Who Screamed?

His watch said 0317 and the darkness was everywhere. She was tilting a bit but nothing bad. He pulled back the duvet and put his feet on the cabin sole. It was cold and there was a vacuousness within the cabin that that made his eyes try to bring their lids back down, but his thoughts wondered where Bobbi was, as her watch was over an hour ago.

‘Bobbi’ he called up to the closed hatch cover and boards. ‘Bobbi, what’s up? “ he called again, rising completely now, knowing he was not going back to that warm and comfortable bunk.

There had been a sound like a screech, that he was sure was a part of a wisp of a dream that was lost completely without even a thought of what it was. The sound remained in his head but he could not define it. He moved toward the hatchway sliding his knee against the bunk to steady his steps.

‘Say, Bobbi’ he called up again as he slid the hatch back. The wind came in in an unfriendly way making sleep seem like a vacation he had had years ago. It was cold and spray filled. He went back over to the bunk and searched for his watch cap, found it and pulled it down over his ears. Then he grabbed his foul weather jacket and struggled to get into it, but made it, on his way back to the hatchway. Still unzipped, he climbed the stairs and stuck his head out to see Bobbi at the wheel looking out to lee away from the wind. She was shiny with her jacket hood up hiding her face. Bobbi had her foul weather trousers on to complete the glow of wetness. It looked like something he did not want to go out into, but Bobbi had already let him have over an hour of rest.

‘Bobbi’ he called again, ‘Watch is over, come on down and get some sleep, girl.’ Bobbi didn’t seem to hear him with the wind blowing like it was. A whoosh of spray slapped him on the side of his face and he ducked below in reaction. Rising again, he looked out into the wind to see a lighthouse well out away from them. A slow sweeping beam of light passed and another, then a quick one. It occurred to him that the light should be on the starboard side not the port side so he looked over in that direction to see nothing but darkness. The slow beam came again and he ducked below to turn on the navigation light and studied the chart, trying to remember where they were last and working that to where they should be to find a light that would be to starboard. There was a light well ahead of where we could possibly be that was out on the end of a very wide bay but our course should be taking us North and keeping the light well to our starboard not to our port, which would make us go East. The bay had deep water almost to the shore, so he figured Bobbi had fallen asleep on the wheel, and he smiled a warm smile at her.

Sticking his head up again with the foul weather hood on this time he yelled, ‘Bobbi, hey, I’m gonna make some coffee. I think you have us off course. Can you look at the compass and bring us back, honey?’ He smiled again and shook his head at Bobbi not looking back nor saying anything. He thought, we can’t hit anything so I will just make some coffee and go up and take the helm.

He poured the fresh, wonderfully smelling coffee into the thermos and almost drank some but wanted it to be a reward for going out into this crap. Up again but all the way up this time he crawled over the hatch boards with the thermos in hand and placed his feet on the bridge deck, sliding the hatch cover back to keep some of the water out of the cabin. The freshness of the night air and wet made him inhale deeply and one of those automatic smiles spread across his face. This wildness was what he wanted as a night at sea. He looked over to the wheel and there was no Bobbi, just the wheel jerking a bit this way and that. He turned to look for her peeing over the side or something but could not see his wife. He lowered the thermos onto the leeward side of the cockpit well, still looking for Bobbi to appear.

He slid the hatch back and looked below thinking somehow she must has slipped past. He saw that he had left the navigation light on, so climbed back down into the cabin calling Bobbi’s name with no response. He went forward into the foc’sle but no Bobbi curled in the v-berth. On the way back out he looked at the chart again and turned off the light. Above, he went to the wheel and sat there waiting for her to appear somehow. Then he looked behind at the trail of their wake breaking the roll of the waves moving through the dark water. The long beam showed nothing behind but maybe we were going to fast and Bobbi was further behind.

Trying to figure out how to retrace the course he pulled in sails and turned into the wind and crossed it trying to trim for a keep a course close to the one they had made and the lighthouse lights didn’t help. The lights just made it clear that he could not see anything and he knew that he wasn’t on a direct course back the way that the boat had come. The sails were pulling properly on a beam reach away from the bay with the lighthouse now on the starboard side but he was alone. He found that he had been shaking his head not accepting that his wife had fallen overboard. Bobbi had a safety harness on and a line to snap onto the deck lines for peeing or moving forward, so how could she fall overboard and suicide was not Bobbi’s way to go either. They had been married for over six years and never did she say anything about hurting herself. They had had a miscarriage and she had been sad, but that was over two years ago and a bunch of cries together. Things were okay now, weren’t they? Something was a bit off.

He corrected the course again and started taking his own situation more seriously. Bobbi was gone and he was still here, he thought out loud to the blackness of the night.

With tears streaming, merging into the wetness of the foul weather jacket and the cold of the wet cotton trousers, he wiped his eyes to clearing enough to see his compass numbers but absolute waves of self-pity ploughed into his consciousness and he looked around for something to blame. Bobbi. Why did Bobbi do this? he questioned over and over. He corrected the helm again not that he cared about where he was going or why he was going where he did not care to go? Why was he alive and Bobbi dead? Why?

He went forward and slid the hatch cover back one more time and called down, ‘Bobbi.’ But there was no answer. Back at the wheel he knew something was about to happen but could not fathom what it would be. The thermos was laying on its side down on the cockpit floor. He bent forward and the boat lurched with him falling and hitting his head. He knew he had hit his head and then he heard the scream, yelling, ‘Tony.’ He looked at the wheel and there was Bobbi. He blinked and Bobbi was gone.

The day had come with a sombre grey of sky and sea, and he was alone.

Bobbi wasn’t here, he thought. Bobbi was never here. He fell and hit his head and Bobbi didn’t come on this trip. Bobbi was never here. His mouth dropped open as he looked around to see no land or place where a lighthouse should have been. He looked at his course and gathered his memory into both of the palms of his hands.

‘What the fuck.’ he said to the palms. Bobbi died in a plane crash over four years ago.

‘So, who screamed?’ he screamed to the compass.