Diver Down

Sea gulls crowded the floating pier next to the dive boat Museum Piece, bullying each other for handouts. A brilliant orange sun emerged from the ocean’s distant horizon and danced a path across the water as we rocked with the boat, readying ourselves for the dive. It warmed our black neoprene suits and lifted our spirits. A late arriving dive buddy approached and the noisy birds scattered, our group was complete, and Museum Piece nosed past Carrot Island and to sea.

Thirty miles off the North Carolina coast our captain throttled down and our group’s banter shifted gear; we busied ourselves helping each other with air tanks and regulators. Over the wreck site our dive master dropped a diver down buoy, and I looked away, eyes welling at the thought—the submarine resting on the bottom beneath us was forever a diver down.

One hundred feet below the surface, darkening shades of green almost surrendered to blackness before the hulk of U-352 loomed into view. It sat proud and upright, as if it might blow its ballast, shudder and ascend after eighty year’s rest. I swam its length and imagined its crew’s final desperate fight against a crushing invasion of water, and before I turned away I reached out and pressed my hands against the German boat and paused, head bowed.

Returning from the sunken U-boat felt longer than the ride out, quieter. We left laughter and the anticipation of the morning dive behind on the chilly wreck just as surely as the submarine’s ill-fated crew left behind echoes of laughter and anticipation of their lives beyond the war. Above us, insolent sea gulls laughed. 

published by Carteret Writers

B-24 Liberators bomb Nauru but pay a heavy price.

click to read

Sole Survivor

A B-17 bomber crewman survives a mid-air collision and an epic island rescue.

click to read

A Japanese soldier on Guadalcanal says goodbye in a letter that never reaches home.

