by Ash, Lauren
“Yeah. You mean the stuff hole—that’s what we called it anyway. It’s just a bunch of old garbage down there.”
“Well, I went down there nights ago. I was bored. I found some journals. I think they belonged to your mother. Anyway, Charlie … he must’ve followed me and I didn’t know.”
“Oh no.”
“He got his foot caught in an old metal mousetrap.”
“Ugh. Granddad put those in there years ago. We had a problem, but I thought we got them all.”
“You didn’t. He’s in bad shape.”
Ron rose from the cedar chair and walked along the rectangular pool edge. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll go back in the morning. I’m home now, and I’m going to bed soon. I wish you were here.”
“Me too. I hate being away from you.”
“I … I messed up. Charlie is hurt because of me. I’ve not been myself.”
“You took him in for help; you’ve done the right thing. I’m going to try to leave here as soon as I can.” He continued to stride around the pool.
“You are?”
“Yes. I’m thinking maybe tomorrow.”
“That’s good news. You could be here for our last week. I won’t get my hopes up, but … my God. You have no idea.”
“We’re very close now.” Ron hoped that was the truth. He sat back down on the cedar chair. “I just have to finish this.”
“Okay. I’ll keep it together. I can do this.”
“You can. You always could.”
Jenny huffed down the line. “We’ll see.”
“But I do need you to go visit Nana. Do you think you could do that for me?”
“We already got into this.” Her voice sounded strained.
“Please?”
“You’re really that worried about her?”
“Mom’s cut me off from information about her; there has to be some reason.”
“Call her.”
“I’ve tried. She won’t answer.”
“Fine.”
“Really.”
“I’ll go. I’ll go tomorrow. Just don’t expect much, please. If anything happens like it did last time…” her voice trailed off.
“Okay.” Ron ran his fingers through his hair. It felt grimy and smelled like smoke, even after a shower. “If you feel uncomfortable, leave, just as long as you get a look at her.”
“I’ve got to go,” she said flatly.
* * *
The little bedroom that had been allocated to Kip was cozy with little boats scattering the wallpaper and a friendly faced crescent moon in the corner.
Jenny bent over Kip, pulling the blankets up to her daughter’s chin. “Good night little one. I love you.”
“Love oo.” Kip snuggled into the covers.
Jenny placed one last kiss on her daughter’s head and left the door ajar just a whisker—Kip’s wish.
“He wants me to go see Gerry,” Jenny told Kurt as she padded back down the blue stairs.
“Who does?”
“Ron.”
He frowned. “Who’s Ron?”
“My husband.”
“Oh yeah. Him.” Kurt looked perfectly comfy sprawled on the sofa.
“I have beds. You sure you want to sleep on the couch?”
“This already feels better than my bunk. It can be pretty uninviting, especially when a hard wave kicks up. Some nights I sleep better than others. I always sleep better after a big catch.”
She tossed him another cushion for his head. “Do you need more blankets?”
“I’m just fine, thanks.”
“Anything else?” She loitered by the stairs.
Kurt gave her a long, knowing look, raising one eyebrow.
She snickered. “Good night then.”
Kurt raised the other brow, but never said a word.
The fisherman has returned, she thought.
The master bedroom, as comfortable as it was, lacked the panoramic view of the hex room, which had become her hideaway, even if the fold-out bed wasn’t as good. Jenny hopped in and propped herself up on the pillows.
“Tell me more,” she said, as she opened up to the middle of one of the spiral notebook journals.
He called again. The phone rang and rang. I wasn’t going to answer, but I did anyway. I don’t know why. I shouldn’t. I can’t help it. Hung up on me again. Sometimes the calls come daily, sometimes just once a week. I’ve had them traced, but it’s an unknown number. I’m sure it’s him. I’m sick of it. Just sick of it. I don’t even go out any more. I bought a pile of vegetables so I can pickle them to avoid going out. I spent all day preserving, cutting vegetables. I cut and I cut and I cut them.
Jenny closed the notebook. “I can’t read this crap. I’m going to have nightmares.” Immediately, she opened it back up to a different page.
He wants us to get back together. We fought, then had make-up sex. It was boring, as it always is. I wish he’d just leave me alone.
Again, she shut it quickly, keeping her finger in the page. Then opened it back up.
I just lie there and think of other things, mostly the stories in my books or that nice man at the post office.
Jenny shoved the notebook under the bed. I don’t need to know that. I really don’t, she thought. That was enough for her for the night.
* * *
“I’ve never seen one so big.” Ron stood at the very top of the concrete dry dock, gazing out into the San Diego Bay.
“She’s the biggest we could get—order went in a coupla days ago, amazed that the barge got her down here so quick.” Carl, too, stared at the black, hammer-shaped crane pointed directly at them.
“How they hell does it even float? How does it not tip over?”
“Engineering at its finest. Speaking of my finest, you ready?”
“They’re cutting the emergency release door pins now.” Ron tilted his head towards the action and Carl leaned over the top to get a look. “As soon as they’re done, we’ll flood it. The sub is manned and ready to go.”
