Deep Shadow

by Nick Sullivan

  Emily watched for a moment, then slid out the little slate she kept in her vest, writing “ASL?” on it.

  While a large black grouper followed the group like a lost puppy, the dive proceeded. A school of tarpon was on station in one of the cargo holds, the scales of the sizable fish reflecting the occasional ray of sunlight that met their silvery sides. In the next hold, Chompy made an appearance. The massive green moray came out of its dimly lit home and treated them to nearly a minute of free swimming before nosing into a pipe and vanishing back into the wreck. Just as the group was about to ascend at the bow, Emily spotted a southern stingray in the sand twenty feet beyond the bow. They were near the end of their bottom time at this depth so she quickly flanked around the ray to “wrangle” it back to the group before they headed back. The ray was a big one and the divers were pleased, though Boone noticed that the girl student looked nervous and swam rapidly away from it when it angled toward her. He quickly caught her eye and gave her a wave and an OK hand signal before pulling out his slate and scrawling “harmless” on it. The girl nodded nervously and rejoined the group.

  In minutes, the dive group had returned to the mooring line and began to ascend along it; Boone pointed out some of the feathery hydroids growing on the rope to the students and waggled his finger in a “no-no” gesture. After their safety stops, Boone and Emily quickly scrambled aboard the boat and helped the divers up the ladders and to the benches along the sides.

  Emily grabbed a clipboard. “Awesome dive, yeah? Okay, roll call!” They knew they had all their divers back but you always did a roll call. While Boone removed the boat’s line from the mooring, Emily went down the list. “That’s everyone! Thank goodness—Chompy sometimes takes a diver. So, we’ve got about an hour surface interval to get some of that nasty nitrogen out of our systems and then we’ll be diving “Windsock”, named for those cloth tubes the airports use to show wind direction. The dive site’s right off the airport runway, so good name, yeah?”

  As Frenchy started the engines, Boone came forward, tipping up the lid on a large Igloo cooler. “We’ve got oranges and chips. Don’t forget to hydrate, water’s back in that cooler there… and we’ve got some sodas if you need a little caffeine boost.”

  Becky, one of the students, picked up a silvery can. “Coca Cola Light?”

  “It’s pretty much Diet Coke,” Emily said. “Some products are different in the Dutch islands.”

  “Like these?” Bill asked, holding up a snack size bag of curry flavored potato chips. He held the bag daintily between thumb and forefinger, a look of distaste on his face.

  “Hey, those crisps are great!” Emily protested.

  “Bonaire’s a Dutch island, Bill,” Boone said. “The Netherlands used to have a lot of colonies in Indonesia, so you see a lot of that influence in their foods. You actually find a lot of curry in the Caribbean.”

  “Try it!” Emily demanded. “You don’t like ‘em, I’ll eat ‘em. That’s the Emily Snack Food Guarantee.”

  From the Hilma Hooker to Windsock was only a couple miles as the crow flies, so Frenchy was leisurely in his transit. Several of the divers went up top to the benches surrounding the flybridge to better enjoy the view. Boone grabbed an orange and went over to the students.

  “You looked a little worried when that stingray headed toward you,” Boone said to Becky.

  “Well… that Crocodile Hunter guy got killed by one, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he did, but that was a terrible accident. Stingrays are very gentle creatures and an attack like that is almost unheard of. Steve Irwin swam over a large one in very shallow water. The ray may have thought his shadow was a tiger shark passing over him, or it may have just felt boxed in. But here, the rays can see you very well, and they’re quite used to us.”

  The blond Claassen brother, Rick, chimed in, “Heck, in Grand Cayman they come right up to you and you can pet them! They’re friendly fellas.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t advise trying to pet the rays here,” Boone interjected quickly. “Grand Cayman and Belize have spots where dive ops feed the rays. That kind of feeding changes their natural behavior. Ours are harmless but they’re not tame, so they won’t come up to you looking for a handout.”

  The girl relaxed a little. “It was pretty, the way it moved.”

