Wreck of the Carl D. by Michael Schumacher

Author:Michael Schumacher
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2009-11-16T10:00:00+00:00

Marlys Mays is prepared neither for the news that her husband is one of the two survivors or for the rush of reporters turning up at her front doorstep. Before she’d met Frank Mays, the former Marlys Bush lived in Waterloo, Iowa, a small town as far removed from the focus of national attention as one could imagine.

Being a sailor’s wife and running a household eight or nine months a year are challenging enough for the mother of three kids under age five; dealing with the stress of the past day has taken her through every possible emotion, from the shock of hearing about the loss of the Bradley, to the despair of just knowing her husband had been lost, to the elation of finding out that Frank has been found alive, to the sadness she feels when she learns that others haven’t been as lucky as her husband. A doctor’s sedative helped her get through last night; it’s likely she’ll need another tonight.

Marlys and her kids—an attractive twenty-three-year-old mother and her cute little boys—are the perfect subjects for the type of news feature that reporters in these parts will wait for years to come around: they look good on camera; they are a heartening story in the midst of overwhelming tragedy; and they possess the kind of down-home innocence you most often found in a Norman Rockwell painting. Photographers corral the entire group for family pictures. One shutterbug lifts the baby out of his crib and plops him in his mother’s arms for a picture. Flashbulbs go off from all sides of the Mays living room.

Marlys has her mother, who happens to be visiting Rogers City, and several friends around her for support, but none of these people knows how to handle the press. Marlys does the best she can in answering a flood of questions while she waits for someone from Michigan Lime to pick her up and take her to Charlevoix. The questions are as flat and predictable as any reader might expect, as are the answers. Interviewers and interviewee are anxious to get the business over as quickly as possible—the interviewers so they can file their stories on deadline for the next day’s papers, Marlys so she can just put the experience behind her. Yes, she says, she’s absolutely thrilled that her husband is alive. Yes, she feels horrible that other wives and mothers aren’t getting the same good news. No, she doesn’t want to see her husband going back on the lakes after all this has blown over.

“I never want Frank to go back to the ship,” she declares. “I’ll die if he does.”

Mary Fleming, addressing the same questions a short distance away in her home, offers the same types of answers, although she isn’t as adamant as Marlys Mays on the topic of her husband’s returning to work on the stone boats.

“It’s his life,” she tells reporters. “His heart is in it. I’ll do whatever he wants.”

Like Marlys Mays, Mary Fleming has had plenty

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