The weak light revealed it was a Ginglymostoma cirratum. It was a harmless nurse shark that was just resting in the U-Boat.
Using just the last inch of my dive fins, I swam over and past the still sea monster and into the belly of the steel beast, all the time making sure my guideline was secure and freely unwinding behind me. Following it back was my only salvation. Deeper and deeper I swam through a solution that was ancient sea water, suspended plankton, spent lubricants, and atomized human beings with ever-decreasing illumination and falling ambient temperature.
Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care. Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care.
Shut-up.
Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.
Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.
Pull on the dive cord.
What was that line?
Oh, yeah. “Little by little we go far.”
Shut up.
I did not know, in truth, where I was. I could have turned around, I could have drifted one way or the other, or maybe I was swimming in drowning circles. I could not use JDNLR. JDNLR had so often saved me from disaster and misfortune. When it came to a final choice, “just does not look right” was the truth of my decision-making, always. But, here and now JDNLR was unusable. It was at the point that the hairs on the back of my neck and the contraction of my bowels were the GPS inputs to my dive and my survival.
Wish I had Mr. Shark’s internal guidance system that’s for sure. Yeah, but Mr. Shark does not have my dive tables.
The thought made me laugh so hard I almost choked.
“I bought you a brand new mustang, 1964. Mustang Sally, you better slow your mustang down...”
Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.
Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.
Pull on the dive cord.
And, there it was: a darker shade of dark. I had made it through the U-Boat. If I could have breathed a sigh of relief, I would have breathed a sigh of relief. But, down, it was always down deeper and into the stain that had been the black slaver. Then it happened. In a spontaneous moment, I lost every thought and devolved into a Rhipidistian, a lobe-finned fish, and in that crawling “S” motion that is in our spines as an inheritance of motion from our chordate ancestors, I descended. I cashed another inheritance check of violent action in order to collect it and thoughtlessly make the exit from the black and into the dim.
31
I had collected maybe thousands of fish in gill nets and there was only one outcome for all those fish: death.
But, here I was attached to a line underwater as if I was caught in a gill net. I was not hoping because underwater hoping is hopeless. I had exchanged my spent tanks for other full tanks and had attached myself by means of steel clamps to this survival line. The calculations had been done and checked and rechecked so it would be the science and the math of good thinking that would be my salvation. All I could do was pray that my science and math was correct.
It was in my goodie bag and lovingly I caressed it.
Check the zipper, check the lock, check the goodie bag, and make sure it is attached to you. Now, hang here and rest.
I knew that I had to just hang there like what I was—a dead weight.
It was up to my body to make the physiological gas exchange, now. The gases that had allowed me to survive the dark were toxic in the light and the gases that were life-giving in the light were toxic in the dark. I had to become desaturated from the gases of the dark and become saturated with the gases of the light.
It had all been calculated before the dive.
Now, just hang here until the numbers do their work.
Past exhaustion, I had no physical needs. Past exhaustion, I had no mental capabilities. Past exhaustion, I had no spiritual pleas.
Was this the state of a fish entrapped in a gill net?
Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.
Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.
Time only passes when you have a reference to motion in your life. There was no reference to motion in my life other than the near-death experience that was changing into a death experience.
What, time’s up here. Now, up to the next safety stop.
The gas exchange had taken place. I freed myself from the line. Very slowly I ascended up the line to the next safety stop. Here I would hang and bleed the extra gas pressure from my body. The extra pressure had to be breathed out in exhausting exhales or explode into a foam of untold trillions of bubbles in my blood at the surface.
I simply wanted to get out of the water. The temptation was there to simply ignore the thoughts and go with the will.
What harm would it be this once?
I knew the answer.
Death.
I kept thinking.
Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.
Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.
You have come this far. This is no time and this is no place to surrender to stupidity. Keep it simple and just keep repeating your mantra.
I thought.
It has brought you here. The numbers, the numbers will bring you home. The numbers would bring order to the chaos of the Deep and cut the strings of fate.
I thought.
Keep your mind on the dive. Check your instrument. Go over the dive plan on your slates, again. Practice relaxed breathing. Focus, focus, refocus.
Just breathe. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing normally. Just breathe. You know the drill.
The numbers nulled, it was time to surface and exit the water—the hateful water. It, the water, had exhausted me but I had survived its innate natural will.
Upon the surface, I turned over upon my back. There was no will in my spirit; gone was the math in my brain and there was no energy in my muscles. I was a blob of gelatinous matter floating on the film of the hydrosphere and nothing more.
The gear of steel and rubber, the gear of numbers, charts, and slates was torn from my body, and it fell and landed where it would. Some landed here, some landed there, and some, because of the force of the rip, returned to the sea.
Does an escaping slave care where the shackles of his enslavement land as he runs toward his freedom?
Finally, on the diamond-cut surface of the fiberglass deck I plopped down into a mass of spent life.
It rested beside me. It hurt too much to look upon it.
It rested beside me. It hurt too much to put my hand upon it.
It rested beside me. It hurt too much to think upon it.
There was no more mantra.