  “Hopefully you’ll see one of our eagle rays! Truly beautiful.”

  The girl’s brother was heading up the ladder to the flybridge and the girl went to join him. Boone tore into his orange and Ron plunked down next to his brother with a cup of water in hand.

  “Way to go, bro… advising folks to pet stingrays.”

  Rick punched his red-headed brother in the arm. “Just trying to put her at ease.”

  There was that accent again. Southern, similar to his own mother’s. “Are you two from Tennessee, by any chance?”

  “Close,” Rick said. “We’re both in Florida now, but we’re from Kentucky. We grew up in Scottsville, near the Tennessee border, northeast of Nashville.”

  “That’s not far from where my mother lives. Kingston, Tennessee.”

  “That’s where they had that big coal ash spill, right?” Ron asked.

  “Yeah. Her place is to the south, though, so her property wasn’t affected.”

  “I gotta say, you don’t have much of an accent,” Rick said.

  Boone chuckled. “My dad is Dutch… I think his accent and my mom’s just sorta smashed into each other and left me a blank slate.”

  “So… ‘Boone’… that’s an unusual name. And I’m guessing it ain’t Dutch.”

  “No… ‘Fischer’ is, but I have my mom to thank for my first name. She thinks she might be related to Daniel Boone. Very popular in Tennessee.”

  “Pretty popular where we grew up, too!” Rick said. “Pop used to take us camping in the Daniel Boone National Forest.”

  “I’ve camped there! It’s about an hour and a half from my hometown—camped there with the Scouts. Small world. Hey, I wanted to ask, I was watching the two of you signing at each other…”

  “Cool, huh?” Rick said. “Ron taught me.”

  “My wife is hearing impaired,” Ron said. “Rick comes over to visit so often, I figured he ought to learn American Sign Language. Turns out it’s pretty darn useful when diving.”

  “You two here with your families?”

  “Nah, we get to sneak away a couple times a year,” Rick said. “Ron’s wife doesn’t care for diving and I’m… ‘unaffiliated’ at the moment.”

  “We’ve been meaning to do Bonaire for a while,” Ron said. “And we’re looking into going in together on a trawler or a sailboat; get in on the cruising scene. If we do that, we probably wouldn’t get all the way down here too often, with Rick’s schedule.”

  “I’m in the U.S. Naval Reserve,” Rick explained. “Have to report back every month, so lengthy cruises might be a bit difficult.”

  Boone continued to chat with the brothers, learning that Rick had been an active duty naval officer for years, based in Florida. Ron had helped farm the family’s Kentucky land until his father passed, before moving out to join his brother. Together, they had started a successful internet company that sold custom recreational equipment—basketball hoops, swings, monkey bars, aquatic slides—and the two of them were thinking of selling the company and entering the mystical realm of semi-retirement. The brothers were in their late forties and were ready to see more of the world.

  The Kleine Dancer had reached Windsock and found the mooring empty so they were ready to begin their second dive once their surface break came to an end. This was a fun dive, and Boone was planning on seeking out several rare creatures he tended to find at this site: a chain moray eel that was frequently at this section of reef, juvenile trunkfish that looked like tiny dice, and the shame-faced crab and his flounder friend. Found in the sand on the shallow side of the reef, this
crab carried its claws snuggly against the front of its carapace, as if it were covering its face in shame; nine times out of ten, there would be a small peacock flounder paired up with the funny crustacean.

  Emily and Boone gave the orientation briefing for Windsock and the divers geared up and began slipping beneath the turquoise waters.

  Just before he descended, Boone watched as a passenger jet roared over his head, descending onto the airport runway. I’ll be on one of those, soon, he thought.

  A couple hours later, Boone and Emily walked into the Deco Stop Bar at Captain Don’s Habitat. All the divers from the morning were planning on doing their own shore diving and there hadn’t been any new sign-ups so Frenchy declared that there wouldn’t be an afternoon boat dive, giving the two divemasters the rest of the day off. Emily plopped down at the open-air bar, looking up at the T-shirts and stickers from dive operations all over the world that hung from the wooden pavilion roof overhead.

