The First Immortal

by James L. Halperin

  If Ben displayed any surprise at all, it could be detected only in a slight widening of his eyes.

  Toby broke the silence. “You might not believe this, but the truth is, I just forgot to tell you.”

  “Of course I believe you,” Ben said, his tone revealing more: grudging admiration, and doubts about whether he himself would have had the rocks to do anything so brazen. “Shit. Should’ve occurred to me, pal. Ol’ Ted woulda done just about anything to keep you home.”

  “You got that right. Anything short of having me arrested for forgery, that is.”

  Ben laughed, a knee-jerk of nervous sympathy for Toby’s predicament and approval of his clever tactics. Both realized that Toby’s parents would ultimately relent. It wasn’t like they had any choice.

  The boys sat in quiet contemplation.

  “What do you think happens when you die?” Toby offered at last.

  “Heaven, I suppose,” Ben said. “Or maybe nothing at all.”

  “Nothing? How could that be?” Toby asked. “Everyone believes in heaven.”

  “Christians do,” Ben said, “and Moslems believe in paradise, but Hindus think we return to earth as other people, or even animals. Reincarnation. Big deal, if you can’t even remember who you were before. Fact is, nobody really knows what happens when you die. Not even priests.”

  “I guess we need to believe it doesn’t just end, don’t we?” Toby said.

  “Guess so,” Ben said. But what if there really was nothing else? he thought. What if everyone simply died, and then there was nothing else at all?

  “Well, you’re lucky you’re joining the Navy,” Toby said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, when the shooting starts for me, some friggin’ Nazi’s probably gonna be doing it up close with a Mauser or a Luger. But you, you lucky S.O.B., you’ll no doubt be nestled down inside some big battleship or heavy cruiser. You won’t have a care in the world. Unless you get a torpedo up your ass.”

  Ben laughed, but the sound echoed hollow.

  Toby let it pass.

  Down in the hold. Dark. Close. Putrid and suffocating. Ben even imagined hearing the whoosh of a torpedo charging through black waters, possessed of a special grudge against one Benjamin Franklin Smith. He shuddered and for the first time questioned his choice of military service.

  Toby squinted as though, having realized he’d upset his friend, he was now searching his head for words to salvage their encounter. “The last thing we read in English class was Julius Caesar,” he started, slapping Ben’s shoulder, a fraternal tap.

  Ben gazed back with shrewd interest.

  “Yeah,” Toby continued. “Remember how at the end, Cassius and Brutus are about to go into battle? Kinda like us; which I guess was why it stuck with me. ‘O! that a man might know the end of this day’s business ere it come.’”

  “And come it will.” Ben looked straight into his friend’s eyes and paraphrased from the verse before it: “‘Farewell, Tobias. If we do meet again, why, we shall smile.’”

  Toby pulled a rabbit’s foot—his lucky rabbit’s foot—from his pocket, presented it to Ben, then solemnly finished, “‘If not, why then, this parting was well made.’”

  The rabbit’s foot, purchased at Woolworth’s for five cents, was grimy and reeking of six years spent in Toby’s pocket. Each boy had a different idea about the powers of good-luck charms: They represented everything to Toby, and nothing to Ben.

  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 lifeboat
s 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?

  Forever if he had to!

  Without warning, he felt something wrap itself around his neck.

  Now what? Ben thought, his instinctive shout of surprise choked off by the stranglehold. He lacked the strength to resist. Nothing remained left in him.

  Then he realized it was a man’s arm, and heard the sweet sound of Ensign McGuigan’s gravelly voice. “Jumpin’ Jesus. Smitty! You okay, boy?”

  This was the impossible made real, and in the face of it only a distant portion of Ben’s brain could muster emotion. He paid no homage to any feeling but amazement. Mack had braved those waters, risked his own life.

  For me!

  The officer towed him safely to his raft.

  But Ben’s fortunes would change again when the rafts were spotted by a Japanese troop ship, HIJMS Asahi Maru. The Americans watched in helpless terror as the enemy ship bore down on their raft. Japanese sailors pointed weapons and motioned for them to board. Two American boys carried Ben, mercifully unconscious, into the bowels of the ship.

  Ben Smith’s most primitive sense was his first to awaken:

  Oh my God! The smell! He couldn’t breathe. Jesus, he’d survived for this?

  Ben now sat on a hard steel surface, his body rolled into a virtual ball, neck twisted, head buried between his knees. His lungs still burned from ingested diesel, his mouth tasted it. A ship’s engine pounded his ears. And sweat-soaked human bodies mashed against him.

  “Where am I?”

  “In hell,” a tortured voice croaked. Its fear was unmistakable, infectious.

  Ben felt his heart race. “What?”

  “Asahi Maru,” said another.

  Ben turned toward the words. They seemed calmer, but almost catatonic. “Japanese?”

  “What else?” said the almost-familiar voice. “Empty Jap troopship. Taking us to a POW camp. If we live.”

  “Jesus. How long’ve I been out?”

