Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  “That’s the ticket,” Bonham said from beside him. “That was a pretty good dive. He’ll go twelve pounds.”

  “They sure put a drag on you, don’t they?” Grant laughed, gasping. He looked down again at his trophy affectionately. The feeling that he had accomplished something, something that neither he nor his body had wanted to do, gave him a new elation.

  “The really big ones really put drag on you,” Bonham said, and grinned at him. “Feels good, hunh?”

  “Sure does.” This time Grant raised his head completely out, and treaded water. “Where’s the boat? I’ll go and—”

  Bonham cut him short. “Too far. Here, give him here.” He pulled a cord fish stringer out of the crotch of his trunks. “If we swam back to the boat to boat every fish, we’d lose all our time. Look at it.”

  Raising his head, Grant at first couldn’t see it. Finally he picked it out as it bobbed up on a wavelet. It was at least two hundred and fifty yards away. A kind of spear of loneliness pierced through him. He looked at his watch, and saw he had been in the water forty-five minutes!

  The most he had ever swum before, swimming normally without flippers and snorkel, had been fifteen minutes when he had swum a hundred yards for a Red Cross life-saving test. And then he had been exhausted.

  It was only the beginning. They moved on from pile to pile, Grant diving and diving, Bonham repeating over and over his lecture to relax.

  “Okay,” Bonham said finally, after a dive. “I’m gonna leave you on your own awhile.” He now had three of Grant’s fish on the stringer. He pulled another stringer from the crotch of his trunks and passed it over. “If you want more fish, use that. I have to spend some time with Sam and the camera. Besides, Sam isn’t all that good to be off by himself like that, anyway. And we want some good pictures. We’ll be over this way,” he said, and pointed southwest and slightly out to sea. “Work your way over that way.”

  Grant felt a small chill at the thought of being alone. “Where’s Orloffski?”

  “He’s over that way too, I think. Now, did you see how I handled them fish?”

  Grant nodded. Bonham had taken both of the two which were not dead by the eyeball sockets exactly as if he were picking up a bowling ball. The pain made them stiffen and cease to move. Then he had cut through the head into the brain with his knife. He had pulled a gill open with his fingernail to show Grant the sharp gill rakers that made it impossible to hold these fish by the gills. And when he pushed the metal tip of the stringer in through a gill to come out the mouth, he did it gingerly.

  It seemed to Grant that there was never a minute that passed when he was not learning something. Sometimes it was hard on the ego. He rolled his own head out now, plucked his snorkel, and suddenly realized that he was getting the hang of that much, anyway. “But isn’t it dangerous? Carrying a fish stringer? Because of sharks?”

  “Yeah, I guess it is,” Bonham said, and shrugged irritably. “But don’t worry about it I’m carrying it. If you don’t want to shoot any more fish, don’t. We got more than we need to eat. Work your way on over toward us, we might see something interesting.”

  Then he was gone. It was all so matter-of-fact.

  For a while Grant simply lay still in the water, looking down, moving his flippers idly only enough to keep him headed in the right direction. The blue and green world was eerie and beautiful. This way, floating with only the back of his neck out breathing slowly and easily through the snorkel, he was totally and completely relaxed.

  After a while, he began swimming leisurely from one coral pile to another, making a dive now and then, but not trying to spear anything. It was the first time he had ever been really alone in the sea, and it gave him a peculiarly satisfying feeling. He even began to feel a little bit at home in it. He tried to remember where he had had this feeling of odd satisfaction before, and then realized that it had been at home as a kid, when he was alone in the big old house, totally alone and with nobody else there. If anybody else was there, it spoiled it, his parents, his kid sister, his two older brothers. But sometimes, once in a great while, his mother would be out, at one of her countless ladies’ club meetings, and everybody else would be off somewhere, and he would—age what? ten or twelve?—come home from school and know that he was going to be there alone for a certain number of hours. He would walk through the big old rooms in the stillness and quiet, the hallway, the kitchen, the diningroom with its big oval table, the middle parlor where they were allowed by his mother, the front parlor where they were not allowed by his mother (“Livingroom Number One and Livingroom Number Two,” his father sarcastically called them), all the bedrooms upstairs, all the bathrooms; and in the silence of aloneness everything, every object and every space, the air and light itself, would appear new and strange as though he had never seen it before. Knowing that eventually he would go up to his own attic rooms—attic apartment was more the word for it—and masturbate in tranquillity, he would touch this chair or that lamp with this odd satisfaction of entity. And that was the way Grant felt now in the sea.

  But then honor came into it and disrupted all that. He had to spear a fish. He had to spear a fish, and he had to carry it on the stringer. If Bonham—and Mo Orloffski, and Finer—could swim around carrying bleeding fish on stringers, then he had to do it, too. Every book he had ever read about skin-diving warned against this. It was dangerous. It was an open invitation to sharks. Some sharks were known to have come from down-tide as far as a mile or two miles after the scent of fish blood, the books said. Grant didn’t even know whether the tide was coming in or going out at the moment. He had forgotten to ask. None of that mattered.

