Berth Defined

“I’m telling you we’ve been out here a week shy of a month.”
“And I’m tellin’ you people drifting longer than us been rescued.”

Captain Glasgow opened his eyes and stared hard into the blue tarp that was less than a foot away from his face. He was unwilling to play leader and abandon his quiescent midday dreams, but since that pair of squirrels he called his crew couldn’t muster the stones to usurp his position with the sudden gift of a M-16, he supposed it was his responsibility to obtrude.

“You’re both right. Now save your breath. The more you boys run your mouths, the more moisture you lose to that great ball of fire in the sky.”

The captain and his last two mates had recovered a food locker and a tarp, the latter an amalgam of fresh water collection and shelter from the burning sun. It couldn’t accommodate all three men all at once, so two stayed under the canopy and covered the last man with their shirts at the hottest hours of the day.

Veem fidgeted in his swaddling pile of shirts and twisted so he could peek into the canopy. Fairer of skin than the captain, he had exposed too much of his back to the burning rays early on. These recent movements had exposed some of his lower back, a topographic map of suppurating boils and peeling skin.

“But if you wanted to save your breath, Cap’n, why didn’t you just say ‘sun?’ That wouldda’ been more succinct.”

Bollinger groaned and rubbed his bony knees together before splaying them both out until the soles of his feet reached the sunlight.

“You’re not succinct! By asking the Captain that question,” he said, “you just dragged out the conversation.”

Glasgow closed his eyes and tried to tune out his fellow survivors. He thought back to happier times on the Silver Fin cruise line when the entertainment was live and the skirts were short. When even the vegetarian table spreads emitted that luscious aura, and morning meals came with poached eggs and toast and every choice of spread, even marmalade. Bright young things, salubrious incarnate, led the tourists in calisthenics on B deck…

Unbidden, he remembered his last night in command of the bridge. Harbor pilots shouting at him about the water draw. The depth. His speed. The berth…

His ‘comeback plan’ had been working perfectly. He’d already managed the first part: sobriety. The next part involved getting his job back, and that was where he hit a snag.

Getting on a cruise ship in the Silver Fin line proved difficult, since the security folks still knew his face all too well. After some false starts he managed to stowaway in a lifeboat, where he planned to wait for an opportunity to show the crew that he hadn’t lost it.
And then it caught fire and sank.

Glasgow had pulled two tourists into the lifeboat and looked up at the listing, burning leviathan, feeling like a polliwog in the silhouette of a killer whale. The current pulled the smaller boat away, and he realized that he didn’t want to be the captain going down with that ship.

Next time he’d just spring for a plane ticket.