Beyond Survival

1

I Surrender

Suddenly what I thought could only happen to the other guy became my reality. No matter how confident we are, none of us is exempt from trauma, from loss, from our world changing instantly without provocation or warning. Even while we cling to the hope that life as we have known it will sustain us, we can begin to find a depth of ourselves we didn't know existed. Imperceptibly at first, the emptiness and panic begin to be soothed by the stranger within. That stranger is our closest friend.

"Hi-dee-ho and away we go! Speedboat rides from the end of the Santa Cruz pier. Thrills and chills! Go skimming across the surface of beautiful Monterey Bay. Hi-dee-ho and away . . . ."

The loudspeaker droned on from the end of the pier as it did every hour or so, the mechanical spiel hardly varying. It blended with the more distant din of the boardwalk: the calliope tones of the old carousel, the roar-scream-roar-scream rhythm of the Big Dipper, which itself sometimes drowned out the belly laughs of the teetering mechanical clown over the Fun House door. The August sun was hot and the air was warm with the smell of ocean and taffy and baby-oiled bodies languishing on the beach beyond. So familiar.

The scorching heat of the San Joaquin Valley and the demands of summer jobs were so distant, as the tiny tongues of water lapped gently around my face. We floated limply side by side just beyond the break of friendly summer waves. Our breathing had eased after we'd wrestled and rolled playfully beneath the water's sun-flecked surface. My eyes were closed; I just let the sound and taste and feel of it all sink in. I smiled contentedly as I thought of her there near me.

Suddenly, as if that thought had distracted her from her own contentment, she rolled toward me, and with a playful chirp thrust my face beneath the water. I twisted away from the pressure of her hand and exhaled hard through my nose. There beneath me in the crystalline water was her lithe body swimming strongly down and then away. She was a water creature, this sweetheart of mine, and the silvery bubbles streamed up and behind from her dark hair like tiny pearls that had just been born there.

I gulped air and dove. I kicked hard after her through the colder, bluer water. Ahead of me she merged with and parted from the shifting prisms of sunlight as if she and the sun and the sea were one, then separate, then one again. Suddenly, in one swift motion, she stopped and turned and challenged, suspended motionless for an instant in her element. A few shining pearls were still breaking free, and she was smiling as I collided with her middle, wrapped my arms around her waist and thighs, and rolled her backward. Then again, as we had done in countless rivers and lakes and salty summer bays, we tumbled and rolled together; wriggling free from one grip, parrying another, holding tightly to an ankle or arm for a moment, then thrusting away defensively. The shivery blue of the deeper water, the swirling bubbles and sparkling rays of light, the firmness of her twisting body-all a sensual kaleidoscope of color and touch as in our sham struggle we inched toward the water's surface and the breaths we knew we would soon need.

I burst through the surface before she did and held her tightly with my legs for an extra second or two. She went limp; a sympathy tactic. As I released the pressure, her retaliation was explosive. The water she slapped into my face stung my eyes. "Rat!" she yelped, and again she dove, the bare parts of her tanned body glistening from the sun. She had an armlock on my foot now and was kicking hard straight down, trying to pull me under. I doubled forward to pry my foot from her grasp. But my right arm wouldn't move. And then she was gone.

The water beneath me was still deep blue, with fragments of sunlight dancing aimlessly from above. But she was gone. The pressure on my foot continued, however . . . from the nylon shroud lines tangled around my boot. My boot . . . ? Shroud lines . . . ? They were stark in their whiteness as they trailed off into the deep where, I was now aware, the dim shape of my parachute drifted downward. The nylon tentacles and undulating skirts of the canopy reminded me of a monster jellyfish trying to envelop me. What fantasy! This whole thing is fantasy! Where is Bea? Where did she swim to?

I lifted my stinging face from the water. The surface was gentle, the sun still high, but the rest . . . The calmness around me was eerie. What the hell was going on here? I floated higher now and vertically, but the pull on my foot continued to threaten, even with the flotation gear that encircled my torso.

