Joan J.K. Groves

Elliott Vaughn Groves

THE LAST ISLAND

This book is dedicated to

our beloved son, Joel,

our loving family,

and our kind friends,

in Faith.

— Joan and Elliott

Introduction

It is simple enough—H₂O—water. Water, a single drop hanging from the sink waiting to be the last drop waiting to fall into a full glass of water. Water, the fresh flow of a winter spring into a freshly unthawed lake. Water, the bubbly foam from the shallows filtering through the soft sands of the shore. All of this is water. Water is the incompressible portion of the realm. Drop upon drop it crushes until only truth is left miles down in the deep where light is forced to darkness and there is no more except for water.

Water is where life is defined by fang and fin that swim about in sight. Life is size becoming invisible in the light in the water. Death is the size of fear floating face down, a mass in the water.

The ocean is four simple atoms over and over and over—the largest of exponential numbers possible—and even then it, the ocean, is beyond understanding. Hydrogen bound to oxygen and sodium bound to chlorine is all there is to the volume of the cubic miles of ocean. I had seen all the natural history programs on the oceans and had completed the required classwork of the oceans at the university long after my first experience with the ocean off the New Jersey coast at eight years of age. The plasma that suspended my red blood cells was seawater after seeing the Deep.

The incompressible nature of the water compresses the entire void from my vanity. The weight of water frees me in dimensionless delight. The simplicity and immensity of endless water destroys all the algebra and geometry that is in my understanding. And, from here, the ocean is without character and without face. The lands of my home in Pennsylvania are there in their ancient nature. The streets of Cleveland, Ohio, are there in their straight line design. The ocean, flat and deep, is only a smooth curved plane from this height. A chaotic chop at the surface, and just dense light where the air is no more.

Water on the moon—there is no sea tide, there is no breaking surf, there is no traveling wave, there is no endless deep. Nor be there fin nor fang. Nor be there spine, nor scale, on the moon. It, water, is nowhere in the sky in the darkest night or the brightest day for water is not there. The ocean sea is the plasma. It is the blood and carries the life that I cannot see, but which is in me.

Neither the moon, nor Mars, nor any star will ever live for there is no water, shallow or deep, in their non-existing seas.

But, and this is the most peculiar of all, the sea, water and salt, are not the vitality in the sea. For life can only come from life and life is undying in the dead depths of the deep black sea where devilry neither lives nor dies.

1

She was admiring her beauty. She knew that she was beautiful and for years she had had no shame or embarrassment in displaying her beauty. It was her pride and she would offer her beauty to others as a gift.

She was standing before nine polished metal mirrors that encircled her, reflecting her beauty in endless radiance. There were named handmaidens, numbered eunuchs, and a crush of slaves to anticipate her will and to do her will.

As one of her maids placed the nine-strand necklace round her throat and another placed on her head the crown that contained thirteen gems, she remarked how they pressed heavily upon her head and shoulders. There were ten finger rings and ten toe rings. There was only silence. The only voice was her voice. It was not that they did not wish to reply; it was that she had had all their tongues cut. Another maid made straight the necklace—for her obligation was to be beautiful and their obligation was to make perfect her perfect beauty. Her hands had touched only one object since she had become queen. She had touched only it.

The planning had been long. The journey had been long. But the wait to see the king had not been as long a wait as she had expected. “That was a good omen,” she spoke to herself, and the maids, eunuchs, and slaves would have said so, too, if they could have talked.

She had brought precious metals, precious stones, precious fabrics. She had brought animals, slaves, wealth. She had brought books, incantations, spells, and magic. But all the king desired was it. And there before her was it which she had also brought.

Nine months, nine days, and now it was the ninth hour—and the time had arrived for the meeting. Her will was anticipated and it, bundled in an ornamental sacramental shroud, was carried before her. He, the king, would see it before he saw her but he would not know what he was looking at while he was looking at it. She would be able to determine where his fascination lay, and then she would know the truth of the manner of man he was in his fiber. The simple cunning of the plan amused her as she thought about how in moments, one way or the other, she would have the measure of the man and, having his measure, she would have him.

She gave an order to the captain of the guard that those maids, eunuchs, and slaves that exited with her were to be put to death once she reached the king’s palace. She smiled as she viewed her final image—she was beautiful.

The king’s high priest gave her directions before the great doors were opened. The doors were massive ornate wood doors with huge metal fixtures. The priest and she understood the formality of the act, each realizing that there was no need for this act, but protocol required the act to be performed and in a respectful fashion.

“The Lady of Cush, the daughter of Joktan; Joktan, the son of Ham; Ham, the son of Noah; Noah, from the line of Cain; the Queen of Sheba stands outside your door and requests to be before your face—my lord, my king, my sovereign. What say you, most high—what say you, most wise—what say you, chosen one? Shall she be granted an audience before you in your holiness?”

There was silence except for the rustle of sound that was coming from the maids who were making perfect her hair, the ribbons of her hair, her eyes, her lips, her ear rings, her nose ring, her bracelets, her belts and shoulder covering, her dress, her anklets, her toe rings, and her sandals. Scent was wafted into the air, and she then walked through the fragrance.

The slaves and the eunuchs were not present. She looked at the captain of the guard, and the maids were politely escorted from her presence.

The priest was given a silent signal and the great doors opened silently.

She was escorted in.

How can such doors open so silently and so smoothly? She pondered.

At a silent signal, the palace guards also removed themselves and followed the queen’s guards.

The room was filled to overflowing with a brilliant radiance that came from no source but was ever in space for not a spot of the great hall had darkness and yet there were no windows. A filtered smoke hung about and created a most wonderful aroma.

The priest, answering to a silent signal, directed her to approach the king. But how could she approach the king? The throne was set in the middle of a pool of water.

How can I approach you and keep my dignity, my lord? she questioned in her mind.

The king and the priests were silent.

She knew her measure was being taken by the king. She could refuse to approach and be put to death for duplicity but she knew that she could not give it to any person except the king. Giving it, the king’s gift, to another would be the capital offense of disloyalty. She even knew that. Once commanded, she could not pause for a heartbeat, for that would be treachery. She knew the rules of the royal court.

He was wise. She would have to humble and humiliate herself before him in front of witnesses. There was no other course of action and she hardened herself and fortified her will. She would have to raise her skirt in front of them all with one hand, thus exposing her feet and thus forever having her modesty violated in public by her free will.

She placed it in her left hand. With her right hand she pulled up her dress and exposed her feet so that she could navigate the pool which she hoped would be shallow. She cried aloud inside but made no sound. The king and none of the witnesses made a sound as she placed her foot into the pool.

How is this possible? How can I walk in water and not get wet? How can I walk upon water? What magic, what wisdom does this king possess?

She thought a moment.

If there is such magic power in his house, what power must his temple possess?

She pondered and quaked at the thought. She had to harden her will and muscles so that she would not fall in weakness.

As she neared him, he gave a silent signal for her to pause. He came down and walked upon the water. With that act she realized it was not water. A king would not expose himself. A king would not demonstrate disrespect to his royal vestments. As he came before her, she prostrated herself before him. It was some sort of clear and reflective crystal. She noticed that it was cold and hard but she noticed that it, the crystal, reflected light. She viewed her beauty in the amazing crystal and desired that the king not request her to arise for she now saw the beauty of her face that her lovers had often seen and she desired to simply lay with herself even if it was in public before witnesses.

From her position on the floor she was able to view the entire room of the king in reflection. There was only one other object in the room. There was a metal bowl. The bowl was crafted like the sea and rested upon four legs. One leg was the north point of a compass. One leg was the west point of a compass. One point was the south point of a compass. The last was the east point of a compass.

In the hand of the king was a metallic scroll; was that scroll the source of his wisdom? She could not see the words inscribed but she did notice the icon in the corner. It was not the icon found in the temple. She pondered. Then she admired her reflective beauty for she had never seen such beauty so clearly and so intimately before in her life.

It was not uncomfortable for her to be on the floor upon herself. At that moment the high priest signaled for her to arise. On doing so he, the high priest, backed out of the presence of the king. In the room there was the throne and the Bowl of the Sea.

Each leg of the bowl was constructed of three oxen. The brim was ornate with lilies. The borders were engravings of lions, oxen, and cherubim in relief. The cup was actually not a cup at all, but rather a bath that rested on massive wheels and its axles were cedars from Lebanon.

The king gave a silent signal for her to begin to speak. But what was she to say? The last moments had taken her tongue away and her own beauty had bedazzled her. Then she remembered it in her hand. She had not dropped it. She had performed as a queen should, in a perfect royal fashion and had at all times been graceful. He, the king, had not gotten the measure of her, after all.

With the formalities completed and her forebearance revealed she finally spoke, “Dear King, it, has been with us from the first, as a gift and not payment or tribute. When the first of the ancient ones of your people crossed the desert into the valley of the Nile from the east and requested seed so that they may live, the ancient ones of my people did give seed. A fair and honest agreement was established. The ancient ones died in their time and the agreement also died in its appointed time.

“Now you, my Lord, request that it be returned to the people east of the Nile who are no longer wanderers in the desert but who are now a great people. I request, Great King, to make fair this bargain that I carry back a seed also—the seed of your people. I request to carry into the valley of the Nile, a son. A gift for a gift, a seed for a seed. Is this not a fair agreement to replace the old agreement, your majesty?

“When he is of age, I will send him to the throne of his father and the final seal for all time will be that you give it to him as his inheritance.”

She put it before him, and he accepted it.

In time, nine months and nine days, a son was born to the queen. Menyelek was a most beautiful baby; the queen saw her beauty in the face of the newborn. The king saw his wisdom in the eyes of the newborn. In the valley of the Nile, Menyelek grew up in beauty and in wisdom. The queen never allowed her son’s beauty to ever be away from her face. In beauty, Menyelek lived and died. Menyelek was thirteen years of age.

The sands came and the desert eroded, then buried, what once was beautiful. In wisdom and power the king lived and died before the destruction of the royal palace by the armies from the east after a nine-month siege. It was hidden, then lost, then forgotten.

— – —

The date on the calendar of the Bishop was Saturday, October 14, 1307. It was the day after Friday, October 13, and the Bishop awaited the results of Friday the Thirteenth’s prosecution of the decree. Only his most trusted knight was allowed in the innermost room of his sanctuary and space of his mind, but he knew it was safer not to trust anyone, including his most trusted knight of the realm, this day. At this moment, even with all his authority, he was powerless and had to wait nervously in anticipation and hope that the expected results of Friday the Thirteenth had no uncontrollable or unforeseen consequences. Hearing the knight’s footsteps in the hallway, he, the Bishop, sprinted to the massive oak door, tripping on and over his vestments.

“Well, Sir Knight!” the Bishop demanded.

“The blade pruned eight but the ninth was not in the orchard,” the knight replied.

“And, it?”

“Sir, it was not to be found,” the knight replied dutifully.

The Bishop, letting his guard down, commented in regret and disappointment.

“A failure. It was a failure. We can cut down and burn all the trees in all the orchards, Sir John, but unless that single fruit is in hand all is for naught.”

The Bishop excused the knight and went behind the massive oak doors and in the slow motion of the dying proceeded to close the doors. It had been there on Thursday, October twelfth, but now he had failed to capture it. The failure was certain, but it was not his blunder. There were spies everywhere and besides, to organize and orchestrate such a raid would have needed divine intervention. But, nonetheless, eight of the secret nine were dead and the surviving ninth could never appear in the realm again with or without the prize.

The Bishop would write three letters. The first would be to Philip to declare success. The second would be to the Inquisition to accuse Sir John of witchcraft and idolatry. And, the third would be a letter to confess his sin.

He called in two horsemen—making sure neither was schooled in reading and writing. One he sent to Phillip the Fair, the letter declaring the nine masters dead and that it had been destroyed—with the caveat that the horseman be immediately put to death. The second he sent to the Chief Inquisitor, accusing Sir John of unfaithful acts against the realm with the article that the horseman be sold into slavery and the profits given to the church. The third letter confessing his sins was placed in the base of a baptismal font.

At the same time the Bishop was kneeling in front of the baptismal font, a fugitive with one sole possession was making straight for the extreme outer region hoping to pass into the land of the unmapped.

The fugitive never spoke, but requested and received aid by the use of silent signals from others who had knowledge. In time, he reached the last structure, a dark, cramped cottage, and put it into a secret place.

The place, then unmapped, is now mapped. The lowly cottage had become a majestic cathedral. It was still hidden.

— – —

The date on the calendar was Friday, October 13, 1933. Herr Schliemann was polishing his newly acquired fourteenth century baptismal font in the large isolated preparation room when an unseen fissure weakened, and it broke.

An aged sealed letter fell before him; the date was Sunday, October 15, 1307. Herr Schliemann began to read, and then he read and re-read the manuscript. The manuscript was a diary, a confession, a map—an account of the demise of the eight masters, the escape of the ninth master, and the failure to capture it.

He knew what the Bishop did not know. In 1307, it was only half the prize, and he knew what no other person knew even now in 1933. Herr Schliemann was a good archeologist, a good German, and a good Nazi. He was Meister des Glaubens neunten grad but he could be Meister der Welt, he thought to himself ecstatically. After all, bishops come and go and Nazism was the political activity of the present, but it was forever.

Herr Schliemann would not be like the Bishop. There would be no letter of confession. It would be much easier in today’s world, he thought. He would not even have to accuse the other eight masters of wrong-doing. He would simply have them invited to dinner and have the special state vehicle be the means and mode of transportation. They would be thrilled to ride in the ornate carriage. The eight would be joyful and unsuspecting and, during the time of the drive to his house, each would become a bloody dead mass. The eight would be gassed to death by a valve that would re-circulate exhaust gas into the passenger portion upon command.

The bodies would be placed in one of the hundred sites that the state had excavated for such necessities. No record would be forwarded. Reports of the missing would simply be ignored. He smiled as he thought how much more progressive, sanitary, and civilized 1933 was compared to 1307.

Confession—what confession? he thought. Sin—what sin? God—God is dead.

All he had to do was to devise a plan and then control the plan. He would tell them half, but only half or maybe less, but not more; he would need them to complete the plan all the while thinking that he was their faithful minion.

— – —

There were no markings to indicate that these rooms were the Office of Strategic Services of the United States of America—the spy agency of the American Armed Forces.

The large wall calendar on the wall of the OSS in London read Saturday, January 13, 1944, as the U.S. intelligence officers deliberated over grainy photographic enlargements.

“I just do not understand this,” Larry said.

“I wonder what they are up to,” Charles replied, equally bewildered by what he saw.

Charles and Larry worked for the OSS as civilian experts.

“Submarines. Three gigantic submarines. Why waste manpower and material on the construction of three oversize U-Boats?” Charles questioned Larry and himself.

Larry answered, “The Atlantic is lost, but, you know, they look more like cargo ships than subs. And that makes even less sense. What is so important that Hitler and his goons are at it all day and all night? And in such a secured area that the crazy man himself could not enter.”

“The 8th Air Force won’t waste a raid on it. I’ve talked to superior officers and they deem it madness on their part and worthless on our part. One general called them Hitler’s sausages.” Charles looked upon the photographs and then continued talking. “You know, Larry, these U-Boats are being loaded with supplies—look. New snorkel design, new shape and outsides. These, I bet, are transports. These U-Boats are going to be underwater trucks. It does not make sense, though. I’ll be.”

“Yeah, but a U-Boat here or a U-Boat there, regardless of how big, will not make a difference now. I’ll be home in time see the flowers in my garden bloom. So, if some crazy krauts want to dream about a new super weapon—it is fine with me. Let them burn their resources and waste their time and materials. The more they waste, the sooner I’ll be going home. But I must say that those U-Boats look like they are well-made.”

— – —

The calendar on his desk read Saturday, January 13, 1944, as he put his hand upon the page and turned it for, after all, it was just past midnight and, after all, he had to keep order.

“Herr Schliemann.”

The General Officer addressed him.

“Yes,” Herr Schliemann responded without looking up from his desk.

“Herr Schliemann, all is ready,” the General declared.

Behind the General, a man was standing without any sort of regalia, but with military bearing.

“I am—”

Herr Schliemann cut him off.

“I know who you are. There is no need for introductions or formalities.”

He handed the General Officer a leather case and the General Officer handed the case to Herr Schliemann.

“Herr Schliemann, this is the most important package of the Reich and maybe the most important package in the world...”

The unannounced man spoke with pride and continued talking. But Herr Schliemann didn’t listen; it didn’t matter. He thought about his next move. I will be soon on my way to obtain the most important item—you fool.

The unannounced man finished, “...The pure blood of the faithful of today and tomorrow is in your hands now, Herr Schliemann.”

Herr Schliemann with great formality accepted the package and with great formality returned the salutes of the General Officer and the unnamed man.

Blood of the faithful. It is just blood. No different than the hundred millions of other units of blood that have been plundered from the unfaithful. Fools, Herr Schliemann thought to himself.

You can make a liar believe a lie. You just have to tell a bigger lie and say it all the time. The best liars do not think they can be fooled by a lie but that was the truth of the lie. Herr Schliemann knew that the more one lied, the more a liar believed any lie.

He had created a lie and applied the lie to their vanity and now his plan was coming to completion. Blood of the faithful—it was all he could do to keep from laughing out loud. But, there was no time to waste. He had to finish the last small tasks before putting in motion the next aspect of his plan.

Locking the door after the meeting, Herr Schliemann sat down and fell into a comfortable slouch at his desk. It had taken over eleven years. Eleven years of twenty-hour days, eleven years of dusty roads and market places, eleven years of no human relationships, and eleven years of lying and lying—but it was going to be worth it very soon.

He had obtained what was needed. He had one very ancient manuscript in the form of what everyone assumed was just a bit of antiquity from an Arab art dealer. The Arab dealer was shrewd and thought that he was getting something for nothing, but Herr Schliemann knew that he himself was the one giving almost nothing for something. The scroll was of tarnished silver when he had obtained it, and he would have passed up the opportunity to purchase it if it had not been for what was remaining on the partial icon.

The second manuscript was obtained by theft and then murder. He did not wish to kill his hired thief, but the thief had engaged in the time-honored creed of ‘no honor among thieves.’ Herr Schliemann then had to enact his creed of ‘dead men tell no tales.’

But now, the very ancient scroll was his, and now it and the other were beyond worth, and he had arranged the ‘how’ of disposal. He knew the ‘why,’ and soon others—all others—would know the ‘why’ also. Yes, after eleven years the end was going to justify all his squalid, miserable, and wretched means.

Yes, it was time for a rest. He had a few moments now to catch up after eleven years of exhaustion.

“Herr Schliemann, you must hurry to your ship. The allies will be here soon. It seems a massive air attack is on the way,” a dutiful voice urged.

“Is the ship in complete readiness?”

“Nein!”

What is another night without sleep? Herr Schliemann thought to himself.

— – —

As he changed the calendar on the wall of the OSS office to Sunday, February 20, 1944, Larry spoke to Charles in businesslike fashion while walking away from the ‘in’ box by the code machine.

“Well, the second of those three giant U-Boats is destroyed,” Larry said.

“Operation Argument, Big Week, is starting and you are talking about a U-Boat.” Charles was confused

Larry continued, “Yeah, it just bothers me. Incomplete business—and all that stuff. I do not like incompleteness. We got one in January on a bombing raid and now this one has floundered in the Atlantic and gone down. The third was damaged—how bad we do not know, and where it is we do not know. It’s incomplete.”

Charles was silent. He was not interested in old news today.

Larry continued his own conversation, but he did not pick up on Charles’ indifference to his topic. “I guess we won’t know until after the war what these U-Boats were about, if then. Why? Why all the war effort to produce these ships is what I do not understand.”

Wanting to silence Larry, Charles began to speak. “Look, we know for a fact that two of the three are destroyed. The third was damaged and in all likelihood rests on the bottom, having gone down silently with all hands. Good guys three, bad guys zero—we win by a shutout. In six months everyone will know the ‘Nutzies’ secrets, and in a year no one will care.”

“You may be correct,” Larry said, “but I have a feeling that it is not a ‘three to nothing’ shutout. I think they have another ‘at bat’ in this game. And, if not in this game, then in the one after this one. I have a feeling they are going to force a squeeze at the plate. Incomplete—it is just incomplete.

“I didn’t think of it at the time because there was so much going on in preparation for the big week, but I wonder now, come to think of it, if that third U-boat was the U-boat that was seen off the coast of Ireland, a while back.” Larry kept trying to puzzle it out.

“May have been, but so what? Just some Nazi rats running for the last open rat-hole, hoping to escape,” Charles said.

“Yeah, maybe that is it, but I think there is something else. I wish I knew what it was.”

Larry shook his head in despair.

— – —

At the same time under the Atlantic, another conversation was taking place between the captain of the U-Boat and Herr Schliemann.

“I agree with you, Herr Schliemann, that this war is lost. Too many Russians and too much American steel doomed us.” The Captain’s voice was stoic, military fashion.

Herr Schliemann agreed, “That, of course, and also very bad management of the war itself by Herr Hitler, idiotic paper-pushers, and psychopathic weak-willed underlings is what doomed the war effort, captain.”

“Herr Schliemann!” The Captain was offended by the open criticism of the Reich.

“Dear Captain, we are under the Atlantic, and the Americans and Russians are going to make certain that you never see those people again. Once we get past the Atlantic narrows between Africa and Brazil, all will be better.”

The Captain was silent for a moment considering Schliemann’s words and choosing his own carefully. “Herr Schliemann, as I understand the orders, I am to enter the Pacific Ocean by going around the Cape of Good Hope. That is all that I know. If the war is lost—why?”

Herr Schliemann began, “There is no hope for Germany. The war will be over by the spring or summer at the latest, depending only on the will of the Americans and Russians—how many Germans they are willing to kill and how many Germans are willing to be killed. That is the situation in Europe.

“On the other hand, the war has some time to go in the Pacific, maybe a year or two, depending on how many Japanese are willing to die. Of course, it could end very soon if the Americans develop a war-ending super-weapon. We almost had one.

“Barring a sudden end to the war, this U-Boat will land on one of the islands that the Americans have by-passed. We have enough food and fuel to reach our destination and, once there, our noble Asian allies will provide me—excuse me, provide us—with the supplies that are needed.”

“I do not understand the purpose of it all, Herr Schliemann.”

“We will trade this ship for what we need.”

“Herr Schliemann, this is property of the Fatherland.”

“Herr Captain, the only Fatherland is what is on this ship, now.”

“But what if the allies capture it, Herr Schliemann?”

Schliemann put his argument before the captain. “What would it matter? They cannot use it to kill an already dead people. And, once they loot Berlin, they are going to find all our secrets.”

“I shall scuttle it,” the Captain said in a moment of pride.

“No, Herr Captain. This ship is useful only as a fool’s card. The Japanese will think that this ship is their super weapon that will deliver victory to the Emperor—it won’t, of course, and in exchange, I—excuse me again, we—can make new and better plans. Yes, Herr Captain.”

The Captain smiled. The very thought of another war in another year was joyful. He thought to himself, war when I was fifteen, war when I am thirty-five, and the third war in which Germany was destined to be victorious and he would only be fifty-five years of age. It was a most pleasing thought. He smiled.

Herr Schliemann also smiled. The captain had believed the lie. The thought of his personal victory made him feel like a little boy at Christmas. But now there was no Christmas, and he felt even happier. On the navigation chart, he saw the island. The island was at hand, It was at hand. What could go wrong with his perfect plan, now? He would rest now in his victory.

— – —

The calendar in the office of the OSS was packed up for transport to Washington, D.C., and the Pentagon Building, USA, as two messages came from the machines.

“Atomic bomb. Hiroshima. Success.” Charles read the message and passed it to Larry. They both nodded.

