Whose Waves These Are

by Amanda Dykes

  It’s Arthur. Their old code, the one he used to flash across the bay to signal that one man, Arthur, was trying to get the attention of the twins. Relief undoes Robert’s muscles, and he realizes how stiffly he’s been standing.

  Arthur says something to the officer. The man gives a nod, and Arthur flashes: BOARD.

  The Savvy Mae advances, tying up to the destroyer. A rope ladder comes over to Robert. He grips it, swings his body toward it, and in his haste, does not check the integrity of the ropes. A wave has slapped the ladder, and it’s slippery. He falls but grabs the ladder and climbs, soggy but thankful no one appears to have witnessed his fall.

  On deck, only Arthur awaits him. His face is a mix of joy and dread. He hesitates, different in his uniform, but breaks right past its formality and grips Robert with both arms. It’s the embrace of a brother. And the embrace of grief. His green eyes are haunted—whether from war or whatever he’s about to say, Robert cannot tell. He is changed. It’s been nearly a year since Arthur got on that train at Machias . . . but it’s been a lifetime, too.

  A figure comes around the corner, and Arthur is quick to salute in the man’s presence.

  Robert does the same. He shouldn’t, being a civilian, but something comes alive in him. All the pages he’s read from the Bluejackets’ Manual, all the knowledge he stored up for someday. He just never expected “someday” to come this way.

  “As you were,” the man says.

  The gold of his insignia declares him chief petty officer. He gives them both an even assessment.

  “Bliss?” He furrows his brow at Robert, looking him head to toe. Registering, no doubt, the drenched state of his entire being.

  But he chooses not to acknowledge that, instead asks, “Where’d you get civvies?”

  Robert shoots Arthur a look. Navy men did not carry civilian clothes with them. “I . . .” He clears his throat.

  The man raises a brow. Robert has not used the proper form of address. This is not going well.

  He summons to mind those yellowed pages of the Bluejackets’ Manual.

  “Sir. Permission to explain, sir.”

  “What happened to your face, Bliss?”

  Robert’s mouth hangs open, searching for an answer. He knows he isn’t generally considered as much of a “looker” as his brother, but . . .

  The officer steps closer. “Remarkable. Not a trace of your injury.” He shakes his head in wonder. “Glad to see it. Glad to see you above deck. Take your constitutional.” He gestures toward the deck, indicating Robert should continue walking. “Take ten, if you like. From what they told me, I feared you might not see the light of day again.” He pumps Robert’s hand. “Here’s to doctors being wrong, eh?”

  Arthur hangs his head. And Robert understands.

  The officer’s voice suddenly sounds distant, as if he’s in a tin can somewhere faraway. Talking about how the ship’s boilers are being repaired and they’ll be out of this forsaken stall by day after tomorrow, if they’re lucky. Headed home. How that wave got them good, but they’d have victory yet. “You’re proof of that, Bliss.”

  Robert presses his eyes shut, opens them to see the officer watching him.

  “Sir,” he says at last, “I need to see my brother.”

  It’s not eloquent. It’s not even an explanation. But the man hasn’t gotten to his rank without sharp wit and quick thinking. Robert, trying to summon more coherent words from the fog that’s filling him, sees the man look questioningly at Arthur, who nods, points overboard to Robert’s boat, and finally says, “Sir, Bliss is still . . . below deck. This is his brother, sir.”

  The man narrows his eyes. “Is that right?”

  Robert feels it—a thousand weights balancing on this thin thread of a moment, ready to snap. A civilian shouldn’t be on deck, shouldn’t even have known where the ship was. He’s so close. He can’t be this close and not see his brother. He’s about ready to burst past them all, charge below deck. But something tells him to Scale it back, son.

  “Yes, sir,” Arthur says. He’s quiet, but he stands tall. Standing by what he’s done.

  Seconds crawl by. The ship’s bell tolls in two pairs—it’s six o’clock. Eighteen hundred hours, Robert corrects himself. And the officer finally breaks his iron stare, shifting into a feigned informality. “A wonder, that.”

  “Sir?”