  Picking the biggest grouper among all the ‘rockpile’ grouper within his visibility, he swam over to above it, hyperventilated enormously, surface-dived, and started down, although he didn’t want to.

  It turned out the most beautiful dive he had ever made, with or without aqualung. It was very nearly perfect. Swimming down in the classic stance, clearing ear pressure as it built up, he could feel his legs beating easily and relaxed with their flippers against the water resistance, driving him, loose all over as goose grease. He watched the big fish come closer and felt he had all the time in the world. The grouper was resting two feet or so above his coral rockpile which meant he was diving, what? thirty-six feet? Stopping his kick, he waited just long enough, but not too long, calculating the angle of entry of the spear for a brain shot from behind and above, and shot the slowly moving fish exactly through his brain. The grouper quivered and became still, and Grant rolled over delighting in himself and his movements and started back up slowly, watching the glistening, never-quiet water-sky come down to meet him as he rose. He was—at least for as long as he could hold his breath—a free man, free of gravity, free of everything, and reveled in it. With only a couple of heaves of his diaphragm, he swam back up as slowly as he could, sorry that it was over. When his head broke the surface, he felt—erroneously or not—that he was a different man.

  But then the anxiety returned. The fish was dead so there was no need to cut him, and being hit well in the head there was almost no blood. But he was anxious anyway. Constantly looking to right and left and behind, he got him off the spear and onto the stringer, tied it to the hip strap of his bikini and went swimming off in the direction Bonham had taken, looking all around and behind every few seconds. He wished now that he had not had to do it, but it was equally unthinkable to unstring the fish and drop him—an idea which had entered his head—just leave him and swim away. He swam on, alone and peering down into a world of water.

  Before he had gone very far, he noticed that there were no more grouper floating above any of the coral rockpiles ahead of him. As if by some signal, they had all just disappeared. A shock tingle of alarm charged through him, because he did not know the reason. Had maybe sharks come into the area? Then ahead of him on the left, inshore, at just the outer edge of visibility, he caught just a glimpse of a faint blue shadow descending. Taking a goo
d grip on his speargun, which was practically worthless as any kind of a real defense anyway, he swam over that way, and saw that it was Orloffski he had seen.

  Orloffski had a stringer of fish—or two stringers, because Grant didn’t believe one stringer could hold so many—so huge that he could hardly dive with it, and he was going after another. Grant watched fascinated as he speared the fish, surfaced, and set about adding it to the string like a man in a field shucking ears of corn into a wagon. Such brutal greed disgusted him. He was aware that he was seeing in action the quality in man which had destroyed the forests and the plains buffalo of America. Orloffski had not seen him and went swimming off looking for more fish, and Grant turned back toward finding Bonham.

  As he swam on alone, he kept peering behind him every few seconds in the approved manner, to make sure no hungry shark was bearing down on him. These goddamned fucking masks, it was amazing how they cut down your side vision. It was like wearing blinders.

  On one of these sweeps of his head he happened to raise his face far enough above the surface that he caught a glimpse of the three little islets sitting there behind him in a string, and on the nearest of which were Carol Abernathy and the two girls. This made him think of her briefly for a moment, but only for a moment and briefly.

  13

  GREAT ROLLING BLACK thunders in clouds and vivid crashing arrowshots of blinding lightning roared and wrassled inside her head, making her want to shout, as she leaped over the end of the boat into the sand and staggered away to fall in the ankle-deep water. That was the only way she could describe it. But she did not shout. Bravely, she kept her strong-willed, self-disciplined lips closed though no one knew of her heroism.

  Well, she would not tell them.

  The strong are sometimes tested almost beyond their capacity. Only the Strong are tested Strongly. And if they cannot encompass it, rise above it, rise above the Dead Ashes of their Selves, they only drop back down one level, one material evolutionary level. And to shout with Spiritual Rage before the ears of material men is to go unheard.

  In the warm shallow water the bright sunlight turned her closed eyelids a warm pulsating red. A million bright bees buzzed in this red space, each with his tiny stinger glowing, a redhot wire ready to inflict upon the strong and magnificent, the true sacrificers, a hundred million burning fiery stings. It was not unjust. It was the Karma of all. The boat had already left, she had heard it go. And now she could hear the two women up on the sand beach behind her talking in the low tones people use in the presence of invalids. Carol Abernathy smiled to herself, but did not open her eyes. The warm sea water was vastly soothing, healing. The Sea as Great Mother. Slyly, she voided her bladder in her swimming suit, feeling in the warm water the greater warmth of her urine on her thighs and crotch, thinking how she had fooled them all. She had not really been sick at all. She had simply had to pee. But she could not come out and say that openly to a crowded boatload of men and women; crude men, and younger women.

  Slowly she sat up, as though she was not quite sure where she was, looking all around.

  “How are you feeling, Carol?” Cathie Finer called down to her. “Feeling better?”

  “Oh!” she said. “Oh!” She put her hand to her head. “Yes. Yes, I am. The water is so soothing. The sea is healing. The Sea is the Great Mother. I think it’s helped me.”

  “Would you like something to eat?”

  “No. I couldn’t eat anything. The very thought of eating ...” She shuddered. Actually, she was ravenous. The sea air was certainly good for one, and for the appetite as well.

