by James Jones
Well, we will see. We will see. This first general meeting was going to be very important he knew. Very important. He could feel his hands begin to sweat.
O, that ship! O, that ship! If he could only get his hands on her! Get her, and sail her, and pay her off. So he—so the corporation (but of which he would be both President and Captain)—would own her! He could take her anywhere in the world. He could sail her to Cape Verde and the Canaries and take her in the Mediterranean, if anybody wanted to go there.
And from there he could take her right on around the whole damn Goddam world, if they wanted to go! A free man, in a free ship, and nobody to tell him one damn thing this or that.
Well, they would see next week. He could hardly wait, and at the same time he hoped next week never came.
It was good that damn woman, that Mrs. Abernathy, wouldn’t be around either. Over there maybe he could talk some to Grant without her influence bein around all the time to offset him every night at home.
9
ON HIS THIRD TIME out with Bonham Grant speared his first sting ray. And quite erroneously at least for a while—he decided he had reached a plateau of some kind.
They had gone out, this third trip, to inspect the wreck Bonham had told him about the day before. It lay just off the western end of the harbor mouth in about fifty feet of water. Apparently it had happened during the war Bonham said, when this freighter, a sort of modified Liberty ship carrying American war supplies for somewhere, had tried too late to get out of Ganado Bay Harbor ahead of one of the rare hurricanes that hit Jamaica. It had sprung a leak due to heavy seas, been abandoned, and then had been washed onto a reef there by the winds, where it broke up and sank. US Navy divers had salvaged what was salvageable in her, and the rest was still there broken into huge chunks scattered across the quiet sand.
They had not meant to fish particularly but had taken the spearguns with them anyway since as Bonham said you never knew when you might see something either good to eat or exciting to try. That was exactly how it turned out.
The smashed and broken ship, parts of it lying as far as sixty and a hundred yards apart, filled Grant with a nervous awe for what the sea could do, for what power it could have when really agitated, as he lay on the surface in the lung looking down at it. Impulsively and a little fearfully, he raised his head and looked up into the world of air: the sun was shining brightly, glints of it sparkled cheerfully off the water, the wash rolled him gently and almost lovingly, the air was soft. Rolling over to the right he surface-dived and planed straight down not bothering with the anchorline in his new-found familiarity with the lung. On the quiet sand bottom, which registered 55 feet on the depth gauge Bonham had sold him, the light was almost as bright as it was up in the air.
They had only brought down one gun. It was Bonham’s, a triple rubber variety with a stainless-steel spear which Grant didn’t know the name of, and Grant was carrying it. Bonham carried the same still camera he had brought out with them the first day, an Argus C-3 in William’s plastic case, which Grant suspected Bonham was in the process of trying to sell him. He took a few shots of Grant inspecting various huge chunks of the wreckage and was just in the process of motioning Grant to come over and exchange gun for camera so he could try it out himself, when he looked down at the sand and motioned Grant violently to come. When he did, Bonham descended a few feet and pointed at the sand.
For several long moments Grant could see nothing. Lying side by side, their shoulders touching occasionally, he looked down over the end of Bonham’s pointing, agitated finger and stared and stared. Finally he saw the thing. Buried in the sand which faintly outlined its form with only the top of its head and its eyes actually showing, was a small sting ray a foot-and-a-half, two feet across. As if in some peculiar way sensing it was being observed with malevolent intent, the ugly little thing heaved itself out of the sand and began swimming slowly away like some delta-shaped airplane with flappable wings.
Agitatedly, Bonham motioned for Grant to follow. Grant nodded holding up the speargun questioningly, but Bonham shook his head as if it was hardly worth a spear shot and the subsequent reloading, and drew his knife and glanced at Grant. Grant touched the heavy hilt of his own big knife strapped to his calf which Bonham had also sold him, and finally shook his head. He felt ashamed and cowardly, but he didn’t know enough about it, about how to go about it. Agitatedly, Bonham thrust the camera at him and took off swimming slightly upward.
