Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  As if his retreat proved her moral rightness, Carol Abernathy grinned, a strange tomato-red rictus, and changed her line of advance to come around the bed end. She came on until she was only six feet away from them, and then stopped, still flourishing the knife at the two standing men, Grant in his shorts, Bonham in his pajamas.

  “Carol! Carol! Are you out of your mind? What the hell are you doing?” Grant was saying.

  Either man was well enough trained, well enough experienced, in unarmed combat and brawling that he could have disarmed her with no more than a superficial cut, but neither made a move to do so. Grant had the feeling that it was all an act, a scene perhaps from one of his own plays, it would make a great second-act curtain. He made a mental note.

  “What a pair!” Carol Abernathy screamed at them. “Men! Men! You, you nigger humper!” she yelled at Grant. “And you, you great lump of degenerate tissue!” she yelled at Bonham. She swung the big knife back and forth in front of her, without even keeping the point directed at them. “I say you’re by God going diving! And you’re by God going! If you stay out all night drinking and whoring with nigger cunts, then that’s just the price you have to pay! But you!” she screamed at Grant, “you’re going to get your money’s worth out of this shitty trip if I have to slice you up!” She did not advance further, as if she knew—or so Grant thought—that to do so would imperil her up to now winning position.

  Bonham turned his head completely away from her and looked over at Grant. “Well, shit. We’re up. We might as well go, hunh?” he said. Grant nodded.

  “Your fucking goddam well right you’ll go!” Carol Abernathy yelled, and brandished Grant’s knife.

  “Mrs. Abernathy,” Bonham said in his deepest voice, “if I’m goin diving, I got to get dressed. Don’t I?” He grinned at her with his stormcloud eyes, and shucked out of his pajama jacket which was already unbuttoned anyway, then untied the drawstring of the pants. Smiling at her, he let them drop.

  Carol Abernathy was already almost outside the door. More swiftly than she entered, she retreated, yelling “I’ll be right outside the door!” in a voice that now held a shrill note of peculiar terror. She shut the door after her.

  It was something Grant wished he had thought of first. But then, being—having been—her lover, it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had done it. Or would it?

  “Fucking cunts! Goddam fucking cunts! I hate them all!” Bonham muttered to himself as he went about putting on his sloppy tentsized swimming trunks. It was the first time Grant had ever heard him use the big bad word. His face resembled a long-suffering thunderstorm that was wanting to break out into lightning and hard hail but never could.

  Outside the door, when they emerged, Carol Abernathy was still holding the knife. “Okay, march!” she said. She was no longer screaming. But the contemptuous tone of her voice made them both stop stock-still in their tracks, and she suddenly looked frightened, as if she knew she had gone too far.

  “Carol, give me that knife,” Grant said, putting into it all the force he had.

  “Not on your life!” Carol Abernathy said. “You think I’m crazy? Not on your life!”

  “I could take it away from you if I wanted,” Grant said quietly. “So could he,” and jerked his head at Bonham.

  “But you’d get yourself cut bad doing it, wouldn’t you?” Carol Abernathy said. “It’s sharp.” She put her thumbnail on the blade like the rank amateur with knives that she was. “Move, I said!” but her tone had softened considerably.

  “Mrs Abernathy,” Bonham said, using again his deepest voice. “After you.”

  “Ha!” Carol Abernathy said. “I’m not turning my back on you. Either one of you.”

  Bonham stared at her for a long contemptuous moment, then turned on his heel and started down the hallway. He did not speak to her again.

  Grant hung back until Bonham was a ways ahead, and then started to follow, Carol right behind him. “What the hell are you doing?” he said in a low voice. “You’re embarrassing the shit out of me. In front of all these people. They’ll think you’re crazy.”

  “They can think what they want,” Carol Abernathy said reasonably. “But I’m not so crazy I’ll let you spend a fortune on this trip and then not do any skindiving.”

  “We’re going diving,” Grant said. “Now give me my knife. And go take a nap or something.”

  “No, sir! Not on your life,” Carol Abernathy smiled. “I’m going with you, and I’m staying right there with you all goddamned day.

  “Fucking niggers! Fucking dirty niggers!” she said in a low, intense voice. “How do you know what you got? You could get the syph.”

