Excerpt from Belly Up - Chapter One - Wyndego Down!

I’ll never in a million years be able to explain how terrified I was the summer of our last season. I was scared the whole time, day after day, night after night, expecting to drown at any second. And if I didn’t die by drowning, I thought I’d surely die of thirst or starvation. Even now, I have terrible nightmares. I wake up in the middle of the night, hearing the sea even when I’m not anywhere near it. The sound fills my ears, and I feel as if I’m drowning all over again. I sit bolt upright in bed, shaking all over, dreams of dorado still in my mind, and I remember.

It happened on a perfectly clear afternoon when it was least expected. The sea was rough, but we’d been in whitecaps before. I was bracing myself in the galley, making fish chowder. Boo was at the wheel on the stern. Grandpa was below, taking a nap before dinner.

Suddenly, without warning, a thunderous blow against the hull sent me crashing into the swinging stove. Boo shouted. “Rachel! Look out! We’re hit!”

Wyndego lurched, then shuddered. There wasn’t another boat in sight, but I’d seen a pod of whales through the starboard window moments before.

Grandpa soared from his berth, stormed the companionway ladder, and exploded through the pilothouse. I held onto a railing as pots and pans banged inside lockers. Through the coated window, I saw the largest whale thrashing wildly, its huge tail raised. Then the sea foamed red with blood, and the whales were gone.

Before dawn, we’d seen a light on the horizon as shots thundered across the sea. One boat must look like another from a whale’s point of view. Grandpa was everywhere at once, shouting orders. “Boo, lower the sails! And you, Rachel, get your life vest on now!”

Boo jumped out of the cockpit, leavintg the wheel spinning. Wyndego jacknifed and veered off course. i dove for the inside wheel, but it was too late. The boat was out of control and beginning to jibe.

My heart pounded like a pile driver. i remembered Gram’s words. “You’ve put your life’s blood into that boat, Pa,” she’d said. “and now you’re goin’ to ruin it all chasing after tuna!”

The main boom swung dangerously. Waves battered the hull. Loose sails billowed and snapped. Grandpa was bringing the mainsail to port, trying to plug the damage by hanging it over the side.

At that point, we were farther out to sea than we’d ever been before. Trolling for salmon usually kept us within sight of shore. Chasing tuna was a different matter. We hadn’t been able to keep up with the fleet. We were out of radio distance. no one would hear a call for help.

Even so, I switched on the radio. There was only static. I plunged down the ladder to the main cabin and landed in ankle deep water. Water swirled along the lockers below our bunks. The bilge pump strained, then ground to a halt. We’d have to hand pump, and the engine room was rapidly flooding!

We’d been punched at the waterline near the fore bulkhead. Desperate, I tried to plug the hole with pillows from our bunks. The pressure was too great. I clung to the mainmast. It came through the deck into the cabin and braced the table where we spent a lot of time. Carved in Tahiti for Wyndego’s maiden voyage with island gods, flaring torches, curving snakes, flowers that looked like shells, and shells that resembled flowers, the mainmast was supposed to bring us luck.

I yanked my grimy sleeping bag from the starboard bunk as Grandpa’s voice boomed overhead. “Ray! Get outa there!” He knelt on the floor of the pilothouse, looking down into the cabin. He was empty handed, without his tools, not a good sign.

Grandpa knew every inch of his schooner, every brass screw, every splinter of teak and mahogany. Almost twenty years before, after the Tahiti trip and long before I was born, when Wyndego was new with pine outrigger poles and fine brass gurdies, a sea magazine published an article about how a sailboat could pay its own way fishing for salmon. That made Grandpa famous in the fleet. no one else fished from a sailboat. No one in his right mind, as Gram liked to say.

