Not Without Hope (11 page)

I thought about my chances to play football at USF. What if I had stuck it out and sat out one year and played the next? Another year—you think that’s a long time, but it’s really not. I should have stuck it out.

Everything in my mind now was what-ifs. What if I don’t make it out of here? What if that plane did see us and is making its way back? What if no one finds us? There was a lot of hope and prayer and frustration.

I
T WAS PROBABLY
five o’clock at this point. We had seen maybe one more helicopter in the distance. I took my life jacket off and swung it over my head, but nothing. The chopper flew away. The sky was kind of overcast. Earlier in the day the sun would poke out for ten or fifteen seconds once in a while. It was so nice. “I wish it would
stay out,” Will and I kept saying. Then the sun would go behind a cloud. You could really feel the difference.

The swells, consistent ten-footers, were getting a little more choppy. We were still getting thrown off the boat. There were no big gusts of wind like before, but we were still freezing. I looked at my legs. There were little cuts all over, particularly on my calves. My butt was bleeding. I could see blood on the back of my knees. My ass and my back hurt so bad. My knees were scraped up, and pieces of skin were missing. The strawberries you get on your hip from sliding into home plate, I had them all over my body. I felt contusions and bone bruises. My hands were freezing. I still had my gloves, but the fingers were shredded. It felt like my fingers were broken.

I had the sandals from my backpack, but the tops of my feet were getting torn up, holding on against a trim tab or the swim platform, gashing my feet against metal and fiberglass. Will’s arms and legs were cut up pretty bad, too. My neck was stiff. It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat and swung at me. I was completely slouched over, sitting on the keel, my shoulders forward, just holding on to that motor for dear life. I tried to burrow myself into my jacket, to get my chin under my sweatshirt so that only my eyes showed.

Will and I were getting quieter and quieter. I could tell he was getting weak. We would get thrown into the water and it would take him longer and longer to get back on the boat. Or he would just float for a while, out of energy. “Oh my God, I’m so cold,” he said. He was choked-up, sad.

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “They’re gonna find us.”

I helped him get back on, and we prayed and hoped some more.

By now, he had gone off the boat quite a few times. He was sitting behind me on the hull, still trying to bear-hug me, but I was getting limited effort from him, almost zero effort. Earlier, when
a wave would come, he would balance himself and work with me. Now, he was ripping me down into the water with him. He must have pulled me in six or seven times.

He was very, very weak. I knew he was exhausted from going under the boat as much as he did.

“You all right?” I kept asking him through the day.

“Yeah,” he would say.

Now his answers were getting weaker. I’d have to call his name a couple times before he replied.

Whatever was going on was bad. Will was sluggish. His strength was going. He looked tired, he squinted his eyes. He kept saying, “I’m so cold, I’m so thirsty.”

“Will, you gotta hold on,” I told him.

He kept asking what time it was. We hadn’t seen any helicopters for a while. I knew dusk was coming quick. It was getting colder out. I could feel it. The temperature in the air was cold. It would end up being one of the coldest nights of the year, in the sixties or the high fifties. All Will had on was a T-shirt, his swim trunks, and his life jacket. I remembered what he had said earlier in the day, “I’ll never make it through another night.” This was probably the most scared I had been.

Then we started seeing fins. The first was a gray rectangle sticking out of the water, probably eight feet from the boat. I didn’t say anything right away. All of a sudden I was really alert. Twenty seconds later, I saw the fin again, so I wasn’t hallucinating. It wasn’t a dolphin. I knew they kind of rolled through the water, slanting up and down. This was swimming more in a straight line. The fin would come up for a few seconds. You’d see a little more fin, a little more, then less and then it was gone.

“Will, you have to stay on the boat,” I said to him. “I think there are sharks.”

There were two of them. I don’t think they were anything large, maybe five-footers. They looked similar to the lemon sharks we had
caught on Saturday, but I couldn’t tell for sure. I assumed the blood leaking off the boat had attracted them. Or the bait under the boat. We had so much bait loose when it flipped. I knew sharks didn’t usually come up unless there was food.

I had gone scuba diving a couple times in St. Thomas and outside Cancun. At first, I was scared. Am I really going down here? Then I thought it would be kind of cool to see a shark. But that was on vacation, not when I was stranded in the Gulf, defenseless and bloody. I never liked being in open water, even when I was a kid and we went tubing and I fell off. My dad had a boat. We’d go tubing in a river or along the coast. I had a phobia about sharks. I’d rather have taken my chances with a gator.

I saw the fins five times in probably a ten-minute span. A wave would come, and Will and I would slide all the way to the side, like we were about to lose our grip, then I would rip us back up. I was working for both of us.

