Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  And as always on this trip, nature, the sea, bad winds, storms, hurricanes, nothing, no other natural phenomenon such as even the Greens, nothing could be held responsible except the people.

  It ended with Ron Grant having a broken nose (and being thus totally unable to dive anymore at all anyway for at least a month, or two), and it ended with just about everybody on board not speaking to everybody else on board. Thinking back on it, as he always liked to do, though he rarely gained anything, any knowledge at all from such practice, Grant thought that perhaps—during the middle of the day while they were out spearfishing still—he had had a premonition of it, when he did something so outrageous (though only to himself) that it made him suspect he was getting close to being insane. But like with all his poor premonitions he could—unlike Lucky—only view them as such a long time after events had proven them out, thus obviating them as any real premonitions.

  The day began auspiciously enough, at dawn again—though the night before, the night of their return from Dog Cay, had not been all that fine, admirable.

  Grant had tried very hard not to drink much that day, and that night, the night they returned to North Nelson, and had succeeded quite well. In spite of that, after dinner, when they had all retired early, he and Lucky had spent the best part of —the whole of—the night on the very opposite edges of the regular-sized double bed they had in the thin-walled, rickety, jerry-built hotelroom supplied (at premium, naturally) by the Greens.

  Whatever pleasant sexual practices were going on between Bonham and Cathie in her room, or in the room of the Spicehandlers, or between the Surgeon and his girl who—like hamsters in their chosen-corner rutting place of a rather unprivate cage—were still in their same old spot on the deck; whatever was going on with any of these, there was nothing going on in the Ron Grants’ room.

  Lucky had tried a couple of times, tentatively, earlier on, to make up with him from their big fight and accusation of two nights before, but Grant, self-convinced, self-convicted cuckold since the night he had stood in the coachroof hatch during the long sail, had been polite but distant. He simply could not get that curiously faceless, though obviously Jim Grointon, image out of his mind. And now when they lay in the bed, and she made a half-tentative gesture toward him, he repulsed her almost savagely. Because of the first night’s sail, the next night’s sleeping aboard at the islet anchorage, the third night’s big fight, then the night on the dock at Dog Cay, they had not had any sex at all for five nights; but Grant did not care.— “I’m too damned tired from all that spearfishing today to think about making love,” he said, almost brutally. Silently she had turned away toward the wall and her own bed edge. As a reciprocal gesture, Grant had moved himself over to his own bed edge.— “It’s funny,” he said after a while, “I find now that I’m much braver underwater, much more courageous now, since we’ve become ‘estranged’, as they say. Isn’t that funny?” He made it heavily ironic. Lucky did not answer. And so that was the way they lay. It was no hardship at all for them to get up at dawn when the first light came into the room, and dress to go down to the Naiad.— “I think,” Lucky said thinly as they were dressing, but in a strangely tired voice, “that when we come in today, I’m going to wire for that Kingston seaplane to come get me tomorrow. You’d better be prepared to give me the money. If you don’t, I’ll get it from Ben.” Grant merely nodded. But by the time she really could have done that, gone all the way through with it, it—‘the cruise’; as cruise—was already all over, and there was no need. Bonham was happily cooking bacon and eggs on Naiad with the bright red disc of the sun just letting go its last touch of the horizon as they came down. There was the delicious, normally so happy-making, homey, friendly smell of coffee in the fresh morning air.

  And so the final day began.

  He took them, Bonham took them, to a place about a half an hour’s sail from the dock out through the pass between North and South Nelson and off to the north-northwest, where there was a large collection of fairly small reefs over an area of several hundred yards, all separated by pure white sand, and all ranging in depth from fifteen to never more than forty or forty-five feet. It was a superb spot. And Bonham obviously knew it well, from before. And yet he had never brought them here. It was clear to Grant, at least, that Bonham could easily have docked them every night at North Nelson for two or even three weeks and never have run out of new and interesting, superb diving spots. And if that was so, it was clear that Bonham’s only reason for not wanting to was just simply to save himself money on dockage charges. And that was no way to run a ritzy, luxury, ‘rich-man’s’ cruise (especially with Naiad’s present accommodations!), which was the type of reputation, and clientele, Bonham wanted to acquire. Grant made a mental note to talk to him about this.

  In any case, Bonham anchored them squarely in the center of this large patch of separated reefs, all richly teeming with all sorts of fish and undersea life large and small. Everybody at once put on free-diving gear and within a few minutes had collected enough fish and lobster tails to feed them all lunch, a huge lunch, and even dinner, a huge dinner—if any of them wanted it for dinner. After that they—those of them who wanted; those of them who could—all put on aqualungs and went off exploring the further, slightly deeper reefs.

