Never Let Them See You Cry Page 18

  I know that no fire department in America has a ladder that will go higher than ten floors, so neither do I.

  In one city, I was booked into a twenty-seventh-floor suite. Hotel personnel could not understand why I insisted on something else, preferably on the third floor. Embarrassed, I finally confessed.

  “Don’t worry,” the desk clerk cried, relieved that my problem was nothing more serious. “If anything happens,” he promised, “the fire department helicopter will pluck you off the roof.”

  I don’t want to be plucked off a roof. I want to be carried down a ladder by a husky fireman.

  Sometimes I think I am the only person suffering from this neurotic mind-set—then I remember Stu Kaufman on his fire watch, spending that sleepless night in his car outside his daughter’s slumber party.

  Maybe we both have seen too much.

  11

  Water

  Survival techniques can save your life, but training and knowledge are not always enough. Surviving takes something more.

  Barry McCutchen, an expert on survival, will not forget the ordeal that began one Memorial Day, a perfect day for snorkeling and fishing in the calm blue-green waters off Key Largo.

  He and two friends spearfished all day in the warm water off John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park. The ocean sparkled like diamonds in the brilliant sunlight, and the afternoon was so splendid that at 4:30 they decided to dive for one more hour before returning to port. Before the snorkelers splashed again into the sun-streaked water, McCutchen, thirty-five, a popular physical education teacher and assistant football coach at Hialeah High School, repeated a litany of safety rules.

  He had no dark premonition; his precautions were routine, since there were only three of them, and this was just the second diving trip for Julio Guevara, an eighteen-year-old high school athlete. The third man, Michael Melgarejo, twenty-five, owned the Hog Wild, their seventeen-foot open fishing boat.

  Something happened to McCutchen about fifty yards from the vessel: leg cramps, for the first time in twenty years of diving, probably because he neither ate nor drank during the long day of diving. He was not alarmed; in fact, he spotted a vivid red-and-orange hogfish on the bottom and pointed it out to Julio, who speared it. Still cramped, Barry said he was returning to the boat, anchored in gentle seas five miles offshore.

  He took the fish and swam toward the Hog Wild, but ten yards short of the vessel his legs cramped so severely that he dropped the brightly colored fish and began to float. The current carried him about ten yards behind the boat. He tried to swim toward it again, but the cramps caught him even more painfully, bunching his thigh muscles and tensing his calves. For five minutes he floated facedown, trying to massage away the pain with his fingers. A former high school football star, Barry was familiar with muscle cramps, but these were bad. Even his feet were rigid and he was unable to move his fins. He took his face out of the water and saw that the current had carried him about fifty yards from the boat. Keep floating, he thought, and wait. My friends will pick me up.

  The time was 5:00 under bright skies in calm, clear waters where Barry, a muscular six feet one inch tall and 230 pounds, had felt at home all his life. Still unconcerned, he drifted for about fifteen minutes, the current taking him out. Almost imperceptibly at first, the wind began to pick up speed. He realized he was being carried away much faster than he had thought. The boat was barely visible in the distance. He checked his diving watch: nearly 5:30, their designated time of departure. His friends would return at any moment now, scan the sea and spot him.

  They did return moments later. He watched them clamber aboard and saw the sudden flurry of activity when they realized he was missing. By now he was a quarter of a mile away. He tried to wave when they turned toward him, but his shoulders, arms and body cramped.

  They did not see him.

  Tired and hungry, he was frustrated, but still convinced he would be found quickly. He had seen a number of other diving boats and pleasure craft nearby during the day, all within a half mile of where they had snorkeled. Floating vertically, in a standing position, his face in the water, he used the drownproofing technique he taught in water survival classes. The method takes little energy. Your lungs are like air-filled balloons and the water holds you up. Barry waited, a tiny speck in a big blue sea, as his anxious friends scanned the huge horizon.

  Mike Melgarejo, captain of the Hog Wild, was slightly annoyed when Barry was not aboard by 5:30. Barry, he thought, must have gone off chasing a fish by himself. By 5:45 he knew something was wrong. The two were longtime friends, ever since Barry had coached Mike’s 145-pound Optimist League football team in 1971. Mike hoisted anchor and made a wide sweep of the coral reef.

