by James Jones
The Brazilian rig (which was no more than a spear with its free line attached to an innertube on the surface instead of to the speargun) was always kept ready in a double-rubber Arbalete on these trips. Ali handed it down to him. The Brazilian rig was great for situations like this, or for any big fish you weren’t sure you could handle by yourself with one spear. Then Ali handed him down the Hawaiian sling and its three free spears. The sling Bonham slid up over his left forearm and tucked the free spears into his weight belt. If the others didn’t want him, he’d get him with those. Then hurriedly he started loading the two rubbers of the Arbalete. Emotion and excitement boiled all through him so that his hand shook a little. Oh the fuckers, oh the cocksuckers! If only they don’t get away! But when he looked down, the loaded gun in his right hand, the coil of long line in his left, they were all still there, swimming back and forth and having moved hardly any at all.
Swimming on the surface and towing the innertube, Bonham had got above the Great Blue and dove almost straight down on him, the heavy line uncoiling smoothly from his left hand. He held his breath so that the regulator would not sing. But when he was within fifteen feet of him the shark turned and started swimming a little faster, out toward deep water. Immediately Bonham turned and swam away from him, to the shark’s left, as if frightened. And the shark turned back, to look at him, but swimming at his own depth without rising. Bonham swam along parallel to him. He was only ten feet from him now. With a sudden twist he turned back and swam out over the shark, diving as he did. The shark turned and darted again toward the deeper water but Bonham was already above him. As he darted by underneath Bonham put the spear in him just where he wanted it: alongside the spine over the gills, about halfway between the brain and dorsal fin.
Immediately the shark bucked in the water, bending almost double, then took off to run out toward sea. Above him the innertube on the surface was pulled under about six feet, but as soon as its drag slowed the shark it bobbed back up again, totally indifferent. Nothing could fight that. Down below a small green cloud of blood had begun to pour from the Blue shark’s right gill openings like smoke. Green smoke. Bonham had backed off. Letting the Arbalete hang from its wrist thong on his right wrist, he got the Hawaiian sling off his left and loaded it with one of the spears from his belt. Then swimming back away from the struggling shark and slightly upward toward the boat, he watched.
The bigger of the other two sharks was swimming in from his incessant cruising out at the edge of invisibility. He turned out to be about a seven and a half or eight foot mako. He swam in a cautious circle around the struggling Blue. Then, apparently deciding the fortuitous gift was on the up and up, he darted in, the great grim mouth opening for a bite. Don’t ever let anybody tell you sharks have to turn on their side to bite, Bonham thought. He was still swimming slowly and easily toward the boat. Down below the mako shook its head and body like a dog worrying a bone. When it came away a great empty black crescent gaped in the side of the Blue where there had been flesh and hide. From behind him the little ground shark darted in for a bite near the tail. Then the mako, having swallowed, returned. Bonham wanted to laugh so hard he was afraid of losing his mouthpiece and grasped it with his left hand. Go, you mothers! go, you cannibal bastards! Cannibals! Eat, cannibals! Eat, eat! He was almost to the boat now and when he reached it he shucked out of the aqualung and Arbalete and passed them to Ali, put on his snorkel and with one hand resting on the boat ladder so he could get out quick, he put his head under to watch the carnage, holding the Hawaiian sling ready.
Down below the cannibal banquet went on. Another, a third, shark had joined the two at their feast, swimming up the current. The three of them tore at the Great Blue in a kind of ecstatic frenzy. The mako went up and down one side of him like a man chomping corn on the cob. The Blue, still alive but dying now, only struggled feebly. But the driving attacks of the other three as they fed were enough to hobble and sink the innertube three feet under.
