There was light, a beam highlighting the Deacon’s face, but he did not blink and bathed most comfortably in the rays. The Deacon’s eyes reflected the fullness of the light and the iris of his eyes became the color of root beer with pupils of true blackness.
“Herr Schliemann has dissolved into the stuff of the ocean and so has his fantasy, as the dreams and fantasies of them all. All the builders of huts, builders of cities, and the builders of empires endeavor to claim it, then clasp it, then control it, and finally it consumes the builders of huts, the builders of cities, and the builders of empires. Some are dust in the desert floors, some are dust of the fields, and some are dust on the floor of the ocean.”
I knew what it was. I looked at John Henry and then I looked at Manta and I wondered if either or both had come to the fathoming of it.
We were less than what we had been.
“Tell me—” John Henry began.
But the Deacon cut her off and began to speak.
“From the first there have been lies and greater lies about it. The smile of the Sphinx, the bastard child of a king and queen, October thirteenth, and Nazi submarines were all lies to bury truth in stone, to bury it in flesh, to bury it in a day of the week, and to bury it in steel. I buried it in what was on this island—folklore and water.
“Yes, before you ask it—it is real and it is true.”
Then Manta began to question him.“The hot spot, the slaver, and the U-Boat—”
The Deacon cut him off as he had cut off John Henry.
“The hot spot was there first. The old slaver fell on top of it and the U-Boat fell on top of the slaver. Just numbers, Manta—not magic or supernatural at all. There is great evil there on the floor of the Deep, for sure. Those poor drowned slaves are out of their misery, yeah, but those slavers are drowning each day in the fires of hell and Herr Schliemann and those Nazis are suffering because in death they now know that they were never alive. The irony of it is so elemental that it plays out the essence of first knowledge.”
“What the—” I said it, but John Henry and Manta were thinking it, too.
Ironic! The fire from Hell and the hot spot from the sea of Chaos procreated and bred the drowned ground. Yeah, Manta’s false gods and John Henry’s real fear were there alright—it was on their faces and in their souls. The Deacon was no better, no less than a Sphinx. But, we all knew and grasped the fact that the last elemental portion was missing—the air that was in the breath of our lives. We all inhaled deeply except for the Deacon.
24
It was one of those occurrences when words are not the method and means of communication. Without words, our four minds became a single mind. John Henry closed the doors to her dive shop. Manta became the Jack of all Trades.”
The Deacon was the virtuoso wizard. And I was included into the mix for flavor.
We were going to dive for it.
It did not bother me that some Nazi wunderkinder had drowned. I assumed that Nazis were just as evil underwater as above the water and the pressure of the Deep pressed the life from them. The one, John Henry’s friend, was too assured in an unsure environment. But, the Deacon’s friend was the one that I could not come to peace with in my thoughts.
Then I asked him as he passed me in the LION. “How did your buddy drown?”
I expected one of those Deacon obfuscations but he immediately paused and began. “Most of the story is inert and meaningless as are most stories and the greater part of our lives. But, now and again, there is motion and meaning. Those are the times when one’s character becomes the variable. Does fate choose us or do we choose our fate?”
He was talking—but not to me. He was talking to himself. “He had possession of it for a short time and he lost his life forever. You see, it slipped from his clutch and descended through the U-Boat and tumbled through the slaver and came to rest. He chased after it, breathing hard and with little air. Having successfully reached it, he gulped his last. There he died. It was not his choice to become a drowned man but his choice did not allow for any other conclusion. He was not going to breathe his last and live.
“He made his choice. I made a choice also. I chose to live. There was not enough air for two lives. There was barely enough air for one life. His choice cascaded upon me. Could I have gone after him—No!
“He was a man grown full and he—not fate—was the decider of his providence.”
“What the—” I said.
The Deacon was unmoved by my sentiment but he was correct. One live man plus one dead man was greater than two dead men. I am sure that this was the calculation the Deacon made. There is no law in the deep, just order, and that is: air-breathers drown when breathing in the sea.
There were meaningful and meaningless things to do. The meaningful depended upon the meaningless.
I put the LION to rest. John Henry’s dive shop became the womb. The Deacon had developed the dive strategy and Manta was the workman who changed thoughts into things. As a master before his pupils the Deacon taught, manipulated, and governed. The orchestration of our actions was geared to the tolerance of his preference and we accepted our fate as dutiful serfs.
There was no randomness, there was no wasted energy, there was no disorder, but rather there was a certain awareness that produced a self-consciousness of perception. We developed a singular telescopic sight-line that leads into the deep. We were becoming less of ourselves.
“In our hands, we will be able pull this off, Vaughnie, and it will be in our hands. Think of it. In our hands. All those years, and all those so-called great people failed. Not us. Just think of it! Us! Some outlanders on the Last Island accomplishing what all others have failed to accomplish. Think of it, just think of it!” John Henry was elated, almost jubilant, as she put her joy into words.
“No one has had it in peace. Its origin is sin and it has been nothing but evil to anybody connected to it. I do not share your glee,” I said.
“Do you not see? It is not evil. It is the evil of and in the people who hold it that brings the evil. Their wish and their want is what is evil. Their neediness for it is what is evil. They show their evil when they covet it. Well, we will get it. We are not evil. We will get it and then they will see what it was ordained to do in a good life. Think of it, Vaughnie. We will be the ones who finally hold it and we will hold it for good and we will hold it forever. We will bring a change. Yes, sir, we will bring a change and the others—the others, they will see.”
She was preaching but there was no choir.
“But, maybe it is better in the Deep. Out of sight and out of mind. It will not take long now for that U-Boat to become a stain on the bottom of the deep. That iron-eating bacteria, Halomonas meridian, will do to that iron hulk what time and tide has done to that slaver. The slaver is gone and the few people here will have to evacuate in thirty or forty years because tidal pressures and time are eating away this last island. All—this island, that iron wreck, and that slaver—will never be found ever again,” I said.
“No! We have to find it. The Deep can claim everything else but I will not allow it to claim it. I will not allow that to happen, ”she yelled at me.
“Would not it be better if it were on the bottom and then gulped down into the mantle and destroyed? Would not that be better?”I questioned her.