The Girl of the Sea of Cortez: A Novel

by Peter Benchley

  And through it all, Jo sat in the corner on a chair tilted back against the wall, and smiled.

  In the morning, Paloma did not go out to the seamount. She told Miranda that her terrible experience of the day before had frightened her and that she wanted to stay ashore for a day or two and help with the wash and the house. Miranda was pleased. Paloma could tell the other women in her own words what a miracle it was that she was still alive, so the other women couldn’t accuse Miranda of exaggerating and they would see that her worries had been well founded.

  Miranda also chose to regard Paloma’s decision as a hopeful sign: Perhaps she was outgrowing this foolishness with the sea and would recognize and begin to accept a more traditional position in the community.

  The reason Paloma stayed ashore was that she knew that if she went out to the seamount and watched Jo and his mates, she would not be able to keep silent, she would surely provoke another confrontation with them. And this time, someone would get hurt.

  She had walked to the top of the hill above the dock and watched them and the other fishermen prepare their boats for the day. She could hear most of what was said and guess at the rest, for the conversation did not change much from day to day, and she knew that Jo was not telling the other fishermen where he and Indio and Manolo were going. Jo waited for the others to leave, pretending to be furious at being delayed by tangled fishing lines.

  Paloma took some small comfort in his selfishness: If Jo was smart enough to know that it was against his interests to tell anyone about the new seamount, his greed would delay, for a while at least, the mass slaughter of the animals.

  But she could take no comfort from the last piece of gear she saw Jo and Indio sling aboard: a big net, with lead weights at the bottom to drag the snare down to the top of the seamount.

  When he was sure he was alone, Jo started his motor and headed to sea. He did not yet know precisely where the seamount was, but, given a whole day to search for it, with no pressure from Paloma or any competitors, he was certain to find it: With one of his mates peering through the viewing box, Jo would drive the motorboat in straight lines up and down the general area until, eventually, he would have to pass over the seamount.

  Depending on the tide and the bottom currents and the movement of the vast schools of baitfish and of the other, tinier creatures at the small end of the food chain, it was possible that Jo might be prevented from doing much damage right away. He might toss his net and let it sink and haul in nothing but a stray pufferfish, for the big schools of robust jacks and cabríos moved constantly, following their own food, and catching them as they passed over the seamount was a random chance.

  But it would happen—if not this morning, then this afternoon, if not today, then tomorrow—because with so many schools of so many fish passing over the seamount so many times every day, even if Jo’s ignorance led him to anchor his boat in a wrong place at an inopportune time, he was bound, sometime, to spot a big school through the viewing box.

  Paloma watched until the wake from Jo’s motor melted into the moving water and the white hull of the boat itself was consumed by the shining light on the sea.

  The dock was empty, so she could work on her boat without bothering anyone. She found some pieces of canvas and some pieces of plywood, and she cut and shaped them into patches that would block the hole inside and outside, and she nailed them in place and sealed them with daubs of pitch.

  Then she walked back to the house.

  Miranda was darting around the house like an agitated bird, and Paloma knew she was feeling a bit nervous, a bit excited, a bit apprehensive—a bit of a dozen different emotions, some of which complemented others, some of which contradicted others, and the sum of which confused her.

  Mainly, Miranda was happy that Paloma would be staying with her and doing woman’s work, and she wanted to make sure that the day was good for Paloma because she worried that if Paloma had a bad day she would go back to the sea, immediately and for good.

  She longed to recover her daughter, to claim the companion Jobim had deprived her of by taking Paloma to sea. She wanted to be able to be proud of Paloma, proud of having a daughter who would be working with her. Raising a female child to do female work was a normal thing, a healthy thing, a good thing in the community. It made Miranda a normal person, someone to be accepted and treated like everybody else. She wanted to show Paloma off to the other women, partly as a symbol of her own achievement. But in the back of her mind she worried that Paloma might say or do something that would not seem normal, and that might make things more difficult than ever.

  She was worried that the other women might not like Paloma and that Paloma might not like the other women. She wanted everybody to like everybody, but that meant that the women would have to contain their ceaseless complaining about everything. Paloma had been taught by her father that complaining was a waste of time. If something was not to your liking, went Jobim’s guideline, change it. If it couldn’t be changed, accept it. If you could neither change nor accept it, then alter your own circumstances to cope with it. But under no circumstances whine about it, because whining accomplished nothing but aggravation.

  Paloma would have to be accommodating, too. She would have to conceal her contempt for complainers. And that, after all, was fair, because Paloma was not familiar with the women’s lives and problems. She could not evaluate the genuineness or seriousness of the complaints.

  If all you did all your life was wash clothes and clean house and cook food, why, then, the minute details of clothes-washing and housekeeping and cooking would be the most important things in your life. It was vital that Paloma be convinced that these details were not trivial and silly, at least not to the women, and so she must not scoff at them.

