That promise seemed to help. Gilligan made it through an uninterrupted night's sleep for the first time since the hunt, and if his appetite wasn't what it had been in his heyday, he managed a reasonable portion of breakfast without looking like every bite was made of equal parts razor blades and gall. And, while he was no less assiduous about keeping himself continually occupied vis-à-vis the chores, he did steal a few minutes from checking the fish traps to splash around the lagoon like an otter… again, for the first time since the hunt. And so, for a day or two, it seemed that life would begin to limp its way back to normal; if he was still subdued and wary, the Professor assured them all that it was no more than could be expected. If the dreams were by no means gone, they seemed less violent than before, and he no longer needed the aid of the handkerchief to remain comparatively quiet.
Something crucial had been shattered, and they'd all been trying to pick up the pieces since the moment Kinkaid's helicopter had left the lagoon. Nothing was ever going to be quite the same, but there seemed to be hope, now, that somehow they would, in fact get through this, that wounds would become nothing more than scars, and experiences be reduced to memories.
So, of course, that was the moment the ship chose to make its appearance.
There was no such thing as luck, the Professor insisted. Coincidence, yes. Irony, undeniably. But luck was merest superstition, and no one living in the enlightened days of the late twentieth century had any business believing in it in any way, shape, or form. And he was grateful that he didn't believe in luck, because, as he had to admit to himself, if he did believe, he'd be forced to admit that their collective luck was, as a general rule, less than stellar, and, where Gilligan was concerned, beyond abysmal.
It was a beautiful day, and six of them were on the beach. The Howells, who were only there in a supervisory capacity, had their deck chairs and the radio. The girls were hanging the laundry out to dry; the breeze was crisp and fresh, perfect for drying clothes, and they had taken the opportunity to wash and bleach their bedding, as well. Gilligan was digging for clams like a terrier, and the Professor was mending a torn fish net. The Skipper was gathering firewood in the jungle; there was less driftwood to be found than usual, for whatever reason, and dinner wasn't going to cook itself, no matter how nicely you asked. So it was a matter of looking for deadfall in the jungle, which meant dodging the vines that wanted to get tangled around your feet and the broad leaves that wanted to smack you in the face when you didn't have a free hand to brush them aside, and he wished he had opted for the nets, instead.
It was Mary Ann who first saw it. "Oh! Oh, look, everybody! A ship! Over there! Look! A ship! We're saved!"
Sure enough, far out in the distance, a ship was just barely visible on the horizon. "Quickly!" the Professor shouted. "Grab the sheets! Wave them in! We have to get their attention!"
All six of them lunged for the laundry, but none of their signaling or shouting seemed to reach the ship. It was too far away to see them, perhaps, or just not interested.
"Girls—keep trying with the flags. I'll light the signal fire; perhaps they'll see the smoke. Gilligan—" a thought seemed to strike him, and his eyes lit up. "Gilligan! Go and fetch a gun. Fire a few rounds. They're sure to hear that!"
Gilligan's eyes widened. "But Professor—"
"DO AS I SAY!" he thundered, and ran for the promontory where they kept a pile of dry wood ready for lighting.
Gilligan stood staring after him.
"Are you deaf, boy?" Mr. Howell seized him by the shoulders, shook him. "Go! Get the gun! We have to get their attention somehow!"
"Gilligan, hurry," Mary Ann wailed. "They're sailing away!"
Snapping back to reality, Gilligan nodded. "Yessir," he mumbled, already running hell-bent-for-leather back to the huts. He found the rifle—Kinkaid's rifle—first, so that was the one he took. It was fully loaded. There was no time to think about what he was doing. He did not want to think about what he was doing. He just grabbed it, slung it over his shoulder by the strap, and raced back to the beach. Facing out into the ocean where he could not possibly hit anyone or anything, (There was nothing to hit out there he would not hit anyone he would not hurt anyone please God let him not hit anyone) he squeezed off three quick shots.
Deep in the jungle, the Skipper heard them. Dropping the wood, his heart in his throat, he ran in their direction.
Gilligan worked the action of the gun, automatically doing all the things he had been taught to do, and he all but emptied the clip, but it was no use. The ship was gone. They all just stood there for a moment, peering into the horizon, as if expecting to see it turning back.
Then, all at once, Mrs. Howell's composure broke, and with a sob, she buried her head in her husband's shoulder.
"There, there, Lovey darling," he soothed, holding her close. "It's all right. It was hardly the sort of boat a Howell could be expected to use, anyhow." He glared at Gilligan, still holding the rifle. "Next time we'll just be a bit faster about how we signal them, won't we?"
"I'm tired of waiting for next time," Ginger said thickly, tears running down her own face. "Gilligan, how could you? How could you just stand there and let them sail by?"
Mary Ann just hugged her, too choked with disappointment to either comfort or blame, and somehow that was the worst of all.
That was the moment the Skipper arrived, skidding to an abrupt halt in the sand. "What's going on here?" he boomed. "What happened? I heard—"
He took in the scene before him; the distraught women, Mr. Howell's grim expression, the tangled sheets lying helter-skelter on the ground. Gilligan standing stock still, with a smoking gun in his hands and a glassy-eyed expression of dawning horror on his face.
