Shipwreck

Jim Parks

December 2005

He rested a little bit, just sidestroking along, guiding himself with his feet and his hands.

"Got to get with it, man. Don’t want the sharks to think they’ve found something that is dying."

Dying? Where did that come from?

He didn’t believe it when the first fin appeared right in front of him, slicing through the water like a knife. A second appeared off his left side and he felt something shove him from behind.

He did a little dance in the water, panicked, screaming for all the world to hear. His head dipped under the water and he heard the high-pitched sound of a record player turned to five times it normal speed.

Almost like a burst transmission of encoded radio signals, something he didn’t understand.

Another shove. He followed the direction he had been thrust into, fighting to outrun whatever had pushed him

"I guess this is it."

He turned to fight and there it was. The massive bulge over the eyes, the bottle nose, the flattened tail, the blow hole spouting spray and air like a pneumatic tool suddenly unhooked from the hose.

The truth was, he could barely see. His eyes were swollen almost shut.

He kept swimming, following the guide of the porpoises. They were shouting their eek, eek, eek noises at him, fussing at him, making him mind.

As quickly as they had come, they were gone, and he found slack water.

He breast stroked toward the fuel dock as easily as if he were in a swimming pool in a motel courtyard.

The surge pushed him against one of the massive earth mover tires used for fenders and he climbed aboard it, reaching up for another grasp, and pulled himself up to stand on its top. From there, it was easy enough to climb to the next one stacked atop it, and grab the chain that held it to the dock.

He crawled onto the creosoted planks and pulled their pungent aroma in as if it was some magic elixir.

He rolled over on his back and said goodbye to "Lady Patricia."

It was a short period of mourning. Almost immediately, he began to shiver.

He regained consciousness and checked his chronometer. The numbers and hands on the analogue dial glowed green and sickly, the way he was feeling. He’d been asleep for about fifteen minutes, and he was starting to shiver uncontrollably. His body temperature was the same as the water, which was probably at least ten or fifteen degrees cooler than the air.

He jumped to his feet and made a run up the dock. He found his way blocked by a chainlink fence and gate secured with a sturdy chrome padlock and a length of rusty log chain.

He cursed the thing and shook it.

"Who the hell they think they’re gonna lock out?"

Up and over the gate, resting one sneaker on the chain, another on the cross bar of the gate. He almost tore his shorts off on the barbed wire on top, then leaped down and caught himself.

He staggered to the guard post where he could see a Bahamian in a funny cop uniform asleep with the newspaper on his lap.

"Mister. Mister. Help me. I’m cold."

The Bahamian jumped to his feet and grabbed his night stick and a flashlight, blinding him in its beam."

"Mon, what the hell you doin’?"

"I sank my boat."

"What boat, boy? What kinda boat?"

"Sloop. Native sloop, man."

"Where you come from, boy?"

"Out there."

He pointed to the water past the dock and the inlet, out in the Tongue.

"Mon, you crazy. It’s sharks out there bigger than you! This private property. What you want me to do about it? You trespassin’."

He couldn’t stand up any longer. His rectum released another rush of the warm water, which ran down his legs with all the rest of the sea water, and he collapsed.

"I’m cold, man. So cold."

He felt the weight of some fabric draped over top of him. He grasped it like a baby in a crib, shivering and wiping the mucus out of his nose and mouth.

"Blow your nose on the flag, nigga, blow you nose on the flag!"

The guard was whipping him with the newspaper.

He couldn’t help but laugh. He had made a swim of about seven miles over the ground and no telling how many through the water, and here this goon was chastising him with a newspaper for blowing his nose on something he couldn’t see.

"I’m sorry, sir. Please leave me alone."

He awakened when someone nudged him with the toe of a highly polished boot. He could see blue trousers with a wide red strip up the outseam.

"Sir, how did you get here?"

"I swam, sir."

"Why?"

"Because I wrecked my boat, The Lady Patricia from Man O’War Cay, and I swam over to here."

"From where?"

"I make it about seven mile off of Golding Point Light by dead reckoning, sir."

"Mon! You so lucky to be alive!"

"I know you are right, sir."

"Does she present a hazard to navigation?"

"In what way, sir?"

"Would another boat or ship ground on her hulk?"

"I don’t think so, sir. I believe the water is more than a mile deep out there, at least somewhere. She is in very deep water."

"I am going to call ambulance for you, sir. Are there any other survivors? Was anyone lost."

"No, I was single-handed."

"You are so foolish, mon. So foolish."

There was dark laughter from a dozen people gathered around that he couldn’t see.

Someone else: "Dat nigga got no sea sense, none whatsoever."

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