  “For Bliss’s . . . twin”—he looks to Robert for confirmation, and Robert’s mouth goes grim—“to find us way out here in the blue by chance.” He’s looking at Arthur again. “Well, I guess we’ve all seen a wonder or two in this war. Best get down to the infirmary, Second Bliss. We do take on sailors in distress from time to time. And you”—he looks at the puddle of sea water at Robert’s feet—“are that. Baxter? Escort this man.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Arthur and Robert speak in unison.

  Arthur leads Robert through a maze of narrow passages. A crypt of walls groaning with the clink and hiss of machinery and ship movement. Shouts echo from some deck within.

  “Try again!” a voice barks. The boiler problem apparently still unsolved.

  “Aye, aye, sir!” The younger voice sounds weary, determined.

  Arthur leads on. The ceilings are low, or maybe it’s just the space going out of the world as Robert draws near to his brother for what, he now understands, will be the last time.

  They pass a sailor coming up from a narrow stairwell, a dark abyss below. “Sleeping quarters,” Arthur says, and Robert squints to see canvas cots stacked bunk-style, four high and what seems like a thousand deep.

  At the end of the passage, they reach an arched door with a porthole window. Faint light glows inside.

  “The sick bay,” Arthur says. He removes his round white cap, and Robert does likewise with his news cap. Through the window, a man holds up a finger, telling them to wait. He disappears from view, moving the stethoscope to ears as he does.

  Arthur looks over his shoulder, and seeing the passage is empty, he speaks on. “It’s not good, Robert.”

  “Tell me.”

  Arthur takes a deep breath. “It seemed the ocean woke up the second the war died down. We got a distress signal—a Polish ship, bound for New York. They’d been taken in by the storm, started to list soon after. We were the closest to them, got there as fast as we could and started to search. Thought we had every survivor, when Roy spotted one more lifeboat. Two children inside, lying so still we didn’t know if they’d lived. And their mother, hollering. We couldn’t hear a thing—the storm was still raging—but her face . . .” Arthur’s voice cracks. He cups his face, runs his hand down the length of it.

  “Men went down on bowlines to get the children. But our ship was creating waves, tossing her boat. We threw the rope to her, but the moment she touched it, a swell came up under her, tossed her into the sea she’d been fighting all night.

  “She didn’t come up at first. It was dark, and when we finally got a light shining down from on deck, there was Roy—already down there. He’d rappelled down and was reaching for her where she was trying to grip the hull of the lifeboat. She couldn’t catch hold—not of the boat and not of him—so he lowered himself ’til he was in the water, reaching. I was sure she was going to give up. But he shouted something to her, and somehow she mustered the strength to grip his arm.”

  Images flashed across his mind. A hand reaching in the cold. Desperate to save a life. Only instead of him looking down this time, it was Roy. He can hear his brother’s voice in his memory—“The view must be better from up there. . . .”

  Arthur continues. “He secured the rope around her, and we pulled them up. He wouldn’t get on board until she was safe. We got her over and turned to pull Roy up, but . . .”

  There is a sick, desperate weight in the silence.

  “A rogue wave moved the whole ship, came over the top of it hard. Slammed him so hard we felt the impact.”

  Robert winces, the noise of flesh-on-steel penetrating the scene so alive in his mi
nd.

  “I don’t know how . . . but he held on. We pulled him up and got him to the sick bay.”

  In the sea of pictures, Robert’s mind reaches for something solid, some piece of logic to hang onto, to thread through all the horror. He clears his throat for the words to get past the ache. “When was this?”

  “Three nights ago.”

  Three nights. Why was Roy still here, if things were so bad? Why hadn’t they gotten him to a hospital ship, or a hospital?

  Maybe sensing the question, Arthur explains, “The survivors spent the night in the engine room. Sailors offered to give up their beds for them, but the engine room was warmer. A passenger ship came for them the next day. Roy was coming to by then. Doing good. He had a concussion, Doc said, and some scrapes, a gash or two, but with us headed to port, we expected to have him there in plenty of time if he needed more attention.”

  “But . . . ?”

  “But we took on more water than we realized during that rescue. The wave flooded the boilers. It keeps looking like they’ve got it fixed, and then keeps on failing. Roy . . . he started showing signs of infection. Took on quick, and it’s gone deep. Doc says he’s never seen it this bad.”

