Crying Wolf

by Peter Abrahams

  No hotel. None necessary: The Zorns had a big yellow house with red shutters on the east side of the hill that dominated the island. There were two villas on the beach below the house, servants’ quarters in a banana grove halfway down the back of the hill, a boathouse big enough for a cigarette boat and a few smaller ones at the head of the little natural harbor on the west side. Not a big island, but beautiful and all theirs, owned or leased.

  Nat’s room was at the end of a marble corridor in the big house. It opened onto a balcony with a view of Tortola and some other islands; on a chaise longue lay a bathing suit. Nat hadn’t brought one. He tried the suit on; the European kind, skimpier than what he would wear, but it fit.

  Nat crossed a huge room with a fountain, cool, although all the windows were open to the hot afternoon, looking for anyone who wanted a swim. But no one was around; the house was silent. He walked outside, down stone steps toward the beach. A bright green lizard skittered away from him; he smelled intoxicating smells; passed a tree bearing an applelike green fruit and a sign on the trunk: Manchineel-Touche Pas!; heard a voice drifting down, almost out of range, but clear enough in the still air: “I thought maybe he’d amuse the girls, that’s all.” Mrs. Zorn, almost certainly; followed by low male rumblings. At that moment it occurred to Nat that the friendly-looking man in the limousine, Andy Ling, hadn’t been on the plane.

  The path wound past the two villas, both silent, cut through a palm grove-he picked a coconut off the ground, felt its weight, heard the milk sloshing inside-ended at the beach. Nat walked across the white sand, powdery and hot on the soles of his feet, and into the ocean. This green ocean: pale green by the shoreline, so pale it was almost colorless if you looked straight down; which Nat did, and saw a fish swimming by his feet, a fish similar in size and shape to Lorenzo, but not quite as spectacular, simply deep blue with red lips. At first contact, this water-the Caribbean Sea! — felt the same as his own temperature; then it cooled slightly, just enough to tingle against his skin. All his muscles, his whole body, relaxed at once, a more complete release of tension than he could ever remember, as though his physical self had been waiting a lifetime for this moment, his first immersion in salt water.

  Nat wasn’t much of a swimmer-Clear Creek High had no pool and the river had become too shallow for swimming-but when the water reached his chest, he slid the rest of the way in and swam a few strokes. Maybe more than a few, because when he stopped and glanced around he was surprised at the distance to the beach. Surprised but not worried: with the increased buoyancy of the salt water, he found he could stay on the surface with almost no effort, and besides, there was that perfect, soothing temperature. He turned his face to the sun, closed his eyes, heard the gentle rippling of the sea around him, the call of a strange bird somewhere above, and nothing else. But that nothing else, that silence, was not like any silence he was used to, but somehow powerful, impending, the background sound, new to him, of the air or sky itself.

  Then something grabbed his leg.

  Nat kicked out sharply, took a thrashing stroke or two in the wrong direction, out to sea. Whatever was beneath him shot to the surface right before his eyes, a strange and terrifying creature. For a moment Nat couldn’t put the pieces together. Then he saw: snorkel, mask, and wet golden-brown hair he’d mistaken for seaweed.

  Izzie.

  She spat out her snorkel and said, “Boo.”

  Nat stopped thrashing, tried to tread water in some sort of measured way. Her eyes watched him from behind the mask.

  “Did I scare you?”

  “No.” But his heart was beating fast.

  She took off her mask, turned her head, emptied her nostrils into the sea. “That’s the dorkiest thing I’ve ever seen in swimwear,” she said.

  “It’s not mine.”

  “You stole it from Pee-wee Herman?”

  His heartbeat slowed to something a little less crazy. “No need. We’re like this.”

  She laughed. He laughed. He noticed that she didn’t appear to be treading water at all, or to be making the least effort to stay afloat, just rose and fell gently with the rhythm of the waves. He also noticed that she wasn’t wearing a bathing suit top.

  She noticed him noticing. “Maybe you are a bit like him.”

  He tore his eyes away.

  “Aubrey’s Cay is topless,” she said. “Like St. Bart’s.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Just another island. But leads the Caribbean in boobs and baguettes. To quote Paolo.” Her mood changed; he could see it in her eyes, as though someone had hit the dimmer.

