From down below to up above

I could feel the heat already as I popped my head up from beneath the waters surface. My legs were tired from the long swim out to the oyster bed. However, it had been a good day and I had found a good number of pearls in the mollusks, or pearl oysters, as many called them. I walked towards my small bungalow and stretched out on a towel to dry off. My mind started remembering how I gotten to this place and time since I was pretty sure this would be my last dive.

  I had been living and working for quite some time now on a small island near Japan. Prior to that I had been a scuba instructor in California. I worked for this really lovely American Asian couple that had a small harbor on the coast. The wife had told me story after story of the Ama Japanese women pearl divers. Her great grandmother had been one and she loved sharing these tales with me. I had met the couple when my partner Douglas and I had rented a small sloop for a week. We wanted to spend some together before he headed off to NASA for his training. Space shuttles with tours orbiting earth had become pretty common in our days and Douglas was completing is training to become one of those pilots.

    Doulas and I had met when were kids. We view life with a similar eye and enjoyed learning and discovering new things. We had lost touch during our college years and then reconnected at a high school reunion. As we grew closer, we decided to try living together and it had been a learning experience for both of us. When he had gotten is acceptance letter, we both agreed it would be a good thing. A good friend of ours had told us about Mr. and Mrs. Chaing’s harbor so we figured we’d go check it out.

    Our week on the sloop had been heavenly and Douglas had taught me about scuba diving, snorkeling, as well as deep sea fishing. He explained that water training was a big part of space training because of the pressure and floating. I couldn’t tell if he was serious but it sounded good. As the week came to an end and we headed back to the harbor I was forcing my cheerfulness. Douglas was going to be gone for almost two years. It would be a long time before we were with each other and I was dreading our good byes. I think he could sense my feelings and was very attentive to anything that would make me feel relaxed and comfortable.

   I sat up from spot in front of the bungalow. The sun had dried me off and the salt was making my skin itch. I decided to take a shower. And estimate how much I would get for all of the pearls I had collected in my time here. They fit into a handmade hide pouch one of the fishermen had given me shortly after I arrived. I counted 20 white pearls, 15 black ,19 pink, 17 golden, and 50 peach. Some of them were fresh water and some not. I put all of them in my pouch and decided it was time for my finial walk around the Island. It was twilight and soon my most favorite sight, the Island evening sky would present it amazing canvas to my eyes.

   I would miss my temporary home that located near the Izu Islands of Japan. It was an island that was about 7 square miles in area and it had become my nightly ritual to walk the shore line. One to work of the soreness of the day’s dive and two to just enjoy the extraordinary beauty of my tiny piece of heaven. I had gotten to the point where I couldn’t see the glow of the evening fire in front of the bungalow. I could see the lanterns of my neighbors in the village of boats. They were usually about 17 to 20 miles off my shore line. Some how looking at them made my eyes water. Many of my friends lived there and I knew I would no longer be able to greet them in person again.

 Douglas was on his last rotation as a shuttle pilot. He loved see the world from the sky’s and the awe of the passengers knowing the were orbiting their home planet. He had dropped of the last group of passengers and was heading out across the ocean to the shuttle post. He was starting to get excited because he would be reunited with Kat in a week. He had missed her more then he imagined. He didn’t notice the glowing object approaching fast from the rear. He didn’t even realize there had been impact until the controls froze. He started to prepare for ejection but he was to late. The shuttle became a flaming ship of death.

  Kat was about 2 miles from the bungalow when she saw something lighting up the sky. Falling stars and meteors were not that uncommon so she passed to watch. She suddenly felt a cold breeze and stopped staring to head back to the warm fire at the bungalow. Then something weird happened. A beam of light started shining down from above. She wondered it was a chopper from the main land doing a search and rescue. She shielded he eyes and looked up but couldn’t make out anything. The light was too bright. She stood transfixed. It was funny because she thought she saw Douglas way up towards the top. Maybe she was suffering from the dive earlier. She tried to sit down but couldn’t. She looked down at her feet and she was no longer on the beach. Looking to the right and then to the left she understood that she was actually being beamed off the earth. She looked up again and it really was Douglas. He was standing there with his arms out stretched.

  The headlines of the News were filled with the shuttle’s explosion. The fishing boat Captain that had come to get Kat had looked all over the island for her. The only trace were her belongings in the bungalow and a pouch of pearls lying near the shore.