  Robert braces himself. He knows there is more.

  His friend’s green eyes, rimmed in red, look at him straight on. “He says . . . he won’t see the night.”

  It’s a gut blow.

  The door creaks open, and a doctor ushers them in.

  “You’ve told him?” The doc’s voice is grave, directed toward Arthur. He must have been in on the plan to summon Robert.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The older man releases a slow breath through his nose, shaking his head. “It won’t be long now. I’m sorry, son.” He puts a hand to Robert’s shoulder. “I’ll give you some time.”

  They weave past three open beds. In the back corner, there is a man, face swollen and discolored, nearly beyond recognition even to the man who sees its likeness in the mirror every day. His chest barely rises, barely falls.

  Roy attempts a deep breath, eyes opening. They roam around the space above him, not seeing.

  When Robert speaks, his voice is gruff. “I’ll get him home,” he says. “Or to Bangor, Machias. Or . . . or . . .” He reaches for a map in his mind—whatever place is closest. “Halifax. Or home.” He hears himself talking in circles. “He’ll do better there. I’ll get him help. He’ll see his son . . . and . . .”

  “It won’t be long,” Arthur repeats the doctor’s words, turning his hat in his hands. “I’m sorry.”

  Arthur leaves, and Robert kneels, looking at his brother’s swollen face, the way his brows crease even in his sleep.

  Robert doesn’t know how to fix this. He grips his brother’s limp hand, as if to give it strength. And he bows his head.

  Oh, God . . .

  They are the only words he has.

  There’s a makeshift bedstand, crates stacked up, and on it rests a Bible and a copy of Rob Roy. Armed Services Edition. Condensed for Wartime Reading. A picture of Jenny and William is pinned to the wall. She’s beaming in that way she saves just for Roy.

  “Knew they couldn’t keep you out of the navy,” Roy mutters. His lip is split, but he pulls it into as much of a grin as he can. “Leave it to my brother to get on board a ship with security tighter than a vault.”

  “It was nothin’,” Robert says. “Piece of cake.”

  “Mmmm . . . cake.” Roy winces. “I was really looking forward to that when I got home. Guess that’s not going to happen.”

  There’s a furious fight simmering in Robert. He restrains it, measures out his words. “You’ll get all the cake you want. When you get home.”

  Roy’s eyes are steady on him now. And there’s this wisdom in them, like he knows things Robert doesn’t, like he’s closer to eternity than Robert is or ever has been, and it’s gathering a peace around him stronger than the storm clouds gathering outside.

  “It’s okay, brother,” Roy says.

  It’s not okay.

  “This is why I came.”

  This is why Robert was supposed to come instead.

  “Just . . . tell William . . . when it’s time, tell him I love him. And it’s gonna be okay. Life is big. And God is bigger.”

  Silence.

  “And Jenny . . .” He closes his eyes. “Give her this.” He pulls his far hand up, opens it to reveal a scrap of paper. The rope burn on his palm is an angry red, proclaiming courage. “She’ll know.”

  Robert takes it. “I will,” he says. “You’re a good man, Roy.”

  They long remain this way, in silence, and Robert wonders if Roy’s gone back to sleep. But then he whispers, “Bob.”

  Robert’s chest burns. The only person in the wide universe who calls him that is speaking it with his last ounces of strength. Roy’s voice is breathless, fading. “Don’t get stuck in the dark, Bob.”

  It doesn’t make sense. Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s saying. But right now Robert would promise his twin anything.

  “I won’t,” he promises, shaking his head.

  “There’s a whole lotta light,” Roy says. “Go there instead.”

  “I will.”

  Roy’s slipping. His breaths are too far apart. Erratic. Robert quickly spins out words, willing his brother back from where he’s going, pulling with his whole soul on this invisible rope tethered to his brother. “You gotta come back and show me,” he says. He swipes the heat from his eyes. “Come home with me.”

  But his brother’s hand becomes heavy and still inside of his own.

  He has gone home.

  And the world has gone dark.

