David Brentwood’s father had often taken him out to see the ships leaving the east coast, and David always found it a calming experience, which was why he’d driven out to the placid waters of the canal. The fight with Melissa was still officially on, but he’d hoped that if he could cool down by the time he got back that evening, then she would have simmered down, too. He needed her, especially now, for on the circuitous route down through Tacoma and up across to Bremerton, the “classic” rock and roll he’d been listening to on the Buick’s radio had been interrupted by a news flash that an American frigate had been attacked in the Sea of Japan, but as yet the Pentagon hadn’t given out the name. Somehow David knew in his gut that it was the Blaine. By the time he’d reached Bangor, another radio flash had cut into the program. It was the USS Blaine. No information on casualties. Then forty minutes later a Pentagon announcement saying the ship had apparently been hit twice. The National Security Council and combined Chiefs of Staff were meeting with the president.
David felt terribly guilty. He had grown up in a naval family; his grandfather had fought at Midway. But instead of following his brothers into the navy, he had bitterly disappointed his father by joining the army reserves at Northwestern instead of the naval reserves. Now he suddenly felt somehow responsible, that somehow he should be in Ray’s place or in Robert’s place aboard the Atlantic Fleet sub, wherever it was. His father had always told him that he didn’t care what “line of work” David got into after college, “so long as you’re happy.” That at least was the official “liberal” stance of ex-Admiral John Brentwood. He had never indicated any disappointment about David joining the army reserve, yet David felt it whenever his father was talking to someone about “the boys.” Likewise David held back from talking about his father’s honor-clad career, for much as he admired his father, David always felt pressured to perform as well as his two navy brothers. One reason he felt he couldn’t, but which he had never confided to anyone, not even Melissa, for fear of them thinking him weak, was that he had a terror of the sea itself. From a distance he could admire and enjoy it as one admired people on the high trapeze, but the very idea of dying at sea, of being entombed forever in the great dark abyss, sent a cold shiver through his bowels. His father, obviously without meaning to terrify him and more as a simple point of information, had once told him when David was a young boy that the Marianas Trench in the Pacific was as deep as Everest was high. To David it became an idée fixe, a phobia that no doubt, like all phobias, would merely have sounded silly to someone else, but one that for a young man from a distinguished naval family was nothing short of cowardice. The thought of the closed-in darkness, the enormous pressures that could “crumble bones to dust”—that was another of his father’s favorites — began to haunt David, to obsess him so much, he’d gone to the library at his primary school and, with all the guilt of a pornographer, had looked up whether his father was right about the Marianas Trench. Surely nothing could be as deep as Mount Everest-was high. His hands trembled as he flicked over the Ms in the encyclopedia, heart racing, ready to shut it immediately should anyone approach him. The Marianas Trench wasn ‘t as deep as Everest was high — it was deeper, by another five thousand feet. Later David’s rational side did battle with his irrational shadows — after all, to die was to die. But logic held no ground in the battle between primeval fear of being buried in blackness and the calm logic that argued that however you died was in the end immaterial. The memory of seeing his grandmother’s body borne away on a wet and windy fall day in New York, the sounds of horns honking impatiently and uncaring from behind the hearse as, rain-polished, it pulled off into the cemetery, had stayed with him. Watching the coffin lowered, hearing the run of the ropes and the thump of the clay to close you in forever, he’d decided there and then he would be cremated when it came his time. But did the soul still rise or did it die, too, in the funeral pyre?
Driving back to Northwestern, anxious about whether or not Ray had been injured or killed, he heard a Pentagon “spokesperson” come on the radio informing the press that “at this point in time we cannot categorically say whether the missile was fired by another vessel or a plane.” The woman droned on with more “points in time” instead of “presently,” and it all added up to the Pentagon wasn’t sure what the hell had happened. David watched the long, black sub, now no more than the size of a small branch, floating out on the clean and vibrant blue, taking what he could from its deceptive serenity. As much as he’d feared the sea, he also felt a strange communion with it at times, an attraction of opposites. David thought of his mother, pained at the thought of her pain, on the other side of the country, and it plunged him into a dilemma. Should he go back that evening to be with his folks? His father, of course, would never admit it: “Not for me, son, you understand. But it’d do wonders for your mom. Thrown her for a loop, David.” Well, Dad, Mom. She handles loops pretty well. Why don’t you just say, “Davy, I need you”?
Or should he wait a few days first until the Pentagon knew for sure what had happened, who was hurt? Driving over the Seattle overpass, David thought of how Melissa would be waiting for him now, full of sympathy and feminine comfort. God, he could play it to the hilt if he wanted, stoic expression, the Brentwood tradition. Just as quickly he was ashamed of even thinking of using it to his advantage. As he thought of her, he felt himself getting hard. Was it normal? His brother thousands of miles away, the Blaine and Ray in God knows what shape, and here his kid brother at home was so damned horny that the mere thought of having a woman could override his concern for his brother.
David could see her now. She was slipping off her jeans but nothing else — yet parading for him in the semidarkness of his room. He could feel her hand cupping him, squeezing, bringing him to her in one long, even pull…
A light changed to red and he hit the brakes. Next to him a big Mack semitruck shuddered, its raw power barely held in check. The driver, chewing gum, looked down at him, shaking his head.
When David got to her dorm, it was four in the afternoon. There was a note for him folded and taped to the doorknob. “Davy — it’s dreadful. I just heard. Be back from seminar five-thirty. Wait for me. Love you, Lissa.”
He went down to the dorm’s lounge room and wandered over to the pop machine before flicking on the TV.
“Dave!”
He turned around to see it was Stacy — only guy he knew who wore a bow tie to class. He had a short neck, too — looked ridiculous. And loaded with library books for effect.