The Raft

  Once again, I was soaked, but didn’t care because I was too busy wondering how to catch the water. I did fill the bailer from the bottom of the raft, although there might have been a little bit of salt water remaining. Still, it would do when I got really thirsty again.

  The rain didn’t stop, and soon I was not only drenched but shivering, regretting my prayer for the rain not to stop. How quickly things went from one extreme to the other. I just wanted a happy medium, but wasn’t even sure what that would be. A true happy medium would involve a sunny day and poolside service, but that was only a dream.

  Even though I wasn’t thirsty anymore, I forced myself to keep drinking periodically; the more I stored up, the better my body would handle another drought. And knowing the weather, the drought would probably come while I was still wet from the current deluge. But I drank so much I felt waterlogged, and there was a doubtful moment when I burped and began to wonder whether I would puke up everything again.

  But I didn’t. And when I was ready, I made myself drink more.

  So I sat there, dripping wet and shaking, occasionally lifting my open mouth to the sky and drinking, waiting for the rain to end. And then Max woke, drank some rain, and told me more of his story.

  “The morning after the cookies, I ran wind sprints in the wrestling room. All out—one end of the room to the other for forty-five minutes. I showed up at the scale and watched the numbers. One twelve point one.”

  My jaw dropped.

  “Coach rolled his eyes and the ref started to write it down. I couldn’t take it. So I stripped naked and stepped on again. One twelve.”

  I wanted to cheer, but I just smiled.

  Max continued. “I took first in my weight. Then second at districts. Went to the state tournament seeded third. Getting a sixth-straight state title was on all of our minds. But we had to focus on our individual matches. That was the only way to get the state title.”

  “It sounds like a lot of pressure.”

  “I’d never been to Portland before. The bus ride took six hours. My first match went well. So did my second. At the semifinals, I waited for my opponent. He never showed. Instead, the ref walked over to me and raised my hand. The other kid got hurt and had to forfeit. I was in the finals.”

  I smiled. “That must have been a relief.”

  “I didn’t sleep much that night,” he continued, “and we had an early weigh-in. I was under, no problem, and immediately went to Denny’s, where I chowed like I hadn’t eaten in months.”

  I whispered, “Which you hadn’t.”

  “My match was that night.”

  I couldn’t imagine how nervous he must have been.

  “When it was time, I stepped onto the mat. I wrapped the green cuff around my ankle. My opponent strapped the red one to his and stood eye to eye with me. We were the same size. His hair was short, like mine. But there was one big difference. He was a senior. And the reigning state champ.”

  I crossed my fingers for him and waited to hear the rest.

  “I told myself, Calm down, just do what you have to. Three rounds stood between me and the podium. Three rounds of two minutes. Six minutes. That’s it.”

  “That’s it?” The match seemed so short to me.

  He nodded. “Six minutes to be state champ. Focus on the first round. We crouched across from each other. Arms up, neutral position. We shook hands. From the look in his eyes, I knew that was the only sportsmanlike thing I could expect from him. The ref had a green band, my color, around his left wrist. I wanted to see that hand. I needed to see that hand up. A lot.”

  I hadn’t watched much wrestling, but Max made it sound exciting.

  “I was ready to shoot. Go for his legs. Try for a takedown. Time stopped, like it all was a snapshot. Like we’d been there forever. I glared at my opponent. He glared back. His eyes were blue. A zit on his chin needed popping. I squeezed my hands again, crouched lower, ready to spring as soon as I heard—”

  I frowned. “What? Heard what?”

  “The whistle. Like a bolt of lightning, he shot at my legs before I had a chance to go for his. I was on the defensive. I sprawled, hurling myself up and toward him. Hoping to get on top of him before he could get one of my legs. The crowd erupted. I knew it worked even before I had him on the ground.”

  “Yay!” I grinned.

  “I had him in a cradle. It took everything I had to get one of his shoulders down. My face was in his armpit, his sweat rubbing off on me. I told myself, Hold on! Hold on!”

