Colin Henderson was swept off the deck of the Thisbe on the night of the fourteenth of January 1966. There was a fearful storm which had come on suddenly, and the trawler was working hard to beat her way into the safety of the Menai Strait. Henderson went on deck to secure a shifting crate, when an extraordinarily heavy wave collapsed across the ship. He went overboard in a welter of white and green foam.
Weighted down by his boots and his waterproof jacket, Henderson was kept up on the surface of the sea for only a matter of seconds. He saw the lights of the Thisbe for a moment before she wallowed and vanished behind the swell. The sky was black. There was no moon. A torrent of spray whipped from the wave tops beat into his face, and he was hurled upwards on the peak of a huge sea before tumbling into a cavernous trough. Then he went under. One final cry for help was checked and swallowed in water. The weight of his clothes and the might of the storm pressed him downwards and he was engulfed.
It was strangely quiet. Henderson watched his hands working in front of his face. They gestured slowly, the fingers opening and closing. They seemed very white with short clean nails. There was darkness shot through with streams of bubbles. It was green and black and silver, with his hands working. A noise of whistling had begun. His neck was hurting. He was aware of being upright and was grateful for this. His legs were lost in darkness, it was only black below him, there was no marbling of silver. The whistling became a long sustained shriek. The light faded. Still his hands, like someone else’s hands, continued to move so slowly. The noise grew. A chaos of bubbles blew into his face and then it was green and still. Two things happened together as Henderson died: the shrieking stopped, for a blissful second there was silence, and a marvelous silver blue bubble as big as a cauliflower sprouted from his mouth. For an instant it was joined there. His chest was clenched with pain. Then the bubble was plucked from his lips. It swam away and disappeared in the green distance. He was a dead man.
It was midnight. The storm raged on the surface and the Thisbe crept towards shelter. Henderson moved downwards through the darkness. He spun gracefully with the current so that his arms were raised above his head while his legs were moved in a gentle dance. Sometimes he turned head over heels and continued like this, downwards and eastward. A bubble broke from his mouth. It caught in his yellow jacket for a long time and stayed there like a silver pocket watch. As Henderson turned again, the bubble moved on and was trapped in his hair. The bubble spun upwards and shrunk to nothing. His eyes remained open. They did not stare. They were fixed in a level gaze, one eyebrow lifted and held by the frown on his forehead. Henderson’s mouth opened and closed as though he were singing. Then a hand would move to his face and brush away an imaginary cobweb. It was peaceful, after the storm on ship. The silence was broken by the mumbling of deep water.
When dawn broke, Henderson surfaced at the mouth of Malltraeth Bay. He rose into a gray daylight with his face turned up. The storm had become a heavy driving sea into land. The dead man rolled in the waves. His hair stuck and shivered like the seaweed in a tidal pool. His mouth ran with water. There was salt in his eyebrows and eyelashes. If he could see, there was the level land of Anglesey and to the southeast the mountains rose behind Caernarfon. It became lighter and Henderson bobbed through a gentle sea. His heels in the heavy boots touched land while his stiffening fingers clutched at the movement of weed. There was a cormorant fishing. It beat its way out of the water when the yellow jacket creaked. A cloud of gulls fell into the waves and looked at the man. One bird jabbed its beak once into Henderson’s beard and flapped away, screaming. The gulls moved off to the sands of Malltraeth.
All morning he swam slowly in the shallow water. It was warmer and there was a clear sky. He turned over when the swell came, his face pressed into the green clean sea. Into the bay as the tide pushed on. There was rubbery weed before the bottom cleared to a firm hard sand. The tide stopped and waited. The sea held. The man lay on the sand with his face to the sky. When the sea retreated, Henderson remained, like a man asleep. He lay on the sands in his yellow jacket and boots, with his hair drying in salt sunlight. White lips. Seaweed skin. Empty eyes. A throat full of brine. A dead man.
