THE LIFEBOAT
I DROVE FOR THREE HOURS ON A WHIM TO GET TO THAT ONE RESTAURANT for some fish and chips. The sun had just set when I received my to-go order so I was sitting in my car dunking deep fried fillets. The cup of chowder steamed the windshield a little as it sat on the dash. My fingers singed and my tongue burned but it was good.
I tried to work my phone with my palm unsuccessfully. I fumbled with buttons and the volume dial to turn on my car radio with my knuckles. Leaving small grease prints was unavoidable so they were everywhere.
A local channel had the clearest audio. It was a fuzzy phone caller.
”...I spotted a little wooden lifeboat with red-orange seats and oars. It had probably been out there for decades. There was no way to know where it came from.”
The soft, bass-y radio show host cut in.
“Didn't it belong to the crab boat you were looking for?”
The staticky, wind-muffled caller continued.
“No. We were out there looking for a different, more modern vessel that had capsized.
Anyway, I didn't think there would be anyone on it... until the water picked it up and threw it down. I saw what looked like a body.
Someone in my crew shouting they had found the vessel and some of its passengers. Now they're in their cold water immersion suits and an inflatable liferaft. They're the ones we were looking for. I'm clutching the rail trying not to lose my position. I hollered 'hey, I found a little lifeboat' but no one seemed to believe me until the waves brought it towards us.
We recovered the lifeboat and, there was a naked woman in that lifeboat! Alive. She was drenched, cold to the touch, like a drowned corpse. She wasn't shivering at all though. I took her temperature, but I don't remember what it was... I checked her pulse, her blood pressure, her pupils. Everything was fine.
She pooled. She trailed water when we took her into the cabin. I tried to dry her but she wouldn't dry. I give her a blanket and she soaks it, sopping wet from the top of her head to her chin, all the way down to the floor...”
“Did she come from the crab boat? Did anybody know or recognize her?”
“You know... that was the first thing we asked everyone but nobody knew her and we tried to talk to her but she couldn't say anything. She's staring at nothing, and here I'm thinking we have a victim of some kind of trauma but then I notice she's actually staring at one of my crew.
He's busy doing something but he looks around and he catches her looking at him. He almost trips too. I say 'buddy, are you okay you want some dramamine'. The puddle on the floor slides into his boots. We're being tossed by the ocean. I thought he was having a rough time of it. He looked sick.
Then it hits me. This guy, his girlfriend drowned in a boating accident, but then she's sitting right there.”
“Did they say anything to each other?”
“Well... I don't know. It happened so fast I'm not sure. He turns around and runs. He runs out of the cabin. She gets up and she follows him. I follow her. The blanket blows into the doorway. When I step foot out there they're gone.”
“They disappear?”
“I'm hugging the railing. The rescue boat isn't that big. I search the deck. I know they could've been easily thrown overboard. But I would've been able to see him. He was wearing a life jacket.
We had a helicopter come out looking for him for hours. They didn't find him or the woman. Nobody remembered what she looked like so it's like I'm crazy. I imagined it. Or it was a coincidence that she looked familiar to me...”
“So she was a ghost?”
“I think so. I thought it was weird though because we still have the lifeboat we found her in. It's sitting on the beach by our station. So it happened.”
My eyes watered so I turned the radio off. The street lamps were coming on so I rolled down the rain-speckled window and looked out. Down there, in the dark, I saw the shadow of a row boat tied to the lifeguard station. I threw my car into reverse and peeled out of the lot.