  I silently chanted, Hold on, Max, hold on, hold on.…

  “Coach yelled, ‘Thirty!’ I could do anything for thirty seconds, right? I could do anything for thirty seconds. I tried to get his other shoulder down, go for the pin.” Max winced. “Round over. I glanced at the scoreboard. Zip–zip. There wasn’t time to wonder why I hadn’t gotten a point for the takedown. The ref tossed the coin. My opponent got to choose up or down to start the next round. He shook his head slightly, deferring to me. He wanted me to pick.”

  “Why?” I wondered aloud.

  Max shrugged. “Psych-out tactic? Whatever. My legs were strong. I was usually up and out before anyone could touch me. Choosing down, I knelt on the mat. His breath was hot on my neck. I was ready to shove off from the mat, go up, and—”

  I wondered aloud, “And what?”

  “Before I could even move, his arm was looped under my arm and behind my neck in a half nelson and I was on my back.”

  “Oh.” I assumed that was not a good position to be in.

  “His fingers were like a vice. He had me.”

  “Was that it? Were you done?” I held my breath.

  Max shook his head. “He had my left shoulder on the mat. The crowd screamed, but I blocked them out. Slowed everything down. There was only my pounding heart in my head. My legs, pushing and straining, trying to get out. My arms, one trying to push him, and the other still trying to get his fingers. Coach yelled, ‘Twenty!’ I could do anything for twenty seconds. He was going for the fall.

  “The pin.

  “The win.

  “The state title.

  “I have got to move. Move! Move! Or I’m done!

  “But he’s got me. He’s got me.”

  “Max … oh no…” I breathed out.

  “The ref slams his hand against the mat. The crowd explodes. Pinned. I’m still on my back. My opponent throws his headgear into the air. He lets the ref hold up his arm in victory and starts jumping around the mat, screaming. I lay there, hands over my face. I wanted to … to…”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I wanted to cry,” he said. “But I didn’t.”

  thirty-four

  Max stopped, leaned back against the raft, and shut his eyes.

  My heart was pounding and I took a few deep breaths.

  There was more to tell, I knew, but I could wait. We had plenty of time.

  The rain had stopped, but the wind had grown stronger. The raft surged along in the waves, which were higher than they’d been since the storm. I was so used to the movement by then that I wasn’t frightened like I usually would have been in a boat. And I wasn’t feeling the fear I’d felt the first day or two. Anxiety had transitioned to boredom. Just sitting there, watching the same sky, same water, same colors. I longed for something to break up the monotony.

  I opened my eyes.

  Something moved in the sky, coming closer.

  Is that what I think it is?

  It was.

  I inhaled softly and tears came to my eyes.

  A black-and-white Laysan albatross was directly above me, wings straight out and motionless, soaring effortlessly in the wind. For all I knew, it was one of the gooney birds from Midway, one of those who nested in my front yard.

  “Hello, gooney bird!” Grinning, I raised both arms in the air and hugged myself.

  Funny, all those stories about shipwrecks and people lost at sea, they always wanted to see a bird, because it meant land couldn’t be far of
f. But the albatross didn’t raise any such hopes in me. Albatross were capable of traveling thousands of miles to bring food back for their chicks. They ate squid eggs or fish and, once they got back to their nest, regurgitated it for the chicks in an oily, viscous, vile-smelling substance.

  That albatross was a little piece of home. The life cycle of the albatross was something I got to experience every year on Midway. From August until October, Midway was void of albatross. The fields were empty, as were the skies. Then, beginning in October, they started coming back. Sighting the first albatross of the season was a game the whole island played. I would ride my bike all over, looking. Then, one day, over the radio, we’d hear, “The albatross are back!” And we’d all race in our bicycles or golf carts to where the first birds had been spotted.

