Adios, Nirvana

by Conrad Wesselhoeft

  Two leafless trees standing at opposite ends of the desert. But now the spheres align; our shadows stretch out and touch.

  I say, “You got some kind of gash, right?”

  “Yes, see here.”

  He traces a scar that runs up his temple and across his forehead.

  I step out of the chair, lean close. Check out the scar. It’s kind of hidden because of all the wrinkles and creases. But when he was younger, it must have stood out. A jagged reminder.

  “All of us got banged up, Jonathan. Not one of us was spared by that explosion. I’ve never been ashamed of this scar. Never tried to hide it.”

  “Was it dark?”

  “Yes. As our engines died, and the propellers stopped churning, our lights went out. An emergency lamp came on, and then it, too, dimmed and died.”

  “Black dungeon dark?”

  “Yes, Jonathan. Not a shimmer of light.”

  David sips his pineapple juice. Winces at the tartness.

  “How long did it take you to sink?”

  “No time at all,” he says. “Imagine a seesaw when a plump child sits on one end. Well, that was our ship. As the stern filled with water, the bow rode up, and we slid into the ocean. It happened very fast. Amid deafening noise—imploding metal, whooshing cataracts of water, then, finally, eerie metallic groans. The sea boiled up around us. To our waist, then up to our shoulders. I had no doubt I was a goner.”

  “How does that feel?” I ask. “I mean, how does it feel to know you’re gonna die?”

  David opens his mouth to speak but can’t. Everything clashes on his face. All the years and memories, the gut reflex to be stoic, the wanting to talk. It’s all there. But he can’t say it. He shakes his head.

  “How deep is ten fathoms?” I ask.

  “Sixty feet.”

  “And you still had air?”

  “Yes, barely. We’d settled on the bottom in such a way as to trap air.

  “Hey,” I say, “I’m in a dark place myself. Nothing like being boxed under water, but it feels like it.”

  David nods, comes back into the present. “My vocal chords need a rest, Jonathan. Why don’t you tell me about it.”

  “Nothing to tell, just . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I know what you’ve been through.”

  “It’s all the same, Jonathan. Armageddon is Armageddon.”

  “For me,” I say, “it’s like a tightness in my throat. It’s like choking.”

  “Share it, Jonathan. It’ll get better.”

  “So far,” I say, “it only gets worse.”

  David struggles with his breathing tube.

  “How’s your oxygen, dude?”

  “Running low, I’m afraid.”

  I grab a fresh bottle from the foot of the bed. Plug him in. Watch his chest rise and fall.

  By now, the canary yellow legal pad is jammed with my scrawlings, scratchings, and doodles. I stuff it into my backpack. Grab a new pad from the drawer. Settle back in my chair.

  David looks wiped out. I expect him to tell me to leave, though I hope he won’t. He waves a finger.

  “Fire up the boilers, Jonathan.”

  “Already fired up.”

  He takes a deep breath. Actually, he takes little sips of air that total a deep breath.

  “Anoxia,” he says, “means an extreme lack of oxygen. This is how we would die, starved for air.”

  David looks at me in his blindness. Seems to see me.

  “Before I tell you, Jonathan, I want you to know—I’ve told this only once before, to Navy interrogators at the inquest. That was decades and decades ago. And they asked only factual questions, which I answered factually, as one does before a Navy board of inquiry. They did not ask for more. For example, they did not ask what the event meant to me or, at a profoundly human level, how it changed me. And in those days, I tried not to reflect on the experience. Or plumb its depths. Quite the contrary, I wanted to build a wall between me and my memories. But you get to a point, Jonathan, when sealing it off just arrests everything in your life. I should have talked about this long ago. We all need to be heard, Jonathan, if only by one other human being. We need to talk about our Armageddons. I feel a great need to talk about mine now.”

  “Well,” I say, “you’re in luck, because today just happens to be Open Armageddon Day.”

  “How fortuitous,” David says. He takes a sip of oxygen. “Now, where were we?”

  “Ten fathoms deep in the black dungeon dark.”