  Robert doesn’t know how long he stays there. He’s slipped into a world without time, vaguely aware of the doctor coming in, checking for pulse, uttering some final words. Time of death. Some of the men come in, hands crossed in front of them, heads bowed in respect, and Robert senses they have work to do. He steps back, and they begin to stitch canvas around his brother’s body.

  Grave words are uttered about bringing him home. He presses his eyes closed and sees his brother, ten years old and all sunburned, pirate patch over one eye. Jenny stands watch as he points out over the water from Rogue’s Clearing with a stick he’d been wielding as a cutlass. “Out there,” he’d said, with all the conviction of someone seven times his age. “That’s where to bury me when I die. Lay me to rest with Granddad and the good soldiers out there.”

  But Granddad had perished during months at sea in the Great War—when water burial was the only option. Roy . . . he could bring him home to Jenny. But he pictures her as a girl, nodding with gravity at Roy’s boyhood burial wishes.

  In the numbness he steps in to help. He can’t stand by as strangers attend to him, family though they are to Roy. His words come out all jumbled, a request for water burial. They all look askance at him. This close to home, it makes little sense to them.

  But they hadn’t known that ten-year-old pirate. “It’s what he wanted,” Robert says. One by one, they nod, drawing themselves up to complete this task with all the honor they can offer this fallen hero.

  At some point in the haze, when the work is done and voices drone low around him, he numbly pulls the pin from the wall, grabs the picture of Jenny. The book on the bedstand, where Roy’s wedding band lay, too. The Bible, the paper Roy entrusted to him. He follows Arthur back out through catacomb passages and above deck where even the dying sunlight is too harsh.

  Arthur pauses, placing a hand on Robert’s shoulder. “I-I’m sorry, Bob.”

  It is only a few words, but Robert doesn’t miss that Arthur has called him by Roy’s name for him. It means the world, in just one word.

  Sailors still from their work as they pass, pulling off their caps. The chief petty officer is there to lower Robert back to the Savvy Mae. It’s a job far below his station, Robert knows, and he feels the reverent respect in it for his brother.

  “Stay out there ’til sundown,” the chief p
etty officer tells him in parting. “Your brother was a fine sailor. A good man. We’ll see to it he has the burial he deserves.”

  And so, out there in the middle of nowhere, with Robert half a mile out from the ship, white-uniformed sailors line up against a sky, red-blazing into night.

  Robert cannot hear, but he knows what’s being said. A prayer. A benediction. Capped heads bowed, sailors’ feet wide in strong stance, as words are spoken over his brother’s body.

  Robert speaks them, too.

  “‘The Lord bless thee and keep thee.’” He thinks of Roy’s grin. Those blasted dimples. An untethering starts in him. A severing of soul he is not—could not ever be—prepared for.

  “‘The Lord make His face to shine upon thee.’” He remembers Roy’s rasped words. “There’s a whole lotta light . . .”

  “‘The Lord—’” His voice cracks, and an unearthly noise comes in its place. He presses his eyes closed and wetness courses down his face, tears gone off to an ocean too big.

  “‘The Lord give thee peace. Amen.’”

  A solemn order echoes over the waters, and the men line up to salute volley one gunshot into the air. Then another . . . and a last. A wordless proclamation soaring over the sea.

  Robert knows that if he could take flight, too, view the scene in aerial, he would see the sailors and officers lined up, row upon row. Saluting—a stance of fiercest heartache schooled into firmest respect.

  He would see himself there on his humble lobster boat, facing them, an ocean between them, saluting too. Numb to the throbbing of his elbow. Trembling.

  And in a split-second’s time that will be burned in Robert’s mind forever, his brother, wrapped with care, slips down into the deep.

  The waves swallow up the boat maker . . . and all is still.

  eighteen

  How did I get here? Robert pauses outside the picket fence around Jenny’s yellow house. The journey back to Maine was a blur, at best. And then he’s spent most of the day wandering the headlands of the bold coast north of Ansel, trying to find what to say to Ma, to Jenny. He hadn’t gone straight home to them. Maybe it was wrong, but he’d asked Arthur to hold back his telegram a day. He couldn’t fathom the weight of the truth emblazoned onto paper, couldn’t let rigid type on a cold white backdrop deliver this news. So he’d navigated back to a nation awash in joy, newly at peace, to bring the news himself.