“I am going to pack up and go home,” Charles declared.

“London?” was Larry’s question.

“No, home,” Charles replied.

The second message was: “USS Vengeance. Encounters and attacks unidentified submarine. Sinks same.”

Charles, in his haste to pack up, put the first message on top of the second message, never having read the second message, and tossed them away. “War’s over, Larry,” he said.

“Yes. They’ll have to sign now. I just wish I knew what happened to that last U-Boat. Incomplete, just incomplete.”

2

Flying out of the South Pacific back to the States, I leaned my head on the back-rest unavoidably close to the woman in the seat beside me.

“Wishing you were back?” she asked.

It was just a whisper, but it hollered in my head.

“Back? Never left.”

She wanted to say something, but all that came out was one of those confused looks. And then, “I mean—was the vacation really that good that you are sorry to be going home?”

She did not understand. She imagined that I had gone to the South Pacific for fun in the sun and the surf.

“You do not understand, miss. I cannot go home because I have no home.”

I knew that this fine lady was unable to understand that a person could be without a home. I was so very sure that this lady was from a fine, upright, and loving home.

“No... home?” She was unsure if she had asked a question, made a declarative statement, or if she had embarrassed me. There was no way that this fine lady could embarrass me.

“I have no home. Rather, I should say that I have no family house. The places of my past, houses or apartments, are gone. You know, ashes to ashes or, in the case of my life, bricks to land-fills.”

In her eyes you could see her fine home now and realize that all her fine homes were still upon the face of the earth.

She wanted to say something sincere and gracious but sometimes silence is the best voice and this fine lady was silent before me.

I wanted to give her some comfort, for I could see that she had fallen into despair. Me, I was going to give comfort. Me, all I could do was appreciate the ironic spin of circumstance.

“Do you wish me to tell you a story? It is a cheerful story but a sad story also.” I asked but with a warning.

She answered with her eyes and then with her mouth, “Yes.”

I knew where to begin.

I looked down to the surface of the sea—it was thirty-five thousand feet below me and that is where my story began. From the surface to the Deep, it was thirty-five thousand feet—and that is where my story ends. My story was a vertical line. Some life stories are lines of time. Some life stories are lines on a map. My story is an axis line from a wave crest to the abysmal bottom.

The plane engines resounded with checked power and hummed magnificently but as I began, the engines sounded no more.

“This is a very true story.” I told her this so she would be cued into belief. “You must understand that everything I am going to tell you is true for if you do not believe each word then my soul is perjured. Will you believe each word? The truth of it all is greater than the greatest imagined sea tale. If you cannot believe in such greatness, I will cease now and we will live nicely in our pasts and separate in peace and my soul will not be perjured.”

Her eyes, part of the silent human soul, were saying yes. but the tongue was speechless for a moment. Then her eyes screamed yes and her tongue followed in a fine voice.

“Yes, I will believe each word and understand the greatness of your story.”

I recalled it so finely, the first days of my manhood in Cleveland, Ohio. It was a bitter winter with feet of snow.

“The river is not going to catch on fire today,” Steve Pearson told me.

Steve was an English teacher. I was a science teacher. Steve was from Cleveland and I was not from Cleveland but we had ended up in the same graduate teaching program at the same university; we had ended up at the same junior high school; and now we had ended up at the same lunch table eating the same lunch food.

“The hawk is out today.” Steve said and looked out at the storm.

Yes, the hawk was flying. I never was much of a bird watcher but this hawk was unavoidable in my sight line.

“One day, one day soon, I’m gonna be on my island. Cleveland and winter will be so long gone that they will not even be a memory,” I said.

I looked onto 55th Street and fantasized that the snow was white sand.

Steve shook his head. “You and your dream island. You see old man Vargas over there? In forty years we will be him.”

I looked over at old man Vargas. Mr. Vargas could have passed for a petrified tree root except that tree roots do not chain-smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes.

“Not me—this time next year it will just be you and old man Vargas.”

“You will be back, and you and I will be buying old man Vargas’ lunch,” Steve replied.

Vargas was a gambler but it was more like Vargas went to the track and threw his money away. He got me and Steve to buy his lunch with the promise of repayment but he never paid his debts.

“Hey, kid, buy me that chicken sandwich. I will pay you back,” said to me.

“Mr. Vargas, I only have ten dollars to last to Friday and today is Tuesday.”

I answered because I was standing in line, waiting for a hot cup of black coffee that would be presented to me, cool and brown.

“Tell them extra mayo and no lettuce,” he ordered me.

“Mr. Vargas...”

I pleaded as I purchased the sandwich for him.

“This ain’t nothing like the winter of ’51 in Korea,” another voice interrupted. Jackson, the security guard, always had a war story from Korea. The war had lasted three years but from Jackson’s telling, the war was one of those hundred-year wars. “Saw men’s feet freeze—freeze, I tell you. None of this frostbite simple new war stuff. I tell you, freeze solid, like ice cubes. Black feets all over da place. Some frozen in boots. Only one way to get dem out, had to take a rifle butt and whack dem so hard dat dem toes and feets broke like glass I tell you. Den we just poured the broken pieces out and picked dem up. Saved a big toe now and again but not much more. Yeah, dis ain’t no Korea. Shoot, wish I was back in Korea, good times den.”

Jackson went down the hall. I purchased the chicken sandwich and carried it to old man Vargas. Steve kinda smiled as if he had won his argument and then began to grade some assignments.

I looked onto the beach that for everyone else in Cleveland was 55th Street. Looking out the window, I knew that Steve would one day sit in old man Vargas’ chair but I was damned if I was going to be with him.

Feet of snow, bitter low temperature, seven dollars to last till Friday. As I thought about it and the remaining four periods of the day—yes, `51 Korea did look good.

I had once asked DeFrancisco why he had all the good classes. He was the department chairperson.

“Because, I make up the schedules, kid,” he would reply.

His answer comforted me because it was the truth but it would not save me from the wrath of fifty criminal girls who did not want to learn about voltage on a miserable Friday in a miserable hundred-year-old science room with miserable fifty-year-old science books.

DeFrancisco had told me that if I stayed around long enough, one day I would make up the schedules—and then I could have the good classes. That was never a promise for I would not accept the terms.

With each passing vehicle, the beach became more and more like 55th Street.

The temperature was becoming ever more bitter cold, now. The sun had never risen and now it was painfully cold and misery was falling from the sky and onto the building and finally into me.

There I was on the doorstep, frozen and covered in the melancholy of the day.

Miss Sharon came out the door.“What are you doing sitting here?”

“I have had the worst day of my life.”

“It’s Friday, go home.”

“My car won’t start. I have seven dollars. Can’t pay for a tow, taxi, or even a bus ride. If I leave, the car will not be here tomorrow. And it’s a fifty-block walk to my apartment at night through a snowstorm in Cleveland, Ohio.” I was one breath away from weeping. “Today, I have had the worst teaching day since humans learned to walk erect.”

Miss Sharon looked down upon me and then sat down beside me. The snow had piled up on me and now was starting to collect upon her.

Her final wisdom, “At least you got the worst day of your life over with.”

Miss Sharon was kind enough to drive me forty-eight blocks. I walked two blocks to my miserable apartment and hoped my miserable car would still be in that miserable frozen lot in the morning.

My apartment was on 107th and Euclid. It was a miserable room in a miserable building at a miserable location in Cleveland, Ohio.

The front door was unlocked until dusk and now it was just after five o’clock and dark so I had to reach into my ragged coat to get the key to the outer door. Once inside, I had to get the key that would open my mailbox. Then, I had to get a third key to open the inside door.

“What the—” I shouted.

The instant I placed my hand upon the door knob, the door was thrust into my face. My mail and my school papers became a blizzard. A man pushed me aside with his forearm. I balanced myself upon the wall.

What was that smell? Was it gasoline?

There was no time to think and I did not really care. Before I could stoop down and begin to pick up my stuff, Mr. Smith, the landlord, came running through the door and stumbled over me. A black pistol fell heavily onto my papers.

“Damn, he got away!” Mr. Smith said.

“What the—” This was not a thought.

“That guy was pouring gasoline in the hall and was about to light it.”

“What the—”

“Thought I had a clear shot at him this time.” Mr. Smith collected his gun and stood up.

“This time?” I said.

I collected my stuff and entered this miserable place of misery. Is it morning already? It was dark. It was always dark in Cleveland, Ohio, except for when it was gray. It was almost as if the gray form of my dirty miserable apartment had oozed outside except for the fact that the outside was an even more pitiful black.

The only color was that of the weak-watted street lights shining on the road-dirt slush. That color made you feel as if you were a captive inside one of those green cathode-ray tubes looking out.

The one thing I did know was that it was cold. You can see cold.

— – —

Better eat a big breakfast.

I knew that I would have to eat till I could force no more food down my gullet. It was going to be a very long day.

Fifty blocks.

That was what I thought as I walked out of that miserable gray apartment building onto that pitiful black Cleveland, Ohio, street. With each block walked, I counted down: 50, 49, 48, frozen, 47, 46, 45, what the—, 44, 43, what the—, 42, until at last, 1—and what the—

The car was still there and really, I was happily surprised because it is most difficult to buy a car in Cleveland, Ohio, for less than five dollars. The snow was piled on my pride and joy, an old blue Chevrolet. Eight cylinders (six worked), black and white leather seats (that were anchored by a chain to the frame), a spotlight (rusted out), three hub caps and one working windshield wiper, but what a killer sound system (a weak AM radio). The tires were worn past the tread, two windows went down and one went back up, and the key was a screw-driver.

I did not know much but I had learned how to keep this Chevrolet repaired, so I proceeded to begin the day’s work. However, it is most grueling being a shade-tree mechanic in frozen weather in Cleveland, Ohio. The trunk had the tools and the equipment that I needed.

I just had to walk from 55th Street to 38th Street once and back caked in ice. I picked away at the ice around the tires, freed the Chevrolet, and drove home. The breakfast had long since diffused from my blood but it is one of those choices that you have to make sometimes as a discerning animal—eat or sleep. I slept.

— – —

Is it morning already?

It is one of those choices you have to make—eat or sleep. I was too hungry to sleep. The decorative scheme of my miserable rat-trap of a room was dirt on grease.

Over on the other side of the table was a stack of ungraded assignments that were long overdue to be returned.

Is this to be my life?

It came to me, that working five days a week and then one day on Sunday was miserable.

Remembering that I had not eaten in twenty-four hours, I brewed a large cup of coffee, sat in my misery, and looked at the now repulsive dirt sponge of 107th Street that forty-eight hours ago was the virgin sand in my fantasy.

Wordlessly, the assignments sat there with thousands of words—waiting for me to place hundreds of words on top of words. What was thousands of words times hundreds of days times scores of years equal to in life terms?

I did the math.

That number added to my misery.

The apartment had an incinerator and Mr. Smith allowed the tenants to drop burnable stuff down a waste chute.

The rest of Sunday was without misery and indeed most restful. I did not know, and still do not know, what constitutes a proper Sabbath but I did obey the Fourth Commandment that day.

“My mother, bless her soul, would be proud of me.”

I thought what a fine son I was, putting all those church lessons to practical use today.

“God, it is so hot in here.”

I began to wonder.

“Mr. Smith must really have a fine blaze going.”

Then, after thinking for a minute, I was most certain that he did have a fine blaze going. I was going nowhere and I had all this time to get there so I just enjoyed my wordless Sabbath. I was sure that there is a Bible quote, something about not worrying about tomorrow for there are worries enough for today and let tomorrow simply take care of tomorrow. I did not know until now what a fine Christian I was in my life practices.

I should have been more faithful sooner.

— – —

February, March, April, May, and now it was June.

“Hey, class schedules for next year are out.” Cool Lewis greeted me.

He was cool. It was not that he was cool in the James Dean sense of cool; it was rather that Cool Lewis had style. He was up to the second in style and all this style came to an exclamation point in his mouth with that fine gold tooth.

“You can get yours from DeFrancisco.” Cool Lewis spoke while looking at his hand full of papers.

“Don’t want one, don’t need one. Soon this place will be so far behind me that it will not even be a memory.” I bragged with the boldness of a hero who was claiming the beautiful princess’s love after slaying the dragon.

“With what’s-her-face gone, you will pick up her classes.”

Cool Lewis had this inflection in his voice as if there was some reward in being sentenced to two hundred thirty-seven years in prison rather than being sentenced to life imprisonment.

“Don’t care, except for the fact that I am gonna miss you, Mr. Cool Lewis,” I said.

On the way out the door, there was Steve sitting in old man Vargas’ chair. He had a pile of assignments before him but he was looking over his classes for the upcoming year. “Hey, I’ve been assigned old man Vargas’ schedule,” Steve exclaimed. “Have you picked up your class schedule yet?”

“No, I have not picked up any schedule for next term.” I grunted.

“See, here only a short time and look, I have Vargas’ schedule.”

Steve was cheerful.

I could see no joy in wearing a dead man’s pants. Mr. Vargas had died in his English class just nine days ago.

“That ain’t no kinda reward and besides, I am gone.”

“Still saying that? Just go get your schedule.”

As fate would have it, DeFrancisco walked into the room and handed me a list of classes for the upcoming year. I set the worthless paper ablaze and exited onto 55th Street in Cleveland, Ohio. As my old blue Chevy pulled onto 55th, I could see the blaze in the open window of the school.

3

I shifted in my plane seat next to my listening companion.

“It takes a great deal of courage to do what you did.” This fine lady spoke to me kindly.

I had never thought about my exit from Cleveland, Ohio, even once before today. Those days were gone and those days are not even a memory.

I explained it to her. “It takes no courage at all to pull yourself from a grave if you’re still breathing.”

“Did you like teaching?”

She wanted to know.

I had never thought about my teaching days once before today, either.

“Loved science, liked most of the students and staff, loved transferring knowledge, hated administrators, hated stupid policies and procedures, hated grading papers. It paid.”

My reply was academic.

We fell silent.

4

The jet engines were mute outside the window.

The money I took out of my pension plan when I left teaching in Cleveland had bought me this ride, the first great jet engine ride of my life, and landed me on the island of Vafa’favifinu’ uakotoba—or, as it is printed in the atlas, ‘The Last Island.’ It is the last island going north. It is the last island going south. It is the last island going west. It is the last island going east. The Last Island is the last island in the South Pacific.

I set the time and date on my watch at nine o’clock and changed the date to October 13th.

“What the—”

I'm one second onto a coral walkway when my gear is spilled on the ground by some local retrieving his gear by pushing me aside and pushing my gear onto the ground—and not even a 'by-your-leave' to boot.

“Don’t mind him.” I turned. The voice came from a giant of a man. Very tall, but rounder than he was tall. “That’s the Deacon.”

I must have stared, for I know that no word came from my mouth. I had never seen such a large man. He helped me gather my gear.

“I’m Ray, Manta Ray.”

My palms opened reflexively and I redropped my gear while looking at him.

He slapped me with great force on my back with a palm that was large as my back was broad and filled the air with a laugh that rivaled a crushing incoming tide.

He handed me my gear.

I stared.

“The Deacon is a good guy; it is just that he ain’t much of no deacon. Or let me put it this way: if he were the deacon of a church, I would not want to be preached to by his minister.” He split my ears with a second laugh and put his tree limb of an arm over my shoulder. Looking down at me, he asked,“What’s your name?”

“Vaughn.” I answered, somewhat in fear.

“Good name—don’t mean nothing—but a good name. Maybe you will have a name that means something before you leave.”

There was a third earthquake of a laugh.

From his broad mouth to his expansive body, I did not have to ask him how the name Ray that his momma gave him became Manta.

Manta, without asking, threw my stuff in with his and pointed to the empty seat of his rig and off I went with this man that was the size of three men. I didn’t ask. I didn’t care. The street was crooked and unpaved and sandy—it was not a frozen straight winter street in a Cleveland, Ohio.

“Hey, Vaughnie, you don’t have much gear. Most people who come here have a department store of supplies.”

What the—Vaughie?. One minute here and I am an ‘ie’. I did not say anything immediately.

“Cannot buy a whole bunch with five dollars.” That was a lie for I really had the better part of fifty dollars on me. “About that Vaughnie stuff...” I spoke to him, looking away into the ocean to prevent any eye contact.

“That’s okay. Yeah. Sounds good, don’t it,” Manta said.

Manta drove on in his open-air dune buggy and I was quite pleased with him. He had not broken the Third Commandment and so as far as I was concerned he was still a fine Christian.

“Where are we going?”

It seemed to me we had driven a long time on such a tiny island.

“Around the point to the LION Reserve,” he replied.

I bolted upright and pulled my feet into the rig.

“Lion reserve! You have a lion reserve on the island?”

Manta’s laugh was the loudest yet.

“What? A lion reserve, here?” I was yelling like a little girl who had just spilled an ice cream soda on her favorite party dress.

“Yeah, we’ll be there soon.” He spoke without emotion.

“I don’t see any fences or security.” I spoke in a sweat.

“You don’t see any because there are none. Nothing to worry about, though, I promise you,” he said.

“Promise me nothing. An unsecured lion reserve. What the—, get me out of here. Now!” I cried.

Manta could not stop laughing. “Oh, Vaughn, don’t be a Vaughnie. The Deacon is not afraid to come here.” Manta spoke with a smile.

Manta continued to laugh at my expense. All that I could do was look around in fear. How was it possible to meet two crazy men at the end of the world in twelve seconds and not be alive at sunset to tell the third crazy person?

“There it is, the Last Island Ocean Natural Reserve, or the LION Reserve, if you prefer,” Manta explained.

The hardiness of his laughter caused his largeness to flow like an incoming tide. I checked to see if any outflowing tide had been placed on my seat.

Manta stopped laughing minutes later.

“Hey, Vaughnie. Want to work here?” Manta said this while getting out of the buggy and walking up the wooden stairs, opening the unlocked screen doors. “Saw your gear and literature at the airport. Don’t get many biologists and divers way out here. You can be in charge of The Last Island’s LION.”

Manta and I talked for a bit. The conversation had nothing to do with LION, wages, or obligations. The suspicion that there was something more behind his offer than there appeared crossed my mind more than once but, in the end, I agreed to be the LION keeper.

The LION was a marine museum with live and preserved displays, teaching locations, fossils, maps, literature, machines, devices, books, digital devices, and a group area, but the prime feature was an immense sea water aquarium at the rear. There were various other aquariums about, but the one in the rear was so large it appeared oceanic.

“LION is yours to run.”

That was all Manta had to say.

LION was mine without administrators, papers, or procedures.

“Yes.” I replied with one of those pregnant delayed answers.

“I am glad, Vaughnie. I like your style.” He smiled at me.

Cool Lewis would have loved to hear that about me. Me and Cool Lewis, just styling.

5

The LION was set in standard display style. The specimens and exhibits were up in a four-square linear box layout; this I casually noticed as I walked to the rear of the LION to my living quarters.

My living quarters were tropical and open: a white painted floor and walls, a ceiling with a palm-leaf fan, and a mat rug in the center of the larger room. Screen windows with slat shutters were on each wall, and a large fan was suspended from the ceiling. One of the lesser rooms was a kitchen and eating room, and the other of the lesser rooms was quite a nice bedroom. The bathroom with a shower was a modern facility behind the bedroom. From the back windows was the sight of a fine white beach that exited into a clear, then green, then blue-green, then blue ocean. I was home.

Sometimes you have to make decisions. Is it better to eat or sleep? I went outside the door of my new home, assimilated the beauty, and dreamed. Sometimes you don’t have to decide.

On the grounds there was a shed and in the shed I found all the utilities that were needed to put the LION in proper repair. I started working.

“This is taking on shape. Looks good.” So far Manta had been the only visitor and helper, but the voice behind me was definitely not Manta’s. The voice continued. “You have a good eye.”

Looking up from around a display, I saw a lady. First impressions are very important and I was very impressed.

“Thanks. Been trying,” I said.

She introduced herself. “Hi, I’m Jeanette.”

“I am—”

“I know who you are, you’re Vaughnie.”

What the—, I thought.

She must have seen the ‘what the—’ on my face because she began to laugh aloud.

Damn Manta. Damn ‘ie,’ I thought.

“You have been talking to Manta.”

She answered me. “Manta talks to everybody and everybody talks to Manta.”

I was on my back under the table looking up.

“Jeanette, good name.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“French?” I asked.

“Pennsylvania Dutch,” she replied.

“You look more French than PA Dutch from this angle.”

She laughed.

“My whole name is Joan Jean Juanetta Jeanette Johnson. When I was a kid, they called me Joan.”

“What were your parents smoking, herbal potatoes? You would think Joan ain’t all that hard,” I replied.

She laughed louder.

“That is why I decided to go with Jeanette—just for spite,” she said.

“Well, John Henry is your new name,” I said.

“John Henry was a steel-driving man,” she mocked and then began to sing the ballad—not well—but she continued on.

“You got some good strong hard-working never-say-quit influences, John Henry,” I said, standing up.

“I like John Henry. I think I will go with that, Vaughnie.” She giggled.

We both laughed.

“Need some help? I am a carpenter’s daughter. I can be another set of hands, I run my own dive shop, after all, and it looks like you can use a dozen score of octopi,” she teased.

When it comes to a helper for work, I have no pride and besides, I am no fool. It is nicer to be under a table with a PA Dutchie than alone with a plumber’s wrench.

There are noises and there are silent sounds. I heard one of those silent sounds. It was the sound of a ghost walking on cotton balls. The only sounds were of the miniscule compression of air atoms in my ear. She heard the compression, too.

“The Deacon,” she said with reverence. I peeked. It was the Deacon. He walked directly to a huge old Navy tank as if he was a positive charge and the tank was a negative pole.

The tank was of military grade quality construction. It was made of battleship grade steel. Great ribbons of support metal acted as belts that were anchored to oversized bolts set in a reinforced cement floor. The battleship gray was total except for places on the steel rusted through exposure.

The viewing space was a single face-sized porthole. The porthole consisted of alternating layers of glass and clear plastic secured and reinforced with a rim of plate steel fused to the side of the tank. The only way to view the internal space of the tank was to press one’s face upon the porthole in a most intimate and immodest kiss.

I couldn’t help staring at the Deacon’s back as he stood in front of the tank. Deacon’s back was a V from his waist to his shoulders, and the bottom was an inverted V from his waist to his feet. He was straight, tall, and muscularly defined with the bearing of a top predator. Somehow, the dreads seemed out of place. They gave him a peacefulness that was not in his soul. He stood looking at the tank. I looked at him.

Just as silently he exited.

I got up. She got up.

“Who is he?” I asked, looking at John Henry.

She turned and walked to the tank as if it was a magnet and she was an iron piece.

“You see this tank.” She paused. “This tank is the Deacon. This tank is his body, his soul, and his mind.”

The tank was oversized, immensely sturdy, and—from what I knew about such things—over-designed.

She continued, “The tank is for the Devil.”

“What the—” I stuttered.

“Well, that is what Manta says it is for—and Manta is no fool.” She turned and faced me. The seriousness was upon her face.

There is this thing about fear. I don’t have any. I did not know the genus or species of the devil. I knew that John Henry was out of work for today. Manta must have told her quite a story.

“Hey, man, thanks for your help. I think that I am through for today,” she said.

There was a ton more work to do, but I was through for today too.

She pulled herself from the tank and turned towards me.

“Are you sure?”

It was one of those ‘are you sures’ that are always said in polite society by polite people with the expectation that a polite ‘yes, I am sure,’ will be the reply.

“Yes, I am sure,” was my reply. “Quite sure.”

I sounded like a member of the royal family at a state dinner and for an anti-royalist, I was quite proud of myself, indeed.