  “This place is cool. Can’t believe I haven’t come here yet.” She lifted her polarized sunglasses and looked out at the ocean below for a moment before letting them fall back onto her turned-up nose. “Bet this spot is primo for sunsets, yeah?”

  “It is indeed.”

  “Well, since it’s not even two o’clock, we better pace ourselves. Barkeep! Two Polars.”

  The bartender, a tall, freckled girl, came over to them. “Boone, haven’t seen you in a while.” She spoke with an Irish brogue and gave Emily the once over. “Who’s your lovely friend?”

  “Penny, this is Emily. She’s the new divemaster at Rock Beauty.”

  “Welcome to Bonaire! This half-Dutch mutt hasn’t tried to make you do yoga with him yet, has he?”

  “Is that a… euphemism?” Emily asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “No, he actually made me do an hour of yoga with him when I lost a bet.”

  “What was the bet?” Emily asked.

  “Mr. Fitness here claimed he could hold his breath for four minutes. I told him he was full of shite.”

  “Boone is frequently full of shite,” Emily said.

  “Oh, I like you already,” Penny said. “Anyway, I didn’t realize he was a freak of nature. He hung off the dock down there and went for nearly five!”

  “Plenty of freedivers can hold their breath a lot longer than that,” Boone said.

  “Well, you’re lucky he only made you do yoga and not that crazy dance karate,” Emily said.

  “Capoeira,” Boone said.

  “Caipirinha, whatever. I saw him sparring with this Brazilian guy at a beach downtown. Pretty crazy stuff!”

  Penny plunked down two Venezuelan Polar beers, favorite cervezas on Bonaire. “Enjoy them while you can.”

  “What do you mean?” Boone asked.

  “Empresas Polar ran out of barley last year and had to shut down production for a while. They’ve been back up, but things aren’t looking too good down there.”

  Boone nodded. The situation in Venezuela was getting worse by the day. Already, large numbers of refugees were arriving by boat in Curaçao. A thriving industry had developed in the Venezuelan state of Falcón as fishermen charged up to four hundred American dollars per person to take refugees across the forty miles of ocean on their peñeros—small fishing boats. And whatever could take refugees across, could take other things across. The drug trade was booming and the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard had their hands full. There was a saying in the ABC islands, “when Venezuela catches a cold, Curaçao gets the sniffles”. Well, this time Venezuela was on track for a full-blown case of the flu. The country’s “president”, Nicolás Maduro, was a dictator in all but name, and his policies were swiftly driving the country into bankruptcy, skyrocketing crime, and international isolation.

  “Sorry to bring things down,” Penny said. “Bad bartender!”

  “Here’s to our terrible bartender!” Boone raised his ice-cold beer and clinked bottles with Emily. “May she never run out of Polar.”

  They ordered some lionfish tacos from Rum Runners and ate the tasty fish at the bar. Boone tried to eat the invasive fish at least twice a week. The meat was white, flaky, and buttery and if it was eaten into extinction in the Caribbean, so much the better. Boone got a plate of fries to go with them—he was addicted to the curry ketchup they served down here. While they were finishing their meals, Penny came and set a shot glass down at the end of the bar, pouring a finger of whiskey into it before attending to a rowdy group of divers that was just arriving. There was one sitting where she’d set it.

  Emily looked at the shot, then leaned over toward Boone. “Who’s that for?”

  “That’s Captain Don’s.”

  Emily looked confused. “But isn’t he… ohhhh.” Then she smiled. “That’s pretty cool. Did you get to meet him?”

  “Yeah, actually. He passed away a few months before I relocated here, but I was working in Curaçao and came over for a week while he was still around.”

  Captain Don Stewart was a legend on the island. Arriving in Bonaire on a leaky schooner in 1962, Captain Don brought recreational diving to the island. In 1976, he opened Captain Don’s Habitat, one of the first full-fledged dive resorts, dedicated to ecotourism and recreational scuba diving.