  “Oh, yes,” he says. “I’d call out a name, and each man would say a few words, very much with the awareness that . . . that we were—”

  “Doomed,” I say.

  “Yes,” David says. “What each man had to say, Jonathan, well, you don’t think you’ll ever have to say, or at least not until you’re a helluva lot older. We were young men.”

  “Can you remember any of those words?”

  “Not verbatim. But I remember the spirit of them. They boiled down to the same thing. Cherish life.”

  “Everybody said that—cherish life?”

  “Each in his own way, yes.”

  The door opens and one of David’s caregivers walks in. She’s Ethiopian, a slim, pouty beauty. Dress her in clingy satin, slap her on the cover of Vogue—she’d sell a million copies. Instead, she’s wearing smocky hospital clothes. Carrying a tray with a pill cup on it. No wonder she looks depressed.

  “Leave us!” David shouts.

  Somehow, in his frailty, his voice booms.

  The Ethiopian beauty freezes. Her Vogue eyes widen.

  “You better leave,” I say.

  She retreats into the corridor, muttering some dialect.

  “Poor girl,” David says. “I was hard on her.”

  “I doubt she’ll go to your funeral now,” I say.

  David grins. “I’ll make amends later. Now, where were we?”

  “Sitting on the bottom of the ocean cherishing life.”

  “Oh, yes,” David says. “I must’ve drifted off, because I remember opening my eyes and seeing the face of the man next to me—a gray death mask—and thinking, This is it, this is what it is. Then realizing—My god! I can see him. And yes, there was light, very faint, a shimmer coming in. My god, light! How could it be? Well, we’d made it through the night, and now daylight was filtering through the broken hull where the torpedo had hit. All I saw was a thin shimmer deep in the flooded passageway.

  “I shook the man, Terry McClendon, a helluva gunner, a big, good man from Wink, Texas, and he saw for himself. Perked right up. ‘Don’t rouse them,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’

  “I ducked under water and swam toward the light. In moments my lungs were bursting. It was too far, too deep. I turned back.

  “We roused the men, and they saw for themselves. A couple were too weak to swim, but most were simply too afraid to try. One or two did try and got no farther than I, but most, well, it was choose your poison, and they would rather suffocate slowly than drown. Here we were, with a chance, if only a slim one, and they were choosing to stay put.”

  “You’d think they’d try,” I say. “Especially after all that talk about cherishing life.”

  “People don’t always follow their own wisdom, Jonathan.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I told them, ‘I’m going again, and if I reach the opening, I’ll bang my knife three times. Like this.’ And I slid out my knife and pounded the hilt against the steel bulkhead three times, below the water line. The sound resonated. Clearly. Then I lay my head on my arm and took air into my lungs. Slowly and methodically. I looked at them one last time—the light had grown brighter—and slid under water.

  “I swam toward that shimmer, Jonathan. In a matter of seconds, I was dying for air. And there was an instant . . . and then I was beyond the point of turning back. Behind me was all darkness. I focused on that shimmer, let it draw me. Getting closer, I could see clouds of plankton and the deep greenish-blue of the ocean. A calm c
ame over me. A peace. Whether I’d live or die, I knew I’d made the right choice.”

  “Hey,” I say, “where I’m sitting, you did.”

  David says, “The light showed a great gash in the side of the ship, a mass of tangled steel where the torpedo had struck. I took my knife and pounded three times. Then I squeezed through. Swam out, dropping the knife, every last atom of me starved for air, and shot toward the surface, which seemed forever above me.

  “When I broke through, I filled my lungs. Drank deeply all the air they could hold. I couldn’t get enough. I wanted to drink the whole damn sky. My ears were bleeding, my nose was bleeding. I had a monster-size headache and was swallowing blood. God knows what nitrous poisons I’d set loose in my body by coming up so fast. But I was alive.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “You sure were.”

  “Life is a beautiful thing, Jonathan.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I glanced about and saw the harbor at Kerama Retto—no more than a couple miles away. When I blinked and got my eyes right, I could see the silhouettes of naval vessels—destroyers, tenders, liberty ships—at anchor.