The magazine was still in his chart table, the fragile, swollen pages frayed along the edges. There was a photo of Wyndego being launched and one of Grandpa in his yellow oilskins delivering fish in Oakland. The article told about the agony and ecstasy of building Wyndego. Grandpa liked to explain how it took years to season the wood, to get the perfect butterfly cut in the mahogany, to shape and mold the schooner that was a 55 foot replica of doghole schooners that sailed along the Mendocino coast a century ago.,

Grandpa swung down the ladder, snatched the wet sleeping bag from my arms, and shoved it up into the pilothouse. i was ready to hand him tools or mix epoxy or hold a plank against the sea.

“Aren’t we going to fix the hole?” I asked.

His words dropped like stones. “Too late.”

“We must radio for help!” I said.

His shoulders sagged. His long arms hung loose. Water was filling the cabin, and it was the first time Grandpa wasn’t prepared with a back-up system. His blue eyes were so dark they looked black.

Black, with blue, green and gold mixed in, like a marble I had once. It had been my father’s when he was a boy, and it changed colors as I rolled it around in the palm of my hand - blue, green, gold, black. It was all I had of Jack Malone. I carried that marble in my pocket when I was seven years old and pretended it had magical powers like Mom’s mood ring. I took the marble to school and held it up at Show and Tell for everyone to see and told how my father had been killed in the Tet Offensive. Of course, no one knew what that was, and I didn’t either. I explained that it was a war, and they all wanted to hold my marble after that because kids believed in things like war. It made up for the time Grandpa chopped off my hair and everyone could see my monkey ears. Kids called me “monkey” until my hair grew out. I lost the marble at Glass Beach right after Mom handed Boo over to Grandpa saying, “Well, Pa, it looks like you finally got yourself a boy.”

I don’t know how she could abandon her own kids, but Gram said she couldn’t cope with living in such a small town. She could have given us her mood ring at least, but she didn’t. She left to find herself as a back-up singer in a musical group in San Francisco and never came back. I never found the marble either, but every time I went to Glass Beach I looked through the kaleidoscope of shifting broken glass, worn smooth by waves. After all that looking, it seemed the marble was gleaming right there in Grandpa’s eye as Wyndego filled with water.

That was when I had the premonition, and it was as strong as the feeling I’d had when Mom packed up her guitar and feather boa and left town on the Greyhound bus. I knew Grandpa was going down with Wyndego. I knew it was the end, that I’d never see him again, and the thought made my blood run cold.

“Grandpa?”

He looked away. “Get your brother into the raft! Get water. Food. Emergency...” Then, suddenly, it was as if he’d been struck from behind. His mouth dropped open. His eyes bulged. His neck pulsed. His body jerked. A choking sound came from his throat. His gnarled hands flattened against his chest.

The sea was rising in the cabin. I reached out and touched his arm. “Hey, are you all right, Grandpa?”

He brushed me off as if I were a fly. A growl came from his throat. His lips were purple, his face gray, and his voice was husky. “Go, Ray! Get outa here!”

“Your pills, Grandpa! Better take one of your pills.”

He looked at me as if he didn’t recognize me. Then he crooked a finger into his shirt pocket where he kept his nitroglycerin tablets. Empty!

“Look after Boo, will ya, Rachel?” he said. He could hardly get the words out. I watched as if he were a stranger, and I was glad Boo wasn’t around to see.

“Yeah, sure, Grandpa,” I gulped.

He coughed and tried to straighten, but he was as rigid and bent as an old tree. Then he shoved me roughly up the ladder. His arm buckled beneath my weight; I grabbed the rail and hauled myself into the pilothouse.

I yanked the puffy, orange vests from the brass hook and hurried outside. Boo had already released the self-inflating life raft. It bobbed at the end of its painter like a rubber toy on a purple sea.

“Jeez, Ray, what’s takin’ so long?” he asked, seizing a vest and putting it on.

I didn’t know how to tell him. “Uh, Grandpa’s...”