  At first, there were a couple in a field, dotting the empty space. But within a week or two, the air was full of them, and soon after every available inch of unpaved open ground and grass had a nest. Albatross mate for life, which can be up to seventy years. They build their nest in the same spot every year. And they dance. A very specific dance, with eighteen actual moves, consisting of dips and bows and calls to the sky. They look so goofy doing it that troops stationed on Midway during World War II nicknamed them gooney birds. We just called them gooneys.

  Along with the dancing came screeching. So much that some people on Midway slept with earplugs when the gooneys were dancing. I never did though. I liked all the noise and became so used to it, I almost didn’t hear it anymore. Actually, I was kind of bothered by the people who saw the sound as a nuisance. It was a part of nature not that many people got to experience.

  One sound I loved was the albatross parents talking to their eggs, a reassuring and melodic eh eh eh. Sometimes an egg wouldn’t hatch, and long after all the other eggs had hatched, the parents still talked to the dead egg.

  Hoping, maybe.

  The same thing happened when a chick died. The adults would still talk to it. Then, one day, they would be gone.

  Because they knew somehow when it was time to give up. To stop hoping.

  The gooney hovered above me, curious.

  The line of the Survival at Sea card came to me, the one about killing any bird you see.

  But this albatross was no bird. Not to me.

  Albatross had souls.

  As hungry as I was, I knew too much about albatross, had seen how they lived.

  Supposedly albatross had the ability to sleep while they were aloft, to shut down a part of their brains in order to allow themselves rest while on their long flights.

  I wondered what this one was doing, how far it had been flying. Where it was going. Was it a parent with a chick somewhere?

  It was mid-June, rather late in the season for parents to still be feeding their chicks. By now, they’d given up, tired of it, ready to take off until it was time to start the cycle all over.

  Could it be one of this season’s chicks? This was the time of year when they left their nesting grounds to be on their own.

  Chicks learned to live, or die, by flying out to sea.

  And, if they survived, they stayed out at sea for seven years before coming back to Midway to nest. We called them teenagers, the ones who were back at Midway for the first few years, because they didn’t really know what to do. They danced in groups, trying to find a mate. And sometimes they did pair up and build a nest and lay an egg. But often they wouldn’t know what to do with it.

  The egg had to be kept warm, had to be nestled constantly for sixty days.

  When I’d go by a nest and see both parents sitting beside the nest, looking at the egg, I’d know they were teenagers, trying to figure it out. And of course they always did, eventually. But not soon enough for that year’s egg.

  A few drops of moisture fell on me from the gooney’s wings as it circled over me and came around again.

  Had it ever seen people on the ocean before? Of course, in ships. But like this? Such a small patch of raft, so low to the water?

  Does it wonder what we are? Why we’re here?

  The bird passed over me, continuing on its way. However old, or young, it was, the gooney seemed content in its world of sky and sea. The raft was simply a momentary distraction.

  I waved good-bye, watching until tears blurred my vision and I could see it no more.

  Late afternoon lowered the sun, which made the clouds moving to the east look especially purplish and dark. When I looked that way, I saw something in the distance. Something weird. Almost like a blur, kind of in the shape of a tornado, but a whitish and constantly shifting form in the sunlight.

  As it came closer, I saw them. And heard them.

  Birds. An agitated, chaotic, screeching cloud of birds. I picked out the ones I knew. Sooty terns, at least one blue-footed booby, a few fairy terns. They shifted and dove and flew. Below them, the surface of the water showed just as much, if not more, commotion.

  I’d seen that before, when I’d gone fishing at Midway with my dad. The birds followed the small fish, trying to catch them, as below, larger fish tried to eat the smaller ones. It was how we knew where to drop our fishing lines.

  What did they call it?

  I snapped my fingers. Bait ball. And this bait ball was heading straight for the raft. A whole lot of fish were coming right to me.

  “Max!”

  He didn’t move.

  My hands started to shake as my heart thumped.

  I could get a fish.

