Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  On his swim across the field of ‘rockpiles’ Grant had found a small ravine which sank maybe fifteen feet below the sand plain, and deepened as it ran out to sea. The far bank of this ravine did not rise as high as the rockpile plain, and beyond it instead of the pure flat sand was a jumble of black rocks and dead coral heads that looked ugly and uninviting and deepened gradually as it ran on south parallel to the coast. This was apparently the end of the ‘Lagoon,’ and Grant had turned and swum along the near edge of the ravine directly out to sea.

  For some ridiculous reason he was nervous about swimming in water that was deeper than where he had been, though this was patently silly. But as he swam along the edge of it and got more used to it, he experimented with a few dives to try and reach the bottom of it. If his guess of fifteen feet was right, it would be about fifty-five to fifty-eight feet deep. He never reached it. On one dive, his best, he was able to touch the tip of his speargun to the bottom, which meant with the length of his arm added to that of the speargun, he had done maybe forty-five feet; but swimming back up from that dive his diaphragm was heaving so much that with his nose he sucked all the air out of his mask and made his eyes bug out. It was depressing.

  It was at the seaward corner of the field of rockpiles where it ended against the bank of the ravine that he found Bonham and Finer, and the nurse shark.

  It was the first nurse shark Grant had ever seen. It was the first shark he had ever seen, close up. But there was no mistaking that it was a nurse, with the two barbels hanging from its small mouth and the long thick single-lobed tail. He had read about it of course, and without exception all the writers on diving he had read warned that the nurse had bitten more skindivers than any other shark, largely because people insisted on playing with it just like now, though the bites were never massively serious. But if Bonham and Finer had read the same books, they didn’t show it.

  What they appeared to be trying to do was to get a closeup of the nurse’s face head-on. To achieve this Finer, swimming in his Scott lung at a depth of fifteen feet, level with the nurse, would advance on the shark until, just as he was about to snap the picture, the nurse, waving its tail and pectorals, would suddenly shoot straight backwards ten feet And there it would wait. It showed no inclination to leave. And this was when Bonham entered the game. With Grant watching from a safe distance, ready to help if he was needed but afraid of disturbing the shark by getting into the act, Bonham, from the surface, swam down on the shark from behind, trying to scare him forward toward the wouldbe photographer, whom he had motioned to stay still. But instead of moving forward, the nurse shot off sideways, just exactly like a skittish horse, and then stopped again, looking at them. Bonham tried again and the same thing happened. He kept on trying, always with the same result, and every time he surfaced Grant could hear him roaring with maniacal laughter.

  It was just then that Orloffski swam up from somewhere. Orloffski had none of Grant’s scruples about a third person scaring off the shark. Diving to the bottom he left his two enormous strings of fish (which he appeared just barely able to tow) at the other speargun with those of Bonham and Finer, and in the same dive then swam up directly under the nurse shark apparently intending to spear it.

  Bonham waved him away. The two of them held a hurried conference on the surface. Then, this time, they swam down on the fish together, from behind and on each side, still trying to scare it toward Sam Finer. The nurse made a little dive, then shot suddenly around in a turn so fast it was only a blur, to reappear again stock-still at its old depth of fifteen feet, facing them, exactly ten feet behind the two of them. Grant had read that sharks, having no air bladder, were heavier than water and therefore had to keep swimming or sink; but this nurse shark seemed able to sit still. The two frustrated free-divers, out of air, surfaced, and Finer crept toward the fish again.

  Grant was beginning to laugh now too, and nearly choked from some water that got into his snorkel from a wavelet. He swam closer, intending to help with the herding process. But Bonham was not about to give up. Determination showing in the set of his shoulders, he got around behind the fish again, dove to fifteen feet and swam slowly up behind it and grabbed its tail with both hands. Kicking his flippers mightily (he had passed his speargun to Orloffski) he literally shoved the nurse shark right up into Finer’s face. Apparently, Finer got his closeup.