Bonham was almost as frenziedly ecstatic as the sharks. Hatred seemed almost to boil from his every pore, making gooseflesh rise on his skin. Evil bastards! Evil, horrible, worthless bastards! Cowards! Scavengers! Sneak attackers in the night! Cannibals! He knew they were only mindless instinctive animals but it didn’t make any difference. There was life for you! Look at that! There is what life on this planet consists of, all you preachers, all you affirmative yea-sayers! Look at it! And you think humanity is exempt? Ha! They’re the worst, I say! Or at least as bad. Trembling from his ecstasy of hate, excitement, revulsion and rage, Bonham let go of the boat ladder and swam out over the struggling fish. He knew it was a foolish thing to do but he didn’t care. God, how he hated them. Them and everything they stood for on this earth.
Down below the mindless fish snapped on. The Great Blue was by now reduced to a mere lump of flesh and gristle, cartilage. Only the spear in the back of his head held him there and kept his dead carcass from sinking. From above them Bonham hyperventilated, took an enormous breath then dove down toward them where they were fifty feet down, the Hawaiian sling with its free spear extended out in front of him. The three of them were so insane they didn’t even see his approach. But he didn’t get too close. From about twelve feet above, which meant that his spearhead was seven and a half feet from the shark, he put a spear squarely into the head of the mako, then turned and streaked for the surface watching the action from between his feet. The mako jerked as if hit with an electric current, then started swimming all around in wild circles. In seconds the other two were on him. And the same process occurred that had occurred before. Bonham back at the boat and breathing quickly over his own recklessness, kept his hand on the boat ladder and stayed in the water to watch. Because the mako was not attached to any line to the surface like the Blue he began drifting away downcurrent, the other two sharks darting in to strike at him again and again. At the rim of visibility Bonham saw the shadow of another shark join the melée. Then they all passed from sight.
Exhausted beyond saying, emotionally exhausted, he climbed back into the boat and they went to pick up the Brazilian rig and its line and spear.
“You got one, hunh, Boss?”
“Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I got one.” How could he tell him any more than that?
“You crazy. You really crazy. You know that?”
Bonham got out the gin bottle. What would he say if he knew about the second one? He drank. He really shouldn’t have done that. Well, he had lost a free spear, that was all, and he had expected that. But he really shouldn’t have done that second thing. That was really foolish. He was glad he’d done it, anyway.
Back in the car, thinking it all over again and remembering it all with painstaking detailed relish, Bonham was still glad. Out of all the many sharks he had killed over the years that was the only time he had ever instigated, or even seen, a mob-feeding. The same situation had been there often enough, true. But sharks were really much more cautious cowardly creatures than most people believed. God! he wanted to laugh out loud when he saw in his mind that mako swimming wildly around, and the other two turning and going for him. I bet he wondered what the hell had hit him. Suddenly he became aware that his wife was watching him.
He looked over at her and smiled. “We’re almost there.”
“Is it as bad as all that?” Letta said quietly.
“Is what what?” he said.
“I say, is it that bad? The camera and Grant? All that?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said sullenly.
“Your eyes very bright, my love,” Letta said.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “Cut it out.”
“Hokay,” Letta said. She turned her pokerface toward the window and looked out.
She knew, goddamn it. Now how could she know? God damn. Ahead of them the town appeared. Its high streetlamps hung above the dusty grubby streets, each one an apex of a cone of dust. Then their own dusty little street with all its high mansard-roof homes of corrugated tin. Their own was st
ill brightly lit up. Could she have told that Lucky anything about their own uh their own private problems today? When they were alone together all that time? He remembered the funny feeling he had had about that at The Neptune, from Lucky and Grant both. Well, screw them all. They didn’t know anything. About anything. So what if she did? Bonham clamped his big jaws together in their storm-weathering position and the dark stormcloud look came back over his eyes and forehead. What the hell did any of them know about ladies? The main thing now was that he had to get that goddamned Orloffski out of here and on his way back north, so he himself could get on down to Kingston.
At the house, after they had searched hard and thoroughly for the camera and not found it and had had a couple of drinks, as a gesture he offered Doug his car to go home in.
“Well, thanks, Al,” Doug said. “I uh—Okay, I’ll take it.”
“I’d just like to have it by ten-thirty or eleven,” Bonham said. “Because I’m going out. Maybe it would be better if I drove you.”