  A third voice answered: “‘Bout a day. Figured you might’ve died. Some have. More room for us.”

  A day? Ben thought. A whole day?

  Then a man shrieked: inhuman, a lunatic being tortured. Too quickly, Ben tried to raise himself, banging his skull against asbestos-clad pipes hanging just three feet above the deck. He looked up and saw only a dense network of pipes, many superheated.

  “Out! Out! Out!” the sailor screamed. “God, oh God, oh God! Get me out! Mother, come and get me now!”

  The twenty-five-foot-by-thirty-foot-by-thirty-five-inch makeshift prison, enclosed at its sides by three layers of overlapping chicken wire, exploded in a din of shouting and scuffling. “Stop him!” “Got one running amok!” “Try and tackle him!” Two hundred men filled the shipsworks dungeon, one panicked sailor flailing and clambering among them.

  “That’s a live-steam return pipe! It’ll cook you…”

  Ben not only heard but felt a high-pitched squeal. Feet stumbled on deck and over men’s bodies. A heavy, hollow thunk echoed: head slamming into a valve cover. Then another noise, much like a crisp apple crushed between two powerful hands.

  After a few seconds of silence he heard only the same soft cries, moans, and pleadings.

  Time wore on, hours then days. All around Ben, hard-packed, were British and American sailors, mostly teenagers like him. But their numbers were diminishing.

  To Ben’s right sat Petty Officer Hauptman, to his left Seaman Moses Walker. Each man’s shoulder touched his own.

  Hauptman shivered.

  In this heat?

  And Moses’s arm had been broken; how badly, no one could tell. The ship’s cook slept or moaned, but little more.

  “I know you saved my life,” whispered Hauptman. “Dossey told me.”

  Ben patted the NCO’s back. “Just hold on. Think we’re coming into some swells.” The ship rolled, quaked, stabilized.

  Moses moaned; brought his right hand to his left shoulder. “White folks’ hell. Lordy, Mama, I’m in white folks’ hell.”

  Ben whispered, “Saltwater’ll drown any color, Moses. The sea doesn’t care.”

  Moses made another sound

  A laugh? Ben wondered Moses hadn’t done anything but moan. Dad had been right—the Navy was the best choice. The Navy would take all Americans, any color, any creed. Of course, it might get them all drowned, too. Ben replied with a laugh of his own.

  Moses took Ben’s hand.

  The ship shuddered again, another rogue wave, and Ben felt his stomach sink.

  Hauptman clutched at him, grabbing his arm. “I’m gonna die. The heat, the stink, the dry heaves. Can’t breathe in here. Ain’t gonna make it, bud Not even worth tryin’ to.”

  Ben felt the man’s hand quaking. “Just breathe. Please. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Think of nothing else. Keep breathing, Chief. One day, you’ll see the sun again.”

  Hauptman gave no reply.

  When Japanese sailors came with hoses to offer their captives callous respite, the men opened their mouths to swallow as much as possible. Afterward, Ben turned to Hauptman. The man’s eyes were open, but sightless.

  He looked away from the lost man and caught Epstein’s eyes. The doctor tossed h
im a two-finger salute, then continued to wipe vomit away from the mouth of the sailor’s head cradled in his lap.

  Ben waited hours, maybe a day, to report Hauptman’s death. They’d only throw him to the fish anyway—gone as though he’d never been. God, he’d saved the guy just to prolong his agony.

  “Why?” Ben heard himself cry.

  On his left, Moses whispered, “He been gone a long while, ain’t he, Ben?”

  “A while, yes.”

  “Why’d you wait?”

  Ben shifted his legs; the needles stitched into numbness.

  “‘Cause it hurts too much, Moses. Letting any of us go: It’s like losing a piece of me.”

  Walker moaned. “My arm, the pain’s fit to kill me. My mama didn’t raise me to be no cook for white sailors. Now I’m gonna die in the yellow man’s sewer.”

  Ben put his hand on the draftee’s forehead. Stupid! How could he possibly tell if Moses had a fever? It had to be at least 105 in there. “Just think of home. Your family. Your girl. You can make it.”

  “If m’ time come, Ben, will you hold on to me, too?”

  Ben took Moses’s good hand into his own and squeezed gently. Then he decided he would put this hellhole in a box, lock it up, file it away. Because if he didn’t, it would surely eat his brain; not just part, but all.

  Ben felt the spray of the Japanese hoses, which meant another morning had come. He tipped his head back, pretending he was home, taking a shower. Moses Walker felt nothing at all.

  Ben did not report his death.

  I don’t accept it, he told himself. This passage was not inevitable. He would live. He would help others to live. He would fight this implacable enemy. And someday, by God, someday he would win.

  The trip to the POW camp at Futtsu spanned six and a half days, during which none of the living ever left that space or those crumpled positions. There they remained, urinating and defecating in their clothes, receiving no food or medical attention and very little water. Only seventy-nine sailors from Ben’s ship, barely one-third of those captured, survived the voyage.