Ironclad

by Daniel Foster

  “I want more than anything to hold Molly and our baby,” Garret said. But as he said it, he turned his eye to Fishy, leaning on the rail of the cruise ship. Fishy’s expression was distant, and Garret surmised he knew what Fishy was thinking, or at least, who he was thinking about.

  Garret gestured to the hounds at his feet. “You go home with them,” he said to Joseph. He nodded to the boat. “Those guys are my family too now, and…” Garret studied Fishy’s face, and he knew the time was close. “And there’s one more thing I have left to do. Then it will be done. Tell Molly I can’t run away from the people who need me anymore. Tell her I’m coming home to spend the rest of my life with her, but I have to finish what I’ve started. Tell her I love her more than the whole world, and when I get there, I’ll be with her and our baby to the end of my days. I think she’ll understand.”

  Joseph nodded and looked away over the ocean, sparkling under the sun. His slender fingers fell absently to the back of the giant hellhound standing next to him. Joseph petted the enormous beast as if it was a lapdog. Garret was looking forward to hearing how on earth that had ever come to be, but there would be time for the story later.

  “Garret,” Joseph said at length. “They might not know who you are, but I do.” He had followed Garret’s gaze to his friends on the stern deck.

  Garret raised an eyebrow at him.

  “You father’s family is German. Your Pa’s name was Garrett. In German it means ‘strong spear,’ doesn’t it?”

  “Close enough,” Garret said.

  “You told me once that your Ma messed up the spelling of Sarn’s name. But she didn’t, did she?”

  Garret grinned and shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  Joseph turned to him. “She didn’t mess up the spelling of your name either.”

  Garret looked away. Joseph was probably the kindest person Garret knew, but his directness could be uncomfortable. Especially when he was right.

  However, just maybe, Garret was beginning to be okay with what Joseph was implying. Garret didn’t know what had changed inside him, but something was different.

  “Did your Pa even know why she did that?” Joseph asked.

  “What do you mean?” Garret asked.

  “Your name isn’t German at all, is it, Garret?”

  Garret sighed, and after a moment said, “No.”

  “It’s right, Garret.” Joseph said. “It’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. Just like when you saved that little girl.”

  Garret drew a breath, and released it slowly. He considered Joseph’s point, turned it over and over. Part of him settled around it, coming to terms, not with the weakness Garret had so long feared in himself, but with strength, subtle and unwavering. Not strength to fight, but strength to love, to endure, and strength to build a good life with the wife and child he loved.

  Slowly, Garret nodded, and it was relieving to do it.

  “I think you’re right,” he said. “I’m okay with it.”

  Joseph smiled a little and said, “See you at home.”

  Joseph turned to the hellhounds. The Pass was waiting behind them, a trail of dirt which wind and moonlight tossed. The hounds moved towards it, and Joseph with them. It would lead Joseph through depth and darkness that most mortals never know, but he would be safe. The hounds were with him, and they would rend anything in heaven above or in hell beneath that tried to lay hand on him.

  Joseph stepped into the Pass, going from bright sunlight to deepest night in an instant. Garret watched his small friend walk away down the moonlit path that would lead him home. The hellhounds slipped away after Joseph, surrounding him, guarding his steps on the shadowy way. The opening into the underworld began to fold up, but as it did so, the last hellhound stopped, turning its unblinking orange eyes on Garret. It stood there on the path, all wisps and dark fire, as if saluting Garret until the vortex collapsed between them, and the bright day was restored all around.

  Several people around Garret exclaimed. A dignified man stumbled back in surprise, dropping his pocket watch to the end of its chain. Garret had watched his friend begin the journey home. The people around him had only seen Joseph vanish like smoke on the wind.

  Speaking of which, the boat’s twin funnels were chugging smoke.

  Garret headed up the gangplank towards his friends. Pun’kin was pointing in awe at an improbably busty woman in a lacy dress who was standing not ten feet from him. Fortunately she was waving a tearful farewell with a handkerchief, so she didn’t see.

