Soul Food

Every direction showed me the same monotonous view; gentle waves reflecting bright sunlight.  How long had I been on this boat?  There had, supposedly, been food and water on board to support two people for a week and that had been gone for?  I tried to remember and couldn’t.  What I knew for certain is that my lips were dry and cracked while my stomach was a constricted knot in my gut.  I was sunburned and my bones ached from lack of movement.  Not long into this solitary voyage I had tried swimming a little and that had nearly ended in disaster.  I’d almost lost the boat and then barely been able to heave myself back inside it, so I had made no further attempts at exercise.  It didn’t really matter because I was dying and the length of time it had taken me to reach this point was irrelevant, since I saw no hope at all of changing my condition before it reached its conclusion.

I lay prostrate in the bottom of the wooden craft, without the strength to reach the seat or raise myself to view the sunlight on the waves.  The boards rocked softly on the waves underneath, speaking of sleep and conjuring tortured visions of splashing streams with pools of water swirling among rocky banks.  My subconscious pulled fish from the pools and set them roasting over a nearby fire and my awareness slipped away as the world of my imaginings pulled me to a better place.

Fishing in the surf was both a calming occupation and a means of survival.  I’d always liked fish but it became a pretty monotonous meal after a week or two and after a month and more eating it became more a grim effort to sustain life than an enjoyable activity.  I had made several attempts to kill some of the gulls which landed here so often, but without any success to add variety to my diet.  A stream flowed from the rocky hillock that formed the center of the small island so water was no problem but drinking only water became as tiresome as eating nothing but fish.  I might never eat another bit of fish again, should I ever be freed of my current predicament, but I was alive and reasonably well so I had reason to hope.  That was in and of itself a miracle for which to be grateful.

The wreckage of the small plane in which I’d been flying had washed up on the beach nearby and provided me with the means for fishing and carrying water.  Bits and pieces of it pulled into the treeline and augmented with a few branches and vines made an adequate shelter so for someone lost and alone I was more comfortable than anyone could expect.  The pilot had seen the tiny bit of land as the engine failed and struggled to keep the craft in the air long enough to reach it.  He had fallen considerably short and had died, I hoped, in the crash but the flotation of my seat had brought me to shore.  The plane itself had washed ashore about three days after the crash and the remains still strapped in the seat had been pretty thoroughly chewed by whatever carnivorous creatures lurked in the area.  It had been a grim business, but I had pulled them free and buried him as well as I could above the tide line.  It wasn’t exactly a hero’s funeral but he was surely my hero and I hoped that any spirit watching recognized the respect.

I was hauling in a fair sized whitefish when I first spotted the little speck on the horizon.  I waded back out of the surf with my catch and turned to watch as the speck slowly grew, moving with the tide toward the beach.  I sat farther down the beach to clean the fish, scattering the remains for the gulls and hoping that I might get one for dinner when they came, watching whatever it was slowly approaching the island.  I had the fish spitted over a fire near my shelter by the time it became apparent that a small boat was moving into the surf at the bar beyond the beach itself.

The appearance of a boat was exciting.  I had an idea which direction I would need to travel to improve my chances of rescue, but no real notion of how far it might be or how long I might be in such a craft to reach help.  Despite such a limitation, I felt both that the boat improved my chances and that its sudden, unexpected arrival was an excellent sign.  As it rocked its way roughly over the bar, I made my way into the surf to pull it in.

I was over my head and swimming when I reached it so I worked my way to the back and pushed it towards the beach until I could stand.  The contents of the craft, finally visible as I stood in the waves, came as a shock.  Lying in the bottom was a human body, showing signs of being cooked alive by the sun but none of actual remaining life.  I dragged the boat as quickly as I could up onto the sand and reached in to check for a pulse.  Upon finding the faintest flutter at his throat, I ran to my shelter for water.

I returned with one of my bottles from the plane and poured the water slowly over his head and neck, hoping to cool him enough to bring him to consciousness.  He was at least six feet tall but thin, emaciated from lack of food and water.  Two empty water jugs and several containers told the tale of running out of supplies during a long time adrift, making me all the more appreciative of my pilot’s sacrifice.  Even in his condition it was difficult to get him to my shelter for cover and I greatly feared that he was too far gone for me to save.  I got him under cover and sat him up with his back to a flimsy wall while I removed my slightly burned dinner from the fire and went for more water.    

The jugs in the lifeboat were bigger than my bottles, so I retrieved them and carried them to the stream.  When I brought them back to the shelter, the man’s fluttering pulse remained and I continued bathing his skin, allowing small drops of water to seep between his lips to hopefully soak into his parched mouth.  I continued this as I ate my fish, which tasted better than it had in some time, and well into the night until I fell asleep leaning against the wall next to him.

It was still dark when I was awakened by a croaking gasp from my companion.  Fearing the worst, I checked again for the pulse, finding it a little stronger and accompanying a soft, raspy breathing.  I began bathing his face and neck again, allowing a little more water into his mouth as he seemed to smack slowly at the drops with his lips.  By daylight his pulse was barely discernible but steady and his breathing was at least regular although it resembled a death rattle more than evidence of life.  I had to fish and gather water but I kept a close watch on my charge as I went about my day.  By evening he was involuntarily swallowing small dribbles of water, though showing no signs of consciousness, and a thin ray of hope for his survival grew in my heart.

That small ray, however, left me with a problem as well.  Somehow, I had to get nourishment into him and not simply water.  He couldn’t eat solid food yet and probably wouldn’t be able to for some time, so I had to devise some method of making broth.  All of my containers and the ones in the boat were plastic but I searched the wreckage until I found a small metal bracket much like a box.  It took considerable effort to remove it but eventually I managed and brought it to the fire.  When the fish was cooked, I put small bits of it in the tin and boiled them, adding water until I could no longer see solid meat, and began adding this to the water which I dripped into his mouth.  He seemed to swallow it well and did not choke, so the small hope grew.