“Then I’ll go. I just remembered some work I have to finish,” she said.

This was her less-than-silent exit.

The Deacon gave no announcement of his entrance and even less of his exit and he was not impolite at all. Here we, in order to be polite, do no such thing. Being polite was a royal complication: first, of engagement, and then disengagement.

“Stop by my shop,” she said.

“I will, I sure will,” I answered.

We exchanged a final salutation and standard body language signals; with such, John Henry left the LION.

6

I was most happy here. Reaching out for a banana leaf to use as a dinner plate was my kind of fine dining, along with the fact that the silverware was always at the ready at the end of my arms, allowing me to live the fine life of unrefined living. At the end of dinner, wrap up the leaf and throw it away—such a fine way to do dishes. Lastly,with a tongue lick, the silverware was clean.

There was a village open-air market. Open tables for food stuffs, an open table for dry goods, and one refrigerator was all that consisted of the business center. For me, a scissors, a pile of winter clothes, a quart of gasoline, and a match had converted Cleveland, Ohio clothes into the latest tropical fashion. The cobbled coral road, the only road on the island, was the super-highway to every island location.

I began to walk. It was not long before along came a family bus—a sawed-off car with an extended back—and I hitched a free ride. More than multicolored on the outside, it was multicolored and multi-smelly on the inside. I stepped over some live chickens, pushed past hanging taro and bananas, ducked under fresh fish, and shared a space with a swine, resting my feet upon a large, very friendly dog.

I made my way to John Henry’s dive shop.

“Hello, John Henry.” I spoke to her with my James Bond cool and looked around.

I’d been an open water diver ever since I took a free certification course in college and qualified in the North Atlantic and, from here to there and back again, dived what felt like a hundred places. I'd been in what felt like a thousand dive shops, and this dive shop was as well-equipped as most. It did not have a volume of stuff, but it had the right stuff, it had the good stuff. You can always tell, and you can always smell quality.

“Nice gig. I’m impressed.” I spoke this time in my non-James Bond manner.

She said hello with her eyes and her smile.

There was a noise coming from the attached work area. I could see Manta working on some gear.

There was silence coming from the open door that I had just entered. It was the Deacon.

The noise from Manta was swallowed up in the vacuum of the Deacon’s presence, and silence ruled.

With a direct and deliberate stride, the Deacon went to the article he wanted, took it from the display, and simply exited. He did not pay for it; John Henry said and did nothing. As he exited, the sounds of the dive shop returned.

I thought about the transaction.

John Henry acted as if she did not see the Deacon.

I was no cop and less of a hero but I decided to follow the Deacon.

“I’ll be back.” I spoke hurriedly for I did not want to let the Deacon out of my sight.

She waved me a good-bye.

I learned that the Deacon made good and then some on his debts—he was no old man Vargas.

The Deacon moved through the air and upon the ground as if he were not material. Footsteps did not appear where he walked and the sea breeze proceeded through, rather than going around, him. He was flesh and blood, but seemingly not atomic flesh and blood—he was simply the essence of flesh and blood.

I followed very silently and from a distance but I knew that he had sensed my flesh and blood, the Deacon was too keen not to be sense-sensitive. He stopped in a half-step and focused on the ocean, not the whole ocean for aesthetic reasons of humanity, but on a single point far away and deep down like a top predator on the hunt.

“If this were the last moment of your existence, would you be involved in someone else’s existence?”

It was Manta. He had been behind me for some time, but he had escaped my notice.

“What the—you scared the devil out of me.”

I turned and faced the mellow giant.

“Does everybody on this island walk in silence?” I questioned.

Manta’s full set of teeth smiled, and then his mouth gave a most resounding sound, “Yes.” It was that Manta had one setting for life—maximum.

The Deacon was gone—into the sea or into the air, I did not know.

Manta continued, “That man, the Deacon, is less than human but more than human. His outsides are human, but that man’s soul spirit ain’t human. He hates the ocean, but makes love to it like a faithful lover. He ain’t from this island, but is more native to this island than the first ancient one.”

Manta was now fully serious.

I imagined that I understood the Deacon.

“Out there is the Deacon’s 55th Street.” I whispered the words to myself.

“55th Street?” The giant repeated my words to me.

“Yeah, and ain’t no blue Chevrolet gonna drive him off this island,” I said to Manta.

“Man, have you been smoking some of that jungle weed?”

Manta’s saucer-sized eyes were looking down on me.

I reached up, trying to touch Manta’s shoulders.

“I was homeless at home, but here I am home. The world is too small for the Deacon. The inside world and the outside world are too small for him. Out there in the deep is his place. What or where—out there is his place, Manta.”I tried to explain.

As I was walking back up the road away from the ocean, I knew the definition for the term ‘dead man walking.’ There was not a defined sound or sight—the sights were muted, and the sounds were muted. Fortunately, it is impossible to get lost on an island with a single road.

7

“No, thank you.” I spoke to the service person serving snacks and drinks on the airplane. The lady next to me refused them also.

“Please, continue.” My neighbor spoke with a touch of angst.

I continued my truthful tale.

— – —

After my attempt to follow the Deacon and a lengthy conversation with Manta I found myself back at the door of John Henry’s dive shop. She was in the space farthest from me, going about the business of sorting. After closing the space, I began to talk. It wasn’t long before John Henry stopped me in mid-sentence. She then told me the history of the Deacon as she knew it, in an effort to help me understand.

“You present the Deacon as a Captain Ahab,” she began. “No, he’s not a trophy hunter and the Great White Whale he chases is no massive Moby Dick. What he chases is without substance, I think.

“The Deacon arrived on the island with a dive buddy—just two wave bums who were out for sun, sea, and sand. At the time, he was a green-fin diver. He was someone from another place who had found paradise. Life was beer, burgers, beans, and 3200 psi. He is now a black-fin diver of the abysmal deep. The food stuff of his life is some unspoken motivation. 3200 psi of air has become his personal formula of mixed-gas brew.

“He and his buddy had found a sunken Nazi U-Boat. They did research and found that the U-Boat had been sunk by the U.S. destroyer Vengeance, exactly as the atomic bomb was exploded over Hiroshima. It was the last Nazi casualty of World War II. It had been reported to the U.S. Navy’s SEPAC, their Southeast Pacific force, but the information had just been filed. The war was over, an atomic bomb had been exploded, and so of what importance could one last U-Boat and a couple score of dead Nazis be to celebrating drunken men? The question of what a Nazi U-Boat was doing so far out of the theater was never asked.

“The Deacon and his buddy did a massive amount of research and even went back to the States and to several countries in Europe, Russia, and even Japan. They were obsessed—no, they were past obsessed; they became addicted. They were on intellectual heroin. His buddy reveled in the secret. It was as if he had seen the Madonna and had to confess his joy although he knew the sin of his confession.

“What they learned from their travels and research was pieced together from the discarded annals of forgotten and overlooked history. Even today many historians would laugh because it seems so outrageous and implausible.

“Near the end of the war, even under siege from all directions, the Reich developed and perfected long-range U-Boats. But the war was lost at sea, in the air, and on land. Still, the minds of the Reich-masters were always working. They perfected and launched three long-range U-Boats from Norway. The U-Boats would be the womb for the next generation of Nazis, for they contained the greatest of the Reich’s secrets.

“One U-Boat was supposedly carrying technology capable of generating enriched uranium. Another U-Boat carried good Nazis, a substrate for a new generation. The third U-Boat—the last one—was carrying the secret of secrets.

“The first U-Boat, carrying their version of nuclear technology, was recorded destroyed by B-24 Liberator bombers off the coast of Norway. The U-Boat carrying the next generation of good Nazis foundered in a storm between Brazil and Africa and rests on the mid-Atlantic ridge. The third U-Boat made a lay-over in Ireland of less than half an hour, evaded the Allied fleet, and went into the Deep with its secret of secrets. That U-Boat is out there and haunts the Deacon. As fate has deemed proper and good, the U-Boat rests directly upon the decayed remains of an old wooden slaver. There is some bad mojo out there.

“But it’s not the U-Boat, the slaver, or the bad mojo that plagues the Deacon.” She paused. Behind her on the wall hung a map of the island and, by chance, I was looking at the name of the bay.

She questioned me. “Do you know what the name of this bay is?”

I read the name. “Itua’faga.”

“Do you know what that name means?” she asked.

“No,” I replied.

“The Bay of Ghosts…”

I did not reply.

“Beyond that bay is where he remains,” she said.

“He is—sorry—is haunted by his buddy’s death?” I asked.

“None of those. I did not say his buddy’s remains are in the Deep. I said his buddy remains in the Deep. His buddy is alive out there in the Deep.”

What the— I thought.

I was about to say something, but she interjected. “Do not question me.”

There was an absolute silence between her and me.

This ain’t no good mojo in here, either, sister, I thought.

If Manta is as quiet in the ocean as he is on land, then he swims without a ripple. A log fell upon my shoulders and, from its sheer weight, I knew it was Manta’s arm. The arm had solidness. Any illusion of softness was dispelled when I tried to remove it peacefully from around my neck—I did not want to offend the peaceful Buddha.

His arm suggested that I turn toward his face, and it was a good suggestion. Very properly I did turn toward Manta. There, as always, was that gorgon of open eyes and mouth looking down at me.

I imagined that with an inhale it was possible to be inhaled into his nose.

Then he began to speak, his speech slow and measured. He was being very sure to be correct and clinical. “I was with him, or better put, I was in the same place as he was when it all began.

“In short order, the fact that a Nazi U-Boat was on the reef became news. I really do not know how the information got off the island. I am sure that the Deacon never said a word, but maybe his buddy did say something; nevertheless, the information left the island. It would not have made a difference in the long run for there are no secrets.

“The US Navy was here. The German government, the Japanese, and even the U.N. were here at one time or another. We were very happy because it was easy money. Each said that they were just doing historical categorizations, but that was not true. They were each and every one looking for something specific. Their behavior was too focused and so very concise.

“The time frame is clear to me, but there is the problem of exactly when and not how the series of events happened. The Deacon and his buddy were good people and good neighbors but, for the most part, they were into their South Pacific fantasy. No time, no worries, no money, was their theme. Every now and again they would take up a job to buy air and, after the air was gone, they would buy food. I am telling you the story because it was around this time—and I am not sure if it was before, during, or after this event—that his buddy dived his last dive.”

John Henry passed a Coke to me, and I missed my mouth. The new stain on my T-shirt went well with the BBQ stain—which went with the basic grime, grit, and dirt that shaded the former white shirt into an eighteen-percent gray fashionable off-white hue.

Manta continued his story. “It wasn’t long before some wunderkinder from the Fatherland, some German scientific prodigies, got here and hired the Deacon and his buddy as underwater guides to explore the U-Boat.

“The wunderkinder had sent some equipment—very specialized, very scientific, and very sensitive—ahead of their arrival on the island. They needed a place to make specific final calibrations, and they rented my space. When they needed this or that, they would ask me the best procurement method. The wunderkinder were not secretive, but rather very particular about their workings and were very good at avoiding questions regarding to whom or what they were affiliated. Often I would observe, but for the actual diving they wanted the Deacon and his buddy. I guess they reasoned that since they had been first upon the scene, they would be the best on the block.

Manta went on. “There were the first explorative dives and then the dives became more involved and more complex in nature. Finally, you could see that the exploration was reaching a climax. The wunderkinder became ever more elated, as if success were at hand. The amount of equipment started to decrease. Their group never repacked it, but the general equipment became less until they started to rely on some strange Area 51-type stuff.

“Then one day they drowned. All the wunderkinder drowned—at the same time and in the same place. They were good divers—the kit and caboodle of the Fatherland’s best—dead, dead, and dead. The Deacon said they were trapped in the U-Boat. That the U-Boat had tumbled into a mangled mess. But, such things do happen, right?” he asked.

“Yeah, right,” I answered.

“The wunderkinder were dead for sure, but that thing about his buddy is the confusing part. It was about this time that he became the Deacon. And one more thing, I went over to the Deacon’s—for what or why is still not clear in my head—but, anyway, I was there and, laid out in perfect pristine display, was the equipment from the wunderkinder’s collection.

“I do not know how the Deacon gained possession of the equipment, in payment for service, or if he purchased the stuff, or if it was willed to him, or just left in the rented space.” Manta stopped.

I didn’t know what to think.

What could I say? The account they placed before me was presented as gospel. I knew that they believed it, but was it true?

“Check the tank.” They both said it in unison.

8

I had made the assumption that the overly-constructed old LION tank was empty. The water was more than perfectly clear and with such perfection appeared to be without substance.

What was the meaning of their command? I pondered. Was there something about the chemistry of the water that was particular or peculiar?

Before I could do a chemical analysis, it, the water, moved. The angle of the light produced a shimmer in the water. I had never observed this shimmer before. I had never been attentive to what to me was an empty tank of water under the mind and hand of a human aberration, the Deacon.

I gathered myself and was about to start again with intensified enthusiasm. As I was about to begin, a slow, low, and sure voice behind me declared, “Don’t.”

That was all, “Don’t.”

My first thought was, what the—

During my opening of the LION, the Deacon had stood haloed by the back light of the brilliant tropical sun. Now he pivoted and diffused away into the light. There was no emotion in his voice. It was not a command and it was not a threat—it was just a simple declarative statement. I decided to respect his declaration.

It was afterward that the Deacon became my obsession. As if I were doing a dissertation on a protozoan, I observed him. As if I were doing a vivisection on a dog, I dissected him. As if I were mapping the range of an endangered species, I followed him. The Deacon knew but he was uncaring and the truth of my participation into the Deacon’s life did not influence or invalidate the uncertainty principle of truth. My remote actions did not remotely affect the Deacon’s actions.

9

“The LION is ready for some new specimens,” I was telling John Henry.

“Well, let’s lock and load, Bro.” I had been talking to John Henry but Manta answered from behind.

“Don’t we need papers to collect specimens?” I asked.

“Papers! Who needs papers?”

Manta was a free man.

They both gave that ‘Last Island laugh’ that was a mixture of joy, revolution, and sabotage.

John Henry and Manta were excellent divers. Manta was one of those giant lumbering beasts that you see on land enslaved under the relentless and insufferable downward pull of gravity. I always imagined that Manta was just one exhale away from imploding under the force of his mass. It was only his massive backbone and his big-boned limbs that defeated all the laws of physics. In the water, Manta was unrestricted—seeming to slip through the inter-space of the ocean’s water molecules—a great gelatinous globule.

John Henry on the other hand swam with the precision of a diamond-cutter holding a fistful of nitro in a storm. There was no wasted energy in her motions and she seemed to prove that the Second Law of Thermodynamics was nothing more than an antiquated science sentence. Each portion of energy was utilized into a frictionless forward-motion pulse.

I had to improve to become a very good diver and, to my deliverance, excellence could not be exceeded, but excellence could be achieved. I became an excellent diver.

We collected in haste, but discarded at leisure. The LION was coming to life.

John Henry, Manta, and I collected in the shallows of the reef but always, in the black of the wall in the deep of the reef, was the silhouette of the Deacon there in the deep and dark past-blue color of the Abyss. He was always, always down there in the deepest water.

The Deacon was always in the solo Deep—solo.

The Deacon was, when seen, just a dark dot far below in the ill-illuminated bleak. All around the Deacon was an undefined cloud that oozed and quivered. The Deacon appeared to be a nucleus in a primitive protoplasmic cell. In the Deep, no life could be detected from the Deacon except for the energetic dynamism that radiated electrically through the density of the sea.

I would float in neutral buoyancy above him in awe of his unity with the water. As he swam, the water apparently flowed through his body and not around his body. The efficiency of his mixed-gas “air” caused my imagination to hold its breath. The slow-pulsed regularity of the expanding jellyfish gas bubbles—one at a time—were as regular as a slow motion pendulum.

I asked Manta about him. “What does the Deacon collect? He seemingly brings nothing to the surface but he is way too good a diver to break the surface empty-handed even once.”

“The fruit seeds of the ghost,” Manta replied to the question.

I looked at John Henry. She looked away.

Fruit seeds of the ghost was the answer.

What the— was my answer.

“Plant or animal? Genus and species, please,” I asked.

“Can’t, Bro, for it ain’t so.” Manta answered me.

I looked at John Henry.

John Henry looked away.

John Henry, Manta, and I collected. The sea was abundant with colorful life: plant, animal, and such stuff that falls between animal and plant. In an overflowing ocean, most of the life was neither animal nor plant because the dynamic motion of the ocean life was unable to be bound by the boundaries of texts. Between Manta’s natural man’s knowledge, John Henry’s instinct for correctness, and my catalogue-like comprehension, the stuff of ocean life was put in its place in the LION.

The LION was coming to life except for the tank at the back. There it was waiting— empty. There I was. With each day, with each dive, with each sight, I was becoming ever more filled with the emptiness of the filled tank. “The fruit seeds of the ghost”—that was what Manta said and Manta was no fool. And, John Henry was trying to hide the truth in daylight.

I kept thinking about that “Don’t” from the Deacon and evermore there seemed to be a force acting through a distance that was attracting me to the filled empty tank. The steel and the glass of the tank were inert in will but the water pulsed with a greater life force than all the combined life in all the tanks in the LION.

It, the tank, was empty but it was filled to ever-flowing with the bare nature of life. There was an immeasurable and unclassifiable protoplasmic entity of life in the tank. I felt it in my primitive brain but my rational brain knew nothing of the sort—and that was that.

10

Manta entered the LION. John Henry and I were running some lines from the air compressor to a few of the exhibits.

“The Deacon is not happy.” Manta announced the fact.

“How many?”John Henry questioned him.

“Captain and crew are four, a ship’s master who is a professor, and less than a dozen mates—students. Rich kids taking some inter-semester study class, doing a sail for credit. Good way to get through college without reading a book. They showed the papers so I guess all is cool. It is called ‘Sea Study Survey.’” Manta answered her.

“My God, did the Deacon go volcanic?” John Henry wanted to know.

“Krakatoa would be a sky rocket compared to his reaction,” Manta said.

“Oh, boy. I’ll help you some other time, Vaughnie. I have to go.”

With that response I thought about the situation.

“Manta, what’s up?”

Manta was seldom silent. He was often still but seldom silent. After a bit he answered.

“Oh, she has gone to her shop. They will probably begin there and that is the most likely place where they will come face to face with the Deacon. She will act as sort of a tsunami barrier.”

“I cannot imagine the Deacon engaged in or enraged by anything or any person,” I said.

“Let’s just say the Deacon is an acquired taste.” Manta was diplomatic.

“That’s for sure.” My reply was sincere.

“But mostly he does not like visitors or strangers.” Manta explained needlessly.

“That’s for sure,” I said.

“Did you ever see his door number?” Manta asked me.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s the number he has determined is the right number of people for this island and you, Vaughnie, made it one over.”

“If I was the one that made it one too many in the Deacon’s census count and I was treated that way, then these people are in for a world of pain,” I said.

Manta grabbed me in a big hug and squeezed me as if I was a wet sponge and forced from me a pitiful “ugh.”

11

Quo diabolus ago was the name of the ship.

“John Henry, who would be so pretentious as to name their boat that?”

“Not my ship. Not my life. Not my problem, Vaughnie. Their money spends. Be careful of your judgments,” was her reply.

I looked at her and just thought, What the—

I went to Easy Chair Rock to let the sun work its magic upon my soul, mind, and body. The iced tea was perfectly chilled and perfectly sweet. I began my religious slouch with my butt in the rock, my face to the sun, and my feet in the teasing foam.

In the intertidal zone, the students were going about their tide work. The logo on their brightly colored surf shirts was ‘SS.’ I gasped. I dropped my sunglasses down over my eyes – it was ‘SSS.’

Out a little way they appeared to be a pod of marine mammals just grazing in a lazy fashion. There was one co-ed off and about on her own—the one nearest to me. Through the iced tea and sunglasses I observed her motions as I had observed so many other sea mammals with a solely clinical curiosity.

“Do you know what this is?” The co-ed inquired with one of those please-tell-me girly voices.

I did not reply. I did not think she was talking to me.

“I’m not very good at this invertebrate classification stuff. I try but I just am not that good.” She was talking to me and, yeah, I did know the common name, genus, and species of what was in her hand.

“It’s a Magnificent Sea Anemone or Actinia Magnifica.”

I yelled the answer back to her. I was not going to tell her but for some reason I did.

As I was looking toward her through the lenses of my sunglasses and iced tea, the water changed in appearance. The water morphed from colorless fluid to gray gel.

I lowered the iced tea and dropped my sunglasses and the water was colorless again. Was it a refraction and reflecting light effect?

The co-ed was about chest-deep in the water bobbing up and down for specimens as if she were at a party bobbing for apples. A shrieking cry raced over the rolling surf. It was the co-ed. Instantaneously, she was standing in a chest-deep pool of bloody water and soon she was face-down in the water, then under the surface of the water—gone. She had been attacked. As I and everyone prepared to rush to her aid and rescue, she surfaced on her back in the arms of the Deacon. Dripping blood from his face and body, he carried the girl ashore. The salt-water blood falling from his dreadlocks and his cut figure of pure muscle gave him the look of a sea demi-god or demon. By the force of his silence and bearing, everyone understood that he was her savior and not her attacker.

I did not understand how or why the Deacon was at that spot out of all the spots in the Pacific at that given moment but I did know that if any person could have saved the co-ed, it would be the Deacon.

The co-ed was transported to the local medical center. She survived.

What had happened? I could not make sense of it as I walked along the road, refusing lifts from the family buses. John Henry was out in front of her place and I ambled over. I did not have to report what had happened, for news travels at the speed of sound on small islands. Strange, in Cleveland, Ohio, gossip traveled at the speed of light.

“Either Tangaroa or Tawhiri, they have been at it a long time.”

I closed my eyes and asked myself –Is God talking to me?

It might as well have been the voice of God but it was a voice just slightly less imposing—it was Manta. Manta was a techno man in mind, but in his heart Manta was a natural man. He explained Tangaroa and Tawhiri to me. They were the gods of the island. He explained how Tangaroa and Tawhiri came into shallow water and drew blood when the peace of the waters was disturbed and that the peace of death was the methodology that restored harmony to the sea. So, the sea was in confusion till the peace of death was collected in tribute.

And, he was serious.

The only thing that has more life than combined oceans is the imagination of man.

“I do not know if it was Tangaroa or Tawhiri but I do know that it was a Rhizodontida, a supposedly extinct predatory lobefin lungfish.” It was a second God-like voice but unlike the kinder voice of Manta’s New Testament, this voice was the serious Old Testament tone of the Deacon.

God, sea creature, or morphed mutant, we four stood there—betwixt and between what we believed.

“This is the deal. It broke the contract. It drew human blood, spilled blood sugar into the sea water, and now it has to die.” The Deacon spoke in the cold judgmental voice of a hanging judge.

“What? You are going to take vengeance out upon a dumb sea creature?” John Henry questioned the Deacon in a disbelieving voice.

The Deacon spoke in a voice even slower and more merciless than before—if that was possible, “It broke the contract and so it must die.”“Manta, say something,” John Henry pleaded with him.

“Man, beast, or god, each lifetime is a life space. It was what it was, it is what it is, and it will be what it will be.” Manta gave his answer.

“What the—” Those words were my confession.

Here was a man who was going to prosecute justice upon a sea creature. Here was a woman who was defending a sea creature. And, here was a man who saw the human drama in the mythos.

John Henry did not understand stupidity and she was stupefied. Manta understood and he never got mad. The Deacon was clinical and he placed no judgment on an action of penance.

The moral vacuity of the sea had come ashore and had exposed the bedrock of our collective mental plasticity and inelastic fathoming.

I did not tell anyone what I had seen just prior to the bloodbath.

