Hell's Bay

by James W. Hall

  First year of marriage, Sasha got pregnant with Griffin. Money tight, they rented a one-bedroom house on Highway 60, dump trucks blasting by day and night, hauling phosphate rock up the road to Tampa to be processed into fertilizer. Sasha spent most of her daylight hours wiping up the gray dust that coated the furniture, the baby’s crib, the few plastic toys.

  When Griffin was six, heading off to first grade at Pine Tree School, Sasha snuck over to Sarasota and filled out the paperwork for the National Guard. Partly for the spare cash, but mostly to cover tuition to junior college. Study hospitality management, that was her dream. Nab a job in one of those plush beach hotels. She didn’t have the brains C.C. had, but hell, she could smile nice, check people in, check them out. She never thought she’d see war.

  But as Griffin was turning fifteen, a scrappy kid, and brilliant like his dad, and Sasha was one course shy of her hospitality degree, she got her call-up.

  Started out as an eighteen-month rotation, then those eighteen turned into a thirty-month tour. Florida National Guard, 143rd military police, trained to provide battlefield circulation control, area security, prisoner of war and civilian internee operations, and to maintain law and order on the battlefield. Iraq was a dismal place, a gray crumbling country, the devil’s sandpit. Savagery and valor. In the end Sasha lost the ability to tell the difference.

  She might still be doing an endless hitch, circulating through the western provinces and Baghdad neighborhoods, if C.C. hadn’t been struck with lung cancer. The man never smoked his first cigarette, but his disease was so virulent and swift, Sasha’s emergency leave barely got her home in time to hold her husband’s hand on his deathbed and give him a parting kiss.

  Within a week of her return, Logan Hardee, the editor of the Summerland Times, got wind of her service record and showed up at her house. He wanted to splash her across the front page: LOCAL WOMAN IS SECRET WAR HERO. He proposed a parade. Whole town could celebrate her heroism— floats, confetti, marching band, speech by the mayor. Put her medal on public display.

  Sasha listened in silence, standing on the front porch. When Logan was done, she told him no. She didn’t raise her voice. Just a flat no. Now, get off my porch. If I see my name in your paper, I’ll track you down and show you a few things I learned in that hellhole.

  That was that. Some people gossiped. Versions of her war story made the rounds, a mishmash of bullshit and lies. Didn’t matter to her. She had no urge to set the record straight.

  After she buried C.C., without any notion how she’d cover next month’s rent, out of nowhere the personnel boss at Bates International called and offered work on the security team. She’d be expected to watch for leaks in the slurry pipes, guard the perimeter of the gypsum stack, stay on the lookout for intruders. A nothing job.

  Nobody in town could believe Sasha Olsen was drawing a paycheck from her dead husband’s sworn enemy.

  For while Sasha was in Iraq, C.C. became a crusader. He got the locals organized, started agitating against Bates. Too many people sick, a cancer cluster a dozen times what was normal. Lung, colon, breast, throat. And Bates was trying to secure permits to double the size of the gypsum stack behind the school and commence mining the pastureland that surrounded the town. A noose tightening around their world.

  Sasha hated working for those people, but it was the only game around and she needed something quick, something with a decent health plan because Griffin, in the weeks after she returned, started showing signs of a mystery illness. Which didn’t stay mysterious for long. Primary bronchogenic carcinoma, nearly as bad as his daddy’s. A tumor restricting the airflow, a main stem lesion shutting down the function of both lungs. The same grim prognosis. As the tumor enlarged, it would invade the lung tissue and perforate a pulmonary artery. Griffin’s racking cough would grow worse until one day he would strangle on his own blood.

  Mustering energy to begin her drive-around, Sasha idled in the shade, mind blank, body chilled, fingertips still puckered from the long submersion. She was watching a hawk swim lazy circles in the blue vat of air when her son knuckletapped her window.

  She cranked it down. A foot away Griffin straddled the chromed-up Harley he’d inherited from his dad. Griffin was six-three, thick-chested like C.C. The bristles on his scalp were growing back from the chemo. Faint shadows of eyebrows reappearing, nubby lashes. He had his father’s hooded eyes, and before the treatments stole it away, thick luminous hair danced brown against his shoulders.