“Just hold on to me,” I told him.

I thought about how I would lift my feet up if the sharks came near the motor. Our blood was dripping there.

It was hard staying on the boat. I knew putting Will in front, on the motor, wouldn’t work. He couldn’t have held on for both of us, and I would crush him if a wave hit us from behind. He was holding on some, trying to bear-hug me, but there were times when we almost started falling off. I would flip us back upright.

Good thing I work out, I said to myself.

I was aware of the cold, but I was more worried about Will. I thought what Marquis had said on Saturday, that sharks would probably be scared of this white boat above them. They might think it was some kind of animal.

Earlier on Sunday, thinking about what might be swimming beneath us, I said to Will, “Do you know how much shit is looking at us in this water?”

And then the sharks were gone. Like the squid, they just went
away. As it turned out, the fear and anticipation had been worse than the reality of seeing one.

The next hour after that, we must have gone off the boat fifteen times. Another twenty times, I yanked Will back before we fell in. I continued pumping my chest, trying to keep the blood flowing. I could feel Will shivering. His teeth were chattering. You could hear the trembling in his voice. It was almost like an echo: “I’m so cooold,” and “Why can’t they fiiind us?” and “Pleeease, God.”

I
T WAS GETTING
to be late afternoon. We had seen only that one plane and that final helicopter. “Where are the boats?” I asked Will.

I was extremely worried. I could see Will’s eyes, the frightened look on his face. It was like the first little sign when someone is going to cry, that look, very scared, very weak. Before, he had been hugging me; now he was completely leaning on me with all of his weight. He said a couple more times, “I’m so cold.” He was choked up. There was quivering in his words. “I’m so thirsty,” he said again.

W
ill kept falling off the boat more frequently. Every ten minutes, then five minutes, then three, then two. He struggled more than ever to get back on the boat. I had tied the steering cable to his life jacket, but the jacket was slightly torn. Then I tied the cable to his wrist, but it began hurting his hand. So I tied the cable back to his jacket. The other end was tied to the motor. At times, when Will fell into the water, he didn’t grab on to anything. He just floated. He would drift eight or ten feet away. Sometimes I jumped off and swam out and brought him back to the boat. Luckily, we had that cable.

“Come on, Will, come on,” I yelled at him. “You ain’t gonna fucking quit on me.”

This went on for half an hour. He was getting beat up. Waves that shouldn’t have knocked us off the boat were flipping us in the water. What little strength Will had left, he was losing quickly. He squeezed me from behind, but there didn’t seem to be any fight left in him. He had done so much for me, and now he was fading. I couldn’t hold on for both of us. Sometimes it was easier for him to drift for a little while in the water, but it was so cold. The waves
were getting real choppy again, like they had been twelve hours earlier, before sunrise.

Swells were still there, but mostly they were random waves, ten-footers. The water temperature felt like it was in the low sixties. The air was definitely getting colder, and the wind was picking up again. The sun hadn’t been out for a while. Any warmth had vanished.

The boat would rise a little bit and then slam back into the water. We were both torn up. I kept looking down and seeing blood on my legs. My hands were bleeding through the tears in my gloves. Will was bleeding from his legs. You could see it running down the boat.

“You’re not leaving,” I told Will. “I’m not letting you die.”

He was real quiet. He just couldn’t get back on the boat. I’ll never forget his face, just very frightened, sad, super-pale.

When he did climb back on the boat, he began rambling and mumbling. I couldn’t really make out what he was saying. It was Marquis and Corey all over again, but without the aggression. He started slurring randomly, like they had. He spoke in a deeper tone. It seemed like his lips weren’t opening or that he was saying his words backward.

“I love you, Will,” I told him. I probably said that a dozen times. “Paula loves you, too.”

I told him, “You’ll always be my best friend. You’ll always be Paula’s best friend.”

The cable attached to his jacket came untied. The wire was ripping back and forth in the waves and it came loose. My hands were cramped and I struggled to tie a tight knot while sitting on the hull.

“Come on, Will, give me something!” I screamed. “Swim, swim! Will, don’t give up on me!”

Two of us were gone, but two of us were going to get out of this, I told him. Help was on the way. They would find us soon. I don’t know if I believed it. I just said it.

“I’m not going to lose you!” I kept yelling. “You ain’t dying on me!” And “I can’t do this without you. I need you here. I’m not going to let you go!”

I started getting emotional. I was very frustrated. Once again I felt absolutely helpless. I had already had two guys die, one in my arms. I was in the middle of witnessing my best friend do the same. I knew these could be his final moments. I wasn’t crying, but I was upset, trying to hold it together. My brain was going crazy. I was trying to think of a million things I could do for him.

