James Halperin - The First Immortal

Ben accepted it gratefully, reverently, as if it were a holy talisman. He stared at it for a moment, his eyes welling with tears, then slipped it carefully into his left pants pocket.

Then he removed from his neck a locket on a thin gold chain and presented it to his friend. In it nestled three locks of hair, with photographs of Sam and Alice Smith on one side, and Marge Callahan on the other.

As if participating in a sacred ritual, Toby placed it around his neck.

The two friends embraced, holding on to each other longer than was publicly sanctionable. And they did not care.

July 6, 1943

Kula Bay, Solomon Islands. When the torpedo plowed into the USS Boise, Ben felt the reverberations and heard the roar, although these disturbances seemed to come from a great distance, almost as if the impact had happened to another, nearby ship. But the still-trembling deck plate and flickering lights told him otherwise. His watch read 8:51 A.M., 0851 hours . He started to return to his fine-control duties.

Oh shit!

In an appallingly swift motion, the Brooklyn class light cruiser took on an alarming seventeen-degree list. The klaxon wailed, signaling a call to stations. The Boise shuddered again and heavy smoke, seemingly more solid than gas, began pouring into the corridor.

Though of equal rank, most of the sailors in his detail unconsciously turned to Ben for direction. It was the third torpedo they’d taken in this engagement. The first and second impacts did little more than open some compartments to the sea. These had been quickly sealed with jerry-built plates, securing the integrity of the ship’s intervening bulkheads. They were, in effect, flesh wounds. This one, Ben decided, was a gut shot. “We just bought the farm,” he called out. “Let’s get up on deck. Now!” His voice, though urgent, betrayed none of the emotion he felt swimming through his entrails.

The list was fully twenty degrees now, the main deck awash, the crew caught up in barely controlled panic. By the time the “abandon ship” horn sounded, he’d estimated that marginally over half the ship’s complement of 888 were attempting to thread their way toward their assigned lifeboat stations. Ben was moving toward his own when a mental picture physically assaulted him: Shit! What about Epstein? They’d have to drag him out of sickbay—kicking and screaming.

Carl Epstein was one of the ship’s two medical officers. Ben considered him a good friend, perhaps the only person he’d met in the Navy with whom he could comfortably discuss science and philosophy. Epstein had been at his station for at least nine hours. If there was even one man who couldn’t move on his own, Ben realized, Carl would simply not leave him.

He headed across the deck and pushed forward through a swarm of sailors heading aft toward the lifeboats.

“Smitty,” Ensign Herbert “Mack” McGuigan called out from several yards away, “where in blazes you goin’?”

“Gonna help Epstein, sir.”

“Well, shag ass, then! Or you’ll ride this tub to the bottom.” He arrived at sickbay and managed to help his friend lift three injured sailors into the main corridor, where Epstein could hurry his charges toward the boats. Then an inner voice told Ben to check the three nearby officers’ cabins. Two were empty, but in the third, petty officers Dossey and Hauptman were out cold from the concussion. He shook Dossey awake. Just stunned. Good . Presuming one man would revive or drag away the other, Ben got the hell out of there. Heading toward the boats, he tightened his life jacket.

As he rushed between smoking debris and now-useless fire hoses, the deck plate separated in front of him, and his world seemed to lose the force of gravity. He felt himself airborne and could clearly see the ship rolling over to port. Suddenly he was wet, surrounded by fuel-blackened waters that assaulted his eyes, nose, and throat.

An hour had passed since the third hit on the Boise, and nearly as long since he was pitched from the ship. His body jerked up and down, whipsawed by rolling crests. The swells were heavy but not tumultuous. His work clothes clung to him like an added layer of diesel-stinking flesh. He still felt the water that filled his shoes as it sloshed between his toes, but the stinging sensation was starting to diminish: a very bad sign. The toes would be the first appendages to numb.

Ben understood that his life was probably over, though he did not articulate the knowledge to himself. It was a primal understanding; probability silencing hope.

It had taken only seventeen minutes for their ship to capsize. Although his life jacket kept him afloat, the water was foul and rough, and he’d heard rumors about sharks. He counted nine lifeboats still visible in the distance, and had already exhausted himself trying to get their attention by waving and shouting. He’d even removed some of his clothing and spread it about the waters around him, but it was hopeless. The ocean was too vast and he was too small. He doubted any of the men in those boats could have seen him even if they’d all been searching; even if he were their only problem. Besides, they had more important things to worry about than finding one expendable sailor.

The sun was well into the sky, the air and water temperatures separated by 35 degrees Fahrenheit. Ben felt distressed and scared, yet strangely calm, as if the nobility of a wartime death somehow vindicated its occurrence.

Was misfortune better or worse, he wondered, when it resulted from actions chosen, rather than uncontrollable fate? He imagined it was worse.

Shivering and hyperventilating, he allowed more of the contaminated saltwater into his lungs and caught himself almost welcoming the end of life. He relaxed his arms and legs. As time passed, he began to drift in and out of consciousness, paying less attention to breathing. The world blurred, distinction between air and water fading. In the abandonment of life’s struggle, he became almost euphoric. He sensed a life force rise, as though it were leaving his body. Physical sensation and emotional pain diminished in both size and import, as if in retreat to a place no longer connected to him.

So this was what it was like to die.

He shut his eyes and saw Gary and Susan Franklin, his grandparents who had died several years earlier, one right after the other. He’d always suspected Gramma Sue died from heartbreak rather than pneumonia. Now they welcomed him to the afterlife. But his emotions were mixed, the tug at life still manifest.

No! Not yet. he commanded himself. Everything he cared about was right there on earth. It was much too soon to leave. His heart began to race. Pain and discomfort returned. He felt the raw wetness engulf his body like dishwater filling a sponge, and the cloying fuel stench attacked every sense as if his olfactory capacity alone were insufficient to absorb it.

He embraced these sensations like a long-lost friend; he would force himself to stay awake, concentrate, breathe more carefully, dissociate pain from soul, and fight to stay alive.

It might hurt, he decided, and would probably make no difference in the end, but if by some miracle he were rescued, any amount of suffering would seem insignificant.

Rolling his arms and scissor-kicking his legs, Ben anticipated the rhythm of the swells and steadied himself against them. He timed his breathing to take air only when his head was completely above water. More time passed; he had no idea how much. In this struggle against death, seconds felt like hours, hours like seconds. Every muscle was drained, his lungs ached, his skin so cold it burned, except on the fingers and toes, which by now possessed no feeling at all. How much longer could he keep that up?