12

Time passed and inertia once again gained control of our lives. John Henry was doing inventory and re-supply. I had opened the LION. The Deacon had passed his judgment upon the creature. Manta had become ever more the complete man.

Manta suggested that we go off-island to Apocalypse Reef. Apocalypse Reef was a spit of coral-head that on the best day at the lowest tide was still underwater except for Ol’ Joe’s. Apocalypse Reef was without government. It had never been under any flag. Ol’ Joe placed his claim on this last bit of claimless land on Earth. All there was on the reef was Ol’ Joe’s which was a place for the coldest beers and juiciest hamburgers—in fact the only hamburgers—on the island.

Ol’ Joe in his decades-old tee shirt, beat-up old lava-lava, old torn flip-flops, and ancient greasy apron seemed a vision dreamed up by an old hippie on old LSD. But Ol’ Joe was a sight for old or new eyes and was a good and fine person.

Ol’ Joe’s was simple with no formality and just as few words. It was elementary. Come into Ol’ Joe’s and in a few minutes dinner would be served. There was no need to order, for all Ol’ Joe served was beans, burgers, and beer. Manta would request multiple orders, John Henry would not finish hers, and mine did not stay that long on the plate.

Ol’ Joe had a hand-drawn map on his wall and while the burgers were cooking—as was my custom—I went over simply to take in the beauty of the dead art of map-drawing. The map was one of the maps from the H.M.S. Challenger.

Ol’ Joe peered out from his kitchen and made his remarks. “The Deacon is becoming ever more interested in that map. I am going to will it to him. It’s the only map in the world that charts the waters between The Last Island and this reef.”

"Are you serious?”

I couldn’t believe it.

“Know for a fact it is so. Oh, there is some maps that mark distance and some that even marks surface current but this is the only map that shows anything underwater. There was and is no need for anyone to go to all the expense and time, I guess.” Ol’ Joe explained the deal.

“This must be worth mucho dinero,” I said.

“What?” Ol’ Joe questioned me.

“Sell this thing and get big bucks.”

“Cannot spend it here, and besides, I have one more dollar than I need so I’m as rich as J.D. Rockefeller. Burgers up.”

He chattered on about some other stuff as he began to serve the meal.

I asked him my question. “Did the Deacon put these fine marks on the map?”

“Yeah, he was doing some work and I said sure. If you are going to complain that he marked up an old map, don’t. It is just an old map.”

Yes, the Deacon had nerve to write on an antique map but it was what he was computing that fascinated me. All maps are incorrect, however the Deacon had not made corrections to the surface waters or to the reef or island but with the fine line of an ultra-sharp stylus had made corrections to the deep water and had noted demarcations and markings about the bottom. The data was coded but in plain sight.

“You and the Deacon sure must have something in common because he would rather be in front of that map than be eating.”

Ol’ Joe continued his cooking.

The scent, the food, and the art of the map were this and that but the mind of the Deacon was an intellectual pheromone that held me captive here and now. I pressed my eyes upon the map and focused my sight into the old black markings that the H.M.S. map-maker had marked and impressed my insight into the near-invisible code of the Deacon.

Was the question a what question, a where question, a how question, a why question, or was the question a who question?

The answer was before me but I did not know what to ask.

“That map is not correct because it is not the original reef.” Ol’ Joe gave me the key in passing.

That was it. I knew what Ol’ Joe was going to say and I understood what the markings of the Deacon meant. The Deacon had made three sets of calculations and was triangulating the deep. Why?

“This reef is not the reef it was and not the reef it is gonna be. It is a walking reef—as one side of the reef erodes, the other side grows. Not magic, but a lot of reefs just walk across the ocean as if’n they is walkin’ on the water.”

Ol’ Joe talked on about how the ocean had been turned into stone by microscopic life and then talked about what I had seen.

“Some slimy stuff like big blobs, kinda like jellyfish bells, been coming up from the bottom. Jellyfish is out of season and besides they is too big to be jellyfish.” So Ol’ Joe said.

“Petro waste of some chemicals that jelled and became ocean junk floating on the currents.” So John Henry said.

Ol’ Joe gave his reply. “No, ain’t that.”

“Could just be some acellular by-product or a biogenetic ocean process,” Manta said.

“Nah,” Ol’ Joe continued, “seen it happen once out there but—but—it did not and still don’t make any sense. The water itself turned into this stuff. Damn queer.”

I thought of my vision of the co-ed at Easy Chair Rock. What the—

Manta and John Henry first tried to deduce a logical solution, then tried to induce a logical solution by using the tried and true methodology of the scientific method: hypothesis development. Such a fool’s game is the scientific method. I did not tell what I had seen. The one thing that the scientific method relied on most was what I did not have, substance.

Ol’ Joe, John Henry, and Manta talked all afternoon about the ocean. I have been in Cleveland, Ohio, in February and I have been to Key West, Florida, in June and Key West in June is better than Cleveland in February by a ton. Being on Apocalypse Reef was better than being in Key West—by a ton, also.

The three of them were sunspots on the face of the setting sun. I turned to the map and into the mind of the Deacon. This I knew. I knew that he knew everything that each one of us knew and that I did not know what he knew, maybe.

The lines of the map became indelible lines in my brain.

The round fullness of the sun almost filled the flat curved horizon of the prismatic deep and it, the sun, did fill the door opening and all other openings with such abundance that the excess of light pushed mightily through every opening. The floor was tiled this way and that way in trapezoid patterns of brilliance. They, those three, sat in the axis point of the day star haloed by its perfection as if they were the nuclear center. I was just a near orbiting charge and the Deacon, the Deacon was in the deep dark of his own light.

13

The sea is the universal level. For all, the sea levels are the same. Giant beast, gigantic contrivances, solo microscopic life, or individual man—the sea has no prejudice and is without darlings. The sea knows no name. From point north to point south, from point west to point east, the plane of the sea is an unadulterated, absolute, unqualified whole and its deep lies in unknown fathoms that are unfathomable. To dive into the black at night is perverse.

There was the Deacon, who was with us but by himself; there was Manta, there was John Henry, and myself. The laws of physics obeyed the Deacon. Manta heard the song of the sea and danced to the sea’s song. John Henry had faith. I was a redundant diver. Double gauges and gear were my methodology of diving. I obeyed the hydrodynamic principles and the gas laws. I heard no song of the sea. I had no faith. Double everything and check it often and then check it twice again. The sea would always be there. I just wanted to be.

I broke the surface and the phosphorescence was upon my face and I was electric blue. A blanket of photo-phosphorescent plankton had randomly floated upon the exact spot of my exit point. Looking down I could see the expanding exhaled bubbles and the ascending lights of the others. I climbed the ladder and prepared to aid the rest.

She was first. The image was that of Electra. The sea had given life to womanhood. She was glowing a radiant blue. Her hair dropped fire as the sea water fell; her fine figure was a constellation of accented female characteristics outlined in the night and with each motion the animation became more sensual and she never realized.

Manta was next out. His image looked as if the sea had given life to a great sphere of itself. The moon volume was pushed aside by his light mass. As he went about, great dazzling blue artifacts were recorded where he had been and indeed with him about, there was no need for any other light.

The Deacon was last from the sea. His image had no glow. I looked into the sea and the sea was still aglow. He had passed through the sea in a cocoon of his own will free of the baptismal desire of the Deep.

— – —

At the LION the next morning, there was a dark stranger standing in the early light.

“May I enter?” The voice came from behind me. It was the voice of a stranger. “I know that you are not officially open yet, but I just desire to look about.”

“Sure. Make yourself at home. Feel free to just roam and look about,” I said

“Thank you, sir,” he said... Sir! Was he just being polite?

I was tired from the night-diving and just pretended to be doing some administrative work. I shuffled papers.

I should have kept the door closed.

There is random roaming about and there is apparent roaming about. As I casually observed the stranger, he was roaming but not randomly. He was not looking, rather he was searching, and it was not for aquatic specimens. I really did not care. I just wanted to rest.

He stopped and concentrated on Exhibit J-14A. There he stood peering into the exhibit—not looking at the specimen but peering at the substrate of the exhibit.

Strange, but what the heck.

He pulled a glass from his pocket and his gaze became ever more fixed. Then he had that eureka moment in full. He said not a word but the topography of his searching expression became the expression of extreme satisfaction.

He approached me. What I noticed first was a gold bob, small as it was in size. The bob dangled. It caught my attention because it had caught an intense ray of sunlight and the very bright, golden, and intense ray was burning a hole into my exhausted retinas.

The bob was one of those secret-society baubles that members wear publicly to announce that they belong to a secret society.

In a most articulate, most precise, and most concise fashion the stranger inquired about Exhibit J-14A. He was interested in the substrate and nothing more.

Should have kept the door shut but it was too perfect a South Sea day not to let the day into the LION—but now I have to pay for my lust.

I could not but ponder upon the surgical method of his inquiry and his gold bob.

As he was exiting the LION, there was Manta. As species are born to recognize that which is not their own, so it was with Manta and the golden-bob man. The body language of each was on display, the reflexive nature of the eye, the responsive nature of skin and muscle, the bolt-uprightness of the spine, and the leaking scent. There were no words exchanged. There were no words exchanged for of what value are words before such truth? The wisdom was in the silence.

Passing Manta, the stranger stopped instantaneously.

“Jeanette. I’ll be.”

Manta pivoted. I woke up.

“Jeanette,” the man said again.

John Henry was a deer in the headlights.

“Jeanette.” He repeated her name a third time.

She was now the display specimen.

“Dee, Joel Dee, what are you doing here?” John Henry began to question him.

“What are you doing here is a better question?” The stranger questioned her. “This place has not even made it into the third world, yet.” The stranger laughed at his own wit.

Manta’s body swelled reflexively.

My reflex thought was what the—

He could take his laughable and—

Light, and thusly sight, are blocked by even the thinnest of things. Sound, not as demure, has a more infusing character. Few realize conversation does not stop at the ears of the people who are in the conversation. By means of natural selection, teachers develop teachers’ ears and thus survive. I desired to hear the conversation but I did not desire to have the conversationalist know that I was a part of their conversation so I ambled to specimen K-08R.

“I knew that one day on some isolated point in the South Pacific, I’d find you. You were always one tough little monkey.” The stranger stared at John Henry.

“Looking for me, really?” she replied.

“Well, almost half-way, to be truthful,” he said.

“If we are being truthful, I have never spent one moment looking for you,” she replied.

“We were friends—once,” he said.

“No, we were never friends,” she retorted.

“You have spent too much time in the water and, to be truthful, that sand and smell of the ocean is not really a good look on you,” he said.

“Thanks. If you do not like the way that I look, then I know that I look perfect. For how is it possible for a stone figurine such as you to have vision, I ask you?” she said.

The stranger walked out.

I saw and heard it all and I was pleased.

Not wanting to show my smile, I walked back to J-14A. and flipped on the black light. There was something atypical in the illumination but it was not the illumination at all—it was the substrate that had changed. I was just looking, but with rejuvenated curiosity.

“Vaughnie, come over here, please,” Manta called to me.

The illuminated substrate was one thing, but respecting Manta was more important. I turned off the black light and went to my desk at LION where Manta was fitted in a very cramped position.

Manta showed me the pictures from the dive into the black and they were dreadful.

“Manta, these are a zero-minus-one in quality. What went wrong?”

The earth man was shaken. Failure was not part of his life.

“Don’t know, Vaughnie. Don’t know.”

There was no use asking if he had checked his equipment. I knew he had done so. There was no need for asking about technique, or settings, or anything else. The images to the last were just bad.

“They are all bad in the same fashion. Notice, Vaughnie. Whatever was in the black did it.”

It was no use, but I was trying to make conversation.

“Was it the plankton, or the night light, or bad exposure?” I tried suggesting.

He looked at me as if I was a sand flea. I knew it was none of these things for Manta would not have been duped by such things and, even if he had, he would know it now. I was out of words.

“Vaughnie, something or somebody is in the water.” Manta said.

“Something maybe, but not someone.” I spoke aloud and most openly and foolishly to Manta.

Manta never got mad and, with a most gracious smile, looked at me. “Well, then I guess we have to chalk it up to aliens. Welcome to Area 51 of the South Pacific, Vaughnie.”

Manta smiled.

Upon a revisited thought, I had just seen that illumination. It was different in quantity, but was the same in quality. That was what I had seen in J-14A as the stranger peered into its hydrospheric soul. And, that light was not a reflection at all. It, the illumination, was what I had seen as I peered into J-14A when the black light was illuminating the tank. I was secretive about my insight.

“The spirits, demons, and devils of the sea have come alive from the depth of death, Vaughnie,” Manta said.

“Did you say death or depth, Manta?” I asked.

“Alive from death in the depth, Vaughnie,“ Manta repeated.

14

John Henry, Manta, and I were all in the LION, but each in his own cell. The Deacon was beginning to visit the LION with greater frequency. It was as if time was becoming compressed, as if he were in one of those Twilight T.V. shows in which a lifetime is played out in a day. Everything was the same except that everything was speeded up for him.

He was making concentrated observations of the tank. He never recorded anything; neither a piece of paper nor a computer was able to hold the thoughts of his mind. As he passed J-14A, he stopped. He had seen in passing what the stranger and I needed time and devices to heed. He did not say a word but his eyes and a stiff lip howled a soul-rending silence.

Whatever it was, it caused the Deacon to hold his breath.

“Hey, Deac, look at these pictures that I shot.”

Manta requested his attention in the familiar and handed the pictures to the Deacon.

In the gulp of a glance, the Deacon viewed the pictures.

“You took these pictures above that sunken U-Boat and old slaver.”

The Deacon announced the site with a very sure certainty. Then he arranged the pictures in some sort of order.

“You are correct. How did you know where and how did you know the sequence? Those are just fogged-up pictures with no detail,” Manta said, amazed.

I was horrified, I was scared, and I was mystified—how could he have known? I had seen the pictures and had answered as a simpleton.

As Manta and I looked at each other, the Deacon stopped in mid-stride, then turned and faced us with an expressionless expression upon his face.

“What you captured on your photographs is the cloud of the miasma. It is his expiration.”

The Deacon walked to the tank and stared.

I felt a shiver of fear run over me.

“Him? Him—who? Or him—what?” Manta asked.

“No it’s in the sea, Big Boy. It ain’t a devil, demon, or sea monster. Unless you want to classify him as one or the other or all three,” the Deacon replied.

“Him?” Manta questioned the Deacon again.

There was no return reply from the Deacon.

My fear accelerated—inside where it counts.

Here the two most principled people were talking about horrible and ungodly life forms and giving life to horrible and ungodly evil.

I back-peddled until, without seeing John Henry, I was upon her.

“You know, Vaughnie, I have become free but those two are trapped. The Deacon is the brick-throwing mind of reality and Manta is a mirror of reality. One wants to let it be and the other wants to kill it,” John Henry said.

“Kill a what? Kill a sea spirit or kill a drowned man?” I said.

“One or the other or both, I suppose. It really doesn’t matter, does it?” John Henry said.

I had known of The Deacon’s and of Manta’s pointillistic philosophies, one the polar of the other, but now John Henry had turned and gone round the corner of reality too.

“Have you all gone island-happy?” I questioned in a strong voice.

The answer was silence.

The simplicity and symmetry was so perfect on the surface of it all. The blue of the sea, the white of the sand, and transparency of the air but, looking again, the symmetry was not so simple. The sea was not blue; it started green and went to black at the horizon. The sand started white and went to black at the horizon. The air started transparent and went to black in the distance. They had their sights on the horizon and my sight had been at my feet. But now I was viewing the world through their eyes.

John Henry came and asked, “What do you think, Vaughnie?”

“Bad vibe, bad mojo—something freaky happening, that’s all I know.”

“You know Manta and the Deacon both know their stuff. They look at the same thing but see different stuff; I wish I knew which one is correct,” she said.

“Both,” I replied.

15

The sea became restless out of season.

“Strange, this is supposed to be the flat season for the sea. Maybe the Deacon is correct about the miasma,” Manta said.

“What the—This ain’t the thirteenth century, Manta,” I said.

“Look, the Deacon knows. And, he made sense,” Manta continued.

“A drowned dead man who is alive is giving off evil exhales. Come on, Manta. That is from the dark side of the moon,” I said.

“We, the Deacon and I, were in the LION the other day,” Manta said.

“Yeah, I know. I saw you there,” I said.

“Yeah, and he showed me J-14A.”

“So,” I said.

“That substrate was live. The specimens were live. And, now they are dead,” Manta said.

“I’ve been meaning to put up a new display, but have not done it yet. That’s all. You know stuff dies.”

“Stuff dies, sure. I know. Stuff dies. But the only stuff that’s died in the LION has come from the area above the sunken U-Boat and that old slaver,” Manta said.

“Just one of those things, man.”

“And, stuff in the sea is beginning to die around that U-Boat and old slaver. I know that you have seen the stuff and the Deacon has shown it to me and it is the same stuff that is in the sea,” Manta said.

“What’s going on here?” John Henry began to question us.

“The Deacon has convinced Manta that a drowned dead man is alive and is killing the sea with a miasma from his breath,” I said.

“I did not say killing the sea. He is giving life to the sea,” Manta said.

Are you flying crazy?” I said.

Manta turned to John Henry. “First it was light. Now, it is life that cannot exist in the cloud of the miasma,” Manta said.

“But you said that it was giving life,” John Henry said.

“It is. It is spawning itself. It is spawning its dead self,” Manta said.

“What! ” John Henry said in disbelief.

“That is the Deacon’s secret?” I asked.

“One,” Manta replied.

“If J-14A contains a miasma, then what about his large tank?” I asked.

“That is for the spawning miasma,” Manta said

“What the—!” John Henry and I said at the same time.

The entrance of the elderly Capt’n broke the tension.

Capt’n was what passed for law.

“What’s up, Capt’n?” We all spoke in unison

“Nice job of rescue yous guys pulled off," he said.

“What rescue?” I wanted to know.

“Some school teachers. They was good ’nuff people and these guys done did good. She done given birth—cute little thing. And he is back at the high school. Man, dey sure was lucky. That storm really blew up fast. The fastest blow-up dat I ever did ever see and the way that the Deacon done did know where to go to. It ain’t nothin’ short of a miracle. But don’t say that to him, please. You know the Deacon.”

In unison, we all said, “We all know the Deacon.”

“That stranger that come ashore—that strange feller John Henry knew—well, he done come ashore drowned. It ain’t right to talk down the dead, but he weren’t no good.”

We three were silent.

“That Deacon must have a crystal ball. As a matter of fact, I said so. I told him he has a crystal ball and he said no, he just has a crystal tank. Ain’t that a hoot.”

Capt’n began to laugh aloud.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Just this. We were there when that stranger was about to take off and I asked, I asked where he was off to. He said that he was off to fish for tuna. Tuna. Funny, huh. Tuna this time of year, and besides, he did not have one rod, not one reel, or one anything ‘ceptin’ some dive gear and fancy-dancy do-dads. We watched as he made his way and the Deacon said that he was going to come back drowned dead and he did come back drowned dead. That Deacon’s tank sure got the spirit of Endor,” Capt’n said.

“Was his bearing toward that U-Boat?” Manta asked.

“Straight and true. Straight and true. You gots a crystal ball too, Manta.”

You could see ‘What the—’ in Manta’s eyes.

The Capt’n began to ramble and then babble on about the good ole days and such but John Henry’s eyes, Manta’s eyes, and my eyes went to J-14A. But only for a moment, for looming always was the tank of the Deacon.

16

As if we three were fish, our imaginations were captured in the gill net of what each one of us denied to ourselves and to each other, but which one of us was coming to realize was the fact of the water or, better put, was the water.

“What are you doing?”

The voice came from behind me but, nonetheless, I knew it was the voice of the Deacon.

I did not answer at first and simply waited, but he did not repeat his question. He knew that I had heard his question and was not about to waste the energy of a second breath on a repeated action. It was one of those very long moments of eternity that lasts for part of a second.

“I am about to redo J-14A. After all, it is about time,” I answered.

“Not today. Not ever. I do not wish to appear to be interfering but it cannot be changed.” He spoke slow and low as he always does, but almost meekly.

“Not to be confrontational, but LION is my design and I am autonomous in the project, as I understand,” I said.

“You are hearing what I am not saying. I am not telling you to do anything. I am asking you not to do something. What you do under your authority is for you to do; however, what you do not do is another consideration,” the Deacon said.

There was one aspect of the Deacon that was precious and that was his Vulcan phraseology. He spoke as if he had learned communication parented by VG-Factor 8 language computers.

“Your request is that I do nothing rather than doing something?” I asked.

“Look…”

I expected to hear “Vaughnie” and would have died if he had said it, but I did not really expect to hear it. He continued.

“What is in there is the breath of death,” he said.

“Do not start that island loco voodoo mumbo-jumbo nonsense,” I said.

“Island loco voodoo mumbo-jumbo does not have to be nonsense. But, in fact, in this case it is nonsense. Not in the sense that you have intended—as being without intellect or understanding—but rather in the correct sense of no sense,” the Deacon said.

“What are you talking about? I do not want to be offensive but—”

He cut me off and then continued.

“With your permission, you think that I have been underwater too long and have sucked in too much nitrox mix under pressure, or perhaps you think that I have become island-happy. No, I am not crackers. It is that there is faith as you know, belief in things unseen; there is what you call nonsense, not believing in what you have not seen or have no faith in; and there is seeing what is, but is neither an article of faith nor an article of the cleverness of our understanding. It is in our sight but it is out of our insight. It is perceived but is not of our perception. It is in the light of our senses but is discerned in the darkness of our nonsense, if you will. Yes, you are correct. It is nonsense but that does not exclude it from being true. Does it? It is nonsense because it is not in the universe of what is behind our eyes and in front of our ears.”

Unbelieving, I began to question him. “Do you believe or think or feel that your drowned dive buddy is alive?”

He gave me an answer.

“Your question is about him, my dive buddy. He, my dive buddy, is drowned but he is not dead—not him. What he used to be is dead. What he used to be is not what is alive.”

“What!” I couldn’t help shouting.

There he stood as if alone, looking through me as if he did not hear the deafening sound.

He was a man who would not bleed if he were cut or make a sound if he were on fire. I wanted to be him; I wanted not to be him. I knew that he did not want to be me.

Out of the silence he began speaking.

“You have heard about Pauperes Commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici?”

“The what?”

He continued, not missing a beat. “Perhaps you have knowledge of the Knights Templar?”

I affirmed that I did.

As if I had to put myself between his words, I tried hard to concentrate.

He continued, “Since Friday, October 13, 1307—or Friday the Thirteenth—the planet has been chasing the Holy Grail.”

“What! You think that you have found the Holy Grail. You! You! The Grail! What the—!”

He did not respond in any fashion. He continued: “The Holy Grail. I did not say I found the Grail—did I?”

I motioned that he had not spoken of finding the Grail.

“The Grail is a myth,” he said.

I agreed with a nod.

“The Templars found the greatest artifact. They were looking for mysterious enchantment and found the bitten fruit. They discovered it. That was the close-held secret. Not a gold falcon encrusted with jewels, not the Holy Grail, not the Book of the Dead.”

He stopped as if eternity were to be rent if he ever spoke again. Then he looked into J-14A. His eyes were the starting point.

I followed his laser gaze into J-14A and the view chilled me. It was not on a mindful level but on the level of pre-thought that I reacted. I responded reflexively. The reality was primordial. It was as cold and dark as the abysmal black deep’s bottom. It, the reflex, had been instilled in me when my genes were in the creature, Protopterus leviathanus. It, a perfect slime of perfect clarity, of perfect ooze, perfectly without friction and of perfect consistency was there in J-14A.