I was begging, “God, please help!”

We had struggled together the entire day. Part of the reason I still had it together was Will. Now there was nothing I could do for him. I knew I wasn’t far from being in the same shape he was in.

I kept thinking about everything that had gone wrong. The boat flipped, we were in a storm, the water was freezing. Marquis got sick, Marquis was gone. Corey got sick, Corey was gone. Daylight came, but a storm came with it. We couldn’t see, it was pouring, the waves got stronger. Help from the Coast Guard was above us numerous times, then the helicopters were gone. Thank God Will got the life jackets and the food, even if it was little more than a tease. I kept saying, “Something good’s going to happen. It can’t be all bad. We’re gonna get a break.”

But the only good thing that happened was the boat stayed afloat and we had each other. There were no breaks.

Will weighed 230 and I was 240, and when I swam out to pull him back in, we would go underwater. The life jackets were dinky. They held you afloat, but not enough to keep you above the crashing waves. I kept bringing Will back to the boat. He was gagging and coughing. He started taking in a lot of salt water. His mouth was opening up. He kept spitting up and coughing, something I had seen before with Marquis.

My heart was racing from swimming. I could barely move my legs, I was so exhausted. For a few minutes, I hadn’t thought about being cold. I forgot about being thirsty. My main concern was Will. He hadn’t been on the boat for a while. I was wearing my backpack now, over my jacket and my sweatshirt. It was a little cumbersome to swim, but when Will got loose from the steering cable, I had to go after him.

“You gotta hold on, gotta work with me a little bit!” I told him. I was yelling, getting frustrated. As bad as everything was, all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, it was getting even worse. I was in the midst of losing the last person I had with me. My best friend. He was deteriorating before my eyes.

I kept wondering, Why is he getting so bad, and I’m not?

I guess I knew why. He had a lot less clothing on. He had gone under the boat a bunch of times. I knew that had completely exhausted him.

We attempted to get back on the boat one final time. I got up and straddled the motor and helped Will get up. I was literally using every ounce of strength I had left. I told him, “I love you. I love you so much.”.

I was getting upset. “I love you, too,” he said. But this time he was real slow, kind of quiet, half crying. That made me even more upset.

I told him, “We’re going to be each other’s best man at our weddings.”

A minute later, Will got tossed back into the water. He came off the side, falling to our left. “Grab on!” I yelled. The steering cable was tied to his jacket and the motor. When he flew into the water, his jacket stayed above the surface as he submerged. I don’t know if it got out of whack as he went down or what. It was choking him when his head popped back up. He lifted the jacket off his neck, and it just flew off.

“Will, Will, grab your jacket, no!” I yelled.

He didn’t respond.

He was near the boat, and I was straddling the motor. I grabbed him and put his hand on the stern, on the swim platform. I told him to grab his jacket, but he looked at me, delirious. In a few seconds, the jacket was probably thirty feet from the boat. A wave had come by and taken it away. It went from five feet to twenty-five feet in what seemed like a couple seconds.

I tied the cable to his wrist, but it was hard to tie a knot and it kept getting looser and looser. Five minutes later, he kind of wriggled it off. He was confused. He was exhausted, and it was hard for him to swim.

I thought, should I leave Will alone and go and try to get the jacket? Do I wait with him? It was an obvious choice. I couldn’t leave him floating there without a life jacket. Within a couple minutes, I couldn’t see the jacket anymore. The waves had taken it away.

I had watched my best friend lose all his motor functions in front of me. He could barely talk. I would speak to him and he would just look at me. Earlier, he could tread water, but now his legs were barely kicking. It was a struggle just to hold on. Sometimes one hand would let go of the boat, then the other. It seemed like the waves were getting worse.

It was six o’clock now. I told Will again, “I love you.” He answered was slow, quiet. “I love you, too.”

His face was droopy, sad. His eyes were shutting. His head was bobbing, almost like he was going to sleep. He was coughing up water.

“Hang on, hang on!” I kept yelling.

I got flipped off the boat. I climbed back on and tried to lift him up with me, but he was deadweight now, no strength at all. I pulled him, but it wasn’t going to happen. A series of
waves ripped me from the boat again. We were both in the water now. He was a little closer to the boat than I was. We were about ten feet apart. He kind of went underwater. I grabbed him and pulled him up.

“Hold on, Will,” I said. “Hold on.”

He could barely keep his eyes open. He kept coughing.

“Please God, we need a miracle,” I said aloud.

I kept thinking, Why is this happening to us? Why is this happening to him? He’s one of best guys I know. I thought about how Marquis and Corey were also some of the best guys I ever met. Why is this happening? I kept asking. There’re a lot more evil people in the world than these guys.