A sudden pressure on my arm let me know Grandpa was beside me. He squeezed so tightly, it practically shut off my circulation. Even when he was dying, he wanted to make sure he looked good in Boo’s eyes. He loved Boo ten times more than me.

“Get in the boat, Boo,” he commanded. He pulled me aside and said, “You can do this, Ray. I know you can.”

“Sure, Grandpa,” I said even though I wasn’t exactly sure what he knew I could do. I watched Boo go over the side. Then I slipped my arms into my vest. I checked the buckles three times. I had to climb down into the rubber boat with Boo, and it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.

Grandpa went back inside the pilothouse. I followed him. He gave me a dirty look, then sort of shrugged as if that was what he expected from someone like me. He plucked supplies from bins and lockers - water, food, a bag of potatoes- and shoved them at me. I dropped everything into a sailbag. I grabbed a pot, Grandpa’s oilskin jacket, ropes, an orange float cushion.

“Toss that stuff over the side,” Grandpa ordered. His voice seemed squeezed from his chest.

I hurried outside and tossed the sailbag down to Boo who waited impatiently in the bobbing rubber boat.

“Hurry, Grandpa!” I shouted. “Get your tools. Let’s go!” I snatched Boo’s spear gun before it slid off the deck. I tossed that down, too. It was almost impossible to stand upright. I had to crawl back to the pilothouse. I had to grab onto cleats and lines. I took Grandpa by the arm. I was ready to pull him off Wyndego. “Come on, Grandpa,” I pleaded. “Boo’s waiting. Let’s get into the life raft. Someone will pick us up soon, and we’ll get you to a hospital.”

He yanked his arm away and attached himself like a barnacle to the teak deck he’d sanded and oiled a thousand times. He seemed to swell twice his size. “See here, Ray, I ain’t gonna die in some hospital, and that’s final!” His mouth became a thin blue line. His eyes were black holes. Even though his brow was beaded with sweat, he was shivering violently. “What rotten luck!” he muttered, shaking his head. “It’s a hell of a mess I’ve got you kids into now!” Then, cursing, he sorted through blocks and chains in the pilothouse storage berth. There wasn’t a minute to lose, and his hands became bloody in his search. old wounds opened up. Scabs scraped off. New cuts appeared. It wasn’t like Grandpa to throw things all over the floor, but he was trying to get his emergency bag out from under the cannonball fishing weights. Crash! Bang! Thud! He finally yanked the bag free. Smack! Powered gray with mold, the long rubber duffel landed at my feet. He looked at the bag apologetically. Then he looked at me. I’d seen him check that bag a dozen times for just such an emergency. It was the backup plan he never wanted to use. He motioned with a hand. “Now get outa here, Ray,” he said. “Just beat it.” His face twisted. He bent over as if he had a terrible stomachache. “Save yourself.”

The deck dropped urgently beneath us. Grandpa seemed to disappear before my eyes. “Grandpa!” I screamed. There was the awful sound of splintering wood and the rushing of water. A moan came from Wyndego’s depths. Chills went up my spine. I grabbed the bag before it rolled across the sloping deck and into the sea. I looked one last time through the hatch. I could see the shiny brass bell and barometer on the wall. The gleaming ship’s clock Grandpa so faithfully wound was tolling eight bells. Grandpa kept everything in perfect working order - the clock, the engine, the fuel lines, the rigging, the electronics. The only thing he couldn’t fix was his heart.

I tried to see beyond the foc’sle into the forepeak that was Grandpa’s vee berth. There was only blackness and silence. “Grandpa?” I called meekly, afraid of a ghostly response. No answer. Tears streamed down my face. Someone was screaming from far away. “Grandpa! Grandpa!” It was me.

I shut my mouth, stunned by my own hysteria. Grandpa’s last words rang in my ears. “Save yourself.” I clutched the emergency bag. It was all that was left of Grandpa. I held on for dear life.