“Maybe that would be better,” Doug said. “I probably wouldn’t get up that early.”
They did not talk on the way, but when he let Doug out at the big iron gates of the villa he said again how sorry he was about the loss of the camera. “I expect Orloffski’s right and one of them damn porters stole it.”
“I expect so,” Doug said. “Anyway it’s a little thing, really.”
“What’ll you be doing now? With Grant and his girl gone?” Bonham asked.
“I don’t know. Probably mosey on back to Coral Gables and get back to my snook fishin, I guess,” Doug said. He turned toward the villa. As he went up the curving walk Bonham heard him start to whistle. The song was a popular song that had been a big hit, called The Party’s Over.
Bonham waited till he had gone in before he drove off. The dew was finally beginning to settle the dust, and the air was cool on his flushed, embarrassed, angry face. God, it was good to be alone. God damn all of them.
22
AFTER HE SHUT THE big glass and iron front door behind him, Doug Ismaileh stopped and stood in the villa foyer several moments. He listened to Bonham’s old car chuff and chug away. Its sound faded and silence settled around him. The villa was totally silent, appeared to be totally deserted tonight. Only one night light burned in the foyer. Everything else was dark.
After hesitating several seconds more in the deep silence, Doug snapped on the lights in the grand salon where the bar was—where a bar was; there were bars everywhere here—and went in there and made himself a very stiff scotch and soda. Then, holding the glass, he looked at all the empty chairs and loveseats and divans under the bright lights in the great room. The sight increased his depression. Bonham probably thought his reserve tonight was due to the stealing of the camera (and Doug very deliberately had not straightened him out) but the truth was that he had been reticent and distant because he was having a real putdown. Again, something had changed, a period was over, an adventure had ended in his life. When Grant and Lucky became airborne in the Kingston plane, a serious melancholy settled over him. Now there was nothing for it but to head back home and back to work on the new play. No more excuses. If he went to Kingston it wouldn’t be the same; down there they would be a couple, a sealed-shut couple. And his former heated ideas about going to New York for a while, and looking up Terry September, made him grin ruefully now.
God damn that fucking Grant! He was shot in the ass with luck. Everything came to him on a plattter. With no more talent, brains or hard work than a thousand other guys, everything he did turned to gold and fame and happiness. Look at how he had found this goddam Lucky, for instance. He hadn’t even found her! She had found him.
Holding the drink up to the light, Doug admired it; selfconsciously admired himself admiring it. The giantkiller, old Hemingway used to call booze. He was sure right. The old man always was. Still, he couldn’t drink it in here under all these bright lights and only himself among all these empty chairs. Turning on his heel he took the big drink out onto the terrace where only small reflected light from the salon penetrated. It felt much better out there.
Pulling up one of the big highbacked wicker chairs, he sat down and cocked his feet up on the terrace balustrade. Below him lights in the town showed where a number of tourist honkytonks and local shag bars for locals were still open. He felt like going down to one of the local joints and getting into some kind of a fight with some ape. Or hit a tourist trap and pick up some tourist for a nice drunken poker-game, or maybe get him dead drunk and fuck his wife. But, no. Anyway, he certainly wouldn’t run into Bonham and Orloffski down there, he thought wryly, now that their two chief sources of drinking money (himself and Grant) were no longer with them. They’d be home. He sure would not like to have to tangle with Bonham. Now that Orloffski, he wouldn’t like to tangle with him either.
Doug was as sure as everybody else that Orloffski had stolen the camera. But in a way it tickled him. It made him want to chuckle instead of making him angry. It was good once in a while to see something that wasn’t quite perfect for fucking Ron Grant!
Of course, why Orloffski would do such a thing when he knew Bonham was trying hard to sell Grant on going into their schooner and diving business, was something else again. As Doug saw it he just had to be some kind of a klepto.
So, let him be a klepto.
No, what had made him distant to them tonight was something entirely else.
