Hole in My Life (6 page)

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Authors: Jack Gantos

BOOK: Hole in My Life
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July 15:
Today I took a photograph of Hamilton sitting at
the wheel with the sun setting behind him. He frowned. “Now take a picture of me,” I said, and handed him the camera.
He flipped the camera over, unsnapped the back, pulled out the film, and tossed it over his shoulder into the ocean. “If I find any more film on board it will join that roll,” he said.
“It's just a photo,” I replied.
“It's evidence,” he snapped back. This is the first evidence I have had that he even thinks we could be caught.
“Let me see your wallet,” he said.
I gave it to him.
He threw away all my identification except for my fake Florida license. “Might come in handy,” he said.
 
July 16
: Dead calm today. Hot. The sails hanging limply from the gaffs like sleeping bats. At one point I dove overboard and swam around the boat as if it were at anchor. Hamilton threw
an empty bottle overboard and we bobbed along next to it for hours. By the end of the day we may have covered a mile. No more. Feel like a sitting duck. Said so to Hamilton. He drifted into a story about his biggest concern on the ocean being pirates, not police. Told me about friends
in the business
who were boarded by pirates who tied them to the masts, and then took their stash. Somehow I find this absurd and can't stop thinking of Captain Hook and his crew of pirates in
Peter Pan
. Wish Hamilton would swallow a clock so I could hear him creeping around. He stalks me like a mumbling crocodile.
 
July 17
: Started reading
Heart of Darkness
. Already thinking that Kurtz is waiting for me in New York along with his gang of savages—and a deep mystery about the evil in the soul of man that I can't solve until I get there.
 
July 18
: Woke up to gunshots. Carefully stuck my head above the deck hatch and saw Hamilton firing his pistol at cans he tossed into the air. He missed them all. I knew he had a pistol because I'd poked around the cabin and found it under his mattress. When he saw me he made me put a can on the end of a yardstick and stand up on the bow while he shot at it from the stern. He missed each time, which was not a relief. I heard the bullets whiz by. William Tell was a good shot and put an
arrow through an apple on his son's head. William Burroughs was a terrible shot. He put a glass of water on his wife's head and shot her just above the eye. The Mexican police called her death an accident. If Hamilton hit me I'd just drop into the water and sink like a stone. Nobody would know the difference—not even him.
 
July 19
: I've missed talking to another human. Last night, after Hamilton came to relieve me of my shift, instead of heading down to the main cabin to sleep, I stayed put. I remained as mute as Friday to Crusoe, hoping that he'd break the ice. But he didn't. He held his hot tea to his lips, and patted delicately at his beard, his fingers slowly adjusting the symmetry after his nap.
“Have you ever thought about what might happen to us if we get caught?”
Hamilton's laugh came out of him like a coiled spring jigging up and down. He had to set down his teacup.
“You are
afraid,”
he finally said. “Afraid of the punishment. You can't be afraid of what we are doing, because we're doing nothing wrong.”
My fear amused him. He began a new round of wild laughter. The compass light illuminated his face so that he looked like a carved pumpkin. If I had any hope of reaching shore, I'd jump overboard.
I stood up and went downstairs. But I didn't sleep. Hamilton had read my mind—I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm just afraid of the punishment.
 
July 20
: The sea is like unrolled velvet under the half moon. Fell asleep at my watch. Tilted forward and hit the edge of the compass with my chin. Blood streamed down my neck and chest. Thought I had severed my carotid artery. When Hamilton saw me he shook his head. After he had a cup of tea he cleaned out the gash and put a bandage on it. I should be fine. Had a headache all day.
 
July 21
: No birds. No music. No noise. No clouds. No wind. Hamilton pacing in circles like an angry clock. In the sky the jet streams crisscross from east to west and west to east like ICBMs. Perhaps when we reach New York it won't be there. No city. No country. No people. We'll just travel around the globe like the navy in Nevil Shute's
On the Beach,
searching for survivors and waiting for the radiation cloud to cook us.
 
July 22
: Ate too much hash. Stared up at the full moon's blemished face. Thought of men walking on the moon. During the first moon walk I was watching television at a friend's house in Florida when a car ran off the road and hit the side of the
house. Scared the crap out of us. The man had been driving with his head sticking out the window, staring up at the moon, looking to see the spaceship.
 
July 23
: Not well.
 
July 24
: Same as yesterday.
 
July 25
: I was sitting at the cabin table eating some dried prunes when Hamilton looked over at me from the kitchen. “I haven't seen you take a shit yet,” he remarked.
“So?” I replied. My face reddened. Taking a shit was private business.
“Just curious,” he said. “It's a small boat. If you don't shit in the crapper I can only hope you're not doing it like a sneaky cat behind the hash.”
“Well, I'm not shitting in the fo'c'sle, if that's what you mean.”
“Where then?” he asked, raising his nose like a shit detective and sniffing loudly.
“Overboard,” I said. “Like the old-time sailors.”
“Those old-timers had seats out under the bowsprit. What do you do? Just hang off the bowsprit and shit down the back of your legs?”
“No. I jump into the water and hang on to the towrope and shit in the ocean.”
“Bloody hell!” he cried out.
“Bloody hell!” I cried back, mocking him.
“You know what can happen to your ass if you shit in the sea?”
“Get arrested by Jacques Cousteau?”
“No. Worse. You can get your ass bit off. Sharks will chum your links and bite your arse down to the bone.”
“You're putting me on,” I said.
“Seen it happen,” he said. “A fellow named Guy went to fertilize the sea and after he did his duty a shark took his legs.”
“Really?”
“Believe it,” he said.
“So how do you do it?” I asked.
“The crapper,” he said. “That's what it's there for.”
“Are you telling the truth?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “I still need help sailing the boat otherwise I wouldn't give a shit about your ass.”
 
