Impact (2 page)

One passenger believed it was her husband,

the ship's jolt just another expression of their love.

Others thought it was an earthquake

or a mishap in the galley—

a runaway trolley, a stack of fallen dishes.

The baker wasn't sure what happened

though he hoped his loaves would not fall.

 

While airtight after airtight compartment filled,

a second-class passenger ordered his drink

with chunks from the berg.

A small child sucked pieces of ice

as if they were candies,

and her brothers scraped up snowballs,

their mother worried only

they could lose an eye.

After Thomas Andrews returned to the bridge

from examining the damage below,

 

he realized how a doctor must feel

when delivering a negative prognosis.

 

While Captain Smith expected the ailment

to only be minor, a strain or sprain,

 

Andrews worked hard for the words

to explain their condition,

 

how they should all find ways

to get their personal affairs in order.

Up until now, his only worries were

rough seas and dull scissors,

but with each launched lifeboat he gained

perspective and a newfound clarity—

the piles of hair, the polite conversations

where he'd nod yes even when he meant no,

a life's worth of postcard sales, miniature lifesavers,

and the pennants that hung from the ceiling.

He considered how early barbers worked

as dentists and bloodletters—

the spinning pole outside his shop

symbolizing blue blood to the heart,

red blood to the body.

Most customers thought it was a giant candy

like the peppermints

he gave to young boys on their first cut.

He wondered whether he should apologize

for all the missing hairs

for he knew the men would need them,

every last one.

Although the boy had yet to hear

his own voice change or find himself

needing to shave a scruffy face,

Second Officer Lightoller still threatened

to blow the boy's brains out

unless he left the lifeboat

and returned to the sinking ship.

The women pleaded he was only a boy,

that there was room enough

for all of them, but as the lifeboat rocked

like a giant cradle in the wind,

Lightoller maintained a strict adherence

to
women and children first
.

One little girl wondered if jumping

from boat to boat was a game

only boys could play and, if so,

why did he seem upset?

As the older men stood back

with cigars, enjoyed the last

few swigs from favourite flasks,

the boy sat inside a coil of rope,

heavy with the feeling

he'd become a man.

As her lifeboat lowered,

one woman recalled

a childhood game

where she squeezed

both feet

into the bucket

from a wishing well,

and held on tight

as her brothers

lowered her

down

to the bottom.

She never opened

her eyes,

could only tell

she made it

by the splash

and the lapping sounds

that reminded her

of hunting dogs drinking

from a birdbath

or pond.

As her brothers

pulled her

back up

she'd think

of new excuses

to tell her mother,

yet another puddle,

a spilled glass

of water,

a leaky vase

full of flowers.

A fortune teller once told Edith Evans,

beware of the water
. For years she walked

with her head down, convinced that if she didn't

she'd someday step into a puddle,

ruin a new pair of shoes.

 

When the last lifeboat left without her,

the deck all of a sudden filled with men,

she reached down to her ankles, undid the laces,

threw her shoes into the darkness—and waited,

waited for the splash.

Unlike his musician compatriots

whose instruments could be carried on deck

 

the ship's piano player could only watch

as his band mates played on.

 

At first he just swayed to the music

then tapped his feet and hummed

 

but he couldn't withstand

the ache to play along

 

even without a sound

his hands slipping from gloves,

 

his cold fingers

tickling the air, ghost-style.

All those years, he'd never harmed her,

not once, until she refused to leave him

and he dragged her by the arm

through the crowd to the lifeboat.

She remembers craning her neck to see past

the hats of the women around her,

how the last time she saw him

the haze of lace atop another woman's head

made it seem like a giant spider's web

had caught him and the ship.

In the weeks that followed, she kept massaging

her arm, watching the bruise change colour.

It wasn't until it faded away

that she believed everything:

the ship sank after the iceberg hit,

her husband never would again.

As if he worried the women in lifeboat No. 2

would succumb to scurvy,

Steward Johnston filled his pockets with oranges

and later watched as an assembly line

of cold hands passed the small orbs around.

One woman thought it strange to be eating

oranges in the dark and struggled

to peel the skin with her numb fingers,

her taste buds unable to decipher

any sweetness beneath the salt.

slipped out

of his pocket

and drifted

down

for two

hours

What I remember that night—

what I will remember as long as I live—

is the people crying out to each other

as the stern began to plunge down.

 

I heard people crying

I love you
.

A few cries came to us across the water,

then silence, as the ship seemed to right herself

like a hurt animal with a broken back.

 

She settled for a few minutes,

but one more deck of lighted ports

disappeared.

 

Then she went down

by the head with a thundering roar

of underwater explosions,

 

our proud ship,

our beautiful
Titanic

gone to her doom.

It was a noise no one had heard before

and no one wishes to hear again.

 

It was stupefying, stupendous

as it came to us along the water.