The slime had killed the specimens in the tank and the slime had fogged Manta’s pictures. I was ready for the answer and spun toward what I thought was going to be the Deacon’s face for the resolution. He was gone.

17

“Manta, what about that U-Boat and old slave ship?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you. A while back it was an easy dive to the old slave ship and as matter of fact it was in free-dive range. The U-Boat sits directly on top of it and that was well into free-dive range too. For a while it was an attraction for people but not so much anymore, nowadays. Once in a while a dive magazine recycles the 411, but that’s about all. The data is kinda old and the dive network knows the truth of the ships.”

“But the Deacon—what and why?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you the truth and—true or false—it is the truth. I have not been in the U-Boat or the slaver since they fell and I suspect that only the Deacon has been in them. Before they sunk lower down the shelf, you could swim through the U-Boat and go into the slaver and then simply swim out again. It was kind of a fun dive. The dive was not hard but it was complicated. You had to be conservative with your air and know where you were at all times in the black. It was like cave diving but it was fun. Now, it is too deep for me or anybody with good sense and that is why only the Deacon dives it,” Manta concluded.

“Why does he dive it?” was my question.

It was John Henry who answered. “The hole,” she said. “Once he told me about the hole. I don’t know why.”

“The hole—which hole? You have been through both ships. What is the deal about a hole?” I needed to know.

“The third hole,” she said

“The third hole. What third hole and what difference would it matter if there were fifty holes?” Manta asked.

“I asked the Deacon once about his dives and he said, ‘One hole leads to two and two leads to three and then there is he and me.’ Then he laughed out loud. Imagine, the Deacon, laughing.”

There was a terror in her eyes.

“I thought he had gone instantly crazy. I was scared.”

Manta practiced slow breathing.

I took a deep breath. Then I reminded myself.Just keep breathing.

John Henry continued.

“The Deacon is instantly perceptive. He saw my fear. The third hole leads into the sea floor,” she said.

Manta, grasping for reason, said, “There must be a swim-through or cave under the slaver.”

“No,” she said slowly and seriously, “it is the abyss of perdition, the open entrance gate of the nether sea,” she corrected him as though reciting the arcane.

Manta practiced deep breathing.

I kept repeating to myself, Just keep breathing.

“He, the Deacon, is as trustworthy as the Gospels.” She was too terrified to continue and wanted to cease but the climax had not yet been reached.

Manta and I were in a heightened state of anxiety.

“Beneath the U-Boat and beneath the slaver and in the final hole in the Deep he saw—he saw his buddy, alive.”

“What the—!” I yelled.

Manta breathed ever deeper.

I was glad that I was against a solid object. John Henry became weak-kneed and Manta put his massive head between his enormous legs to suck in gallons of air.

“But it was not his friend as he knew him; his form had changed. It was only his buddy’s head. His buddy’s body was that of a Sarcopterygiin,” she concluded.

Manta fell to his knees. He was not praying to his island gods. He was trying to breathe.

John Henry concluded. “The head of his buddy but the body of a coelacanth!”

The words just hung in the air in neutral buoyancy as if never uttered.

18

It was too weird and too fantastic to be true but it was also too fantastic to be an untruth. It had to be one or the other for there was simply not ground for compromise. A hybrid reality could not exist and to believe in such a mutation of reality was impossible.

Back at the LION, there he was, the Deacon. He was always particular about specifics but as time passed he became ever more specific about this particular or that particular.

“You know that you can never get your specifications one hundred percent perfect.” I did speak very boldly.

“This ain’t no weak-minded mind game into the uncertainty of the uncertainty principle.” He coldly spoke without a glance. Then he continued, “One hundred percent, I am not trying for one hundred percent. I am going for absolute control. That is, from here to gone, past one hundred percent. One hundred percent; that is weak-mindedness derived from some line of a science book written by some scientist that was never near one hundred percent and quoted by some weak-minded student hoping to get a one hundred percent on a test paper.”

He still did not look at me and continued his conversation with himself.

“I am not part of that chaos of nature out there. No, sir. Not on your Aunt Nellie, no sirree-bobcat. I am here to stake my claim on the heart of that mess, out there.”

He continued in silence, super-perfect in his cell of nature.

He did not seem to know that I had exited, even though he was too aware not to know that I had, and he must have been aware of the heat of my anger even though he was as cool as the water, steel, and glass of his tank.

19

Manta, John Henry, and the Capt’n were looking out to sea and all three were focused on a moving point in the water. The point became a dot. The dot became a dingy. It was Ol’ Joe’s dingy and soon enough Ol’ Joe could be seen steering the craft straight and true. Ol’ Joe never utilized any navigational charts or maps for a number of good reasons: he did not require any maps for he knew the oceans, he did not have any maps, and lastly he could not read navigational literature.

Other than the grill on his island, all that Ol’ Joe owned was in his dingy and the dingy was empty.

As if he were putting a greased burger into a bun, Ol’ Joe slipped the dingy into the slip and tied it up and, in fluid and continuous motion, exited onto the pier. The wonderment was why he was here on this island and not on his island.

For such a calm day the ocean was filled with energy.

It was good to see Ol’ Joe after just being with the Deacon. A warm fuzzy human interaction was called for and would be oh so very good. The four of us made merry on the beach. The three of us acted as if we had just rescued a marooned sailor and Ol’ Joe as if he were a marooned sailor just being rescued. There was only one place to go so mindlessly and without a word spoken—we three found our way to the tap. On the walk, we four—but Manta mostly—kept eyeing the ocean.

Ol’ Joe explained about how his island had been enveloped by the ocean. The island and his enterprise were under water. They had not been relegated to the Deep but rather flooded by the tide; they were no more.

“Strange, the nav literature and current telemetry have not and are making no note of such,” Manta said.

“Look, Manta, I know when something is underwater without a chart or some biggity brain tellin’ me so, okay? As for the waters, maybe dey is like me—never read, can’t read, don’t read, and ain’t ever gonna read.”

All that Ol’ Joe said before a gulp, during a gulp, and after a gulp.

He, Ol’ Joe, sat back and began to tell the story. There was no remorse, sadness, anger, or fear in his voice. There was colorful language and reason. The ocean had come ashore and to Ol’ Joe that was the long and the short of it.

Ol’ Joe turned to see what we were staring at past him. He made a comment as if he thought we were looking out to sea. We were looking at the Deacon. He was never happy but now there was a look of near revulsion upon his face and he was as stock still as if he were a piece of petrification.

“Ocean come ashore and washed you out, you say. Here you sit and your island is underwater,” the Deacon said.

“Just as true as fish swim,” Ol’ Joe answered.

“You die easy, old man.”

The Deacon was cold and murderous in his tone and choice of words.

“Even you can’t stop the tide, Deacon, and old men don’t die,” Ol’ Joe shot back.

“You can be alive and be dead.”

Manta, John Henry, and I became transfixed at that remark from the Deacon.

“The deep has all that you let it have and more,” The Deacon preached.

“You know what they say, ‘Time and tide wait for no man.’ ” Ol’ Joe answered.

The left side of Deacon’s face went into a grimace as the right side of his face went into a smile. He walked really slow to Ol’ Joe and placed his hand on his shoulder and put his face before Ol’ Joe’s face—right between Ol’ Joe’s eyes was his mouth. The four of us, Manta, Capt’n, John Henry, and myself, were coiled in fear, uncertainty, and anxiety but Ol’ Joe was calm and still. He was an old seaman—fear, uncertainty, and anxiety had long since been thrown overboard.

The Deacon, without a blink, without a threat, without a single emotion, and in the most calm and droid voice said: “The black-heartedness of that beast, if it ever comes near me, will be put to rest.”

Everybody, even Ol’ Joe, heard it and there we stood. As if he were standing in an empty room, the Deacon exited.

We were silent.

What did he mean?

20

The Capt’n and Ol’ Joe were the human equivalent of the ocean floor. They were ancient, enduring, and complete. Whatever had happened in the ocean was in their faces, in their hearts, and in their minds. Stories, facts, and fantasies were one and the same in a constructed truth. And, as the ocean had endured—they also had endured. Once they had tried to calculate the volume of sea water—not for any stupid square-headed academic calculation but rather to compare it percentage-wise to the volume of alcohol they had consumed. They had once decided on a percentage to consume and diligently set about to achieve their goal. but had to cease the quest due to the commercial fact that the world’s distilleries were incapable of producing the volume of alcohol needed at the rate that was needed.

The Capt’n’s real name was Travis and his mama and Ol’ Joe were the only people privy to that fact.

“You still have that old dive gear, Travis?” Joe asked.

“Old dive gear, you ask. What old dive gear ‘cause I do not have any new dive gear or anything else new,” Travis answered.

“That hard-hat stuff we used to use years and years ago, when we used to dive commercial,” Joe clarified.

“Yeah,” Travis said. “Polished good as gold—you could use it today. That stuff is better than anything out there.” There was a touch of pride in his voice. Then he continued, “We sure did have a world of fun. Found a lot of stuff and lost a lot of money and women on the way, huh.”

They both laughed as they remembered their unchurched youth.

“Those were the times,” they said in unison and smiled together.

“Seen a lot of things and done a lot of things and gonna see more and gonna do more. Right, Joe?”

Joe heard but was not listening to his old friend for he was recalling not the lost treasures of his life, but the faces of the lost loves of his life.

Joe was leaning back—relaxed. Travis leaned forward—unrelaxed. Joe had half-closed eyes that come with dreams. Capt’n had squinting eyes that come with calculating. Capt’n was full of life. Capt’n was hungry for life.

“What did you say?” Joe finally replied.

“Nothing really, but I am about to,” Travis said.

“Well, what?” Joe asked.

“You know, we could dive right now.”

Joe sat up straight, listening with full attention.

”Yep. Could dive this second,” Travis replied. He turned and questioned Joe in a most serious manner, “Do you know how to operate the on-board equipment?”

“Sure do. Was the best then and the best now. Have you ever seen anyone better?” Joe asked—and continued. “What, miss the old days, Trav?”

“Not at all, those days are in the locker,” Travis said.

“What, you wanna dive—again?” Joe inquired.

“If that stuff is good to go and if you are good to go, that is exactly it—I’m good to go.”

Travis spoke with the force and concentration of a harpooner casting his spear.

Joe was again with a lost lover and did not hear Travis. So Travis continued but in effect was talking to himself.

21

The Capt’n and Ol’ Joe knew that the ocean was not vacant, but as they eyeballed the plane of the ocean’s surface there was no life evident. There was the vista of the seascape that slowly and with perfect grace diffused into vacant sky.

The skin of the ocean was as seamless as glass crystal of incalculable proportion. They, Ol’Joe and the Capt’n, were simultaneously giants and dwarves. Neither, being sailors, was engaged in the math or the poetry of the moment’s situation as they went about in their honest sailors’ duties and obligations.

There are days to sail and there are days not to sail, but only for those who are not sailors in their souls because for each sailor each day is a day to sail—for time and tide are the sea and the days of a sailor are of time and of tide. And the pulse of a sailor’s soul is in synchronization with the ripples of the sea-tide which marks the time of the sea and the working pulse of the sailor man.

“You’ve done a right fine job keeping this gear in A1A shape,” Joe said to Travis.

“This is good stuff,” Travis said. “It cannot wear out ‘cause it can’t wear out. It done did right by me so’s I just done right by it. It done pushed a lot of air to me and kept me breathing a long, long time. Yep, some people polish diamonds or cars but that stuff is just junk to me.”

“You done got that right,” Joe said. “Fancy women in diamonds and sissy dude boys ain’t seen what we done seen and ain’t been where we done been. They lay there or flip-flop around and see their toes in the water and call that adventure.”

Both sailors howled with glee.

With nimble hands and nimble minds they assorted and assembled the equipment. The expanse of time had not diminished their intuitive understanding or their learned knowledge- for all proceeded as if their last hard-hat dive was an hour ago past.

All the connections were seated and fit in square fashion. All the valves were secure and tight. All the hoses were flexible and without leakage. All the brass was polished and without corrosion. Finally, all the gauges were true and accurate. They checked and rechecked their work and then double-checked the recheck and did a redundant check of the recheck. Fingers manipulated, eyes examined, and brains concluded their check of each piece of gear looking for and anticipating a botch that might develop into a fiasco that would cause a system failure that would finalize in a catastrophe. There was no verbal communication and the ancient carapace of canvas and brass was about to regenerate an ancient life anew.

“Been a while, boss” Joe smiled.

Travis agreed.

“Yeah. It has, champ. Done it once, done it a thousand times. The sea don’t change. We don’t change.”

“Seems like yesterday that we were doin’ this for good and ill. Now, we are like this thing—old and not improved, but the best there ever was. Huh, boss?”

“Yep, the best there ever was. We are like this contraption—we ain’t pretty no more but we ain’t worn out, neither. Not like stuff and people of today, once and done. That ain’t the way of the ocean. It ain’t fancy and it ain’t never been worn out, neither.”

“When you are right, you are right, boss.” Joe was ready to assist.

With Joe’s assistance Travis got into his old atmospheric diving suit and helmet. Everything was checked, double-checked, and rechecked.

There is one thing about the sea and that is truth. If you are above the water, you are not on the water. If you are on the water, you are not in the water. The truth only comes with the immersion in the wet of baptism. The ocean’s truth is not the surface but the Deep.

Onto the platform Travis strode. He balanced himself on the platform, grasped the attached chains. With Joe working the winch that lowered the platform, down into the Deep he went—the weight with dumbness falling slowly and silently. The whoosh of his breath and the hammering of his heart were the only living sounds. The mechanism with its well-oiled and machined regularity of noise was extracted from the circumstance.

The light—clear, diffused, and with a glow—slowly evolved into a gray, then black syrup. The Deep chilled what had been his sun-warmed skin and slowly—standing on the platform—

he fell deeper and deeper. He was getting ever smaller. The air was being pushed from his ears; the air was being pushed from his lungs and entrails; the air, it seemed to him, was being pushed from his bones. He fell silently ever deeper into the truth of the Deep, the increasing compression on his body making it ever harder to breathe.

There was a time when he could have looked up and seen the truth of the ship’s bottom but that time and sight had passed. He was isolated and falling, the controlled drop taking him down in the dark of the isolated Deep. He knew that the weights would endure. He knew that the machine would endure. He knew that the ship would endure. He hoped that he would endure the Deep.

Just keep breathing!

This had always been the mantra that he chanted in the Deep, the mantra of all divers. In good times, in bad times, when calm, when excited—just keep breathing and think. Work the problem, never make the situation worse, find the answer, and never get scared—were what had allowed him to just keep breathing when the truth of many a situation was simply one breath from death.

Just keep breathing!

No, it is not the time to turn on the lights—have to manage the resources, he thought. The coral shelf where the U-Boat lies has to be near.

On its chains the platform dropped lower down along the wall as Joe, far above, cranked the handle of the winch, paying out chain through the hollow leg-like extensions of the spider-gear. Down, down the platform went along the wall, then hit a coral shelf with a thud.

The sound of the thud on his eardrums was confirmed by the stillness of fluid in his inner ears. There was no more motion. His body and his soul were with the body and the soul of the Deep.

He flipped on the lights and saw into the Deep. He stepped from the platform, the long hose seated in a metal ring in his suit still bringing life-giving air from the pump above. He found himself co-mingled with the Deep and his truth was its truth.

There it was, the sunken U-Boat on a shelf off the wall, just within the halo of the lights. He sent his “go” signal up from the Deep and continued on toward it.

In the incompressible fluid universe, the dark was nearly impenetrable with foreign energy. The vibration of the thud raced uncontested to the surface ever faster and faster, pulling energy from the Deep and ascending to the surface through the chain attached to the spider-gear with a surplus of oomph. The last of the energy leaped with a pop through the spider-gear’s sprockets. The old spider-gear, not being able to maintain its integrity, fell into the Deep with an almost silent plop. The chains, pulled down, hung limp and there was only slackness in the Deep as Travis turned his back to the now-drowned contraption.

What is true of water is true of contraptions, also. As water seeks the lowest level of inertial maintenance, the same is true for contraptions. The lowest level for a contraption is failure and that failure cannot be until there are causal events that can be neither checked, double-checked, nor rechecked for the consequence. So the magnificent rig of the contraption loomed ever-imposing but simply loomed over doom with no hope of intervention.

The sun was upon Joe’s face as lost lovers warmed his heart. Ever faithful to his buddy, he had seen the ripples in the water where the leg-like extensions of the spider-gear fell and he went about in seaman-like fashion to bring good repair to the contraption.

He and his buddy knew that failure—the state of all things on or in the sea—was not of the sea. The repair was one of mechanical replacement. He had done it many times before and he could think and reflect upon the warm faces of those that he had loved and the faces of the ones who had loved him—so long ago.

It was stupid, he thought now. He had departed for the cold and relentless never-changing beast of the ocean. His cut, rough, grime-covered hands maneuvered and manipulated this part and that part into place. His dreams and thoughts manipulated and maneuvered his dreams and his thoughts into place.

Then he looked into the Deep. He could see the slow trickle of air bubbles escaping to the surface, finding liberation in the atmosphere, and he saw the dreams of his loves vaporized into a mist of memories. He was a good sailor and he had long ago accepted the sacrifice of his life.

Put this on and secure it with that and a job well-done is a well-done job, Joe thought.

This fell into the water; that fell into the water—he fell into the water. A small plop, followed by a bigger plop, followed by the plop of a dead man were the sounds. His system had failed. Failure, death, is the inertial consequence of life above the Deep, on the Deep, and in the Deep.

The automatic engine droned on. Down below on the shelf, Travis’s every weighted step into the muck and the mire of the Deep was a challenge to his most mature muscles. Each new step required another fresh drop of oxygen and each fresh drop of oxygen required another fresh drop of fuel. The automatic engine droned on until it gasped and sucked down the last drop of fuel and the vapors of the fuel. His blood gasped for the last drop of oxygen. His muscles gasped for the last drop of blood. The engine ran out of fuel and vapors. His blood ran out of oxygen. His muscles ran out of blood. Peacefully, in the Deep, a silent falling silhouette came to rest near his feet. The smiling face with open eyes was his buddy, Joe.

He had come to truth in the dim light of the dark Deep before all went to black.

The ripple of spider-gear and Joe’s falling body had passed into the sea. The automatic engine shut off. In moments, there were no more ripples from ascending air bubbles. The underwater current caused the bodies to drift. It, the slave ship, had grasped the U-Boat; it, the U-Boat, grasped and seized the lifeless forms.

22

“We live in a world that is defined by who, what, where, why, and how—and still that does not answer all the questions. The Deacon fills it in with some sort of razor-sharp steeliness and Manta fills in the spaces with vapor intuitions. That U-Boat, that old slaver, what the Deacon saw, what Manta photographed. Me, I don’t know—anything. It scares me.”

John Henry looked at me.

I did not reply.

She walked to the window and looked out from my place in the LION Reserve onto the sea.

She continued. “The Deacon can see into the ocean and fears nothing in it. Manta sees into the ocean and fears nothing in it. Not me. l see nothing but the water of the ocean and everything associated with the ocean scares me.”

I did not reply.

She continued. “I came here to be brave and I have always known that it was an act of forwardness. How can Deacon and Manta fear nothing?”

“One is crazy and the other irrational. You can pick A and B or B and A. It does not matter,” I said.

“But—”

I cut her off in mid-sentence and told her the truth: “One sees the sea as black and white. The other sees the sea as colorless. Neither is correct. And you… sometimes you see the sea as black and white; other times you see the sea as grey; and sometimes you are blind to the sea.

“Talk about scared! I am scared of everything that is not me and I am proud of it.

“The sea is not what scares me. What is in the sea is not what scares me. Drowned ships and drowned men are not what scare me. Nah, that stuff is for the philosopher and the wise. That thing, that morphed life form—it don’t scare me—no sir, not a least little bit. But if it is, it has to be, and there lies the inquiry.”

“What the—,” she replied.

“Look, Manta observes only. He never engages. The Deacon goes right to the conclusion. The earth has hot spots, places of volcanic action, true?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“The earth has frozen poles,” I said.

“Yes,” she answered again.

“Now reason, a Nazi U-Boat escapes and sinks twelve thousand miles directly on top of an old slaver that is scuttled off the trade routes to rest on top of an opening that leads into the ocean floor. The cargo of the slaver was misery. What was the cargo of the Nazis?”

“Atomic material and plans for a bomb?” she said.

“No. If that were the case, why stop in Ireland? Also, it would have been discovered,” I replied.

“Something caused the Deacon’s friend to drown. Something caused the wunderkinder to drown, and something caused your friend to drown.”

“Manta would not have taken pictures of a fog. The pictures had to get that way later and the Deacon is always in that miasma.”

“No, it is a something. It is an it. The question is: it is what?” I was now talking to myself, muttering as I began to walk. “It is what? I know where, the others did, too, but not the Deacon. How could that be? The who are all dead. How and why seem tied together.”

She followed as I muttered on.

“Then it comes back to what. What is it?”

The light from a gleaming knife blade blinded me.

“The Deacon always dives in the black. That is the reason he survives. He has never seen it! He knows what it is but he has never seen it!”

I stopped muttering.

“What about that creature he saw?” she asked.

“Genus and species,” I said.

“Genus and species?”She replied.

I was now in front of the Deacon’s tank.

“Genus and species, John Henry, and fear—for it has a genus and species classification,” I said.

The fish tank had always been a rock in the sand to my thinking and I had more than once stubbed my toe upon the unreasonableness of the design. The rigor was excessive and the size was nonsensical in all respects. I had often measured and kicked the tank, more to satisfy my disbelief than to satisfy my belief. The tank was real.

Then I began talking in my head to my reflection as seen in the polish and clarity of the tank. Since people do things in their best interest, what is the obsessive fixation that is in the Deacon’s fascination?

I drew a conclusion but the conclusion was not intelligent, the conclusion was not even sensible and the Deacon was intelligent and the Deacon was sensible; however, truer descriptive adjectives of the Deacon were shrewd and cunning. The Deacon was more cunning than he was sensible and the Deacon was more shrewd then he was intelligent. And, therein was the resolution to the riddle of the tank. The answer to the riddle of the Sphinx is not the smile of the Sphinx. The resolution is man’s face with a smile and head in stone in the middle of the desert. The smile is just for sages to contemplate for millennia and for fools to blabber about for millennia with both sages and fools coming to the same resolution.

The giant goliath tank that was colossal enough to contain a behemoth-type leviathan was the deceptive smile that I saw, finally.

The drowned yet living buddy—and it exceeded the rationale of the genus and species of reason. The truth of the Deacon was as unidentifiable in the tank as that stone-faced smile of the Sphinx. I knew that the tank was a lie.

We did not see Manta in the reflection of the tank. We did not hear Manta enter. Without introduction, he began. It was not his usual sing-song voluminous voice but an almost inaudible chant.

“The Deacon found Ol’Joe and the Capt’n in the locker.”

The thread that was knitting our fates together was becoming ever more heavy-gauge. We were without emotion.

John Henry began, “There is the Holy Land that draws people together.”

“Not in peace,” I said.

She ignored me. “It has us all seized in its net and is drawing us ever closer downward. You may not admit or concede this and it may not be fact and it may not be mystical but that is the truth of it. And, I am scared—”

Manta and I both interrupted at the same time. She did not acknowledge either one of us.

Manta looked into his heart and found his truth. I looked into my mind and found my truth. She looked at both of us and fathomed a certain uncertainty. We were lifeless.

23

In time, I was by myself and there was an inescapable truth to the situation. It was that only the divers searching for it met with death. Many had dived and were none the worse for the experience and, as a matter of fact, all were joyful in having survived the dive.