Again Grant became aware of the almost rapaciously sanguinary quality in the big diver, as he watched. Everything in the sea was his enemy, would hurt him, even kill him if it could. And he in turn would kill it, damage it, destroy it every chance he got, and give no quarter or mercy. Grant watching him felt as if he were looking back through misty eons of time at the history of his race.
Swimming slightly upward, Bonham leveled off about six feet above the ray. It didn’t take him long to catch it though he didn’t appear to be swimming strenuously. Then from above it he dove straight down. His knife was held in his right hand with the butt buried in his palm and the fingers extended along the hilt. The grip made Grant think of a matador holding banderillas. Just above the ugly little creature he braked, leveled, then dipped down with incredible delicacy and stabbed the knife squarely into the head just behind the eyes, wrenched it free and drew back.
The little fish, fairly struck, flapped and bucked and lashed about with its poisonous barbed tail ineffectually. In three seconds it was dead, and turned belly upward floated gently down toward the sand. Above it, motionless, his body in an odd indefinable posture which communicated intense satisfaction. Bonham watched its death throes, then sheathing his knife came swimming back to Grant. He paid no more attention to the quarry. He could not grin in the aqualung, but he smiled with his eyes and wiggled his eyebrows with an innocent, totally unselfconscious pleasure in the killing which Grant suddenly realized he himself would never be able to achieve during the runout of his life no matter what he did. He felt his hero-worship for Bonham, and his envy, growing. Casually the big man took the speargun and motioned that Grant should try the camera out and take some shots of him on the wreck.
It was only two or three minutes after that that they saw the big ray, and Bonham galvanized into action again.
Where it had come from Grant couldn’t tell. Not that it mattered. Apparently it had been in among the reef hillocks behind them where the big ship had ground itself to pieces and which rose to within ten feet of the surface, feeding or playing games, and was now off across the rippled sand toward deep water on some private mission of its own. He had no time to think more than this when Bonham from thirty yards away was suddenly beside him wresting the camera from him and thrusting the speargun into his hands. Agitatedly he motioned for Grant to go and get it. As Grant started off, he repeatedly stabbed his forefinger into his mask squarely between his own eyes while with his other hand he held up two fingers. As he swam away Grant nodded vigorously. Between the eyes and two inches behind for a brain shot, sure, he knew all that, he’d read all that.
Following Bonham’s method, he swam slightly upward to get above the fish. Two of the gun’s rubbers were cocked, he noticed, but only vaguely. Because by then something had come over him and he was excited in a way he had not been excited since the war, and then only a very few times. It went from his chest straight down into his balls and sent tingle after tingle of electricity through them. His scrotum contracted. He remembered a bicycle race he had won at the County Fair when he was in high school, when he hadn’t cared what happened to him or if he died. It was like that now. He was going to chase this fish, catch it, kill it, destroy it, and he didn’t care what happened to him.
Four to four and a half feet across, it was more formidable looking than the little one. From above, as he started his dive, right arm and gun extended before him, kicking softly, like Bonham, he could see the long poison spine a third of the way back along the undulating tail, with its bone-white recu
rved teeth from which the skin sheath—integument, the books called it—was missing because of use and wear. This one was an old toughy. Okay; good! The spearhead hit him squarely between the eyes, went on through, and smacked into the sand. Swimming back away, Grant pulled until the hinged, spoonlike, unsharp barbs held him snugly. It wasn’t a killing shot. Damn! Damn! Down below, the ray was kicking up a cloud of sand against the bottom. Grant swam him up a little. At the other end of the fourteen feet of spear and line the rising ray whirled and gyrated. Grant waited, fascinated. Spontaneously, he drew his knife. But the fish made no effort to attack him. Maybe he would wear himself out? But swimming him toward the dinghy was like trying to run with a kite against a heavy wind. What do we do now? How’ll we boat him? What about sharks? He looked around for Bonham. Here I am, Bonham, attached to this goddam thing!