  “Nat?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The thing you said to him the other night-‘what’s a gentleman called now,’ or whatever it was?”

  He nodded.

  “Thanks.”

  “Hey,” said Nat.

  “Grace always said he was a jerk. She was his first choice, by the way.”

  “She was?”

  “She had a boyfriend of her own at the time.”

  “And now?”

  A wave rippled by, a green wave rippling a green reflection in her eyes. “No. He had personal problems.”

  “Like what?”

  “He was sort of married.”

  “Sort of?”

  “You know.”

  But he didn’t. Out there, offshore and separated from everyone else, Nat asked a question he might not have asked on land. “Have you had any married boyfriends?”

  “What do you take me for?”

  Nat laughed. She raised an eyebrow-her right, the opposite of Grace. Did it have something to do with the way the egg had split?

  “What are you thinking about?” she said.

  “Eggs.”

  “Eggs?”

  “Eggs and you.”

  “You’re funny,” Izzie said.

  They fell silent. There was no sound but that of the sea; the sea, which began moving her a little closer to him. Their legs touched under the surface. Since the water was so clear they could have glanced down easily and seen this contact, but neither did: they pretended it was happening somewhere else, out of sight. But it was happening, all right; Nat felt something new going through him, or perhaps something he’d known before, just magnified by the emerald water, the deep blue sky, the scented air.

  Izzie backed away. Nat saw for the first time that she had a speargun in one hand, dangling down in the water.

  “What’s that for?”

  “You like seafood?”

  “Yes,” he said, although his mom almost never served it.

  Izzie checked the sun, lower over the island now, and pulled down her mask. “Jukin’ time,” she said.

  “Jukin’ time?”

  “When the big ones come out, country boy.”

  She stuck the snorkel in her mouth and swam off at a speed that amazed him, her fins, not quite breaking the surface, churning away. In what seemed like seconds, she had rounded a stony point at the south end of the beach and disappeared.

  He thought of Patti. She’d spelled incident wrong. He’d made spelling mistakes too. Maybe Izzie couldn’t spell it either. He thought of testing her on the word, a disgusting idea he quashed almost as soon as it left the gate. And Patti had nice breasts too, although she’d never dream of swimming topless. All this led nowhere, and was still leading nowhere when something tickled his toes. He didn’t panic this time, but peered down through the clear water and saw a little green fish nibbling at him. He swam a few lazy strokes, turned on his back, floated under a purpling sky.

  Did he actually fall asleep? It was close: his mind drifted, drifted, down into one of the seagoing sagas of his childhood. Pirates, pistols, parrots, pieces of eight. Only a slight chill, the difference between the ocean temperature and his own making itself felt at last, brought him back to full wakefulness. He treaded water, gazed out to sea.

  The sun had sunk behind Aubrey’s Cay, graying the water around him, except for the wave tips, still liquid emeral
d. In the distance, light still shone bright, blazing on the sail of a lone windsurfer. With the wind at his back, he approached very quickly, skimming toward the point that Izzie had rounded, disappearing for a few seconds, then reappearing, much closer, cutting back toward the beach. With a sound from his board like tearing paper, the windsurfer blew by Nat, about ten yards away: a brown-tanned, barrel-chested, skinny-legged man, wearing a bathing suit even skimpier than Nat’s and a look of glee on his face. He ran his board right onto the beach, skipped nimbly off, noticed Nat, waved. Nat swam in.

  The windsurfer-older than Nat had first thought, with a trim gray beard and gray hair, long, wild, matted with salt water-was lowering the sail.

  “I saw you were in residence,” he said, nodding up toward the house; a white flag with a black Z on it now flew over the roof. “And so dropped in. You’re the physical trainer, as I recall? Angelo, is it?”

  “No,” Nat said, and introduced himself.

  “Not the trainer?”

  “A friend.”

  “Ah. Of the girls.” He gave Nat a closer look, or perhaps actually saw him for the first time. “Or of one particularly.”

  “I’m a friend of the girls.”

  “As am I,” the man said. “A friend of the girls, indeed of the whole lovely family.” He held out his hand. “May I present myself? Leo Uzig.”

