Jonathan

Ballard Locks Wave Sculpture Beneath a Rainbow, photo by Meg Bartlett, 2017

Jonathan should be the one writing this but he’s already dead.

He died in 2018 but a part of his soul first began wandering the day his captain called an emergency ascent in the submarine. It wasn’t something Jonathan was supposed to tell me but he did anyway because sometimes the pieces of memory that torture us the most need to be shared. They need to redistribute their weight. I understand. Even if the ears that hear our stories can’t fully comprehend their depth, it alleviates some of the heaviness, releasing bits of gravity like a stream flushing sediment down to its widening delta. The churning waters of origination always naturally attempt to spread out and calm.

I only knew Jonathan for a total of four months but when you recognize someone grappling with the same weight of existential crisis that you are, the appropriate measure of time for how long two people should know each other before sharing their life’s darkest secrets sort of ceases to matter. 

Jonathan and I worked our first shift together during my second week on the job. I had been hired as a Natural Resources Specialist at the Ballard Locks in Seattle and Jonathan was partly responsible for my training. After a brief introduction we started our round, making our way across the locks, past the spillway, and over to the counting room to take down the daily numbers of salmon that had jumped up the ladder.

The counting device stuck straight out of the concrete wall amid the pipes and valves and pressure meters that defined every maintenance room of the lock and dam system. I smoothed my thumb over the plastic cover to wipe away the condensation. Eleven salmon had passed through, an acceptable number for the month of November as most salmon pass through the weirs from late spring into early fall (sometimes up to a thousand per day). I jotted down the number in the small green notebook I’d been given before shoving it back into my pocket and grabbing the big set of keys jingling on the carabiner at my hip, beginning the arduous process of sifting through all of the various shapes and sizes to find a match. This place had a massive collection of inconsistent keys that fit into an assortment of different-sized locks. All of their identifying information had long worn off in the salty breeze that consistently blew through Seattle. I made a mental note to re-label my set in whatever down time I was afforded before the disorganization drove me nuts. 

Jonathan stood near the edge of the walkway, his eyes out of focus and staring off into the distance, overlooking the top of the ladder as he waited patiently for me to find the right one. Learning the keys by their texture and weight was important, especially for the night shift. I glanced up from the jingling mess and saw the vessel that drew his gaze. A barge had come in from the Sound and was patiently waiting for the lockmaster’s invitation to enter the large lock chamber. I found the correct key and secured the counting room.

We continued our round, walking into the aquarium-like viewing room at the 18th weir to peer through the distorted glass at the salmon who were waiting out their physical adjustments from saltwater to freshwater in this level of the ladder. Salmon are some of the most adventurous fish in the world, traveling hundreds of thousands of miles through the oceans before returning to freshwater when they’re ready to mate. Somehow, they defy human logic by returning to the exact same stream in which they were born, honing in on the unique chemical make-up of their original waters and “smelling” their way home. Out in the ocean, they can identify the distinctive pheromones of their spawning grounds down to as little as one part per million.

Two chinook remained from the count and tread place in the long, glass-walled adjustment zone of the 18th weir. Both were beginning to show signs of reverse osmoregulation, the physiological process salmon undergo when adjusting to freshwater. A molecular pump in their gills switches from filtering out the high sodium levels of seawater to retaining what they can find in freshwater while their kidneys decrease urine production to assist with the retention. At the same time, their skin begins to absorb the carotenoids that have amassed in their scales from a lifetime of eating crustaceans, recharacterizing their green and silver shades into deep reds or purples. Males are the ones who display more of a dramatic change in color. One salmon’s jaw was beginning to elongate and develop a hook at the end (known as a kype) identifying him as a male ready to spar for dominance, but, unlike his companion, he seemed like he was struggling to adjust to the freshwater.

A group of kids on a field trip walked in with one of the guides from the museum, interrupting our together-but-separate spacing out. Time to go. We waved hello and smiled at them before walking away. The round continued. 

A Dreary Day at the Ballard Locks, photo by Meg Bartlett, 2017

We checked the overgrown brush at the south gate for trash and hobos, circled our way towards the wave sculpture looking for graffiti (finding none), and began to cross along the concrete path along the six giant arches defining the spillway. Jonathan decided to break the ice first and asked me about the military. He knew I’d served but he wanted to get some details and talk specifics. 

“You were a Marine, right?” he asked. “I was in the Navy.”

Habit choked up my vocal chords as I involuntarily spewed out the ingrained phrase “I am a Marine. Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

I stopped walking to grab my own face in mock horror, shaking it to clear the propaganda. Jonathan snorted with derision. 

“Something tells me you literally just got out.” He leaned on the railing, salty mirth practically pouring from his eyes as his brows wiggled with amusement. 

I let the tightness in my shoulders go with a giggle. Jonathan joined in and our laughter echoed across the canal before spilling into the Shilshole Bay. 

We got a grip and de-escalated our humor into a chuckle, returning to the conversation all veterans have at some point in time.

“I was a signals intel Marine,” I specified. “It was… mentally difficult.”

“Nice to meet ya, spook.” he said. “I was on a sub.”

