Absolute Pressure

by Sigmund Brouwer

  And they seemed happy about paying that much for a few balloons worth only a couple of pennies each.

  See, tourists come here to be happy. To soak in the sun and the lifestyle where people don’t care about suits and ties. Maybe Mr. Rabbit Balloon was a banker in a small town where everyone expected him to be serious all the time. Here, he could be himself.

  Especially as sunset approached.

  Every night, Key West had a sunset celebration. I loved it. As people relaxed and gathered at the edge of Mallory Square to watch the setting sun, they enjoyed street performances too. There were the buskers—people who performed for tips— like the balloon maker, a couple of jugglers,a tight-rope walker, a unicyclist with a trained dog, a sword swallower, some magicians and even a bagpiper.

  Other people sold arts and crafts. Wood sculptures. Metal sculptures. Jewelry. T-shirts. Paintings.

  And some were happy to turn anyone else into art. They painted on your body or gave cool hair wraps and braids. You could even get a body massage out there in the square.

  It was festive and magical and noisy and fun. It was another one of my favorite places to be alone without feeling lonely.

  Yet as much energy as the buskers and performers and tourists added to the square, it always lost to the majesty and beauty and peace of the sunset.

  From Mallory Square, the view west across the flat water was amazing as the sun came closer and closer to the horizon. On clear nights, the sun was an orange glow that seemed to sink into the gulf. If there were clouds, the colors would be streaks of orange and red and purple.

  And as the sun came closer and closer to the horizon, people would turn away from their amusements and get lost in something as pure and untouched as the rest of the universe. The sunset.

  I’d get lost too. Most nights.

  Except tonight.

  I had ducked a juggler, avoided a tattoo salesman and dodged the unicylist when I saw Uncle Gord.

  He was at the edge of the square. Facing away from the sunset. Between a couple of guys a couple of inches taller than him.

  Normally, I wouldn’t think twice. Uncle Gord loved Mallory Square too. He knew most of the performers and buskers because he’d been living here all his life. He’d walk around, talking, laughing.

  But here, he was away from the crowds. As if the two bigger guys had dragged him away.

  And Uncle Gord’s shoulders were up near his ears. I hardly ever saw him like that. It was something he did when he was so angry his muscles bulged like he wouldexplode. His powerful shoulders would rise and rise, and his elbows would go way back.

  As I wondered if I should go over and help, Uncle Gord snapped his right fist forward and smashed one of the guys in the nose. It happened so fast, if I hadn’t been watching, I would not have seen it.

  chapter fifteen

  No one else seemed to notice.

  The guy he had hit bent over and clutched his nose.

  That’s when I began jogging. I only had about twenty-five steps to go. I didn’t want to go so fast that it would draw attention.

  The second guy had backed away so Uncle Gord couldn’t hit him too. I got there just as the second guy pulled out a switchblade. He was holding it low, so that no one else in the crowd would notice.

  I don’t think it mattered. Everyone was looking at the sunset.

  “Got your back,” I said to Uncle Gord.

  “Go away,” he said without looking at me.

  “Got your back,” I repeated. I pulled out my best weapon. My cell phone. “If these guys try anything, I’ll have it on video.”

  “The kid is dead,” the second guy said.

  “Ian, go away,” Uncle Gord said. “This is my business.”

  “Can’t,” I said. “You guys going to run, or do I need to start shooting video? I can have it on the Internet in less than an hour. You’ll be famous.”

  The second guy snapped some Spanish words at the first guy. They backed away. The first guy had blood streaming between his fingers. Uncle Gord had probably broken his nose.

  When they got to the street, they began running. In seconds, they were out of sight.

  “Thanks,” Uncle Gord said. His face was red in the last rays of the sun. “I think.”

  “What was going on?” I asked.

  “Just drop it,” he said.

  “You’re my uncle,” I said. “You’ve taken me in every summer. How can I drop it?”

