on the water

     This is an old one- from last June- written as I remember it. I wasn’t going to post it, but then I changed my mind, so here it is, long after the event. The facts may have shifted a bit in their transport to the page, for which I apologize. Also, I changed a few of the names.



    We were shooting a dolphin tour on a white catamaran off the coast of Hilton Head Island, the last shoot of a day that began at dawn. Just Chris, me, a camera, and a white binder filled with travel channel documents. We shot footage of everyone climbing aboard the boat, shot the tour guide’s introduction. Then we settled in to wait.
    “When you did Semester At Sea, did the boat look like this?” I asked.
    “Naw, it was a giant cruise ship.”
    “Wait,” I said. “I always imagined a great big sailboat. And you had to raise the sails and swab the deck and stuff.”
    He laughed. “There was a crew. We didn’t have to do anything.”
     “Oh.” I looked up. Giant white sails pulled up the breeze. People were laughing and taking pictures of each other. A family across from us stood around a red cooler filled with beers and sodas.
     “So the cruise ship,” he leaned back, “was high above the surface. Really high. And we weren’t allowed to swim in the ocean. On our first day out at sea, the captain rounded us up and said that if we jumped in the water and survived, we would most likely die before the boat could turn around. We were not allowed to swim. Ever.”
     The sun was thinking about beginning its decent. It was cool out on the ocean, away from all the humidity of the shore. The light bounced off the white sails, off the white ship, off of Chris’s white shirt so that the whole world seemed bright and open.
    “So my friend, Derik,” Chris continued, “He was crazy. He used to joke around about – well you remember back then everyone was wearing those ‘coed-naked’ shirts? We weren’t allowed to swim, but it was so hot on the boat. There was no shade anywhere, and everywhere you looked, there was just water, as far as the eye could see. Just ocean. But we couldn’t swim in it. So that’s all we ever wanted to do. Derik used to joke around about hanging a rope over the edge and lowering himself down- just to dip in the water. He used to call it the coed-naked-rope-dip club.”
     Jan, the energetic woman who ran the tour, pointed out to the starboard side and waved, “There! Look! A dolphin!” I didn’t move.
     “We should get this shot,” Chris said. He stood up, and we hauled the camera over to the starboard side. The dolphin appeared only once- a quick flash of dorsal fin, barely visible between the light on the waves.
    “There,” I whispered to him, gesturing with my head at two beautiful, serious-eyed children staring out at the sky.
     Chris saw it too. “Do you mind if we shoot you sitting there?” he asked them. “It’s for the travel channel.”
    I set up the shot: wistful child, windswept hair, pink and white sky, white boat, and silvery water. It gave me little chills. Afterward, we made our way back to our little corner, the seat by the back of the boat, away from most of the guests.
    “So what about the rope-dip club?” I asked, settling back into my spot next to him.
    “Oh yeah. So one night, Derik is hanging out with some of his other buddies, they’re up on the deck, walking around, and he’s looking at all the water and he’s like, ‘Man, I’m going to do it.’ And his buddies laugh and they’re like ‘Yeah man, right. Go do it.'
    So Derik grabs a rope, right? And he wraps it around his waist a bunch of times, and he ties the other end of the rope around a post on the deck.”
    “Was he drunk?”
    “I don’t know. I mean, maybe. But I don’t know. He was a pretty crazy guy. So he goes over to the edge of the ship, and he climbs over the railing, and his friends are like, ‘Oh shit, he’s really going to do it!’ He starts climbing his way down the outside of the ship. It looks for a second, like it’s going to work. Then all of a sudden, the rope slips out of the knot, and he drops down and disappears into the water, and like that – he’s gone.”
    I stared at Chris, my jaw hanging open. “The rope didn’t hold him?”
    “The rope didn’t hold him.”
    Just then, Jan came up to us. “Look at the two of you looking so cozy together over there.”
    “Aww, thanks Jan,” Chris said, smiling big at her.
    “You guys having a good time?”
    “Are we ever!”
    “Yeah, this is amazing,” I piped in.
    “It’s great now that the wind has picked up and we can turn the engine off.” She looked us over, the wind tousling her salt-and-pepper hair, and billowing her windbreaker. “You two look so beautiful together.”
    “Would this be a good time for us to interview you?” Chris asked.
    “Sure, sure!” She glanced at her husband who was steering. “This is a good time.”
     I set up the camera. The wind blew. Chris asked her questions about the catamaran, how long she’d been running the tour, why she got into this in the first place.
    “How does it sound?” he shouted over to me.
    “Can’t tell. The wind is too loud in my headphones. But the levels look good.”
     He winked at me and went back to the interview. I watched them and let my thoughts wander. Watched the easy way he spoke to people, the comfortable way they responded. I liked that he was so good with people. I could be quiet and stand next to him and hear everyone else’s stories. Except for when the wind blew into the headphones.
     When we finished the interview, Jan smiled at me and said that we really should interview her husband when he had a spare moment. We looked over at him. He was quiet compared to Jan’s garrulousness. He had one hand on the helm, steering, placidly staring out at the horizon.
     We moved the gear back to our corner and sat down again. “Chris.”
    “How’re you guys doing? You having fun?” Chris said to the newly-weds curled up in each other’s arms next to us.
    “Chris,” I said again.
    “Oh we’re fine, fine. We’re loving this weather. It’s so cool!” They looked out at the water together.
    “Chris, what happened to that guy? The guy that fell off the ship?”
    “Oh right.” He turned to me and leaned forward. “So yeah, the rope didn’t hold him and he went down. Just disappeared into the sea. His friends, they started screaming, and yelling. And they ran over to the railing and leaned over it, but they couldn’t see him. They couldn’t see anything. The water was black. Like ink. And the engine was loud. They couldn’t hear even if he was shouting. So they start yelling and just throwing those life-rings, those donuts, into the water, one after the other. Just yelling and throwing them into the water. They couldn’t see if he had grabbed one. They couldn’t see anything.
