Swimming With Tongues

SWIMMING WITH TONGUES
by Michael Kroetch

He dove on Sundays. The rest of the week, every day except that day of Sunday, he was on the subway. Its fat rubber steering wheel in his hand like a donut a blind person might sell for beer money. But him, he wasn’t a drinker of beer. Couldn’t. The Lord said so. And he listened to the Lord even though he didn’t believe in Him. It’s the whole reason why he dove on Sundays. To get away from that sound, that chatter, that whispering of the Lord.

Beneath the water’s surface among the wrecked cars and shopping carts covered with rust, mollusks, and shimmering thin red slips of underwater weeds – down there he was free from the Word. His subway job offered some protection, but the layering of earth was nothing compared to what water did to insulate him from the Sacred. And that’s what he wanted. Peace from God. Five fathoms down usually did it. On holidays he had to go deeper. Easter for example. Last Easter he went down so far that his divers’ watch built in Switzerland, the result of five generations worth of diligent craftsmanship, didn’t last. It burst like a phosphorescent flower into petals of glass that drifted and drifted. But not in silence like he hoped. No. They drifted to the bleeding rhythm of a thousand saints in his ears.

All he could do was go further down into the darkness.

Saying he didn’t believe was a joke. Might as well try and stop his East Side express during the rush hour by tossing a dime on the track. Had the same effect. God didn’t care. God was after him like a man with a hatchet. And that Easter he thought the Holy Hatchet would surely burst his tanks if he stopped swimming down… Till he came to the school bus.

With his watch broke he had no idea how far down he was or how long he’d been down there. All he knew for sure was it was perhaps the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his whole life -- above or beneath the ground. From the style and shape of the bus he knew it was old. Real old. Maybe forty or so years old. Perhaps more. Wasn’t much left to see on the outside, so much had the sea already hidden. Inside though, yes, he could see a lot. They were all girls. Young ones. Uniforms. Rosaries. A prayer book. It was amazing how much remained among the skeletonized ruins of their bodies. Lockets even. He opened one, and with his flashlight found it contained a love note. Little of the writing remained. A few words among the smudges and decay. “Love.” “Always,” and “Jennifer.” He had known a Jennifer once. But this could not be her. She did not believe in God, did not even believe in the Bible, and laughed at him when he tried to get her to go to church. And yet… And yet, here she was. He took her hand in his and kissed it. Or what remained. For it came free in the translucent water like a whisper softly lipped against your furthest lobe. Small it was. Her hand. This hand. His beloved’s hand. And perfect in its youth and promise. It seemed wrong to leave it there. He couldn’t. Not for selfish reasons, but because its beauty shouldn’t be so trapped in darkness and mire.

At home he put it in a lovely blue vase on his table and while he ate dinner he would sometimes talk to it about his day. It never spoke back, but while he was with it neither did the other voices. And this is how he came to carry it with him everywhere in a thermos that looked like it might hold coffee.