His eyes went huge. In an instant, he was across the beach, and he ripped the weapon from Gilligan's unresisting grasp. "What have you—Where's the Professor? Gilligan, what did you do?"
"I didn't want to!" Gilligan yelped. "But Mary Ann saw it! And everyone shouted. But it wasn't any good and the Professor, he said 'Do as I say,' and so I ran back to the huts, and I got the rifle, and I came back here… I'm sorry, Skipper! I tried… but it was too late! I… I didn't mean… I'm sorry!"
The Skipper, aghast, stared at him. The incoherent narrative mapped all too well against the description of Gilligan's recurring nightmares, and the Skipper, for possibly the first time in his life, was completely at a loss. There were no good choices, not anymore. He was drowning, right there on dry land, he was drowning.
All that saved him was the Professor's reappearance on the beach. He was walking heavily, shoulders slumped, defeated, a far cry from his usual quick stride.
"Professor?" the Skipper said, dazed. If he was there, then he wasn't dead. Perhaps Gilligan had missed? There was at least that much mercy left in the world. "What…?"
"It was too late," he said, tiredly, in an unconscious echo of Gilligan's words. "By the time I got the fire lit, the ship was already gone."
"Ship? What ship?" the Skipper asked, looking from one face to another, now completely lost. "What in the name of the seven seas is going on here?"
Mary Ann sniffled. "I saw a ship," she said simply. "Out there. We tried waving flags, and shouting, but they didn't see us. The Professor went to light the signal fire."
"And as an additional sensory stimulus, I instructed Gilligan to fire a weapon," the Professor finished. "Unfortunately, it would seem that none of these were sufficient to alert the ship to our presence."
Just a ship. Just a failed signal attempt. That was all it was, the Skipper reiterated to himself, trying to force his heart to resume some sort of normal rhythm. It had skipped so many beats that he must have been at least a minute behind, and now it was pounding so quickly that it was at least a minute ahead. He took a deep breath. Just a distress signal. That was all it had been. He would never have thought he could be so grateful for another failed rescue attempt.
He looked at the gun in his hands, then looked at Gilligan. His face, never hard to read, might as well have been a flashing neon sign; they both knew exactly what the Skipper had thought had happened. They both knew that they both knew it.
Watching him, the Skipper suddenly also knew exactly how a damned soul would look as the Book of Judgment was slammed shut.
And it was no kind of solution, no kind of strategy, no kind of anything, but Gilligan had nothing left in his mental arsenal but flight. So he turned and ran, just ran, away from the others, away from the tears and the shock and the failure and the anger. Fat lot of good running was going to do now. If he hadn't frozen like a possum, if he had been a bit faster to run when the Professor had first ordered him to, perhaps he wouldn't have been too late, and the ship would have come, and they would have been rescued.
Bumbling, incompetent, useless and stupid… and those were his good points. One more for the list; he wasn't just useless, he was actively dangerous. He'd wrecked another rescue and the Skipper thought he'd gone berserk and killed the Professor while he was at it. So much for the Skipper's assurances that he was not like Kinkaid, that he was not a ravening monster who could be expected to turn on them at a moment's notice. So much for all that 'I know you better than you know yourself' jazz. Or maybe he really did. Obviously, Skipper knew what he was. They both did.
He could not outrun his own thoughts, as hard as he tried, and he did try.
He ended up in the clearing, again, and his face twisted as he stared down at the grave. "All you had to do was play fair," he told it. "That's all you ever had to do. You could have done like you said, and radioed the Coast Guard to pick everyone up, and you could've had me, fair and square and no cheating. I promised, didn't I? All you had to do was what you said you would! We'd all have been better off."
OoOoOoO
The other six, back at the beach, stood in awkward silence for a moment.
"What just happened, Skipper?" asked the Professor.
The Skipper sighed, and indicated the gun. "This happened," he said simply. He might have stopped there, but decided against it; this was rapidly going beyond the point where privacy was any sort of consideration. He described their conversation, briefly but comprehensively. "So today, first of all, he had to pick up this rifle again, just like he'd been dreaming about, and then, when I got here, and saw him with it in his hands—and you, Professor, nowhere to be found—I jumped to all kinds of conclusions." He shook his head, anguished. "I probably just knocked him all the way back to square one."
"It's just as much my fault as yours," the Professor said. "Using the gun really was our best chance at getting their attention; sound carries a long way across water. I thought that he'd be less likely to have an adverse reaction to the sound of the gunshot if he were to wield the weapon himself. Apparently I could not have been more wrong."
The Skipper shook his head, obscurely unwilling to share the blame even that much. "I'd just got him believing that I trusted him, that I knew he wasn't any kind of killer, and what do I go and do? Accuse him of murder. I'm an idiot."
"Well, Captain, standing around here rehashing the blame won't solve anything," Mr. Howell said bluntly. "If we're back to the beginning, then we're back to the beginning, and talking about it isn't going to change anything. Let's go find the boy and see what needs to be done."
The Skipper dragged a deep breath into his lungs. "You're right, Howell," he said. "We'd better split up. Girls, why don't you try looking by the lagoon. Mr. and Mrs. Howell, you stay in camp in case he comes back there. Professor, you go east, and I'll go west."
They all started out in their respective directions. They left the rifle lying on the sand, along with the abandoned laundry, the empty deck chairs, and the radio, still blaring news that no longer interested any of them.