July 26
: Started using the crapper.
 
July 27
: All the bread is old. Furry with medallions of blue mold. Hamilton toasts it. Each time we take a bite clouds of
mold spores drift across the table. We slather the bread with jam in an effort to keep the dust in place. It helps, but as soon as the bread splits open it coughs out another cloud. We have to eat it on deck with the wind to our backs to keep ourselves from gagging.
 
July 29
: Another night without a breeze. Nothing to do. I tried to read, but instead of focusing my attention I became restless. I'm tired of just sitting. I smoked some hash and then dove overboard. I swam around the boat and on my second lap I noticed Hamilton's porthole was open. We usually keep them closed, but with the sea so flat we aren't worried about waves splashing through. I stopped beneath the porthole and listened for a minute. I could hear him breathing, heavily. I held on to the bottom rim of the hole and pulled myself up with one hand. With the other I reached in and grabbed his leg. He hollered, and kicked out.
I dropped under the water, but even from there I could hear the gunshot.
Oh no, I thought. I flipped him out. I swam around to the stern and pulled myself up. As soon as I got my head above the deck I saw him step up out of the main hatch and point the pistol at me. It went off. I buckled and dropped back into the water. I was so scared I didn't know if he had shot me or not. I swam around to the port side and quietly broke the surface. I
reached up and held on to the bottom of a stanchion. I could hear Hamilton back at the stern.
“You think you're so funny? I'll show you what scared is!” He fired into the water. And again. “You laughing yet? You failed to consider that in the British navy an officer has the right to execute a sailor who is a danger to an operation.”
I didn't know how to calm him down so I kept quiet. I peeked up over the deck and watched him. After a few minutes he dropped the gun and began to adjust the sails.
“Here we are,” he shouted to himself, “bobbing out here like a bloody cork. It's enough to make a man go mad and I'm stuck here with a nitwit.”
I dropped back into the water and swam around to the stern, where it was easier to pull myself up. “Can I come aboard, captain?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I'm tired of wanting to shoot you. I'd just like to flog you instead.” Then he turned and went back to his cabin. I retook the wheel and when my shift was up I didn't dare go wake him. And when he finally came to relieve me, he didn't say a word. He certainly scared me. And I think he scared himself firing blindly into the water. I didn't like that he called me a nitwit, but I haven't brought it up for discussion.
 
July 30
: Of all the sea books I've been reading, the book that has taken me over is Jack London's
Martin Eden.
Just as Holden
Caulfield sees phonies everywhere, those same phonies can't recognize Eden's talent and they run him down. He was a man trying to create greatness, and the phonies were too ignorant to recognize anything beyond their own limitations.
On my night shift I've begun to act out the final scene, where Martin Eden pushes himself through a porthole and dives into the dark water and intentionally drowns himself. I don't have a porthole to dive through, but I do have a ship to dive from. I don't really want to kill myself so I tie the end of our yellow towline in a tight knot around my ankle before diving in. There in the darkness with the sky full of stars I lie on my back and glide through the water with the boat pulling me along. It is beautiful to look at the boat, lit only by the compass light and the moon off the sails as she glides up and over the slow swells. It is so peaceful. Martin had once seen the moon as hopeful, too, but after he was beaten down by cynics the moon was dark for him. I wondered if I could ever kill myself as he had. If that yellow towline slipped off my foot, would I sink into the sea as he had or would I swim for all my life to catch up to it? I won't know until it happens. I do know that there is no reason for me to drown myself from sorrow since I haven't yet tried to achieve anything great.
 
July 31
: For the last week the wind has been unusually calm, and in order to make any time at all we have lowered the sails
and used the engine. Soon, we speculate, we will run out of fuel. About midday I saw in the distance what I first thought was an oil derrick. I pointed it out to Hamilton. “Let's take a look,” he said.
We coursed toward it. Oddly, we couldn't seem to hold our bearing and the rig kept moving from our port side to starboard.
“Is something wrong with our rudder?” I asked. I was worried because the great German battleship
Bismarck
had been hit in the rudder and was doomed to going in circles until she was sunk by the British. If Hamilton and I were stuck going in circles, we'd soon try to kill each other—and I'd be the one getting torpedoed.
Hamilton fiddled with the wheel. “No, we're fine,” he replied.
Then, as we got closer, we figured it out. It wasn't an oil derrick but an enormous Japanese fishing trawler with two tall cranes for hauling up their vast nets. Hamilton had seen one before. “They stay out for a year at a time,” he said. “They catch the fish, then process and can them right on board. It's a floating factory.”
I went up to the bow and began to wave to them. I could see that they were trying to avoid us because they didn't want us to foul their nets, and now the large cranes were hauling them up. A few fish flopped around trying to get back to the sea.
“Ahoy!” I shouted through my cupped hands. “Do you speak English?”

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