Collapse Depth

“Forward tanks venting…” He turned the periscope one hundred and eighty degrees. “Aft tanks venting….decks awash…” It was always a strange sight to see the dry deck become covered in swirling green water, where just minutes before crewmen had scurried to make the ship ready for sea. Then the scope was at sea level, water splashing over the optics, then it was under. “Scope is submerged. Lowering number two scope.” He backed away from the scope and turned the orange ring that brought the scope down. Every part of the ship was under water. Their patrol as a submarine had begun.

• • •

The navigator excused himself from the control room without a word, and quickly locked himself into the watchstander’s head at the bottom of the control room ladder. He grabbed each side of the small steel sink, and looked straight down at the drain to avoid looking at himself in the mirror. He throat constricted as he thought of the sea surrounding them, just inches away on the other side of the bulkhead, endless, dark, and merciless.

• • •

In his stateroom, Jabo felt the rolls ease, without completely stopping, as the ship paused at an intermediate depth to get its initial 1/3 trim. The chief of the watch and the dive were working together, moving water from tank to tank, making fine adjustments, until the ship was at a perfect, level angle, and a slow speed, with all the control surfaces at a zero angle. It took time and skill to get it exactly right. Then the ship increased speed, which he could not feel. But it went deeper, which made the rolls completely melt away, and Jabo almost sighed at the sheer pleasure of the moment. Jabo didn’t quite feel any kind of supernatural, physical connection to his ship. Maybe that came after a lifetime of sea tours, maybe the XO and captain felt that way. But Jabo was profoundly in tune with the machinery that surrounded him, and it was a special kind of relief he felt as the ship went deep. It was like driving a truck on rutted dirt roads for two days, then finally pulling onto the smooth asphalt of a new highway.

“So you turned in your letter?” asked Hayes Kincaid, his roommate in Stateroom 3. Their third roommate, Hein, was on the conn. At the moment the diving alarm sounded, the earliest moment allowed, they both changed from their khaki uniforms into their blue coveralls, or “poopie suits,” and tennis shoes. The poopie suit was one of the great perks of submarine life, and Jabo had trouble imagining how his comrades-in-arms in the surface navy managed to strap themselves into khakis, blues, and shined leather shoes every day.

Kincaid was not only his roommate, he was his best friend on the boat. He was the only black officer onboard, and the only one who’d been enlisted prior to receiving his commission. Kincaid had done a full sea-tour on a submarine as a nuclear electronics technician before being awarded an ROTC scholarship and attending Hampton College in Virginia, where he got a mechanical engineering degree and an Ensign’s shoulder boards. Then he went right back to nuclear power school, then right back to sea.

“Well sort of. Not really. The captain refused to accept it.”

Kincaid laughed loudly. “Can he do that? Didn’t you need to get that in this last mail call?”

Jabo shrugged. “He was a little mysterious about it. Said we’d have another mail call in a couple of weeks, and that the reason we were having the mail call would convince me I want to stay in the navy.”

Kincaid laughed again. “Fuck…that. You want to come back to one of these? Be a department head?”

“That’s what I said — I mentioned the navigator — said he doesn’t look like he enjoys life all that much.”

“What did the captain say to that?”

“Said the nav was a bad example.”

“Fuck that! He’s a perfect example. That department head tour is when they get you. JO tours, XO tours, what are they, three years? Because JOs, like you, they’re trying to trick you into staying in. And XOs, they only need one per boat. And the CO tour is down to what, eighteen months? But the departments heads, the Navy knows they’ve got those guys, they’ve already decided to stay in — so they keep them out here like five years, wring every last drop of sweat out of them. And then what do they do? Promote half of them to XO and tell the rest to fuck off. No pension, no nothing to show for their trouble.”

“What the fuck, Hayes, aren’t you a lifer?”

“I’ve got twelve years in, my friend, ‘cause of my enlisted time, and all my time in college counted too. I’ll do my shore tour after this, then my department head tour, and then I’ll have my twenty. The Navy can do whatever it wants to me after that. I don’t give a shit if I don’t screen for XO.” But Jabo knew Kincaid would — he was an outstanding officer and, despite everything he ever said aloud: he loved the navy.

The rough voice of their Executive Officer on the 1MC: All officers report to the wardroom.