The Great Offshore Grounds

by Vanessa Veselka

  Down the road Essex saw John A. Lejeune. The marine’s marine had charged the North Carolina shore under a full moon at dusk. Emerging from the phosphorescent surf, his ankles tangled with glowing seaweed, he began the forward march, his eyes on the western shore of the nation, and beyond that, China. Ever fixed, ever focused. The Tuscarora flickered behind him, sometimes a People, sometimes a Union ship.

  Coming upon Essex he stopped.

  “Rage,” said Essex. “What do you do with it?”

  “I have seen so many beaches. I have earned so many stars,” Lejeune said.

  Essex saw that rage ran through Lejeune too. How else could it be? In this Southern son. Yet in Lejeune it had come out as drive and been transformed into coordinated movement and discipline, strategy and will. Whereas in Essex it was loose, electric, and sparking.

  59 Static

  HAVING RUN OUT OF JUSTINE’S and trudged through the swamp, Cheyenne now stood on the small highway in wet tennis shoes and swamp-soaked jeans without a plan. She started walking. One car passed, then another. What was she to do? Wave like she was drowning and flag them down? Help. My life is an emergency of my own making. Save me.

  Images ran through her head in random order: the blown second chances, burnt relationships, twisted cars—all spent on a ticket to get to here, this moment.

  The preposterousness of Justine’s story rang in her head, echoing in a closed universe. Little interactions returned backlit with new meaning, the way Justine spoke of freedom, the way Kirsten handed her the letters, the hints of something over the years that may or may not have been something at all because she really didn’t know what Kirsten knew or what was true at all.

  Her mind, scrambled from weeks of silence, bounced. I’ve seen this in a movie with the cave and a jungle or maybe it was a cave in a jungle. There were skulls but they were bone, not golden so there’s no way any of this is real. Insane thoughts. If Livy was born first there’s no way in hell I’m going to treat her like an older sister. Quieter thoughts. So this is what it’s like to be thirty-four and have thrown it all away.

  She came to an intersection. A flashing yellow streetlight swayed in the wind next to a mini-mart with an empty parking lot. She walked in and was instantly baffled by visual noise—racks of Technicolor candy; neon cheese puffs; baby-blue and cotton-candy-pink marbled inflatable balls imprisoned in a black wire mesh rectangle.

  The woman behind the counter had a face like a sandstone cliff and the manner of a bullfrog. She watched Cheyenne move around the store like a fly. Cheyenne grabbed a packet of powdered white doughnuts and went to the register. She tried to speak a sentence but the words didn’t come out like she heard them in her head.

  “I want to please plug in my phone.”

  “Where’s your car?” said the woman, looking out the window.

  “Texas.”

  Cheyenne tried to smile but wasn’t quite sure what was happening on her face. She pulled out her wallet and opened it and took out the debit card Essex had given her.

  “Please may I charge my phone?”

  Recognizing the logo on the card as one used solely by service members, the woman’s chin softened.

  “I’ll plug it in behind the counter.”

  Cheyenne handed her the phone and charger.

  “I have a grandbaby in the service,” said the woman.

  Cheyenne, missing the invitation to talk, tore into the packet of doughnuts and began to eat, getting white powder all over her fingers and clothes.

  She wandered down the aisles looking at soup cans and Kotex. She read the tags over empty racks by the travel packets of Benadryl and Midol. Rounding the endcap she passed cases of energy drinks and chocolate milk. Pausing by a row of microwavable popcorn she turned and looked at the woman.

  “What’s the wrongest you’ve ever been?” she asked. “ ’Cause I can’t decide. It might be now. It probably is. But it could also be a couple of months ago. That was pretty bad—or a few months before that.” Cheyenne’s eyes wandered toward the Slim Jims and peanuts. “There’s a really good argument for now but it could also be my first marriage. I really messed that up.”

  “Everybody gets a test pancake,” said the woman.

  There was something in her tone that made Cheyenne tear up. It was only kindness. She’d forgotten. There was kindness everywhere.

