Unspeakable Horror

by Joseph B. Healy

  The line burned from his reel with a dry, buzzing sound. He heard the Captain’s voice crack one word. “Mako!” Tommy felt his line stop, sag briefly. He cranked furiously, then saw the clear nylon begin angling to the left. And then the big mako came up again. The fish boomed into the air in one head-over-tail leap, crashed back in, then exploded a second time into the sky. Again, it came up on a totally reversed course. It happened so quickly the huge boils from each leap were still visible on the ocean’s surface before the shark crashed down the third time.

  The mako veered to port where Hammond was still fast to the dusky, now farther from the boat. Ed felt the shadow of something over him, turned and saw the Captain. He saw the brightness of steel in the gray light, the quick movement as though a dark bird’s wing had passed over-head. And then the pressure on his rod was gone. He looked up, pained.

  “I want that mako,” was all the Captain said.

  Ed stumbled shakily toward the cabin, laid his rod against the bulkhead. He felt weak. Now it was Tommy’s turn. The mako was on another tack, giving the angler a chance to gain line. It lasted only a moment. Again the fish ran, and Wakeman, on his feet, was dragged in a crab shuffle toward the opposite side of the boat. He came up against the unpadded wood gunwale, slamming his knees painfully, trying not to bend over.

  “You lose that outfit and you’re in after it,” the Captain warned.

  Long minutes passed in strained standoff.

  “Stop resting him,” the Captain said.

  Tommy managed to raise the rod and move the fish. He dropped the tip, then repeated the action, mechanically. The mako came a little way then burned off again, taking all the gained line plus a little more. But there was no jump. Thirty minutes later Guido guided Wakeman to the chair. The relief to his legs was a gift. No longer was he forced to fight to keep erect against the mako’s direction changes. The pale blue jeans he wore were blotted dark from blood around the knees where he hit the gunwales, but he felt no pain. What hurt were his arms, shoulders, and back. Especially his forearms. His mouth was drier than he ever remembered. Guido poured some water and held the cup for him to drink.

  An hour later he was ready to do almost anything to end it and hide somewhere in darkness. Forty minutes more and the mako was coming in. It made small lunges now, then heaved halfway from the water in a final effort to leap. Tommy was beyond summoning a final surge of energy. He cranked and pumped raggedly like some antiquated machine. Close to the boat, the fish went down, but just a little way. Tommy raised him.

  “Get up,” ordered the Captain. “Move him along the side, and bring him in. Back yourself!”

  Tommy obeyed, stumbling, not trusting his legs. Guido had the leader, held, lifted. The Captain reached with the flying gaff, sank the plow-pointed head deeply, and the shark went wild, spinning in a concussion of foam and water. The leader snapped. The line from the gaff head was tied to a bit on the boat, and when the fish quieted a little, the Captain pulled it close again. Guido used a straight one-piece gaff to bring the tail up. The Captain dropped a loop of heavy line over it and came tight. They held the shark shuddering there.

  “It’ll go close to four hundred,” Guido said. The Captain went to the controls. He started the engines, threw over an unanchored marker buoy, then began moving ahead in a slow forward arc that took him away from the chum slick.

  Hammond had taken the rod from his friend. Tommy sat dazed. Sweat matted his hair. His shirt clung to him. His face was slack. Hammond gave him water. When he was finished, he handed Tommy a beer.

  “I can hardly hold it,” Wakeman said.

  “You did all right,” Guido told him. He clapped Tommy’s shoulder and the angler thought he’d fall over. Ed was talking when they both realized the boat had made a huge circle and was now headed back toward the marker. And the slick. From the primary controls the Captain turned. His eyes were bright and he was smiling, all teeth showing.

  “We’ve got them coming boys,” he said, his voice rich and full. “Now we have a mako. God knows what else will come.”

  No more, Tommy thought. I won’t touch a rod. I can’t handle anything more. Let Ed do it.

  When they were back in the slick the Captain helped Guido lash the shark fore and aft alongside.

  “We’ll bring him in when something tries to eat him,” said the Captain. “He’s dead, but they don’t stay that way much.”

  Guido started the chum again. Tommy looked over the side at the big mako, a nosegay of uneven teeth blossoming from its mouth, the flat dark eyes looking as though they had never been able to see.

  Two more blue sharks came later. They made Tommy take a rod, and when he broke off, he silently thanked whatever fates were responsible. Later than afternoon, another dusky ate the twin fillet of menhaden and Ed worked him frantically, but this time there were no knives. When it became apparent that the fish was tiring the Captain sprang from his bridge aerie. He put Guido on the mako’s tail rope. He took the forward line himself, and together they worked the carcass into the boat. It fell in, stiff and heavy, puddling gore, and Tommy moved quickly away. They raised the mako’s tail section toward the superstructure to rest against the spar that served as a gin pole. The shark was then secured forward and aft. Then they turned to Hammond.

  Along with fear of losing the fish, Ed sensed the lateness of the hour. He strained against the shark, anxiety whining in his head. But the dusky was coming. When it was over, the shark alongside, the Captain shouted before Ed could open his mouth.

  “Gaff him,” the Captain ordered Guido. “Don’t turn him loose.” He ducked into the cabin while the mate sank the clean stainless gaff hook. The shark’s thrashing hammered the gaff handle violently, forcing Guido to fight for balance.

