Caribbean Rim

by Randy Wayne White

  Tamara wore a baggy white dive skin with a hood over a T-shirt and shorts. A Japanese pearl diver came to mind, a dancer in a white gown, a fluid underwater ballet. Leg strokes, long, strong, her body a slow missile in ascent. No wasted effort, no pointless splashing, when, after separating for ten minutes, they compared notes on the surface. She was excitable, a woman who loved discovery.

  “Yeah, man, didn’t I tell you! This here’s a wreck of some type or part of a litter trail. Could be we’re the first to dive it. You see any beer cans or fishing lures?”

  No, the area was pristine. An acre of sand dunes, the dunes spaced washboard-like between rocks and gardens of coral.

  “You’re good luck, that’s what you are, sir. I would’ve heard the rumors if there was something worth diving in this area. That hurricane a few months back must’ve shifted the sand away. You see all the ballast rock? I didn’t notice it first time I was here.”

  Ford, smiling, waved her closer. “I found it.”

  “Ballast rock?” Her expression brightened behind her dive mask. “Wait, you don’t mean . . .”

  “Exactly as you described. But it’s not from a dinosaur or a mastodon, or anything else prehistoric. I can’t figure out how the heck it got here, but, by god, it can’t be anything else. Come on before I lose the spot.”

  Tidal current was deceptive, a steady force that would’ve swept them away had they been unaware. It flowed northeast over a mile of shoals, then spilled into a chasm twenty miles long and six thousand feet deep. The Tongue of the Ocean, the trough was called. In this current, next stop was Spanish Wells or Nassau—if sharks, tigers, and oceanic white tips didn’t find them first.

  She braced him on a series of bounce dives. Wedged beneath a litter of staghorn, there it was: a log of ivory curved like a sword. Ford clung to it and fanned away sand. The object was longer, heavier than a fence post, mossy with age and barnacle-encrusted on the pointed end. With a knife, he’d already scraped away enough patina to expose what might be scrimshaw but could be scars from a machete.

  They surfaced. “It’s an elephant tusk,” he said.

  She hooted with delight, then sobered. “Elephant? It can’t be. Like from a circus? Not in these islands.”

  “From Africa,” he said. “Not the whole animal, just the ivory. Could be Dutch or British, a ship headed for the States to do some trading, probably under sail because of all the ballast. Or a steamer, maybe. I doubt if there’s anything really valuable, but—”

  “Valuable enough,” she laughed. “Come on.”

  For twenty minutes, their world glazed. Near the elephant tusk were shards of glass that turned purple when exposed to the sun. Hogfish rooted among the detritus as they kicked away more sand. The underwater world wasn’t silent. It was relentless motion and noise. Whales chirped from the distant depths, fish groaned an octave lower. A multitude of crustaceans crackled like a blazing fire. Gradually, Ford’s radar broadened to include a diesel rumble he’d ignored too long.

  He went up to check. The vessel he’d seen earlier was closer than expected, much closer, coming toward them at speed. It was the commercial variety, powered like an ocean-going tug and scarred by rough use as a barge. If someone in the wheelhouse didn’t wake up—or sober up—it was on a collision course with the little sailboat.

  Tamara surfaced nearby, whooping with laughter. “Looka what I found. We gotta mark this spot and get our tanks. See?” She held up a simple copper bracelet—it was open-ended, with Arabic-looking knobs, the patina jade green—then pushed her mask back, concerned by his expression.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Who are those idiots?”

  She snapped out of her daze when she saw the trawler bearing down and the size of its wake. “Drunk bastards . . . Damn him . . . Or just dumb, stupid, mean. Hurry. We’ve got to get back and pull anchor or he’ll swamp us for sure.”

  Ford grabbed her wrist. “We’re safer here. He’s bound to see your boat.”

  “That’s the problem.”

  “You know who it is?”

