AGAINST LOVE

I could not make out how all the flurry of escaping from below decks and shuttling from place to place fit into three quarters of an hour. Time must have been standing still for me. As we rowed farther from the side of the ship, it felt as if I must be among the very last passengers to get away. Yet I was wrong. Robert, sandwiched tightly between Mariah and myself, waved toward Newcastle’s railing. On the deck there a lone man struggled with a heavy life raft that was the last resort now that all the boats were gone. Single-handedly he muscled the wooden frame attached to metal pontoons up to the barricade, then heaved it over. It tumbled into the water, disappeared, then bobbed up again. “Hurry, man!” Browne yelled. “There’s not much time!” But instead of jumping for the raft, the man turned away and disappeared from sight. When he returned, he held a struggling, life-jacketed child under each arm, as if taking a pair of frenzied hens to market.