  And it was then that there occurred the strange experience, act, outrageous act, which Grant was later to rather lamely and half-heartedly refer to as what he should have recognized as his ‘premonition’. The ship as she lay was heading southeast, and Grant had swum off to the southwest where he had noticed a reef a hundred yards or so way. Orloffski had come off on that side too, but had turned off toward the southeast. It was true that it was not customary, or even accepted or recommended practice, to go off alone like that, but on dives as shallow and as short as these nobody well-acquainted with diving and the lung ever paid any attention to this ‘buddy’ principle—except of course in the case of little Irma, and even Ben, though Ben had now begun to go off by himself on little forays. But this was Bonham’s job, of course. This particular time he had taken Irma and Ben off to the northeast clear over on the other side of the ship, where the Surgeon and his girlfriend were also diving. So Grant was really alone when he came up to his little reef.

  The first thing he noted was that it was almost circular in shape. For some reason the coral had grown that way, and while there were a few irregular entrances into it here and there, it made an almost perfect circle of coral, with a clean white sand field completely bare of any growth: weed, gorgonia, anything: in its center. A really strange formation in any case, something he had never seen before. It wasn’t deep; to the sand bottom in the center was maybe thirty to thirty-five feet, while the circle of coral around it rose up to maybe twenty and in places fifteen feet from the surface. Rather adventurously, or at least feeling rather adventurous, he decided to swim in over the coral and go down into the center and have a look.

  It was true, as he had told Lucky last night, that since their ‘estrangement’ (what a word!) he had curiously grown more brave, more courageous underwater, in his diving. It had started back when she had gotten angry and had ‘estranged’ herself from him over Carol Abernathy. It had grown stronger, considerably stronger, after that horrifying ‘spaghetti dinner’ night—although he had not—or had he?—yet begun to ‘estrange’ himself from her. But after that moment during the allnight sail (he would never forget that moment), when he had stood in the open hatchway, one armpit resting on each side the coachroof while the ship communicated its so-delicious lilting movement to his body as it moved through the water, and him looking up at the so-bright stars and the masthead that moved back and forth in a great arc amongst them, and had suddenly known, realized, become convinced that she had in fact cuckolded him—after that moment, his courage, bravery (whatever you wanted to call it) underwater had suddenly grown at least two hundred percent. At least. Maybe more. It was not that he was reckless. Or at least he didn’t think it was: recklessness. It was jus
t that he had become more aggressive, more belligerent, and being more aggressive became less thoughtful, and being less thoughtful was less cautious. It was as if in the diving he was relieving himself of some terribly intense, and yet at the same time equally terribly unknowable, frustration over her and over all of it. Bonham and Ben had both commented on it, this new aggressiveness, during the cruise. And, well what the hell? why not? But just the same, and in spite of all of that, what he saw— on his right—when he swam slowly down into the sand center of the coral ring, made his heart literally stop beating. For several seconds. Or at least it seemed that long.

  On his right in that part of the coral ring that ran all around him was a large deep overhang, like so many that you saw continually down on the reefs, but under it, just lying there, was the hugest fish he had ever seen in his life—including the giant snapper Jim Grointon had once shown to him and Ben from a distance. It was so big that it was as if his eyes refused to believe it for several seconds. They kept travelling up along it from tail to head strangely, as if trying to convince him not to believe what they were seeing for him.

  It was partially hidden by parts of the overhang which drooped lower in some places than others, and he swam down further and levelled off, being careful not to disturb the sand and make a cloud, and then he saw that it was a shark. And at that moment he decided to shoot it.

  He didn’t know why he decided to shoot it, and could not even have said. There was no audience. To perform for. He was totally alone. But so much the better. He did not know what it was doing there. He knew sharks could not float and sometimes were said to take rests on the bottom, but sharks of this size were supposed to live only out in the deep ocean. Weren’t they? He could not even make out what kind of shark it was. He could see enough of the snout, as he swam carefully and very slowly a few yards off, to see that it had no barbels and was no nurse shark, but then nurse sharks never got that big. It did not have the characteristic spots that mark the tiger shark, but tigers never got that big either, did they? It was at least three times his own length, and more. Maybe four times. Maybe even more. What would that be? Three times his own length was about seventeen feet. Four times was about twenty-three feet. The tail was almost entirely covered by an especially long overhang so that he could not see if it was the ‘lunate’ type tail which characterized the white shark and the mako, but the white shark—the real ‘man-eater’ —was the only shark he had ever heard of that attained such lengths. It was sort of reddish brown in color, and the huge dorsal fin, like a damned sail, was only two-thirds visible under the overhang. How the damned thing had managed to wriggle itself in under there was incredible anyway. And all the time all this was running through his mind, in really only a very few seconds, he was preparing to shoot it.

  He did not know why he wanted to shoot it, or why he had to shoot it. But he knew he did want to, and knew he did have to. He really didn’t expect to kill it. The way it was, under the overhang, he couldn’t get a real brain shot. But if he hit it right, so that the spear went forward through the mouth he was pretty sure it wouldn’t attack him. It probably wouldn’t anyway. As a precautionary move, he slowly and stealthily drew his knife from his leg sheath and cut the heavy cord that attached the spear to the gun. The gun was already cocked, both rubbers. Then, holding the knife in his left hand, he swam slowly toward it.

