The First Immortal

by James L. Halperin

  “I’ll be out of town a few days,” he told her. “The girls’ll look in on you.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Phoenix. Remember Ensign McGuigan?”

  “The man who saved my baby’s life? Met him at your college graduation. I wouldn’t likely forget him, would I? Please give him my best.”

  “Wish to God I could, Mom. I’m going to his funeral.”

  “Oh.” She gazed into his eyes, a deliberate calmness overtaking her. “He had quite a pretty wife. Anna, was it?”

  “Annie.”

  “Annie. Of course. She’s still…”

  “Alive… yes.”

  “I doubt she’ll remember me, but would you deliver a message?”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  “My mother, your Gramma, passed on just seven weeks after Grampa did, remember?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m always saddened that so many people die during the first year after their spouse does, but I understand why. When Sam passed away, I was entirely certain I wanted to join him as soon as possible; actually started to wish for my own death. And if I’d kept wishing for it, I think Death might have come to me, too. Of course life will never be the same without your father; I remember him and ache for his smile. Often I cry. But if I’d followed him to the grave, just think what I would’ve missed! I’d never have seen my granddaughters’ weddings, or met any of my four great-grandchildren. Life is the most precious thing there is, Benjamin, so you tell Annie that, from one widow to another. You can’t keep your memories alive if your heart isn’t pumping oxygen to your brain. You tell Annie McGuigan I said the best tribute she can grant her husband is never to give up on her own life.”

  Ben hugged his mother hard, suddenly realizing that her message was not really intended for Annie McGuigan at all, but rather for Benjamin Franklin Smith.

  He left at 8:37 and stopped at Rebecca’s place. It was on the way and he had plenty of time. She embraced him, not at all surprised; he showed up at each of his daughters’ homes at unpredictable times, but predictably twice a week. His grandson George, my father, who was ten at the time, had already left for school. For the next hour, while Rebecca worked at a drafting table in the next room, Ben sat on the floor playing tea party with Katie, his four-year-old granddaughter. Since he only worked afternoons these days, he often stayed all morning, and wished he could now. It would be so easy just to let this trip go; to lose himself in these visceral joys. But he would not permit himself such an escape.

  “I’ll see you two goddesses next week, and George, too, I hope,” he said as he left. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Grampy.” Katie ran up and gave him a long hug and a quick kiss on the mouth. Rebecca watched, beaming.

  At Logan Airport he popped two Valium. He’d hoped not to, but here he was, nowhere near the plane, already shaking like a wet dog on a blustery day. He walked through the X-ray machines, to the gate, and down the boarding chute.

  The cabin’s spaciousness surprised him; nothing like it looked from the outside, and remarkably different from the claustrophobic C-47 “Dakotas” he’d flown Stateside after the war. Hell, he could stand straight up and still have six inches to spare. Why hadn’t he realized that before?

  He took his seat. The 727 was barely one-third full. And the Valium was starting to work. His perceptions were still sharp, but he felt comfortably detached from them.

  A male flight attendant droned through the safety procedures. Ben, on his first commercial airline trip, listened carefully. “Should the air pressure change suddenly, an oxygen mask will drop from the overhead compartment. If you’re traveling with a small child, first place the mask over your own nose and mouth. Once your mask is operational, only then should you do the same for the child.”

  That seemed logical. The instinctive reaction for parents would have been to save their children first. But you couldn’t make sure your kids were okay unless you were still alive yourself, now could you?

  Ben listened to the rest of the instructions, relaxed. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

  And it wasn’t. Until the engine pitch increased and the Boeing began its backward roll.

  Suddenly he felt a tightness in his chest. Was this a coronary? He was a doctor, after all. Shouldn’t he have known how to tell? Yes, his father had died at fifty-eight, but his mother was still in good cardiovascular health at seventy-eight. Besides, Toby had recently given him a physical and EKG stress test, both of which had come out well. But now he felt like a grandchild had jumped on his rib cage, forcing all the air from his lungs.

