Authors: Homer Hickam
Sampson had been trailing his foot in the water. It seemed he had been hiding a puncture in the sole of his left foot. When it had gotten so swollen he had to take off his boot, he had been astonished at how awful the wound looked and felt. Thinking to clean it, he hung off the side of the outrigger and immersed his gory foot in the sea. Within seconds, the shark had come up and taken a bite out of it, removing several toes and shredding the flesh, leaving the metatarsals exposed.
“Does it hurt much, Sampson?” Josh asked, as tenderly as he was able.
“Like it's on fire, sir. But I can take the pain.”
“Aye, sure, 'tis a given for a marine,” Sister Mary Kathleen said.
Josh got down to cases. “It would have been better if the shark had bitten
off more than it did. In any case, it did you a favor, because now we can see what you've been hiding. You have gangrene, son.”
Sampson gulped. “Am I to lose my foot, Captain?”
“No, my boy. If you are to live, we'll have to take off your leg.”
Sampson stared at Josh, then lay back. After a long second, he asked, “Sister, is the captain telling the truth?”
“Aye, Sampson,” she answered. “'Tis true. Ye'll die otherwise.”
“My whole leg?”
“I think a few inches below the knee will suffice.”
“Isn't there another way?”
“Nay, Sampson. I'm sorry.”
“How about just my foot?” he begged.
She gave it some thought. “Maybe. 'Twould be risky. Better to cut too high than too low.”
Josh barged in. “For God's sake, stop coddling him, Sister! Now, look, Sampson. You brought this all on yourself. You let your foot fester in your boot, kept it to yourself, and it took a shark to call it to our attention. This ain't up for a vote. We're going to take off everything up to a couple inches below your knee and you're going to lie there and take it like a marine. That's an order.”
“Oh, do be quiet, Captain Thurlow!” Sister Mary Kathleen snapped. “'Tis Sampson's leg, not yers!” She touched the marine's cheek. “Choose, me boy. Open your heart to God and He will tell ye what to do.”
“I'm Jewish, Sister,” Sampson said.
“God doesn't care what ye are, lad. Choose!”
Sampson nodded, then closed his eyes, his brow furrowed in thought. “Sampson,” Josh said, “I think you and God should hurry up and decide, else we'll lose the light.”
“Will you do the cutting, Sister?” Sampson asked, opening his eyes.
“I'll do it,” Josh said.
Sister Mary Kathleen raised her head as if to argue, then nodded her consent. She knew such surgery, considering the tools available, required more physical strength than she had.
“Ready, let me see your K-bar,” Josh said. The bosun complied, and Josh considered its edge. “Nango? Do you have a whetstone on board? Sharpee? Whoosh! Whoosh!”
Nango searched among the canoe's various dilly bags until he produced a thoroughly worn whetstone. Josh handed him the knife. “Sharpen it up, Nango. Savvy? I need an edge like a razor. Then boil it good. Ten minutes
at least with a hard boil. Sister, needle and thread, there's surely some aboard. You have such for your habit? Very good. And Ready? I'll want some sulfa powder from your medical kit, if you have any left.”
“I used all I had on you, sir.”
“How about morphine?” Josh demanded. “I'll need two syrettes at least.”
“Those I have, sir,” Ready replied.
“So you're really to do it, sir?” Sampson asked, gulping back his fear. “Ease your mind, son,” Josh said with a confident smile. “Back when you were a pup, I did the odd amputation of legs now and again on the Bering Sea Patrol, and nearly every one of my patients survived. Hell, somebody had to do it when the doc wasn't around, and as the lowest-ranking officer, it fell to me. But I'm not going to lie to you, Sampson. I ain't no New York surgeon. It may come out looking a little rough, but I promise to do my best.”
“Then say me a prayer, Sister,” Sampson said. “Say me a
big
prayer.”
She smiled at him. “I will say many prayers for ye, Sampson.”
“Will you say one now, I mean out loud? I'd like to hear it.”
After a bit of thinking, she nodded, and all on board lowered their heads, except Ready, who took the opportunity to push a syrette of morphine into Sampson's shoulder. The sea and air murmured a quiet song syncopated by the steady rhythm of Nango polishing the edge of the K-bar blade as Sister Mary Kathleen prayed, “God of all things, great and small. Hear me prayer for your servant, Sampson. Though we sail through the tempest, even to the far reaches, keep our wits about us as we engage in this surgery. Let Captain Thurlow's mind be clear, his hand strong. Let him do that which must be done with skill and care. And please give Corporal Sampson the strength and resilience of his youth and the courage of his assembly, the United States Marine Corps. Do these things, we ask, in thy Son's name. Amen.”