  They shook hands. Leo Uzig’s was big, out of proportion to the rest of him, except for his head. “Where did you drop in from, Mr. Uzig?” Nat said.

  “Excellent question. You see that island? No. The one to the north. Not that. To the right. South, then. Got it. Discovered, and please spare me the politically correct boilerplate, by Drake in 1568, thus the name of the simple but pleasant Sir Francis Inn, where I spend my Christmases. Also explaining, to anticipate your question, my long association with the Zorns, the blanks easily filled in. You, I take it, are a student at some Ivy institution.”

  “Not exactly,” said Nat. “I’m at Inverness.”

  “What luck,” said Leo Uzig. “We’re fellow inmates, then, you a freshman-you are a freshman?”

  “Yes.”

  “And me chairman of the department of philosophy. If you’ll just help me pull my board above the high-tide line, we can be safely inside before the no-see-ums come out.”

  “No-see-ums?” said Nat. Something bit him on the back of the neck.

  Dinner on the terrace: mosquito coils burning on the tile floor, candles burning on the table, more stars than Nat had ever seen shining in a soft black sky, everyone barefoot except the servants. Professor Uzig sat at Mr. Zorn’s end of the table, Anton at Mrs. Zorn’s, Albert and Izzie on one side, Grace and Nat on the other. They ate the lobsters Izzie had caught, drank something called goombay smash, then Krug, then a Meursault, and more Krug, while a guitarist brought from Virgin Gorda in the cigarette played in the background and the smells of flowers and of the sea took turns drifting by. Could life really be this sweet? Nat had never even imagined it.

  “We’re taking Phil three twenty-two from Leo next semester,” Izzie said across the table to Nat, her nose pink from the sun. “You should too.”

  “A three hundred course?” Nat said.

  “A misnomer,” said Professor Uzig, “dating back into the academic mists. Three twenty-two is now for freshmen only, selected freshmen.”

  “It’s full, isn’t it?” said Grace.

  “Oh, yes,” said Professor Uzig, “long full.”

  “What’s it about?” said Nat.

  “You haven’t heard of the famous course that teaches people to think?” said Mr. Zorn. “Isn’t that the one, Leo?”

  “You know my thoughts on that subject,” said Professor Uzig.

  “It’s called ‘Superman and Man: Nietzsche and Cobain,’ ” Izzie said. “Isn’t that cool?”

  “Cool?” said Grace.

  The girls stared across the table at each other. Izzie looked down.

  “I don’t know anything about Nietzsche,” Nat said; he didn’t know much about Cobain, either.

  Professor Uzig turned to him, his hair washed and dried now, but still wild, his teeth and the whites of his eyes the same color as the Meursault. “Of course you do, young man,” he said.

  “Nat,” said Izzie.

  A quick smile crossed his face as the professor continued: “That’s like saying you don’t know anything about Christ or-”

  “Walt Disney,” said Mr. Zorn.

  Everyone laughed, except the professor, and Nat, who wanted to hear what he was going to say.

  “Yes, or Walt Disney, I suppose, but that simply demonstrates the power of the trivial in our times,” the professor said. “Nietzsche, on the other hand, is not trivial, and, unlike Mr. Disney, is inside all our minds at all times, whether we are aware or not.”

  “That sounds almost scary,” said Mrs. Zorn. “Like that movie, oh, what was it again?”

  “ Night of the Living Dead?” said Anton.

  “No.”

  “ The Little Shop of Horrors?” said Albert.

  “No,” said Mrs. Zorn. “Oh, why won’t it come to me?”

  “Go on, Leo,” said Mr. Zorn. Mrs. Zorn’s end of the table quieted.

  Professor Uzig was sitting back in his chair, arms crossed. “I think I’ve said enough.”

  “Please go on, Leo,” said Mrs. Zorn.

  “Yes,” said Grace. “You’re just getting to the good part. What’s Nietzsche saying inside my head?”

  “You already know what he’s saying-if you choose to put it that way. None of us would be the way we are without Nietzsche.”

  Nat saw Anton-flexing his forearm in the candlelight-pause.

  “But give us some idea of his philosophy,” Izzie said.