  The lone response to their shouts came from a huge hammerhead shark that boldly circled the boat, trying to strike at the fish in the baitwell. Mike returned to their original spot to radio for help. It was 6:00. He reported a lost diver wearing only a T-shirt, shorts, dive mask and flippers. The Coast Guard instructed him to stay put so searchers could fix on the point where Barry had vanished.

  A forty-one-foot search boat was dispatched out of Islamorada at 6:05 P.M. The Coast Guard from Miami to Key West was alerted by 6:15 P.M., along with the Pennekamp Park rangers.

  Still adrift in a current now rapidly picking up speed, Barry realized he might be in the water longer than he first expected. He hoped his friends had notified the Coast Guard. He hoped he would not miss dinner. They had planned to stop on the way home for an all-you-can-eat buffet of prime rib and fresh shrimp.

  He scouted good fishing spots and watched colorful schools of snapper in the living coral reef while awaiting rescue.

  Eight private boaters and the pilot of a Cessna in the air overheard Mike’s distress call and offered assistance. Barry saw the small single-engine plane fly toward the boat. When it began circling, patterning out from the Hog Wild, he knew they were looking for him. The searchers combed the bright green waters to the south. Barry was drifting north.

  Complex crosscurrents tend to sweep south inside the reef but rush north on the outside of the underwater rock formations. The wind increased. The sky faded to an overcast gray. Across the water, Barry saw mountainous dark clouds, a gathering thunderstorm. Visibility dropped rapidly, and the storm’s energy kicked up the surface of the water. Daylight faded fast. Darkness was but an hour away.

  Barry saw a Coast Guard helicopter out of Miami’s OpaLocka Airport whirl over Key Largo just after 7:00 P.M. and cut across open water, directly toward him. Relief and gratitude swept over him. He was not worried about dinner anymore. Having been diving since 8:30 A.M., he was weary. He wanted out of the water by dark. Before college Barry had served three years in Coast Guard search and rescue. He remembered that during those years they never found anybody in the water if they were not found by dark. He had never heard of a free diver with no flotation gear surviving a night alone at sea. He still believed he would be found, but was increasingly uncomfortable. Cramps continued to wrack his body. The waves, so gentle that afternoon, had grown choppy. When they lifted him, he could see search boats in the distance. Then he would be plunged down, surrounded by towering walls of water. All he could see was a patch of sky above, with occasional glimpses of the aircraft.

  Twice, the Cessna came within a quarter of a mile. He tried to wave but pain crippled his efforts. Lack of salt and fluids reduced the reservoir of potassium in his body, and the cramps worsened as it became more and more depleted. His eyes played tricks, making him believe the plane was veering toward him, when it was actually turning away.

  He watched, willing the next circle to be larger, closer. Then, he said, “he came right at me.” Elated, certain he had been seen, Barry tried to wave both hands, exposing as much of his body as he could above the waters.

  The small plane droned directly overhead, wheeled in a wide loop and soared toward land. The pilot had given up.

  The orange-and-white Coast
Guard chopper continued to beat the darkening sky at 8:00, with thirty to forty-five minutes of light left. Whenever the search pattern brought it into view, Barry kept his eyes locked on it. In doing so, he missed the last boat of that gloomy twilight. He saw it too late, out of the corner of his eye, a sleek fifty-foot sailing schooner gliding silently across the waves, moving fast, under full sail, parallel to shore. The sails were red-and-white striped. Barry saw two people aboard, near the helm. They did not see him.

  Just four hundred yards away, it shot by in a flash. Almost as quickly, it was gone.

  The Coast Guard was his only hope. The circling chopper with its searchlights and red blinkers was too close to shore, and too far south. When the helicopter seemed at its closest, Barry rolled over to float on his back, knowing that otherwise only the top of his head and snorkel could be seen. The thunderstorm still rumbled twenty miles offshore, lightning and black clouds building. It was drifting his way. He could feel it in the whipping wind.