“Have a good dive?”

I had once put the question to a green-finned diver on his return to the island from a dive to the U-Boat.

“Has there ever been a bad dive?” he exclaimed.

And, it was true. Any dive you survive is a good dive. This was my feeling. But, there was a joy in his voice as if he had opened his first Christmas present and had gotten exactly what he had desired for three hundred sixty-four days.

The U.S. navy was not looking for it. They were looking for atomic fuel pellets and plans for an atomic device. Not looking for it they found nothing. The Russians did not know what to look for but dove because the U.S. navy dove. Not looking for it they found nothing. The Nazis and the stranger were looking for it and found death. The Deacon’s friend, also knowing what it was, found it and also found death. The Deacon knew it and found it but survived. The others survived by grace. Knowing not what it was, all I thought about was the Deacon. The Deacon was the whole, the total, the sum of my thinking.

Everything about the Deacon: his character, his vocabulary, and his actions, were minimal but there was nothing trifling about the Deacon.

His residence was also very true to his character. He had all that he needed and needed all he had and everything was functional, purposeful, and effective. The observation and conclusion that was most contrary and prejudicial was that everything was always so neat and so tidy. I always thought it strangely inexplicable that he was so fastidious. I never did question him about the matter. I just assumed that he had an enduring fear that his mother would drop in without invitation and he just wanted to be prepared for her inspection. There were times that I imagined the Deacon’s mother and it made me straighten up and fly right in my own housekeeping.

“I am going over to the Deacon’s,” John Henry commented.

“For what?” Manta asked.

“I do not know. All I know is if anybody knows anything; it is the Deacon.”

“You are telling me that the Deacon is the answer,” I questioned her.

“I really do not know. I know that I don’t know. Maybe, if he is not the answer, he is part of the question,” she said.

If there is any innocence in truth, then this was the most truthful statement ever spoken.

If you are fortunate, you meet a person like the Deacon once in your life. It is also true that if you are fortunate you never meet a Deacon in your life. The character of the Deacon is elemental. Not precious like platinum, gold, or silver but more valuable like lead, iron, or copper.

In a gulp, the Deacon could observe, analyze, and decide the relevant method, mode, and means. I had always assumed that the Deacon had taught himself for there was such surety in his being as if he were the teacher and the student in a Zen moment—as if, after having made the mistake and then making the self-correction, he was satisfied in the final solution. There was nothing loose, dangling, or sloppy in his thinking, in his actions, or in his way of life. Discipline, order, nor regiment was the Deacon’s lifestyle nor was it worship of all things correct and proper; it was that like all refined elements the dross of his life had been burned off, disregarded, and discounted.

I did not know if the Deacon was the question or if the Deacon was the answer but I did know that if there were a question, I would ask the Deacon and if there were an answer, I would be astute to listen to his voice.

We confessed our fears of what to us seemed the only course of events. As there is no way to walk off an island, there seemed no way on this island except to the Deacon. Question or answer, right or wrong—the pathway led to the Deacon’s door and then to him.

On a small island, there is commonality in where you live due to the smallness of the land mass and how you live is due to the limitedness of choice. What was true for the other citizens of the island was true for the Deacon, also. It was not that it was different for it was the same; it was that it was somehow different because it was the same.

Manta, John Henry, and I stood there like three little children in front of the old Hag’s house on Halloween wondering if we had enough nerve to ask for sweets.

Inside and seated Manta was drinking water, John Henry was drinking iced tea, and I was nursing a frozen coke while reaching for a cream-filled cupcake. If any of us had been dressed, we could have passed for citizens of polite society but, as it was, we were natives of the bush. Strange, I had been in the company of the Deacon and I had even been in his home by myself and I had been there with friends but I assumed a certainty and he simply did not embarrass me by going below or going above my expectations of him. Not knowing what to expect, I could not have expected more of the Deacon.

Manta was relaxed. John Henry was leaking energy. I was in a ready state. The Deacon looked at us with his back to the window and, with the cadence and tone of a Baptist preacher beginning a sermon, he began low and slow.

“He was alive—once. He was very much alive. He was like you. He was like me. There is a question: Do we deserve our fate?”

We all knew that it was a rhetorical comment and so followed his voice with absolute concentration of will.

“It did not begin with him. It is that he swam into his fate.” He paused and looked into the deep. Then he continued, “Have you ever thought about it?”

None of us said anything but we looked at each other—it?

“Whatever happened to it?”

It?

“He and I never, and I suppose no one ever, thinks about it but we swam into its effect and he was once alive and now is not.”

I thought to myself, What does he mean?

“The tank and the story are one and the same. The story needed the tank and the tank needed the story.”

I knew it! I knew it! I said to myself.

“Both were needed and both had to be a large enough lie to seem true.”

Well, that makes sense in the non-sensible way of reality.

But, it was not a lie for he did not profit from it and, after all, there is an ethic to lying and, as it were, the tank and the tall tale were in the fine traditions of yarn-spinning.

It? It! It. What is it? I waited silently.

“We found the truth of it. We were not the first. We had never even wondered about it as others have but we literally swam into it.”

What is it?

He began again.

“Manta, you remember when we first arrived on the island?”

Manta said yes with his eyes.

“We were just a couple of dive buddies looking for the perfect double dive. We were just having fun. Then we dove the sub. It was fun, at first. With our cute pastel suits, we thought we were something. Then there was a change. That scroll was what ended our fun, that scroll, if only we had never made contact with that scroll. That ship of the damned would not have damned and ended his life and damned my life.”

Was that it? Was that scroll it? How could a scroll exist underwater for so long? What the—! I couldn’t help thinking.

“That stupid gold scroll! Why had fate chosen us? Had we chosen our own fate?”

Gold, okay.

Gold!

I dreamed.

Well, that makes sense.

The light was behind him. The Deacon sat down. The chair was large and very ornate. The legs had carvings that resembled the legs and paws of a lion. The ornate brow of the chair imparted the illusion of wings. His dreadlocks imparted the impression of a mature lion’s mane.

I thought to myself, the Deacon is a little girl who is scared of an enchanted trinket.

The Deacon continued. With his hands clenched over the arm rails of the chair, it was truly the image of the talking Sphinx.

“The scroll was not it.”

I thought.

What the—It is not it!

“B-A-B-Y-L-O-N,” he spelled.

“B-A-B-E-L-I-O-N,” he spelled.

What the—, I thought.

John Henry and Manta were paralyzed.

Then he began to address a fifth person in the room but there was no fifth person in the room.

“Balal means to confuse. Babel, if you wish, means the ‘The Gate of God’. That was where the first great city arose. After exponential millennia, a great city arose overnight from the desolate sands of a waterless dessert. Ur, it was called and it arose overnight. A metropolis constructed, erected, assembled without previous knowledge. And, that is it—where was the previous knowledge base?”

“It was outside ‘The Gate of God’.”

John Henry and Manta were now enslaved.

I thought, It was an old dead city.

The Deacon continued talking ever more directly at the person who was not there.

“Ur was not it.”

What the—, I thought.

“Outside the Gate of God, Ur, a great city, arose. A master builder’s mind was involved. But how was it possible to have such a complete knowledge on the first attempt? And, he built a city.”

The Deacon was preaching and John Henry, Manta, and the unobserved one were the congregation.

But, I did not concentrate on them.

That sounded familiar. I knew those words. Wait, wait, wait—that’s it! Is he crazy? I thought. He is not serious. He’s mad.

He cannot mean that is it. I looked at him to detect if there were any sign that would betray him. He was still. He was quiet. He was looking at the one who was not present.

Then he continued.

“He took it with him. When he left, he simply took it with him. He picked it up and came through the gate with it in his hand. It is as simple as that.”

Then I spoke. “You mean to tell me that you believe that? That he picked it up off the ground. It was bitten and he walked away with it. Is that what you are telling me? Is that what you really think? And, is that what caused the fate of those drowned dead men? Is that what you are saying? Is it? Is it?” I questioned him.

“What I am saying is that there are drowned men out there and some are dead because of it. It did not cause them to die but it caused some of them to drown,” the Deacon said.

He was certain, now, that I had knowledge. The population of the room was he and I.

“Men die. Some die out of the plan and design and die due to the fact that they try to force their life through their own desire. That is what happened to my buddy. He wanted it more than he wanted his own life,” the Deacon said.

“It did not rot,” I said.

“It came from the other side of ‘The Gate of God’ and it is incorruptible.”

I was now enslaved and paralyzed.

The Deacon continued.

“It was spirited from Ur and hidden away for three generations. It became meaningless but because it did not rot or show corruption from year to year it became a curiosity and was eventually sold for supplies in Egypt. The Egyptians—simple native people at the time—became in days an empire. It was traded for seed. From it the seed of Egypt came that allowed for an Empire. His name in English is Lion. And, it gave him wisdom and the title of the deed to earth. And, he claimed his deed and watered his field with the blood of many people. Being wise, he kept the secret of his wisdom but he kept it in plain sight. There it was in view but the wisdom of it was unknown except to him and he died not telling his heirs.

“It was there. It became nothing more than a royal relic.

“Then the wisest of all men realized what it was. Having read an ancient scroll he set out upon a quest to reclaim it for it was his ancestor that had first claimed it by right of ownership. It was in the possession of the Queen of Sheba and was just an artifact. In reverse, as the ancient ones from the east had traded it for seed grain to gain life, she would go east and trade it for his seed to gain life. She desired to be the fertile field of his wisdom.

“Being the only person with the wisdom of it he used it, he abused it, and he always kept it hidden in the foundation of his great temple under the empty place. It was secure in the empty place of the great foundation stone of the palace.

“The bargain with the Queen of Sheba was fair because she conceived and bore a son, his seed, from this most wise man, a king. She went west with his seed and it was again in the land of the original possessors.

“That was the secret of the Sphinx. It allowed for the wisdom of man or it allowed for the behavior of a beast. It never allowed for both. It allowed for a choice—good or evil. It did not allow for one to choose good and evil. Therefore the Sphinx sits in the sands pondering its predicament. The Lamassu has chosen—look upon its face. And, the Griffin with its wings tries to avoid a choice. They are stone. They are protohumanoid minds, after all.

“In 1899, Koldeway told Schliemann of his findings from the scroll. It was most unwise. Schliemann, wanting to keep it to himself, killed his half-brother Koldeway.

“Schliemann, although a murderer, was however no fool. He was intelligent and schooled and had done research for decades but his most useful, practical, functional, and valuable trait was that he was a Nazi. And, being a Nazi, he realized a lie when he was told or read one. The lie was the Holy Grail. As the acquisition of Austria and the invasion of Poland was based upon a lie, the Holy Grail was also.

“The Knights Templar were looking for it. Not the Holy Grail—they were looking for it and a cohort of knights found it.

“Knowing the authority, supremacy, and dominance that it could be utilized to achieve, the cohort sent out one band of three knights with the cover story of the Holy Grail; another band of three knights was sent out mysteriously in silence; and the last band of three knights simply walked out as common folk with it.

“Everyone was hunting for the Holy Grail of the first Knights, or perhaps the treasure map of the second group of knights, but the last knights who had it were obvious and with them it was hidden in plain sight. If you can recall, Richard went to the east with a red cross on his shield but came back to the west with a lion—a lion—on his shield.

“Looking at Richard on horseback, does not he have the appearance of a lamassu?

“The flames of the inquisition opened closed mouths and what had been a clandestine secret in a dark room was now an open actuality and became the thing of royal desire and royal craving. It was taken to the edge of the realm and then out of the realm and placed in a dark foundation. It was a place in secret and lost from sight. Herr Schliemann uncovered the secret of it and then unearthed it.”

There was light, a beam highlighting the Deacon’s face, but he did not blink and bathed most comfortably in the rays. The Deacon’s eyes reflected the fullness of the light and the iris of his eyes became the color of root beer with pupils of true blackness.

“Herr Schliemann has dissolved into the stuff of the ocean and so has his fantasy, as the dreams and fantasies of them all. All the builders of huts, builders of cities, and the builders of empires endeavor to claim it, then clasp it, then control it, and finally it consumes the builders of huts, the builders of cities, and the builders of empires. Some are dust in the desert floors, some are dust of the fields, and some are dust on the floor of the ocean.”

I knew what it was. I looked at John Henry and then I looked at Manta and I wondered if either or both had come to the fathoming of it.

We were less than what we had been.

“Tell me—” John Henry began.

But the Deacon cut her off and began to speak.

“From the first there have been lies and greater lies about it. The smile of the Sphinx, the bastard child of a king and queen, October thirteenth, and Nazi submarines were all lies to bury truth in stone, to bury it in flesh, to bury it in a day of the week, and to bury it in steel. I buried it in what was on this island—folklore and water.

“Yes, before you ask it—it is real and it is true.”

Then Manta began to question him.“The hot spot, the slaver, and the U-Boat—”

The Deacon cut him off as he had cut off John Henry.

“The hot spot was there first. The old slaver fell on top of it and the U-Boat fell on top of the slaver. Just numbers, Manta—not magic or supernatural at all. There is great evil there on the floor of the Deep, for sure. Those poor drowned slaves are out of their misery, yeah, but those slavers are drowning each day in the fires of hell and Herr Schliemann and those Nazis are suffering because in death they now know that they were never alive. The irony of it is so elemental that it plays out the essence of first knowledge.”

“What the—” I said it, but John Henry and Manta were thinking it, too.

Ironic! The fire from Hell and the hot spot from the sea of Chaos procreated and bred the drowned ground. Yeah, Manta’s false gods and John Henry’s real fear were there alright—it was on their faces and in their souls. The Deacon was no better, no less than a Sphinx. But, we all knew and grasped the fact that the last elemental portion was missing—the air that was in the breath of our lives. We all inhaled deeply except for the Deacon.

24

It was one of those occurrences when words are not the method and means of communication. Without words, our four minds became a single mind. John Henry closed the doors to her dive shop. Manta became the Jack of all Trades.”

The Deacon was the virtuoso wizard. And I was included into the mix for flavor.

We were going to dive for it.

It did not bother me that some Nazi wunderkinder had drowned. I assumed that Nazis were just as evil underwater as above the water and the pressure of the Deep pressed the life from them. The one, John Henry’s friend, was too assured in an unsure environment. But, the Deacon’s friend was the one that I could not come to peace with in my thoughts.

Then I asked him as he passed me in the LION. “How did your buddy drown?”

I expected one of those Deacon obfuscations but he immediately paused and began. “Most of the story is inert and meaningless as are most stories and the greater part of our lives. But, now and again, there is motion and meaning. Those are the times when one’s character becomes the variable. Does fate choose us or do we choose our fate?”

He was talking—but not to me. He was talking to himself. “He had possession of it for a short time and he lost his life forever. You see, it slipped from his clutch and descended through the U-Boat and tumbled through the slaver and came to rest. He chased after it, breathing hard and with little air. Having successfully reached it, he gulped his last. There he died. It was not his choice to become a drowned man but his choice did not allow for any other conclusion. He was not going to breathe his last and live.

“He made his choice. I made a choice also. I chose to live. There was not enough air for two lives. There was barely enough air for one life. His choice cascaded upon me. Could I have gone after him—No!

“He was a man grown full and he—not fate—was the decider of his providence.”

“What the—” I said.

The Deacon was unmoved by my sentiment but he was correct. One live man plus one dead man was greater than two dead men. I am sure that this was the calculation the Deacon made. There is no law in the deep, just order, and that is: air-breathers drown when breathing in the sea.

There were meaningful and meaningless things to do. The meaningful depended upon the meaningless.

I put the LION to rest. John Henry’s dive shop became the womb. The Deacon had developed the dive strategy and Manta was the workman who changed thoughts into things. As a master before his pupils the Deacon taught, manipulated, and governed. The orchestration of our actions was geared to the tolerance of his preference and we accepted our fate as dutiful serfs.

There was no randomness, there was no wasted energy, there was no disorder, but rather there was a certain awareness that produced a self-consciousness of perception. We developed a singular telescopic sight-line that leads into the deep. We were becoming less of ourselves.

“In our hands, we will be able pull this off, Vaughnie, and it will be in our hands. Think of it. In our hands. All those years, and all those so-called great people failed. Not us. Just think of it! Us! Some outlanders on the Last Island accomplishing what all others have failed to accomplish. Think of it, just think of it!” John Henry was elated, almost jubilant, as she put her joy into words.

“No one has had it in peace. Its origin is sin and it has been nothing but evil to anybody connected to it. I do not share your glee,” I said.

“Do you not see? It is not evil. It is the evil of and in the people who hold it that brings the evil. Their wish and their want is what is evil. Their neediness for it is what is evil. They show their evil when they covet it. Well, we will get it. We are not evil. We will get it and then they will see what it was ordained to do in a good life. Think of it, Vaughnie. We will be the ones who finally hold it and we will hold it for good and we will hold it forever. We will bring a change. Yes, sir, we will bring a change and the others—the others, they will see.”

She was preaching but there was no choir.

“But, maybe it is better in the Deep. Out of sight and out of mind. It will not take long now for that U-Boat to become a stain on the bottom of the deep. That iron-eating bacteria, Halomonas meridian, will do to that iron hulk what time and tide has done to that slaver. The slaver is gone and the few people here will have to evacuate in thirty or forty years because tidal pressures and time are eating away this last island. All—this island, that iron wreck, and that slaver—will never be found ever again,” I said.

“No! We have to find it. The Deep can claim everything else but I will not allow it to claim it. I will not allow that to happen, ”she yelled at me.

“Would not it be better if it were on the bottom and then gulped down into the mantle and destroyed? Would not that be better?”I questioned her.

“No! No! No! This close. This close and you say it would be better. You think it would be better that after all this time—all this time—that it would be better if it were not used for good. After all the evil and dirty hands that have been on it how can you say that it is not the time for clean and good hands to be on it. Now!” She sermonized.

I thought.

Clean, good.

I was not so persuaded for I knew the state of my morality.

“Is our quest for it any different, any better, or any worse than all the other quests?” I asked her.

She answered, “Yes, and not in means or in methods only, but also in motivation. That is the basis, that is the bedrock of why our quest is different from all the other quests that have preceded us. Ours is the noble and righteous quest.”

“Noble and righteous motivation?” I asked.

“Certainly, our motivation is good. We will bring the power of good up from the Deep’s dark. Think of it. It will be the power of good and that power will be in my hands—our hands,” she said.

“Power,” I said.

She repeated, “Power.”

25

Water is meaningless except for the meaningless fact that water is the current that carries all life on Earth. The lithosphere is just dead rock. The atmosphere is just atomized vapors. The hydrosphere is the realm of life.

On the surface, where the spheres meet, water is transparent and the character of it is innocent. I sat upon the coral head in the shallow tidal pool with my feet dangling in the ava—the cut that fell to the deep. Clear, innocent, and warm—the water baptized me in its simplicity and I was at peace. Then my mind wandered into water’s pressure charts. Sitting here the water pressure was meaningless. Then the changes began. At thirty-three feet, the pressure was the air pressure plus the equivalent of another atmosphere of air pressure and that reality was constant in its increase until the bottom.

At thirty-five thousand feet the pressure was sixteen thousand pounds per square inch—an increase of one thousand times in pressure.

It, the water, was not clear, warm, and innocent. It, the water, was black, cold, and evil. It, the water, had at the bottom lost its fluidity and was a syrup at below-freezing temperatures. But, there the world was most organized. For entropy was reduced to a zero state and what had been was, what had been is, and what had been was to be. There was no confusion, no randomness, and no chaos.

As I was resting there a great leviathan cruised beneath my hanging feet and another, Manta, entered the water. The small air bubbles were always expanding in volume and always decreasing in density until they exploded at the demarcation of the spheres.

Then I did the math. An air bubble with a one-inch diameter at thirty-five thousand feet—one thousand atmospheres—would have a diameter of one thousand inches on the surface as it expired with only one-thousandth the density of its origin in the Deep.

Manta, the lesser of the leviathans, swam in the shallow deep as the greater of the leviathans descended downward.

Upon the belly of the Deep a blob of jellyfish, Cyanea capillata, at 0.077 inches was ascending upward on its single life’s journey from the Deep to the shallow. With each pulse of its bell the blob would, without growing, ever increase in size until at the surface what had been an almost invisible blob would be a seventy-seven inch Lion Mane jellyfish with two hundred thirty feet of invisible tentacles inlaid with billions of deadly poisonous stinging cells. Upon the surface, it would float, glide, drift mindless—but not at the mercy of time and tide.

26

They that go down to the sea in ships; that do business in great waters;

These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.

For He commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof.

They mount up to heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble.

They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end.

Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their distress.

He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.

When and where I grew up it was required that the Bible in the King James Version be memorized. It was not so much a requirement as it was the practiced way of life. I do not know how but I know why Psalm 107: verse 23 to verse 29 was recalled. It was my prayer.

The shipworms had in silence reduced the slaver to digestive by-products. The iron-eating bacteria was reducing the U-Boat to a rust stain in silence. In silence, the jelly blob of life was trekking. The more we toiled, the more we labored, the more we worked; the more we became evermore wordless. Words were no longer the agents of our communication and for the most part were little more than an archaic artifact of our petrified past. Words had a past which had purification and we were seeking a purified future.

But the more silent we became; the more the Deep gave voice.

Manta threw out a question. It was as if a well-spring had been tapped. “Has anyone else noticed the restlessness of the island spirits?”

I was thinking it but the Deacon said it. “Island spirits?”

Manta retorted boldly but calmly, “Yes, island spirits.”

The island environment had been less calm then usual but the season was changing.

The Deacon commented, “It is just the change of season. Island spirits have nothing to do with what is happening.”

Then Manta added what he knew. “Yeah, how can you argue against hygrometers, thermometers, and seismometers? They put black numbers on white charts and so each day we have a new truth. Right, Deacon?”

The Deacon was put off by this slap. Then he said, “Truth or no, that is not the point. The point is there ain’t no living spirit in the water or in the air on this island. And, there ain’t no spirit living between or among the three elements. The air is changing because of the migration of the direct rays of the sun, the water is counter-current because of the seasonal change of the Antarctic Circum-Polar Current, and the land is heaving because of deep-water seismic activity. It ain’t truth but it is fact by the numbers.”

“What lies between the numbers?” Manta asked.

They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits’ end.

I was praying.

“Do you think that we can get this dive completed before the season’s change? We are coming close to the end of the good weather,” John Henry said.

“The easy dive weather is about over but you can dive in any weather, it just may not be easy diving,” Manta answered.

“I agree. We may not get optimum dive conditions but the dive can be accomplished. Also, other than weather there is time. If we do not get to it first, somebody may just stumble upon it and blunder into our plans. It may end up on a fireplace mantle, as a spittoon, a meaningless gift, or an evil icon. This dive has to be weatherproof and it can be made so.” The Deacon declared his opinion.

For He commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof.

I prayed.

Just then there was a low bass rumble that seemed to push the already high tide higher.

John Henry looked over her left shoulder and a wave had piled on top of another wave and was breaking over the coral reef.

Then she spoke. “I don’t know which of you has the correct understanding grasp of all of this or any of this, but come what may, there are going to be impediments that are within us, large and small, and impediments outside of us, large and small, that we have no insight into and never will see until it is before us in our adventure. That higher-than-normal breaker was the last event consequence in a series of unknown sequences. In what we are about to do, that is what we must be concerned with in order to be successful. We will never know the before and must not be concerned with the after. The moment, each moment, is our only concern. Each moment has to be our objective. The tides will be less, the tides will be greater—it matters not.”

The broken wave crest weakly rippled to shore.

They mount up to heaven, they go down again to the depths; their soul is melted because of trouble.

I prayed.

The ship was being ever more perfected for the sojourn.