  As Miranda flitted about the house, dusting things that didn’t need to be dusted, cleaning things that were already clean, putting away things that she never put away, she started sentence after sentence, then stopped and started again, then tried another avenue of thought, then stammered and changed the subject. She was so fearful of being too specific that she was too vague, and it took Paloma several minutes to realize what Miranda couldn’t say. When finally she caught on, she said, “Don’t worry, Mama. We all have hands.”

  “What?” Miranda stopped.

  “I row with the palms of my hands. They sew with their fingertips. If they cut one of their palms, it’s nothing. They laugh at it. If I cut a palm, it’s a tragedy. But if I cut a fingertip, it’s nothing. We all have hands.”

  Miranda did not completely grasp why cut hands were central to the expression of what she had been trying to say, or to Paloma’s comprehension of it, but there was an atmosphere of compassion to Paloma’s voice that gave Miranda confidence that everything would be all right.

  And it was, finally.

  At first, the women treated Paloma carefully, eying her as a curiosity. This was only natural, since they had all regarded Jobim as a curiosity, and more—as an oddity, almost a menace. He had obeyed the laws and customs he agreed with and either rejected outright those he disagreed with (if he felt that they unwisely deprived a person of a freedom) or tolerated them with silent disdain (if he felt that they were harmless vehicles to convey the insecure along a path to self-regard). Jobim’s attitude could make him appear superior, and he might have become intolerable to many people had he not shown just as piercing an eye for his own failings. Even so, there were men—mostly those who used rituals to give themselves stature they could not otherwise attain—who did not like Jobim and were not particularly sorry when he was no longer on the island. And some of those men were married to the women with whom Miranda worked. The women knew how close Paloma and Jobim had been and knew that Paloma had been behaving like her father’s child. They would need to be convinced that Paloma intended to act more like a woman now.

  She convinced them. She kept her mouth shut except to answer direct questions, and replied respectfully, even when she judged the questions to be either
provocative or inane. She listened attentively to every monologue and nodded sympathetically, though the women’s words made no impression on her brain: They rattled around like marbles in an empty shell, for the occupant of the shell was elsewhere—out on the water, imagining what was going on on the seamount.

  She worked hard, abusing muscles she was not accustomed to using, never stopping to rest as most of the women did, not permitting herself a grunt of weariness or a sigh of tedium—until, that is, she discovered that the women wanted her to be exhausted and to appreciate physically the hardness of their lives. She did appreciate, and so she did echo a few of their complaints. And at the end of the day, several of the women took Miranda aside and complimented her on how well Paloma seemed to be turning out.

  Walking up the hill under a heavy load of wash, Miranda was silent but obviously elated. Paloma thought that if the day had accomplished nothing else, it had given her mother some happiness, which was a rare and good thing.

  Paloma did not stop wondering, though, how many animals had died during Miranda’s brief happy time. She flayed herself for not stopping the animals from dying, even though she knew it was foolish of her to take the blame.

  While she helped sweep the house and hang the wash to dry and feed the chickens for the second time and stoke the cook fire, Paloma forced her thoughts to stay ashore. But as soon as the chores were done and Miranda turned to cooking the evening meal, Paloma went outside and looked at the sky to tell the time.

  The sun was very low; it was late, later than Jo and the others would normally stay out. And as she looked toward the path that led down to the dock, she saw several of the fishermen strolling home, which meant that they had already been ashore for an hour or more, for it took that long to unload fish and clean them and swab the boat and stow the gear.

  Perhaps some trouble had befallen Jo and his friends … nothing too serious, for Paloma was not capable of wishing real harm to anyone. But something inconvenient, time-consuming, uncomfortable, perhaps something frightening that might discourage them from returning again to the seamount.

  Perhaps they had fouled their net on the bottom and had been capsized trying to retrieve it. They would have to right their boat and row home, for the saltwater-soaked motor would never start.

  Or perhaps they had cast their net into a mass of king mackerel or wahoos and seen it torn to shreds as they struggled to free the thrashing, snapping animals before they could drag the boat underwater.

  Perhaps now, as night approached, they were being harassed by a herd of porpoises who had smelled the fish in their boat and wanted some and were playfully bumping, jarring, slamming the boat with their noses and tails. The fishermen would toss a few fish over, and the porpoises would interpret that as encouragement to play even harder, so they would bump the boat from underneath on both sides and the boat would rock and spill more fish into the water, which would convince the porpoises that their game was a rollicking success and one to be continued with increased vigor. Jo and the others would hear the clicks and whistles and grunts as the porpoises chatted with one another, and in the thick, impenetrable blackness they would translate the conversations as the ravings of monsters. Soon they would panic and lose the balance of the boat and be tossed into the water, there to be engulfed in splashing, roiling foam filled with fish blood.

  Paloma liked the last possibility best. Yes, that’s what she could dream was happening to them if they weren’t home soon.

  But, walking toward the path to the dock, she suddenly realized there was a more likely reason for Jo’s lateness—and it was a reason that made the palms of her hands go cold and wet, and then a trickle of sweat ran down her sides and a bubble of fear made bile rise in her throat.

  From the top of the hill she saw that this was the true reason.