  “I didn’t fuck anybody,” Grant said reasonably and then realized how totally unreasonable everything was.

  “DON’T LIE!” Carol Abernathy thundered.

  Still walking, half a step in front of her, Grant too looked at her for a long moment and then turned on his heel and walked away. But this deliberate action did not faze her either. She followed both of them, still carrying the knife.

  When their little procession marched out onto the dock, the waiting Orloffskis and Finers had the same benumbed expression Bonham had worn earlier. Carol Abernathy marched right through them—and through Bonham and Grant—and climbed into the big sixteen-foot diving dinghy and stationed herself in the very forepeak of the bow, and there she stayed with Grant’s knife.

  “Well, come on!” she called raucously. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

  But it was at that exact moment when her self-appointed role began to fail. Whether it was the presence of Cathie Finer whom she had taken such a liking to, or whether it was something else, Grant did not know. Whatever it was, her emotional oneness began to shrink, visibly. And with it, she herself seemed to shrink physically, shrink up into herself as if she were putting her arms around herself and curling up into a foetal ball, a foetal selfpity.

  “Come on, get in!” Bonham said to the others shortly and savagely.

  “Well, say, what the hell?” Orloffski said.

  “Shut up!” Bonham said. “Just shut up, and get in, will you?”

  The two women took the crossboard seat nearest Carol, Orloffski and Finer the middle one, and Grant and Bonham climbed into the stern.

  “How are you today, Carol?” Cathie Finer said sweetly. Wanda Lou, for once, was saying nothing.

  “Oh, I’m all right,” Carol Abernathy said. “Only I didn’t get much sleep last night with these two drunks coming in and hollering and yelling at all hours.”

  “It’s a lovely day today, isn’t it?” Cathie Finer said.

  Carol Abernathy looked around. “Yes, it is,” she said and suddenly looked as if she was going to weep. She smiled tremulously at Cathie.

  They were about a mile out when she said she was deathly sick.

  12

  BONHAM, WHOM EVERYONE accepted tacitly should be Captain and take the tiller of the big Evinrude, was heading for the famous Grand Bank ‘Lagoon’. Finer and Orloffski deliberately had not fished it yesterday, in order to save it for today. It was not really a lagoon at all but a long inlet protected on the seaward side by three small islets covered with pine and scrub. The long point where he would turn into the ‘Lagoon’, off which these islets lay, was still half a mile ahead of them, and it had taken them almost an hour to cover the mile they had covered. Because of Carol Abernathy, the trip had been uncomfortable for everybody.

  “Well, I don’t see how I can take you back, Mrs. Abernathy,” Bonham said. “It’ll cost us another couple of hours.” He looked questioningly at Grant, who shrugged.

  “What do you think is wrong with you?” Grant said, and found himself wondering anxiously if she really was sick. How could you tell with a nut? He didn’t want her to die or anything. And—as Bonham obviously felt too—he felt that injury or sickness, especially at sea, superseded all other wishes or plans automatically. But of course Carol Abernathy knew that. “What do you think it is?”<
br />
  “I don’t know,” she said dully in a deathly sick voice. She was sitting all hunched up now in the forepeak, still clutching Grant’s knife.

  “Are you seasick?” Bonham asked.

  “No. I never get seasick,” Carol Abernathy said in a choked voice. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But I feel terrible.”

  “I tell you what,” Bonham said, squinting into the sun. “There’s three little islands up there ahead. With trees on them. Good place to picnic. I’ll put you off there, and you can lay down in the shade of the trees. Then we’ll pick you up on our way back. How would that be?” he said gently.

  “I don’t know,” Carol said dully. “I guess it would be all right. If I don’t die.”

  Grant, who was fuming now, smothered a desire to laugh harshly out loud. He was convinced now that it was all some kind of an act, a warped sense of shame and depression coming out backwards in a crazy plea for some kind of pity. At the same time, he was still anxious. But he was so embarrassed he wanted to lie down and hide in the bottom of the boat.

  “I’ll come with you, Carol,” Cathie Finer said kindly. She looked at the men. “And look after you. We can always signal the boat if you feel worse. They won’t be far away.”

  “No, I don’t want anybody to come with me,” Carol Abernathy said.

