Thirteen Ways to Water

by Bruce Holland Rogers

  No more conceptual leaps. No more flying from breakthrough to breakthrough.

  I think of men on the rail of a sinking tanker. I think of the arctic explorer stranded on the ice.

  I think of deserters. What are they afraid of?

  Maybe they are afraid of the wrong thing.

  The dead bear witness.

  From the bottom of the sea, dead sailors wave their arms.

  It’s not that Richardson has gone dull. If anything, his mind has more edge than before. But we’ll be arguing some point of memory structures and I’ll happen to catch his eye and see…

  There’s someone else looking back.

  “Philip Richardson,” he likes to remind me, “is dead.”

  I’d be a damned fool to believe him.

  There are a lot of damned fools in the world.

  I still hear the tick, tick, tick of my heart, the one, one, one that counts down to zero. I still believe that there’s a chance, just a chance, that I can find a door into eternity. When Richardson and I were at our best, there were days when I thought I had glimpsed that door.

  But I don’t work with the same focus I once did. Whatever I’m doing, there’s something that flutters at the edge of my consciousness.

  When, at quiet moments, I hear the blood rush in my ears, when I feel my heart thumping in my chest, it’s not just the numbers counting down that I think of. It’s also the numbers already counted. Bierley, gone. Richardson…different.

  I am fifty-nine years old.

  What if I succeed? What if I reside in TOS, eternal, separate, watching the living die and die and die?

  Often, I think of the man in the lifeboat. He has rowed himself to safety, beyond the burning oil, beyond the fire’s reach. Through the smoke and flames, he can see the others waving to him, holding out their arms. Do they think he’d row back across the fire in a wooden boat?

  Crowded at the rail, the sailors wave and sink. Each drowns alone, but they sink together.

  There’s no comfort in a common grave, I tell myself.

  But on days when I can’t think clearly, I sit and look at my hands, the hands of a man who is rowing himself to safety, and I know that the sea around him is wide. And black. And cold. And empty.