  There was a dark glow in his eyes that shone with chemical heat.

  “You get it done?”

  Sasha labored to find the words, failed, then simply nodded.

  ’Any problem?”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head.

  He set the kickstand and climbed off, leaned closer to the window. His jeans were baggy, his brown belt cinched to its last hole. Black shapeless T-shirt. Dropped thirty pounds in the last year. Skin with a sallow, pearly sheen, dark hollows under his eyes.

  “Well, shit, then this is a red-letter day.”

  “I guess it is.”

  “Head of the snake,” he said. “Don’t forget. Head of the snake.”

  Sasha nodded.

  “Say it. Say the words.”

  She drew a long breath then spoke their mantra. “Head of the snake.”

  “You look pale and clammy,” he said. “Don’t go weak on me, Mama.”

  He held her eyes.

  “Just a little tired,” she said.

  He lifted a leg and remounted the bike.

  “Things’11 change now.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe they will.”

  They watched a pickup pass. Old man Flannery and the wife heading to town for Thursday groceries. Same people, same routines all her life.

  “Purge those doubts,” he said. “Fear is acid. It’ll eat you up.”

  He settled his weight on the leather seat.

  “Come on now. Gut-check time. You did a good deed.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Damn right, I’m right.”

  He scuffed the toe of his shoe in the sandy soil. Reached a hand into his back pocket and pulled out an envelope. Folded and crumpled. She saw the burgundy embossed seal.

  “Got another one,” he said. “Kind of funny, the timing.”

  “Which is it?”

  “Yale. Full ride. The whole deal.”

  “Congratulations, Grif.”

  “I had a bright future,” he said. “Back when I had a future.”

  “Don’t talk like that. You got to have hope.”

  He looked at her for a moment, eyes harsh and steady, then he tore the envelope into confetti and offered it to the breeze. They watched the pieces scatter across the asphalt highway.

  “Head of the snake, chop it off, snake dies. Fuck a bunch of Harvards.”

  Sasha stared at her hands gripping the steering wheel, white and spidery.

  “Has something happened, Grif?”

  She knew the answer. Had seen it in the gray cast of his flesh.

  He drew a white handkerchief from his pocket, pressed it to his mouth, and hocked up a plug of phlegm. He coughed it into the cloth, then held it out so she could view the clots of red. More blood caked his lips.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Mother of God.”

  “Remission’s done. Now the fun begins.”

  He tucked the handkerchief away, and Griffin studied her eyes as he thumped his heart with a fist. Be brave, be strong. Then he smiled. Not a thing bitter in it. A smile from the old days, back before his dad died, before the disease spread its gristly tentacles through their world. A real smile for his mom like the two of them were in on some great joke.

  Then he kick-started the bike and roared off into the radioactive air.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A steamy night in Key Largo, middle of July. Humidity so thick you could lift a finger and sign your name in the air.

  It was the hottest summer anyone could rec
all. High nineties in the afternoon, dipping only a few sticky degrees by mid-night. Not a whisper of breeze off the ocean to cool us off or ignite a thunderstorm. For weeks a heavy lid of high pressure had been clamped over South Florida, and everyone was basting in their own sweat.

  Exactly the kind of weather I loved.

  I was on the back deck under the single porch light where I’d set up my workbench facing the lagoon, and I was staying busy tying bonefish flies and swatting mosquitoes.

  The swatting kept my reflexes sharp, the tying kept me calm. I coulďve gone inside, switched on the ancient air conditioner, but I relished the heat, always had. And the mosquitoes and I were lifelong rivals. I liked to think I was a legend in their world. Thorn, the big sweaty magnet who wore no shirt, no shoes, and no repellant. The great tempter. I’d been doing this since I was a kid so it was possible thousands of generations of mosquitoes had passed along the word. This one’s quick. This one’s very quick. Stay clear.

