We Should Have Left Well Enough Alone

by Ronald Malfi

  “I’m not really in the mood for golf.”

  “I don’t think I could watch them eat a seal, though,” Janet confessed, lightly placing her hand on the tour guide’s arm. “I think it would make me feel bad.”

  “There are special ways around that,” the tour guide said. “I have just the thing.”

  “What is it?” Janet asked.

  “A surprise,” Tommy McCurry went on. “Tomorrow you will see.”

  Janet laughed and finished her drink.

  “This shark thing,” Jay Conroy said abruptly, “it does sound interesting.”

  “Then it will be the three of us?” the tour guide suggested.

  “Jay doesn’t really like the water,” Janet said.

  “That’s not true,” he countered.

  “There is always safari,” Tommy McCurry said. “You could do that.”

  “He has bad knees, too,” Janet continued.

  “Stop it,” he said to his wife. To the tour guide he said, “I don’t have bad knees.”

  Janet frowned. “Of course you do, Jay!”

  “The safari,” Tommy McCurry said, “they take you around in a bakkie, so there is not much walking.”

  “What’s a bakkie?” Janet asked.

  “A truck,” Tommy McCurry said and Janet laughed, reaching for the tour guide’s untouched drink.

  “This is such a beautiful country,” she said, sipping from Tommy McCurry’s glass.

  “I don’t have bad knees,” Jay Conroy said to no one.

  * * *

  In the morning they had breakfast along the crest of the hillside. They drank tea and Janet ate several pastries. Jay Conroy ate nothing, as he did not feel well. They sat beneath a straw canopy and he could see the beach below. There was a circle of fishermen down by the docks, unfolding their nets and setting them in long, flayed strips along the bulkhead. Some young men stood watching the fishermen, snorkels and fins collected in their arms. These young men were abalone divers, Jay Conroy surmised, and he watched them watching the fishermen for a long while.

  “You should eat something,” Janet told him. “We’re going to be out on the water all afternoon.”

  After breakfast they returned to the hut to bathe and dress. Janet dressed in a sheer cotton blouse and wrapped a floral-printed sarong about her waist. Jay Conroy dressed quickly in whatever clothes he came upon. He sat mulling over his paperwork beneath the hut’s awning while waiting for his wife, breathing deep the salty air. Someone had come and dragged the rotting whale carcasses away from the beach. There were a number of other huts scattered around the point; perhaps one of the other guests had complained about the smell. But it hadn’t bothered him.

  By early afternoon they were trekking down the rocky slope toward the white sand flats. There were tall reeds in the grass and they whipped their legs in the strong wind coming in off the Atlantic. Below, several small charter boats crowded the few piers.

  “Those are the boats?” Jay Conroy said. “They don’t look too sturdy for shark hunting.”

  “No one’s hunting sharks, Jay,” Janet said.

  Tommy McCurry’s catamaran was small and peeling and looked rickety and uncertain. There was a cylindrical steel cage strapped to the front deck. His shirt off and his skin coffee-colored beneath the blazing sun, Tommy McCurry carried heavy white pails to the rear of the ship. He noticed them approaching and set the pails down and waved. He looked much younger with his shirt off, Jay thought.

  “Watch your footing,” Tommy McCurry said as they approached. He assisted Janet onto the boat. “She may not look like much,” he assured her, “but she is a good boat.” And looking back over his shoulder, he seemed surprised to see Jay Conroy. “Husband Jay,” he said.

  “Hello.”

  “So you’ve decided to come after all?”

  He’d decided to come last night, but perhaps Tommy McCurry had had too many mai tais to remember. No, wait—Tommy McCurry hadn’t had anything to drink all evening.

  “Is it a long trip?” he asked, managing to climb onto the boat without any assistance. Tommy McCurry was already moving toward Janet at the rear of the boat, anyway.

  “Maybe twenty minutes out,” Tommy McCurry assured him.

  “It’s a wonderful day,” Janet said. She’d seated herself on a bench outside the pilothouse and looked very young and very pretty with her hands folded in her lap.

  “It is,” the guide agreed. “Wait till we get out and away from the mainland here. The water is very clear.”

  “It’s very pretty,” Janet said.