“Right pretty, Sister,” Sampson said as if from far away.
“Jesus was a Jew,” she said. “He came to fulfill yer people's destiny.”
“That was good of him,” Sampson replied sleepily, his veins coursing with morphine.
“Sampson, I'll ask you again,” Josh said. “What's it to be? Below the knee or just the foot?”
“Just the foot, sir. Thank you.”
Josh took Sister Mary Kathleen, Ready, and Nango aside. “A knife like a K-bar, even with an edge, is barely useful as a cutting tool. It's going to be tough getting it through the bone, and I fear all the crunching might bring the boy awake. He must be held down.”
Nango said, “Fella boys hold. No worry-worry, Jahtalo.”
The fella boys placed two sturdy breadfruit planks (the outrigger was astonishingly well supplied with odds and ends) across the gunwales, shoving them together to make a makeshift table. Sampson was laid across it; then Sister Mary Kathleen washed the marine's infected foot and leg, using the copra soap Nango produced from yet another dilly bag.
Josh studied the afflicted foot from several angles. “What's your opinion, Sister?”
“Me opinion is that a Coast Guard officer has no business cutting off a man's foot, but here we are and there ye are.”
Josh laughed. “I told a little lie, Sister. I never cut a man's leg off before, although I did have to amputate a man's arm once upon a time. It was one of Colonel Burr's marines on the old
Comanche”
“Is that what started yer argument with the colonel?”
“It didn't help it. But our main contention was we fell in love with the same woman, the fairest maiden ever to walk across the tundra. God, how I loved her. I even married her.”
“Faith. The poor girl. What became of her?”
Josh looked away, into the emptiness of life and its equal fullness. “She was murdered. It's a long story.”
“I should be pleased to hear it, though I suspect 'tis not the time.”
“No, Sister,” Josh answered forthrightly. “'Tis the time to cut off a man's leg.”
“His foot only, if ye please.”
“Aye, aye, ma'am. His foot only it is, and God help Sampson for having such a poor surgeon.”
“Well, at least he will have a good nurse,” she answered with a shy smile. “Now raise yer knife, Captain, and let us get about today's work.”
And so they did.
Sampson came awake in the night, and Sister Mary Kathleen held the lamp so Josh could inspect him while Ready watched from the shadows. “All's well, Sampson,” Josh told the boy, who was staring at him with owl's eyes, still dilated from the morphine.
“How much did you take off, sir?”
“Just the foot, as you said.”
“I hope it wasn't too much trouble.”
“No trouble at all. You have soft bones, Private. It's all that easy living you marines practice.”
Sampson blinked a couple of times. “I thought I was a corporal,” he noted.
“I demoted you for letting yourself get gangrene.”
“I'm glad. The responsibility of rank was wearing me down.” Sampson looked up at the nun, whose expression, by the light of the lantern, was one of quiet joy. “Thank you, Sister. I know you had a big part in this mess.”
“I just mopped up a bit. Now, sleep a bit more, why don't ye?”
“Aye, aye, ma'am. I feel like I could sleep a hundred years.”
Josh and the nun watched over Sampson until he began to breathe easier and they knew he was asleep. “You did well, Sister,” Josh said in honest admiration.
Sister Mary Kathleen was tired but pleased at the result of their labors. She smiled up at Josh, thanking him with her smile and her eyes. Hidden in the shadows, Ready was astonished when she said, “Ye are a good man, Captain Thurlow, at least when ye put yer mind to it.”
“Why, thank you, ma'am. I've always loved a backhanded compliment.” “Sampson not finish?” Nango asked from his steering position at the mast.
“Sampson not finish,” Josh replied proudly.
“Sampson not finish,” Ready muttered under his breath in mockery “Ye are a good man, Captain Thurlow,” he added, also mocking the nun. His expression hardened into petulant outrage. During the surgery, he had been given nothing to do besides being a spectator. Once he'd asked if he could help, but neither Josh nor Sister Mary Kathleen had even given him the courtesy of a reply. They were too busy, not with the surgery, in Ready's opinion, but flirting with each other. She had oh so tenderly mopped Josh's brow, then encouraged him when he'd hesitated, the big lug claiming to be nearly worn out from cutting through bone with the K-bar. In Ready's opinion, it had been nothing but butchery, and if Sampson lived, it wasn't anything the captain or the nun had done.
Nango was in high spirits. “Ah. Good fella Jahtalo!” he exclaimed. “You swoop swoop blade tumas good.”