  The beast had not moved at all during the time, say ten or twelve seconds, that he had been there. He had swum away a few yards, now he approached it from the tail (which he still could not see), swimming up along its length from behind until he could see the gill slits. It was at least four times his length, he was pretty sure. Then, when he had the gill slits in view, he reversed his position slowly and with very careful movements, so that his feet were toward the shark. Aiming from between his feet at the gill slits, from almost on the very sand bottom now, he tried to aim upward forward toward where the brain would be, trying for a brain shot. When he pulled the trigger and felt the jolt in his arm—that finality—he was already swimming backward along the bottom as hard as he could swim.

  It was well that he did. The shark erupted out of the overhang like some kind of projectile, taking most of the overhang with it when it did. It was as if an underwater explosion had occurred. Pieces and chunks of sharp coral sailed slowly through the water, turning in slow motion, exactly the way debris from a topside explosion would have flown more swiftly through the air, and was followed more slowly by a great cloud of sand and coral dust. Pieces of sharp coral stung Grant’s arm and legs and chest, but even so he swam up until at least his head was out of the dust-sand cloud. The shark, whose snout had been almost at one of the little entryways into the coral ring, had swum, plunged, out through this, and—his head above the sand cloud—Grant watched it, gyrating wildly and frenetically, disappear off into the sea into the green fog of the visibility range. The spear had seemed to go on in, and on in, and on in until it disappeared completely through the gills. The head of it must certainly have come out through the top of the head somewhere after traveling through the mouth cavity. Even though it had not been a true killing shot (it had been an awfully tough position to shoot from), that shark was certainly not going to eat anything for quite some time to come. It sure was a damn good thing he had cut that line! Feeling an exquisite satisfaction he could not have explained, and in fact had rarely ever felt in his life except in bed with some woman which of course he could explain, Grant swam on up out of the sand and dust cloud and looked himself over. He had certainly been stung plenty, but he had only actually been nicked, cut a little, by the coral in only four or five places. All the fish around the reef had suddenly disappeared. It was as if a giant electric shock had suddenly shot through the reef making the entire underwater world jump. Grant finally, now, took the time to look around —and off to his right, to the south since he was facing the ship, saw Mo Orloffski lying halfway between the surface and the sand bottom about forty yards away, making incredulous and horrified gesticulations at him.

  Grant swam over to him. Orloffski continued his gesticulations Grant wiggled his eyebrows and bunched his nose inside his mask to show that he was grinning. But Orloffski would not accept this. They swam slowly back to the ship together, and Orloffski did not cease his remonstrations, using his hands and arms and shoulders and head, and even his back. The first thing he said when they had handed up their rigs and climbed up the diving ladder was, “You’re crazy! You must be out of your ever-lovin fucking mind!” And he said it in just about as loud a voice as he could.

  The others who were on board, which now included Bonham, Ben and Irma, as well as Lucky naturally, clustered around.— “You know what this guy just did! You know what this dumb son of a bitch just did!” He proceeded to tell them. “At least twenty feet, twenty-five feet! He’s a nut!” he concluded. “He’s some kind of a crazy ravin fucking nut, I tell you!” Then he turned on Grant. “Have you done things like that before when you was out alone?” He turned to Bonham, shaking his head. “Really, Al! I don’t think you ought to let this guy go out all alone by hisself no morel I mean it! Really!”

  All this, from the tough, big, brutal, insensitive, totally unimaginative Orloffski! Grant began to have his first doubt.

  Grant had not, of course, known Orloffski had been watching all the time. He had thought he had drifted on off to the southeast and had been totally unaware that he had doubled back south and then further, southeast to the strangely circular reef. He had not wanted to make a fuss. And he had not done what he’d done for any audience. He had done it for some grinding, gnashing, screeching something in himself. And he was sorry Orloffski had seen it. And if he had known that he was there, watching, he almost certainly would not have done it. But now it was done. And they all knew about it.

  Bonham questioned him about it. He explained the situation as it had been, and his plan and his theory, embarrassed now, and beginning to get angry.

  “What if he had come at you?” Bon
ham asked.

  “I figured he would go the other way. Go in the direction away from whatever it was had hit him, hurt him. Which, in fact, was what he did.”

  “But under that ledge, that overhang. In that position, in total panic, he might just as easily of turned back toward you. What would you have done then?”

  “I figured with that spear running through his mouth out the top of his head he wasn’t in any position to bite anything.”

  “Bite, hell! He wouldn’t have to bite you. All he’d have to do would be just run into you. Or even hit you with his tail. By accident.”

  “I was swimming backward from the second I shot. Swimming backward, upsidedown on my back, right down on the bottom. Would he be likely to hit me there?”