The Watch

by Rick Bass

  “I’ve an idea,” I said. “Let’s pull the tower down, and drag it over to the fire with the car.”

  “Yeah!” said Kirby. “Yeah!” Clouds were hurrying past the moon, something was blowing in quickly, but I could see that Kirby had straightened up some, and that he was not going to pass out.

  It’s been ten years since we were in high school. Some days, when I am with him, it seems that eternity still lies out in front of us; and other days, it seems that we’ve already died, somehow, and everything is over. Tricia is beautiful. She reminds me of that white sports car.

  We kicked most of the sand off of our shoes, and got in the car, and it started right up, the way it always did. It was a nice car, all right, and Kirby drove it to work every day—though work was only one-point-eight miles away—and he kept his briefcase in the back seat; but in the trunk, just thrown in, were all of the things he had always kept in his trunk in high school, things he thought he might need in an emergency.

  There was a bow and arrows, a .22 rifle, a tomahawk, binoculars, a tire inflator, a billy club, some extra fishing poles, a tool box, some barbed wire, a bull riding rope, cowboy boots, a wrinkled, oily tuxedo which he had rented and never bothered to return, and there were other things, too—but it was the bull riding rope, which we attached to the tower, and to the back bumper of the little sports car, that came in handy this time.

  Sand flew as the tires spun, and like some shy animal, the BMW quickly buried itself, up to the doors.

  To the very end, I think Kirby believed that at any moment he was going to pull free, and break out of the sand, and pull the tower over: the engine screaming, the car shuddering and bucking . . . but it was sunk deep, when he gave up, and he had to crawl out through the window.

  The Cuba Libres, and the roar of the wind, made it seem funny; we howled, as if it was something the car had done by itself, on its own.

  “Let’s take a picture and send it to Tricia,” he said. I laughed, and winced too, a little, because I thought it was a bad sign that he was talking about her again, so much, so often, but he was happy, so we got the camera from the trunk, and because he did not have a flash attachment, we built another fire, stacked wood there by the tower, which is what we should have done in the first place.

  We went back to get the couch, and our poles and sleeping bags, and the ice chest. I had worked, for a while, for a moving company, and I knew a trick so that I could carry on my back a couch, a refrigerator, or almost anything, and I showed it to Kirby, and he screamed, laughing, as I ran down the beach with the couch on my back, not able to see where I was going, carrying the couch like an ant with a leaf, coming dangerously close to the water. Kirby ran along behind me, screaming, carrying the other things, and when we had set up a new camp, we ran back and forth, carrying the larger pieces of burning logs, transferring the fire, too. We took a picture of the car by firelight.

  Our hands and arms had dried blood on them almost all the way up to the elbows, from the barnacles, and we rinsed them off in the sea, which was not as cold as we had expected.

  “I wish Tricia was here to see this,” he said, more than once. The wind was blowing still harder, and the moon was gone entirely.

  We got a new fire started, and were exhausted from all the effort; we fixed more drinks and slumped into the couch and raised our poles to cast out again, but stopped, realizing that the shrimp were gone; that something had stolen them.

  The other shrimp were in a live well, in the trunk, so we re-baited. It was fun, reaching in the dark into the warm bubbling water of the bait bucket, and feeling the wild tiny shrimp leap about, fishtailing, trying to escape. It didn’t matter which shrimp you got; you didn’t even need to look. You just reached in, and caught whichever one leapt into your hand.

  We baited the hooks, and cast out again. We were thirsty, so we fixed more drinks. We nodded off on the couch, and were awakened by the fire going down, and by snow, which was landing gently on our faces. It was just starting. It was beautiful, and we sat up, and then stood up, but didn’t say anything. We reeled in and checked our hooks, and found that the shrimp were gone again.

  Kirby looked out at the darkness, where surely the snowflakes were landing on the water, and he looked up at the sky, and could not stand the beauty.

  “I’m going to try to hitchhike back to Houston,” he said. He did not say her name but I know he was thinking of waking up with Tricia, and looking out the window, and seeing the snow, and everything being warm, inside the house, under the roof.

  “No,” I said. “Wait.” Then I was cruel. “You’ll just get in a fight again,” I told him, though I knew it wasn’t true: they were always wild to see each other after any kind of separation, even a day or two. I had to admit I was somewhat jealous of this.

  “Wait a little longer, and we’ll go out into the waves,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Kirby. “Okay.” Because we’d been thinking that would be the best part, the most fun: wade-fishing. We’d read about that, too, and Kirby had brought a throw net, with which to catch mullets for bait.

  We’d read about wade-fishermen with long stringers of fish— the really successful fishermen—being followed by sharks and attacked, and so we were pretty terrified of the sharks, knowing that they could be down there among our legs, in the darkness and under water, where we could not see, following us: or that we could even walk right into the sharks. That idea of them being hidden, just beneath us—we didn’t like it a bit, not knowing for sure if they were out there or not.

  We fixed a new batch of Cuba Libres, using a lot of lime. We stood at the shore in our waders, the snow and wind coming hard into our faces, and drank them quickly, strongly, and poured some more, raced them down. It wasn’t ocean any more, but snowdrift prairie, the Missouri breaks, or the Dakotas and beyond, and we waded out, men searching for game, holding the heavy poles high over our heads, dragging the great Bible cast-nets behind us.

  The water was not very deep for a long time; for fifteen minutes it was only knee-deep, getting no deeper, and not yet time to think about sharks.

  “I wish Tricia was here,” said Kirby. The Cuba Libres were warm in our bellies; we’d used a lot of rum in the last ones. “I wish she was riding on my shoulders, piggy-back,” he said.