  “We’ll leave you some food,” Bonham said.

  “I couldn’t eat,” Carol said.

  When the boat grounded gently in the sand, she dropped Grant’s knife in the bilge and stood up and leaped over the prow, staggered away a few steps in the ankle-deep water and then fell and lay still on her side in the shallows. Grant watched her with disgust and horror, and fascination. She did not move.

  Bonham tossed a sack of sandwiches and a bottle of water up onto the dry sand above her.

  “I’m going to stay with her,” Cathie Finer said. “How do we know? Maybe she’s really sick. I never dive anyway, just snorkel around.”

  “I’ll stay with you,” Wanda Lou said. “We never do real divin us girls anyway.” She look disturbed.

  Grant knew that if anybody should stay with her it should be himself, but he wanted to make the dive, and selfishly, and furiously, he just didn’t care. He retrieved his knife.

  “Here, then,” Bonham said. “Take some more sandwiches with you, and some beer.” When they were safely ashore, he clapped his big hands together smartly. “Now, for God’s sake, let’s go!”—“Christ, yes!” Orloffski said, and he and Finer jumped over the sides to push the big boat off. When Grant looked back, Carol Abernathy was still lying on her side in the water, the two girls were sitting quietly together up on the beach above her, and he didn’t care. He just didn’t give a damn.

  When Bonham steered them across the point, the ‘Lagoon’ suddenly opened up before them, a long sandy beach with the three islets sitting like guardians off shore, the sun glinting merrily off water in which there was almost no wash at all. On the shore tall pine trees soughed in a morning breeze that would soon begin to fall. Maybe half a mile from the islets and a quarter of a mile from shore Bonham heaved over the little patent anchor, warped the line around a cleat, and boomed, “Well, boys, here we are!” Everybody had a drink of gin. Then they were getting into their flippers.

  The nearest of the little islands, where Carol and the girls were, looked calm and peaceful from here.

  “I’ll stick with you,” Bonham told Grant as they donned their masks. “At least until you make your first dive or two and get to feelin at home.” Then they were all in the water.

  Grant had thought for a moment—while they were dressing out—to, after yesterday, remind the big man that he was paying his expenses on this trip in order to be taught freediving, but then had thought better of it. Now what he saw below through his mask was so eerily breathtakingly beautiful that it took all thought of that out of his mind as well as all thought about most everything else, including Carol Abernathy.

  As far as the eye could see in every direction stretched a vast plain of pure yellow sand that was absolutely flat. For the most part the sand was totally bare, except for a single sea plume or purple gorgonia here and there swaying gently as the water moved it, but every thirty or forty yards in all directions were what appeared to be piles of carefully prearranged rocks. Closer inspection showed these to be coral hillocks, too young in creation to have grown together to make themselves into a reef. And two or three feet above each hillock as far as the eye could see hung one or two or three big grouper, gently moving their fins to keep themselves exactly over the center of their pile. It was like looking down on the domain of some primeval dukedom from the air, a land tranquil, peaceful, alien and dangerous, ready to explode into killing war, into flight and pursuit, at any second; a land to—Grant couldn’t really say what it made him feel—a land to conquer. Half drunk as he still was, with his terrible great hangover, floating face down on the surface, he could hear his breath coming slow and steady through his snorkel tube, and a tingle of a sense of danger, of a forever alien misunderstanding, slithered around through his viscera and groin and finally settled itself in his scrotum.

  Beside him Bonham touched him on the arm and when he looked over, wiggled his eyebrows in his mask proudly like someone showing off a friend’s art work to an interested collector. Grant nodded vigorously, and the big man rolled over easily till his mouth was out, plucked his snorkel, and said, “To the top of the rocks is thirty-six feet, to the sand itself forty-three.”

  Grant raised his own head, much more awkwardly, and treaded water. “But what are they doing?” he gasped.

  Bonham rolled on his side again. “Doing! How do I know? Who the hell cares? These grouper here’re almost always like that in the middle of the day.” He took a breath. “Watch.”

