Time to Fish

By Jerry Mack Grubbs

Have you ever awakened and briefly wondered where you were or what day it was? As I raised my head and looked around, I began brushing the sand from my face as though it was something I routinely did every morning. The sound of waves crashing on the beach drew my attention away from myself for a moment. The ocean looked angry and the skies were dark and threatening. It was only a matter of time before rain would be pelting me if I didn’t find some type of shelter.

My clothes were in disarray. I was missing a shoe. I had an ache in my stomach that resembled hunger but I wasn’t sure if it was hunger or anxiety. When had I last eaten? I couldn’t remember. How long had I been here? I didn’t know. How did I get here? I wasn’t certain but there was a nagging thought that I had fallen overboard from a ship of some kind. I had this sense of falling and then the darkness and the cold. Now here I was lying on this beach, chilled, hungry and about to get drenched by a storm that filled all the visible sky.

The wind howled and the tree limbs leading into the dense vegetation whipped against my face as I pushed my way through looking for a place that would shield me from the elements. As the rain came I could hear it pounding on the canopy of trees above me. It reminded me of the big bad wolf growling and trying to blow my house of trees down. The trees were so thick they blocked the sky as the rain pounded against this little island. The ground was thick with vegetation and fallen timber. I found a large log about three feet in diameter. I stacked limbs and clump-grass against the log making a lean-to to shield me from the rain. After I crawled inside I drew my knees up against my chest to block out the chill of the coming night air.

When I dozed off and was startled awake by a large clap of thunder it was dark. I couldn’t see anything. The sounds around me were adding to my already heightened sense of concern and anxiety. As I laid there huddled against the forces of nature, I became aware of a sound that was different from the rest of the forest noises. It was a crying sound that was human or near human. I wasn’t alone. But what was out there in the dark of this wet, cold night? Not being able to see because of the darkness I laid there for the rest of the night listening to that muffled cry. With all the other noises I couldn’t determine how close or far away the sound was coming from.

At daybreak I eased out of my resting place behind the log and looked around. As far as I could see it was just trees, trees and more trees. The vegetation was choked with fallen timber from trees that had finished their lives and collapsed, rotting at the feet of newer, healthier trees. The sound of crying was fainter now and it was hard to distinguish the direction it was coming from. I made my way toward what I thought was the origin of the sound.

I didn’t know what to expect. What if it was someone injured or sick? It had never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to figure out a way to survive, but to have to care for someone else may be more than I could handle. My mind was alert and I had always been taught that the mind is the most valuable weapon we have against the unknown. The sound of crying gradually became clearer as I moved deeper into the dense growth of trees. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. It startled me and my breath locked in my throat yet I was excited to finally know the source of the crying sound. I wasn’t prepared for what I discovered.

It was a woman holding a small child cradled in her arms. The girl looked to be about three years old. They were both drenched and shivering from the rain of last night. Fear streaked across the woman’s face as she clutched the child to her chest and struggled to get on her feet for what I thought would be a flight deeper into the jungle. She collapsed back against the tree trunk she had been leaning against before I startled her. Then the lady began to weep in deep gasping sobs which caused the little girl to cry even louder. They just sat there clutching each other like I was their executioner.

I dropped to my knees in front of them and asked how I could help. As the woman’s sobs turned to whimpers I reached out and rubbed the side of her face. She gradually eased her grasp of the little girl and allowed me to take her in my arms. I took the woman by the arm and helped her to her feet. She was like a wobbly newborn calf as she stood and tried to walk. Gradually we began to move in the direction from which I came. My footprints were easy to follow in the damp earth. Looking down it was almost comical as I remembered that I only had one shoe. As I held her arm and carried the child we did not speak. The little girl had stopped crying and was leaning against my chest. I could feel her warm breath on my neck. It was such a contrast to the chilled skin of the woman’s arm as I continued to steady her as we walked.

Somehow I needed to get these two people warm. The rain had stopped but due to the dense canopy of trees overhead, I didn’t know if the clouds had blown away to reveal a sunny day or not. They needed warmth, water and something to eat. My mind began to race as I thought about trying to get a fire started after such a downpour. What was I thinking? I didn’t even have a single match: no Bic lighter, no flint and steel, no nine- volt battery and steel wool. A feeling of calm came over me as I remembered that if Heavenly Father wanted this woman and child warm he would help me accomplish the task. He had helped me find them, hadn’t he? I thought about that saying: “There are no coincidences in life.”