  Still, a few hadn’t gotten the message. One or two a night made it past my radar, got a taste of my blood, and flew off, but most turned to red goo on my palm. And the smart ones circled close, took a look, and buzzed off.

  It was an hour past sunset, the last of the hazy pink after-glow fading. I’d finished two dozen flies since supper and done my part in thinning out the herd of mosquitoes that bloomed in the mangroves south of my house. The Atlantic was spread before me, a vast oily glimmer. Water sloshed against the nearby shore, unceasing in its restlessness.

  Living on that sandbar, surrounded by fickle seas, with only the flimsy buffer of mangroves and palms to protect us, gave an edgy zest to daily routines in the Keys. We served at the ocean’s pleasure—our moody lover. Forever in her thrall, always alert to her treacherous temper, grateful for the long stretches of peace. This time of year, storm season, we squinted up at the sky with more regularity and monitored the barometric fluctuations against the skin for any hint of sinking pressure—a telltale hollowing in the gut, or that sickly yellow light that warned of some swirling mass beyond the horizon. Such fine-tuned weather sense was a critical skill on our island. Deciding when to batten down and when to flee was not a choice most Conchs were willing to entrust to TV forecasters standing before a flashy array of instruments.

  On that airless July night I was finishing up one more of Rick Ruoff’s Backcountry bonefish flies. Size 4 hook, rust monocord thread, one-eighth-inch lead weight with painted red-on-yellow eyes. For the tail I used Ruoff’s grizzly hackles, splayed to flank eight strands of white Krystal flash. The body was natural tan deer hair, spun and clipped to pear shape, leaving a small shaft of standing fibers as weed or coral guard. Doing it by the book. No variations, nothing creative. Just Rick’s recipe for imitating juvenile toadfish. Next was a Bead Minnow, and after that I was planning a Black Urchin and a Bonefish In-Furriator, designs by Phil Chapman.

  It had been a long while since I’d tied flies straight from the book. It called for discipline, hard focus. Like a Catholic at his prayers, I found a reliable comfort in the ritual. After all the years of inventing, following my creative impulses, breaking every rule in search of new, original patterns, being locked into such mindless repetition was a sweet relief.

  As I was tying off the last knot, I heard Rusty’s knock at the front door. For the last month she’d been knocking on a fairly regular basis. Three quick knuckle raps, a brief pause, then three more after that. I didn’t get up to let her in. The door was never locked and she knew it. But Rusty was polite, so she knocked six times before entering. She’d done that when we were lovers, too. Same six knocks. Back then they were slower, suggestive. Arousing knocks. Now they were businesslike. Not hostile or cold. But precise, restrained.

  Our fling lasted a few weeks and ended about as well as breakups can. We’re too much alike, she said. That’s bad? I remember asking. According to Rusty, yes, it was, because when it came to guys, a woman had two choices. There’s your brother or there’s the Dark Prince. She’d decided I was her brother, in fact, her twin. She wanted to try the other.

  There was a plentiful selection of Dark Princes sprinkled around Key Largo, Tavernier, Islamorada, and the rest of the Upper Keys, and Rusty had spent the last few years sampling the darkest of them. Shit-kickers and shrimpers, dealers of various illegal substances, mad-dog bikers, and oily, real-estate con men. She’d run through at least a dozen since we split up.

  No hard feelings between us. Still warmth and genuine affection. We’d both put on some hard miles in the years since we were lovers. Things neither of us wanted to talk about.

  The floorboards crackled as she walked through the long living room, and then her rubber soles squeaked across the tile of the kitchen. I knew Rusty hadn’t come calling for romance. She was on a mission even crazier than that. She wanted to hire me as her first mate.

  She pushed open the screen door and stuck her head out.

  “How’s it going?”

  I waved at the corkboard. “Assembly line’s cranking along.”

  She stood there for a moment looking at the flies I’d tied that evening.

  “Come in the kitchen,” she said. “Something I want to show you.”

  I fanned away a final lunatic bug, stood up, and followed her inside.