  “I hovered there, waiting for my men to follow.

  “Ducking under, I saw my ship—the Gabe, number four fourteen—on which I’d lived and served for three years. The top of the mast was only a fathom or two beneath me. The ship itself was a massive blurry shadow.

  “I surfaced. ‘C’mon,’ I shouted. ‘C’mon!’

  “Jonathan, all the joy of being alive was gone, because no one else followed.”

  “Or,” I say, “they tried but they couldn’t make it.”

  “Some did try, Jonathan. That’s the victory. You’ve got to try. Come here.”

  I set down my legal pad and go to his bed.

  “Give me your hand, Jonathan.”

  I hold out my hand, as if to shake, and he clasps it. Wraps mine in both of his.

  “We’ll take a moment,” David says. “If we were at sea, we would toss a wreath, as an homage. Just a moment of silence, Jonathan. For everyone we care about whom we’ve lost. They will never be with us again, but we won’t forget them. I’d like to include your brother in this.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “He’d like that.”

  David’s hand is soft and frail. It’s like I can feel all of his illnesses through it. The tangle of old age, weak veins, and cancer cells.

  His lips move. He speaks some kind of prayer, and I see Telly as I often do, flying on his long board.

  Happy to be alive.

  Chosen for life.

  Impossibly dead.

  When I open my eyes, David is staring at me.

  “You must remember, Jonathan: Point yourself toward that shimmer. And keep going—always keep going.”

  He lets go. I sit down.

  “So how’d you get back?”

  David gropes for the box of Kleenex. Pulls out a tissue. Blasts his nose.

  “I started swimming. After a while, I got picked up by a launch combing through the debris. They took me to the makeshift hospital at Kerama Retto.”

  “Couldn’t they send down divers?”

  “Oh, they did, Jonathan. But it took hours to organize that dive.” He shakes his head. “You see, there was really only that one chance.”

  “And some tried to get out?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know that? Did they find bodies floating in the passageway?”

  “Yes, Jonathan.”

  “Hey,” I say, “don’t blame yourself.”

  “I don’t,” David says. “Neither should you.”

  “Me?”

  “Now, I’m afraid I’ve run out of steam.”

  David closes his eyes. Leans back, exhausted. I slip my legal pad into my backpack.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “No, thank you, Jonathan.”

  Chapter 30

  It’s way past midnight. I’m standing in my room twirling a lariat. Actually, it’s just an old clothesline—and it’s not much of a twirl, either.

  I try to lasso my desk. I widen the loop, and eventually it lands just right, hooked at the base of a great mountain of books and notebooks and empty Red Bull cans and flung T-shirts and stacks and mounds of everything else.

  I tug, and slowly this great mountain slides to the brink of my desk. I jerk, and it plunges over the edge into the canyon below. An end-of-world event. Armageddon.

  Yippee-aye-oh-cuy-ay!

  I take a sock and wipe the dust and grit off the surface of my desk. For the first time in history, it’s clean.

  I open my backpack and shake the contents onto my desk. Out fall about twenty canary yellow legal pads, the pages all feathery and fluffy from hard note taking.

  Last to shake out is a manila envelope—the one Mrs. Scranton handed me in the hall at Taft.

  I’d forgotten all about it.

  I tear it open. On official stationery—“Gupti R. Jacobson, PhD, Principal, William Howard Taft High School”—is a note in the fine hand of multiarmed Shiva:

  Jonathan,

  Thought you might like these.

  “These” are a stack of formal invitations to the graduation exercises on Friday, June 1—two weeks from today. Normally they go to graduating seniors, but I’m an exception because . . .

  I’M ON THE PROGRAM!

  Gupti has enclosed a draft of the program. My spot comes at the end. Gupti herself will introduce me.

  I’m listed by name and these words:

  Performing “Crossing the River Styx” (Pinky Toe)

  I fling the invitations at the wall. Down they flutter. Like shot doves.

  From various other stashes—mostly Ruby’s gig bag—I build a tower of legal pads. Yellow and rectangular. Thirty-six pads jammed with my barely legible scrawl, scratchings, and doodlings.