click to read

First Date

Six months had passed, but still Delores wondered if it was too soon. She knew that Walter would laugh at her as she fretted about things that didn’t matter. She didn’t need to rearrange the plastic fruit in the bowl on the dining room table, didn’t have to change the towels in the guest bathroom. Mainly she didn’t need to worry whether it had been long enough. Walter convinced Delores, in the months before he died, that we have an unlimited capacity to love. If she found someone, someday, it wouldn’t mean that she loved Walter any less. Delores believed it, but if she let go of Walter enough to embrace someone else, wouldn’t she go through the same pain again, eventually? Delores created men and scenarios with men in her mind, and she imagined how she would react, how she would behave if one of them showed real interest in her. She embarrassed herself, getting carried away in her fantasies and the choices and crossroads she created with someone new, but she’d always bring herself back with thoughts of Walter laughing, in a way that said he would always tolerate her fretful nature. “It’s not even a date, really,” Delores replied, now beyond talking to herself. She had conversations, arguments sometimes. She wondered if she was crazy, but she told herself that crazy people don’t ask themselves whether they’re crazy. “It’s not really a date when you plan to meet somebody someplace. It’s not really a date when you drive separately and it’s at two in the afternoon.” “It’s a date when you agree to meet a man and go somewhere with him, Delores.” “Kiss my ass,” she responded. Then a moment later, she said, “I think you might be insane after all.” Delores slept fitfully Friday night. What’s the train like? she wondered. Will there be lots of other people around? I hope there are lots of other people. Will he want to hold hands? Will the old rail car be airconditioned? “I hate to sweat.” Especially on a date. I told you, it’s not a date. By Saturday afternoon Delores was too tired to worry about it anymore. She was past caring and looked forward to having it over and done with. She wondered if he were thinking the same way, looking forward to the drive home alone more than anything else, and she caught herself hoping he genuinely wanted to spend the afternoon with her. She felt guilty about wishing it to be over. “Just have fun, you stupid old hen,” she said. The train was at the depot when Delores arrived, and he was there waiting for her. He smiled and approached the car, held the door for her as she got out. After hellos he showed her a commemorative book he’d bought in the depot, then asked her to forgive him for being so effusive about it. Inside the depot he admitted he was a rail nut, had been all his life. He built a scale railroad in his garage and lost himself in it, had obsessed over it after his wife died. He dreamed about railroads and fantasized about working on the railroad, and he laughed at the idea, confessing it was a childhood dream he’d never outgrown. He kept a diary of the rails he’d ridden, the crossings he’d recorded. He saw life through rail metaphors, strong couplings, keeping switches closed that might lead off the main line. And signal blocks along the way, showing green for the distance of a good run of life. Delores listened, fascinated, and promised him that he wasn’t boring her. This isn’t a date, she heard herself saying, and for a moment she feared she’d said it out loud. He opened the book and told her all about the road they were about to travel. It was originally a canal route, he said. The canals were used to transport building materials into the interior and harvested crops on the return trip, and she listened to this man and his passion for the history of this place and wondered if he had loved his wife for listening to him the same way, tolerating this little boy still in love with railroads. He told her how the horses walked alongside, pulling the canal boat, and how the men walking the horses would release the harness from the tow line to pass the bridge, and reconnect it on the other side after the boat’s momentum carried it through. But the rails bought up the canal lines and the horse paths became rail beds for trains, and Delores wondered what became of the horses. Were they allowed to retire, grow old gracefully and die peacefully? She thought they’d earned the right, but she doubted that’s how it happened. Sold out to a farmer for plow horses—had to keep plugging away no doubt, she thought. Probably slaughtered when they got too old. She laughed, glad she wasn’t an old plow horse. He said they’d sit on the right because they’d be able to see some of the old stone locks still in place along the canal route, next to the rail line. He explained how the locks raised or lowered the boat for the next part of the trip, and how fascinating he believed it was that these locks still existed at all, and how tight the stones used to build them still fit together. Delores lost herself in thought about how the stones must have been hammered and chipped and refined before they would go together so well, and how seeing a couple that went together so perfectly, it was easy to forget how much effort went in to making the fit just right. It didn’t just happen, and once they were together, she was sure it took a lot of work to keep the seams tight. He was pointing out the first lock but it passed before Delores focused on the right place, and she felt bad, like she had disappointed him. “You silly old bird, Delores,” she said, for worrying about what he thought. She really was listening, truly interested, and she hoped he sensed how much she appreciated his effort, trying to give her a good time. But she lost herself again in the plight of the horses and the backbreaking work, getting those stones to nest up to each other so perfectly, just to have the next generation’s train come along and zip by so fast they didn’t even notice. He explained the second half of the rail loop, how it was built so they could bring trains in, load them with lumber, and run them back east to the mills and factories that relied on them for raw materials. He talked about how many trains they kept on the loop, and how men came from all over to work the forest or the mills, the factories or, if they were lucky, a job on the rail line itself. It was a boom time for the area, but now it had faded to an excursion train with a handful of people hardly able to imagine its rich history. The boom time had been the area’s youth, Delores thought. Now it was holding onto a piece and hoping the school field trips that passed through would inspire some young person, or plant inside them some bit of appreciation for what had been, and who. But it’s hard for a young person to understand that old things, and old people were once young and strong, too. “Your mind is wandering, you old biddy,” Delores said. “Pay attention.” She hoped that her uh-huhs and little questions interjected here and there had been convincing enough that she cared about what he was saying, and she tried to appear interested when he pointed to something along the line, or to a picture in the book. He touched an old black and white photo and then pointed to the site, where whatever it was in the picture had once been, and if you look there you can see the supports for . . . something, he said, but it was a railroad term or a lumber industry term, and she didn’t catch it exactly. “Just nod, Delores.” The railroad conductor approached in his period costume, and smiling passengers handed their tickets to him. He punched each ticket and returned it to them, a souvenir of their ride. The conductor reached Delores where she sat, and she passed her ticket to him. He punched it for her and asked whether she was enjoying the trip. “I was,” she said, and in the fog of her daydream, the conductor’s smile became the smile of the nurse, the nurse who cared so well for Delores, whom Delores resented for interrupting her dates throughout the day. “Miss Delores, you need to be with me long enough to eat something, okay? You can’t take your medicine without some food first, right?” “I was enjoying myself so much.” “Were you riding your cruise boat again, Miss Delores?” “No, I was . . . I was on a train, riding through a pretty little valley with lots of trees. And I was with a very nice man.” “I am sure you were, Miss Delores. Were you riding the train with your Walter?” “No, Walter is gone.” “And you know why he’s gone, right, Miss Delores? You know why you’re here?” “Walter died, and the judge said I had to come here and stay with you.” “Now why do you suppose the judge would say a thing like that?” “’Cause Walter was sleeping, and I soaked the bedroom carpet with kerosene, and I lit it under the door with a fireplace match.” “That’s good, Miss Delores.” “And they said the smoke’s what got him.” Delores paused, turned her head and looked again out the window, and she saw birch trees and falling leaves, and for a moment, she thought she saw snowflakes floating past as the train gently rocked along. He slid his hand under hers on the seat and smiled sweetly at her. “But I made sure the cat was out first, before I closed the bedroom door. And that’s good, right?” The nurse watched Delores swallow the last of her medicine, and said again, “That’s good, Miss Delores, that’s good.”

published by Shift: A Publication of MTSU Write