  * * *

  —

  When the phone was charged Cheyenne took it into the bathroom and called Kirsten, who sounded strange. Didn’t want to talk. Normally Cheyenne would have demanded whatever needed to be said, be said now and not danced around. But she, too, needed to have a longer conversation.

  Leaving the bathroom, Cheyenne called a taxi company and told them she needed to get to Camp Lejeune. Whatever Essex had on the debit card would either cover the fare or it wouldn’t. Either way she’d be closer to someone she knew.

  She stepped outside. The bushes scraped and the trees rustled. Some creaked and scratched at other branches twisting through each other toward the sun. She watched the streetlight on the slack cable flash yellow. There was no contest. This was definitely the wrongest she’d ever been. Hands down.

  Her phone began to buzz as a string of missed calls came through, downloaded from whatever satellite passed over like an angel, thinking nothing of her, not knowing she existed at all, orbiting. Because this is the way of it, the great exclusion.

  The missed calls were all from numbers she didn’t know. There were two voice mails. The first was from the office of Essex’s commanding officer, but it was immersed in static. What words were audible, incident, shooting, chilled her lungs. She played it back and heard investigation and field. She played it again and got that the message was from the CO’s office and that Essex had been involved in what seemed to be a friendly-fire incident with another marine but it was still under investigation. The number to call for information was garbled. The second voice mail was clearer. It was from Essex. He sounded shakier than she’d ever heard him. I fucked up. I love you. I really fucked up.

  60 The Universe Returns

  KIRSTEN WAS READING when Livy came in just before 3:00 a.m., made a grilled cheese sandwich, and joined her on the couch.

  “What are those tall ships like to work on?” Kirsten asked.

  “Hard.”

  “Harder than fishing boats?”

  “Different hard.”

  Livy ate half her sandwich. “They’re going to Panama,” said Livy.

  “I know. Sarah told me.”

  Kirsten watched her daughter.

  “I should tell her I love her,” said Livy, “but I don’t really see the point.”

  Livy put the plate on the coffee table and leaned back. Kirsten waited to see if she would say more but she didn’t. Three twenty-five a.m. filled the room. Livy laid her head on Kirsten’s shoulder, something she hadn’t done since she was twelve or thirteen. Kirsten sat still as if a hummingbird had landed on her.

  That night the Universe sent Kirsten a dream.

  There were two bags of gold coins. One with five coins and one with eight. She was only allowed to pick one bag. There were only three prizes she could buy. One costs less than five but more than three, one costs five, and one costs nine…

  She could pick the bag with eight and try to haggle with the Man behind the counter, but she knows he will refuse. She could grab all the coins and run, but the Man said there weren’t any prizes outside of the room. She could bribe the Man with sex, but she could tell he couldn’t see her anymore.

  * * *

  —

  Livy found Kirsten humming in the kitchen that morning.

  “I think you should go,” said Kirsten. “Get on that boat and see where it takes you.”

  “You’re still sick and I’m broke. Maybe another time.”

  In the evening when Livy g
ot back from looking for work, Kirsten was humming the same song. Livy recognized it this time. It was a track off some ’70s record Kirsten always played when they had to do chores. At fourteen, Cheyenne gave it a name, Coke Damage Radio Hour.

  Cheyenne would be on that boat. Cheyenne would go after what she wanted.

  Livy went to bed. Kirsten’s humming entered her sleep. It wasn’t a song but a strategy.

  At breakfast, Livy was patching the elbow of her foul-weather jacket when Kirsten stopped humming and started singing.

  “Would you go if she promised you heaven…”

  “Just say it,” said Livy, putting her work down.

  “What?”

  Livy returned to the patch.

  “Would you go if she promised you heaven…”

  “It’s ‘Would you stay if she promised you heaven,’ ” said Livy.

  “I can sing it however I want.”

  Livy packed up her needles and duct tape and got into the shower. As the water came down, she relaxed. At least her mother was better. She had eaten a real breakfast and done some laundry. She was singing, if only to torture Livy. She had even opened the curtains to let the day in.

