The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories

In the Squalus

8 8 8 8 8 He was under water for too long; lying in the shell of the submarine for more than thirty hours, he left his body and his living mates and became at one with the dead floating on the other side of the bulkhead. In the last seconds before the lights failed a few men had scrambled into the control room to join the living; Larkin and the others in the bow let them through and then, facing the rushing ocean, they were forced to close the door against the rest, so that there were twenty-six dead sealed in the flooded engine room. The survivors lay together under the great weight of the ocean, Larkin alive with the rest but already cut adrift from them. If he was waiting for rescue he was not aware of it; he heard only vaguely the sos the others tapped out on the metal hull. When he took his own turn he was not aware that he did so and he was not listening for a reply. Instead he imagined he heard the voices of the dead reverberating in the metal; he heard the dead in his own ship, in all the drowned ships of all time in growing volume , making a remote but ceaseless boom against the hull. As a child Larkin had looked out across flat New Mexico and dreamed of water. In all those dusty summers he prepared his eyes for the ocean, super­ imposing that great, watery horizon on the desert. With other landlocked boys he would choose the Navy, going to sea with a thirst he did not yet understand. Married, he would take Marylee and their little girl for vacations at one beach after another, lifting his daughter high above the water and bringing her down quickly, so they would both laugh at the shining splash. He may have been certain he would die by drowning, that in the end he would let the water take him; he would be muffled and shrouded by water, water would carry away all his doubt and pain so that in the end there would be nothing left but water, washing over his own skull’s bright, eternal grin. Instead Alvah Larkin found himself safe in the Squalus, freezing in the dark. It was only a matter of time before the diving bell clanked against the hull and he would have to begin the tortuous escape. It would kill them if I stayed here, he thought in the last minutes before he gave himself to darkness. Janny, he thought, seeing the child and Marylee arrested in attitudes of waiting: on the In the Squalus 198 k i t r e e d rocks looking out to sea, pleading at the main gate of the base, poised, whitefaced on the dock. They would always look to the horizon; Marylee would not let the girl look down, into the water. If Larkin stayed where he was they would remain fixed like that forever; still death seduced him and for some hours it seemed as though he would not have to go back. Numbed, he was able to lose track of time and project eternity. In the last freezing hours he may have thought he had seen Jonah, or had been Jonah, or was that the face of Christ hovering just beyond the lights streaking his closed eyelids? There was a clang on the hull, the bell, and so he would not find out this time. Instead he had to pull himself back and join the others. When the hatch opened to let them into the bell he would hesitate only a second before going, blinking, into an uncertain birth. Inside the bell he heard himself saying, “Yeah, I’ll be glad to get back to the wife and kid.” When they were all safe in sick bay, President Roosevelt talked to them; his voice was full of static but sad, expressing national relief. Everybody was going right back into submarines, they told the president; Larkin wanted to get back on duty as soon as possible but he knew it wouldn’t make any difference; it was too late. He could see in Marylee’s eyes that it was too late. “Oh Alvah,” she said. “Those poor men.” Janny hugged him hard. “Daddy, you were gone too long.” He buried his face in her. “But I came back.” Marylee said firmly, “Daddy always comes back.” So he put Janny down and...