The big diver, who had been taking pictures of Grant as he swam down and shot, took one more picture of him holding the wildly gyrating ray and then swam over and calmly motioned him over toward the top of the reef. Inside his mask Grant could see that he was laughing.
The reef was a hundred yards away and by the time Grant got there, puffing and blowing from hauling his underwater kite, the ray had worn himself down a lot. When he whipped at all it was feebly. On the very top of the reef ten feet below the surface Bonham motioned what he wanted him to do. Following the silent instructions, Grant stuck the spearhead firmly into some soft coral and holding pressure on the end of the spear backtracked with his fins so that he was headdown at an angle, plenty high enough so the spine on the whipping tail could not touch him. Swimming around to the front Bonham put his left hand forward cautiously and grasped the wing just beside the head. His hand appeared to stick there when he did. Then with his knife held the same way as before he stabbed for a spot two, two-and-a-half inches behind the eyes. The first try missed and hit an eye of the still moving fish. The second connected. The ray quivered. Taking the butt end of the spear, Bonham swam him over to the dinghy and boated him at arm’s length with a long swing up of the spear, not unlike a farmer forking hay onto a wagon. It required a considerable amount of strength to do it, and the dinghy sank visibly under the weight. Grant felt his hero-worship growing even greater.
But the next development surprised him. Bonham calmly proceeded to give him a lesson on how to take the lung off over his head underwater without letting go of the mouthpiece. No sharks had appeared, Grant noted, nor did Bonham seem worried about them. When he took the tanks off over his head underwater as instructed, he sank six or eight feet but with the mouthpiece still in his mouth he was able to breathe easily and swam right back up where, grasping the ladder, he reversed the bottles and handed them up to Ali by the yoke.
In the boat after he clambered in and slumped back against the gunnel Bonham began to roar with laughter as he reached for the gin bottle.
Ali, after helping them in, had gone back to staring at the dinghy. “My God!” he said. “You guys crazy!”
“Here!” Bonham said, still roaring and holding out the bottle. “Slug it! You earned it!”
“What are you laughing at me for?” Grant said, thinlipped. He was furious. He would not touch the bottle.
“I’m not laughin at you,” Bonham gasped, and roared for a moment. “I’m laughin for you. You’re gonna be all right, boy! You’re gonna do just fine!”
Grant resented the ‘boy’. “You think so?” he said thinly.
“I know so! I’ll bet money on it! Cash money!” Again he laughed, roaring. “You were all ready to go for him with that knife if he came at you, weren’t you?” He waggled the bottle. Reluctantly Grant took it.
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You could of cut the line,” Bonham said. “Why didn’t you cut the line?”
“It never occurred to me,” Grant said wonderingly. “Anyway, cutting the line wouldn’t have done any good if he was going to come for me.”
“That’s right! But most people would’ve cut it. In a panic. Rays never go after people after they’re hit. Neither do sharks. Or anything else, except moray eels. They will.” He had about stopped laughing, but he snorted again shaking his great head, before accepting the bottle back from Grant.
Grant, somewhat mollified now, mollified in fact to the point of shy embarrassment by Bonham’s openness about his courage, had drunk deep from the gin bottle, and the straight gin warmed and burned in his belly pleasantly, heating up and dissolving the knot of cold fear that came when he contemplated what could have happened. He felt happy inside, down there in his belly where the gin was, but he was curiously depressed too. It was then that he knew he had reached no ‘plateau’ after all.
“He would have died anyway, wouldn’t he?” he asked. “If I had cut the line? I mean, soon enough that we could have got him?”
“I dunno. Probly,” Bonham said, inhaling deeply after a generous helping of gin. Again he snorted out his laughter. “If you didn’t look funny, you two, out there horsing each other around on the opposite ends of that speargun.”
“I wasn’t at all sure I could hold him,” Grant said. “But he pooped out pretty fast.”
“Most fish do. They aint really built for longterm endurance. And they panic.”
“What do you think he’ll weigh?”