Crabs collected at his fingernails and tested the flesh. It was very soft. They began to feed there. The heron came and was afraid. Curlews fled with a skyful of sad songs. Only a pair of crows stopped to see and soon they saw it was safe to stay. Their heavy beaks broke open the skin on Henderson’s cheeks.
But a man came, attracted by the yellow jacket. And soon they carried Henderson from the estuary.
It was the fifteenth of January 1966. A woman arrived to see the dead man. They had cleaned his face and put powder where the crows had been. Henderson had closed his eyes and his mouth. They asked the woman: “Is this man Colin Henderson, of the Thisbe?”
“Yes,” she said, and she touched her husband’s lips.
THE FOURTH BELL
by Daniel Braum
The fourth bell’s pitted metal left me no doubt the crusty old thing had to be from a shipwreck. It wasn’t only larger than the dozens of other bells on Terrence’s work table, it was categorically different.
I had returned from the hospital last night to find Terrence had moved his work area, and Gerald’s massive ten-foot square tank, right smack into the middle of our living room and I still wasn’t used to it. Early evening sun streamed through the ceiling-to-floor glass windows, turning the views of our sprawling property and the Long Island Sound beyond into giant rectangles of dirty, orange-tinted light. The room was full of wonderful things from the life Peter, Terrence, and I had built. Without Peter, the way the cavernous space dwarfed everything only added to the oppressive weight on my chest. Terrence was my best remaining friend on this earth; my brother, my partner, my creative soul mate, my chosen family, and I knew he was all torn up inside just like I was, but nothing I did or said seemed to reach him.
Gerald floated motionless in the center of his tank. His eight sucker-covered arms dangled in what I took to be boredom and resignation but his eyes were alive and watching us. Flags, a Ouija board, waterproof maps, chess pieces, and children’s blocks with letters on them littered the bottom of the tank. Terrence picked up one of the smaller bells and held it to the glass. Gerald remained motionless. I know Terrence wanted a response but the only sign Gerald was even alive was the minute ripple traveling along the thin fin-like skin on the contour of his pink-gray head.
Terrance slammed the bell on the table and huffed through the pages of one of the oversized old books held aloft in front of him by one of the mechanical arms from our last project.
“I don’t think he likes you very much,” I said as diplomatically as I could.
“Of course it does,” Terrence said without looking up. “Doesn’t matter anyway.”
I hated his refusal to use Gerald’s name.
The sunlight cast August’s glow on the miasma of mechanical parts, tools, and equipment that covered every available inch of tabletop space in the room. A dust-filled ray illuminated the nest of spider-like mechanical legs, wire-laden circuit boards, and other disassembled pieces and remains of our last project that surrounded the tarnished World War II-era dive bell languishing in the far corner.
Gerald gracefully brought his arms together and jetted to the bottom of the tank. He gathered the letter blocks and brought them to the side of the tank nearest Terrence. I marveled at how adeptly he tumbled them over and over with the tips of those four-foot tentacles. He could turn any color or squeeze into the tiniest space, though this usually meant he was all fed up. He glanced at me, then put the last block into place; his tablespoon-sized eyes saying everything I needed to know, though they didn’t need to.
D-I-E T-E-R-R-E-N-C-E, the blocks spelled.
He waited for Terrence to look, then quickly changed them to read “Hi Terrence.”
If Terrence noticed, or even cared, he didn’t show it. He struck at the seven bells he had arranged in front of him with a thin c
opper rod. I expected their sounds to be sharp or at least cleaner, but each tinny ring sounded as if it had traveled from faraway through some muffling impediment. Peter’s face sprang into my mind. His tortured face, sucking in those last gurgling breaths. Closing my eyes never helped.
Terrence fervently struck the bells again in a different sequence.
I hated that he had moved Peter’s worktable into the living room and claimed it as his own. The table had always been covered with the latest schematics and plans the three of us were working on. The old books and all the bells were new additions. The largest bell, the old crusty one, sat fourth in Terrence’s current lineup and felt like even more of an intrusion than the rest of the miasma.