We worked and refitted the ship. We retooled the facilities of the ship. The ship and the ship’s equipment were not only made perfect to the most stringent maritime specifications but were made to exceed the specifications by exponential factors of ten. It was unspoken but it was known by all that this was going to a last dive.

The Deacon began talking to all of us. “The ship looks good and it looks tight. We have put a lot of good hard work into this. It is as if we have a new ship. Except for head and mess there just ain’t that much there that was there to start with from the beginning.

“The last thing we have to do is to install and get this digital visual system up and working. If we can get eyes under the water before we splash and if we can have a scout topside during the dive we will have two tactical advantages.

“We have all seen and have fore-knowledge of what is down there and yet it has eluded acquisition and the main reason is time over target. The laws of the dive have always been the same and sighting has always been the joker in the deck. Not this time, pilgrims. Many have dived, many have drowned—but not this time, pilgrims of the Deep. We are going to be the first to dive into what we have seen. We are going to dive into what we know. We are going to dive into charted waters. The dive will lead directly to it and then the dive will lead directly here from whence we began our pilgrimage.”

He had converted John Henry and Manta. None of the three saw the dive. They all saw it.

Manta saw a reestablishment of the original unity. John Henry saw the establishment of a new unity. The Deacon saw the dead one.

They that go down to the sea in ships; that do business in great waters;

These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.

I prayed.

This I knew: in the great waters most of the works of the Lord are not seeable. Below a few feet, the great waters eat up the light. In the great waters, most of what is there is transparent and at best only translucent. The rest is encased, hidden, or indistinguishable.

The great meaningless ones—whales, sharks, and seals—are only upper orders of disorder on the great water. And, in the midst of such technology and empirical wonder, I knew two and certain truths at this moment. The Deacon, John Henry, Manta, and I were the highest order of disorder and crying pleads of mercy cannot be heard in the Deep.

Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their distress.

I prayed.

Manta added his ideas. “The sooner we commence the better. There is a silence between the wrath of the spirits and the stillness. I think we are being granted a gift of kindness. We are between the seasons. There is none that control the ocean, now. That will change, if we do not commit to our feat. If we delay we will be cursed with defeat. And, if we are defeated, let us wear our defeat with pride.”

John Henry agreed. “It is getting on to that point when we should stop talking and preparing to dive and just do the dive. Dive or don’t dive—one or the other, I say. And, not to dive would be too severe a consequence to endure. We are as ready as we are going to be at any time. Tell me: is ninety-nine point nine percent any different than one hundred percent?”

The Deacon spoke his peace, “Yes, we are going to dive. We are going to dive not because the water gives us allowance. Yes, we are going to dive. We are going to dive not because the percentage gives us allowance. We are going to dive because we have willfully decided to dive.

“The waters have no ownership of my will. Percentage has no call upon my will. I am diving not because I do not fear the water or percentages but because I do fear the water and the percentages and that is not permissible. I am diving because fear is not permissible in the waters of the Deep, in the seasons of the times, or in the calculations of life. That is why I am diving and as for it—it will be captured. Intellect dictates that it must. It is just an inspiration.”

Manta and John Henry were at peace.

Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their distress.

I prayed.

Then I talked to the group. “No good can come of this. If we are successful in gaining possession of it, then we will have failed. It has claimed the bodies, minds, and souls of many. I am certain that we are better than the waters. I am certain that we are better than percentages. I am sure that we are better than our fears.

“I am not sure that we are better than our will. I think that we are weaker than our will. This is put before you as a proposal. Upon the capture of it, let’s take it to the fault line off Hopeless Atoll and drop it into the deepest waters of the Deep. Let it be there until it’s captured by the subductive flow pressures of the mantle. Then it will be gone, for all time.

“Let us not become the curse. Let us not lose our humanity and simply become the thing that we do, the thing that we desire, or the thing that we are not.”

John Henry and Manta answered with talk of unity and of one.

Then the Deacon spoke, “What it is doesn’t matter until we have it. Let us first put upon it and then in cool and precise intellect make a willful decision.

“With your insight you have put before all of us this problem. What is to become of it and what is to become of ourselves? I make no claim upon it. However, there is one of it but there are three of you. A decision may have to be made, but how is that decision to be made?”

This was the first time that the question was asked. I supposed we had thought about such a decision in an ethereal way but never in a conclusive fashion. The way into the Deep had been singular and unified. Coming up from the Deep, we would be singular. But we would not be unified. We all knew that the sequence of events goes from order to disorder. In this case, from one will to three wills.

“Drawing lots is unfair and voting will not work.” I don’t know who said it but it was said.

Whoever said it was correct.

They that go down to the sea in ships; that do business in great waters;

These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.

For He commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof.

They mount up to heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble.

They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end.

Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their distress.

He maketh the storm a calm, so that thereof are still.

I pondered how a poet thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away and so deprived of thousands of devices was so aptly able to pen my situation. Who had been this desert genius that saw over the horizon and then saw into the Deep?

It came to me that this man had once had it and worded an apocalypse. He knew the final finality of it and had given me a heads up, not knowing my name but knowing my will.

I did not tell the others my thought nor, other than the Deacon, had the others told me their thoughts. The revelation was before me but now I had to incorporate into myself the cool intellect of the Deacon, the subliminal knowledge of Manta, and the liberated will of John Henry, while all the time never losing myself in the amalgam of my humanity.

We all noticed the seasonal change. On the shore and on the surface waters, the great coelenterate mating migration had begun under their romantic dark moon. The ocean bubbled and boiled with these jellied beasts, some translucent, some transparent, some bio-luminescent, some floating, some pulsing, some giant, some miniscule, but all poisonous.

27

The ocean was filled with chop. The white chops of the waves went to the horizon. The chops of the jellied bodies went to the horizon. And, the chops of the thoughts of John Henry, Manta, the Deacon, and I went to the horizon, but also to the Deep. Mindless first-evolved organisms millions of years before us were sharing the same space and the same time as we: they were coming up from the Deep and we were going into the Deep. Which are the mindless, they or us?

This was the beginning of the quiet time. With each moment, we became ever more silent. The components, the elements, the bits and pieces of master pieces were assembled, and now all that was left to do was to complete a performance. But, it was not such a simple thing. I was thinking of the dive. The Deacon was thinking of the dive but Manta and John Henry had thought past the dive.

Manta spoke,“You have said that you have no inheritance in it. Is that not so, Deacon?”

The Deacon nodded.

Manta continued, “You, Vaughnie, you wish to assign it to the Deep, is that not so?”

I nodded. Affirmative.

Manta continued, “John Henry, you wish to make it public. Is that not so?”

She nodded also.

Manta continued, “I desire to keep it secret.”

All the positions had been delineated but there was no point of intersection.

Manta again, “It simply seems to me, but I am not very intelligent, that our choices seem to be doing this, doing that, or doing nothing at all. But of our choices, it is not which is the better or best but which choice is the most noble.”

There was no altering or shift in the Deacon’s facial expression. It was as if the statement had never been vocalized. He, the Deacon, had come to his answer.

John Henry’s expression altered and shifted to one of very deep thought. The statement had vocalized consequences and she wanted to respond with a valued answer.

Manta’s expression altered and shifted to one of peacefulness. The statement vocalized values and he was to define the highest value.

I don’t know if my expression changed. I did not know the derived resolution of the three but I did know my final resolution.

The Deacon spoke, “We could dive through this jellyfish bloom but it is better if we wait a bit until the bloom is gone and that will still give us time in excess to dive comfortably. In the meantime you three geniuses will have a chance to generate a whiz-bang answer.”

It came to me and I am sure it came to Manta and John Henry, too. How can one question have three correct solutions?

Manta looked out to sea and spoke a reply, “The Deacon is right. He is one of those people who is not always right but he is right so often that he may as well be right all the time.”

John Henry spoke, “You know, I wish he were more human and less Deacon. His standards are so elevated, perfect, and incorruptible but he cannot be that simple a man. Everyone, even the Deacon, has to have vulnerable, pathetic, and brittle aspects to their human nature.”

There was a moment of silence.

Then I spoke, “It has nothing to do with his humanity or his expertise. The Deacon is fortunate enough, but some may call him unfortunate enough, to hear the score of life.”

“The score of life,” they both said in unison.

Then I continued. “I do not mean the score like an addition or a subtraction score. I do not mean like a winning or a losing score. What I mean has nothing to do with numbers. What I mean has to do with notes. The Deacon hears the music of his life. He hears the melody and he hears the harmony of his life’s music. So he is fortunate because he hears it and he is most unfortunate that he cannot free himself from its beat.”

John Henry thought a moment before replying. “Look out there at all that chop, Vaughnie. Millions and maybe billions of jellyfish are out there riding the meaningless music of their meaningless lives: water temperature, salinity, moon cycles. But they are blobs, no better today than a million or billion yesterdays ago and no better than a million or billion tomorrows from today.

“Vaughnie, we are not to be dictated to by the music of our lives. Are we to dance to a score that we did not compose like those billions of blobs of jelly just pulsating to a no-good end, to either just dry up on the beach or dissolve back into the deep?

“No. I say the score of the music of our lives is to be composed by us so that the millions and billions of tomorrows are liberated, emancipated from the restricted imprisonment of all those past yesterdays.

“The Deacon is today, and he was today yesterday, and he will be today tomorrow. That is the noble beginning and the noble end of jellyfish.

“I am no jellyfish. I am much better than a jellyfish.”

I said nothing and neither did I nod nor shake my head.

Then Manta began. “None of this is the point. To make a better tomorrow is not in our job description. Those jellyfish out there are what they are and that is all they are; not jelly and not fish. They are a couple layers of cell tissue, some gelatin, and a group of unknowing cells performing a unified purpose and that is all they are and it is all they do.

“Somewhere and somehow in the simplicity of the Deep they refused the psychosis of complexity and elected the sanity of unfussiness. Where do you place simplicity on that upward chart of advancement that you carry around in your ego? You know and I know the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Things, all things, go from order to disorder—there is no exception. The world will be no better tomorrow for our efforts and the more we try to make it better, the more we will make it worse. There will be no better tomorrows. The good is today and the better was yesterday.

“The Deacon has no inheritance in tomorrow because he has no birthright in today. I am no jellyfish either but I am no better than a jellyfish.”

I did not nod. I did not move my head side to side.

Each second there were more jellyfish by an exponential amount. The mass of jellyfish exceeded the mass of the sea.

Then I spoke, “Jellyfish. Jellyfish. Tomorrow. Yesterday. It is not about those things. I don’t begin to understand the Deacon nor am I able to understand you. We are one step away from the completion of our task and now the vitality of raw nature dares us. It stands there and dares us. Imagine that—it dares us.

“It says dive now in the midst of cnidoblast and go into the anaphylaxis of Irjukadji Syndrome because our white blood cells release mediators in response to a neurotoxin from nematocysts. Imagine that.

“Then there is this: wait, which could lead to an out-of-season dive and the savage, cruel, and feral winds of the storm. Imagine that, imagine that.

“It has brought suffering, anguish, and grief from the beginning because unlike those jellyfish, in season or out of season, in the deep or on the surface, it knows we may or may not tempt temptation. Destruction and desperation is not given to us, rather we choose to claim ownership of them.

“Are we to dive to our destruction and cry in our desperation? No, we must not float on the tide in season only to pass as rot on the shore or film on the crest. Nor are we to not dive and claim ignorance. Such things as the Deep, the seasons, and jellyfish are lesser than we, but all are our greater, also.

“Even a dead jellyfish can kill.”

The Cyanea capillata that had started its journey at one thousand atmospheres below the surface had reached the final surface film of one atmosphere and was floating and its giant bell of six and a half feet pulsed slowly and in rhythm to the beat of the waves. Its hundreds of feet of invisible tentacles descended for a bit but then ascended to the surface and simply lazily floated along. The always armed microscopic and uncountable ruthless cnidoblast-nematocyst units were ready to generate death without motivation, neither malice nor mercy.

28

“Are not you embarrassed by the tag of Vaughnie? What kind of moniker is that for a man grown full? Is that gonna be your cute I.D. forever?” It was the voice of the Deacon.

“What the—? Is everybody on this island a child of the living dead?” I said.

The Deacon was no more than five feet distant from me but I had walked right past him. He was as stationary as the coconut tree that he was sitting on in the light of the dark sky. As always, his calmness showed his internal confidence and tranquility.

“Look in the spit of light,” he commanded.

I looked. I knew what he wanted me to see.

“Cyanea capillata,” I said.

“I do not know if you are all that smart or just goodly schooled but either way you know your stuff, kid.”

What the—

The Deacon used the familiar in his conversation and it was to me.

“Yeah, a Lion Mane jellyfish is out there a ways or so. Giant, big creature. Maybe six or seven-foot bell, with a tentacle net long and wide enough to envelop a whale. Giant, big creature but inoffensive and totally nontoxic. You can bump into it and be home free. Just a giant, big beast. Lion Mane jellyfish sounds better than Cyanea capillata.”

What the—

The Deacon was a scholar. He played at being boorish. In the dark light, his intellectual refinement was radiating.

“It is never of the giant big that you have to be vigilant, wary, or suspicious in life. On the whole such things are slow, dumb, and harmless but they fool you into thinking that they are a peril and a menace and, in haste caused by fear and panic, we put ourselves in jeopardy and expose our vulnerability,” he said.

I spoke, then. “Chironex fleckeri.”

He laughed out loud.

“You got it, kid. The whole South Pacific contains a few harmless Lion Mane jellyfish that ain’t nothing more than floating balloons of glue which people avoid like salvation. But, it is filled with untold scores of killing, invisible Box Jellyfish that can and will hunt you down. And, as with all great evil, you are inveigled by its non-appearance and then only upon your death pang do you find the truth of the lie, kid.”

What truth are you trying to reveal and impart to me?

Then I continued aloud, “What the—”

He laughed out loud in an uncontrollable manner.

“The first time I saw you on the island, I told Manta what I was going to do to you. I wanted to see if you had a spine or a bag of jelly for a backbone. I knew you from the first. I gave Manta the thumbs up and then Manta gave you the LION.”

“What the—”

Then he began, again. “It is beginning not to matter at all, however. The storm season is going to come early and will probably be here in days, not weeks. The reason for this over-population and higher density of jellyfish is the same reason the tides and water overran Apocalypse Reef and are causing rogue waves here: the bottom is falling apart.”

“The sea tide is going to claim this island," I said. "The deep tide is going to claim that U-Boat. When it, the Deep, opens up I wish that I could drop that cursed thing into its gaping mouth.”

29

“Is that you, Deacon?” It was the voice of John Henry.

Why was she asking if I was the Deacon?

Then she called out again, “Is that you, Deacon?”

I did not answer. I just walked toward her voice and Manta’s imposing darkness.

For a short time there was quiet.

Then Manta called out. “Hey, Deacon. Something up? Is there a problem?”

So now Manta just had to start playing the game. Well, I was not going to play it. So, in silence I proceeded toward John Henry and Manta.

There were a few more shout-outs but I remained silent. They must be in cheerful spirits to be playing such a mindless game. I proceeded in silence.

John Henry caught on. “It is not the Deacon.” The surprise showed on her face as she articulated the truth of her vision. “Vaughnie, it’s you,” she said. “You looked like the Deacon. Why didn’t you say something?”

I thought, but did not say.

I did not make the mistake.

“Yes, you did have a bit of the Deacon in your stride,” Manta said. “And, now in your demeanor, there is the influence of the Deacon. He must have poured a great deal of water into your glass.”

Were they just having fun at my expense? It did not matter. There was a bit of satisfaction in being associated with the Deacon but I thought better of telling my thought to them.

“Look, he is smiling,” John Henry said. “Isn’t that the sweetest little smile, Manta?”

“The sweetest,” Manta said.

They were proud of themselves and began to laugh.

“He walks like the Deacon. He is trying to stand like the Deacon. And now look, he is trying to be silent like the Deacon.” She spoke with a teasing laugh. “That’s so cute. But, I want my Vaughnie back. Vaughnie, Vaughnie, where are you?” Then she put her hands on either side of my face and, while squeezing, asked me her question. “Vaughnie, Vaughnie, are you still in there?”

In a very playful, serious tone Manta picked up the Mutt and Jeff act.

“He’s gone, John Henry.”

“Gone,” she said.

“Yes, gone,” he said.

“Oh, no. Not gone,” she said before covering her eyes as if crying. “How, when, why? I don’t understand.”

They were so proud of their little act.

“It is just one of those things. It happens now and again here in the South Pacific. Vaughnies come and Vaughnies go. That is all there is to it. National Geographic did a show on it once,” he said.

She pretended to cry but it came out as laughter.

Then Manta began again, “You see, what we have here is not a Vaughnie nor a Deacon, but a creature half of each, a hybrid beast. It is more advanced than a Vaughnie but less so than a Deacon. It is classified as Deconas Wannabeis but most people just know it as a disciple. What we have here is a brand new-born disciple.”

They thought they were as funny as three monkeys eating two over-ripe bananas on one swing. They fell out laughing. It was funny, however, and kind of quick-witted, also. As a matter of fact I enjoyed it. Who knew there was such dramatic talent between these orphaned sea dogs?

“Manta, Manta, Manta,” I said.

“Yes, new disciple.”

“You are an expert diver.”

“Yes, I am,” Manta said proudly.

“You are a natural man.”

“Again, true, and I must confess to it.”

“And, Manta, you are a genius.”

“That is also true. Oh, so very true.”

“But, Manta, I had doubted your abilities as a prophet until this very moment.”

There was no answer. There was just a perplexing and curious expression on that great big beautiful earthman face. John Henry turned and looked at him. She was perplexed and curious.

I turned on my heel and slowly ambled away. I knew the question was coming but I did not know from which one the question was going to come. I am no prophet for simultaneously the question was shouted, not asked, by both.

“Prophet!”

I paused but did not turn to face them.“Prophet,” I said. Then I walked a bit.

“Prophet,” they said.

A third time. Good. That was what I wanted for now they were surely upon my hook and all I had to do was reel them in and land them.

Then I began, “Manta is a prophet.”

Manta was scared to ask the how’s and the what’s of his prophesy but John Henry was never bashful about such inquiries.

She began in a most effective way since a good offense is the best defense.

“Oh, I see,” she said. “You just have to get the last word. That is it.”

“Oh, no. Not me, for surely I am not the type. I have no ego,” I replied to her.

There were smirks all around.

“Explain then, if you can, the prophetic powers of Manta,” she queried.

I began in a most contrite way with my head bowed. “Well, when I first came to this place of wonder, I had a name and it did not end in a vowel duplet of ie that diminutized me. Do you remember?”

She thought for a nano-second. “Oh, yes, I was Madam Frankenstein. I, in a moment, gave life to a Vaughnie.”

“Yes, you did. Yes, you did. I became an ie,” I replied.

“It was so cute. It was just so right. It fit you so very well.” There was a big grin on her face and she had this expression of pride.

“Then I met the Deacon or rather he walked over me. Then I met Manta and he put the fear of fear into me. Do you remember, Manta?”

A second passed.

He figured out the answer.

“Oh my God, oh my God! You are right; I am a prophet. Oh, my God.”

There was a detonation of noise that was sheer joy from him and austere silence from John Henry. It had passed her and she had no understanding.

Finally to ease her suffering, I told her the answer. “I told Manta as soon as you tagged me with the ie label how I hated it and he said that it was not much of a name and that one day I would have a new and better name. Now I do. I have a new and better name.”

There was a crease in her forehead but Manta just grinned that giant big grin. He was basking in the pleasurable fulfillment of his prophesy.

I explained to her, “I am the Disciple.”

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

All she could do was shriek over and over again.

All I could do was walk away as the Disciple. Vaughnie was left there, somewhere—forever.

30

On the boat solo, I, by means of evil, had put myself alone upon the Deep’s surface. By other means of evil, I had manipulated machines and means so that I would be the only person upon the surface of the Deep.

The Aurelia aurita, Moon jellyfish, reminded me of the blizzard that had chased me from Cleveland, Ohio. It was the same but different. In that blizzard, the snow had fallen gracefully by the ton from the sky. Here, the Moon jellyfish in their diurnal dance were arising from the bottom. Cleveland, Ohio, was a frozen wasteland of excessively straight lines that never reached a horizon. Here and now, there was no cold and there were no straight lines and the horizon was a depthless three hundred and sixty degrees. But, just as 55th Street on that blizzard-enveloped evening was overprovided with the crystal whiteness of snowflakes, here and now the film of the deep was overprovided with the jelly bodies of shimmering Moon jellyfish.

At first the daily vertical migration of the Aurelia had kindled the burning of my imagination. Box jellyfish have eyes and are sensitive to light. Box jellyfish, like all sight predators modern or ancient, are active in light and indolent in the dark. While the Box jellyfish were lethargic, I would fool their ten-neuron brain and simply dive past them. I would find the densest mass of harmless Moon jellyfish and, while using them as a jelly coat of armor, go into the Deep.

I thought to myself, Genius.

My dad used to say, “If I have one more dollar than I need, I am rich.” After all, I had at least one more neuron than a jellyfish.

This was going to be a technical dive and all technical dives are baptisms of intellect.

The algorithms of the partial pressure gas laws had been calculated and the gas mixtures combined and supplied to the tanks. The gases of nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide had all been calibrated and mixed to very precise volumes. I would in the first portion of the dive depend on my comprehension but the back half of the dive would all be muscle memory. Such things as nitrogen narcosis, oxygen poisoning, or carbon dioxide elevations were not good ways to dive but they were sure ways to die.

I knew that positive bio-feedback and the thrill of being face down in the water would power my first kicks. I also knew that the governor of negative bio-feedback had better not be overcome by the thrill for surely it would be the negative bio-feedback that would save my life —if my life could be saved at all.

The extra salvation tanks were resting on the bottom, bow, and, stern. Suspended in four atmospheres at the last link of the steel chain were the tanks that I would use for my first safety stop and above those, suspended in one atmosphere, were the second and last of the tanks that I would utilize as another safety stop.

I knew that these were the last tanks I would ever use, but, I did not say so out loud. My mother had taught me to never say never.

If I rechecked the equipment any more, it would show wear. The last tugs, the last pulls, the last shifts, slaps, and stamps were performed. The final recheck of air was drawn in and the last glance taken at the numbers on the submersible wrist dive computer. The final shift of the mask and pull upon the strap were completed.

There was inside of me a hope of a component failure. There was the hope that something would break, fail, or ill-perform—something that would allow me to discontinue and halt this dive. Something that would allow me to fail, but at the same time allow me to keep my manhood. So often, on so many other dives, there had been something. There were times in a few feet at the pool, there were times in the shallow waters of Looe Key, and there were the times over the coral-heads that one thing or another happened. But when your life is in the balance the gods just grab some popcorn and a soda and watch the drama unfold. It must be some Greek mythological thing.

At this moment, I knew it was not harmless Greek gods or precision-engineered dive gear or perfectly calculated formulas that held the balance of my life. My life rested simply in my actions. Turn around and go home. Just float here. Start the dive but do not complete the dive. Start the dive and complete the dive. At the end of each option was the same outcome: death. But, life and death was not it at all.

It was it. The Deep, Box jellyfish, sunken ships, uncaring, and everything else from dead Nazis to savage slavers and ancient prophets; they were all trying to define me. All were trying to limit me. From those back in Cleveland, Ohio, to now, all were trying. And now it—it—was not trying to limit. It was tempting me.

I knew that I was not yielding to temptation. I was overcoming temptation.

“Yes, I will dive for it. I will not die for it!”

This is what I said as I sat backwards on the rail readying myself for the somersault into the water, my entrance into the Deep.

“This has got to be right!”