  Should he get off and seek medical attention? That’s what he’d have told his patients to do. Probably heavy anxiety, he decided at last. Yes, an anxiety attack. Must be. God, how he hated airplanes.

  When the plane finally became airborne, Ben’s pain intensified. Then the Horror flashed through his mind and for a split second he was back on the Asahi Maru, that floating torture chamber. Suddenly, the carbon-dioxide-rich air inside the plane seemed cloying, his breathing became difficult. He began to gasp for air. It felt like a goddamn elephant was squatting on his chest. Instinctively, before becoming aware of it, he started to push the vision from his consciousness. He forced himself to respire evenly. But the dull pain in his chest remained.

  To distract himself, he daydreamed about his family, work, Toby, Epstein. Hell, anything pleasant at all.

  Gary and Maxine had both received medical degrees, while Rebecca had become an architect and Jan a lawyer. The girls were good in their professions, each having achieved some success. Ben recalled how, once he’d started limiting their television-viewing time, his daughters’ grades had improved markedly, and they’d all earned admittance to top colleges. Thank God.

  Gary had always worked hard, of course, yet his career had never flourished. Marge once speculated that Gary—like Ben, a gastroenterologist—had only entered the field to placate his father—he might have been temperamentally unsuited for medicine.

  Ben still believed he’d given his son every opportunity. At Marge’s urging, he’d actually taken Gary into the practice as a partner. Gary had been thrilled at the opportunity and tried to make it work. Technically speaking, Gary was a good-enough doctor, but never had what it took to succeed.

  Ben had sat his son down and tried to discuss the matter.

  “You get too emotionally involved with your cases; your objectivity is suspect,” he’d told Gary. “Worse yet, your appointments run late because you spend too much time with each patient. Keeping patients waiting is disrespectful.”

  “They don’t seem to mind.”

  “But I do. By God, we’re doctors. We can’t abide sloppiness. We have our reputation to think about.”

  “You mean your reputation. I can’t run my practice like a factory.”

  “Are you saying I do?”

  Gary backed off. “No. I just mean our styles are different. You’re a great doctor, Dad.”

  “Damn right I am.”

  Gary was his son, Ben now reminded himself—again. What the hell was wrong with him? Then he rationalized that maybe the fault wasn’t so much his own as Gary’s. After all, a parent could not make a child become responsible and effective. A father could only set an example and hope his children would follow. This all sounded fine to Ben, except for one minor problem: He didn’t believe a word of it.

  After about an hour the pain subsided. Ben fell asleep from nervous exhaustion.

  Two hours later the flight attendant tapped his shoulder. “Wake up, sir. We’ve arrived.”

  In the terminal, he picked up his rental car and a map. The teenage girl at the counter told him that he looked like her father.

  “I wish I was your father,” he answered with a wink, which got her to grin.

  But driving to the funeral home, the new sun-dazzled surroundings barely registered. His mind sought only Gary.

  Three years ago, when Marge died, the real problems began. Gary had
started to drink. Within six weeks he’d been arrested for cocaine possession. Minerva, his wife of six years, left him. He’d abandoned his medical practice, his license was suspended, and he’d gone through a series of decreasingly productive jobs. Finally, and perhaps mercifully, he’d quit working entirely. For the next two years Gary had been in and out of AA and rehabs. Even more disturbing to Ben, about eight months ago Gary had stopped asking for money, their only certain connection; they hadn’t seen each other since. Ben hated to think how his son might be supporting himself; probably dealing drugs or burglarizing homes.

  He worried that the next place he saw Gary might be the visitors’ section of a penitentiary.

  Through the left side of his windshield Ben noticed a medium-sized one-story building with a tiny sign: THE PHOENIX LIFE EXTENSION FOUNDATION. He’d never heard of it before, although he always tried to read up on organizations that claimed to promote longevity. As a doctor, he would rationalize, he needed to learn about the latest theories.