Terrence brushed his sandy hair out of his eyes and squinted as the mechanical arm moved the book he was trying to read closer to him. Despite the beginnings of worry lines and creases his face was still boyish and had never lost that rascal charm. After the crash, he’d taken to wearing vintage rock T-shirts and old jeans. He had been planning to dress like that at Peter’s funeral until I informed him in no uncertain terms that I’d drag my ass out of the hospital if I had to and dress him properly myself, but there never was a funeral. At least not one that we were told about. Peter’s “long-lost” family had come out of the woodwork upon the news of his death and promptly set about trying to lay claim to his share of our fortunes. There was no way we were going to let those vultures get their hands on anything of Peter’s. Cutting us out of the funeral and not even letting us know where they had buried him was their way of punishing us.
Terrence claimed his newfound wardrobe was his version of Einstein’s same-black-suit-everyday thing. I knew it really had to do with a yearning for when the three of us were young and together and everything was easy. Today he had on a Rolling Stones shirt. Peter had loved the Stones. Terrence couldn’t even name four songs by them.
“You know, it wouldn’t hurt to try being— ”
“It’s not a pet,” Terrence said. “Pampering isn’t going to help figure out which seven bells I need.”
“Need for what?”
“To make it right for…”
He knew if he said “make it right for Peter” one more time I was going to slap him.
Peter was gone. Terrence hadn’t been right there, forced to watch his pained last moments of life, unable to help like I had. Maybe if he started being nicer to those of us left in his life it would help, otherwise he wasn’t making anything right.
Gerald moved the querent around on the Ouija board and changed the blocks so they spelled incomprehensible phrases.
“What are you doing, Gerald?” I asked.
He ignored me.
“See what I mean,” Terrence said. “At least when Peter was spacing out we still knew he was contributing to the plan.”
The plan. It was always all about a plan for him. Ever since we were kids Terrence was at his happiest when embroiled in some plan. Peter, Terrence, and I, the three little geniuses. All grown up, out of school, and in this great place of our own where we made one plan after another happen. Without Peter we weren’t the same, nothing was. I know that’s the way things go. Everyone dies in the end. Everything changes but Terrence wasn’t right.
He worried me. And he hadn’t even been the one who watched Peter, trapped upside down in the car, in that ditch. Gasping for air. Drowning out in the middle of the desert. I hated this was how I remembered him.
Gerald tapped the letter block S against the glass. I knew it was his shorthand for “smile.”
Terrence scowled.
“I know you don’t want to hear it but think about it, maybe if you were nicer he might just decide to help,” I said.
“Nicer doesn’t matter,” Terrence muttered. “I don’t even think he knows.”
I didn’t know what Terrence was after with his books and bells. But if Gerald didn’t know I had no doubt he could figure it out, one way or another.
No one could replace Peter. Not even someone as special as Gerald. With Gerald I thought we would be three again and that maybe things would sort of feel the same. He could pick the exact scores of cricket matches in advance and had something to do with a new project Peter had been dreaming up right before the crash. Peter’s Australian contact had no shame and demanded an exorbitant sum to part with Gerald but money was never an issue. We had all the money we could ever want but no amount could give Terrence and me what we wanted most.
I last saw Peter in New Mexico. I try to remember how happy he was that night, out in that desert canyon testing our latest project. He had pinpointed the spot as having the largest concentration of Gila monsters and we had carefully driven off the road and found our way in. From the front seats of our rented SUV we watched our rover walk on its mechanical legs, maneuvering around the bases of tall cactus and granite outcroppings of rock like one of those robots fire departments sent into burning buildings. The rover’s top was loaded with antennae and dishes pointing up that detected cosmic rays, its underbelly crammed full of temperature sensors to track the fat nocturnal lizards Peter had come for. Night air tinged with the clean scent of desert brush and dry earth gently blew through the open windows.
