The moon is a smoldering ice cap.
The moon is a dissolving Alka-Seltzer tablet.
The moon is a charred penny scraped flat by a passing train.
They sit in a circle and make guesses out loud about what the moon looks like.
It should be full tonight.
The 8-Day Seth Thomas clock ticks.
One of them lights a Camel from their dwindling stash, puffs a quick drag, and passes it. A small treat after a barely edible dinner of hard chocolate, shaved thin and eaten slowly. The canned C rations went first, though they had tried to make them last. Now all that remains is a couple of boxes of the dreaded D rations, 600 calories of oat flour and bitter chocolate specifically designed not to melt packed into a pocket-sized brick. The three sailors, ages 18, 20, and 21, savor the cig until it sizzles down to the filter. Early on, in moments like these, they would share stories from back home, tell jokes they heard from the old salts on the docks.
You ever hear the one about the three old sailors who got into an argument? Where I come from, said the first sailor, the ships are so big that the captain has to use an automobile to see his orders carried out. That’s nothin, said the second sailor, out my way, the ships are so big the engineer has to use an airplane to inspect the tops of his engines. Well I don’t know about the ships you fellers are used to, the third sailor said, but the ship I sailed on last year was so big the cook had to use a submarine to stir the soup.
No one feels like joking anymore.
The clock ticks.
They sit in darkness. Their bodies have grown accustomed to the heavy scent of wet metal, the low groans of pressure building up in ears, the endless night of expiring weeks made normal through timekeeping, the shared and intimate dankness of their destiny. They have a flashlight to use in five minute increments when absolutely necessary: marking the calendar, fetching water and rations. One of them whistles a few bars, both whimsical and mournful, from “I’ll Never Smile Again,” but is interrupted by a dry tickle in his throat that turns into a coughing fit.
The clock ticks.
They have been rotating this task in shifts, reserving their energy and praying to god their thunderous efforts ring out into someone’s ears from forty feet down. Before the confusion began to creep in, they tried morse code, knocking out messages of distress against steel. But now any old clanging will do. The first sailor begins with a renewed invigoration and hits the wrench on the hull to the beat of the ticking clock.
Tick-clang. Tick-clang. Tick-clang. Tick-clang. Tick-clang.
They don’t know if the sailors ashore can hear them, they only know that any chance of rescue is soon evaporating. The possibility bulks large in their imaginations.
Is anyone listening… Have we been forgotten… Maybe the West Virginia wasn’t hit as hard as some of the others… Maybe no one was left on land… But what about the diving team… Surely the diving team is working on an evacuation plan… Farfetched maybe, but possible… Someone has got to know that we’re still down here…
Tick-clang. Tick-clang. Tick-clang. Tick-clang. Tick-clang.
The air is stale with sweat, breath, exasperation. Every step is thick, like swimming laps fully clothed in their 50 square feet of space from one end of the pump room to retrieve fresh water from the reservoir and back. If they had been given the chance to swallow a lungful of ocean, they would have taken it. But orders are orders, and they have already made an oath to man their stations until the carbon dioxide eventually poisons them.
Soon, they will breathe more and more rapidly, their indomitable will to survive inside their airtight coffin of unparalleled firepower overcome by convulsions.
Tick-clang. Tick-clang. Tick-clang. Tick-clang. Tick-clang.
The clock stops. It takes a moment for anyone to notice.
Wind that thing back up, why don’t cha? the first sailor says to the other two.
-- Alexandra Naughton is a writer, publisher, and literary events producer based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her third novel, Fake Company is forthcoming from Maudlin House in winter 2027. Find links to her writing at alexandranaughton.com and subscribe to her newsletter.