After an hour of frustration I still didn’t have that miracle fire started. I gave the woman my dry shirt and told her to remove all her wet clothes and let them dry in the sun. I took the toddler’s clothes off and put my tee shirt on her. As we sat in the sand she explained that they hadn’t eaten for three days. That is how long it had been since they were left on this island by the father of her child. When she told him she was pregnant he became angry and tried to persuade her to get an abortion but she refused. After their daughter was born, their relationship deteriorated until he took them on a sailboat cruise to this remote island and deserted them, leaving them nothing but two bottles of water. They watched him sail toward the horizon certain that he would come back. Since the birth of their daughter he had played other cruel jokes on her but this time he didn’t return.

All of a sudden the responsibility of caring for this woman and her daughter began to overwhelm me. Getting a fire started using old Indian methods I had studied in a book wasn’t going to be easy. That was just one of the many challenges that would be required of me if I was going to keep them alive until help arrived. I began preparing to go into the forest to see if I could catch some small game for us to eat. The woman didn’t want me to leave them but I couldn’t accomplish what I needed to do with them along. With my pocket knife I sharpened several long stakes to use as spears and headed back into the dense vegetation to look for food. After several hours of hunting with no success I returned to fine both of them sound to sleep. Something pricked my heart to think that they had laid their troubles in the sand and were sleeping contented. They wouldn’t be sleeping so peacefully if they knew how ill prepared I was to keep them alive.

The woman was lying on her left side with her head resting on her outstretched arm. Her hand was open, palm up with no ring on her finger. Her mouth was slightly parted and her breathing came in short little puffs. She had small laugh lines at the crease of her mouth. Her hair was blonde with the slightest presence of darker roots at the scalp. Her daughter was tucked in a fetal position against her stomach with the woman’s right arm holding the child snugly to her. It was like I was seeing them before she gave birth to her daughter. I wanted to brush the sand from her cheek but I was afraid I would awaken her. There was something familiar about this woman and her child. I realized I was studying her like someone preparing for an examination and I became embarrassed for invading her privacy as she slept. Rising to my feet, I unbuckled and removed my jeans and took one of my sharpened sticks and started toward the breaking surf to try my luck at fishing. They were hungry when I found them and they would be even hungrier when they awoke. As I approached the water I saw a white plastic trash bag half buried in the sand. Then I saw another, and another. One of them was ripped open spilling out debris in the surf. There were milk containers, tin cans, rotting vegetables, soggy wet paper goods . . .

Then I remembered. I had been standing on the deck near the back of our cruise ship watching the moon and stars paint the sky with a beautiful array of twinkling lights. I heard a clanking sound like a heavy steel door being opened somewhere far down below me. I leaned over the rail to examine where the sound was coming from. I was startled to see gigantic amounts of garbage being belched into the ocean from the ship. It was sickening to watch. Hundreds of garbage sacks and food along with the smell of human waste spiked the air. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. If every cruise ship practiced ocean dumping at this magnitude, what would eventually happen to all the marine life in the water? As I watched the tons of waste being dumped it began to stream out behind the ship like a highway of refuse. I looked at my watch. It was 2:38 A.M. “No wonder they do this in the middle of the night,” I thought. Startled from a noise from behind, I began to turn around and at that moment I was shoved over the ship’s railing and began to fall. I grabbed for the rail but it was too late. If this was a dream I would awaken before I hit the water. With arms and legs flailing in the air I was certain I was going to die from the impact but unwilling to give up I tried to arrest the tumbling motion and keep my feet pointed down. Wham! I landed in a sea of plastic garbage bags, rotting food and worse. Crashing through the bags of garbage I tore through some of them and drug them down below the surface with me. Fighting the water and the plastic bags of garbage I worked my way to the surface and gasp for air. I guess it wasn’t a dream. I didn’t wake up before I hit the water and I hadn’t died. I was wrong on both counts. I felt something strike my leg and fearing it to be a shark I scrambled to stay on top of the floating garbage.

Fear shut down my brain or I actually passed out, I don’t know which. I was pulling garbage sacks around me trying to hold them together when a voice in my mind said, “Give up, it will be okay.” I shouted out loud, “I will never give up.” The next thing I remembered I was waking up on shore and brushing the sand from my face. Now here I was, on a remote island with a woman and the daughter she refused to give up. They were looking for me to be an answer to prayer. Standing at the edge of the surf with my spear in hand, I looked back at the woman and child sleeping in the sand. Then she rose up on one arm and calling after me said, “Will you take care of my daughter like she was your own if something happens to me?” I didn’t answer her. I just turned back toward the ocean. It was time to fish. She would ask the question again and we both already knew the answer. As I stepped into the water, I awoke.