“I don’t know. Eighty-five? A hundred? Maybe more.” He turned his head, without moving his big arms stretched along the gunnel. “Ali, get that damn thing up here and let’s see what he looks like.”
“You know how I hate those damn things, boss,” Ali said in his East Indian accent “Those damn devilfish.”
“He’s dead. I promise you. And he’s no devilfish. If he was, we wouldn’t get him in this boat I guarantee you. Every ray’s a Manta to these guys,” he said to Grant. “Go on, goddam it!” he commanded, “git him up here!”
“I couldn’t even lift him, boss,” Ali said.
“GO ON! Get him up. I’ll help you.”
Gingerly and reluctantly Ali drew in the painter till the dinghy was alongside, and got a long-handled gaffhook into the head. It was completely true that at least in that awkward position with no purchase for leverage, he couldn’t lift it. But with Bonham helping with another gaff they managed to slither the slimy beast over the side into the cockpit.
“He’ll go more than a hundred,” Bonham said breathing heavily. He stood looking down at the animal (Grant couldn’t think of it as a ‘fish’) whose spreadout wings nearly touched both sides of the cockpit. “Evil bastards!” he said finally. Working carefully, he first cut out and laid aside the stinger. It measured five and a half inches. “Make you a good trophy, after I clean it up for you. Like ivory. Make you a good toothpick!” he said, and roared. “Sure,” Grant said. But when he bent to inspect it, Bonham called out, “Careful! That spongy tissue on both sides in them grooves is what generates the poison. It could still hurt you.” He bent back over the big fish. “Here, I’ll show you something else.” He tapped one of the wings with the flat of the knife. “You see this here? One of the best eatin fish there is, these wings. I’ll cut them out for you when we get back in and you take them home with you tonight and don’t tell them what it is, and they’ll swear to you it’s the best red snapper they ever ate. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars on it.
“Okay, come on, Ali. Let’s get him back in the dinghy. Wait a minute!
“You want me to take your picture with him, Ron?”
Grant did, but he was embarrassed, and also his depression was still there, had come back. His depression had been growing steadily. “No. No, I guess not. You got one of me with him underwater, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but it may not show his size.”
Grant shook his head. “I guess not,” he said, and as they got the gaffhooks into the beast again, he moved forward to the wheel dashboard to get out of their way. And when Bonham came back to start the engine and run them back in while Ali began washing down the slimy cockpit in the sun, he moved over an
d stood alone, looking out the half-open starboard windshield.
Why was he depressed? This was what he had come down here specifically to do. And already, on his third day of it, he had had a sort of minor triumph, spearing a hundred-pound sting ray. Nobody could say that wasn’t at least somewhat dangerous. Then why so depressed?
Was it because he hadn’t done it all alone? Certainly he wouldn’t have done it if Bonham hadn’t pushed him probably; and he might never have boated it if Bonham with his experience hadn’t been there to help. Though he might have alone, because it was pretty obviously dying by the time they got over to the reef.
There was still in him a great excitement of triumph over having speared and battled the ray like he had, and over having felt his blood get up the way it had—to where he didn’t really care, about anything, anything but the kill. He was sort of proud of that. Bonham had even thought him brave.
Why couldn’t he feel happy about it then? The excitement over the ray remained, although it was a dense, uncomfortable, not at all pleasant excitement. And yet, underneath that, there was a deflated feeling of: ‘If this was reality, so what?’
He had come down here seeking a reality. A reality of manhood. A reality of courage. What? Who knew? A relief from a feeling that life was too soft. Anyway a reality he felt was missing from his life, and from his work, and for a long time. A reality Carol Abernathy was at least partially responsible for the loss of, with her peculiar and increasingly domineering ways and coddling.
He had speared a big fish, and they had killed it, and what remained? What remained was to have your picture taken with it like a tourist (which was why he refused). What remained was to run it in to the dock and hang it on a block where the awestruck dockworkers—and maybe even a few whites—could admire you while you bragged. Like Ali. That was what remained. And yet he wanted to brag about it. This was reality?!