 

It was if all the heavy things

one could think of

 

had been thrown downstairs

from the top of a house,

 

smashing each other, and the stairs

and everything in the way.

When we were in the boat rowing away,

then we could hear the panic,

of people rushing about on the deck

and screaming and looking for lifeboats.

Oh it was dreadful!

 

The bow went down first and the stern stuck up

in the ocean for what seemed to me a long time,

of course it wasn't, but it stood out stark

against the sky and then heeled over and went down.

You could hear the people screaming and thrashing about.

 

I remember saying to my mother once

how dreadful that noise was

and I always remember her reply, she said

yes, but think back about the silence that followed,

because all of a sudden it wasn't there—

the ship wasn't there, the lights weren't there

and the cries weren't there.

There arose to the sky

the most horrible sounds

ever heard by mortal man

except by those of us

who survived this terrible tragedy.

 

The agonizing cries of death

from over a thousand throats,

the wails and groans

of suffering,

none of us will ever forget

to our dying day.

By chance the
Carpathia
's wireless operator

kept his headphones on

while undressing before bed

 

and in what should have been the last moments

of his long shift, he overheard messages

destined for the great ship.

 

Come at once.

We have struck an ice berg.

It's C.Q.D., Old Man.

 

When her Captain learned of the disaster,

he ordered heating and hot water turned off

to conserve as much steam as possible,

 

so that her passengers,

scheduled for sunny Gibraltar,

awoke to cold cabins.

 

Although designed for only 14.5 knots,

she conjured up 17.5 that night

as she rushed to the rescue.

 

As she grew closer to the scene,

the Captain ordered rockets fired

every fifteen minutes

 

as a navigational tool for any lifeboats,

but mostly as inspiration

for those who'd spent all night in the dark.

 

When she arrived at four a.m.,

her crew couldn't believe

all that remained of the world's largest ship

 

lay before them in the wreckage

floating amongst the ice

and the lifeboats that speckled the sea.

 

Surely, there must be something else,

they thought, how could she

just disappear?

Even the children knew not to play

around the mountain of lifejackets

piled on the
Carpathia
's deck.

How strange they seemed empty,

lifeless on top of lifeless,

their collars looking more and more

like holes.

While Rosa Abbott contemplated

how her family might still be together

had her arms only been stronger—

her sons once again pulled from her body,

into the Atlantic cold and un-amniotic—

a fellow passenger combed Rosa's hair,

stroke after stroke, determined to untangle

the piece of cork that lodged itself

while she'd struggled to stay afloat.

It took a long time and with each stroke,

again and again, the repetition lulled them

like the soft strophe of a child's song.

Of all the widows, newlywed Mary Marvin

had the unfortunate distinction

 

of being able to watch

her wedding after the fact,

 

for her husband's father owned

a motion picture company

 

and made theirs the first wedding

filmed for all to see.

 

Although she would see her eighteen-year-old self

grow older over the years,

 

her nineteen-year-old groom was forever

on a film loop, never to change.

His wife remarked he'd developed

    a carver's tick where he gently blew

on everything he cared for

    as if fine sawdust impeded his view—

be it of her bedtime body or his daughter's forehead.

 

As a child he whittled away at sticks,

    non-stop it seemed, so that his mother teased

whenever she needed to find him

    she just followed the trail

of his fresh wood shavings.

 

His father nicknamed him the termite

    and his sisters chastised

for all the wooden bits

    they found

in their petticoats and frilly dresses.

 

When he grew up a master carver,

    it seemed a perfect fit,

like the way Cinderella's elegant foot

    found a matching slipper,

only this time made of wood.

 

During his years at Harland and Wolff

    he dreamed in the curlicues

and elaborate patterns handcrafted

    into the oak panels and staircases

that made First Class first class.

 

The day he learned of the sinking

    he felt an ache not only in his heart,

but in his fingers and in his lips

    as he blew away at the non-existent

sawdust, and cried.

Out in the harbour, one reporter chartered a boat

to shadow the rescue ship,

used a megaphone to tempt the crew

 

with the promise of a few month's pay

to give an exclusive interview

by jumping overboard and swimming to him.

 

Thirty thousand gathered that night around the pier,

more than a full house

at major league baseball's Hilltop Park.

 

Some showed up to confirm

the fate of their loved ones,

others just hoped to satisfy their curiosity

 

catch a glimpse of the survivors,

the famous, the infamous,

all that spectacle and pain.

Someone thought it a good idea to document

the devastation further—as if numbers weren't

vivid enough—the photographer moving them,

boys in back, girls out front,

each of them a relative

of a lost
Titanic
crewman.

 

It's the same sort of photograph taken

after coal mine disasters or when an entire fleet

from a fishing village goes missing—

in every photograph there's always

an older sister holding a younger sibling

or boys almost old enough for a father to teach them

how to shave. In every photograph there's always

a young girl with a big smile,

just an ordinary girl

smiling.