  He lay on the surface taking several long deep breaths— ‘hyperventilating’; he had already explained this to Grant— then surface-dived and swam down kicking rhythmically and easily, left arm back along his side palm up, right arm extended with the gun. At maybe twenty feet Grant watched him snake his left hand up to his mask and clear his ears. Six or eight feet from the two grouper resting stationary above the pile he stopped kicking and coasted down, waited two or three seconds, speared the biggest of the pair, rolled over and headed back up, his head back, sunlight glinting on his mask, his arms at his sides and the fish trailing along wildly below him at the end of the spear and line. His heart in his mouth from the eerie beauty of it, Grant thought he had never seen anything so beautiful. It was like a ballet conducted in nongravity. It was twice as beautiful as when the bulky lung tanks were on the diver’s back.

  Just as Bonham started down Sam Finer had touched Grant on his other side and swept his arm with excited appreciation across the underwater scene. He was again wearing his Scott Hydro-Pak (he was still on his first set of tanks) and at the moment was breathing through the snorkel-like ‘air economizer’ on the side of the fullface mask. He carried the little Minox Bonham and William had repaired for him last night in one hand and his speargun in the other.

  Grant had spared him one quick glance, not wanting to miss any of Bonham’s dive, but now as the big man surfaced still trailing his gyrating fish Finer touched Grant on the arm again. “Great, hunh?” he said in a faint, strangely squeaky voice from inside his fullface mask, and spread his arm again over the underwater scene. Grant nodded. “Ever see anything like this? What a life! Okay. See you later,” Finer squeaked, and went swimming off.

  “Okay, now you try it,” Bonham said, coming back from boating his fish in the nearby boat. Grant looked down. The other grouper, which had disappeared when Bonham speared his companion, had now returned to his exact same position above the center of the coral pile. He maintained himself there calmly with little movements of his pectorals, as if nothing had happened. Grant began to ‘hyperventilate’, himself. “Not that one,” Bonham said from beside him. “He’s spooky now. We’ll save him for later. Pick another pile.”

&n
bsp; Grant nodded and swam off toward another one, which had its own grouper floating serenely above it as though he was not aware human predators had invaded his land. Looking down at him, wanting more than anything in the world to get down there to him and put a vicious, triumphant spear into him, Grant lost all sense of time. It took him at least four tries before he could finally get far enough down even to shoot, and when he did he was so nervously out of breath that he hurried his shot and missed by at least two feet. Bonham waved him on to another pile patiently.

  “Relax more,” Bonham said, rolling over on his side and floating easily while he made a lecture. “Don’t kick so hard. Don’t try to go down fast. Take your time. You got plenty of time. Believe me. Don’t get scared down there. Don’t panic. It isn’t lack of oxygen that makes you want to breathe. It’s excess carbon dioxide that makes your diaphragm heave like that. Remember how I made you stay down in the pool till you couldn’t stay any more, and then made you turn and swim underwater across the pool? Relax more when you hyperventilate. Don’t work so hard at it. Relax. It’s not dangerous. Relax more.” It seemed to become a running comment that never left his ears. They moved on to another pile.

  The very first time down the pressure on his ears had really begun to hurt at twenty feet, and he had stopped to clear them; by the time he did, his momentum was lost; he had given a few frantic kicks and then had to come back up.

  On the second try he had been prepared for the ear-clearing problem, had kept on kicking as he cleared, gone on down, but the moment he realized how deep he was below the surface now his heart had begun to pound, he was suddenly out of breath, and he had to come back up.

  He did not know how many piles he spooked before he finally shot a fish, two or three maybe. But when he did succeed and hit one, and turned, elated, to come back up, he thought for a moment the fish had anchored him to the bottom. Frantically trying to swim the other way below him, it effectively held him down. He considered letting go of the gun, but the shame would be too great. Remembering Bonham’s advice, trying not to let himself get scared and step up his carbon dioxide content, he worked his fins rhythmically and easily at the ends of his legs, and slowly he rose, the fish below him dragging heavily at the gun in his hand. Far above him, while his chest heaved uncontrollably, he looked up at the undulating sun-glowing surface as a haven the like of which he had never dreamed of before. When his head burst through it, and he blew out his snorkel and gasped, and then just lay floating and breathing, it was as much of a return to the Promised Land as he ever expected to feel. Twelve feet below him his fish swam around in slow circles on its side at the end of his spear and line.