  “Swim for the shallows,” she told him. “I’ve got to get back and free that anchor. He’s crazy enough, he might stop and do worse when he sees you.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  Tamara set off alone, her fins low, sleek like an otter. Ford followed, swimming on his side. The trawler was almost on them by then, the bow huge through his prescription dive mask. It had a high steel rail adorned with tire bumpers that banged against a rusted hull of white. SANDMAN, the name stenciled portside. The vessel’s speed, its course, guaranteed what was about to happen.

  “Tamara, goddamn it, come back here!”

  Roaring diesels masked all sound.

  Crawl-stroking, he went after the woman in earnest. After what seemed a long time, he almost caught her fin, missed her a second time, then got a grip on her ankle not far from where the dory sat prettily at anchor. By then, it was too late. He snatched her down and kicked toward the bottom expecting an explosive impact. Instead of steel crushing wood, they heard the dory’s hull slam the surface after it went airborne, then what resembled the snap of a brittle tree as diesel engines thrummed overhead.

  Wait—Ford used his open palm to communicate. Framed within her mask, the woman’s eyes widened while the trawler’s shadow blotted out the sunlight, then sailed past like a black cloud. On the surface, cresting waves awaited. From atop each was a view of the trawler’s stern. Drifting in the opposite direction, the dory had broken free. Its mast was a wild metronome battling to stay upright in the waves.

  “Snapped my anchor line,” she yelled and took off after the thing.

  It is a common error, often fatal, to chase a drifting boat when land is nearby. Again, he caught her from behind. “Listen to me. Wait for the wake to settle down and let’s see what she does in this tide.”

  “You crazy, man? We’d die out here all alone, and that fool sure isn’t gonna help.” She meant the trawler. A couple of men were up there in the wheelhouse looking back, maybe laughing, but already too far away from them to be sure.

  “We could die chasing your boat, too, the way this tide’s running. Maybe the anchor pulled loose. Give it a minute and let’s watch. If you’re convinced you can out-swim the tide and the wind, we’ll both go. But we’re not splitting up.”

  “I’m the dive master,” she snapped. “It’s my boat.”

  “And I’m your paying client. Wouldn’t do your business much good to lose a client, now would it?”

  As one, they watched the Abaco dory. Its lapstreaked hull was red, the mast black mahogany. The little vessel settled like a duck on rolling waves that pushed it away. An easterly trade wind turned the bow while the tide tractored it north toward the Tongue of the Ocean, where that ledge plummeted a mile deep.

  “This is bad,” she muttered after a few seconds. “We’ll never catch her. And god help us out here at night on that little bitty piece of rock. Local fishermen, they don’t hardly never come this way.”

  The lone palm tree was suddenly half a mile away. The tide had swept them east at a different angle from the boat. They were drifting toward a rip line where the shallows transitioned to purple, then black. Wait much longer, they might not make it back to the only high ground for miles. Ford was about to say just that when the dory jolted, spun away from the wind . . . jolted again, then swung hard into the tide and stopped drifting.

  “Maybe you are good luck,” Tamara said, meaning he’d been right. The anchor had snagged another piece of bottom. They kicked along side by side, not leisurely, but not panicked either—until the anchor pulled free again. Wind caught the boat and pushed it away faster than the flowing tide.

  Ford put his head down and swam. Below, through his mask, he saw sand funneling into a valley. An indigo crevice appeared. At the edge of the drop-off, a slow carousel of sharks awaited
tidal effluvium. Reef sharks, a few black tips. In water this clear they ate fish, not mammals. But a thousand feet below, in the darkness, larger predators might be scanning the surface for larger prey.

  He looked back only once. Tamara lagged far behind. At the boat’s transom, he battled the current with his fins to slow the hull and waited for her to get a hand over the gumwale. She was breathing heavily.

  “After you,” he said.

  “That was close, man. I don’t think I’d have made it on my own.”

  “You’d have managed.”

  She gazed down into the darkness before pushing her mask back. Whatever it was she mumbled was rushed and had the flavor of panic.

