Eating dinner with Len, the captain. A good wine. Better food by far than they get from the galley. Len cooked it on a hot plate. He offers Alex a black cigar. “No thanks.” “Havanas. You soon won’t see these in America anymore.” “Ah, why not? You mind if I don’t smoke it but give it to my dad when I get home?” “You bet. Anything for your old man. He took care of my teeth when I was a kid, you know. Maybe why I have so few, but that’s all right.” Holds up his glass. Alex holds up his. “To my precious wife and kids in Cuba and six teeth, at last count, I didn’t have to pay for,” and they drink. “To my parents and sister and — oh, I don’t know how to toast,” Alex says, when the intercom buzzes. “Yes? Holy shit,” and some nautical terms, sounding like instructions. Tells Alex to quickly get his warmest clothes on, several pairs of socks, cap that fits over his ears, gloves if he has. “Ship might be sinking. Don’t worry. We’ve plenty of time to get into the boats if we have to, and I got to get you back alive and well or I’ll never hear the end of it from my old man.” Alex runs to his cabin. Bells sounding. Gets his coat, sweater, hat, socks, scarf, fountain pen, ballpoint pens, memobook, sticks what he thinks are his best new manuscripts inside his shirt, picks up his typewriter in its case and wonders if he should try to take it. For the trip he borrowed Howard’s portable in exchange for his standard. “Hustle,” someone says. “Worse than they thought. Forget all that crap. Just the sweater and cap. Len sent me down to get you in one minute.” Entire crew’s upstairs. Len says to them “Unbelievable as this is to believe, believe it: the ship’s splitting apart. For real. Right down the middle. We didn’t hit anything nor I think do anything that wicked or impious on this crossing to whip up the cussedness of the gods. It happens to about one transoceanic ship a year and we seem to be this year’s catch. But our boats are in good order, sturdily built and well stocked right down to the prescriptive quart per man of hundred-proof rum. We’ll get ten in one, eight in another, five plus oversize me in the smallest. Well stay close together but not that close to risk ramming one another. Each boat’s equipped with an emergency distress signal,” or whatever it’s called. “Because of the signals we’re still putting out and the heavy traffic of this sea lane, I’m reasonably cheerful a ship, even if we haven’t pinpointed our location”—or whatever’s the expression—“in two days, will pick us up in ten to twelve hours. So hold out, don’t start cannibalizing or throwing one another overboard just yet. If we survive the killer wind, rain and cold that’s in store for us out there, well have come through something almost unheard of, whatever good that’ll do us. Good luck. I love you all and loved sailing with you. Alex, you come with me,” and they get in the boats and lower them or lower them and get in, Alex’s last. His is overturned a few minutes after it’s in the water. He tries reaching the boat but the waves keep moving it farther away, or him away from it. Water so cold he can hardly use his limbs a minute into it. “Over here,” he yells. “Save me, please get me, it’s Alex,” just as others are yelling to be saved; most in Spanish. “Where are you, we can’t see you, keep yelling so we can find you,” other men yell to them, most in Spanish. Then so numb he can’t do anything to keep himself up or yell he’s there, and sinks. Held his breath and tries getting his head out of the water, but nothing he does pushes it through. His breath breaks, water rushes into his nose and mouth, spits our some, more than what he spit comes in, tries kicking and flapping to get above water, chokes, gags, retches.
Assisting the cook with the ship’s supper when the ship jolts, then an explosion. Alarms, bells, the cook says “They say ‘Emergency, straight to deck, no stopping in your cabin.’” He’s assigned to one of the boats. It’s lowered and breaks apart when it hits the water. Or they can’t lower it. They cut lines, clip chains, boat still won’t lower. Or the boat’s in the water and he tries climbing down to it but falls into the water. Or dives in to reach another boat, since none’s left on ship, and water’s so cold his heart stops, or he has a cardiac arrest or shock, or whatever happens in a heart failure or attack, when he hits the water. Or water so cold he can’t come up from the dive. Paralyzes him and he just sinks. Or he’s underwater, swimming up. Holds his breath long as he can, but he dove too deep and his mouth bursts.