  So far, nearly every such claim had been exaggerated; many were outright frauds.

  Was this a research foundation on longevity? Maybe they tested anti-aging hormones on lab rats, or offered lifestyle modification programs to people. Or were they one of those bullshit religious—or cryonics—cults?

  Ben remembered his discussion about cryonics with Epstein back in 1971, but hadn’t heard much about it since. Apparently the idea had never really caught on.

  He did recall reading about one cryonics facility in California. The article noted that about a dozen people had paid between $8,000 and $24,000 each to have themselves frozen after death in hope of being revived, cured, and restored to youth decades or even centuries later. It was eventually discovered that the owner had neglected the bodies, allowing them to thaw and rot. There remained some question as to whether the fraud was preplanned or forced by financial circumstance.

  Ben hoped this place wasn’t another one of those cryonics scam outfits, and made a mental note to call when he returned to Boston.

  He pulled into the parking lot of the Saint Francis Funeral Home on Camelback Road and walked inside, wondering if he would recognize anyone. Maybe even Carl Epstein; Ben hadn’t heard from him for the better part of a year.

  Throughout their adult lives, Ben and Mack had exchanged letters, cards, and photographs of their families, and had often spoken by telephone. But he’d never met any of his children or friends, and hadn’t seen Mack or Annie since they’d flown to Boston for Marge’s funeral.

  Because the McGuigans were Catholic, Ben had anticipated the open casket. Mack hadn’t changed much—except now he was dead, of course. Ben laughed nervously under his breath.

  Then came sorrow and the hint of tears and, less noticeably, perhaps because it was so devastating, the fear… of his own death. The end of things for all time? Although the man had been thirteen years older than he, his strongest impression remained of Mack as the heroic young ensign.

  Ben knew there wasn’t supposed to be as much sadness when an old person died. Old people died; that was what they did. Most others barely noticed the demise of a seventy-year-old man in their midst, except maybe when “the deceased” happened to have been famous. Even then it was quite unlike the intense bereavement experienced when a child or young adult met an untimely death. But to other old men and women, all deaths were untimely. When an ordinary seventy-year-old man like Mack passed away, you could be damn sure his surviving contemporaries paid heed to the passage.

  Today’s was an elderly crowd with only a smattering of younger folks. The room was nearly full: almost a hundred people, most seated in pews, while perhaps a dozen filed past the casket. Some mourners knelt in front of it for a minute or so; a few genuflected somberly, as Ben waited in line with these kindred others to voice his farewell.

  He saw Mack’s widow dressed in black, seated with family in a special row off to the side. Annie looked at him vacantly. She appeared frail and dazed; he wasn’t sure whether she’d recognized him at all. Her expression reminded him of Alice’s grief and confusion following his father’s death. As he waited, he tried to reconstruct the message his mother had imparted: Take it from someone who’s been there; the best tribute you can grant Mack is never to give up on your own life. He hoped to give comfort, too, but realized such heartache was impossible to soothe; Annie would never be the same. She’d lost a piece of herself, and humans did not spontaneously regenerate.

  Then he looked around, searching for familiar faces. His eyes caught a group in the seventh and eighth rows, fourteen men whose posture and body language suggested a cohesive unit, not unlike a Boy Scout troop at a symphony; even without their uniforms it was no great feat to discern such a group. He had not seen these men in thirty-seven years, yet once he understood they were together, he recognized most of them; he was certain of it. He nodded, and many seemed to return the greeting. As a wave of memories rushed over him, he felt lightheaded again. The room spun and his knees buckled. He collapsed onto the threadbare carpet.

  The Horror returns; suddenly it is 1943 again.

  Ben finds himself back in that crawl space on the Japanese troop-carrier-turned-POW ship, reliving it all: his inability to move, squashed into a lump, the ceiling chicken wire bearing down on his back. The bodies of his sick and dying shipmates locking him into place. The cries and whimpers, the smell like a fist down his throat. And the dread.