“Happy to see her leave,” said Carl. “Ah’ll stand by up here, if you want to climb down to balcony three.”
“Sure.”
They split up and took their positions watching the sparks fly as the welders did the job.
“All right, the pins are cut. The men are out. Flood the dock,” Ron called, and Carl gave the signal to the crew in the dry dock tower.
Dirty bay water gushed in from ports around the top, slowly filling the dock and covering the sub until it was afloat.
Ron smiled. “Boy, look at that—the USS Mac Roy. The Admiral is going to be very happy. Okay!” He signaled to the divers.
In full gear, they jumped in. There was a gut-wrenching spark, a flash, and a loud ZAP—a sound so horribly unnerving that it meant only one thing.
“FUCK!” Ron yelled. “Cut the power, cut the power. There’s a live wire! Cut the power.”
“It’s down by you!” Carl yelled. “Behind you!”
Ron opened up the panel behind him and shut off every switch he saw, then immediately spun 180 degrees and dove twenty feet into the cold water, barely missing the sub.
The divers were nowhere to be seen. Ron swam towards the doors, took a big breath in, and dove down. Five feet down he felt one of them. Reaching behind the diver’s neck, he yanked the cord to inflate the man’s emergency life vest. He continued down deeper, through the dim blur of green bay water, searching for an outline of some kind. He couldn’t see anything.
Running out of air, Ron swam back to the surface and inhaled deeply again, then kicked back down, faster and even deeper. His ears ached with the pressure, but he saw a dark shape. Fumbling in the murky water, he felt the air tank up to the man’s neck and pulled the cord. Together, they floated back to the surface. Ron awkwardly swam the floating divers to a dry dock ladder.
“I need help down here,” he called. “We need to get them up, they’re not breathing.
Three marines cl
imbed down. Two took the first diver while Ron helped with the second.
“We need defibrillators. Get these tanks off.” Ron pulled one tank off and then rolled the young diver over onto his back and unzipped his wetsuit.
Someone had already started CPR on the other diver, so Ron began pumping the younger diver’s bare chest while the marine gave breaths until the AED kits were rushed over and shock pads applied. Don’t you drown, he urged. Don’t you dare drown! He shook his head at the echo of those words.
“ALL clear. ALL clear.” The warnings rang out as both divers were shocked back to life.
The first diver began to cough, but the second, who had remained in the water longer, remained lifeless. Ron pumped his muscular chest until they called again, “ALL clear.”
The diver’s chest heaved as the shock went through him, and he began to cough. Medics scrambled over and strapped the divers to gurneys escorting them off in ambulances.
Ron, kneeling there in disbelief, wondered how a man could be electrocuted just like that, and then, with just a little current, be brought back to life.
* * *
“Is scrambled okay?” Jenny added a dollop of butter to the hot pan.
“Fine.” Kurt sat at the dining table and sipped his pulpy orange juice. “I need to get back to the shop.”
“I’m hurrying. I at least owe you breakfast.”
“Can I take that picture with me?”
“Barney?” She whisked the eggs again with a fork and poured them in. “Yeah, why not. It’s not like Gerry will be back over here ever again.”
“Have you met her?”
“Yes.” Jenny frowned.
“Why the cranky tone?”
She kept her eyes focused on the eggs, pushing the soft piles around the pan with an egg flip. “She’s not well. I don’t want to get into it.”
“You already have.” Kurt downed the rest of the juice and set the glass back on the table. Then leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, waiting.
“Alzheimer’s.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. It’s sad—very sad.”
“Maybe I’ll go over there sometime.”
Jenny shook the pan and then slammed it down hard. “No! Don’t go over there.”
“But I want to now, because you said that.”
“You’re one of those types? Really?” She dished the eggs out into a steaming pile on a white and blue plate and passed him his hot breakfast.
“Tabasco?” He asked, one eyebrow raised again.
“Here.” She sat next to him and poured cornflakes into a bowl for herself. “She really isn’t well. You don’t want to see that.”
“You forget that I take care of an ailing man every day, and he sees her.”
“Still, he never told you—for a reason.” Jenny crunched down hard on her cereal.
“Yeah, I’m wondering about all this now,” he said, forking up the eggs and pausing for a minute to chew. “Why the big secret? My mother has been gone for decades, and Gerry, well, didn’t her man pass some time ago? None of it makes sense—none at all.”
“I don’t know. Ron rarely speaks of his folks, let alone Gerry. I just found out about all this when I got here. I’ve been reading some journals.”
“Ohhhhhhhh.” Kurt tilted his head.
“No, it’s not like that. I found them—accidentally.”
“Whose?”
“I don’t know. Ron’s mother’s, I think.”
“What’s she got to do with all this?” He stopped shoveling eggs for a minute and stared at her intensely.
“Something … she has something to do with it. I’m trying to find out.”
“You shouldn’t be reading the dead’s journals,” he said.
“She’s not dead! What are you talking about?”
“I’m confused.”
“Eat your eggs.”
She gave Kurt the black and white picture and dropped him back to the tackle store. Driving off, seeing him in the rearview mirror, still standing out front of the shop, she wondered if she would see him again. Intuition told her she would.