  Velvet was redder than a beet and trying to push down Pun’kin’s arm before anyone noticed. Butterworth was gone, and he’d left quite a hole behind. He’d taken a train north not three hours earlier, saying he needed to see his sister again.

  They’d all seen him off, exchanging embraces and ludicrously inadequate farewells. They’d wanted to say a lot, but they’d said almost nothing. Pun’kin had tried to talk Butterworth into coming to Alabama to live with him. Fishy called him Barney one last time. He’d done it at the last possible second when the train was pulling out, so Butterworth hadn’t been able to respond. Garret surmised it would probably eat at Butterworth for the rest of his life. Garret was going to miss the rascally Brit, even though Butterworth had introduced himself by kicking Garret in the balls.

  Fishy stood a short distance away from the crowd, leaning on the rail. He was looking out over the ocean, regret on his face.

  This was not the time, but Garret knew it would be soon. He would wait. The opportunity would come when Fishy was ready. Garret stepped onto the deck and worked his way through the people towards his friends. Pun’kin had stopped pointing, and was now arguing with a well-dressed man about whether or not Alabama was home of the “bestest” cheese in the world. Velvet was talking to a pretty young lady about his age. He was self-assured, and she was interested.

  Garret made his way out the far side of the crowd and leaned on the rail beside Fishy. For a moment, Garret watched Velvet and the girl. Garret hadn’t noticed when Velvet had settled with himself, but it had definitely happened.

  Garret swept his gaze across the city before them, basking in the hot life with which summer fills the earth.

  “Do you miss them?” Fishy asked.

  Garret didn’t need to ask who. “I do now,” he said.

  At that, Fishy gave him a gaze.

  “I didn’t at first,” Garret said honestly. “I thought I did, but I just felt… I don’t know what I felt. But I don’t have to live that way anymore. I want my wife back now. And my baby.”

  Fishy nodded and looked away again. “I miss my brother,” he said quietly.

  “I know,” Garret said honestly. “I miss him too.”

  Slowly, slowly, the massive ship began to churn away from the dock. Fishy took a breath, let it out.

  Garret put an arm around Fishy’s shoulder and gave him a solid squeeze and a shake.

  “Come on, buddy,” Garret said. “It’s time to go home.”

  After a pause, Fishy nodded. “It’s time to go home,” he agreed quietly.

  “Hey ya’ll!” Pun’kin yelled at them. “They got one o’ them electric icecream makers on this ship, too!”

  “Icecream?” Garret asked Fishy.

  “Theo loved icecream,” Fishy said.

  “He licked out the bowl,” Garret said, smiling.

  After a moment of churning water beneath them, Garret added tentatively. “Have some with us?”

  Fishy stared away again, but this time he was looking to the east, his heart penetrating to the place his eye would never find again, that unmarked spot in the open sea where Theo had been laid to rest.

  After a moment, Fishy smiled a little and nodded.

  “I’d love some icecream,” he said.

  Epilogue

  Garret stood at the foremost tip of the oceanliner. He leaned on the brass rail while the salt breeze tousled his hair. Below him, the ship’s sleek bow cut
the Mediterranean water, which was sparkling and beginning to burn as the sun sank low before them. A few of the crew were on deck behind Garret, winding ropes or lighting lamps for the coming night. On-ship duties had become part of his hands and his heart, but that part of his life was over now. Change was healthy and good.

  A woman in a plain dress sat a ways behind him beneath the canopy, knitting. Her hands moved smoothly, and the needles clicked in rhythm, but her focus, like Garret’s, was on the blaze that stretched across the sky before them.

  The rest of the passengers, including Garret’s friends, were packing the dining hall for the crescendo of a high-stakes poker game that had proceeded since mid-morning. Last Garret had seen, Pun’kin was hustling everybody, though Fishy had almost had to arm-lock Pun’kin into playing in the first place.

  “Mama said cards was the Devil’s game!” Pun’kin had insisted.

