was a manual for the espresso machine in the galley, and that I had last seen it under the cast iron skillet along with The Joy of Cooking.
“No,” he said, “the manual for the boat.”
From the notebook of Captain C.J. Wyle, February 23
This ocean reminds me of someplace I’ve been before. I don’t want to give the impression that I am one of those worldly, traveling reporters, always on assignment to exotic locales. I’ve visited Hemingway’s Paris, yes, and hated it. I spent one semester during college in central northern Europe for my major in western studies. I’ve been to Trinidad, but not Tobago. And I’ve only seen one species of penguin in the wild.
But somehow this spot—this water and sky and nothing else—is so familiar. I’ve decided it’s not what’s here, but what is absent that I am recalling. Although that’s a depressing way to consider my life on the whole.
I hate to think I’ve always been this adrift.
I’ve just now remembered I have parents who are disappointed. I have a half-finished novel in a drawer. I have dirty dishes in a shallow apartment sink. A single neglected houseplant. A certificate that reads “One Year Sober.” A nug of hash I was too anxious to take on the plane, squirreled away in the glove compartment of my car in Lot C16 at Boston Logan. Unreturned phone calls. I have loans I’ll never pay back.
I’d gladly trade all my Crystal Light packets for that hash.
From the notebook of Captain C.J. Wyle, February 25
Gideon has been feeding the squid. He drops overboard my post-meal scraps of fish that even Plymouth rejects.
“I’m trying to teach the octopus to eat out of my hand,” he explained when I questioned him about this behavior.
“I don’t think squid eat fish,” I told him. “I think they primarily eat plankton, which they suck in through their strainer-like teeth.”
But my doubt did nothing to discourage the boy and after a few moments, bubbles the size of dinner plates appeared at the surface. Something had taken Gideon’s offering.
From the notebook of Captain C.J. Wyle, February 26
Have you ever seen a humpback whale? They are ugly as sin. Really and truly unattractive creatures. Not that this justifies their being shot at from boats and then hacked up and refined into restorative powders and sold by the ounce to Japanese businessmen. I’m just saying this cause might be easier to get behind if the animal in question were a bit cuddlier. Or at the very least, not covered in humps.
Yet, through it all, Gideon has remained loyal, insisting that his fellow crewmates perished in the name of maritime justice.
“But what about us, then?” I ask.
Gideon is not, as a general rule, tolerant of this style of questioning.
I worry I’ve ceased to be an objective observer of this trip and its crew (living and not). I feel badly about this. Clearly, I am in breach of my original contract with Popular Anarchist Quarterly, having become too personally involved with my subject matter. Yesterday, I got out my tape recorder and tried to interview Plymouth about the mission statement of the organization and its aims for the future. He chose not to speak on the record. Pity. I have been thinking that perhaps if I can make sense of my earlier notes, I could still file my story via message-in-a-bottle. But the words on those wrinkled yellow pages appear as hieroglyphics. They are from another time and make no sense in this new, modern world. My handwriting doesn’t even look like that anymore.
From the notebook of Captain C.J. Wyle, February 27
I’d like to make an amendment to my last entry, if I may. The truth of it is, even if I could file my story, I wouldn’t want to. Because I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. I’m here on the Artemis, yes, but that wasn’t my assignment. My assignment was to follow Erica and her crew and report back on their vision, their methods, their passions, their most human moments. That’s what it means to be embedded.
I should have been on the Righteous Fury when it motored bravely into that storm. I should have been at the very front, camera and tape recorder at the ready.
But instead, when Erica handed me my life jacket, I handed it right back. Not because I knew anything about the impending storm, but simply and inexcusably because I was afraid. I didn’t even know what there was to be afraid of but I knew I was afraid and so I said, “No, I’ll be just fine watching from the boat with Gideon, thanks.” And off they went, without me, rendering my very being on the trip purposeless.
Of all the many, many things I’ve been ashamed of in my life, I suspect this is perhaps the most shameful of all. The reason: no one knows I’ve done it but me and I still feel ashamed.
From the notebook of Captain C.J. Wyle, March 2
Water has become a problem. The greatest irony of the ocean is... do I even need to say it? Every morning, we ration out our daily liquids into shot glasses. I’ve given up on the trick of swallowing my own spit for sustenance; the placebo of it’s gone and I’m only left thirstier.
Gideon’s been thinking about trying to drink his own piss a la Kevin Costner in Waterworld. I see him eyeing the near-amber stream he allows to trickle off the side of the boat every fourteen hours or so. But Mr. Costner had a special machine for that, I remind him. He reminds me not to watch while he pees.
From the notebook of Captain C.J. Wyle, March 3
I wonder about the individuals with whom we used to share this boat. What kind of people choose the seafaring life, anyway? They say the ocean is the last refuge of the damned.
No, that’s prayer. Prayer is the last refuge of the damned. Regardless.
Sometimes, Gideon stands on the deck with his head back, arms spread, baggy t-shirt hanging from his sun-blistered shoulders like a sail. What is he offering up?
Or beckoning in?
I don’t want to be alone out here either.
From the notebook of Captain C.J. Wyle, March 4
Gideon has begun jettisoning things into the sea. First, his video camera, battery-power long since exhausted. Then pots and pans, socks and shoes, etc. He thinks if the boat is lighter, it will have an easier time floating somewhere, as if it were the weight that holds us to the middle of the ocean.
“That looks fun,” I told him after he tossed a half-gallon jug of hand sanitizer over the side of the boat this morning. He didn’t answer me, but I decided to join in anyway.
Inside the cabin—which had already grown muggy and airless in the heat—I moved aside boxes of charts and nautical instruments until I found the corpse of the Artemis’ shipboard communication system.
Early on in the trip, Erica dismantled the radio, saying any attempt to contact authorities for any purpose would be considered an act of mutiny. At the time, this proclamation seemed foolhardy, but as an observer and not an active crewmember, I didn’t feel it was my place to object. Now I’m pretty pissed about it though.
I pushed the stray knobs and fuses back into their metal casing, picked the whole contraption up, then tied its chords into a ball and carried it back up top. It wasn’t a particularly
