Captain Pike's Ship Log II

Chapter 7 -- "Rescued!"

Anthony woke up in the dark, freezing. He managed to rummage around and find a nice thick sweatshirt. Taking a drink of bottled water, he saw that the sky was clear and it looked as though the stars were hanging down low, relaxed, as if backstage, unobserved, after a tiring performance. Anthony saw the big dipper tipping precariously, well above the horizon. The sea seemed fairly calm and he paddled a bit to rotate his barge. Immediately, a swirling universe of stars appeared in the water. This was not a reflection, but the luminous emission from tiny phosphorescent animals in the sea. He shivered a bit but marveled at the beauty of this scene.

One edge of the horizon seemed to be somewhat illuminated. This was either the distant lights of civilization on the mainland, or the coming of dawn. A bit of wind still chilled his legs and he decided to try deploying the metalized plastic "space blanket" which was rolled up tightly along the side of the barge. This proved to be a noisy, tippy and calamitous affair. Once the incessant crackling ceased and he lie down gazing upward, the warmth reflected was considerable. He smiled in the apparent success of his invention. Any minuscule rotation of the barge was magnified by the sheer dimension of the firmament. Still smiling, Anthony shut his eyes and soon they felt warm, almost stinging a bit, as if from a hard days seeing. It was nice, the gentle motion of the barge. He thought about the day and the ending of summer. Summer had always been a better time for Anthony than what he could remember of the school year.

When he was a young boy, he had spent summers at his grandfather's cottage on the lake. These were happy times but always ending with autumn. Autumn, a place to pause for reflection and introspection. Even as a child, Anthony had become aware of his human change as summer drew to a close. He could remember saying goodbye to his stuffed animal friends at the end of one summer. Later, he bid farewell to innocence and wondered what new girls would be in his class as the school year started out. Now he was a man. But his feelings were similar: this had been a summer of swimming, where would he go from here? Oh, he enjoyed the challenge of study, and he was a good student, scoring better than most. But why? Where was it all going? His vague plan to become a teacher of some sort seemed now incongruous with his present interests. And more to the point: how would he continue his ocean swimming while attending college? Anthony was surprised that he hadn't thought of this before. It was quite a bit further to the ocean from campus than from his own home. Further, most of his free time was absorbed when attending college. On the other hand, what kind of future existed for a person with his motivation? Maybe he can return to lap swimming in the University pool. He knew it meant a great deal to his mother that he achieved a college education. And Anthony's father, always self-deprecating, had cautioned Anthony to not wind up in his shoes. Anthony's father hadn't finished high school in the traditional sense, instead, receiving a GED after Anthony had finished elementary school. Ironically, Anthony had looked up to his father in many ways. People had come from other states to learn how to build boats in the tradition of the region in which they lived. More than simply possessing a great intelligence, Anthony had realized, even as a young child, that his father seemed happier than most men -- happier than other kids' fathers. It bothered Anthony greatly when his father would insist that he wanted something better for his son since Anthony wished to be exactly like his father. What would his dad think of this? It seemed silly to be lying on a homemade float, miles from shore, pondering his future in the middle of the night. He drifted off to an uneasy sleep.

The morning came with a light rain. As he woke, Anthony had the sensation of waking up in a tent as he had done as a young boy. The rain's gentle and random pitter-pat on his plastic blanket made for a kind of alarm clock. He sat up and attempted to stow the "roller-blanketing". The resulting rolled up material wasn't as neat as it had been from the unfurling, but it was sufficiently out of the way. There might be a way to keep the material flat as it wound on the long, flexible spool. He took off the sweatshirt and slipped into the water to relieve himself. He decided to begin moving immediately and began a measured saunter westward. It wasn't long before he began to feel tired. He slowed some, deliberately pressing less firmly with each stroke -- this was a technique he had used in the past to conserve on his breath, conserve on his oxygen. Swimming along like this a bit longer revealed a problem: he was hungry. He pulled up into the sitting position on the barge. A lone seagull flew overhead as he munched his orange. Food seemed to taste better at sea. Some salty hard crackers seemed to go well with the citrus.

The rain picked up a bit and Anthony slipped back in and began his swim home. After adjusting his breathing and the meter of his stroke, he entered that very comfortable phase of plodding which allowed him the luxury of pragmatic thinking. As if his conscious mind were an antique shop, he pondered over the various items, dismissing those which required no continued dissemination, and then gave renewed attention to the more interesting and unresolved items. Having spent many hours in his watery office of conjecture and reflection, Anthony had developed a mnemonic mechanism for organizing and inventorying. The thing was, he didn't want to stop and jot down every important thought requiring follow-up on a piece of paper -- this would be plain lunacy. On the other hand, certain items definitely required action to bring them to fruition on dry land.

During the hours of methodical swimming, here is what he would do. When a certain concept had been thought through and needed follow-up, he would assign it a letter or two, representative of its mission. For example, his pickup truck needed an oil change. This concept acquired the tag "TO" -- truck oil. Another thing on his mind that required some digging into was his university housing scholarship -- there was some outstanding paperwork in order that he stay in the dorm. The mnemonic associated with this thought became "US" -- University Scholarship. Fix/repair of mower, was a great one resulting in "FROM", he hated the idea of his mother having to mow the lawn with a less-than-operative piece of equipment. The mower would run for a while, and then die out. Usually, it would start back up again easily enough, but then soon repeat this dysfunction. Anthony had pretty much concluded that the lawn mower's fuel tank contained sediment which was clogging the little screen at the beginning of the fuel line. He had seen this malady cause the same symptom before. It would be easy enough to clean it out so that his mother would have trouble-free operation. But this was one of those things, that would slip the mind until Anthony was back in college -- sitting in English class imagining his mother having to start, and restart the mower over and over again to finish their relatively small corner lot. By then, the mower's malady would, not only detract from his mother's day, but be able to reach into his life, miles away and distract him from his learning experience.

Given that a person has hours of sensory deprived swimming time, with his brain supplied with oxygen rich blood, one can sift through all sorts of vestigial thoughts and sort them out. In this way, Anthony was able to make the best use of the time he spent walking about on the planet. Most people don't have the luxury of rigorously organizing their recent memories and thoughts. Where before, he may have walked into a room saying to himself "now, what did I want here?", now he could remain sharp and focused. While the sentence "to us from ", was incomplete, it needed an object, it was intact enough to easily remember, and thus, reconstruct the important thoughts sifted from his ruminations.

He heard the sound of a boat approaching. Even the largest outboards, when heard in the water while swimming, sound like tinny alarm clocks hopelessly buzzing in the bath water. The metallic grinding sound grew louder, causing Anthony to stop swimming and look for its source. Sure enough, not far off to the west, a small, all aluminum boat approached containing two men. As the man in the bow of the boat shading his eyes turned to the boat's pilot and pointed, Anthony recognized them as members of the US Coast Guard. Anthony was treading lightly with his right elbow on the barge when the small craft pulled up alongside him.

"You Anthony Winslow?", commanded the man in the bow, both arms locked on the gunwale, he seemed suspicious.

A flash of terror ran through Anthony. The man in the boat speaking to him was wearing a dark blue or black baseball style cap, Anthony had to squint to see his face. "Yeah, sure, I'm Anthony, what's this all about?", he had never been interrogated at sea.

The man looked away from him, leveling a stern gaze at the horizon, "you're almost a mile from shore, son, and your mother is worried sick about you".

So that was it, she must've called, or come home early. One of the men was now speaking on a radio as Anthony began to imagine what his mother must've been going through. It wasn't as if he were doing anything wrong. Why did he put off telling his mother of his plan to swim out and stay overnight? Because she would've thought he was crazy, that was why. And now, these men thought he was crazy. Of course he wouldn't be allowed to swim in by himself. They would need to "rescue" him.

Anthony felt stupid and humiliated and began to shiver as he rode towards shore in the Coast Guard launch. He had been made to wear a Coast Guard blanket but he refused to make eye contact with either of the men, staring instead at his dejected barge as it bounced and played in the wake made by the rescue boat. He hadn't argued with the men about riding back in their boat -- they had offered him a hand up like an errant child and he had clambered aboard as an admission of guilt. The old feelings were back. He knew he should be saying something but it just seemed that no matter what he did, people always wound up thinking he was weird. He remained obdurate and didn't speak unless absolutely necessary until they brought him to the beach where his truck was parked.

"I couldn't imagine what had happened to you", her eyes were filled with tears, "you mustn't do this without letting me know. The Coast Guard men said they found you swimming a mile from the beach, where were you last night?".