  At 8:55, by the luminous dial of his diving watch, the helicopter flew directly at him. The engine throb grew louder. Jubilant, Barry peeled off his bright yellow T-shirt, tied it to his spear and waved it three times. Cramps gripped his shoulders, and the spear, with its makeshift flag, slipped out of his grasp. He dared not dive for it, fearing that the chopper crew, not quite a quarter-mile away and closing in fast, might miss him.

  His shirt drifted away, slowly settling to the bottom. Tearing his eyes from it, Barry sprawled on his back in water forty feet deep, trying feebly to wave his white diving gloves. What happened next will always haunt him: The helicopter throbbed overhead—and kept going. The Coast Guard had called off the search for the night.

  He was alone.

  His stomach knotted, as it always did at kickoff, before a game. His chances for survival were not good. Gazing down into the black water, he asked God to take care of Susan, his best girl, his family and the kids he taught. He thought of two former students, teens on drugs. He had hoped to bring them back; now he wished he had tried harder. He felt awash in regrets. His mother had died when he was three. He had grown up close to his father, who had suffered two heart attacks. Why hadn’t he called his dad more often? Why hadn’t he spent more time with him? Why hadn’t he showered Susan with flowers and surprises? He probably would not have the chance again.

  The threatening thunderstorm passed to the south, the clouds blew by, and the moon emerged. His hopelessness passed, and something stronger took over—the spirit in every person that fights to be indestructible or immortal. Barry knew this would be a long, hard night, and he began to plan his survival.

  The time was 9:30. He believed he was strong enough to stay afloat through the night, but he had to prepare for the worst: sharks. Fishing in the same area two days earlier, he had seen a fifteen-foot tiger shark feeding on the surface. The creature, large mouthed and fast moving, with formidable saw-edged teeth, was out there right now, somewhere in the dark—perhaps nearby. So were the hammerheads that frequent the warm water off Key Largo. Their fleeting shadows streaked through his mind as he scanned the moonlit surface. His spear was gone, at the bottom, but his Hawaiian-style sling, used to fire it, was still tucked in his gray athletic shorts. The sling is simply twenty-four inches of yellow surgical tubing attached to a wooden cylinder. Insert the spear, draw back the rubber tubing and let fly, like a slingshot. Now he considered another use for the unarmed sling: if attacked by a shark, he would use the tubing to fashion a tourniquet and hope to be found before he bled to death.

  The Hog Wild remained anchored on the reef until after nightfall, when Mike radioed the Coast Guard that he would return at dawn to resume the search. He tried not to panic. Barry was a strong swimmer. Tomorrow, he told himself, the call would come that Barry swam ashore, safe somewhere. But what chance did even the strongest swimmer have of surviving the night among sharks and stinging man-of-war jellyfish?

  Mike telephoned Susan to say he had bad news. “We lost Barry,” he said flatly, “out in the ocean.”

  “That’s not funny,” she said. For ten minutes she refused to believe him, then burst into tears. She drove to the townhouse Barry and Mike shared. Word spread. Adults and teenagers, students and members of Barry’s fellowship group began to arrive. When Mike drove up shortly before 11:00, they ran out to his van, hoping for good news. There was none. They talked and prayed. No one slept.

  “Football players would walk in and break down crying,” Susan says. “It was touching, how much they cared.” One even promised to start going to church if only Barry was saved.

  “All of Hialeah knows Barry,” Mike said. “He’s helped so many kids out of drugs and drinking. Kids love him. So do parents. He can take straggly, skinny, wimpy little kids with no self-confidence and no sports ability and just draw out qualities that the kid never knew he had. That’s why Barry always had championship teams.”

  Somebody brought Cokes and sandwiches at 2:00 A.M. One high school athlete brought his favorite photo, shot when Barry took a group of youngsters white-water rafting on a wild North Carolina river. Tears, prayers and reminiscences filled the long night.

  Time dragged for Barry, watching the water for shark fins slicing through the dark. He checked his watch at 10:00 P.M. After a long wait—at least thirty minutes—he checked it again. It read 10:05. He vowed not to look at it again for a long, long time. When he finally allowed himself to check it again, the time was 10:10.