I cared for him like this for days, at least a week though I did not count, before he briefly opened his eyes as I bathed his face.  “Can you hear me?” I asked as soon as he did, my own voice sounding alien to my ears, but he lapsed immediately into somnolence without response.  This small sign of recovery strengthened my resolve and I ate that evening with more relish than I had in quite some time.  It occurred to me that I hadn’t felt sick of eating fish since this man had drifted to my island. 

Each day after that his eyes opened for longer periods of time.  When he showed any wakefulness, I spoke to him as much as I could and finally, his eyes followed me when I spoke.

“I’m John.” I said.  I had introduced myself at every chance but this time he blinked, looking at me clearly.

“You understand me today?” He blinked again and continued to look my way.

“I’m Jonathan Staten.  The plane I was in crashed near this island several months ago, I think.  I can’t be quite sure how long.  You drifted up in a boat quite a bit after and I’ve tried to revive you.  I haven’t been at all certain that I would be able to.”  I nearly choked on that so I stopped.

“Fssss,” His lips moved and he tried to speak without any success.

“Don’t try to talk yet.” I cautioned him. “I think that you’re recovering now, so Just be patient.  I’m not going anywhere.” I gestured at our surroundings and actually laughed.  I hadn’t laughed since before the plane crash.

“John Staten,” I thought to myself as my eyes slid shut once more, “His name is John Staten.”

My eyelids fluttered crustily, showing me a blurry view of whatever little hovel covered me.  I had vague recollections of this scene and a wildly bearded man but my last strong memory was of hunger, thirst, and glaring sun.  I remember closing my eyes into sweet dreams of water and shade.  It occured to me that here I was with water and shade.  I was still thirsty and my stomach rumbled, painfully, at the thought of food.  I was half sitting against something solid and as I tried to sit up a bit straighter, the bearded man came in, catching me around the shoulders.

“Hey, take it easy.  Let me help.”

John Staten is what he’d said.  He had told me that his name was John Staten.  I had tried to tell him mine, but I couldn’t manage to speak.  He had water for me now, which I tried to gulp.  He managed to give only sips though.

“Careful, you have to sip this slowly.  Just take a little at a time and swallow slowly.  I’m glad to see you awake but don’t hurry things yet.  You’ve been well over toward the shady side of dead and you don’t need to go back yet.”

I listened.  I didn’t have much choice, since I could barely move.  He bathed my face and washed me but I didn’t recognize my limbs as my own.  What I saw were bits of scarecrow with stretched garments for skin, weak sick, and emaciated.  I remembered the comfort of my dream, the escape from the pain of my ending life and began resenting having been awakened, but I listened.

I listened because once John Staten started talking, he wouldn’t stop.  He talked while he washed me.  He talked while he gave me water and some steadily thickening, vile tasting liquid that I suppose had some sort of food in it.  It was mostly gibberish to me at first, just a near constant stream of words to which I paid no attention, but as time passed I retained more of his chatter.  He was a lawyer.  He was from Arizona.  He was thirty-six years old and an only child.  He had no wife, no kids, no family, and he had never travelled until he decided to make the trip which ended here.  I was determined to regain my speech just so I could tell John Staten to shut up.

I don’t know how much time passed.  It was interminable to me; struggling to move, to speak, and subjected to John Staten’s continuous monologue.  I slowly healed though, and it was John Staten’s unfailing attention that brought that about.  I moved my arms, then my legs, and gradually relearned the use of my fingers and toes.  I felt the liquid, the water, making up my body more acutely than I ever had before.  I stood at long last, if only for a moment with John Staten’s help, but it was only a short time later that he helped me outside to sit beneath a tree and look at the waves crashing on the beach.

I had heard them all through my recovery and I’d hated it.  I remembered the torment of the sun glaring harshly off of those waves and the horrible thirst which they would not quench.  Today, however, I was shaded and a breeze caressed my healing skin.  Nearby was a small fire with a fish over it on a spit and the smell of roasting fish made me ravenously hungry.  As I sat there, I found that, the horrors of the past notwithstanding, it was actually beautiful. 

I sat there, looking at the beach and hearing John’s chattering as a background harmony to the waves, for a long time before I realized that he was speaking to me directly about something and looked around.

“I think that you should give this a try.  Take your time and don’t eat too much but at least see if you can stand something solid.”  In his hands was a plastic container with some broken up pieces of the fish in it. 

He sat down next to me and offered me a small piece with his fingers and I turned my head.  He looked disappointed and began to coax me to eat but this was important to me.  I slowly reached into the container, trying to make my still stiffened fingers hold a small bite.  I dropped it and he reached to help again but I shook my head and tried again.  He slid a small cup of water next to me and sat back, eating his own fish slowly as he watched me struggle.  Eventually, I got the tiniest morsel between my fingers and brought it to my mouth, slowly chewing and tasting actual food.  It may as well have been forever since I ate anything and this tasted like manna from heaven.

“Great!”  He exclaimed. “Don’t hurry, just see if you can keep it down.”

I let him help me take a sip of water, felt the cool liquid coat my throat and mouth, then took another.  I struggled, trying so hard to find my voice, and he cautioned me to not push, to take my time.  This was as important as the bite of fish, however, and I continued over his protests.

Eventually, I succeeded.  My voice emerged as a halting, barely audible croak, but it emerged.

“Best. Meal. Ever.” 

I smiled as I said it.