  “Nekkid,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Kirby, picturing it, and he was happy, and even though I didn’t really like Tricia, I thought how nice it would have been if she could have seen him then, sort of looking off and dreaming about it. I wished I had a girlfriend or wife on my back, too, then, to go along with all the other equipment I was carrying. I was thinking that she could hold the pole, and cast out, waiting for a bite, waiting for the big fight; and I could work the throw net, trying to catch fresh mullet, which we'd cut up into cubes, right there in the water, and use for fresh bait: because the bait had to be fresh.

  It was like a murder or a sin, cutting the live mullet's head off, slicing the entrails out, filleting out a piece of still-barely-living meat and putting it on the hook, and then throwing the rest of th.e mullet away; throwing it behind you for the sharks, or whatever—head, fins, entrails, and left-over meat—casting your hook then far out into the waves and dark and snow, with that warm very fresh piece of flesh on the hook—it was like a sin, the worst of the animal kingdom, I thought, but if you caught what you were after, if you got the big redfish, then it was all right, it was possible that you were forgiven.

  I wanted to catch the largest red fish in the world. I wanted to catch one so large that I'd have to wrestle it, maybe even stab it with the fillet knife, like Tarzan with the crocodiles.

  Kirby looked tired. He had put on about twenty pounds since high school, and it was hard work, walking with the poles over our heads.

  “Wait,” I said. We stopped and caught our breath. It was hard to hear each other, with only the wind and waves around us; and except for the direction of the waves, splashing into our faces, from the Gulf, we couldn't tell where
shore was, or in which direction the ocean lay.

  “I’ ve an idea,” said Kirby, still breathing heavily, looking back to where we were pretty sure the shore was. If our fire was still burning, we couldn’t see it. “There’s a place back up the beach that rents horses in the daytime. Some stables.”

  “They shoot horse thieves,” I said. But I thought it was a wonderful idea. I was tired, too; I wasn’t in as good of shape as I’ d once been either.

  “I’ ll go get them,” I said, since I wasn’t breathing quite as hard as he was. It was a tremendous picture: both of us on white horses, riding out into the waves, chest-deep, neck-deep, then the magic lift and 80at of the horse as it began to swim, the light feeling of nothing, no resistance.

  Mares, they would be, noble and strong, capable of carrying foolish, drunken men out to sea on their journey, if they so desired, and capable of bringing them back again, too.

  “Yes,” I said. "You stay here. I’ ll go find the horses.”

  Back on shore, walking up the beach to the stables, I stopped at a pay phone, and dialed Tricia’s number. The cold wind was rocking the little phone booth, and there was much static on the line.

  “Tricia,” I said, disguising my voice, mumbling. "This is Kirby. I love you.” Then I hung up, and thought about how I really liked her after all, and I went to look for the horses. It would be perfect.

  We could ride around out in the gulf on the swimming horses until they tired, casting and drinking, searching for what we were after, pausing sometimes to lean forward and whisper kind things, encouragement, into the horses’ ears, as they labored through the waves, blowing hard through their nostrils, legs kicking and churning, swimming around in wide circles out in the gulf, in the darkness, the snow; no doubt full of their own fears of sharks, of drowning, of going down under too heavy of a load, and of all the things unseen, all the things below.

  Acknowledgments

  Acknowledgment is made to the publications in which these stories first appeared: “Juggernaut” and “The Watch” in The Quarterly; “Mexico” in Antaeus; “Choteau” in CQ; “Mississippi” in Cimarron Review; “The Government Bears” in The Southern Review; “Wild Horses” in The Paris Review; “Cats and Students, Bubbles and Abysses” in Carolina Quarterly; and “Redfish” in Esquire.

  “The Watch” was selected for New Stories from the South 1988 and Prize Stories 1989: the O. Henry Awards. “Cats and Students, Bubbles and Abysses” was reprinted in Best American Short Stories 1988.

  Praise for THE WATCH

  “There is enough energy in this book to shake a house.”

  —Clyde Edgerton

  “[Conveys] excitement. . . . A sense that a potentially significant writer of short stories has emerged. . . . ‘The Watch,’ an altogether remarkable story of ‘poisoned loneliness,’ . . . has the look of an American classic.”

  —Peter S. Prescott, Newseek

  “Rick Bass owns a durable and authentic voice. I read The Watch, with intense pleasure, wondering at the skill of a young writer who can both frighten and amaze. This is a superb debut.”

  —Jim. Harrison

  “One of the truly impressiye short story writers of his generation.”

  —George Plimpton

  Also by Rick Bass

  Wild to the Heart

  The Deer Pasture

  About Rick Bass

  Rick Bass was born in Texas, was educated in Utah as a petroleum geologist, and now lives in Montana’s Yaak Valley. His other books include The Deer Pasture and Wild to the Heart, which are also available in Norton paperback editions.

  About THE WATCH

  These quirky, brilliant stories launched Rick Bass on his literary career. Set in the South and West, they pursue themes of friendship, loyalty, and freedom, of escape, where valiant holdouts refuse to grow up, or to grow old.

  Particularly helpful advice has been given by Carol Houck Smith, Tom Jenks,

  Rust Hills and Gordon Lish on several of these stories. The author also wishes

  to express his grateful acknowledgment to James Linville and the staff of The Paris

  Review for their encouragement on all of the stories.

  Copyright © 1989 by Rick Bass

  All rights reserved.

  First published as a Norton paperback 1994

  Book design by Margaret M. Wagner.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Bass, Rick 1958—

  The watch.

  I. Title.

  PS3552.A8213W3 1989 813′. 54 88-12543

  ISBN 0-393-31135-X

  ISBN 978-0-393-31135-8 (pbk.)

  ISBN 978-1-324-00027-3 (e-book)

  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

  www.wwnorton.com

  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

  Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT