One night, when Jennifer could no longer keep her eyes open at the helm, she tried tying the wheel in place so it wouldn’t turn. It seemed to work. She took a final look in all directions. There were no lights. Still, she knew it would be chancy. But maybe she could go down and close her eyes for a few minutes.
When she went below, Buck was awake, sitting on the bunk cleaning his handgun—a .22-caliber revolver—while smoking a thin marijuana cigarette.
The sight of the gun made her uneasy. It brought back memories of their biggest argument at Mountain View. When she had put her foot down and told him she did not want him bringing guns into their cabin, he’d ordered her to shut up. She ended up running outside and jumping in her van, an old bread truck with pink butterflies painted over the grille. He’d peppered rocks at the van as she pulled away. When she returned a few days later, Buck was ready to promise not to bring guns into the house again, but he did not apologize. Not for yelling, not for telling her to shut up, not for the rock throwing. In fact, Jennifer had never to this day heard Buck ever say to her, or to anyone else for that matter, “I’m sorry.” Not once. There were people like that.
“I still don’t like having guns aboard,” she said resignedly, taking a hit off the joint. Before leaving Hawaii, Buck had made a persuasive argument for bringing weapons on the trip, explaining that they needed protection from pirates and other bad types they might be unlucky enough to encounter on the open seas. She had reluctantly agreed, and had even acquiesced when Buck insisted she take target practice. (She had surprised herself by hitting the tree on both her attempts.)
He smiled, but mechanically, without humor or warmth. The scraggly beard he’d been growing made him look surly. He seemed to savor the weight of the gun in his hand. “Remember what I said, Jen. A person would be crazy to sail the high seas these days without protection.”
The .22 was his two-by-four in the bushes.
“I was sitting here thinking about Jake,” Buck went on, dabbing a spot of oil on a soft cloth.
Jennifer, exhausted, collapsed at the galley table. She felt resentment rising. Buck had goofed off below all day, eating, resting, reading. And now he was primed to talk, while she hungered for sleep.
“You remember Jake?”
“Yeah.”
Jake, as she’d heard often, had been Buck’s favorite teacher at San Quentin.
Although Buck had dropped out of school in the seventh grade, he had taken various courses in prison and become a serious reader of a wide range of books, from detective novels to more challenging works like Will Durant’s The World of Philosophy and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a novel that portrayed a world in which his father, Buck believed, would have succeeded. Buck’s favorite biblical book was the story of Job, with which he identified strongly, given his interpretation of the circumstances of his life. In prison, Buck once met notorious “Red Light Bandit” Caryl Chessman, the convicted kidnapper and rapist. Buck, who dreamed of being a published writer, had read Chessman’s well-received book, Cell 2455, Death Row, and admired his fellow prisoner’s gift for compelling narrative. In their only conversation, the two cons discussed books they found important and provocative. About the time Chessman went to his death in San Quentin’s gas chamber, Buck received his high school diploma by mail.
Buck was pushing the rag down the barrel of the revolver with a rod. “In World War Two, Jake was an Army major. One time he was ordered to reconnoiter around an enemy-held Pacific island with a squad of men.”
Jennifer was so tired she had to fight to keep her eyes open, and here was Buck telling her some war story.
“Early in the mission, they captured a Japanese sentry. They couldn’t spare men to return him to their own lines, and they obviously couldn’t take the prisoner with them on their mission.”
Buck was now wiping the trigger mechanism with a clean corner of the rag. “So, Jake ordered his sergeant to shoot the prisoner. The sergeant refused. Jake admitted to me it was probably an illegal order. Still, he said he didn’t believe in issuing an order that he wasn’t prepared to carry out himself. He thought about it a long time. It was important to get the information they’d been sent for. On the other hand, shooting the prisoner seemed tantamount to…murder.”
Jennifer perked up. “Jake called the mission off and took the prisoner back, right?” He was, after all, Buck’s hero.