  Ford searched beneath them, seeing only rays of sunlight. “What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t like hanging here, that’s all. No telling what’s looking up at us. Diving’s different. I’m like a fish if I know where the bottom is.”

  “It’s always straight down,” Ford replied. “Hop in, we’ve got to check for damage. I’ll help you.”

  No need. Fear launched her over the side while he took his time and enjoyed the sensation of drifting above the abyss.

  Aboard, they removed their gear. She opened bottles of water and thanked him too many times for slowing the boat enough for her to catch up. Her breathing had returned to normal, but her adrenaline was spiking, and she felt the need to explain.

  “It’s not often I get scared like that.”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “That supposed to make me feel better? I wasn’t afraid exactly, it’s just something got put into my head a long time ago. Wall dives, they don’t bother me neither, but black water like this . . . It’s because, well . . . Uh-oh.” She got up and searched around her feet while patting the pockets of her baggy tunic. “The bracelet,” she muttered, “I must’ve dropped it when I climbed in.”

  Ford watched her peer over the side. No way was she going after the thing.

  “It’s a normal response,” he said. “Dark water scares everyone. Me included.”

  “Now you’re lying to be nice. Damn it all—” On her knees now, she continued to search. And she kept talking. “I’m not making excuses. It’s the way I was raised. I didn’t learn to swim ’til high school. Move your feet for a sec.”

  He did. And he provided her an excuse by referencing the government program she’d mentioned.

  “Stop pretending you understand because you don’t. My grandma used to switch me if I went into water over my waist. Bathtub-deep, we call it. She said I had the ears. It’s an expression here. You got the ears, Tamarinda, don’t make me cut a switch. Meant I was destined to drown.”

  “Your ears look fine to me. Switch you, as in—”

  “You know, whip me with a switch. That’s the way it is on the islands. They tell children they got the ears so as to scare them away from deep water. Older folks can’t swim—most of ’em anyway—so that’s what they do.”

  “Only girls?”

  She lifted a dive bag, moved his fins, still searching for the bracelet. “Everyone, the boys, most of them, too. Even the ones with daddies who fish for a living. Sounds silly, but what child doesn’t believe what their grandfolks tell ’em? It’s a story keeps getting passed down. If a child’s got the ears, he’ll die eating sand. That’s another expression. Everyone on these islands, we’ve all got some family member who drowned. Me, it was two cousins I hardly knew and my Uncle Oxley. Then my . . .” She left the sentence unfinished, with a sense of sadness. “Black water, it used to give me dreams.”

  For an instant, he got a glimpse of Tamara as a little girl. Timid, too big-boned to be pretty, but with a mind that was open and wanted more. And still wrestling with childhood demons, as most adults do.

  The bracelet was gone. “Damn it,” she said again, but several minutes later, as they checked the boat for damage.

  * * *

  —

  The mast was cracked. Under partial sail, it was sunset before they reached the channel to Congo Town and Mars Bay.

  The long sculling oar came out. She’d been talkative on the trip back. Ford had learned more about Leonard Nickelby and the stranger who’d asked about him. He also knew where the trawler Sandman was moored when in port.

  “Why you care about that? A lot of men on the island, they’re jealous, that’s all. Don’t like the idea of women dive masters. They think the government gave us special treatment, so they play their little jokes to scare us out of the business.”

  Strangers who survive a near-death experience, imagined or not, are never again strangers. Ford used the bond to say, “He recognized your boat and you recognized who was steering. Tell me or not, it’s up to you.”

  “The police won’t do nothing, if that’s what’s on your mind. And you don’t want to trade words with the man we saw up there laughing.” She watched the biologist clean his wire-rimmed glasses. “Is that what’s in your head? If it is, don’t. It would be a dangerous thing to do, Mister Scientist.”

  Ford went silent to let her know he was waiting.

  Ten minutes of silence was enough. “His name’s Hubert Purcell, but Sandman’s what everybody calls him. Even before he started running boats. What he did was . . . I . . . I’ve never told anybody this before. It’s not like I’ve had a lot of men bothering after me in my life, so folks might not have believed—”

  “I’ll believe you,” Ford said, already aware of the possibilities. Purcell, he suspected, was her ex, lover or husband, possibly the father of her child.

