When The Going Gets Tough,
The Tough Get Going
by David Adams
San Francisco. The door to America stood before Carl, calling him, telling him to jump over the steel rails of the ship and brave the frothy wrath of the mighty Pacific. No. He must follow the plan. The plan is infallible. Even if it wasn’t, these damn Brits would be too stupid to figure it out in time. He doubted they even knew that he wasn’t one of them. After all who would guess. He rarely spoke, outside of endless “yes sir’s”, and “no sir’s” that seemed to be everywhere you went. There is no place of refuge on a British war ship. No break, no sanctuary. Military procedure permeates every storage room, every lonely tower, every dank corner, until Carl finds himself polishing his boots at night, when no one is even watching. He had to get out.
It wasn’t always like this. Carl could recall a time when there was nowhere he would rather have been than scurrying about the innards of this great steel monstrosity. The rush of the wind in his hair, the sight of endless ocean. It all seemed like the greatest adventure that a boy from Gutingrad, Sweden could ever have. In fact it most probably was the greatest adventure any one from Gutingrad had ever had. As far back as can be traced without having to appease the enormous hungers of the gods of ancestor nomenclature with a sacrifice of upwards of 20 greats preceding the grandfather title, Carl’s family have been blacksmiths. A noble profession, but a profession promised to the eldest son in the family. Not being the oldest son, Carl had to look else where for his life’s work. After a month or two Carl’s parents gave him two options: either get a job, or leave. He left. The day he left, his father didn’t shed a tear. He didn’t even hug him. The Swedish people are a stoic folk. All he did was pull him aside, put a hand on his shoulder, look him in the eye and say in his rough smithy voice “ Son, people change; that is part of life whether we like it or not. It us up to us whether we change for better or for worse.” That is where this long adventure began. For despite all this hardship and strife there is no denying that his experience, since that day have been an adventure.
First, going through the local recruitment office window at 1 in the morning to change the writing in the box with the name Carl Peterson in bold letters from, “unacceptable applicant”, to “acceptable applicant”. Next, boarding a colossal ship, bristling with turrets, and antennas, bound for the far reaches of the world. Then the weeks spent in hard toil loading and unloading at every port city. It was only after a 3 day stint without sleep did Carl realize that he was changing for the worse. He was becoming another mindless appendage of the British Navy. That is when he decided to accelerate the plan. Instead of New York he would have to execute at the next American port. This was all before he was locked in a room with no windows, and no fresh air for 5 days, for reasons so trivial that he can’t even recall their nature. This system was no place for a man with dignity, it was no place for any man at all in Carl’s opinion. He couldn’t stand the constant hunger, the beatings, the work, and the smell. What ever sense of adventure there was that lingered about the whole affair was swallowed up by his hate of the ship.
Salty spray reached up and touched Carl’s face, bringing him back to the real world. He quickly turned around, and headed away from the rail. Staring at the horizon is a telltale sign of a deserter, and Carl wanted no signs. As he entered the bowels of the ship, the same rank smell greeted his nostrils. Wet decay. The whole ship reeked of it. It’s malodorous body filled the air and mercilessly flogged one’s olfactory receptors until one started to feel anger at his nose for letting such an obtrusive uninvited guest into the body. Carl continued down deeper into the ship, passing the mess, then down a steep flight of stairs to the third deck supply room. The ship rocked back and forth as Carl disappeared into the mountains of rations and ammunition. Deeper and deeper he continued past rows of shells, and boxes filled with gun powder, until finally he entered a small clearing. He made one last quick check over his shoulder to be certain that no one had followed him. He then went to a small pile of durbs on the floor and unearthed a pile of maps that had obviously seen their fair share of use. No one but the supply officer ever ventured into this twilight realm of the ship. Seeing as how Carl was the supply officer, he had almost exclusive use of this little wet cavern of the ship. He sat down and looked at the maps. The space from San Francisco to Chicago was over 9 inches, that meant over 2000 miles. The journey would be long and hard.
After staring at the maps with his tongue protruding a centimeter or so out of his lips, he stacked them up in a neat little tepee and dropped a match. The maps went up in flames. No evidence, no crime, and in the British Navy, desertion was the most heinous of crimes.
As the papers turned to ash before Carl, he couldn’t help to second-guess himself. What if the mechanism misfired? What if, however unlikely it seemed to him, another crew member was aware of his plan. Regardless, he had no choice. Staying on this ship was simply not an option anymore, here and now was the ideal time of departure; the perfect exit to an unsatisfactory stay in the Royal British Navy. In retrospect signing up was a bad move. At the time he didn’t see the irony in the prospect of sweating, bleeding, and even dying for a country that wasn’t even his own. Over the past 5 months, 2 weeks, and 4 days it became painfully obvious to him. He had to get out. Not that getting out wasn’t his plan to begin with, but if he didn’t get out now he would end up throwing him self in the furnaces.
The ashes of the maps lay on the floor, wilted and dead as Carl walked away in the half-light of the supply room. The time had come for Carl Peterson’s stay on Her Majesty’s Ship the Seahawk to come to an end. Carl couldn’t help but let a smile bend his lips up at the ends. In ten minutes he would be immersed in the cold water of the Pacific Ocean heading for San Francisco. He walked past a flight of stairs, then into a cramped space, with 2 large metal tubes on each side of the wall. He walked to the very end of the narrow corridor where there was a red box on the wall. He looked at the box. His heart sped up for a moment. What if some thing went wrong? Impossible. He had covered every variable. He didn’t have to even think about it. He remembered the long hours of planning, and assured himself that he had in fact calculated everything down to the dime. He slowly reached out his hand, and swung the red door open. It’s ungreased hinges squeaked. He stood for a moment and feel the boat sway. Harsh waves set in motion by the contest of two distant leviathans battling in a stormy sea on the other side of the world. Inside the box was a red lever. He pulled it down quickly. Sirens cut through the silence. The sound of a ship awakening. He quickly ran to the end of the hall, opened a hatch to the first metal tube, hopped in and closed the door on his way in. Soon the sound of footsteps sounded outside. They came just as he knew they would. These Brits were suckers for procedure. The tube began to fill with cold water. Next they would jettison the water. Standard procedure. It was necessary to clear the tubes with a quick rinse of sea water before loading the torpedoes. The water now reached his mouth as he took one last breath of stale air, then closed his eyes. Five, four, three, two, one. He hovered for a moment in the chamber. There was a large portion of his mind that screamed telling him to panic. To take the seven- inch hunting knife out of his pants, and be ready to stab the first Brit to grab his legs if they opened the hatch. His brain sent out the signal to his cramped appendage, but before word reached his fingertips the metal around him disappeared, and his body erupted into the vast Pacific. When the initial burst of speed wore off he opened his eyes. The surface was ten feet up, five feet up, two feet. He surfaced and began swimming toward San Francisco.