A smile bloomed on Peter’s face as he watched the data come up on his tablet. He loved the mandala patterns it formed. Seeing him happy was a rare thing. Too often his face was solemn and stern. That’s when I knew he had his birthplace, Mumbai, on his mind which had been happening more and more lately; all his recent paintings depicted the faraway city in one way or another. I knew his family was out there somewhere but that was all. Any direct mention of either subject caused him to shut down.
I wanted to remember him overcome with joy, that joy particular to an inventor seeing his invention manifested for the first time. The joy as he watched the rover move over the sand and listened to the whir of the motors in its joints and grind of metal on metal as antennae and sensors rotated.
“It’s working,” I said. “It’s locked onto some star now for sure.”
“It tracks all celestial objects not just the stars,” Peter said. “I can’t believe how many lizards it detected already.”
Peter hunted in the back seat for his watercolor pad and aquarelle pencils. He set his tablet on the dash, propped the pad on the steering wheel. Instead of sketching he began writing in his distinctive flowery handwriting. I glanced at the pad and saw something about cricket match scores, and a phone number next to the words “Darwin Australia.” As usual he was on to something new even before what we were working on was complete.
The data coming from the rover bloomed into a mandala on Peter’s screen. The shape was a graphic representation of how the movement patterns of the nocturnal Gila monsters corresponded to all those celestial objects in the night sky, even the ones we couldn’t see with our eyes. I couldn’t see it yet but I knew there had to be an application for biology or maybe astro-science. Peter came up with the ideas, Terrence handled the lion’s share of building them, but it was my job to figure out who we could sell them to and for what.
Peter was no help. He said he had dreamed it up so he could use the shapes of the plotted data in his paintings but now he was sketching an octopus and what looked like a dive bell next to his scrawl. All his inventions ultimately were born from his desire to create art. We all loved him for that. His purity. The integrity with which he created. I worried that Terrence secretly resented him for it as well.
I noticed the breeze had ceased. Something kinetic waited in the stillness. A fat rain pellet splattered on the back of our rover as a rumble I felt in my chest punctured the night’s quiet. Before I could voice my confusion the dry earth transformed into spattering mud from the downpour that had not existed a mere second ago. The rumble became a roar. Something hit our car. A wall of water. We were in a flash flood. Foaming, roaring, spraying water lifted us and sent us careening along the canyon floor. I saw one of the rover’s mechanical legs in the maelstrom and managed to click m
y seatbelt as we spun end around end. The water took us where it pleased, knocking us against cacti and brush until we lurched to a halt against a boulder. Peter’s tablet flew into the windshield. We strained against our seatbelts. I felt the current pushing, tilting, willing us with its elemental force in the other direction. Something gave and we spun free of the boulder. Down became up. My stomach heaved. We flipped and dropped into a ditch on the side of the road with a crunch. My head hurt. The window was spider-webbed. We were upside down but all right. I looked over at Peter and we both cracked a pained laugh. Then the water poured through the windows. The way we were tilted Peter was lower than me; his hair and forehead already submerged. I struggled to break free of my belt and reach him. I tasted my own blood and the belt held me fast. Water rose to above his nose and he began to gasp for breath. The water stopped before it reached me. I waited there bleeding, trapped upside down with my drowned friend. Sometime in the night the water receded. It wasn’t until morning before someone found us.
Gerald was tapping on the glass trying to get my attention. Terrence was in the middle of speaking. I tried to banish the image of Peter’s lifeless body hanging upside down with his head underwater.
“…I just need to pin down the locations,” Terrence said. “I feel like the bells know. They call to each other.”
“Terrence. They’re bells.”
I expected rage or sarcasm for questioning him, but before me was just my friend. My sad friend wearing a T-shirt of a band he didn’t know or like. My friend who was struggling just like me.
“I don’t know how I know,” Terrence said. “I just do.”
One of the old books on the table was open to a page with a drawing of a boy reaching into a man’s pocket. Beneath it was another drawing of a hand reaching into the silhouette of a man’s head. Hand-drawn staves annotated with music notes and notations surrounded the drawings.
Death by Water Page 8