Huge iceberg hits the ship while he’s climbing an outside stairway and knocks him into the water. Or while he’s leaning on a stern railing, smoking a cigarette and looking at the water. Or hits the ship while he’s sleeping. Cuts right through it to his cabin. There might have been emergency sirens and bells warning of the approaching iceberg, but he slept right through them. He doesn’t wake up or feel anything. Slams through so hard and fast he’s killed instantly or knocked unconscious while he’s reading in bed or further unconscious in his sleep, and drowns without waking. Or wakes for a second or two underwater, goes into shock or coma from the freezing water and drowns without coming out of it. Or wakes while he’s thrown from the stairs or his bunk or over or through the railing into the water, blacks out a few seconds after he hits the water and drowns almost instantly or is dead from the impact of the iceberg or being thrown through the railing, before he hits the water.
Ship splits apart just where he’s sleeping. Happens so fast he never even senses it. Sleeping, suddenly ship’s in two. Ship might have hit something. Or it was some unseen or neglected flaw in its structure that took ten to twenty years to materialize this way. He drops several decks, never wakes up. Is dreaming while he’s in bed and while the bunk drops with him in it to the ocean. Of the city, night, stars, flying, gliding, then drowning. In the dream he tries swimming to the surface, then is one of the other crew members on watch seeing his head emerge from the water.
He was sitting on a kitchen chair in Jerry’s small living room. Jerry’s wife Iris nursed their first child on a couch across from him. Suckling and smacking sounds irritated him. Been irritated by certain repeated or oral or eating sounds like that long as he can remember. Finger drumming. Watermelon and carrot crunching. Couples doing some heated kissing in theaters. Soup-slurping, fingernail clipping, gum-snapping, nervous foot-tapping, snoring, dripping faucets, heavy breathing in sleep (even his kids’). Jerry sat in the rocker Iris usually nursed in, said the ship was long overdue and it didn’t look good. “It stinks, to be honest. I hate thinking the worst but I’m thinking it. Some emergency distress signals — I forget the exact technical term the Coast Guard spokesman used; in fact that could have been it — were heard in that general area, but briefly — You OK?” Howard nodded. “That doesn’t mean their ship sent them. Another freighter in the same general area could have been testing out its signal-making machine. Any kind of ship. A Coast Guard cutter, for instance, though of course this spokesman would have mentioned if one had been in the area at the time. God, that would have been a miracle, wouldn’t it?” Howard looked up. “For one to have been there, on a routine cruise, let’s say — east, going west, out there to spy on Soviet submarines, who the hell cares, so long as it saved them. Not a cutter but a regular-sized Coast Guard or Navy ship just miles away — fifty to a hundred miles, even, for those babies move fast. Anyway, the signals were so weak, the spokesman said, that they more than likely came from a much smaller windup crank-type version of this machine on a lifeboat.” Howard looked confused. “I’m saying it could have come, these weak distress signals, from a lifeboat launched from Alex’s ship. From his lifeboat, even — why not? The machine was battery operated, probably. Though maybe not. Maybe the manual cranking does the operating. I wish I knew more about boats. It could have been a practice drill, everyone to his station and so on, with designated men testing all the ship’s emergency distress signals. The spokesman doubts that. He said there would have been an all-clear signal immediately after the distress run. But it was a terrific storm they were in, one of the worst there in years, so maybe Len wanted to be extra cautious and tried out all the distress-signal machines, or just the ones on the lifeboats, and the all-clear signal was never heard by anyone. It’s something he might do, from what Dad’s said about him. He’s an iconoclast, goes his own way always. He once ran guns for Nationalist or Red China; supposedly fought against and then bought off his execution by Thai pirates. But a great captain, I was told — something in our favor. One of the youngest ever to get his master’s license for that size ship. He could have been a doctor, a physicist, Dad days. Chose water. But you can see why I think the situation’s getting almost hopeless. Since we’re talking here about several weak emergency distress signals most likely sent from a lifeboat, one out of who knows how many on that ship, during an unbelievably terrible storm seven, maybe eight days ago.”