Free A Mile Down by David Vann Page A

Nancy. We strolled the ancient marble streets of cities such as Phaselis, with its lovely coves on either side, a city that had attracted Alexander, Rhodes pirates, and whoever else was big at any particular time. And one afternoon—in Kas, of all places—as we sat outside a small café and had ice cream, Rand and Lee expressed interest in becoming something more like partners in the boat. Lee was retiring in a year or so, and they loved the boat and the trips I ran, and they also could see the financial strain I was under, so they wanted to help out.
    This came as a tremendous relief. AmEx had shut down all four cards. They wanted everything paid in full. I was out of cash and at the end of other credit and I would have expenses for the crossing to Mexico.
    By the end of the charter, Rand and Lee, though they had already loaned me $100,000 in various stages, agreed to lend $150,000 more, interest free. I remember whispering about it at night in bed with Nancy. Rand and Lee were in the next stateroom, so I had to be quiet. But I was so excited. I was going to make it. Everything was going to work out. With this loan and then John’s loan I could clear all the cards, make my first interest payments in December to the lenders, and have enough cash to get through the winter in Mexico. Then I would need to have some better charter seasons, of course. But I felt like a free man again.
    The more I thought about this new loan the more stunned I was by the generosity of it. Rand and Lee were loaning me a total of $250,000, sixty percent of it without interest, and they were even giving me ten years to repay the principal, instead of the usual three. This was the time of “angel” investors in Silicon Valley, but those “angels” usually tried to take most of the equity of any company they invested in. Rand and Lee were not taking any equity at all. They were the real thing.
    Rand and Lee left on a four-day tour by car as Nancy and the crew and I motored back to Bodrum. We’d have a few days to take on diesel and provisions and do last-minute work on the boat before sailing for Mexico. And we’d be switching from Turkish crew to American crew, to avoid hassles with customs and immigration in various countries.
    These days were busy but also much easier than the rest of the summer, because the financial crush had been lifted. Amber was happy to hear about the money coming in, after having to juggle bills all summer, and reassured me that she had just spoken with John, whose loan would arrive in about three weeks.
    Not everything went smoothly, though. Now that the new seams had cured, Ercan and another man were sanding the entire deck with a large grinder, and naturally Ercan was barefoot. I had told him to wear boots many times that summer, but he was always scoffing at my safety worries, and this time the grinder caught a bit of deck, jumped, and tore up his foot and hand pretty badly. It didn’t saw through, but it mangled skin and several toes and cut the bone.
    We rushed him to the hospital, which was already a familiar place. A few weeks earlier, Seref’s son had been run over by a car while riding his bicycle through one of Bodrum’s narrow streets. He pulled through without permanent damage, and Ercan was going to do the same, but I couldn’t help being reminded of how easy it was to die or lose a limb here, how cheap life was.
    I stayed with Ercan through that first afternoon and evening, and I paid for all his care. I also gave him extra cash in addition to his pay. There’s no workers’ health insurance to speak of in Turkey. Employers just pay if an employee gets hurt, or else the employee is out of luck. The cost of medical care, fortunately, is about a tenth of what it is in the United States.
    As we came to our last day in Bodrum, Seref was holding all of my papers. Ostensibly this was because he was clearing customs and immigration for me. But it was also a