Random waves kept crashing into the boat. They were a little smaller but quicker. It was getting choppier. The waves were six to eight feet high, but they were more frequent, a lot rougher. We would go under and come back up. Will was slouched over, his head floating in the water, his arms almost zombielike in front of him, not holding on, his back a little hunched. I grabbed him and pulled his head up, once, twice, three times. Thank God there was still a little light. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to see him.

Will was unresponsive. He had that same, scared look, like this was it. There was so much going on. The steering cable kept coming loose from his wrist and I wasn’t able to tie it into a knot. Three or four times we lost each other; he went under, and I grabbed him and pulled him up.

“Stay with me,” I kept telling him. “I can’t do this myself.”

The fourth time I pulled him up, he just wasn’t there. He had no vital signs. His eyes were shut. I was yelling at him, holding him with my right arm around his back, under his armpit. We were chest to chest. My left hand was holding on to the boat.

“Will, Will!” I kept saying. I must have said his name nine or
ten times. I was getting emotional, crying. “Will, be there, please be there—I need you! I can’t survive without you!”

I shook him and grabbed his T-shirt and yanked it back and forth. “Why?” I screamed a half dozen times, as loud as I could. “Why?”

I held on to him for two or three minutes, bobbing up and down in the water. We were chest to chest, wedged between the swim platform and the motor. My head hit the motor. I didn’t know what to do. I just cried.

I tried to pump his chest and give him mouth to mouth, but there was no way with the waves so rough. I’d get close and then we’d hit heads or a wave would come and he’d rip away.

“Why, God, why?” I kept screaming. “Why? Why?”

Will’s head was down, eyes shut.

I kept telling him that I loved him.

I looked at his eyelashes. He had big beads of water dripping off of them. He had a cold, still look on his face. His lips were purple.

It was probably six thirty. By this point, I had had two guys die in my arms, literally die in my arms, and a third one got loose and died seconds later, all within the past twelve hours. The sun was setting. It was definitely cold. My teeth were chattering. I was freezing. Hope was running out. I knew I wasn’t going to give up, but there was nothing I could do. Four was down to one. It was just myself. All I could do was wait.

I was holding Will by the hand now. I climbed up on the boat somehow and I kept hold of him. I held his wrist. I wish I could have tied him to the boat. At least we would have had his body. I remember his skin being very cold. He was a lot colder than the water, it felt like. A couple more waves came, and I lost my grip. He was gone.

Unlike Marquis, Will didn’t sink right away. I could barely look at him. It was eating me alive, tearing me up. I’d look at him
for a second and have to look away. I cried and kept screaming, “Why?!”

Please, God, let this be a bad dream, I thought to myself. Let me wake up already. Let Will be alive.

He stayed above water for a while, his head down, slightly slouched, just floating. A wave would come and he would drift above it. It was like he was saying, “I’m not quite ready to go yet.”

There were a lot of bubbles coming from beneath his body. For a split second I thought he was still alive. I thought, Oh, my God, I need to go get him. I screamed, “Will, please, Will!” He was twenty feet from the boat, floating away. But of course he wasn’t alive. I can’t imagine myself feeling worse than that, ever.

I was screaming again, as loud as I could: “Why, please, God, why?!” And I was crying, “I’m so sorry, Will!”

If I had died, I knew how hard it would have been on my family. Will’s parents wouldn’t even get to bury their child. I would be the last person to see him. I was with Will until the end. I was with all three of those guys for their last words, their last breaths.

I thought about how tough it would be on Will’s family. If I got out of this, what would I say to them? I was already speechless. I didn’t know his parents well, but I had met them quite a few times. Bob and Betty Bleakley. We used to meet at halftime of USF games. They’d buy us a beer or vice versa, and we’d talk about the game. They were big fans. They never missed a game once Will started playing. It was really hard not to like them. They always wanted to make sure Will was okay.

I pictured all the families. I had only met Marquis’s wife, Rebekah, once or twice. I had never met Corey’s family. I just kept picturing each family, huddling up together and hugging and crying. I got so upset, it made me sick to my stomach. It was an awful thought. I tried to think of something else, but all I could do
was picture them hearing the news for the first time. They would be devastated.

I knew I needed to get through this to explain to them what happened. I needed to live long enough to tell the story, even if I was found alive and died later. If I didn’t make it, people would tell their own stories, based on rumors. At least I could tell them the facts.

I had lot of mixed feelings. I was emotionally devastated, just shot. I had a beating heart, but that was about it. That was the only feeling I had other than chattering teeth and the pain in my hip flexor, groin, and butt. Sometimes it took getting banged up by the waves to kind of wake me up for a second.