  Not to be deterred, Velvet and Fishy had wrangled him into starting at their table. “Just a few minutes,” they’d said. After assurances from a scotch-guzzling priest that Pun’kin’s immortal soul would be safe, Pun’kin had sat. First, he’d ask a hundred dumb questions. Then he’d taken their money. And everyone else’s at the table.

  As Pun’kin had cleaned up the next table and the next, he’d held up his hand and swore he’d never played the game before. An angry Frenchman with a monocle had told him that it was, “Highly irregular.”

  How had Pun’kin loudly put it? “Like my Daddy always said, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn ever’ once in a while!”

  Garret grinned to himself as he pictured the reddened expressions of one wealthy, avid gambler after another as Pun’kin had cleaned them out.

  Garret shook his head and returned his gaze to the sunset. As much as he loved being with his friends, he had sneaked away for this, just for a little while. As the ocean lit up in layers of gold and red before him, Garret idly wondered how many sunrises and sunsets he had watched in his life. A hundred? A thousand? It seemed as if sunsets came to him personally, as a gift.

  Every sunset was different. Each one a unique masterpiece, and they were all beautiful. He’d sat on the edges of the Appalachian hills and watched them flood the valleys beneath him with warmth. He’d sat on cool rocks and watched the sunsets sink down, taking the ebullience of the day away, leaving the restfulness of night. He’d watched sunrises with his dog, Babe, after a long night of hunting. He’d watched them as Molly cuddled in his arms. He watched them alone. He’d watched them with a smile on his face. He’d watched them with a broken heart.

  Garret leaned on the polished brass rail as this sunset set fire to the Mediterranean. His life was rife with beginnings and endings, most of them burning as brightly as this one did.

  Regardless, he was beginning to suspect that his life wasn’t about beginnings and endings so much as it was about continuance, and growth. Garret had once heard someone say that life never ends, it only sleeps for a while that it may awaken in a new place, stronger and more beautiful.

  In the past three years, Garret had fought, killed, suffered, loved and lost, but he had only carried those things with him as an increasing weight. He had not allowed them to make him a better person. Now, as the sunset matured into a burning red wash that reached all the corners of his heart, he knew it was time. It was not yet time to be a seasoned adult—he would not flatter himself to think he had achieved it yet.

  In its own way, this was an even better time than that. This was the time that always is.

  This was the eternal time which is available to everyone, ready and waiting in each moment. This was time for the greatest privilege ever given to men and women— the time to learn and grow and become more than you are.

  At some point in the past weeks, Garret had stopped apologizing to Molly in his mind. He didn’t know when it had happened, only that it was good and right to stop. He would apologize to her in person. It would be honest and heart-felt. Beyond that, he would live his intentions.

  It was no longer time to mourn, it was time to build. It was time to raise a child. It was time to love, truly.

  It was time to give and to take. It was time to laugh.

  Garret stood and spread his arms to the wide open world before him. He breathed deeply, letting life and sunset flow into his soul.

  It was time to be.

  Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, August 1914

  Twitch stood behind the building in the rain, bowed under the weight of his shame. It was the building. The brick beside him was still charred from the blast of the bomb he’d set in the Tin Lizzy, nine months earlier. Fortunately the blood had been washed away. He could barely make himself stand there as it was. The rain poured in thick sheets, constricting the world to a damp grey sphere around him. It was confining, depressing, even frightening how tightly it pinned him in the alley, alone with the blackened brick and the note in his hand.

  The note had said for him to be here, at this time. The note was typed, and it displayed no signature, but Twitch knew who had sent it, so he would have waited in that alley for the rest of his life if that’s what it took. But he didn’t have to wait long.

  Footsteps approached through the rain behind him. He quivered with anticipation, fear, guilt, maybe a spark of undeserved hope, but he didn’t turn. If the person attacked him, so be it. But maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t go that way.

  The footsteps stopped behind him. It was a man, by his gait. Twitch waited and thought he might throw up. The man behind him also waited. When Twitch could stand it no longer, he turned. Behind him in the rain stood his father, Captain David Maxwell.

