Stephen Dixon - Frog

Huge iceberg hits the ship while he’s climbing an outside stairway and knocks him into the water. Or while he’s leaning on a stern railing, smoking a cigarette and looking at the water. Or hits the ship while he’s sleeping. Cuts right through it to his cabin. There might have been emergency sirens and bells warning of the approaching iceberg, but he slept right through them. He doesn’t wake up or feel anything. Slams through so hard and fast he’s killed instantly or knocked unconscious while he’s reading in bed or further unconscious in his sleep, and drowns without waking. Or wakes for a second or two underwater, goes into shock or coma from the freezing water and drowns without coming out of it. Or wakes while he’s thrown from the stairs or his bunk or over or through the railing into the water, blacks out a few seconds after he hits the water and drowns almost instantly or is dead from the impact of the iceberg or being thrown through the railing, before he hits the water.

Ship splits apart just where he’s sleeping. Happens so fast he never even senses it. Sleeping, suddenly ship’s in two. Ship might have hit something. Or it was some unseen or neglected flaw in its structure that took ten to twenty years to materialize this way. He drops several decks, never wakes up. Is dreaming while he’s in bed and while the bunk drops with him in it to the ocean. Of the city, night, stars, flying, gliding, then drowning. In the dream he tries swimming to the surface, then is one of the other crew members on watch seeing his head emerge from the water.

He was sitting on a kitchen chair in Jerry’s small living room. Jerry’s wife Iris nursed their first child on a couch across from him. Suckling and smacking sounds irritated him. Been irritated by certain repeated or oral or eating sounds like that long as he can remember. Finger drumming. Watermelon and carrot crunching. Couples doing some heated kissing in theaters. Soup-slurping, fingernail clipping, gum-snapping, nervous foot-tapping, snoring, dripping faucets, heavy breathing in sleep (even his kids’). Jerry sat in the rocker Iris usually nursed in, said the ship was long overdue and it didn’t look good. “It stinks, to be honest. I hate thinking the worst but I’m thinking it. Some emergency distress signals — I forget the exact technical term the Coast Guard spokesman used; in fact that could have been it — were heard in that general area, but briefly — You OK?” Howard nodded. “That doesn’t mean their ship sent them. Another freighter in the same general area could have been testing out its signal-making machine. Any kind of ship. A Coast Guard cutter, for instance, though of course this spokesman would have mentioned if one had been in the area at the time. God, that would have been a miracle, wouldn’t it?” Howard looked up. “For one to have been there, on a routine cruise, let’s say — east, going west, out there to spy on Soviet submarines, who the hell cares, so long as it saved them. Not a cutter but a regular-sized Coast Guard or Navy ship just miles away — fifty to a hundred miles, even, for those babies move fast. Anyway, the signals were so weak, the spokesman said, that they more than likely came from a much smaller windup crank-type version of this machine on a lifeboat.” Howard looked confused. “I’m saying it could have come, these weak distress signals, from a lifeboat launched from Alex’s ship. From his lifeboat, even — why not? The machine was battery operated, probably. Though maybe not. Maybe the manual cranking does the operating. I wish I knew more about boats. It could have been a practice drill, everyone to his station and so on, with designated men testing all the ship’s emergency distress signals. The spokesman doubts that. He said there would have been an all-clear signal immediately after the distress run. But it was a terrific storm they were in, one of the worst there in years, so maybe Len wanted to be extra cautious and tried out all the distress-signal machines, or just the ones on the lifeboats, and the all-clear signal was never heard by anyone. It’s something he might do, from what Dad’s said about him. He’s an iconoclast, goes his own way always. He once ran guns for Nationalist or Red China; supposedly fought against and then bought off his execution by Thai pirates. But a great captain, I was told — something in our favor. One of the youngest ever to get his master’s license for that size ship. He could have been a doctor, a physicist, Dad days. Chose water. But you can see why I think the situation’s getting almost hopeless. Since we’re talking here about several weak emergency distress signals most likely sent from a lifeboat, one out of who knows how many on that ship, during an unbelievably terrible storm seven, maybe eight days ago.”