  Laughing, the guide said, “Yes.”

  Hugging the side of the boat with one hand, Jay Conroy made his way to the fiberglass bench and sat beside his wife. Without looking at him, Janet patted his hand. Jay Conroy thought she was watching their good-looking tour guide.

  In the pilothouse, Tommy McCurry set aside a number of scuba tanks and started up the engine. It crackled and spat and roared and didn’t sound too reliable. Jay Conroy wanted to ask if anyone’s charter had ever gotten stuck in Shark Alley, but he said nothing. Tommy McCurry maneuvered the vessel out of its slip and directed it toward the wide mouth of the Atlantic. The boat cut quickly through the water, splashing spume and sea salt onto the deck and against the pilothouse windows. Janet laughed and dangled one hand over the side of the boat, reaching for the froth. Then she leaned forward and hollered something to Tommy McCurry. The tour guide laughed and rubbed at his ribs with one hand. Jay Conroy could not hear what they were saying over the roar of the boat’s engine.

  When the jagged peaks of Dyer Island appeared on the right, Tommy McCurry slowed the charter to a sputtering gallop. “The water,” he explained, “it’s shallow here in places. I have to be careful.”

  “Be careful,” Janet agreed.

  Jay Conroy looked around but could see no sharks. There were a few seals populating the island’s coastline, sunbathing on the black rocks, and coal-colored cormorants perched in the high, reedy hills.

  Tommy McCurry slipped from the pilothouse and went to the stack of white pails. He bent and popped the lid off one with a large knife then pulled on a pair of rubber gloves.

  “What is that stuff?” Janet asked.

  “Chum,” Tommy McCurry said. “I spread it in the water to attract the sharks.”

  “Oh,” Janet said, watching the tour guide work. She wrinkled her nose. “It looks like blood and guts.”

  Tommy McCurry said, “It is.”

  “And we want to do that? I mean, have them come up so close to the boat?”

  “The closer the better,” the guide said. He began scooping chum from the bucket with a plastic ladle and emptying it overboard.

  “You should help,” Janet told Jay Conroy.

  “It’s all right,” Tommy McCurry said. “Just enjoy yourselves. This is your vacation. In fact, there are beers in the cooler.”

  “Where is the cooler?” Janet asked, looking around.

  “You are sitting on it,” Tommy McCurry said.

  They stood and Jay Conroy fished out a cold bottle of beer for himself and his wife. Janet nudged him and he glanced over his shoulder and asked Tommy McCurry if he wanted one.

  “Not for me, thank you.”

  “They’re very cold,” Janet said.

  “Enjoy them,” Tommy McCurry said. He finished with the chum and stepped back into the pilothouse to steer the boat in a half-circle. They proceeded to backtrack through their wake.

  “This is prowling,” Jay Conroy said into his wife’s ear. “I read about this, too.”

  “You are magnificent,” she said, and tasted her beer.

  Something dark and plastic and the size of a small dog jumped from the pilothouse and slid across the boat deck. Janet jumped and cried out, startled, and Tommy McCurry appeared, laughing and raking his fingers down the xylophonic sides of his rib cage.

  “Goodness,” Janet said. “What in the world…?”

  “This is Hester,” Tommy McCurry e
xplained, and picked up the object. It was a Styrofoam cutout covered in black latex that resembled a seal pup. There were ragged cuts and indentations along its body where the foam, white as bone beneath the latex skin, could be seen. Tommy McCurry held it up vertically, dangling it from the mossy rope that was attached to its snout.

  “Look at that,” Janet marveled.

  “This is how we get the sharks to jump,” Tommy McCurry explained. “We trail Hester here in the water behind the boat. Once the sharks get a whiff of the chum, they will come and follow the boat. When a shark sees Hester’s silhouette swimming atop the water, it will spring up out of the water to catch her.”

  “How sad,” Janet said, reaching out and stroking the seal’s latex hide.

  “It’s fake,” Jay Conroy said.

  “Still,” she said, “it’s sad. Poor dumb fake dead seal.”

  “Those cuts along its body,” Jay Conroy said to his wife, “those are from sharks’ teeth.”