My eyes widened. I looked him up and down—all six plus feet of him—and his tallness suddenly became much more apparent. Submarines are no joke.  He knew what I was asking without the need for words.

“Yeah,” he laughed, “it was cramped…”

A shadow passed over his eyes

“... and it fucking sucked.”

Something about the tone in his voice made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. It sounded unnervingly familiar.

Time suddenly stood still and, as if being compelled by some unseen force, we turned to stare at each other. The smell of saltwater bit into my nose and the churning of the spillway drowned out any noise from the city around us. We stood in a bubble of mist, frozen on the path in between, and saw one another. Jonathan was more than just Jonathan, he was a version of myself from a parallel universe somewhere in a time beyond time.

“I think I’m having deja vu,” I whispered. A quiet, undefined sadness hung in the air around us.

He stared at me a bit longer before grimacing. “Yeah… me too.”

A kid in a yellow raincoat burst past us with a loud squeal of delight as his mother raced to catch up. 

Snapping ourselves out of the moment and back to work, we approached the small lock and paused to wait for the pedestrian gates to open. A group of kayakers on their way out to the Sound hung onto the grooved handholds etched into the sides of the structure. Some tourists stopped to ask us questions and I listened to Jonathan’s answers, taking note of how I should respond when my training was complete and he wasn’t here.

The bell rang, echoing across the concrete, and the lockmaster’s voice came over the loudspeaker announcing that it was safe to cross. We walked through the bars atop the small and then the large lock before returning to the admin building with our salmon numbers from the ladder. 

Jonathan unlocked the little wooden gate on the stairs, walked up to the rangers office and recorded the count. I looked out the window at the setting sun, painting hues of pink and purple and red across the sky—the colors salmon don as they change and move upstream.

***

Moonrise Over the Salmon Bay, Seattle in the Distance, photo by Meg Bartlett, 2017

Three months later, number forty-five was elected president and the government entered a hiring and adjustment freeze. The pay increase I had been promised after my probationary period was stalled and money was getting tight but I brushed that thought away whenever Jonathan and I were assigned overlapping shifts. It was always a good day when we made our rounds together, checking the counts and the cameras and regaling our military experiences. Salmon spend most of their adult lives alone, only coming together in community once their journey nears its end and, like salmon, we appreciated this unfamiliar sense of connection in a sea full of civilians. 

We liked to swap “war stories” from our times abroad. It was silly because neither of us had ever seen combat but we had seen other things in different ways. Jonathan saw things on his submarine and I had seen things on computer screens in dark, windowless rooms.  We talked about them in the most blanket of terms, adhering to our lifetime obligations of silence, but our knowledge of each other's work filled in most of the gaps. It felt nice to talk to someone who understood without having to risk the specifics. Security clearances are unforgiving. 

Sharing our stories became the highlight of my shifts and though we hid the details from each other, the act of sharing brought relief. It made me feel not quite as insane as I thought I had been on my own. I had existed in the service to know, to see, to operate, to pass along and to follow orders even when I knew those orders were wrong and Jonathan had experienced something similar. I never got to experience resolution for what I saw. The bad guys never paid the consequences. I had just watched them and observed them and operated.

The solace I found in listening to Jonathan’s stories and sharing my own offered a daydream of resolution which was better than nothing.

***

Jonathan approached me in the laminating room a week before I turned in my resignation. Something different was written across his face. He looked determined, like he’d just made up his mind, but he nervously poked his head out the door to scan the second floor hallways before asking me if I’d leave my phone and walkie talkie in the office. An old poster from my A-school SCIF popped into memory, “Loose Lips Sink Ships,” it said, displaying a half-sunk destroyer.

We left anything that could listen to us on the other side of the building before walking back over to the laminator—the old-school contraption didn’t have ears.

“Can I tell you something?” he asked, looking back over his shoulder again at the locked door. His voice was strained and scratchy and he whispered even though we were the only people here tonight and the only people with keys to this double-locked building.

“Of course,” I said, matching his hushed tone.

Gravity shifted.

He suddenly looked doubtful, like he didn’t actually know if he really wanted to share what was on his mind—we both knew he shouldn’t—but it needed to be shared. He decided that swimming upstream was worth it and pressed on.

With a shaky breath he told me he’d been struggling with something. It was something he had been ordered not to share. The order came from way, way up but it was eating him alive.

I said he could tell me because I knew how to keep secrets. I nodded and told him that sharing can alleviate part of the load.

We made a pact to never speak of it as long as we lived.

Somehow, I think a part of me knew it was killing him from the inside out. He was having trouble adjusting and this was something I could do to help.

Jonathan blew out a long, slow breath and began. He told me that he had worked on a nuclear sub. He was a nuclear sub technician. He was responsible for keeping the nuke running.

One day, the captain of the sub wanted to impress someone. There was a higher up on board and the captain wanted to pull a dangerous stunt just for the fun of it—just to prove that he and his crew could. He wanted to make an emergency blow to the surface, a rapid ascent. It was a dangerous maneuver, one that should never be made lightly and one that absolutely should not have been made solely to prove a point. 