“No.” Buck spoke without emotion as he loaded his .22. “He shot him and completed the mission. As Jake pointed out, millions of words have been written about morality over thousands of years. But in the end, it comes down to a very personal decision.”
Jennifer said nothing for a long time. From the way Buck talked, next to his father, Jake had had more influence on him than anyone. It amazed Jennifer that Jake had tried to make a strong moral argument to his class of convicted criminals for killing the man, and she was troubled that Buck had accepted the reasoning so readily.
Jennifer slept only sporadically that night. She popped up anxiously every half hour to make sure the wheel was still tied in position and to ease her fear that a ship might bear down on them in the night. Buck slept soundly.
The ocean voyage was draining her stamina. Her face and shoulders were burned from the sun. Her once-shiny hair was caked with salt. Her hands were ugly dishpan-raw. Her arm muscles ached from pulling on the sails and lines, and her legs were stiff from sitting so long at the helm.
Each day, she hoped Buck would find his sea legs, but the incessant rocking of the boat seemed too much for him. He was sick most of the time and even put off the crucial task of bringing the twenty-horsepower Mercury outboard motor inside where it wouldn’t be ruined by the constant dampness.
She had been forewarned that most wooden boats leak to a degree. But the Iola, elderly and often repaired, leaked a hell of a lot. It made matters worse that her hull had been fiberglassed by the previous owners, who must have thought they were sealing the leaks for good. Actually, the only proper repair of a wooden hull is recaulking the leaking planks, but that is a bigger job than slapping on a coat of fiberglass. Everything looked fine while the Iola sat in the harbor, but in ocean sailing, wooden planks tend to work back and forth, causing the Iola’s fiberglass to crack immediately. This exposed the old leaks and allowed seawater to soak through the hull. Too, the cabin’s forward hatch let in water, even though they kept it shut as tightly as possible. Everything in the bow stayed soaked. Because of all the leaking they had to start the generator and run the pump daily to keep down the water level in the bilge.
At dusk one evening, alone at the helm as usual, Jennifer saw they were heading toward ominous dark clouds lying low and heavy over the water. Suddenly, with no additional warning, a squall with near-gale-force gusts hit the Iola. The air and rain were bone-chilling cold. Clad only in shorts and T-shirt, Jennifer found herself shivering uncontrollably.
Buck rushed topside and leaped on the cabin top to close the air vent, which was letting in rainwater. Jumping back down to the wet deck, he lost his grip on the boom and slipped. He landed headfirst, striking his face on a metal stanchion.
Jennifer heard the sickening thud and wheeled to see Buck, semiconscious, rolling off the deck toward the churning ocean. It was a disaster she had feared all along.
She had pleaded with Buck to wear a lifeline whenever he came topside in inclement weather, but he’d always resisted. “If I go overboard, just throw me a flotation pillow and I’ll swim back to the boat.” But what if he was unconscious?
The netting for the dogs saved his life. Jennifer quickly tied down the wheel and rushed over, but it was a full minute before he was alert enough to respond so she could help him out of the netting and back onto the deck. Feeling woozy, Buck went below to lie on the bunk. One eye swelled angrily.
Jennifer did what she always did when the seas got rough, only this time with no help from Buck. She reefed the jib—rolling up some sail so as to catch less wind—and put the stern into the wind to preven
t the boat from heeling over too steeply.
She hurried below and donned a vinyl foul-weather parka, thick pants, and rubber-soled deck shoes, then returned to the helm, where she strapped on a chest harness connected to a safety line that would keep her tethered to the Iola if she was swept overboard.
The next instant, she was caught full in the face by sea spray from the raging waters. When she choked and gasped for breath, the wind smothered her mouth with a blast of air. It was like sticking her head out the window of a fast-moving car. She couldn’t breathe—she was suffocating! She swung away from the fierce wind, coughing, spitting out salt water. Her eyes stung; her feet and hands were wet and freezing. “Buck,” she cried out. The roiling sea rose vertiginously high, causing the Iola to swing wildly into the wind and tipping the vessel over at a crazy angle. Terror and amazement blanched Jennifer’s face as blinding billows of water burst upon the little boat. Over the maelstrom of howling wind and crashing seas, she cried out: “Buck…goddammit!”
Buck, tossed from his bunk, struggled topside and grabbed the wheel. Straining desperately, with Jennifer huddled next to him, he slowly got the Iola turned downwind, straightening the Iola out. Minutes later, the squall dissipated completely, and the sky was as clear as black Baccarat crystal. The moon lay on the horizon like a lighthouse beacon, their course lying perpendicular to the path of its rippling reflection.
They hugged each other long and hard, and Buck went back below to rest, Jennifer taking over the helm. She blew on her numbed red hands and vigorously rubbed them together.
The isolation of being stuck on a leaky sailboat in the middle of the ocean was beginning to wear on both of the lovers. They found it unexpectedly and oppressively claustrophobic. Here they were upon the open expanses of the world’s largest ocean, yet they were feeling uncomfortably hemmed in. And with never the slightest break in the ruler-straight line of the distant horizon, all they could see in any direction—today, yesterday, tomorrow—was water, the vast, impervious Pacific Ocean. The creaking confines of the sailboat became their entire world. Their isolation together was complete.
Day after day, they saw neither land, ship, nor plane. It was as if they had fallen off the earth into an endless waste of water, just as the maps of medieval Europe had predicted. The problems of the world no longer mattered. They were on their own either to conquer the elements or succumb.
The finality of Jennifer’s action in sailing off with Buck to a deserted isle had finally hit home. “Are you willing to abandon your family, leave this country with him on a sailboat, and stay away the rest of your life?” Her brother Ted’s words flooded her head. Though at the time she had denied that she was deserting anyone or anything, she saw now that she was doing just that. She had left civilization behind. She couldn’t phone her mother and say, “You’re right, Mom, I want to come home and take over your business.” Nor could she change her mind and turn back. Buck would be caught and returned to prison. On the other hand, they didn’t know for sure what they would find once—or if—they reached their destination, yet they planned to make this place their home. And they had all of thirty dollars between them. The die was irrevocably cast. Jennifer wondered why she had never foreseen the consequences of her actions.
To compound her fears and anxieties, Buck, without explanation, began to retreat into himself. For one thing, they hadn’t made love since leaving Hawaii a week before, an unusually long abstinence for them.
Buck was the most adventuresome lover she had ever known. It was as if he’d created sexy scenarios in his mind during his years in prison and whenever he felt randy, wanted to act out every one of them. “Turn over this way.” “Let’s try it like this.” “You know what I’ve always wanted to do?” He was summa cum laude in eroticism.
Had they not been alone on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean, his lack of attention would have caused Jennifer to wonder if he was being unfaithful again. She still felt a stab of betrayal when she thought of Gina Allen, the coquettish girlfriend of Mike, whose Hilo roofing business had employed Jennifer at the time she met Buck. The work—carrying loads of roofing materials up and down ladders—was far too strenuous for Jennifer, and Buck later took over helping Mike. The two couples often got together, and Jennifer always sensed that Gina had tarted herself up for Buck. One night at Mike’s place after he’d passed out from too much booze and grass, Gina suggested that the three survivors climb in the backyard hot tub. Buck thought it was a great idea and began undressing. The next thing Jennifer knew, Buck and Gina were naked, necking playfully. Buck summoned Jennifer to join them, making it obvious what he had in mind. Shocked and upset, Jennifer stormed out, slamming the door behind her. When Buck came home the next morning, she asked nothing about the night before and he volunteered no details. She had not wanted to know then, or later, when Buck spent late nights in Hilo. To be fair, he had never promised Jennifer a monogamous life together. Just the opposite, in fact, as he bemoaned having been denied so many experiences for too many years behind bars. He needed to be free to act on his urges, he told her. At least he was being honest about it. Jennifer tried to overlook Buck’s occasional liaisons, hoping he’d get it out of his system. Yet it hurt whenever she sensed, as women so often can, that another woman had been in her man’s arms.