  Jo’s day had been successful beyond his dreams. They had netted so many fish and killed them and brought them aboard that they had had to drive the boat home at its slowest speed to keep it from swamping and sinking. The slightest wave of water would rush over the bow of the boat; the merest tipping of a railing would cause a flood.

  As the boat puttered toward the dock, Paloma saw Jo and Indio and Manolo all sitting on fish, hip-deep in fish, surrounded by mounds of fish.

  In a single day’s netting they had caught more fish than in a month of line-fishing. But that alone was not what distressed Paloma. The great schools of jacks and cabríos could sustain—did sustain—heavy losses quite often, and they soon returned to full strength. There were so, so many of them, and they reproduced with such speed and in such profusion, and the sea was so vast that the few regular fishermen could not hope to catch up with them all; they could endure all but catastrophic onslaughts—dynamite, say, or a sudden invasion by the huge factory ships from the Orient, both of which were forbidden by law.

  No. Worse for Paloma than the quantity of the catch was its quality, worse than the numbers were the species. Even from this distance and in the dwindling twilight she could see how Jo and his mates had fished, for they were pawing through the corpses in the boat and flinging overboard those that did not measure up to their suddenly high standards.

  When they had caught little, they had taken everything and claimed to need every bit; they had to feed their families and sell the rest. There was no waste, they claimed, no disrespect. The death of anything gave life to something else. Very noble.

  But now that they had plenty of fish—more than plenty—and the guarantee, as they saw it, of endless more, why should they bother to save anything that did not bring silver coins just as is, without further effort? Why bother with fish whose price was by the ton, not the pound, fish that had to be carted away and dried and ground up into meal? If those fish came up in the net and got killed, it was more economical to throw them away than to process them. And if some of them were fish that did not school, did not breed countless young so that many must naturally survive, did not exist in profusion on the seamount, well, to clean out these “trash fish” this way was probably efficient, probably a good idea, because it meant that each successive netting would yield a higher percentage of the more lucrative species.

  As for maintaining a balance of life on the seamount, a balance that had taken nature scores of decades to establish, they would argue that it was well known how resilient nature was. Nature would always come back from anything. If this seamount was fished out, move on to another one, and by the time that one is fished out, maybe this one will be coming back. Or another one will. There is always more. You just have to be smart enough to find it.

  By the time Jo and Indio and Manolo had finished culling through their catch, night had come, and they did the last of their work by the light of the rising moon. They were tired and hungry, so they did not bother to clean their boat or prepare their gear for tomorrow.

  “We can do the boat in the morning,” Jo said as they strode up the path. Paloma was crouching in the brush at the top, watching the three shadows approach.

  “Now we know where the place is.”

  “And what’s on it. Baby Jesus! I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “I bet we could go late and be back by midday.”

  “We could go twice, do two trips a day.”

  “You go twice. One load like that’s enough for me. My back’s about to break.”

  “Maybe we ought to get another boat.” This was Jo’s voice, moving past Paloma and on up the hill.

  “That’d mean more people.”

  “Why share?”

  “We could double the catch.”

  “For the same profit, though. We’d have to go partners.”

  “No we wouldn’t. We could make a deal: We take them there—maybe we blindfold them so they can’t find the place again—then we take all our catch plus half of theirs.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Me neither.”

  “We meet after supper,” Jo said. “To talk. We don’t have to decide anything.”

>   “Okay.”

  “Remember: Nobody talks to anybody. Or you’re out.” Jo added gravely, “Finished.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  The voices stopped and footsteps faded as the three dispersed, each to his home.

  Paloma waited until she could hear no sound but the breeze rolling over the island. Then, staying in the shadow of the bushes in case someone should return for a forgotten tool, she crept down to the dock.

  The moon was high enough so its light penetrated the shallow water by the shore and cast a faint mantle of white on the rocky bottom.

  But there was little bottom to see, for most of it was littered with the dead.

  There were floating corpses and corpses that had sunk, corpses that tried to bob to the surface but were blocked by others, corpses battered and mangled and without color, their brilliant capes faded into a sameness at death. And their eyes, all black and blank, stared glassily at nothing.

  Jo and his mates must have thrown away a fourth of their catch, all but the biggest of the most valuable kinds, the ones that would bring at least a silver coin apiece. Here in the water by the dock were smaller jacks and yellowtails, a few little cabríos, and other groupers that should have been pulled from the net alive and put back in the sea immediately, for they were the future of their species.

  Here too were those fish Jobim had called the innocents, those that had no market value, could not be sold as individuals, and were not worth gathering in the numbers, the tons, that would produce fish meal or cat food and be worth a few pennies at the factory.

  They were the pufferfish, gentle and shy and gallant in their defiant instant obesity, contributors to no one’s purse and no one’s table, but hilarious jesters for anyone who dived into the sea.

  They were the angelfish, whose chevrons changed color in every stage from infancy to adolescence to maturity, like an army man displaying seniority, radiantly beautiful at every age, the fluttering sentinels of the seamount.