  “It would be the best thing you could do for me.”

  “It’s about the treasure, isn’t it?” I took a deep breath. “I know how much it’s worth.”

  He stared at me for a long time. In the background, someone was playing the bagpipes.

  “I wish you didn’t know anything,” he said.

  “I want to help.” Then I began to blurt it all out. “The Miami guys are lying to you. They are not Abbot and Gardner and Betz.”

  “What!”

  I told him how I found out.

  “Does anyone else know?”

  I thought of Sherri. I didn’t want her to get in trouble. She shouldn’t have even told me about Judd. I couldn’t let Uncle Gord know that I knew.

  So instead of answering, I finished with a question. “You think if you’re getting close to finding the treasure, they want you out of the way? Like maybe one of them made sure the valve on the tank would break?”

  Uncle Gord’s shoulders slumped now.

  Finally, Uncle Gord sighed. “Thanks for telling me this, Ian. Give me a few days to figure out what to do, all right? That’s all I’m asking. A few days.”

  “It’s the treasure, isn’t it?” I repeated.

  “It’s the treasure,” he said. “And it’s one big mess.”

  chapter sixteen

  “Hey,” Uncle Gord said, “let’s shoot some underwater shark video.”

  It was morning. We were at Thelma’s Diner. Uncle Gord was talking like it was just another day. I was happy to pretend it was too. If that made him feel better, I was all for it.

  “Yeah,” he continued. “We’ll go down in the shark cage.” He grinned. “But we’ll make it exciting. We’ll bring some hamburger in with us.”

  I knew what he meant. Our shark cage was ten feet by ten feet by ten feet. Made of aluminum bars spaced every six inches. A big square with an open top. There were floats all around the outside, about a quarter of the way down from the top. The floats held the cage upright, but allowed most of it to remain underwater. We lowered tourists into the center of the cage. The tourists had snorkels and masks. They could stand in the cage and duck their heads under the water to look at the sharks.

  We brought the sharks in with meat. Bloody meat.

  After the cage was lowered into the water, held to the boat by a towrope, we’d throw the meat into the water. It would bring sharks in from miles away. Little ones. Big ones. The most spectacular were the great white sharks, the tiger sharks and the bull sharks.

  “Hamburger inside the cage?” I said.

  “The video will show them bumping the bars trying to get in. We’ll post it on our website. It will be a great marketing tool.”

  I liked the idea. The shark cage was safe. And if it would bring in more phone calls and e-mails from people who wanted to hire Uncle Gord and the GypSea, that was good. I knew he needed the business.

  “I’m in,” I said.

  “Good.”

  “As long as you let me shoot the video,” I continued.

  “Why do you get all the fun?” he grinned.

  “That mean I can do it?”

  “Sure,” he said. “What could go wrong?”

  Famous last words.

  chapter seventeen

  Ten miles out of Key West, I stood on the deck of the GypSea and watched angry sharks bump at the cage in the blue Gulf waters.

  Uncle Gord and I had chummed the waters to bring them in. We’d thrown out chopped up fish, knowing the scent of oily blood would bring sharks in from all directions.


  We’d saved the raw hamburger for the center of the cage. Five pounds, in a meshbag that kept it from dropping through the floor of the cage.

  Now the sharks were banging at the cage, which was held in position by the floats three-quarters up the sides. Six, maybe seven, sharks. Just little ones. Three to five feet long. Nothing really exciting.

  Then I saw a big, dark shadow. A big dark shadow that came to the surface.

  I felt a tingle.

  Not the kind of tingle when my senses get mixed up.

  But the kind of tingle that said danger.

  It was a bull shark.

  A great white shark will shake you and spit you out. Bull sharks hold on and chew, like bulldogs but with a hundred times more teeth and strength. Bull sharks eat anything and everything. Fish, seals, turtles, smaller sharks. Even license plates or pieces of old tire. And whenever you read about a shark attack on a human, chances are it was a bull shark.