  Sensing the progress of the ship as it cuts through the whitecaps, he huddles there wondering how his parents will feel if he never makes it home. He imagines friends he left behind and things he’d hoped to do. And mostly he wonders about Marge. How long will she mourn? What kind of man will she marry? How clearly and how often will she remember him?

  Since he no longer holds power over his circumstances, he decides to focus on the only thing he still controls: his attitude. He’ll apply his mind, salvage whatever he can from the only life God will ever give him. He knows he must be strong. If he ever gets off this boat alive, he’ll force himself, through sheer will, not to be bitter. In fact he’ll never even think about this ordeal once it’s over. He’ll live his life in the present and future without dwelling on the past.

  This thought seems to make him stronger. It will help him endure the hell which on this day has barely begun. No amount of suffering can make Ben want to die. As long as there is any hope, he will cherish and cling to life like a miser guarding his gold.

  Ben will survive by placing the hellish voyage in a separate compartment and locking it, apart from his conscious mind. A few fleeting images will escape over the next thirty-nine years, but he will mostly succeed in maintaining their confinement.

  Ben opened his eyes. Several people hovered over him. A disembodied hand offered a paper cup of water. He drank and felt better. Had it only been a dream? he wondered. No, a flashback. God, a repressed trauma, resurfacing.

  The sight of these fellow survivors had suddenly shattered his carefully constructed prison. Now he understood. That suffocating subterranean chamber, that floating crypt, was where his loathing of cramped spaces began, and his need for control, and the fear of flying. On that boat, with that resolution. And something far worse; something evil that overpowered his rational mind, had started there, too.

  His head hurt where he’d bumped it, but he assured everyone he was fine.

  Then he rode a limousine to the McGuigans’ church with six of his shipmates, and swapped stories about Mack and Epstein and the Navy and the war. One of the men told Ben that Epstein had become very sick about a year ago, and that no one had heard from him since. “Probably died alone,” he speculated. “Don’t think he had any family at all.”

  “He didn’t,” Ben said sadly, wondering for a moment about the point of human existence. What good had it done to save Epstein’s life, or his own, or anyone’s, if they were all going to die anyway?

  Then he reconsidered, deciding: All the good in the world! Epstein had believed in no heaven and no
God, yet he’d been a moral man, a great educator, a compassionate doctor whose life’s work helped others. And none of it would have been possible had he drowned that day in 1943. Didn’t every good deed tip into another like an endless series of dominoes? If he had indeed saved Epstein’s life, surely he must have saved many others with it.

  The men exchanged addresses, promising to keep in touch, and for the moment intending to. Few actually would; most would feel more comfortable keeping their memories at arm’s length.

  After the interment service ended, Ben drove to the airport, returned the rental car, bought another one-way ticket, and boarded the plane for home.

  At first his heart raced and he began to hyperventilate. But this time he understood why. He forced himself to relax, breathing steadily and slowly.

  Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

  Within fifteen minutes his pulse returned to normal. It was almost comfortable to fly; his fears and anxiety had nearly disappeared. A fresh thought crossed his mind, something about the oxygen masks on the airplane. He fell asleep thinking about Gary and the guilt that had suffocated them both for thirty-five years.

  October 30, 1982

  By the time the plane landed, Ben knew what to do.

  He realized that he’d visited each of his daughters’ homes hundreds of times, yet had never been inside Gary’s apartment. At 4:02 A.M. he rang the doorbell in the building vestibule.

  “Who is it?” Gary answered. It was only three words but the tone suggested a few more. Who in the hell is it? was what Ben heard.

  Ben shuddered, nervous but determined. “It’s me, son. I need to talk to you.”

  Gary paused a second or two, then buzzed him in. Ben took the elevator to the third floor and saw his son, dressed in blue jeans and a paint-smeared plaid shirt, waiting in the doorway. Was Gary already awake? Or still up from last night?