Joan Groves - The Last Island

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.”

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.