  The Captain returned with the killstick. He dropped a charge in the powerhead, screwed it closed, and waved Hammond back. He went to the side, came over, two-handed, brought the 12-gauge head down surely. There was a thudding report. The shark shuddered violently, then was still. He had Guido raise the dusky halfway from the water, still keeping the shark over the side while he watched it.

  Ed leaned against the far side. Finally satisfied, the Captain and Giudo brought the dusky over. It was a good fish, slightly lighter than Tommy’s mako. The mate began hoisting the fish up, beside the mako.

  “Wait,” the Captain told him. He returned to the cabin, and when he reappeared he carried the two dead cottontail rabbits. They looked stiff and flat and totally out of place.

  “Drop that snout,” the Captain ordered. Guido lowered the shark’s tail and went to its head. The Captain placed the rabbits almost tenderly in shadow on the deck. He grasped the wood handle in two hands and began working at the shark’s mouth. The end of the handle burred and splintered. He dropped it in disgust, went back to the cabin rack, and returned with a harpoon shaft. With Guido’s help he finally spread the jaws as far as possible. He took the first rabbit and thrust it into the dusky’s maw. He took the burred wood handle, pounded the cottontail deeply down the shark’s gullet.

  Tommy and Ed watched, incredulously. The mate, who had learned to accept each new turn of the Captain’s virtuosity, contained himself with effort. Now the second rabbit followed the first. The Captain plunged and pounded. Guido straddled the shark, straining at its snout. Gulls screamed. Lost in his world, the Captain worked feverishly, chortling, mumbling to himself. His hair flew like Maypole streamers. When it was done, he straightened.

  “String him up,” he told Guido.

  The Captain’s eyes slid like a lizard’s over to Ed then back to Tommy. He mumbled something as he turned, then started laughing as he climbed to the bridge. It was not a totally unpleasant laugh. The two friends sat in disbelieving silence all the way back.

  The precise moment that Huntress rounded into the harbor, the bank of grayness in the sky parted. The sun was orange-golden, sinking quickly, growing fatter, shimmering as it did. Above the dock, the evening crowd was waiting for the returning
boats. There were children, mouths rimmed in residual ice-cream crust; the svelte, the bulbous, the old and the prime. As the boat turned prettily toward her slip, they pushed forward excitedly, murmuring. Some pointed.

  The boat pulled neatly in, reversed engines, stopped dead. Guido was out quickly making lines fast. Then the unloading started.

  The sharks were slid from the boat and winched high beneath the charter boat’s sign across the entrance to the slip. The crowd grew louder as the huge fish inched to their final triumph. Tommy and Ed collected their gear. They paid the Captain.

  “You’ll want the mako,” he informed Tommy. “Guido will steak him for you; ask him. The jaws are yours, unless you don’t want them.”

  The fishermen agreed. They didn’t know what else to do.

  Then it began. The Captain strode from his boat. The late sun glinted from the large knife in his hand. He ignored the spectators, going directly to the sharks. He pulled up on the snout of the mako, revealing the awesome rows of violent-looking teeth. The crowd murmured again; fearful sounds. Children were lifted to shoulders to stare with eyes like small raisins in faces of whole-grain pudding. Some of them turned away.

  The Captain went to work carefully on the mako’s jaws. It was a bloody job, but soon he had freed the hinged cartilage. He set the jaws aside in a large pail, straightened, and for the first time acknowledged the spectators while wiping the knife.

  “How’d you like to pay the dentist bill for one of these beauties,” he said. There was a real titter of laughter. “Let’s see what these fellows have been eating,” he added.

  Guido began trimming flesh from the mako’s jaws. The Captain turned his knife to the thick dusky. The skin was tough but he worked through it, spreading and emptying the shark. A few of the spectators left. More refused to look—momentarily. Most of them pressed forward, and now one, then another pointed. Voices grew louder. There were a few unbelieving gasps. A child began to cry. The stiff forms of the wretched cottontail rabbits had been revealed. The crowd grew noisier. For one woman it was too much.

  She was short, blocky without being fat, and her hair resembled a used SOS pad. She clumped down to the dock in a nimbus of indignity. She jounced right up to the Captain, looked down at the rabbits, then thrust her chin at the man towering above her. She gathered herself, took a deep breath, and in a voice that had ordered countless bowls of chicken soup for a generation of children and grandchildren, she spoke.

  “Can you explain,” she demanded, “how two land animals happened to be inside this … this fish?”

  The Captain had played it perfectly, and now he approached Shakespearean eloquence. He looked once at the crowd, then at the woman. He swelled, readied himself.

  “Madam,” he said, “this is one of the mysteries of the deep we’ll never understand.”

  The woman’s mouth dropped. The crowd stilled for a moment before returning to its babble. The Captain strode from the dock and up to the parking lot. Crossing the distance to the truck, he began humming little bits of something that sounded, if you listened closely, very much like a verse from the Battle Hymn of the Republic. In his truck he slammed the door, opened a window. Now he was signing the words in a gentle rumble to himself. He reached into a small beverage cooler, plucked out an icy beer, and started off, still singing. He sang aloud, inspired, “His truth is marching on!” He drained half the beer, belched once, contentedly, wrapped himself around the steering wheel, and rattled off into the gathering dusk.