  This big dark shadow wasn’t just a bull shark though. The average bull shark is bigenough—seven feet—and end to end will be longer than some couches.

  This one was half as big again. A female. Its nose could touch one wall of an average room, and its tail would curl against the opposite wall. Fast, mean, unpredictable. The perfect killer. Some grew as big as eleven feet, seven hundred pounds.

  “Uncle Gord,” I whispered. I didn’t need to whisper. But it was so scary I was afraid to draw its attention. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Like I was a rabbit, and it was a python hypnotizing me. “Check it out.”

  Uncle Gord moved beside me.

  “Dang,” he said, with admiration. “Can’t ever remember seeing one that big. This is perfect.”

  The other sharks had scattered. In fear.

  This monster nosed the cage. Its dorsal fin broke the surface of the water, showing a gleaming dark blue triangle. I shuddered at the thought of what it would be like to be treading water and see a fin like that approach.

  The bull shark bumped the cage a little harder, trying to get at the mesh bag of hamburger inside. The cage bounced on its floats.

  The shark turned away, but in a flash swirled back and hit the cage hard. Maybe it was my imagination, but the bars seemed to dent a little.

  “Ready?” Uncle Gord said. “We’ve got to get footage of this before it gives up.”

  No. I wasn’t ready.

  It’s one thing to talk about it over breakfast in a diner. Onshore. Safe.

  It’s another to be on a gently swaying deck of a boat in a hundred feet of water. Looking down at a monster shark that was angry and hungry and could take off an arm with a single swipe of its jaws.

  But I’d said I would do it.

  And the cage was perfectly safe. No shark would be able to break through the bars, because the cage was floating and would simply bounce away. The tops of the bars were more than a foot out of the water. The shark wouldn’t be able to jumpover top and get inside, even if its tiny brain figured out how to do it.

  Although my emotions told me it was insane to get into the cage, my brain told me nothing could go wrong.

  So I put on my snorkel and mask, grabbed the underwater camera and climbed down the ladder of the GypSea into the cage.

  To face the monster.

  chapter eighteen

  I was in a wet suit.

  I wished I were in chain mail.

  All that the wet suit could do was protect me from the cold water. Even though Gulf waters are warm compared to other areas, the temperature is still lower than body temperature. It never hurts to stay warm.

  The floor of the cage was about eight feet below the surface. It meant that I was treading water inside the cage, looking directly at the dorsal fin of the bull sharkon the other side of the bars. I could have reached through and touched it.

  The shark must have seen my legs and arms moving below the surface. It charged the cage again, sending shudders through the water.

  I gulped and told myself again that the cage could take it.

  Then I lowered my head and put my mask in the water and began to breathe through the snorkel.

  I almost wet myself inside my wet suit.

  With the mask showing everything underwater so clearly, I could see the shark’s jaws opened wide enough to swallow a basketball. It was directly on the other side of the bars, angled sideways, trying to get through to me.

  It was so terrifying, I almost forgot to turn on the underwater camera.

  Bang. It hit the cage again.

  Scary as this was, I knew it would make for some good footage.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  As I concentrated on filming the shark as it swirled around and attacked the cage, I forgot to be afraid. My world was reduced to the shark and the water and the sound of my breathing.

  Until I noticed something as terrifying as the shark.

  One of the cage’s outside floats had drifted away from the cage!

  That side of the cage immediately began to sink.

  Now the cage was tilting sideways. Before, there had been quite a bit of the cage above the water on all four sides. Now the side without the float had sunk below the surface.

  And, unbelievably, another float drifted away from the cage.

  Without warning, and before I could react, two sides of the cage were well underwater. The top of the cage was now three feet below the surface, with the open end of the cage beginning to face sideways.

  With the shark coming in hard. Directly at me.

  chapter nineteen

  Strange how a person’s mind can register things so clearly.