A second in a backward free fall and a splash put me into the sea. The fall made a hole in the water and for another second or two there was no motion. I looked up and the water stopped supporting my weight and rushed into the hole that my splash had created. The natural sounds of the sea gurgling upon me mixed with the technological sounds of my breathing regulator and other devices. Looking up from a reversed fetal position, I saw the underside of the boat through the film of my baptismal waves.

There was nobody on ship to give the okay sign but dive protocol had to be observed. I righted myself and kicked to the surface, anyway. It did allow me another final and last check of my equipment. Head up in the black South Sea there was no sky, there was no land, and really there was no universal ocean. There was just the swell coming to rest upon my mask. At this point in time, I was the most alone person on Earth

I couldn’t help thinking, I am Homo stupidcanas.

This caused me to laugh. Just as I was about to submerge, a Moon jellyfish glued itself to my mask. I pulled it off but it, in a moment, had deposited a plop of goo on the face-plate.

What the—Not a good sign.

The water had now filled the space between the wet suit and my skin. The rush of water seemed very chilly and I rested to become acclimated to the chill. I turned the glow of the flashlight upon the thermometer on my wrist. The water temperature was higher than normal water temperature. It was not the water that had chilled my spine. The thrill was what had chilled my spine.

Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.

I repeated the formula as I began my descent. The beam from my flashlight produced a safe-passage cone as it reflected off the ascending plankton arising and the feeding fish that followed lazily behind, grazing on the aquatic manna. They ignored me and I ignored them.

An old Carole King song came to mind at that moment: Doesn’t Anybody Stay In One Place Anymore? I could not help but laugh.

Stop it. Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instruments. Go over the dive plan in your mind again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.

There they were, the one-atmosphere safety-stop tanks that I would need on my return to the surface.

Better check them. Looks good. Why am I talking to myself?

Because I am homo stupidcanas.

You are too tense and too worked up. You have got to get into a flow or you are not going to make it boss. There is only so much fire on a match and you are burning yourself out too quickly.

What the—Why is Wooly Bully playing in my head?

Stop it. Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan in your mind again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.

Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.

These were the thoughts I had at the stop.

I readied myself and descended and with each kick the cone of safety became ever smaller and smaller.

Push down on the high beam button, you idiot. Get more light.

Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan in your mind again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.

Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.

Down, down, down—always down. At neutral buoyancy and in the dark, there is not a down. I only knew that I was going down because I was pulling upon the dive rope and my bubbles were not going in the same direction as I was diving.

The light spread out in front of me like a plate.

The bottom, where?

Check the two-atmosphere safety tanks first—fore and aft. Good.

Take a breath. Hey, that’s funny.

Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.

Looks good. Exchange tank one for tank two.

Good exchange. Okay, let’s go.

Let’s go. Tie it here. Make it good and tight now. Make it sure. Make it secure. Looks good. One more pull. Okay. Let’s go. One more pull now.

Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan in your mind again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.

There were old, but not rotting, guidelines all about in the area from all the other previous divers—nylon does not rot. Some of the guide cords had sessile life forms lodging upon the free rental surface area of the cord.

There was a stroke of insight to this line. The ugly pink florescent color will be of untold aid.

Why am I talking to myself?

Looking at my dive watch, the dive was asymmetrical. The first half of the dive was too quick and now into the second part of the dive I had fallen behind in time.

This will not do.

At this rate of speed I would in all certainty run out of the needed calories to keep my body temperature steady, to keep my muscles functional, and to have enough warm blood to feed my brain. If I increased my activities, I would become exhausted well short of completion.

A horse is a horse, of course, of course—except if the horse is Mr. Ed! Why am I singing the tune to Mr. Ed?

Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instruments. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.

Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.

There it was, the opening into the U-Boat. It went from black to what black imagined black looked like when black was dreaming. It was colder. And the water had much less motion.

I swam into the hole up to my shoulders, trying not to ensnare myself in the razor rust that was once hard steel. The cone of light was faint and dim in the shadowy darkness. Nothing in the internal space could be seen clearly. All the light illuminated was the densely floating plankton that was suspended there.

What reason could I make up for quitting now?

Who could blame me?

A swim-through, maybe, but I hated diving when and where there was something between me and the surface.

Finally inside. I got into a knee-rest position and reached out.

Use only the tip ends of your fins. You do not want to kick up the sediment layer and the suspended materials and make misery miserable do you?

I assumed the dive position and reached into the polluted and fouled water.

A shark!

I had just reached out and fingered the dorsal fin of a shark. I did an instantaneous calculation and, using my arm as a meter stick, it, the shark, was ten to twelve feet in length and I, my belly, was just above his eyes.

What the—!

In a U-Boat on the head of a shark.

The weak light revealed it was a Ginglymostoma cirratum. It was a harmless nurse shark that was just resting in the U-Boat.

Using just the last inch of my dive fins, I swam over and past the still sea monster and into the belly of the steel beast, all the time making sure my guideline was secure and freely unwinding behind me. Following it back was my only salvation. Deeper and deeper I swam through a solution that was ancient sea water, suspended plankton, spent lubricants, and atomized human beings with ever-decreasing illumination and falling ambient temperature.

Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care. Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care.

Shut-up.

Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.

Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.

Pull on the dive cord.

What was that line?

Oh, yeah. “Little by little we go far.”

Shut up.

I did not know, in truth, where I was. I could have turned around, I could have drifted one way or the other, or maybe I was swimming in drowning circles. I could not use JDNLR. JDNLR had so often saved me from disaster and misfortune. When it came to a final choice, “just does not look right” was the truth of my decision-making, always. But, here and now JDNLR was unusable. It was at the point that the hairs on the back of my neck and the contraction of my bowels were the GPS inputs to my dive and my survival.

Wish I had Mr. Shark’s internal guidance system that’s for sure. Yeah, but Mr. Shark does not have my dive tables.

The thought made me laugh so hard I almost choked.

“I bought you a brand new mustang, 1964. Mustang Sally, you better slow your mustang down...”

Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.

Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.

Pull on the dive cord.

And, there it was: a darker shade of dark. I had made it through the U-Boat. If I could have breathed a sigh of relief, I would have breathed a sigh of relief. But, down, it was always down deeper and into the stain that had been the black slaver. Then it happened. In a spontaneous moment, I lost every thought and devolved into a Rhipidistian, a lobe-finned fish, and in that crawling “S” motion that is in our spines as an inheritance of motion from our chordate ancestors, I descended. I cashed another inheritance check of violent action in order to collect it and thoughtlessly make the exit from the black and into the dim.

31

I had collected maybe thousands of fish in gill nets and there was only one outcome for all those fish: death.

But, here I was attached to a line underwater as if I was caught in a gill net. I was not hoping because underwater hoping is hopeless. I had exchanged my spent tanks for other full tanks and had attached myself by means of steel clamps to this survival line. The calculations had been done and checked and rechecked so it would be the science and the math of good thinking that would be my salvation. All I could do was pray that my science and math was correct.

It was in my goodie bag and lovingly I caressed it.

Check the zipper, check the lock, check the goodie bag, and make sure it is attached to you. Now, hang here and rest.

I knew that I had to just hang there like what I was—a dead weight.

It was up to my body to make the physiological gas exchange, now. The gases that had allowed me to survive the dark were toxic in the light and the gases that were life-giving in the light were toxic in the dark. I had to become desaturated from the gases of the dark and become saturated with the gases of the light.

It had all been calculated before the dive.

Now, just hang here until the numbers do their work.

Past exhaustion, I had no physical needs. Past exhaustion, I had no mental capabilities. Past exhaustion, I had no spiritual pleas.

Was this the state of a fish entrapped in a gill net?

Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.

Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.

Time only passes when you have a reference to motion in your life. There was no reference to motion in my life other than the near-death experience that was changing into a death experience.

What, time’s up here. Now, up to the next safety stop.

The gas exchange had taken place. I freed myself from the line. Very slowly I ascended up the line to the next safety stop. Here I would hang and bleed the extra gas pressure from my body. The extra pressure had to be breathed out in exhausting exhales or explode into a foam of untold trillions of bubbles in my blood at the surface.

I simply wanted to get out of the water. The temptation was there to simply ignore the thoughts and go with the will.

What harm would it be this once?

I knew the answer.

Death.

I kept thinking.

Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.

Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.

You have come this far. This is no time and this is no place to surrender to stupidity. Keep it simple and just keep repeating your mantra.

I thought.

It has brought you here. The numbers, the numbers will bring you home. The numbers would bring order to the chaos of the Deep and cut the strings of fate.

I thought.

Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.

Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.

The numbers nulled, it was time to surface and exit the water—the hateful water. It, the water, had exhausted me but I had survived its innate natural will.

Upon the surface, I turned over upon my back. There was no will in my spirit; gone was the math in my brain and there was no energy in my muscles. I was a blob of gelatinous matter floating on the film of the hydrosphere and nothing more.

The gear of steel and rubber, the gear of numbers, charts, and slates was torn from my body, and it fell and landed where it would. Some landed here, some landed there, and some, because of the force of the rip, returned to the sea.

Does an escaping slave care where the shackles of his enslavement land as he runs toward his freedom?

Finally, on the diamond-cut surface of the fiberglass deck I plopped down into a mass of spent life.

It rested beside me. It hurt too much to look upon it.

It rested beside me. It hurt too much to put my hand upon it.

It rested beside me. It hurt too much to think upon it.

There was no more mantra.

I could now breathe here without command.

The Box jellyfish had not taken my breath away. The sea had not taken my breath away. And, I had gotten a last breath in before the season could take my last breath away.

I stretched out. My arms extended from my shoulders perpendicular to my body. My legs crossed one over the other. From space, it would appear that I had been crucified.

They that go down to the sea in ships; that do business in great waters;

These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.

For He commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof.

They mount up to heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble.

They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end.

Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their distress.

He maketh the storm a calm, so that those thereof are still.

I prayed.

The new rising sun began to warm my blood but I was not able to produce even a muscle twitch. I knew that my blood needed water and food but my body was not able do anything other than lie in the new light.

After all this, this is how I am going to die.

In the water, there were numbers for and of my salvation but here, here, on this plastic plane feet away was fresh drinkable water and enough high quality food calories to sustain me for days and I was glued to this floor too weak to move.

What the—

I felt the passionate rhythm of my beating heart.

I am no disheartened, washed-up, and beached jellyfish on the shore without numbers and without hope.

Sure, it had been fun to lie lazily there on the deck spineless and without will or desire— but that was not the deal.

Thinking back on what my father had said so many times to me as a child, I heard him again:

“A man is what a man does, son.”

And, thinking what my mother had often said to me as a child, I knew what to do:

“Always look the devil in the eye, son.”

I looked upon it and arose from the deck to eat and drink—joyfully.

32

I was encrusted with sea salt but worse, I was enveloped in the smell of the sea. There are no landmarks on the sea surface, unless you count each wave a landmark but that makes no sense. It always seemed so very strange to me that the much curved un-demarcated surface of the sea could be elucidated onto a plane on a piece of plain paper with utmost definition.

11°22.260′ N x 142°35.589′ E was the compass destination. Of the closest land there was none unless you counted the sea floor that was 35,827 feet below the surface tension at the surface of the last water molecules of the surface sea.

I opened the navigational charts and made all things ready.

Captain Jean-Michele Adamah on the LaCross in 1612 first floated over this point and named the waters, Les Rouges Eaux du Pacifique. His thinking was that the ocean was bleeding. Captain Adamah in the age of enlightenment was in the dark about algal blooms. As the Global Ecology and Oceanography teams at the GEOLAB now knew, harmful algal blooms producing the red waters of this area of the Pacific were caused by the heterotrophic dinoflagellate, Pfiesteria, and related Pfiesteria Complex Organisms that released Saitoxin, Domoic Acid, and other generated brews of toxic death. The Red Tide was a universal tide of death. Perhaps, all the blood in the water was what the captain saw under his ship.

In 1781, the British National Geographic Society, in order to correct this misunderstanding—and to correct all things French—deemed it their proper duty to give the waters an English name. The name given to the area was the Red Pacific Waters. Much neater, more reasonable, and not French, were all excellent reasons to rewrite history—indeed.

In 1856 the sailing American missionary and thoroughly anti-British evangelist, the Reverend and Good Doctor Adam David Moses, renamed the area the Red Sea of the Pacific for the United States Navy on his third charting expedition of the South Seas.

Today NOAA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association, and the AGU, the American Geophysical Union, have taken all the color from the sea and call this area not by the surface waters, but by the unique spot it has on the planet.

I thought about its name as I moved through the waters toward my destination.

It is the end of the line of the alphabet of named names and now, on the map I am navigating by, is called the simplest of all last-named names.

The spot I was heading for was The Z Hole.

What could be more colorless, what could be more meaningful, and what could be truer. The Z Hole was at best, elite in simplicity, truth, and description.

There were enough stores on hand to make a comfortable and safe voyage but all the rules of reason would have to be observed in order to stay within the parameters of precaution.And thus I set out. 11°22.260′ N x 142°35.589′ E was the compass destination.

Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead, I thought.

Admiral Farragut was correct.

One small boat versus an unending ocean, one man versus unending time was the drama. There was no fear, there was no joy, there was no gratification, there was only the job.

I kept remembering what my mother had said to me thousands and thousands of times.

“Time and tide wait for no man.”

I soon had a more refined understanding of her wisdom. Tide is the time.

I wondered on that empty surface above the full ocean base, Was my tide running out?

Why would this thought occur to me once I was at 11°22.260′ N x 142°35.589′ E?

What the—

The sun was directly overhead so there was no shadow upon the face of the sea and there were no clouds in the sky, no countenance in the air. And, this was the strangest part of it all. The sea in gradations of light goes from bright to dim to dark—from horizon to horizon or from surface to depth. But, in temperature there are warm surface waters, a thermocline demarcation line, and then cold water. The warm surface waters and the lower colder waters never integrate to produce a tepid sea.

The sea was not red, and then suddenly the sea was as red as sweet, oxygenated arterial blood. There was no gradation from pink to red; there was no red, and then there was deep red.

How many Pfiesteria Complex Organisms did it take to produce this blood-red tide since a single PCO organism contains an almost invisible red hue?

I tried to think.

There must be more PCO’s here than there are stars in the sky. It was the only answer.

What a horribly wonderful conclusion.

I was in a red pool of death. Only the fiberglass hull of my ship was between my life and my death. I could not drink, I could not swim, and I could not even reach into the red and maintain my life.

In my head, I played with the math. I knew the classical laws of Newtonian acceleration. With a little remembrance, I used the temperature, pressure, and humidity of the Ideal Gas Laws that I learned in high school to calculate the density of the air. Gas constants were always a joy to engage in as a student in Mr. Fenstermaker’s classroom. The water was so much easier. It was 1000kg/m³. That was not the absolute truth. But, what is 3.5% in the scheme of things? 1000 was a perfect number to use.

Contemplating these absolutes, I thought about my new possession—it.

It was so very simple and that was what all the others had failed to understand. Here, very alone on the sea, I understood it. I could possess it. Or, it could possess me. And, I wanted to possess me. The fall through 35,827 feet of air was easy to calculate. The fall through 35,827 feet of ocean was incalculable. It would float. It would flutter. It would fall. It would drown in the undivided waters of the red sea.

There was no ceremony, there was no afterthought, there was no regret, and there was no prayer as I tossed it in into the deep red. I stepped back as I tossed it for I did not want any splash of blood to hit me.

It floated. It fluttered. It fell. I did have the hydrophone turned up to the maximum and the splash was explosive. The flutter was a fading swish. Then, even at maximum, there was just silence.

I ignited my engines.

As the wake expanded into that perfect “V” of divided foaming sea, I was free of it. And, the world was free of it.

33

11°22.260′ N x 142°35.589′ E, once the center of my wake, was now a point that had fallen off the curve of the earth. All the PCO’s had dissipated—for “disappeared” is such a poor empirical word. The engine was running most effectively as my ship skimmed along the surface for, after all, on the ship was one item less. The throbbing sounds of the boat engine and the hum of propellers was a gospel hymn to my ears.

I could push it to better than thirty knots but then I would not have enough fuel to reach the island. I reduced speed but I did not cruise. I was exhausted past the point of all need for food, water, sleep, and soap but all I wanted to do was eat, drink rest, and wash. So, maybe a little more speed could be applied.

What the—where did that swell come from?

I thought about its origin.

What the—

There was a second swell, a third, a fourth, and then some racing water beneath my boat. It caused my boat to race along at faster than its possible top-rated speed and with each swell I rode a little higher upon the ocean’s film.

The only moving air was that which I was creating by pushing through the atmosphere.

What was that sound?

It was not the efficient sound of the engines or the propellers. And it was not the sound of the sea—which I knew. The hydrophones were transmitting a low and deep sound of something angry as if a great leviathan had been wounded and was bleeding to death from a great open wound. Because it was screaming in the sea, its pain became a universal background cry of pain for the cry was vibrating each and every molecule of water in each and every direction—and the sound of its pain was out-racing my boat. Soon, the sound dimmed and faded out. The beast must have made a last cry and died.

Then I thought, I have never heard a birth cry. Maybe, it was a leviathan giving birth. I did know that PCOs cried neither in dying nor in giving birth.

I turned the hydrophone off. I turned the marine radio off. I turned the short wave and the sea phone off. In effect any device that had an on/off switch was turned off. I was electrically disconnected from the universe.

34

There it was, The Last Island. There it was, the outline of the top of the island. But where was the coast and what was that dark line beyond the high-water mark?

What the—Am I on the right island? Have I navigated incorrectly by dead reckoning and made landfall on another island by mistake?

I answered myself, No. You are too good for that and besides, it is the Last Island, just look.

But, there was something amiss in my muddled brain.

Had the toll of the voyage exhausted me to a state of misperception?

No, I thought.

Water always falls downhill. It is the ultimate truth. I began by following the outgoing tide and, in doing so, floated backward in time.

Those swells in the ocean were swells that reached 35,827 feet down to the floor of the sea. Those swells had out-raced me by five hundred sixty-three miles per hour. Those swells had reached the Last Island as tsunami waves and had eroded the shore away as a fisherman removes scales from his catch of the day. The debris of man and nature were simply piled up as so much junk at the inner-most places where the wave is removed of its last energy. The incoming tide had in effect raised the sea depths to the surface in a series of rising waves and, as water always falls downhill, the sea bottom and the sea wave fell upon the island. And, in doing so, scoured it to the island’s coral base.

A goldfish bowl had been knocked to the floor and the goldfish were flopping, fighting, and dying in fright. That is what I saw as I navigated without a wake through the floating debris field that had once been the Last Island.

The Last Island was largely decimated, but not destroyed.

I set foot upon the shipwrecked island. I was a pitiful and ragged pirate coming ashore on a desolate island which contained no buried treasure.

“11°22.260′ N x 142°35.589′ E.” It was the Deacon’s voice.

I knew no wave had enough energy to wash him away.

“Yeah, I know—and it makes sense,” I replied. Then I continued, “How about John Henry and Manta?”

He answered.

“It is all about humanity and organization. John Henry and Manta are doing what they do best: she giving aid and comfort and he constructing out of destruction; they are both good people. Better people than you or I.”

He was correct, of course. I never knew him to be wrong.

To the Deacon and me, life was a controlled experiment where one side had to equal the other side. To John Henry and Manta life was greater than the sum of its parts where one side had an infinite value and the other side was larger than infinity.

“Got something for you,” the Deacon said.

“It came in on the tide and was deposited at the doorstep of the LION. You have to come with me.”

We walked over broken things and people. He talked. I listened. He was the Deacon and I was his disciple.

He stopped. He reached into a sea-worn old goodie bag. He pulled it out.

“Here it is,” he said as he handed it to me. “The sea does not want it.”

What was that expression upon his face?

“You wanted it. Now, here it is. I do not want it.”

He just stood there taking the measure of my manhood.

“All the others who wanted it,” I said. “I was not one of those who wanted it and now—I have it to keep as a treasure.”

“It is harmless and incorruptible. It has no power over you—unless you choose to donate the power of your life to it,” he said.

What the— I thought.

The shallow warm foam teased my toes, but not my soul. I had been in the truth of the deep cold Abyss and, though it was playing tag with me, I was not going to be it.

35

The landing protocol had been concluded and the inertia of the plane was zero as we opened our inertial restraints. As always the opening of the seat belt induced the duel feelings of freedom and relief. The math of Newton had once again delivered a correct solution to: if X goes at this rate of speed with this amount of mass, how much energy is needed to keep me from dying in a plane crash?

“Is that true? Is your story really true?” she asked.

“At the start, you promised to believe. Was that statement true?” I questioned. “I said that I would tell the truth. I did not lie for I am no liar. If you believe in the truth, you should believe me.”

Quietly, she responded, “I am sorry I asked that question but such a truth is almost too enormous to believe. Such a secret is too invisible to see.”

“There are secrets within secrets,” I said.

She looked at me, wanting to probe that statement. She did not.

“It, what about it?” she said while reaching up to gather her supplies, her back turned towards me, protecting her modesty.

“It is safe,” I said, thinking, where no one will ever look for it.

Finally, she exposed herself. “Is it in the Deep?”

I returned no answer and she was not surprised for that was no secret.

Thinking to myself, I recalled how through cleverness and exposing it to the looking, but not seeing, it had passed through many inspections and was never seen. You can only see what you are looking for and none of them was looking for it as they looked at it. It was secreted away and rested deep in my left pocket upon the gracilis muscle of my left leg. I could feel its mass as it adducted my thigh.

There was time between connections. Enough time to eat and drink. There was no South Pacific before me but I saw it anyway. I had long since given up eating in airports and had constructed a travel diet of the two major food groups: coffee and pastry.

As I was drinking the terrible coffee and eating the terrible pastry, the fine woman from the airplane was before me. She had a salad and bottled water on a tray.

“May I sit?” she asked.

“Yes, most certainly,” I responded. I wanted to show respect but, nonetheless, I did not stand up.

She with coyness placed her tray upon the table. She sat down. She cleaned her hands with those universal alcohol towels. She opened the bottle of water. She opened her salad package. She stuck the tiny fork into the salad. Her face was close to the salad. She began to eat. The fork plucked up the brown and wilted salad mix. She was about to take a bite as she rolled her eyes toward me.

“Secrets within secrets,” she said.

“How much time do you have?” I asked.

“I have more time than I have money,” she said.

I thought my dad was the only person who said that. Where did she hear that?

“Yes, secrets within secrets,” I said as I started talking, again.

About the Authors

Married for forty-one years, Elliott and Joan Groves started their lives together in Cleveland, Ohio, where they got their M.A.(T.) degrees at John Carroll—Elliott in biology and Joan in English. From Cleveland to their dream island of American Samoa—where their son, Joel, was born—then back home to southeastern Pennsylvania, they taught for thirty-five years. Now retired, they like to write, jam on keys and guitar, bike and hike, volunteer, join in family and church activities, and visit Joel on the west coast. Elliott’s special interest is photography while Joan’s is horseback riding. Elliott certified to dive in the North Atlantic when to S.C.U.B.A. dive meant sticking a hose in your mouth and strapping a tank on your back. Joan is a green-fin diver who certified after Elliott taught her to swim. Diving offshore at various islands, they’ve lived in part the life described in The Last Island. Look for them in tropic waters dodging barracuda and razor-edge wrecks.

Copyright

Copyright © 2013 by Joan J.K. Groves & Elliott Vaughn Groves.

All rights reserved. Published by Aperture Press. Name and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Aperture Press, LLC.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information, write to Aperture Press LLC, P.O. Box 6485, Reading, PA 19610 or visit www.AperturePress.net.

ISBN 978-0-9889351-1-2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover designed by Stephen Wagner & Jere Stamm.