If it had fallen any other way then flat it would’ve sliced my skull in pieces. I passed out. I was lucky to be alive.

“When I woke up the crane was wedged in the opening of the hold and it was pitch-black. I heard animals screaming and the echo of footsteps. The dogs had gotten loose. I pulled a book of matches from my back pocket and lit one. After a few minutes of getting my bearings I was able to find my flashlight and begin searching for anyone else who might be trapped below deck.

“Not long after I started digging through the toppled cages I heard a voice calling out from the other side of the compartment, near the fence. A stray piece of tension cable had broken loose and cut open the chain-link, so I used my body to bend an opening. The voice became louder as I walked up toward the steel door. I called out to the other side, but there was no answer at first.

“I knew that the scientists were behind that door and I knew that they had a first aid kit that I needed. The only question was whether they were buried under some kind of debris.

“Just as I was going to start striking the lock with a piece of pipe I heard the voice again. I recognized it as Kurt Stronheim, one of the officers. His leg had been cut length-wise, like a seam. He told me the combination to the lock and asked me to bring him some of the morphine from the veterinary supplies.

“As I opened the door thick smoke poured up and in to my face. Stronheim’s body fell flat against the ground and he grabbed at my ankles. Past the smoke I could see a large cylindrical vat that had toppled over. Some of the scientists were working to put out the fire. I wiped the soot from my eyelids and tried to get in closer to the compartment. Doctor Klein saw me and started pushing me out the door. I tried to back up but in the confusion I tripped over something. That’s when I must have passed out again.

“I remember waking up in the infirmary with bandages around my face and hands. I was near a window and could hear Lieutenant Jeffries yelling at Stronheim. Stronheim was on top of the second crane in his underwear screaming, ‘I’m a shit-bird, I’m a shit-bird.’ He was being punished for letting me open the door. I had to chuckle a little bit about it-the way the navy chain of command worked. I’d never let the captain do something like that to me. I’d take the brig before I’d climb a crane and call myself something like that.”

Joseph walks to a rosewood bookshelf on the far side of the study. He pushes a pile of loose papers aside uncovering a six-inch long tin box. Two snapping sounds ring out in the hollow silence as he unclasps the latches and tilts open the cover. He removes a rolling paper and licks the edges. With his other hand he pinches a heap of dry tobacco from a bag and rolls it tight.

“I thought you had a cough?” Asks Anderson.

“Smoking can’t make it worse, so I might as well enjoy myself.” Snaps Joseph, becoming noticeably irritated at Anderson’s tone of familiarity.

He lights his cigarette and resumes his place adjacent to the cautious Anderson. A kind of animosity grows in him; although it’s not necessarily directed at Anderson. He takes quick puffs of smoke in to his mouth and forces them out from his flaring nostrils.

“Around that time the rust started showing up. I’d been released from the sick bay for about two weeks when they had me scraping these stains off the deck. They looked like rust, but no matter how much we would grind at it the stuff would never come off. After a few days of work we saw that the tools were all stained with it and the spots on the deck had branched out across a larger area, like veins. After three weeks we started to see them everywhere. They were on the wood, the metal, even some of the men had gotten it on their skin. It turned their limbs black. Atrophied. Some of them had to have amputations, others weren’t as lucky.

.