He wanted to be buried there, the letter said, describing ocean he remembered like a child’s drawing, almost uniformly blue, at least the last time he had it seen it, from the fast-ascending plane. The word felt awkward in my child-mouth, like noises ducks would make in mud. Not scary-sounding like the battle Dad said Grandpa never spoke of until so many years had passed we grandchildren were born. *** The Duncan sank in darkness patched with flashes of exploding orange light. Confused by radios that broadcast either garbled Japanese or tinny Christmas tunes, between enemy and friendly fire my grandpa climbed a turret as the deck grew hot beneath his feet and splintered just off Cape Esperance, which he knew meant Cape Hope in some romantic tongue. Two life jackets clutched to his chest, one filled with shrapnel bits, jingling like pocket change, he jumped into the ocean where his mouth filled with a slick of blood and diesel fuel. I always asked about the sharks and he would talk about their skin, like heavy sandpaper that ripped blanched flesh in chunks off men they brushed against. Sharks don’t eat carrion and so the soldiers knew which ones of them had died. My grandfather passed out, awakened later to small hands, two Tongan boys, pulling his slack, heavy form from where they’d found it floating in the waves, alone. *** His widow thought it morbid that he wished to be returned in death to where he’d nearly died so long before, but I remembered how his voice picked up in tempo, like a Benny Goodman tune, as he recalled out loud the sparkling Auckland hospital where nurses woke him whispering, and dances held outside with eager Red Cross volunteers, the calm brunette who finally asked him home for tea, and how he said he’d nearly laughed when shown a casualty list bearing his name and “Missing/ Presumed Dead,” because it was the first time he had ever really felt alive.
Ali Fischer