* * *
“See Charlie?”
“Maybe, Kip. We’ll see what happens when we get in.” She pulled the car to a stop outside the veterinarian’s surgery.
The first thing Jenny did was ask the unscrupulous, slinky secretary for her insurance card back.
“You can take a seat now. The doctor will be right out.” Jean continued typing, her red acrylic nails clacking on the keys.
The same yellow roses sat before her, slightly wilted now and with a few missing petals and a new vase.
“Good morning.” Doctor Shooner loomed before them in green scrubs partly covered by a pristine white coat.
Jenny stood and shook his outreached hand.
“I have good news and bad news,” he warned.
Jenny’s mind flashed back to every speech she’d ever heard from medical types. Why did it always start with that cliché? She said nothing.
“He’s stable. He made it through the night. He’s had plenty of fluids, and he’s opening his eyes.”
Jenny put her hands to her heart. “Are you serious? He’s okay? Really … I barely made it through the night.”
“I had to amputate his hind leg; he had a systemic infection.”
Jenny winced as another woman, her hands full with a fuzzy orange cat, entered the surgery.
“Come out back with me,” said the vet.
Nodding, she followed.
Charlie lay on a pet bed with a green blanket over him and a warming lamp above. “Oh!” Jenny and Kip ran over. “You poor thing. Poor Charlie.”
The sleepy little dog wagged his tail half-heartedly.
“I’m going to take you home with me. Don’t worry.”
He whimpered.
“Now, he is on pain medication and antibiotics, which you will have to cut in with his meals, and he may not have a very good appetite for the first few days, so you’ll need to make his food look irresistible.”
“I can do that.” Jenny kissed the dog’s wet snout.
“And he’ll have to wear this sling, but not at bedtime. It’ll take him a while to adjust to having only three paws. The muscles have to develop, and some dogs adapt to it quicker than others. Could be a week, could be a month, but you’ll need to help him about in the first few days.”
“Can I look?”
“Yeah, go ahead. You can take him with you today.”
She lifted the blanket. White bandages covered Charlie’s fresh stump. All she could do was close her eyes and sigh.
“Here’s a neck cone, in case he starts biting at his wound; so far he hasn’t, which is unusual.”
“He’s a good dog.”
“I’m sure he is, but the wound may get itchy as it heals. Just play it by ear. We’ll give you a discharge pack with all the instructions and all the medications you’ll need. Give him antibiotics twice a day and painkillers every six hours. Do you have any questions?”
Even knowing whether she had any was beyond her at that point; they would probably creep up later. “No.”
“Okay, you can check-out up front. I’ll help you out to your car. Do you have a bed for him?”
“Yes.”
“You may want to contain him in one room for a few days. Keep him quiet.”
Shaking her head at all the information, Jenny signed the papers at the front desk. “Five thousand dollars!”
“If you could sign there, please; you have a co-pay of twenty percent.” Jean put the form on the counter, along with a horrible pen made to resemble a flower.
“We take all major credit cards. No checks. Cash is okay.”
“Oh boy.” Jenny fumbled around in her worn purse, looking for her card. “Where is it? I know it’s here … there, got it. Here you go.”
Jean finally smiled.
Jenny turned her back to her and leaned against the counter. “It’s okay.”
; Kip took her hand.
“Excuse me?” Jean said.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Sign here and date by the X.”
* * *
“I can’t believe that just happened.” Ron had changed into his back-up clothes: jeans, a white shirt, and a heavy black coat.
“We missed it,” said Carl.
“We all did. And I know the electric guys checked all the systems, too. Nothing we can figure out unless that sub leaves and the water is drained.” Ron put on his hard hat.
“The new divers are here and suiting up.” Carl pointed in their direction.
“Let’s try this one more time.”
The divers took their spots and jumped in without hesitation; Ron felt ill, the image of them going into the water mimicking the entry of the earlier divers—but minus the spark. “Thank God.”
The divers descended into the deep and removed the cut pins with an underwater blowtorch before returning to the surface, all in just twenty minutes. The crane swung over and two lines were dropped, clamping onto both 80-ton doors of hollow concrete covered in black resin. The signal was given: lift.
The doors were hoisted up as if they weighed nothing. Swinging them over, the crane driver placed them very steadily and carefully on a standby barge. Everyone went quiet; all mechanical sounds ceased, and the cries of gulls reigned. The boats then cleared a path. The black USS Mac Roy sailed off into the bay and sounded its harbor horn.
All the men cheered. It was as if the pressure had suddenly been relieved, although they did not know the sub’s destination or its future purpose, only that whatever it was, was dire.
“Where do you think she’s headed?” asked Carl.
“We’ll never know,” Ron said, staring after them.
* * *
The fleshy snap replayed in her mind as Jenny sat waiting outside Gerry’s room. She shook her head, trying to forget the sound, only to see sharp teeth come forward through the beige wall. She shut her eyes.
“Nurse!” she called to a passing woman who wore the same printed scrubs she had seen at the ER. Was it déjà vu or was that print popular? “I need some water.”