The Stranger in the Lifeboat(43)

“Go in the water,” she said.

“Why?”

“It is time.”

I didn’t understand. Despite that, I felt myself rising.

“Take this with you,” she said.

I glanced down. My eyes sprang open. Somehow, there, in the middle of the raft, was the green limpet mine. It looked the same as when I purchased it from a man I found on the Internet. I met him in a boat warehouse. Our transaction took less than ten minutes. I hid it in a drum case that I carried onto the Galaxy.

“Pick it up,” Alice said. “And don’t let it go.”

I wanted to refuse, but my body did not operate on its own. I lifted that mine, felt its metal edges against my bare skin, and did as I was told.

When I hit the water, its cold enveloped me, and the weight of the mine sank me quickly. I dropped deeper and deeper. I closed my eyes, certain this was my penance. I was to die at the bottom of the sea, like the others who died because of me. All you do comes back to you. God’s circular judgment.

As the water grew darker, I felt my body crying out to breathe, to expel the carbon dioxide accumulating in my blood. In a few seconds, my human form would submit. Water would fill my lungs, my brain would lose oxygen, and my death would come.

And yet, at that moment, Annabelle, I felt something new wash over me. Something liberating. After all that had happened, and everything I had done, I accepted this as a just ending, because I accepted the world as a just place. In that way, I accepted that God, or little Alice, or whatever force we all answer to, had justly determined my fate.

I believed. And in believing, I was saved.

Just as the Lord had promised.

Suddenly, my hands were empty. The mine was gone. Above me I saw a perfect circle of bright light, and in that circle was the entire sky and the sun, spraying rays like porcupine quills. My body began to drift up toward its center. I didn’t have to do a thing. As I lifted, I felt certain that this is what it’s like to die, and I saw there was nothing to fear from it. The Lord was right. A hovering Heaven is always waiting for us, visible from beneath the Earth’s blue waters. Such a wondrous world.



Moments later I burst through the surface, gasping for breath. I saw the raft, maybe twenty yards away. I saw little Alice, waving her arms. “Here!” she yelled. “Over here!” And I realized I had heard that voice before, from someone with a flashlight the night the Galaxy sank.

When I reached the ladder, Alice helped me inside. I was gulping air as I tried to speak.

“It was you in the raft … that night … you saved me …”

“Yes.”

I fell to my knees and confessed everything. “I brought the bomb onto the boat, Alice … It was me. Not Dobby. I planned to blow it up. It was my fault.”

The words spilled out easier than I imagined, like a loose tooth that after hours of painful clinging suddenly slips onto your tongue.

“I was angry. I thought Jason Lambert was my father. I thought he’d done unforgivable things to my mother—and to me. I wanted him to suffer.

“I’d lost my wife, the only person who mattered to me. I couldn’t afford her medical treatments. They cost too much money, money I never had but others did. I blamed myself. Everything seemed so unfair. I wanted revenge for all the suffering I’d gone through. I wanted Jason Lambert to lose as much as I did.”

“His life,” Alice said.

“Yes.”

“It was not yours to take.”

“I know that now,” I said, looking down. “But …” I hesitated. “That’s why I never went through with it. I never detonated that mine. I hid it away. Please believe me. Someone else must have exploded it. I can’t explain. It’s been torturing me ever since it happened. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know I’m to blame …”

I began to cry. Alice touched my head softly, then rose to her feet.

“Do you remember the last thing you did on the Galaxy that night?” she asked.

I closed my eyes. I pictured myself in those final seconds on deck. The rain was beating down, my elbows were on the railing, my head was hanging low, staring at the dark waves. It was a terrible moment. I was thinking about how I had failed you, Annabelle, and the horror I’d been ready to commit in my grief, and what a pathetic, empty man I had become.

“Benjamin?” Alice asked again. “What was the last thing you did?”

My eyes opened slowly, as if coming out of a trance. Finally, with tears streaming down my cheeks, I confessed the truth, whispering the words I had been hiding all this time, from you, from Alice, from myself.

“I jumped.”



A long time seemed to pass before I spoke again. Alice had her hands clasped under her chin.

“I didn’t want to live anymore,” I whispered.

“I know. I heard you.”

“How? I never spoke.”

“Despair has its own voice. It is a prayer unlike any other.”

I looked down, ashamed of myself. “It doesn’t matter. The Galaxy blew up anyhow. I saw smoke from her engine room. I saw her go under. I didn’t do it. But it’s still my fault.”

Alice walked to the rear of the raft. She stepped onto the tubed edge without the slightest hesitation. Then she turned back to me.

“Lift your head, Benjamin. You were not responsible.”