  “So, you want spoon-feeding,” said Professor Uzig. “Since it’s Christmas, then, and such a beautiful night, and since the concept of learning to think, by which I mean to think originally, is in the air, and since, as an original thinker, Nietzsche has no superior-” He paused, took a drink, looked at Mr. Zorn. “Here is some idea of his philosophy, then, as it applies to the act of thinking, thinking of the first water. Our supreme insights, he says, should sound like follies, even crimes.” He downed the rest of his drink, almost the whole glass, in one gulp. “Even crimes.”

  “Like Galileo and the Inquisition,” Nat said; it just popped out, he had no business speaking at all.

  Professor Uzig turned to him, eyebrows, gray and wild, rising. “Exactly.”

  A bare foot pressed itself against his.

  Mr. Zorn laughed. “I love your bullshit, Leo, I really do. World-class. But if you picked that quote-or invented it-to goad me into endowing that Leo Uzig chair of yours, the answer’s still no.”

  “Does he have to be so rude?” Grace said.

  “Grace,” said Mrs. Zorn.

  Grace gave her a furious look. It made Mrs. Zorn’s hand shake. Nat saw the reflected candlelight from her rings making jagged patterns on the far wall.

  “Nietzsche didn’t mind a little rudeness, did he, Leo?” said Mr. Zorn.

  “He was rather correct in his personal dealings, in fact,” said Professor Uzig. “Excluding the period of his madness, of course.”

  “Let’s exclude Lizzie Borden’s one bad day while we’re at it,” said Mr. Zorn.

  Mr. Zorn was gone by the time Nat got up the next morning; the noise of the takeoff woke him. He went onto his balcony, found the skimpy European bathing suit gone, American-style trunks in its place. He put them on, went down the path to the beach. On the deck of one of the villas lay a pile of snorkeling equipment. He borrowed mask, fins, and snorkel, as well as a large fishnet, and jumped into the sea.

  The sea calm, without a ripple, the sun rising directly in front of him, changing the color of everything moment by moment; and the water itself, as he sank into it, still that perfect temperature: it relaxed him to the core. Trailing the net as he’d seen Izzie trail her speargun, he set off toward the point.


  Nat saw brightly colored fish, coral heads and fans, a ray, a barracuda, all things the Discovery Channel had prepared him for. It hadn’t prepared him for the feeling of this sea, the experience of being in it. He thought of all kinds of metaphors-amniotic, baptismal, blood-none of them quite right.

  Nat was around the point, rising and falling with a swell so gradually begun that he was hardly aware of it, watching a tiny purple-and-gold fish nibble at a piece of coral that resembled antlers, and thinking antlers, St. Nick, and smiling into his mouthpiece, when he heard a low whine. It grew louder. He raised his head, saw that he’d gone much farther than he’d thought, all the way to the back side of the island, and, once again, a surprising distance from shore; was there some sort of current? As he oriented himself, he saw the cigarette boat, source of the whining sound, come shooting out of the natural harbor, throwing a frothing bow wave in front, a rooster tail behind. As it came closer, he could make out Grace at the wheel, Professor Uzig in the stern. Their course would take them hundreds of yards to the north, but Grace suddenly changed it and bore straight at him. Nat felt an adrenaline rush, was just about to do something, maybe dive straight down, when the cigarette veered sharply, reared up like a reined-in horse and settled rocking beside him. Grace and Professor Uzig, a book in his hand, gazed down.

  “Scare you?” Grace said.

  “No.”

  She laughed. “I’m dropping Leo at the Sir Francis, then going over to Pusser’s for supplies. Want to come?”

  “Think I’ll just stay here.”

  “Not permanently, I hope,” said Professor Uzig.

  “Suit yourself,” Grace said. “And if you spit in your mask, it won’t fog up like that.”

  “You’re supposed to spit in it?”

  “Unless you’re too dainty.”

  She gave him a look. Professor Uzig, laughing, didn’t see it. The book in his hand had a German title. Grace hit the throttle, circled Nat once-she shouted something at him, might have been “Don’t get eaten”-and roared away. Nat caught the name on the stern: Manchineel. He spat in his mask, swished it with seawater, kept going, his vision much improved.