  When Livy got out of the shower, Kirsten was gone. She’d left a note on the counter. She was out of soy milk. Livy looked at the note and poured the last of the coffee into a cup. Her eyes flicked to where her foul-weather gear hung, patched, in the hallway, along with her marlinspike and knife. Livy looked out the window. At that same moment, in the harbor, the Neva’s crew was preparing to get under way. Stowing and lashing trunks of dishes, doing boat checks. Soon they’d go to stations and take up the lines. Between them was the kind of fog that wouldn’t burn off. It would stay with them all the way through the sound. Floating on the lowlands and deltas, pooling in inlets, passing spectral through suspension bridges.

  Kirsten would be back soon. Maybe they could order pizza and try to find a movie where the earth almost gets blown up and saved at the last minute.

  Livy looked again at her foul-weather gear.

  * * *

  —

  The gangway was already stowed when Livy got to the boat and she had to jump from shore to ship while teenagers heckled her, chanting, “Fall! Fall!” Once on, she scrambled down the ladder into the poorly lit captain’s quarters. Three of the four mates’ bunks were empty. The captain, with his thick gold rings and bad haircut, the epaulette with an N for Napoleon tattooed on his shoulder, stared at a chart table with no maps on it.

  “Do you still need sailors for Panama?” she asked.

  “I need a bosun.”

  “I can probably figure it out.”

  “Someone should,” he said.

  From Sarah’s phone she texted Kirsten: I’m aboard. Use this number to reach me. I love you. I’ll see you in a month.

  * * *

  —

  Kirsten was on the bus when she got the text. She had just finished a box of strawberry-banana-flavored edibles when it came in and read it twice. It was a strange feeling. All the joy she could imagine, a rush of euphoria, then nothing.

  BOOK 5—THE SEA

  “What hills are those, my love,

  That are so bright and free?”

  “Those are the hills of heaven, my love,

  They’re not for you and me.”

  —Author lost to time

  61 Ghost Ring

  THE M4 CARBINE is a lighter and shorter rifle than the M16. Less cumbersome with superior targeting at close range, it replaces the M16 as the preferred rifle for infantry. Since armies no longer line up on opposite hillsides and charge each other, controlling certain distances matters less because if satellites and drones cover stratosphere to ground, and the M4 covers house-to-house, who cares about the middle ground? The enemy is either very far away or far too close. There is no longer an in between. Gone like the phalanx, one soldier crammed against another, rotating positions like antarctic emperor penguins, gone like the line, a meaningless shape in the geometry of warfare replaced by the vector, sweeping the sand at night, flashlight-like, checking underbrush for snakes or for the reflective eyes of a large cat.

  Unable to fully abandon its past, though, the M4 carbine is equipped with a traditional iron sight. Just as a sailor makes an aperture with his hands to scan the horizon for objects, so a sight or ghost ring narrows the field of attention. With a trick of the eye, it can turn the body of the enemy into a dime-size circle, making it easier to hit. The M4 can also be fitted with a scope that provides a telescopic view of the target through an objective lens, though this doesn’t necessarily solve the problem of parallax because what gets seen is never simple.

  Telescopic sights evolved quickly during the Civil War. Unlike the iron sights before them, they didn’t just exclude the distraction of an entire body and its context but magnified the enemy. A triumph of lens light, the scope prospered on the battlefields of Harpers Ferry and Antietam and throughout the war on both sides. Now, only what you want to hit is presented and all else is diminished. But the problem of parallax compensation remains. Because it turns out when you don’t have another perspective, the depth of what you’re looking at is impossible to gauge.

  * * *

  —

  Jared had wanted to go shooting. Liberty came again. A real one when they could leave the base. Essex had taken to avoiding Jared after the conversation about Livy, but the downtime was killing him and Jared said he knew a place.

  “What are we going to shoot with?” asked Essex.

  “I got loaners.”