Again I doubled forward, face in the water. God, it stung like fire now. I strained toward the tangle around my foot. Still my right arm wouldn't move. No pain. It simply dangled limp, ignoring my command to help out my other hand in freeing my foot. What's going on? My arm's broken, my face stings. What happened? Where am I?

Concentrating very hard, I finally freed my foot from the sinking chute. Several shroud lines had drifted loosely around my other leg by now, but in the space of one more breath, I was able to extricate myself from the deadly weight that had done in many an exhausted Navy pilot after all else had gone well.

Slowly I realized I was floating in the water with my parachute. Had I ejected from my plane? I couldn't remember. It was all so fuzzy. Green, sloping hills met the water ahead of me and behind me at some distance. I seemed to be in a very calm bay. It was absolutely silent at first, but then I was aware of the low rumble of a jet aircraft rocketing across and away from me, somewhere far in the distance. High overhead a thin trail of white smoke curved from the direction of the hills and ended in a darker cloud, all drifting slowly, benignly, out to sea.

No speedboat rides! No Fun-House clown or summer smells! Bea! Where had she gone? A tepid little breeze ruffled the water around me. Still; quiet.

My mind felt numb. Then vague reminiscences of the Sunday comics passed through it: Dick Tracy or Lois Lane coming to after being knocked out by the bad guy. What happened? Where am I? My arm floated limply before me. My face and neck were stinging like mad. I squeezed my eyes shut, straining to remember. Here I was in the water, in my flight gear and helmet. That was my parachute drifting in the depths below me. The first few shards of recall stabbed painfully as I focused harder, desperately seeking comprehension of my plight. A reconnaissance mission planned and approved. It was coming back now . . . .

Bob and I had manned our aircraft for the last launch of the day. We had found our way across the flight deck of the USS Kitty Hawk, stepping around tie-down chains and ducking under wings, jibing lightly about how much the other would spend on shopping in Hong Kong. The Hawk would be heading that way immediately after our 1600 recovery. Soon that same flight deck had been engulfed in an awesome symphony of sound and motion: an attack carrier's launch and recovery cycle. The jet engines from four dozen fighter and attack planes-all closely bunched toward the stern-screamed discordantly, gulping in tons of humid air even in idle. The hot exhaust from their tail pipes shot out across the catwalks at deck's edge. Their collective force alone could have powered the leviathan runway through the water at several knots. My own J-79 engines had checked out fine, their eagerness reflected in the quivering gauges before me. Pretaxi check had been complete, wings "spread and lock" to go. Bob readied the navigation and reconnaissance systems in his own cockpit aft of mine. This, too, had all been so familiar: countless evolutions from the carrier decks in the Atlantic and Pacific, Caribbean and Mediterranean; the same choreography- yellow-shirted plane directors; green-and red-shirted maintenance and ordnance personnel; sophisticated warbirds, wings still folded vertically to conserve deck space, lumbering close aboard into position behind the sturdy jet-blast deflectors aft of each catapult, then straddling the steaming cats themselves.

Suddenly the goggled face of my plane captain had disappeared from the side of my cockpit and was replaced by that of my squadron mate, Lieutenant Bob Renner. I knew he had just landed two cycles ago and had been debriefing his film with the Air Intelligence guys from the attack squadrons. "Beef" (he was husky) put his face close to my left ear and shouted above the din, "Jerry, the A-6 guys need to do some target planning while we're in port. They need coverage of these areas just northwest of Vinh City." He had thrust a folded map in front of me, several areas squared off and bisected by a dog-leg flight line-all drawn hastily with a green marking pen. "Your flight is the last chance to get what they need. Can you do it?" My own mission was to get verticals and obliques of the seemingly indestructible Than Hoa Bridge, and more verticals of military and supply areas up the river to the west. Plenty of extra time and fuel.

Instinctively I flashed him a "thumbs-up." "No sweat, Beef. Tell 'em it's as good as got!" As I clipped the map beneath my own on the kneeboard strapped to my right thigh, I recalled-just for an instant- the map of that same area northwest of Vinh that I'd seen down in the briefing room. It was peppered with little red and white pins, red designating confirmed triple-A (antiaircraft artillery) sites, white...