Joan Groves: The Last Island

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.

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.