His whole life seemed to be going past him fast, and faster, like an express passenger train picking up speed until the windows blurred into one, and all without leaving any residue or marks on him. And to see Grant and Lucky together made him intensely aware of it. What did he have? Ha! His first wife out in L.A. with that dumb kid of theirs they’d had; who needed it? His second wife in Detroit, the fat pig, with her dopey teenage son; he never should have signed all the income of the first play over to her, now she had that and his house in Detroit; he had sure had bad advice on that one from all his Greek cousins in New York in their try to save taxes; still, he had all the second-play income himself although it wasn’t as big a hit. He had his house in Coral Gables, and his little boat, and a bunch of fishing experiences and opportunities—which, unless there was an audience to see them or somebody to tell them to afterwards, didn’t mean all that much anyway. And he had his third play, which although he was halfway through the second act, he still couldn’t get the first-act curtain for. Which meant it wasn’t even off the ground. That was what he had.
And that fucking Grant! That son of a bitch! How dare he come up with such a great broad as old Lucky? He had no more right to her than anybody. She was as loyal to him as a tigress. She loved him. And why? She had met him. A mutual friend had introduced them. A mutual friend had introduced them, and she had been ready to fall in love with somebody, so fucking Grant fell into the gravy. Why had he met her? Why hadn’t Doug met her? It could just as easy happen. What was so great about Grant? His Moral Integrity? Ha! Here he lived with this older broad for fourteen years, screwing her in her own house, in her husband’s house, letting her husband support him—until his work started making money. Hell, he wouldn’t even have to pay her alimony now when he left her! What kind of luck was that? But moral integrity! Did Lucky think he had moral integrity?
His next thought caused a kind of astonished stillness in Doug.
What if somebody told Lucky all about Carol, what would she say about moral integrity then?—was the thought.
Why hadn’t he? Why the hell hadn’t he? He could have slipped it to her so easy she probably wouldn’t even have known where it came from. And Grant the fucker deserved it. Why, by God, he hadn’t even thought of it! What kind of a brain-thinker did that make Ismaileh? No. No you couldn’t go doing things like that to your best friends. Even if they deserved them.
Sitting in the high-backed wicker chair Doug sensed rather than heard someone come up behind him out onto the terrace. Silently he tensed his body in the chair and grasped the h
eavy crystal ashtray that had been sitting in his lap and grinned, somehow feeling vastly relieved suddenly. Okay, come on, you!
“Doug?” the soft voice of Carol Abernathy said from behind him. “Is that you, Doug?”
He relaxed and got to his feet “Yes. Hi, Carol! God, did I wake you up? I’m sorry.”
“No, you didn’t wake me. I woke on my own, and then saw the lights on down here and thought it might be you.”
“I’m just havin a nightcap before goin off to bed.” He turned to look out over the town again, his jaws tightening for some unaccountable reason. A few of the lights had gone out.
She came and stood by him, looking out too. She was wearing one of her better looking robes, tied in with a wide Japanese-style sash, and mules with long-haired pompoms on them. Above the sash her heavy breasts, even though they sagged a good bit, didn’t look bad.
“Did you finally get the pair of young lovers off for Kingston?” she said in a mild voice.
“Yeh,” Doug said lightly. “Yeh, I did. And everybody was as happy as clams.”
“Where were you all day today? I thought they were leaving last night.”
“Well, Bonham had this dive to make today. Couple crashed through the bridge in a car. And he wanted Ron to make it with him. So they stayed over a day. So—I stayed with ’em.”
“Yes, I heard about the accident. Some poor married man and his girl. Did they seem happy to you?”
“Yes,” Doug said, not without a certain twinge of particular pleasure. “Yes, they seemed very happy to me.”
Rather sadly Carol pulled a big wicker chair over by his and sat down on it, putting her heels up on the balustrade.
“Do you think he’ll marry her?” she asked.
“Yeah, I pretty much think he will. He was sort of of two minds about it in the beginning, but he’s come around to accepting it as sort of his Fate. And she’ll do just about anything to marry him.”