  Tommy McCurry smiled. “Not exactly,” he said. “That’s really just natural wear-and-tear. I’m afraid that if a great white got a hold of Hester, there would be very little left.”

  “Oh,” Jay Conroy said.

  “Poor Hester,” Janet moaned, then sang: “Hester, Hester, beware the shark molester…”

  “Lucky for Hester,” Tommy McCurry said, “the big boys miss quite often.”

  With the latex seal dumped overboard, Tommy McCurry piloted the boat up and down Shark Alley. Jay Conroy was having serious doubts about spotting a shark, let alone a great white, when the tour guide shouted and pointed out over the dark, undulating waves.

  “Look,” the guide said. “See there? That’s its dorsal.”

  A sleek, black mast rose from the water and streamed toward the boat. Janet began shouting and clapping and Tommy McCurry, grinning proudly, looped an arm around her narrow shoulders and gave her a familiar hug. Jay Conroy watched them then looked back at the shark. As it moved the dorsal fin dipped back down beneath the surface.

  “Is that all?” Janet asked.

  “Wait!” Tommy McCurry said, still squeezing Jay Conroy’s wife. “Wait, Janet!”

  There seemed to fall an eerie, foreboding silence. The cough of the charter’s idling engine was all they could hear. Then the shark struck, spearing in a spray of glistening diamonds straight up out of the water, its body heavy and sleek and pure muscle, its jaws gaping and impossibly wide, reinforced with serrated, stone-colored teeth, each one huge and like the blade of a fan. It rotated its body until its jaws faced downward, its powerful crescent-shaped tail whipping from left to right, left to right, machinelike in its efficiency. Hester sprang up from the water and spiraled into the air, the rope taut then slack, spinning and twirling like an acrobat. The great fish came down and slammed through the surface of the water, shattering it. And with all its awesome, preternatural supremacy, it disappeared beneath the waves as if it had never existed.

  “Good Lord,” Jay Conroy uttered.

  Janet broke out into cheers, wailing and clapping her hands. “Oh Tommy, that was amazing!”

  “You see?” Tommy McCurry said. “What did I say?”

  “You live such an amazing life, to do this every day! It is so beautiful here and the sharks are so impossibly wonderful! I never knew it!”

  “I have much respect for the sharks,” Tommy McCurry said.

  “It is a very brave thing,” Janet said.

  Jay Conroy watched them and listened to them and forgot all about the jumping sharks of Dyer Island. He felt something hot and strong turn over in his stomach.

  “I want to go down in the cage,” Jay Conroy spoke up suddenly. “That shark cage at the front of the boat—I want to go down in it.”

  Their laughter subsiding, his wife and Tommy McCurry only stared at him.

  “I want to go down,” he repeated.

  “In the water, Jay?” Janet said.

  “Mate,” Tommy McCurry said, “I’m afraid that’s just not doable.”

  “I have money. I have cash right here with me, right now. What is it you people say? I want to do it now-now.”

  “It’s just not doable.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t have the proper equipment on board.”

  “The cage is right up front,” Jay Conroy said, “and there are oxygen tanks in the pilothouse. I saw them.”

  Tommy McCurry started to laugh. “You are fooling with me, yes?”

  “I’m serious. I want to go down.”

  “Jay,” Janet said.

  “It is a lot of work to send someone down in the cage.”

  “I’ll help you,” Jay Conroy said.

  “Jay,” Janet said, pulling herself to his side, “what are you doing? You can’t go in the water.”

  “What needs to be done?” he asked Tommy McCurry.

  The guide lowered his head slightly and smiled at Jay Conroy from beneath his dark brow. He placed his hands on his hips and flexed the muscles in his chest.

  “First,” Tommy McCurry said, “we need to lower the cage into the water.”

  “Jay!” Janet shouted.

  “All right,” Jay Conroy said.

  “We let it sit in the water so the sharks will get used to it. I will then instruct you on how to use the scuba gear. Have you ever been scuba diving before?”

  “No.”

  “You have bad knees, Jay,” Janet reminded him.

  “It is quite simple,” Tommy McCurry said. “It will take no time for you to learn. Then,” he said, “when the big fish have lost interest in the cage, I will send you down. There is even a camera I keep onboard for taking pictures underwater. You may use it, free of charge.”

