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Show Deep Sea If I were to choose a moment that encapsulated those years in Hawaii and the desire I felt to be at the center of so many things I hardly understood, it would be the fishing trip my parents planned for our family, a trip meant to give us time together now that my father worked long hours and my brothers and I spent so much time with friends. It was still dark outside when the boat pulled away from the dock at Pearl Harbor, through the darkness of first light, a shallow darkness really, grainy like an old movie. We motored quietly past the sleeping frigates and destroyers, their sides rising in steep walls from the harbor, decks and guns indiscernible above us, but there. A few sailors, returning from leave in Waikiki or the CPO club, nodded and waved as our fishing boat passed. Having checked in with the officer on deck, they moved up the gangplank and disappeared into the vast belly of the ship. We passed the empty dry dock and the submarine base where boats floated like slugs, trailing oil along the surface of the water in ribbons of slime. Motoring up the channel, I was surrounded by the familiars of my world. The ships and boats were, for me, what trees and ditches must have been for other children. They were what occupied the space of my childhood, the outline of home. Like any child, I did not question my surroundings. It was what was. Many of the subs I could identify, like dolls, by name, and those I could not, I knew by class. A few-the Indy, the Tunny, the Aspro-were familiar both inside and out. Captained by the fathers of my friends, their interiors were known. I had washed my face in the tiny metal sink that crowds the far corner of the state room, run my hands along the ladder rails, rifled through the video collections, and slid the narrow halls as the submarine dives and surfaces, demonstrating 167 |