Although it seemed a cruel irony,

the crew stocked her hold

with one-hundred tons of ice.

 

They covered her decks

with burlap and coffins,

enough embalming fluid for hundreds.

 

They brought along an Anglican priest,

undertakers who wondered

how they'd work at sea.

 

Not even double wages

or extra rum rations,

not even reminders

 

of how much comfort

they'd bring grieving families

could lessen their dread

 

of the moment

they discovered wreckage

and needed to begin their task.

 

They had fished all their lives

for haddock, mackerel, and cod,

but never for corpse,

 

so when they arrived on scene

they thought the white specks

in the distance were seagulls,

 

not whitecaps caused

by waves breaking

over bodies.

 

Men in teams of five

lowered themselves into cutters

no larger than
Titanic
's lifeboats

 

and in the open ocean

they searched

for those held up by lifejackets,

 

many with arms outstretched

like sleep walkers,

though they'd never wake again.

 

Row, situate, grab, and hoist.

Row, situate, grab, and hoist.

Row, situate, grab, and hoist.

 

They retrieved over 300,

including a young boy,

no more than two years old.

 

In Halifax, one newspaper

nicknamed her The Death Ship,

as if she were the root

 

of the tragedy,

and not just another messenger

forever changed

 

by the knowledge

she brought back

to shore.

He always prided himself on being timely,

set his pocket watch ten minutes fast,

a trait the men in his family shared

along with broad shoulders, dimpled chins,

and a taste for adventure.

Had he travelled with his father or brothers

the embalmer who found him

might not have been surprised

to see the pocket watch indicate two-thirty—

ten minutes after the
Titanic
went down—

but as he travelled alone,

his was the only watch out of step.

At first the embalmer pondered how

he'd cheated the ocean of those precious minutes—

whether he'd stayed afloat

atop a piece of wreckage or treaded water

with the watch held over his head—

then, in an indignity specific to his family,

the embalmer declared he'd arrived late.

Her mother once explained

it was like playing dollies,

 

dressing people up in their Sunday best,

pretty as a picture, her father's hard work

 

helping everyone remember

how much they loved someone.

 

She thought of this whenever

children threw spitballs or rocks,

 

pulled the ribbons from her hair,

or teased that she smelled like a corpse.

 

No matter how fragrant the soaps

or expensive the perfumes,

 

it was if they could smell

the disinfectant and formaldehyde

 

that followed her family

as fish smell follows fishermen.

 

When word spread that the boat

filled with the
Titanic
dead

 

would soon return to Halifax,

she thought of her taunting classmates

 

and her father's hands working hard

to make things beautiful again.

Even though they'd both watched rats

scurry across the deck,

 

Edward Lockyer somehow convinced

Emily Badman that he'd be okay,

 

that she should enter a lifeboat,

for he would see her later

 

and could even take her eyeglasses

for safekeeping.

 

Months later, when opening a parcel,

Emily felt as if she'd seen a ghost

 

for when Edward's mother received

the personal effects found on her son's body,

 

she unwittingly kept his promise

and mailed off Emily's eyeglasses,

 

intact though questionably

no worse for wear.

Though his family understood

the ocean's give and take

as well as anyone,

 

it was hard for them

not to sense

divine retribution

 

for when a passing ship discovered

Thomson Beattie's body

one month after the sinking,

 

it happened near the spot

eighty-two years to the day

where his grandmother

 

gave birth to his mother

as she crossed the Atlantic

in search of a better life.

Although the band played on,

their paycheques stopped

the second the water swept

over the bow.

 

One family received an invoice

for the balance owing

on their loved one's uniform,

which startled them

as they believed

they'd already paid so much.

Salvaged from a block of wood,

a banister perhaps, or something from First Class

found floating amongst the bodies,

Third-Engineer J.A. O'Brien sanded it

smooth as a newborn baby

so sometimes his wife would cradle

or press it to her face.

 

Although no one would dare mention it,

while watching her from behind

it seemed as if she were rowing,

her arms muscling over the dough,

her pie crusts heavenly,

light as air.

Most survivors will tell you

it can't be explained,

 

the horror when the lights went out,

when nothing was left but voices.

 

One survivor spent a lifetime trying to forget

everything he'd heard that night—

 

he moved to the Midwest, replaced the ocean

with plains, a neighbouring baseball field,

 

but each time the home team cracked one out of the park

he'd think of the lifeboats, the iceberg,

 

the screams.

Had he not cancelled the planned extra lifeboats

in favour of additional deck space

and a less encumbered view,

 

had he heeded the ice warnings

and not pushed the Captain

for a speedy maiden voyage,

 

had he not taken a seat

when offered

especially with so many stuck below,

 

had he not holed himself up

in a private cabin

on the rescue ship

 

while other survivors

crowded together

forced to grieve in public,

 

perhaps history

would not have been

so unkind,

 

and the whispers

that followed him

ubiquitous.