  The shark, startled apparently, or perhaps having seen enough to satisfy his curiosity, gave a light flick of his tail that knocked Bonham five yards off, and swam off slowly and disappeared into the water-fog that marked the limit of the visibility range.

  The three of them, Bonham, Orloffski, and Grant, were roaring with laughter as they swam over to each other, directly over the stringers of fish down below on the bottom. Treading water to keep their heads up above the surface, they let their snorkels fall out of their mouths and shouted with laughter. Grant didn’t really know why. Then Finer who had been below, swam up to them in his Hydro-Pak, scowling blackly through his fullface mask. He was swearing and cursing in a muffled voice from behind it. “Goddam it! Oh, Christ! Oh, goddam it! I didn’t have the fucking thing cocked!” he complained. He had thought that it was cocked, but it hadn’t been. This set them all off again. But Grant wondered why had they been laughing in the first place?

  It was a hard thing to try to describe to anyone. It was hard even to understand. The comedy of errors, sure. And then the nervous inoffensive shark, swimming off slowly like a person trying to keep his dignity. And then Finer missing his picture, after all. But Bonham had been laughing before any of all that even became apparent, and in the end so had he. And, after all, it was a somewhat dangerous situation they had been in. The nurse maybe couldn’t have eaten one of them up or bit off a leg and killed one of them, but it could have given any one of them a bad nasty bite. Why so funny? Then he realized that that was just it, and that that was why they were laughing. They had gotten themselves into a potentially dangerous situation, and they deliberately had done it deliberately. And now they were laughing about it. It made Grant think of certain things that had happened to him during the war. He didn’t say it was smart, or intelligent. But he liked it. He treaded water to keep his open mouth from choking him with sea water, and roared helplessly with the others, and not since the old days in the Navy in the war had he felt so affectionately close to any group of men. He felt, and it was shared, a real warmth of really deep affection for all three of them. And he didn’t need to be ashamed of it. It was something you could never explain to any woman and, he realized, something no woman would ever be able to understand.

  “Well, come on,” Bonham said finally. “Let’s git our fish and haul ass. It’s gittin late, men.”

  Raising his head to look Grant realized he could no longer even see the boat. But it would be easy to find your way back to it by following the landmarks of the bottom. Looking at his watch suddenly he was astonished to see that he had now been in the water without ever touching land or boat or any other support, for more than three and a half hours. It was almost 3 P.M. And he must have swum at least three or three and a half miles in that time. Maybe more. Then he suddenly thought of Carol Abernathy back there on the little island waiting for them, with the other females. Well, he thought with deliberate care, piss on Carol Abernathy.

  He watched the other three go down to get their fish, Finer switching off his ‘air economizer’ and using lung air, the other two simply freediving it. When Mo Orloffski picked up his two enormous stringers of big fish it looked like he would never make it back to the surface. But he did. Then they started the long swim back to the boat.

  She was waiting for them with the other two girls, all three of them sitting in a row on the beach, when Bonham gently grounded the boat’s nose on the sand. She seemed okay and perfectly all right, as she helped the other girls pick up the picnic gear and their other things. But then when she came up close to the boat, a startling thing happened. Finer and Orloffski had leaped out to hold the boat
steady, and when she saw the four happy, replete and selfsatisfied men close up, something in her face changed. It was as though one light in her eyes came on and another light went out.

  “I’m not getting in that boat unless I have the knife!” she cried out, suddenly, as Wanda Lou was just climbing over the side. But her tone was no longer commanding. It was selfpitying, almost whiny, and falsely fearful, as though with her manner she was letting them know she knew what thieves and dangerous unscrupulous types they were who might do anything to her.

  For a moment Grant didn’t say anything.

  “Give it to her,” Bonham said in a voice of long-suffering toleration. “You know she’s not going to hurt anybody with it, anyway.”