“Rachel!” It was Boo calling from the sea and much closer than I thought he ought to be. I had to abandon ship. I swallowed the cold lump of fear in my throat. I dragged Grandpa’s heavy rubber bag across the crumbling deck. Wyndego was so low in the water, all I had to do was walk into the sea. I felt numb until the shock of the cold water took my breath away, I hated being in the sea. I kicked and thrashed my way toward the raft. My life vest swelled to keep me afloat.

“Boo!” I shouted. Somehow I managed to get myself and the rubber bag to the raft’s weighted boarding ladder. An orange patch read: Enter here.

Boo hauled the bag into the raft. Then he helped pull me inside. “Jeez, Ray, we haven’t got all day. What took you so long?” he asked. “And where the heck’s Grandpa, anyway?”

I couldn’t answer. I was soaking wet and freezing cold. I avoided looking at Boo. I looked at the life raft instead. It was so small, too small for such a sea, just an orange tent-like canopy atop black inner tubes with a floor. More than anything, I wanted to be back on Wyndego, safe and warm, chasing after fish, playing cards, making chowder,

Again Grandpa’s words tolled like a bell. “Save yourself.”

“Cut the liner!” I gasped. “Hurry!”

Boo looked at me as if I were nuts. “We’re waitin’ for Grandpa.”

At that critical moment, we were being pulled dangerously close to Wyndego. The line was stretched so tight, I knew we’d be towed under in a matter of seconds. There was a labeled pouch in the bright orange canopy: “Safety knife.” I pulled it out and handed it to Boo. I looked him straight in the eyes and said, “Grandpa’s not coming! Cut the liner!’

Boo stuck his head out through the canopy entrance. Wind yanked and tugged at my hair, slapping long, salty strands into my face. “Jeez, what’s taking him so long?” he asked.

I practically choked on the words. “Grandpa’s...dead!” I said. “Dead!”

Boo’s eyes got very round. He looked younger than twelve and not very strong even though he was an expert swimmer and a darn good fisherman, too. “What do you mean?” he asked cautiously.

“I think he had a heart attack,” I said.

Boo seemed to deflate right before my eyes, like a balloon losing air. His freckled face got all blotchy and his eyes grew puffy. “Jeez! I’m going over there,” he said, but he spoke too quietly and didn’t move an inch. He just stared at what we could see of Wyndego as we bobbed up and down.

I was hoping against hope Grandpa would appear. He didn’t.

Only the stern and a section of the mainmast were visible. It broke my heart to see the familiar gold letters across the black stern: “Wyndego. San Francisco.” The dinghy we’d named Wyndee floated off the chocks upside down. Boo and I used to row the little wooden boat around the harbor. Within seconds, it was lost.

A broken outrigger pole speared dangerously close to the raft. The painter that tied us to Wyndego had stretched to the breaking point. Our raft was at the mercy of the line and twisted hard back and forth in a rocking motion. If we didn’t cut the line, our little boat would fill with water and we would die.

“Save yourself,” Grandpa had said.

The safety knife rolled across the floor. I caught it and sawed through the line even though Boo was hollering and crying. It seemed to take a long time. I clenched my teeth and forced myself to do it, to cut us away from the only real home we’d ever known.

We soared away, spinning in circles, catching only brief, nightmare glimpses as the sea swallowed Wyndego with Grandpa inside. We gripped the inside lifelines as our raft rose on the crest of a wave. We slid to the bottom of a mountainous swell. We were dreadfully exposed, not speaking, scarcely breathing, intent upon our survival.

Water rushed into the raft through the opening. I caught the stainless steel cooking pot. Only minutes before, I’d been making chowder in that very pot. I’d been slicing potatoes and onions as I looked out at a thrashing sea.

We went up, down, sideways, bouncing, soaring, nearly flipping over time and again. I was in a constant state of fear. Surrounded by a gray sea beneath a gray sky, we huddled together. I had no idea where we were or how we could possibly last even an hour without Grandpa.