Josh nodded, accepting the compliment, then cocked his head to peer approvingly at the nun. Under his attention, she smiled at him again, and he responded with a big, thoroughly delighted grin. “All right, Nango,” he said grandly. “Let us proceed now to the Far Reaches. Does that suit you, Sister?”
“Aye, it does, Captain, surely it does.”
And fly they did, Sister Mary Kathleen laughing gaily as the outrigger bounded crisply from wave to wave, and Josh grinning broadly beneath the great sail, his sandy brown hair ruffled by an eager breeze. Nango and the fella boys even broke into song, while Ready, having fallen asleep, was startled awake as he felt the first stirring of an awful jealousy.
The Far Reaches
Out of the deep I call
To thee, O Lord, to thee.
Before thy throne of grace I fall;
Be merciful to me.
Out of the deep I cry,
The woeful deep of sin,
Of evil done in days gone by,
Of evil now within.
âH
ENRY
W
ILLIAMS
B
AKER, A HYMN
It was seen two hours before dawn, a flickering glow that meant something was burning on the distant edge of the coal-black sea. Josh studied the trembling sliver of light while Nango worked the sails and called quietly to his fella boys to pull taut the lines and to move back from the bow and mind the pontoon. They complied, their wide eyes never leaving the thin glimmer toward which the outrigger was aimed. “Far Reaches belong this way,” Nango said in a low voice meant for Josh.
“What think you?” Josh asked, his eyes riveted on the fire.
Nango wiped his face with his big hand and then peered at the quivering ember. “Island Burubu,” he said reluctantly. “She burn.”
Josh kept studying the yellow streak, trying to discern the size of the fire and what might be fueling it. It was not unknown for villages and the bush on Pacific islands to fall prey to accidental fire. An overturned kerosene lantern, a celebratory fire built too high during a kava-drenched ceremony, the jungle being burned off for farmland, there were any number of possibilities. Josh recalled now that when he'd been cabin boy on the trading schooner
Bathsheba,
he'd seen such glimmers in the night, and that had been in these very waters. More often than not, Captain Fairplay bypassed the burning islands and Josh never discovered what caused the flames. But he recalled the
Bathsheba
once anchoring in a lagoon before the smoking remnants of a village and the captain oddly chuckling at the sight. “Damn fools have burned themselves down again,” he'd sworn. Josh, new to the Pacific then, had stared wide-eyed at the destruction, not a hut, house, or chicken coop left standing, and thought surely the village was doomed. But after going ashore, he saw that reconstruction was already well along, the people cheerfully working together to rebuild. “Like a phoenix rising from the
ashes,” Captain Fairplay had remarked, grinning and shaking his head at the foolishness of mankind in general.
Josh recalled those days, those comparatively untroubled, halcyon days, when he'd sailed aboard the
Bathsheba.
It was his father, Keeper Jack, who'd sent Josh to the Pacific to work for Fairplay, an old friend of the family. In the Keeper's opinion, such would provide his eldest son an opportunity to understand there was more to the sea, much more, than the Atlantic off the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Josh hadn't wanted to go, couldn't imagine being that far from Killakeet, but the Keeper wouldn't hear his objections and ordered him off on his adventure. It had proved to be a wondrous year even though it had ultimately seen Josh a victim of shipwreck. He'd survived, of course, and even though he'd been scared more than a few times during his stint along that tropical sea, he'd always been grateful to his father for making him go.
Josh rubbed his eyes, willing that the fire would prove to be an illusion, but when he looked again, the amber smear was still there with all its un-happy implications. Here he was, back in the waters of his youth, and he was older, but was he wiser? He had learned to kill and was immersed men-tally and physically in a great war, but Josh doubted he had gained much wisdom in the process. He wished now, while studying that fire in the darkness, that he might have alongside him the mentors of his life, Captain Fairplay, Captain Falcon, and, of course, his father, the Keeper, so that he could ask them what he should do.
But perhaps,
he thought further,
they are here, and they are telling me their opinion, if I but listen.
Josh considered a truism that someone had told him somewhere, maybe even in a bar: that a good teacher never left his pupil, not really, and that the lessons were embedded, just waiting until they were required. Those old men, Josh thought with a sad smile, they had been the best teachers there were.
So what would you do?
he asked them, and sure enough, they answered, each in turn, Captains Fairplay and Falcon and the Keeper. Josh took a breath, fancying that he caught a whiff of smoke, then made his decision. “Pull down your sail, Nango,” he said. “Whistle up the others to do the same. We'll wait for dawn before getting any closer.”