Castle of Water: A Novel(30)

The impact was indescribable, beyond imagining, as most forces of nature are. Once, as a teenager, Barry had been involved in a fairly serious head-on collision on a rain-slicked road on the outskirts of Cleveland. And even that crash, with all its Toyota Camry–crushing force, paled in comparison with the experience of being hit head-on by a thousand tons of angry ocean. And after that initial wallop, the situation was slow to improve. For a full hellish minute, he became the proverbial rag doll in the washing machine, spun and yanked about, smashed mercilessly against rocks and trees and everything else the wave brought his way. Was he afraid? Yes, most definitely. Horrified, in fact, as he had not been since the sickening plunge of their damaged Cessna. But it was a peculiar, out-of-body fear, surreal in its intensity. This can’t be happening. Oh, but it was. Barry knew he was at odds with incredible forces; he felt as if he were being ground between the molars of the jaws of the sea.

Then, suddenly, he was released. Like Jonah spit from the belly of the whale, Barry found himself squirted up to the surface. An unimaginable tug still bore him along, but he was no longer underwater. Sure enough, one of his contact lenses had been claimed by the tsunami, but the other remained intact, and with his rehearsed one-eyed squint, he was able to ascertain that he had been taken quite far from the island and that an apocalyptic storm was still raging all around him. Huge swells buckled in every direction, and a violent wind smacked salt spray right into his face. It was quite dark, but storm dark—a bruised shade of almost luminous black and blue, freeze-framed by the bolts of electricity that scissored relentlessly down from the clouds.

Shit. Barry gasped and spit water and turned onto his back, struggling with the dead weight of the duffel bag that was somehow still strapped to his shoulders. He hoisted it onto his belly while fighting to keep his head above water. He considered trying to get out the raft and inflate it but quickly came to terms with the impossibility of that option. Simply staying afloat was monopolizing every ounce of his energy, and the thing took ages to blow up. So up and down he went, simply riding the swells. With each rise, he caught a fleeting, haphazard glimpse of the island’s rocky center from his one good eye, only to have it vanish when he went crashing back down. And after several such glimpses, he reached the disastrous conclusion that he was being carried by the storm farther and farther away from it. The island, that little spit of sand and nub of stone that had seemed to him for so long like a prison, became in that instant the purest home he had ever known. And besides—Sophie was still on it.

Lightning crashed, the oceans roared, and there, at the mercy of waves as big as mountains, beholden to a storm the size of God, Barry closed his eyes and turned his face toward the heavens. And the strangest thing happened: For the first time he could remember, he felt an uncanny sense of peace. He wasn’t afraid anymore. Not really, anyway. Well, okay, maybe a little. But not much. Confronting such an immense dose of destiny brought fresh clarity to the fact that some things were simply beyond his control. Out of his hands. No longer his concern. Honestly, the thought of leaving Sophie alone was more dreadful to him at that moment than the possibility of death. And honestly, how could death be any worse than this?

He did, however, have a bone to pick. The winds swallowed his words, but he spoke them skyward anyway, as only the only child of rural Protestants can:

“Goddamnit, if you’re going to kill me, fine. I get it. No hard feelings. But if not, please quit jerking me around and help me to get back to that island, because there’s a pain-in-the-ass French girl there who I can’t leave alone.”

The first time Barry had made such a request, floundering amid the burning wreckage of a plane, destiny or a deity—take your pick—had delivered to him a Ziploc bag full of contact lenses, an uninhabited island within swimming distance, and, although it took a few days to materialize and nearly a year to realize, a companion whom he truly cared about. The second time he pleaded his case, he was given:

A log.

Or a tree, more accurately. For Barry wasn’t the only thing that the tidal wave had ripped up by the roots and carried far out to sea. One of the island’s few coconut palms had been swept along with him. It didn’t happen right away—he noticed it after some ten minutes of being convinced that the god(s) above had finally forsaken him. But once it finally arrived, it was hard to miss—it smacked him right upside the head, causing him to briefly see stars in the midst of the cyclone. The fact that it was a large, floating palm tree took a moment to register, and his initial reaction was that the half-emerged form was some sort of primordial aquatic beast (at this point, just about anything seemed possible). But after a few pokes and prods, he ascertained its true identity: a big floating log. He slung the duffel bag over it, wrapped his arms and legs around it, and clung to it tighter than a baby koala. The storm was still raging, but if he could survive it, just wait it out, then he might be able to paddle the thing back to Sophie and back to his home. In fact, to keep his mind occupied, he shut his eyes and sang the words to the John Denver song “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” just as he had done nearly two decades before, while listening to the radio in his grandfather’s pickup truck, the bed loaded with feed sacks and the smell of fresh-cut timothy grass rushing in through the window.

Barry wasn’t able to keep an exact accounting of time. But after what felt like a few hours, the waves regained normal proportions and the rain eased up—giving him the chance at last to put in a new pair of contacts from the duffel bag and restore his full vision. The island was well out of sight by that point, but based on a few quick glimpses he’d managed to sneak at the survival kit compass, he figured he had been moving away from it in a generally northern direction. Which meant once the setting sun appeared dim and milky through the post-typhoon haze, it was simply a question of kicking his log and keeping its glow to his right. His fingers were pruned beyond sensation, and the single water bottle he pried loose from the duffel bag hardly put a dent in his thirst, but Barry was alive. He had something to keep him from drowning, and he knew in which direction his home could be found. A few minutes’ rest, he finally decided, and he would turn the log that way and begin the journey. After all, what other option did he have?