medical laboratory, he would have found that the organisms spawned in Walt’s boots were of a completely unknown variety. Thus, Walt’s disease was a truly new thing under the sun.

If this discovery had been made by the Second Mate, which it was not, several different things could have happened. He could have isolated the parasite, written a scientific paper about it, and been the man of the moment among the world’s medical bacteriology community. Not least among the pleasures of such an activity would have been the honor of naming the newly found organism. No one can say what he might have called the bacterium if he had discovered it. Perhaps he would have named it after Walt. Perhaps he would have named it after a certain woman in Singapore of whom he was fond, and visited without fail every time he sailed there.

Another thing: if he had capitalized on the discovery of this organism, a discovery which, I must repeat, he did not after all make, he could potentially have made a tremendous amount of money in the process. At that time, the Second Mate believed that he wanted to make a great deal of money, and that doing so would make him happy.

In what way could a sailor become wealthy from a microbe? There were at least fifteen governments around the world that would have paid dearly for a dysentery bacterium that bred in people’s boots. They would pay even more when they found out that this particular organism was resistant to conventional antibiotic therapy.

There is of course a second possible outcome to this bacteria scenario. The organism could have run rampant through the crew, killing them all in one of the most unpleasant ways imaginable. Remember that the
San Geronimo
was still nearly two thousand miles from the nearest shore. She could have drifted for months, a ghost ship and a plague ship both, before being found by anyone.

It never crossed the Second Mate’s mind that Walt might be carrying a disease which could eradicate all forms of life on the vessel, even the rats that lived in the deepest part of the hold.

But, again, the Second Mate never learned how drastically Walt’s case of the trots could have changed the course of human history.

Walt, incidentally, recovered after not too long an illness. The Second Mate was reduced to explaining away Walt’s recovery to his strong constitution and his willingness to undertake bed rest.

Quite honestly, the Second Mate had absolutely no idea what had in fact cured Walt. Walt had very wisely chosen to tell no one aboard the ship about the music in his head. Thus the Second Mate had no reason to test Walt’s electromagnetic field. As it was there was no test equipment available aboard the vessel that could detect the field that Walt emanated, a field which was slowly but steadily increasing in power.

The microbes had flourished for a time in Walt’s magnetic field. In fact, the reason that Walt’s complaint was not contagious was simply that no one else on the ship, or on the face of the Earth, had a similar electromagnetic resonance. As the amplitude of the field increased, Walt’s intestines became an increasingly hostile environment for the parasites. When the oscillatory amplitude became critical, the microbes simply exploded.

One other thing: Walt’s powerful magnetic field was also subtly throwing off the accuracy of the ship’s navigational equipment. The members of the crew had no way of detecting it, but the
San Geronimo
was already drifting off course.

Walt, who considered his whole life to revolve around boats and the sea, had in fact never been aboard a vessel more than four meters in length. With the exception of one, every boat he had ever seen had been powered by the wind or oars. The sole exception was an ancient five horsepower outboard motor that belonged to a second cousin of his.

Under such circumstances, one might assume that a seaman would be interested in touring a modern vessel. Walt, however, had no interest in the propulsion, cargo, navigation, or bridge sections of the ship. The only parts that held his interest were the galley and, far more strongly, his own bunk.

This was not due entirely to his fear of the members of the crew. Everyone on board the ship had been very nice to him. Apparently they expected a castaway to be decrepit in appearance and solitary in manner. Even the Captain had several times come to Walt’s bunk to ask if he was receiving satisfactory treatment from the Second Mate, who seemed be the only member of the crew with whom Walt had any regular contact.

Walt always responded that he was being treated very well on board the ship, he just had no interest in being anywhere but his bunk just then. He thanked the Captain, or whoever might be addressing him at the moment, for visiting, then rolled over and went to sleep, or merely rested.

Incidentally, there is one fact which has not been mentioned about Walt’s physical condition. When the Second Mate examined him, it was discovered that Walt had chlamydia. The Second Mate felt that this was not a matter to be discussed, and so did not tell Walt about his condition.