Deadlock

It only takes about fifteen minutes for the lock to empty its two million-plus gallons of water into Lake Huron. We sank rapidly while the men alongside us tightened the cables. As soon as the Lucella was level with the lock, Bledsoe and I would hop across the two-foot gap to land. We’d have about thirty seconds before the forward gates opened.

An observation tower on the American side allows tourists to watch the ships as they rise and fall between the two lakes. The May day was still quite chilly and few people were out. I looked at them idly across the intervening MacArthur Lock and then squinted a second time at a man on the lower level. He had a thatch of bright red hair unusual for an adult. The hair reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t place him, especially not at a distance of thirty or forty yards. As I peered across the water, he picked up an outsize set of binoculars and focused on us. I shrugged and looked down through the gap between the side of the Lucella and the side of the lock where the fetid water was rushing away. The deck was almost level now with the top of the lock. Bledsoe touched me on the arm and I walked back toward the pilothouse to pick up my bag.

I was almost there when I was thrown to the ground. I landed with a thud on the deck, the wind knocked out of me. I thought at first I’d been hit and looked around defensively as I gasped for breath. But when I tried to stand up, I realized the deck was shuddering underneath me. Almost everyone else had been flung from their feet as well by some gigantic shock.

The head cook was teetering at the edge of the rocking ship, groping for the steel cables. I wanted to go to her to help, but the deck was too unstable; I tried to move to her and was thrown to the ground again. I watched in horror as she lost her balance and fell over the side. Her screams were drowned in a roaring that blocked out all other sound.

We were rising again. We didn’t have the buoyancy of a ship in water, but rocked as if balanced on the air itself. Sheridan’s comment at breakfast came back to me: the Fitzgerald being held in the air and snapped in two. I didn’t understand what was happening, why were we rising, why there was no water pushing up, but I felt vilely sick.

Bledsoe was standing near me, his face gray. I clung to the self-unloader for support and pulled myself up for the second time. The crew were crawling away from the open sides of the ship toward the pilothouse, but we could not help one another. The ship was too unstable.

As we rose, sheets of water rushed up like giant geysers between the sides of the ship and the lock. They towered skyward in a thick curtain cutting us off from the land, and then from the sky. A hundred feet above us the water rushed before falling in a pounding torrent onto the deck, knocking me over again, knocking everyone over. I could hear some of the men near me screaming.

I peered stupidly at the curtain of water, trying to see through it to the men at the sides with their cables. They couldn’t be holding them, couldn’t be restraining the ship as she rose lurchingly upward, lashing forward and backward in her concrete confines.

Holding the self-unloader, I struggled to my knees. A wall of water was pounding the forward gate, ripping panels from it. Great logs spewed into the air and disappeared through the sheets of water which still rose on either side of the ship.

I wanted to shut my eyes, shut out the disaster, but I couldn’t stop staring, horror-stricken. It was like watching through a marijuana high. Pieces of the lock broke off in slow motion. I could see each one, each separate fragment, each drop of water spraying loose, knowing all the time that the scene was moving very quickly.

Just when it seemed that nothing could keep us from diving forward and smashing against the rocks in the rapids below us, a great cry sounded above the roaring, the cry of a million women weeping in anguish, an unearthly screaming. The deck cracked in front of me.

People were trying to shout at each other to hold on, but no one could be heard over those screams as the beams wrenched and tore and the ship broke in two. The geysers of water rising above us shut off abruptly. We fell again into the lock, falling forward and down at a great jolting speed, ramming the forward gates and the bottom with a bone-jarring impact. A hatch cover popped free and knocked over one of the crewmen. Wet barley poured out, covering everyone in the middle of the ship with pale gold mud. The deck slanted sharply down toward the crack and I grabbed the self-unloader to keep from being hurled into the center. The broken giant lay still.

18 The Long Journey Home

The air was blessedly quiet following the roar of the explosion and the screams of the ship; all other sounds carried through it. People yelling, both on the Lucella and on land. In the distance we could hear sirens beginning to wail. Every few seconds another piece of the deck broke and clattered down the inclined plane toward the gash in the middle.

My legs were shaking. I let go of the self-unloader’s side and massaged the aching muscles in my left shoulder. Bledsoe still stood next to me, his eyes glassy, his face gray. I wanted to say something to him, but no words came. An explosion. Someone blew up a sixty-thousand-ton ship. Sixty thousand tons. Sixty thousand tons. The words beat meaninglessly in my brain.

The deck swam up and down in front of me; I thought it was starting to rise again. My trembling legs buckled and I collapsed. I fainted for a few seconds only, but lay on the deck until the swimming in my head passed, then forced myself to my feet. Bledsoe was still standing near me.

to the port side of the ship. I could hear him retching behind me.

“Martin. Our ship. Our ship. What happened?” That was Bemis.

“Someone planted explosives on your hull, Captain.” The words came from far away. Bemis was looking at me strangely: I realized it was I who was talking.

He shook his head, a jack-in-the-box on a spring; he couldn’t stop shaking it. “No. Not my ship. It must have been in the lock.”

“Couldn’t have been.” I started to argue with him but my brain felt flaccid. I wanted to sleep. Disjointed images floated in the gray mist of my mind. The geysers of water towering over the ship. The water changing color as the Lucella cut through it. The troughs of water dug by the screws as we left Thunder Bay. A dark figure in a wet suit climbing out of the water.

The figure in the wet suit. That meant something. I forced myself to focus on it. That was the person who planted the charges. It was done yesterday. In Thunder Bay.

I opened my mouth to blurt it out, then swallowed the words. No one was in any state to deal with such news.

Keith Winstein made his way over to us. His face was streaked with tears and mud. “Karpansky and Bittenberg. They’re both-both dead, sir. They were down on the bank with the cables. They must’ve-must’ve been-smashed into the side.” He gulped and shuddered.

“Who else?” Bemis demanded.

“Anna. She fell over the side. She-she was crushed. She never had a chance. Vergil fell into the hold. Oh, Jesus! He fell into the hold and suffocated in the barley.” He started laughing and crying wildly. “Drowned in barley. Oh, Christ!” he screamed. “Drowned in barley.”

Focus and energy returned to the captain’s face. He straightened and took Winstein by the shoulders, shaking him hard. “Listen, Mate. The ones left are still your responsibility. Get them together. See who needs medical care. Radio the Coast Guard for a helicopter.”

The first mate nodded. He stopped sobbing, gave a few last shuddering breaths, and turned to the dazed crew.

“Martin needs some help, too,” I said. “Can you get him to sit down?” I needed to get away from the crowd on the deck. Somewhere, just out of reach in my mind, important information hovered. If I could just get away, stay awake, force myself into focus… I started back toward the pilothouse.

On my way I passed the chief engineer. He was covered with mud and oil. He looked like a miner emerging from three weeks in the pit. His blue eyes stared with horror through his mask of black.

“Where’s the captain?” he asked me hoarsely.

“On deck. How are things below?”