Without proper causation and clarification the captain ordered the ascent and his crew executed those orders. It was an awful ride with the pressure change but the sub held in one piece. They successfully did it. But when they popped the hatch and walked out onto the deck they realized the captain hadn’t checked the surface above them.

It hadn’t been clear.

Bodies and the wreckage from a small vessel littered the water around the sub. Fishing nets and buoys and fiberglass pieces churned in bloody waters. There were hands and feet and pieces of faces and dead fish strewn everywhere. 

Jonathan looked at me from across an eon of time. 

“We killed them all,” he said. “I killed them. They’re all dead because of us… because of me.”

They were just people living their lives. They had been fishermen. They may have even been fishing for chinook like the ones we counted on the weirs. Salmon travel thousands of miles and can live for up to nine years. It was possible that some of the salmon here at the Locks had seen his submarine.

I reached for Jonathan’s hand and held on tight when he tried to pull away. I sat with him in silence for a time, observing his face which was tired and pained, like a chinook waiting in the liminal space. I told him it wasn’t his fault. We both knew it wasn’t but it’s hard to put the dead faces away. 

He cleared up his eyes and thanked me for listening. I was the first person he’d told.

There was nothing else to say. It wasn’t the right time for me to exchange my own pain so I asked him if he wanted to walk down to the weirs again. Perhaps the sound of the spillway could drown out the memories. He nodded and we headed out.

I knew it wasn’t enough but I hoped. I hoped because all I could do was hope.

***

Sentinel of the Liminal Gate, photo by Meg Bartlett, 2017

I left Washington exactly one year after I had arrived, driving what remained of my life up into the Cascades where many of the salmon’s spawning grounds lie. I had almost pulled the trigger on myself to the west of those mountains but a combination of fate and will had intervened on my behalf. I had found the courage to ask for help and was on my way to live with some friends in Minnesota. Smiling sadly, I thought about Jonathan and hoped he got promoted soon. He deserved it.

During our last shift together we celebrated by getting milkshakes at the Red Mill Totem House across the street just before they closed for the night (the place is unfortunately gone now). Desserts in hand, we walked back through the botanical gardens and out to the locks, peering into the shadows for anyone doing something they shouldn’t be. Thankfully, it was empty.

We continued on past the lockmaster’s tower and onto the path over the spillway before ending up at the walkway next to the salmon ladder. Double-checking that the viewing-room locks were secured for the evening, we headed over to the silver wave sculpture and leaned over the railing, peering down into the dark waters of the 18th weir. We couldn’t see the salmon but we knew they were in there, spending the night trying to adjust before moving on.

“I still can’t believe they just die at the end,” Jonathan said. 

“Mm-hmm,” I hummed in agreement, still enjoying my milkshake.

No one knows how a salmon determines when it’s time to return to their spawning grounds. You’ll find salmon at a variety of ages upstream after they’ve smelled their way home against seemingly impossible odds. But perhaps the most bizarre thing about them is that they stop eating as soon as they enter freshwater. From their very first inhalation of lesser salinity they begin shutting down. They pour all of their resources into the next generation. They survive entirely off of their body fat as they battle to swim upstream and leap up impressive waterfalls, driven by a single instinctual purpose: to return home. 

Salmon have always reminded me of watery phoenixes. They reach the end of a lifetime, turn scarlet red and burn themselves up before starting the whole thing over again. But not every salmon makes it upstream. Some are eaten by predators along the way, some tire out before they can arrive, and some struggle to adjust to the freshwater in the weirs.

Jonathan and I stood there for a while longer before tossing our styrofoam cups in the trash can with a few other pieces of litter we’d picked up. 

“I’m gonna miss ya, Meg,” he said. 

“Yeah, I’ll miss you too.”

***

A year later I got a text from one of our former coworkers. Jonathan had committed suicide.

Somehow, as I read that message, I felt him sitting on the bed next to me and I knew that I might be the only person who understood why he had decided to go. Tears rolled freely down my cheeks. I had only known him for four months but time really doesn’t matter when you recognize a soul—when you recognize a part of yourself. 

I didn’t blame Jonathan. I wasn’t angry with him. I grieved that he had suffered someone else’s murderous blunder, that he had enough human within him to feel pain for those fishermen and the families that never got closure. I grieved that his government had failed him. I grieved that he was a good person who had been caught in a horrific moment. I grieved that he had felt the need to leave the face of the earth in order to find peace.

I grieved for all of us.

But Jonathan was there. He was sitting next to me smiling sadly but peacefully and when I finally looked up, gazing into his eyes that weren’t really eyes, he told me it was ok. He told me there’s no right or wrong way to travel upstream. Most of us make it, some of us don’t, but all of us try and that’s the only thing that matters.

***

Author’s Note: This creative nonfiction piece was written in honor of Jonathan, his family and friends, and all veterans struggling with suicidal ideation. You are not alone and help IS available.

If you’re a veteran who is depressed or thinking of suicide—or if you know someone who is—dial ‘988’ in the United States to connect with the Veterans Suicide and Crisis Hotline.