  Essex had assumed they were going to a firing range, but they ended up at an abandoned shack. When Jared got out the guns, Essex realized they were from the base.

  “What the hell are you thinking? Do you know how much trouble we’ll be in if we get caught?”

  “I bought bullets. They won’t know.”

  “I’m not getting kicked out because of you.”

  “Stop being a drama queen,” said Jared. He held out one of the guns but Essex didn’t take it. “Come on, man. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  Essex gave in, and Jared handed him the bullets and he loaded the gun.

  They set up targets in a beaten field. Essex took a couple of shots and hit the target both times. Jared shot and missed.

  “Every marine is a rifleman,” said Essex.

  “Don’t be a dick to me just ’cause Livy got raped.”

  Jared walked toward the target. Essex felt the rage like a tornado in his chest.

  “They shouldn’t let you go anywhere as a soldier,” said Essex. “I’d never trust you in a dicey situation.”

  “I’ll probably end up saving your life,” said Jared.

  “Spare me.”

  Jared missed again.

  “I think it’s the gun. Let me try yours.”

  “They’re all the same. You’re just bad at it.”

  “Give it to me.”

  Essex reloaded the gun and handed it over. As he did, he saw the safety wasn’t on. Fuck him. Let him shoot himself. Essex went to find a bush. A second later the gun went off.

  * * *

  —

  Essex drove Jared to the hospital on empty roads. The shot had gone through Jared’s leg so he was upside down in the front seat to keep the blood inside him, with a belt tightened around his thigh. At the hospital, Jared was given blood and stabilized while Essex talked to the cops.

  The MPs came and ushered him into a small room. They asked him nothing, but he tried to tell them anyway, that it was his fault, he was to blame.

  “I left the safety off.”

  “Tell someone else,” they said.

  “He’s an asshole but I know his mom. Should I call her?”

  “We took your phone.”

  The MPs took up a position outside the d
oor. Essex’s pulse was still racing but his skin was cold. He felt like he did as a little kid locked in the apartment while his mom was out for the night. But Essex was not alone for long. The ghost of John A. Lejeune appeared beside him.

  “My father was a Confederate captain.” Lejeune looked through the window. “I’ve seen continents severed. I saw the Great Canal. I saw the solar eclipse in Algeria. You’ve seen nothing,” he said, then walked through the wall, scrubbed for surgery.

  Essex yelled for the MPs to call his wife, but there was only silence.

  62 Realm of the Sky God

  ALL THE WAY DOWN the California coast, Livy and Sarah were on opposite watches. One slept when the other was awake; one ate while the other washed plates. They saw each other in passing or when all hands were called to deck. Livy could feel when Sarah was near. The sunlamp of electric tension, her unmistakable presence. They couldn’t touch or talk without being overheard, still everything between them deepened. Meaningless subjects carried the weight of all that was unsaid. Soon, Livy’s awareness of Sarah expanded from ten feet to twenty-five to the whole ship, catching the movement of their bodies up in the ecstatic moment of where and who they were—Sarah in the hammock near the engine room when Livy came to wake the next watch. Livy with sailor’s palm and needle repairing chaffing gear between fore and mainmast. With no relief possible, Livy began to work in a Tantric state of sexuality: the cheap manila rope running through her cold wet hands burned, that turned her on; the radiant heat of her own body in an afternoon’s freezing rain, same.

  Livy was used to working above the crosstrees now, and out on the yard. She could move across the crane lines without a thought. Her old autonomy back, if flowing from a colder source; she had sharkish clarity now.

  Crossing into California waters, she texted Kirsten from Sarah’s phone. Kirsten texted back a picture of Livy’s horoscope. Livy texted Kirsten a picture of the Moss Landing Power Plant at night when they sailed past. The twin concrete towers like spires, the gasworks cube with a chassis of blinding industrial light all floating in the dark water. The photo didn’t capture it, though. The power plant was a small yellow blur in a field of flat black. She tried again, but the power plant was an even smaller yellow blur and the blackness more complete.