  “What do you think it was?” Cathie Finer asked as she slowly climbed up the sand to them.

  “I think it was some kind of intestinal crise. An acute colitis, perhaps. People with very sensitive nervous systems often get that, and I’ve had trouble with it before. But never anything like this.” She smiled wanly at the two women, who appeared to look relieved, especially Wanda Lou Orloffski, and then looked beyond them. “What do you say we explore our island?”

  “There isn’t very much to explore,” Cathie Finer smiled. “Just that clump of six pines there in the middle, and that heavy brush down at the end.”

  “I think I’ll go over and lie down in the shade of the trees a while,” Carol said.

  “You go ahead,” Cathie said. “We’ll stay here and get some sun and maybe eat something after a while. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m a little shaky,” Carol said and smiled at her, and suddenly felt tears well up in her eyes and turned away to hide them, but not before she was absolutely sure Cathie had seen them. One knew one’s friends. No word need be spoken. That young woman had much good Karma.

  It was lovely in the pines. A light little breeze played under them, moving their long leaves softly, and the floor of brown needles where she sat and then lay down smelled deliciously of pine. But then the rolling black thunders and slashing lightnings began to clash and smash and roil in her head, effectively cutting off all her exterior senses, as she thought again of Grant.

  Who the fuck did he think he was? She had not come all this long way all these long years from the back hills of Tennessee, to see herself muzzled and her power cut off, just when it was just beginning to have some serious national voice. She had not disguised her Self and her Motives all these years— for twenty years before she even met Grant—to have him think he could divest her of all she meant to accomplish in the world with a flick of his little finger. Did they think, all those selfish fools, that she had married Hunt Abernathy because she loved him? or because she merely wanted to be number-one social arbiter in a hick town like Indianapolis? Ha! She had suffered almost twenty years with Hunt Abernathy, biding her time, playing her little role, waiting. Him, with his drinking to such excess and chasing piggish waitresses, the more piggish the better. She had saved his Mind and his Soul; she had made his career for him in brick manufacturing just in her spare time, while she was preparing herself and waiting.

  Of course the producers and publishers all hated her. They were terrified of her and of her force. They lived dirty little status quo lives behind the façade of which was their true degeneracy which they didn’t want exposed. They knew they could handle Grant. Because Grant was easy to handle.

  But there were Forces on her side, Forces of Good and of Evolution in mankind, which were not to be toyed with. When she had deliberately burned all of her writing and play manuscripts that time years ago on that beach in Florida, accepting the role of Sacrifice of her talent and her selfish ambition, she had put into her own hands enormous power, psychic Power, which neither producers nor publishers, nor Grant, could even conceive the force of. And especially Grant, the ungrateful Grant. She had made him into a man. She had saved his Talent and his Soul; she had even given him her body to use, suffering in silence all the unpleasant—things so that he might concentrate on his great work toward the purpose—her purpose—of changing mankind. He would turn against such psychic Power as that at his peril, if he did.

  Suddenly the black roarings ceased and she began to cry. Oh, Ron. Ron. You were so beautiful then. I was so beautiful.

  After a while the crying ceased, but it brought no relief. She got up nervously from the unenjoyed bed of pine needles, looking anxiously for the two women, deciding to go back to them.

  Well, at least Bonham was on her side. That little trick of telling him she would get Grant to put in money. That had worked good. She would decide more about whether to go ahead with that after this horrible, stupid trip was over and she got back to Ganado Bay and looked the situation over. But it was not inconceivable that the more and more Grant gravitated to these men, the less and less he could care about any woman. She had noticed about adventurers that the more they got their kicks out of adventuring and danger, the more they tended to consider all females as less and less important except for a quick fuck.

  And anyway, quite apart from all that, she had another quick little trick up her sleeve, fo
r as soon as they got back to GaBay.

  As she came out of the trees and down the path to the beach where the two girls were still sitting, now amongst the eggshells, sandwich wrappers and empty beer bottles of a picnic, she carefully put on her face her expression of fatigue and depression and low energy. She would dearly have loved to have eaten something.

  They were, of course, when she came into earshot, talking about their husbands. Carol looked out to where they could just make out the boat in the distance on the sea. There they all were, playing, playing, playing, kids playing games.

  14

  IT DID NOT SEEM like kids playing games to Grant. Playing yes, maybe. But not kids’ games. When he finally did find Bonham, Bonham was doing an—at least for Grant—unbelievable thing. Bonham and Sam Finer, with the camera and one spear-gun between them, were playing with a seven-foot nurse shark, trying to get closeup pictures of it.

  After seeing Orloffski that one time, Grant had swum alone slightly out to sea roughly in the direction Bonham had indicated, over the long flat field of coral ‘rockpiles.’ The rockpiles here had no fish floating above them either. Bonham and Finer had scared them away, had both taken quite a few fish—though nothing like Orloffski. They had laid their fish and the other speargun, Finer’s, on the forty-foot bottom for temporary safekeeping, much the same way a man might without worry leave a suitcase in a quarter locker at Grand Central, in order to deal with the nurse shark.