After the first sip, when Jerry held up his glass of scotch and they silently toasted as they just about always did with their first drink, Howard didn’t touch it. After awhile he wasn’t even aware he was holding it. He was surprised, when he later walked downstairs, the drink hadn’t dropped out of his hand. He could hardly speak. Tried a couple of times, couldn’t. Said a few times to himself while Jerry told him about Alex “I don’t believe this, I just don’t. It can’t be happening, couldn’t have happened.” His throat was a lump. Maybe that was why he couldn’t speak or didn’t want to. He knew what his voice would sound like and that he’d start crying while he spoke or right after, when what he wanted was to sit calmly as he could and hear everything Jerry was telling him. He was looking for something hopeful in what Jerry was saying. That the storm hadn’t been so bad, or if it had, that the ship hadn’t gone down, or if it had, that Alex had got on a lifeboat and had already been saved or had survived on the lifeboat till now and would be saved in a day. His fingers felt cold, tingled; chest as if a cold wind whirled around in it. That was what came to him then. Except for a few quick looks at Jerry, he stared into space, at the floor, window, wall of lithos, maybe his glass without realizing it, the baby, Iris. She continued to nurse, sounds of it no longer irritated him. Probably because he told himself a few minutes into Jerry’s account “Worrying about some stupid nursing sounds now? That’s ridiculous.” She took the baby off her breast and held him on her shoulder to burp. Her exposed nipple was erect, fat, very red, wet. It looked like a worm coming out of sand. That also came to him then. Because it glistened he thought it must be the one just sucked. Hadn’t seen. Only looked at her breast when she wasn’t looking at him and Jerry was looking somewhere else. First he looked at Jerry to see he wasn’t looking at him, then at Iris’s face and then quickly back to Jerry and if he still wasn’t looking at him, quickly at her breast. He was probably caught looking at it by one or both of them a few times, but didn’t think of it then. What might they have said later? “Fucking guy, at a time like this, trying to sneak a peek?” “It’s natural, he’s curious, and it certainly doesn’t bother me.” If Iris was looking at him when he looked at her face, he nodded or shook his head and looked away. Breast was big and full. Before she got visibly pregnant she seemed, from seeing her in a swimsuit and T-shirt several times, almost flat chested. He’d once looked down one when she didn’t have a bra on, didn’t see much but bumps. He pictures his lips kissing and tugging at the tip of it, fingers gently pinching the nipple and finger circling its rim. He’d dreamt of making love with her, or starting to, both times both of them naked on the couch and floor and playing with each other when the door banged open and a gruff voice bawled “Virus,” but didn’t think anything of that then. Baby burped. “That-a-boy,” and she put her breast to his mouth which quickly latched on to it. She mostly gazed at his head while he sucked, played with his fingers. Light in the room seemed dimmer than when Howard had come in. Jerry might have dimmed it with a new kind of light switch device he’d recently installed himself that had a name like a heat regulator. Alex had been the handiest, Jerry next, Howard far behind. Alex could take apart and reassemble clocks and radios when he was seven. Just opened them up and went right at it. Maybe Jerry dimmed the lights whenever she started nursing. He remembers her once talking at length about the sensitivity of babies’ eyes to sunlight and high-wattage bulbs and fluorescent lights and how even a little of these lights could later lead to color or night blindness. Nobody spoke for about ten minutes, maybe twenty. Solo piano music on the record player. Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, someone like that, inclined toward the high keys and feathery, which Howard just heard but it could have been on since he got there. For all he knew Jerry might have turned the record over a few minutes ago. “you all right?” Jerry said. “Hmm?” “So silent. I can imagine. Listen, it’s still not that absolutely hopeless. Even better than that. Did you see the looks Iris was giving me before?” “Nuh.” “Well she was, because I’m sure she thinks I made things out to be much worse than she knows even I believe. There’s still some hope. Possibly even plenty. We’re both sure — Iris and I — there is.” Good moment to look at her even while Jerry was looking at him. Few minutes the feeding would be done and blouse buttoned. Doesn’t know why he wanted to look so much then. Just young and horny perhaps, sometimes overcoming everything, or he wanted to take his mind off what Jerry