  “All right,” he said. “So let’s put the cage in the water.”

  The tour guide’s grin did not falter. “So let’s,” he said.

  They unhooked the cage from the boat deck and secured it with nylon ropes to metal hinges along the catamaran’s railing. Tommy McCurry strapped a diving cylinder to the inside of the cage and tugged at it. Jay Conroy stripped his shoes and socks off while watching Tommy McCurry through the meshwork of bars.

  “It doesn’t look like a strong cage,” Janet said, hovering over her husband.

  “It is a very strong cage,” he told his wife, though he didn’t think the shark cage looked very strong at all. “Isn’t it?”

  “Aye, sure,” said Tommy McCurry.

  “Jay, why are you doing this?”

  “Go sit down on the cooler,” he said to her, and watched Tommy McCurry watch his wife walk to the rear of the catamaran. Then Tommy McCurry turned and looked at him.

  “You should not treat her that way,” the guide said casually. “She is a lovely young woman and it is wrong.”

  “And you are a fine dancer,” he responded.

  “Oh?”

  “You must make all the women very happy around here.”

  “I see,” Tommy McCurry said. “This is a foolish thing, what you are trying to prove.”

  “I’m not trying to prove anything.”

  “Secure these ropes,” Tommy McCurry said, tossing a coil of nylon ropes at Jay Conroy’s feet.

  The ropes tied to anchors running along the portside of the boat, the two men hoisted the cage up with little difficulty: it was not only small, but made of very lightweight steel. The two men lifted it and set it sideways on the boat’s railing. Jay Conroy struggled with his end. There was a sliding, whistling sound. Tommy McCurry looked around and saw one of Jay Conroy’s ropes had come untied and had slipped around the front of the cage. Jay Conroy saw it, too. It hung limply over the portside.

  “Can you grab it?” the guide asked. “It is closer to you.”

  Jay Conroy reached out and overextended his fingers, but could not reach the rope. He chewed on his lower lip and was aware of his bare feet and he could not reach the rope.

  “Balance the cage on your thigh,” Tommy McCurry suggested.

  Jay Conroy tried. “I ca
n’t,” he said, his breath coming in short little wheezes now. “The cage is too heavy. It’s too much weight on my knees.”

  “Then just hold it good and secure,” Tommy McCurry said. The guide bent himself forward over the railing and snaked one bare arm around the outer portion of the steel cage, grappling for the fallen rope. Looking at Jay Conroy from the other side of the cage he said, “If I let my end go, can you support the weight?”

  “No,” he said. “Don’t let go.”

  “But I cannot reach the rope,” Tommy McCurry said.

  “Wait,” he said, “I’ll call my wife over. She’ll get the rope.” But he didn’t call for his wife and remained staring at Tommy McCurry through the bars of the cage. Tommy McCurry stared back and did not blink and Jay Conroy could see the glistening beads of sweat running like tears down his face and chest.

  “No,” Tommy McCurry said finally. “I can reach it.”

  He leaned further over the railing, stretching for the rope while balancing his side of the cage awkwardly with one hand and his left thigh. The rope hung loosely over the railing, thumping against the hull in the wind. So close to it, Tommy McCurry could almost reach it, almost swipe it with the tips of his fingers…

  The cage shuddered then tipped further over the side of the boat. Tommy McCurry shouted at Jay Conroy to hold it secure, hold it, mate, but it was now unbalanced. The cage slid off the side of the boat and struck Tommy McCurry and caught his arm in the steel bars as it went down. The cage struck the water, pulling Tommy McCurry in with it, and Janet began shouting. Jay Conroy stood and saw Tommy McCurry’s head rebound off the side of the cage, his arm still caught in the bars. The cage bobbed momentarily then began sinking slowly into the water. Tommy McCurry struggled and managed to get his arm free. Catching his breath, he began treading water with his one good arm while the cage sank next to him. He looked up at Jay Conroy and winced. The sun shone directly in his eyes.

  “Well,” Tommy McCurry said.

  Janet rushed to the side of the boat and looked over. She said nothing.

  Jay Conroy wound a length of rope around one hand. Slowly, with calculated lethargy, he began pulling the rope back onto the deck.