  I could get a fish, eat some of it, and then use the rest for bait to get more. I couldn’t stop myself from licking my parched lips.

  The Survival at Sea people could shove it.

  I can do this.

  Every year, a fairy tern always laid her egg right on the railing of our front porch. The chick was just a little white ball of puff, no taller than two or three inches to start. I’d named this year’s chick Sméagol, because I’d just reread Lord of the Rings.

  The mother brought back small flying fish, sometimes so big the fish dwarfed Sméagol. I knew there had to be some of those little flying fish in that bait ball, and with any luck …

  The smaller fish jumped right out of the water where any bird worth its feathers snatched them up. As they came nearer, I wondered whether I could use my hoodie as a net, either to scoop some out or catch them as they jumped. I took it in both hands and stretched it out, then doubled my grip. Everything depended on whether or not they avoided the raft.

  Kneeling, poised with my hoodie in trembling hands, I held my breath as the edge of the bird cloud reached me. All the calls and cries and screeches were a cacophony after so much silence. The small fish were so close I could almost reach out and touch them. Something warm and sticky plopped on my head. Then on my shoulder.

  Bird poop.

  Like a reflex, my nose scrunched, causing me to wince in pain. As I did, several of the little flying fish jumped up, so close, and with my hoodie I swatted them down into the raft, where they flopped on the bottom.

  “Yes!” I hooted. “Take that SURVIVAL AT FRICKIN’ SEA! Woohoo!”

  The bait ball seemed to stall over me, and I put the hoodie over my head to ward off the assault of the birds. Their cries continued as I watched the small fish die. Too bad. I needed them.

  One of the fish finally stopped thrashing right next to the plastic Santa Claus. As I reached for it, the Santa Claus jumped about six inches off the bottom of the raft.

  I fell back as something bumped my butt, shoving me upward.

  “Oh, God.”

  Something was under the raft. Something big.

  thirty-five

  I tried to see into the water. There were small fish and larger shapes under them, a couple feet long, which were probably tuna or wahoo or ulua. But under those? Could be anything. The guys who fished on Midway sometimes complained of Galapagos sharks trailing them, stealing their fish just as they try to haul them aboard.

  Another bump from under.

  Crap.
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  I stopped trying to look. My hands began to shake. Maybe I didn’t want to know.

  Please don’t tip over the raft.

  I picked up one of the little flying fish. If I didn’t get tipped over and eaten, I would still be hungry.

  I grabbed my hook and stuck the fish on.

  “Sorry, little guy.”

  Gripping the line, I wrapped it once around my fist and tossed it over.

  The line was short, about two feet, so the fish was barely in the water. Immediately, there was a tug. On Midway we fished with huge reels attached to the back of boats. But I’d been fishing for small stuff with a rod before on my grandparents’ lake in Wisconsin. I knew enough to wait, let them set the hook in their mouth, then yank. I waited.

  Another tug.

  I yanked.

  The fish yanked back and the raft began to move. It was all I could do to hang on. I had a good-size one.

  Sitting back down so I could use my whole body’s weight, I held tight. I wished I’d remembered to wrap the hoodie around it, just in case the line did end up being sharp enough to cut through my skin. But it was too late, so the only thing to do was hold on as best as I could.

  One fist at a time, I started pulling the line in. The striped face of a yellow skipjack appeared above the water, its eyes shiny and dark. The sight gave me more strength and I pulled harder. The fish was almost all the way above water, and I grinned, even though I had no idea how I was going to gut the thing.

  “Oh man! Max, I caught a—”

  The words died as a big open mouth with rows of razor-sharp teeth burst out of the water just below the skipjack and snapped shut, taking a mouthful of water and most of the fish below the waves. The shark was gone almost before I’d registered what happened.

  I let out a belated but still startled shriek.

  As hard as I’d been pulling, the force brought the rest of the skipjack into my lap. I quickly shoved it off, onto the floor of the raft where it lay, bloody, next to the Santa and the other little flying fish.