  Wrong, but close.

  “Sandman—Hubert—he wanted his way with me once. This was a year or so back, and I said no. Didn’t let him touch me. Some men are the type to hold a grudge, but I really think what happened today was jealousy over what I do.”

  “Wanted? Or tried to force you?”

  “Bullied me with words, that’s all, when his idea of charm didn’t work. He’d been drinking. Of course, he’s always drinking, but he was drunker than usual. Hubert, what you don’t understand about him is, he does dive trips on the side. That’s how he makes his living. No license, but tourists, a certain type, never bother to ask.” She said this in a way that invited questions.

  “Tourists like Dr. Nickelby?”

  “The type that think they know everything there is about diving, yeah. Him and his girl, they chartered the Sandman ’cause they said a sailing dory was too slow for what they had in mind. And too small, is what they said, because they had a lot of gear. No sense arguing. The three of them had too much fun in the conga line that night.”

  There was no hint of jealousy in her voice. Ford abandoned the subject and asked if she had shared the same information with the Cuban-looking guy who’d come asking about Nickelby.

  “Already said I didn’t trust him—had kind of a cold, mean way, superior-acting, you know? Besides, I didn’t find out who Dr. Nickelby hired until later. Tend bar at the Turtle Kraals, you hear just about everything there is to hear. Three full days, him and that girl were aboard Sandman’s boat. I don’t know where it is they went to dive. That part’s strange. Captains usually got no reason to keep the information private, which might mean something to you.”

  It did. Ford said, “You need to involve the police or he’ll run you out of business. At the very least, tell someone you trust. Your husband, maybe.”

  A bitter half laugh prefaced “This sort of thing, I can take care of myself. Promise you won’t do nothing stupid?”

  “Confront Hubert and another hard-assed local? No thanks. I’m not the type.”

  The biologist’s easygoing manner tried to convince her while Tamara scrutinized his face. “I can’t say I’ve ever met your type. You’re a nice man, I think, but I’ve been wrong before. You also know a lot more about boats and diving than you let on. I wonder why that is?”

  �
�I didn’t say I wasn’t a good swimmer.”

  “Not in words, maybe. More in a polite way so I’d feel like the expert. Which is sweet, I guess, unless you were being tricky. I don’t like tricky.” After a sharp look, she shrugged. “Either way, I’ve changed my mind. I’d be pleased to have that drink tonight when I finish work.”

  They were in range of a cell tower by then. His phone chimed. Instead of accepting her offer, he read a text message. She ignored him as if, yes or no, his answer made no difference, but said as he put the phone away, “Your wife’s probably worried and I don’t blame her. She back in Florida?”

  “It’s from a friend,” he said, “a guy named Tomlinson. He and that treasure hunter I mentioned, they were supposed to rent a boat out of Cay Sal and sail north, but the Bahamian government won’t let . . . Anyway, I’ll get back with him later.”

  Tamara found this interesting. “A sailboat big enough to make a trip like that costs money. They rich, these friends of yours?”

  “Tomlinson, probably—he wrote a best-selling book years ago. Kind of a self-help philosophy thing for hippie types. The other guy, I’ve yet to meet a rich treasure hunter. What about you?”

  “Answer him back while you can,” Tamara said. She used her weight to thrust the dory toward a dock, several small boats visible in the distance. “We’re close enough, I might also suggest you have one of those beers in the cooler. No charge.”

  As Ford dug through the ice, she added, “Open one for me, too. I wouldn’t mind hearing more about that logbook.”

  5

  Fitzpatrick had been worried about Tomlinson, the abrupt mood swings. After a break at the marina to watch the sunset, he began to feel more at ease. Mentioning the stolen coins had softened Zonk’s attitude, perhaps because he had yet to hear the details about why Nickelby and the girl were in danger.