  To sustain himself through the long and perilous hours, he began to relive happy times: rafting down the river with kids, surfing in Hawaii, cruising the South Pacific during his Coast Guard years.

  The night was beautiful. He was not alone. The moon hung directly overhead in a star-studded sky. He could make out the constellations. Occasionally he would change from his vertical, drown-proof position, roll onto his back and stare at the stars.

  An unbelievably loud noise shattered the serene silence at about 1:00 A.M. Deafening engines roared across the water. The moon was bright, but eyes straining, he saw nothing. Then it appeared, a wide, white wake in the dark. Silhouetted against it were two Cigarette boats, the fastest in the water. They streaked full throttle across the waves at fifty to sixty miles an hour. Painted dark colors, they ran without lights and rode low in the water. They came so close he was afraid of being run down, but he made no attempt to draw their attention. He knew what they were and that no drug smuggler would rescue him. The roars faded into the night, toward Elliott Key.

  Another torment soon accompanied the torturous cramps that made his body ache: jellyfish stings. Tiny creatures he could not see in the dark. At 4:00 A.M. the wind began to stir, and a violent storm struck. Rain fell in such torrents that he could see nothing. Thunder seemed to crash around him and lightning lit up the entire sky. He was afraid it might strike close by and stun him into unconsciousness. The wind howled at least thirty miles an hour, with forty-mile-per-hour gusts. Battered and blinded by waves, he felt like a cork bobbing in the water. Several times great waves pushed him under. He swallowed salt water and his tongue began to swell. His throat burned, and he found it difficult to breathe. He managed to roll over in the rough sea, remove his face mask and let it fill up with fresh rainwater, which he gulped.

  The storm raged for three hours, then winds began to subside. The rain stopped at 7:00 A.M. Barry watched the storm roll off the sea, across the Keys, and disappear, a huge black mass, into Florida Bay. The sun was up. He felt elated. The storm he thought might kill him had propelled him toward land. Within a half-mile of North Key Largo, he was in much shallower water, just fifteen to twenty feet deep. Even more important, the waves were carrying him toward shore.

  A Coast Guard helicopter whirled off the mainland about a half mile south, heading toward the search area. Barry suddenly realized that its crew was now searching for a body. He thought of all the faces, all the jaws that would drop in surprise when they saw him alive.

  Mike and two frie
nds, an elder from Barry’s church and a teenage student, had also resumed the search. Mike still harbored hope. Though haunted by thoughts of sharks, he remained certain that Barry was too calm and too strong a swimmer to drown. His companions had despaired. Their goal was to find Barry for a decent burial. A diving team from the Monroe County Sheriff’s office had also been dispatched to look for a body.

  By 7:30 A.M. the wind had begun to blow again and the sky was growing overcast. Today was Tuesday, the day Barry taught survival swimming to teenagers. The irony did not escape him but he was too exhausted to laugh. He wondered if anyone had called school to say he would not be there. His eyes watered, his throat was raw and his tongue so swollen he could hardly breathe.

  Watching the shoreline at 11:30, he saw that he was floating a half-mile off a North Key Largo marina, the last sign of civilization for miles. He knew people were there, he could see parked cars, but his throat was too sore and his lips too cracked to cry for help. He had hoped someone would pick him up, but the weather was so nasty that no boats were out. If he drifted past the marina he could be in the water for another ten or twelve hours, perhaps another night. Fighting cramps, he began to dog-paddle toward the marina.

  When the tips of his swim fins touched bottom, he said, “Thank you, God.” He felt no wild elation, just gratitude for a second chance.

  He put his weight on both feet and gasped as pain like knives plunged into both hips. He dog-paddled the last twenty-five yards to the beach and sat in a foot of water. It was noon, on a desolate shore of mangroves and rocks about a quarter-mile north of the marina. Every muscle in his body was tightly knotted. When he removed his swim fins and looked out at the ocean, he said, “It really struck me what a miracle it was.” He looked at the sea in awe, overwhelmed.