Castle of Water: A Novel(11)
“This is it?”
“Oui. This is the kit.”
“What’s inside it?”
“I’m in the process of finding out. And the raft still works. I checked. It deflated because the plug came loose, not because it had a hole.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Barry remarked, although he wasn’t sure it actually was. Even a cursory scan of the horizon revealed an obvious lack of nearby islands to row to (and yes, there were two small plastic oars bundled beside the survival kit as well—Sophie evidently had not used them). The odds of them making it on the open ocean, much like the statistical probability of his artistic success, appeared to be one in a million.
As for the survival kit, it did not contain quite the freeze-dried bounty Barry had dreamed of, but its contents proved to be far more useful in the long-term sense. One by one, Sophie removed the items from the satchel and laid them carefully out on a space of smoothed sand. Included in the lineup was: 1 white plastic first-aid kit, containing gauze, bandages, sterilized sewing needles and thread, a plethora of alcohol wipes, antibiotic cream, and, strangely enough, cold medicine.
1 flare gun with six flare cartridges—instructions to its use were stamped on the handle.
1 emergency foil blanket folded into a silver cube. (Barry recognized it instantly from the New York City Marathon; the runners always donned them like capes after the race for warmth.) 1 box-cutter-style utility knife with six fresh blades.
12 emergency energy bars, packed, according to the labels, with carbohydrates and essential vitamins and minerals.
4 bottles of distilled water, ready to drink.
6 heavy-duty resealable plastic bags, empty and rolled, to be used for potential water storage.
1 solar still. (This one took a moment to figure out, but Barry recognized its plastic dome from his old Boy Scout manual and explained that it could be used to get limited quantities of freshwater from the ocean.) 1 spool of medium-gauge filament fishing line.
15 fishhooks of varying sizes, complete with sinkers and lures.
1 Grundig FR-200 shortwave radio with a hand-crank generator.
1 Brunton magnetic field compass.
1 waterproof match safe containing (and yes, Sophie counted each one) forty-eight matches.
1 waterproof Maglite flashlight.
1 bundle of thin nylon rope (one hundred feet or so, by Barry’s rough estimation).
1 pack of Russian cigarettes. (Barry didn’t recognize the brand, but the warning label was in Cyrillic.) 2 stainless-steel drinking cups/cooking pots with folding handles.
3 lightweight blue plastic tarps.
0 packages of astronaut ice cream.
There it was. Their lot. Their chance at survival. Barry grinned and reached for one of the water bottles.
“Ow!” he exclaimed when Sophie smacked his hand.
“Put that down. Those are for an emergency.”
“What the hell do you call surviving a plane crash and being stranded on a goddamn island?”
“We have freshwater for the time being, so we must drink that. Actually, we should fill the extra water bags in case we need them later.”
“So I suppose no energy bars either?”
Sophie shook her head. “Non. We might need them later as well. The best thing now would be for you to catch us a fish.”
“Why should I catch the fish?”
“Because you are American, like Huckleberry Finn, no?”
“But you are French, like Jacques Cousteau, no?”
“Non. You can catch the fish.”
“Christ.” Barry plopped down on the sand. “Can I at least have a cigarette?” He asked this sarcastically.
Sophie did her shrug. “Sure, why not.”
Barry picked apart the foil of the Russian cigarettes and held open the honeycomb of exposed white butts in offering toward her.
“No, thank you, I don’t smoke.”
“You’re French, and you don’t smoke?”
“You’re American, and you don’t know how to fish?” She said this snarkily, with an exaggerated twang she had no doubt picked up from some cowboy movie, and that infuriated Barry.
“You want fish? Fine, I’ll get you some fish. See you back at camp, ma chérie.”
“Don’t ever call me that!” Sophie was suddenly enraged. “I’m not your chérie.” She hastily undid the buttons and whipped off the shirt, throwing it at his feet.
Barry didn’t reply. Detecting at last her hidden layer of heartache, he realized, as he picked up the shirt and stamped off across the sand, that as young and pretty and seemingly impervious to disaster as his island-mate might seem, the ink on her widowhood was still painfully fresh—a fact that was demonstrated quite clearly by the fading sound of her sobs as she dragged the raft alone back to camp.
10
Despite her many incorrect assumptions regarding Barry and his country of origin, Sophie had been at least in the ballpark with her comment about Huckleberry Finn. Although he was raised in Cleveland, Barry’s grandparents’ farm, which he had visited frequently as a boy, was to be found in Macoupin County, Illinois, just across the river and a few tractor pulls away from Hannibal, Missouri, the hometown of Mark Twain. And indeed, as a boy, Barry had engaged in many similarly folksy pursuits, one of which was catching catfish, although this occurred more often in local “cricks” than on the Muddy Mississipp’. Unlike those hook-and-line aficionados Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Barry had learned to fish with the fine-meshed nets known locally as “seines,” any similarity to the river that bisected Sophie’s city of residence being pure coincidence. In fact, one of Barry’s most beautiful and haunting memories (and he had never told anyone this, certainly not his co-workers at Lehman Brothers and definitely not his ex-girlfriend Ashley) was going seining with his grandfather when the moon was full, the two of them waist-deep as they dragged their gossamer nets through the quicksilver water.