  Twitch’s heart leaped with fear and hope. As usual, Maxwell’s granite features gave away nothing.

  After a moment of silence, Maxwell said, “You look well.”

  “Aye sir,” Twitch answered timidly. “You too. For a dead man.”

  A hint of a smile bent Maxwell’s features. It faded as he ran a hand down the blackened wall.

  “This is our place, Emery,” he said. “We did this. Both of us.”

  With no emotional preamble, Twitch fell apart, and like the small child that he truly was on the inside, he ran for his father, arms out. Perhaps Maxwell would slap him into the mud. Perhaps he would kick him until he was dead, but at the moment, Twitch didn’t care. If he was rejected again, that alone would kill him, so he might as well get kicked to death.

  Maxwell did not reject him. He embraced his son solidly and held him while he cried.

  Twitch wanted to blubber how sorry he was, but words wouldn’t come. He just hung on.

  “We will speak of this later,” Maxwell said quietly, “We will talk about it because your step mother would want you to know all about her, and your half-sister. They would have loved you.”

  Maxwell released a grievous sigh. “They are dead now, but so are we.”

  Twitch pulled his face away, dying to know the final answer, even though tears were still running. “That’s why you went to see the Admiral, wasn’t it? I couldn’t figure it out. You knew we couldn’t stop the war at that point.”

  “We could never have stopped it,” Maxwell said, exhaling again. “People will make the war that they crave, but by keeping the gold out of Colson’s hands, we’ve made certain it will be a war, instead of the rise of a nightmare empire. The world’s course is in its own hands again. That’s all we can do: give back to humanity the right to decide its own fate.”

  “So you went to see the Admiral to convince the world that we were both dead.”

  Maxwell nodded.

  Despite his tears Twitch tried to smile and asked, “Does that mean what I think it does?”

  “It does,” Maxwell confirmed, then added, “Are you ready?” even though Twitch was obviously far from it.

  Twitch nodded shakily, still clinging to his father.

  “Good,” Maxwell said, and at last he smiled. As he did so, the family spirit came into his eyes, intense, focused,
and unswerving. Perhaps his eyes lightened just a shade as well, certainly not all the way to summer’s sky, but no longer the grey of winter’s ice.

  The sight of it was a warm balm to Twitch. The same spirit welled up inside him as it always did when it was needed: driving, demanding, overwhelming. It bonded them together. It made them what they were.

  “Good,” Maxwell said again, “We have work to do.”

  That, at last, was something Twitch understood.

  Maxwell’s smile turned wry. “You let Intelligence demote you and send you back to basic, just so you could board the Kearsarge and become part of my crew without me knowing?”

  “It was the only way,” Twitch answered simply. “They weren’t sure who you were… Neither was I.”

  Maxwell nodded. Nothing more was said.

  They walked out of the alley together, Twitch staying close to his father, and Maxwell gripping the back of his son’s neck in return. It was a small gesture, and one that no one saw, yet it proclaimed to the rain and the charred walls that Emery “Twitch” Maxwell was Captain David Maxwell’s son, and that he would hear no more on the matter.

  They disappeared from Philadelphia that evening, from the United States, from all record or recall. No one saw them go. No one would miss them, except Garret and a handful of others who had bled and died with them aboard a forgotten battleship on a fool’s errand—a desperate attempt to buy the world a little more time.

  Captain Maxwell and his son Emery vanished into the twilight so that, side by side, they could continue to stand between us and all that hides in that greyness:

  The things we never know, the things we never see.

  The things that could be, but won’t.

  The things that lie far off, and exceedingly deep in the heart of man.

  Author’s Notes

  The keel of USS Kearsarge BB-5 was laid down on June 30, 1896. She was launched in 1898, toured the world with the Great White Fleet, and was decommissioned in 1909 for a refit at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. According to official US Naval Records, the refit was completed in 1911, but she floated in the shipyard for the next four years without leaving. No explanation for this was ever offered, despite persistent rumors that, during two months encompassing the start of WW1, Kearsarge was unaccounted for.