  Rusty looked at me with a tricky smile. A woman with a secret. Decked out in her usual after-work uniform of white T-shirt, khaki shorts, and her one extravagance, Merrell flip-flops.

  For as long as I’d known her, she’d worn her blond hair in the same shapeless Huck Finn cut. With that sun-bleached mop and the intense angles of her face and her oversized brown eyes and long, trim frame, at times she resembled a runway model, at others, a card-carrying tomboy.

  She was only an inch shy of my six feet, with long, hard-muscled legs and a figure that was holding out nicely against the drag of years. Sometime after she left me she’d gotten a tattoo at the base of her spine, an intricate, swirl·y Chinese illustration that now and then peeked out above the waistband of her shorts. I was curious, but I hadn’t asked what it signified. That seemed a topic too delicate for our present situation.

  She was right about our similarities. In many ways she was more than my match. With fly rod or spinning tackle Rusty could out-cast me on accuracy more than half the time, though on my best throws I could beat her in length by a few yards. She knew the backcountry as well as I, and was fearless and deft steering her skiff around the tricky shoals, narrow passes, and coral heads that filled those shallow waters. She could pole the boat for hours without rest, in wind and hard currents. In bright sun or overcast, she could detect the nervous riffles of bonefish or tarpon from fifty yards. She was the only female guide working out of Papa Joe’s marina in Islamorada. Nine guys and Rusty.

  A few other women guides were sprinkled around the Upper Keys but none with Rusty’s reputation for finding fish. She had secret spots, and super secret spots, and a few spots so secret even I didn’t know where they were.

  On my kitchen table she’d unrolled a three-foot-square laminated sheet. It was an aerial picture of a watery region dotted with islands. She’d set a saltshaker on one corner, pepper on another, and a novel at the bottom.

  “What’re you reading these days?” she said, tapping the book.

  I bent forward to study the chaotic array of islands, inlets, and coves. Creeks threaded like capillaries through marshes and scattered scraps of dry land. It was clearly the Ever-glades, but it was taking me a minute to get my bearings.

  “What is this, Rusty?”

  Her lips held a faint smile. I knew the look. She had a fish on—nicely hooked. Now she was letting it run, playing it. A quiet, self-assured expression.

  “Title sounds like some kind of thriller.”

  “Sugarman recommended it. Said it was good.”

  “Is it?”

  I looked back at the photo, a growing awareness starting to warm me.

  “Not very.”

  “What’s it about?”
<
br />   “Come on, Rusty. You don’t care about the book.”

  “What’s it about?”

  Her smile deepening a degree. So confident.

  “Bunch of ex-Navy SEALs and Army Rangers pull off some twisted caper. Our hero whips their asses one by one. White hats, black hats.”

  “Sounds like your kind of story, Thorn.”

  “Not really.”

  “No?”

  “I was twelve when I stopped reading comics.”

  “But Sugarman liked it.”

  “So he said. I’ll have to ask him why.”

  I looked back at the photo and touched my finger to one of the larger bodies of water.

  “Hell’s Bay?”

  “You got it.”

  “What is this? A satellite shot of the Glades?”

  “Much better,” she said. “Satellite photos don’t have nearly the detail as this. Plus the stuff you can download, some of the images can be five, ten years old. The rate that mangroves grow, flats and channels shift, it wouldn’t do us any good.”

  “And this?”

  “Twenty-three different photographic images spliced to-gether.”

  I still didn’t get it. So she explained about her friend Sherman Beams, how last spring Rusty paid him to fly his Cessna back and forth between Lost Man’s Creek and White-water Bay for a couple of weeks. Using a belly camera and a wide-angle lens, on successive cloudless days they’d criss-crossed the whole area east of Ponce de Leon Bay and Shark River, laying out meticulous grids across that jumble of islands and winding waterways. When they had all the images collected, Rusty got her brother to dovetail the assorted photos into a single panoramic shot on his computer.

  “Teeter did this?”

  “Teeter’s a genius about some things. When he had it all pieced together in a single image, I took it to the PhotoLab, and they blew it up and laminated it.”