was saying. Both. Maybe deeper, more complicated. When he got home he probably looked out his bedroom window as he did almost every night in hopes of seeing the woman in the next building’s back apartment undressing or walking to and from another room nude. Nipple was in the baby’s mouth, blouse somehow hid the rest of her breast, either unknowingly or something new. “It’s got to turn out all right,” Howard said to Jerry. “Ships just don’t suddenly disappear in the middle of the North Atlantic like that.” “It wasn’t in the middle. It was estimated to be about three days past the Irish coast which, weatherwise, is a real trouble area.” “Whatever. But to get even a little irrational about it, ships with Alex on them just don’t disappear, period.” “Some ships, even much larger ones — and for argument’s sake we’ll forget Alex being on this one — do suddenly disappear without a trace, or with only a minor one. Not all in the North Atlantic, though the greater ratio of them do, but around the world. It’s nothing mysterious. They hit something and go down fast. An iceberg, a tree. Or something explodes in them or breaks apart, the ship splitting cleanly in two sometimes.” “Come on.” “No, it happens. I questioned this expert with the same ‘come on’ when he told me. You would never think that someone you really know can be the one that something like this happens to when it only happens once or twice a year. But some ship has to be the one, and quite a number of men have to be on that ship and have it happen to them.” “Well, Alex’s ship wasn’t the one. It didn’t suddenly sink, so couldn’t have disappeared. It’s either — something tells me this — still out there, adrift, though for some reason hasn’t been located. Or has already docked or just drifted to some landing — some little uninhabited island or atoll somewhere — went aground, even, I think they call it, on a pile of rocks in the middle of nowhere — and will get in touch with whoever it’s supposed to fairly soon.” “I want to believe that as much as anyone. But we also shouldn’t be too unrealistic. Same when you go to the hospital for a simple tonsillectomy, we’ll say. There has to be some self-preparation for an accident — for the worst. Great surgeons, as well as highly precise machines—” “No mistakes. If so, they’ll be corrected. Look, I really got to go. It’s been a little too much,” and he stood up. “Do you want me to walk you?” “I’ll be all right.” Kissed Iris on the cheek, patted the baby’s head but was careful not to touch where they’d said the soft spot still was. Scared him. He’d imagined a few times his finger going all the way in, wondered why kids that age didn’t wear helmets or something. Iris said “You don’t know — Jerry would never say it — how hard it was for him to tell you this. Also, now that the folks know you know, it isn’t going to be easy with them. So be — well, it’s not my place — but try to be extra solicitous and patient.” “She’s got a point.” “I will, don’t worry.” “Also, because I know how you can get sometimes, though this is perhaps asking you to go too much against your nature, try not to break up in front of them. They’ll see you, and then who knows what?” “He’ll know what to do.” “Don’t let off steam or tears. Got it.” “You know it’s only for their good I asked,” she said. “Of course. I only repeated it to remember. Honestly.” Jerry walked him to the door. “What else is there to say? I don’t envy you at home. Mom will hold up but Dad’s sure to cave in.” He held out his arms, eyes seemed wet. Howard went to him, Jerry hugged him, they cried. He walked downstairs. He still had his drink. He drank it down. Ice cubes the size of small pebbles and he chewed them. He wanted to return the glass. About to ring the bell, put the glass on the doormat, then to the side of the door so they wouldn’t kick it when they left in the morning. Walked downstairs. When he got home his mother was waiting up for him. She was having a drink and smoking a cigarette. She’d smoked several, probably had drunk several. “Jerry told you? Dad’s a wreck. Neither of us had the heart to say anything to you ourselves. Or the courage — which one? What’s the difference? I had to give him sleeping pills. The first pills like that he ever took, but I told him they were very strong aspirins. A professional man — his patients practically live on those kinds of aspirins — you’d think he’d know. He probably did but he’d never admit it. My poor boy. What a disaster for all of us. It would be so nice to fall asleep for two straight weeks. But the truth is we can do more good by staying awake. Talking to the authorities. Doing what we can to see that the search planes stay up one more day. But what do you think? Will the ship ever be found? Did Jerry hear anything new? Or should we simply give up and tear all our hair out now?”