  This close to the surface, there was plenty of sunlight. Behind the shark, I saw bright particles of plankton suspended in the water, like dust in a beam of light.

  I saw the shark’s blank eyes. I saw rows of sharp triangular teeth, all pointing inward. I even saw a few strands of meat stuck in those teeth, floating like streamers.

  I had no way of protecting myself.

  In the movies, the good guy will punch the shark on the nose and frighten it away.

  That was the movies. Here it would have done as much good as spitting in the face of a grizzly.

  The shark filled the entire opening of the cage. The cage that was now my prison.

  And then, with the clarity of a snapshot, the water mushroomed with bright red.

  I wondered if that was my brain again, connecting a color to something happening to my body. Maybe the shark had grabbed my arm and my perceptions were exploding.

  But I felt no pain.

  The red in the water swirled as the shark thrashed.

  For a second the red cleared, and I saw that the top of the shark’s skull was gone.

  It continued to thrash and swirl, and its body bumped against my face. I felt rough sandpaper and saw yellow.

  That, I knew, was my brain. Yellow was not a color that belonged here. In a weird way, I found myself noting this new information. My left elbow gave me bright red.

  Behind my right knee gave me green. And when something unexpected touched my cheek, yellow.

  I didn’t think about that for long.

  Other, smaller, sharks, drawn by blood, were coming in fast.

  The first one, maybe five feet long, lunged in and tore a chunk out of the side of the bull shark. Then another chunk came out. More blood. More sharks.

  But if I tried to move past the dying bull shark, I’d attract those same savage bites. I’d become part of the frenzy.

  I finally realized I hadn’t breathed in about thirty seconds. The top of my snorkel had long been underwater.

  As my brain put all of this together, I saw a gaff reach into the water. It was a long-handled pole with a giant hook at the end. We used it to pull fish out of the water.

  Now it was dragging the bull shark away from me.

  Uncle Gord! Finally! I fought the urge to suck for oxygen as I waited for the sharkto be pulled from the now-sideways cage. Once it was clear, Uncle Gord simply let go
off the gaff. With a dozen small sharks now ripping at the body of the massive bull shark, it began to sink.

  And I was finally free to escape.

  chapter twenty

  Blackberries again.

  It was Friday morning, and I sure didn’t want to say good-bye to Key West.

  I was standing beside Uncle Gord’s old white Chevy truck. Sherri had pulled up on her scooter. As soon as she took off her helmet and shook her long hair free, I tasted the blackberries.

  It was going to be a long time before that happened again. Uncle Gord was sending me back to Chicago.

  “You sure you like the truck?” he was saying as Sherri walked closer.

  “Love it,” I lied. In a few places, springs were sticking out of the front seat. The body of the truck had dozens of rust spots from the salty moist air of Key West. Nobody could love a truck like this.

  But he and I had been lying to each other since breakfast. Lying is not right, but we had been doing it to protect each other.

  And his lie probably had more truth in it than he wanted to admit. He’d said he couldn’t afford to keep me or Sherri on as summer workers. He’d said he didn’t have enough money to pay what he owed me. Or even to let me stay at his house anymore. He’d offered me the truck instead of my wages.

  We both knew it was a lie, because we were both still shaken up about the bull shark. It was a good thing he’d been able to grab his rifle and shoot it. Otherwise yesterday’s shark video would have had a much different ending.

  I knew he was lying because he was afraid I’d get hurt if I stayed around.

  “Hey,” Sherri said, “leaving already?”

  I didn’t trust my voice, so I nodded. I was leaving. I didn’t know if Uncle Gord would be all right, but he wasn’t letting me stay to help him. I didn’t know if Uncle Gord’s dive shop would be in business next year, so I didn’t know if I’d be back. And that meant I didn’t know if I’d see Sherri again.

  I’d sure miss the taste of blackberries. But how could I tell her that with Uncle Gord standing right beside the truck?