  Boone chuckled. “You ever hear about his ‘depth gauge’? He tied a red ribbon to his wrist. I don’t have to tell you, Miss Photographer, that water absorbs light…”

  “Yeah… oh! And the color red goes first! Brilliant.”

  “Yep. If the red was gone, Don would know he was below twenty feet, and he could make other depth estimates by subtleties in the color change.”

  “Is it true he had a peg leg?” Emily asked.

  “Yep. He crushed his ankle during a salvage operation and some years later, the lower part of his leg had to be amputated. He had a funeral for his leg and buried it in the local cemetery—I think he wanted to be able to say he had ‘one foot in the grave’—and he took to wearing a wooden peg leg carved from a table leg. Although when I saw him, he was in a wheelchair. I was fortunate to get to chat with him for more than a minute, being a ‘dude’. He liked the ladies—named several dive sites after girlfriends. He would’ve loved you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Well, you’re gorgeous and…”

  Emily grinned and slid her elbows along the bar, tipping up her giant sunglasses and batting her eyelashes. “Go on.”

  Boone felt a flush coming on but was saved by a burst of cheers from a group of divers that was settling in to a round of rum punches and looking at a couple of underwater cameras.

  “Check it out! Six dolphins in that shot!”

  “There must have been a pod swimming by!”

  Dolphins! Boone set down his beer. Seeing a dolphin during a dive was on Boone’s bucket list. Emily was listening intently too.

  “You guys were lucky. I’ve never seen the conditions down there that calm.” This from their guide, a divemaster from the Habitat, Emilio.

  “Emilio!” Boone called out. “Where’d you see them?”

  “Hey, Boone! Willemstoren Lighthouse. It was phenomenal, man. You should get down there, not much current, not much chop, great viz.”

  The dolphins would probably be long gone, but still… they did have the afternoon off. He turned to Emily. “How do you feel about a little shore dive?”

  “Can we be back in time for a sunset drink?”

  “We most certainly can.”

  She flipped her sunglasses back down on her nose. “Let’s roll.”

  After loading Emily’s jeep with tanks and gear, they headed south along the coast with the top down. It was a wonderful drive, with the smell of the ocean in the air and the sun shining bright with hardly a cloud in the sky. Boone figured they’d be able to get in the water before half past three, provided they didn’t hit too much “donkey traffic”. Bonaire’s wild
donkeys were descended from herds brought over by Spanish settlers and they roamed the island, including the roads. They saw a few along the shoulder but none decided to cross. They passed the Cargill saltworks—the giant, white pyramids shone in the sun above the pink-colored waters of the salt pans. The waters turned pink due to bacteria and brine shrimp that thrived in the salty waters. When flocks of pink flamingos visited, the riot of pink and white created a stunning scene.

  Nearing the southern tip of the island, they passed the Yellow Slave Huts, followed by the Red Slave Huts. These sites were composed of tiny stone huts, their openings so small a man would have to crawl to enter. Built in the 1850’s to lodge the slaves that worked the salt pans, they were sobering reminders of a darker time on this beautiful island. Finally, the lighthouse came into view—in short order they passed the ruins of the lighthouse keeper’s house.

  “Just after three,” Boone said, checking his dive watch as they pulled off the road next to a pair of painted yellow rocks, one saying “Willemstoren”, the other “Lighthouse”. They crunched over the crushed coral and came to a stop.

  “Looks pretty good from here,” Emily said, gathering her gear from the back of the jeep.

  “Let’s put our rigs in that little patch of beach there and check the surf.” Boone said, heading for the shore with Emily close behind. Dumping their gear, they stood side by side and took in the view. The site was the calmest Boone had ever seen it. “Oh, hell yeah, we’re going in.”

  “Sweet as!” She pointed at the jagged ironshore. “All right, you go left, I’ll go right. Let’s find a good spot to hit it!”