But Jennifer had to face a much worse problem after a week at sea. She and Buck had no idea where they were. Months before they left, Jennifer had volunteered to be the navigator. She knew that finding a little island represented on the chart by a dot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean wasn’t going to be a cinch. She’d heard that even the most experienced ocean navigators could miss that small a target. It wasn’t like hitting the Hawaiian Islands with their several good-sized mountains and busy lanes of sea traffic.
She had learned everything she knew about the complex subject of celestial navigation from books—like a paperback guide called Ten Easy Steps to Navigation, which she had brought along. She had never taken a sight or worked out an actual navigation problem until this trip, so Jennifer had no reason to trust her navigating. The positions she plotted on the map fluctuated wildly—one day, according to her calculations, they had sailed three hundred miles south. “Wow, we’re making great time,” exclaimed Buck, who was only too willing to believe such good fortune. But the next day, they had gone seven hundred miles to the east! Jennifer knew that in optimum conditions, given the Iola’s slow speed, they couldn’t go more than fifty or sixty miles in twenty-four hours. Clearly, her calculations stank—and they did not change the Iola’s course based on them. They just kept heading in the direction the compass pointed to for due south.
Nevertheless, she doggedly followed the same routine each morning. She tied the wheel down, surveyed the horizon, and went below, tuning the AM-FM transistor radio to the international channel that gives the soft tick-ticking of Greenwich Mean Time. The seconds ticked off until a melodic recorded female voice said: “At the tone, Mean Time will be twenty-one hours and ten minutes.” In three or four seconds, a louder tick signaled the minute mark. At exactly that moment, Jennifer started the stopwatch and went topside. Dutifully following the step-by-step instructions in her how-to book, she raised the sextant and looked into the eyepiece that reflected, through a tiny oval mirror, the line of the horizon in relation to the position of the sun. Once fixed on that point, she checked the corresponding scale of numbers on the bottom of the sextant, which gave her the angle between the horizon and the sun. Jennifer would then go back below and use the navigation book to translate the sextant’s number into a formula based on several factors, including the season of the year and the exact time of day. Finally, she drew a “line of position” on a chart of the central Pacific. “Of course,” the book offered helpfully, “this is not a line of position as much as a curve or circle of position. What you are measuring is the geographical position of the sun at the time of your sighting.” Right.
Four hours later, she repeated the process. She extended the fi
rst line of position until it met on the chart with the latest one. Where the two lines crossed was supposed to be their current position. But every time Jennifer saw the haywire result of her careful work staring up at her, she felt like throwing the sextant and book overboard.
They were lost.
She fought to push back her feelings of desperation. She could figure out this problem. She had to. She’d taken math in college, she had confidence in her analytical abilities. She was a capable woman, not a helpless damsel in distress. She went back to the celestial navigation book again and again, trying to find her mistake, but the solution continued to elude her.
On their tenth morning at sea, with Buck on deck at the helm, Jennifer had no sooner awakened than the realization stunned her. North, not south! She reached for her navigation book. Somehow, she had assumed all this time that she was supposed to be using the logarithm for south latitude. That’s where they were headed. But she woke up realizing that was wrong. They were north of the equator.
Her novice’s mistake had been understandable. As her guide confirmed, the north logarithm was for use above the equator, where they were. She excitedly spread out the chart and did some quick figuring, using the previous day’s sightings. The position she came up with looked probable, unlike her others, but she wanted to be certain. Three hours later, after two new sightings, Jennifer pointed to a spot on the chart and proudly told Buck: “That’s where we are—halfway to Palmyra.”
Buck hugged and kissed her. His relief was obvious, and it occurred to Jennifer that he’d been more worried about the uncertainty of their position than his sense of machismo had permitted him to let on. But they weren’t home free, yet. From her library research, Jennifer knew that Palmyra’s low-slung islets could only be seen from within six to eight miles, making it easy even for the most deadeye navigator to miss the atoll completely.