  Countless words.

  The raw materials from which I must build the story of David O. H. Cosgrove II’s life.

  I open a twelve-pack of taurine (8.3-ounce cans, sugarized), platoon the cans at the far corner of my desk. Post my bottle of maximum strength NoDoz at the head of the platoon, the bulky sergeant. Position my laptop. Adjust the light.

  I pull Ruby’s rocking chair over next to me. She can keep me company. Lift me over any humps and hurdles.

  These are the essential tools of the writing trade: notes, laptop, taurine, NoDoz, guitar.

  If only I had a candle to invite the muse. Whoa! I run downstairs, dig through a kitchen drawer, find a dildo-shaped Christmas candle.

  Upstairs, I light it.

  Now I stare at the empty screen. Words . . . do not appear. They hide in prairie dog holes.

  My mind is mud.

  After a while, my eyes start to droop. Drowsiness creeps in.

  I jerk awake. Pop three NoDoz. Peel open a can and bull down 8.3 ounces of taurine. This little cocktail kicks me in the head.

  So where’s my muse? When will she land on my shoulder? Whisper in my ear that first sentence? One sentence to start the snowball rolling down the slope. Start the prairie dog barking.

  I reach for Ruby. Crunch some twelve-bar blues. Brocade them with pinkie sevenths.

  Since I’m into it, I place Frank’s metronome on my desk and try the intro to “Crossing the River Styx.” Play it straight through. I still can’t keep up with Pinky Toe, but I’m getting better. As for the singing, Frank Conway is right. Everything sort of falls into place when I clamp the capo on the second fret.

  I play the intro till I can’t stand it any longer. Then I fall into my punkie meditation ditty—my Telly tune, sweet and complex, strawberry dipped in vinegar.

  Ruby sounds warm and forgiving. When I play her, I don’t know if I’m making music, praying, or wasting time. But she makes me feel better. Ruby always makes me feel better. There are times when I think she’s my girlfriend, and times when she’s more like a grandmother, because there are no complications. Just flat-out unconditional love.

  I set Ruby back in he
r rocking chair. Slip my North Face vest over her to keep her warm. Grab a stack of legal pads and riffle through them. My eye catches on this quote:

  “Maybe we don’t need to hit the duck. Maybe all we need to do is say what we must say once, to another human being, openly and honestly, with humility and remorse. Maybe that is enough.”

  I type these words. They become the first sentences of my book.

  The first sentences of the story of David Cosgrove’s life.

  Finally, the snowball has started to roll.

  The prairie dog has poked out of his hole.

  And barked.

  I work all night. It gets so cold through my leaky window, I put on two hoodies.

  Now it’s Saturday morning. Punch-your-pockets drizzly.

  Typical spring day in Seattle.

  My back feels gnarled. My butt bone throbs. But I don’t care because I have flown. During the night, I have jumped off the precipice, spread my wings, and swooped. I have smashed rules—of spelling, punctuation, and syntax. Gleefully. I have flown fast and far.

  I view the doc in print mode—thirty-four pages. Click on word count: 9, 322.

  Jeezus!

  Not even Charles Bukowski—Uncle Buk—wrote that fast.

  I consider going for an even ten thousand words, but that would be quantity over quality. Besides, I’ll get back to it tonight. I can hardly wait.

  Writing, in the zone, is about the best feeling ever.

  I’m way past writing for the fun of it. Lots of times it’s not fun. I write because I have to.

  If Stalin or Hitler arrested me and tossed me into one of those camps, I would carve words with my fingernails. If they cut off my fingers, I would write with my teeth. If they pulled out my teeth, I would blink my words to any listening bird. If they cut off my eyelids, I would fart code into the troposphere.

  You’d have to kill me to stop me from writing.

  It’s how I breathe.

  I go down to the kitchen, build a massive bowl of Special K. Slice a banana on top. Blanket the surface with C&H pure cane sugar from Hawaii.

  Mimi’s stuck a note on the fridge: “Where’s my ad?”