    “One of the guys, he ran and went to get the captain. The captain was pissed. I mean, he warned us. But we were all, 18, 19 years old. We were so young…
    “So the captain called all of us onto the deck. That’s the policy. If anyone is missing and suspected of going overboard, they can’t turn around until they do a head count. There were a hundred of us. I remember I was in my room at the time when I found out. I was playing guitar, and my friend burst in and started crying. I didn’t even believe her at first.
    “So we started to assemble on the deck, and people were crying and holding each other. The captain decided it was stupid to do the head count. He knew that Derik was overboard. He started the process of turning the ship around. But a big ship like that, going at that speed, you can’t just turn around, you’ve got to do a figure eight and loop back. But with the currents and the speed, it’s impossible to track back to the exact point where Derik fell in. Not to mention if he tries to swim or if the current carries him away. Meanwhile the water is freezing. There are no lights. No other ships. The ocean is black in the darkness, and Derik’s a black guy. He’s not going to stand out or anything. And the water is full of sharks.”
    “Dolphins!” Somebody shouted it.
    “Over here, everyone!” Jan, ever the hostess, gestured over to the port side. “Oh, wow, there are a lot of them!”
     We took the camera over. There were the dolphins. They were elusive, like shooting stars. Never seen by all the guests at once. One person would shout and point, and we’d whip the camera around and turn our heads to follow their gaze, but by then it was too late and we had missed it. A small cluster of people shouted at once, and Chris exclaimed. He caught that one. I missed it though. I was too distracted by the setting, by all the thoughts in my head. I was too slow to catch them.
     Finally the viewers and the viewed got tired with each other and parted ways, the dolphins swimming below for their dinner, and the guests turning back to their sodas and seats.
    “Let me take a picture of you two,” Jan said. We stood in front of the helm with the last of the sun setting behind us. “Smile!”
    Jan’s husband, Dimitri, was letting the kids take a turn steering. I watched them enviously. “Do you want to try it?” he asked me. He gave me the wheel and stood beside me, talking in a soft voice to guide us back to shore.     “See that blue light over there? The blinking one? You want to steer right in between those two lights. That’s where the dock is.”
     The last, tardy rays of sunlight slipped behind the hills, and we sailed our way past lavender skies and reflected waters. The boat was so quiet with just the wind pushing it, no engines. Dimitri spoke a little of his life in Greece, of the life he chose here running this tour boat in Hilton Head, and of steering by the stars. When he took the wheel back from me, the sky had darkened. A hush fell upon the group. They cuddled in the cooler air.
    Chris had wrapped up all the gear and put it away. I sat next to him.
    “Well?”
    “Well, what?”
    “What happened next?”
    “Oh, right. Derik said afterwards that it was the craziest feeling. He hit the water and it was freezing – just a shock of cold. And then the boat powered away. It left so fast. He saw the lights of the ship disappear and leave him by himself in the dark. He couldn’t see anything. He didn’t know if he should swim after it or just stay where he was. But the current was pulling him away too. And if he tried to move too much, the sharks would find him. He stripped off his clothes. They weighed him down too much. He was shaking and freezing in the cold water.”
    I looked up at Chris like a child. I didn’t notice that our sailboat was approaching the island that held the dock. The lights from the boat framed his face against the darkness of the world behind him. I shivered a little.
    “You cold?” he asked.
    “No, not really. What happened? How did they find him?”
    “He was really lucky. I mean, really, really lucky. When his friends threw the donuts down after him, they were the type to light up when they hit water. So the ship followed the trail of lights back as far as it would lead them. Then they put a small rescue crew into a life boat, lowered it down. They shined a light onto the water and shouted out for him until they heard him calling back. When they fished him out, he was unrecognizable. He was naked, shaking so hard that they had trouble holding him. His fingers and lips were blue.
    The captain was furious. The crew had to risk their lives to go into that life boat. They wasted hours and tons of fuel to turn around. It was all needless. Such a waste. Derik was instantly expelled and put into the infirmary.
    Once they knew he was going to be ok, he was allowed guests, but only three. He picked me and two of the friends that were there when he fell. We were so upset. I mean, we thought he had died. We thought we had lost him. The friends that were there when he fell started crying. They were a mess.
    We got to the room, and Derik was sitting there, covered in blankets, his skin still a little blue. He turned to us, sat up a little, his voice all raspy from the cold, and he said…..‘Coed-Naked-Rope-Dip-Club! I did it!’”
    “We’re here everyone!” Jan smiled bright. “We’re going to put the plank down, and just be very careful going across!”
    The littlest children on the tour were exhausted. Some slept in their parents’ arms. The couples held hands as they walked across the plank back to the shore. The dock was dark, the sky black aside from the lights on our boat and a few others.
    “Wow,” I said. “Wow.”
    “I know,” said Chris.
    “That is crazy.”
    “Did you kids have fun?” Jan came over and put her hand on my shoulder.
    “Yes,” I breathed. “It was wonderful.”
    Chris turned to me conspiratorially, “Wait till you hear my pirate story.”
    “There’s a pirate story?”
    We stayed until the last guest left the boat. Chris talked to the couple about the travel channel video, promising it would air in the next few months. I was exhausted. I stood there next to the gear in the dark, listening, smiling, watching a giant spider crawl its way across the wood slats of the dock, my head filled with thoughts of dolphins and daredevils and far away oceans.
    Finally, we said our goodbyes and walked together up the dock, to the car.
    “Good day today, Shiva.” Chris said.
    “Yeah,” I said. “A great day.”