  “Not unless somebody comes near me,” Carol Abernathy said with the same fake tearfulness. “Keep away from me!” she cried as Cathie Finer turned to smile at her.

  She didn’t say another word, and it was the same uncomfortable, unpleasant ride back to the dock that the ride out had been, in which everybody else tried to talk as if everything were normal.

  While the other men were taking care of the fish and the gear, Grant helped her out of the boat and repossessed his knife. He started immediately for the hotel, and she followed him looking curiously repentant.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked nervously.

  Grant didn’t say. He didn’t even know, yet. All he knew was that he didn’t have to live this way. “I don’t have to live this way,” he said. “I don’t have to. And I’m just not going to. I don’t have to spend my life doing things and being reminded by you that I mustn’t enjoy them because it might hurt my ‘art.’ If that’s self-sacrifice, fuck it. If that’s what you have to do to be a ‘great artist,’ fuck that too.” He meant every word.

  “What are you going to do, Ron?” she said again.

  “I—First I’m going to take you back to Ganado Bay. Right now. Tonight.—If I can.—You go and pack your stuff. I’m going to find the pilot and—”

  “You can’t do that!” Carol Abernathy cried. “I won’t let you ruin your trip you’ve spent so much on to have!” He was walking fast, so that she had to half run to keep up, and when he stopped she almost ran into him.

  “Then you can stay here by yourself with these people. I’m going. I’ve been embarrassed enough.” He did not even feel like bothering to remind her that it was she who had spoiled the trip.

  “You can’t make me stay here! You can’t force me to stay in this horrible place!” Carol Abernathy said.

  “Then go and pack our stuff,” Grant said sharply, and then immediately regretted the ‘our.’ “You don’t really believe I mean it, do you?” he said more softly, dangerously soft. “I’m really through.”

  Carol looked at him a moment without saying anything, then hurried away toward the hotel, and she seemed to be almost scurrying.

  Raoul and Jim Grointon had not yet returned from spear-fishing, he found out when he went back to the dock. And in the end it was another hour before they did return. Grant stayed on the dock and did not leave it. He took Bonham off to one side and told him quietly what he had decided to do. It was a shame, but he had to do it. He did not intend to ruin everybody else’s trip too because of his personal problems. Bonham nodded solemnly. He was sorry, but he guessed it was probably the best thing to do. Grant simply nodded. His face felt very bleak. The whole thing was terribly, painfully embarrassing to him, but it had to be done. He told the others. They were all sorry he was leaving, too, but he noted that none of them urged him seriously to stay. The only thing about it all that bothered him, when he went back to Bonham, was whether Raoul would be able to make the flight tonight, after it was dark, so that they wouldn’t have to stay till morning. He hoped to avoid that.

  “I don’t see why not,” Bonham said. “They’ve got all the instruments on that plane, and good radio. And Raoul plays around but he’s really a very good pilot. A night flight shouldn’t bother him.”

  “Well—I hope not,” Grant said. He stayed around on the dock, talking to the others, helping to gut out the mass of fish. Orloffski was for selling it tonight in the local market. “What the fuck,” he said in his brutal way. “What’s left that we don’t eat’s worth forty fifty bucks. Pays some expenses.” As the sunheat left and the sky turned rosy the evening air came on fresh and cool, Grant breathed it with the feeling that he was drinking a delicious glass of cold water and regretted his decision. But not enough to change it.

  There was a considerable bit of time lost when Grointon and Raoul came in with Grointon’s ground shark prize, which had to be weighed, and measured, and talked about. He had found him in among some big coral heads they knew about, at a depth of about eighty-five feet, where he had run into a coral tunnel arching between two of the heads. Raoul couldn’t go that deep but had managed to go deep enough to scare him back into the tunnel so Grointon could take him as he came back out the other end. He had missed a perfect brain shot, but had managed to hit enough of the spine to half-paralyze him so he could horse him up to the boat, gaff him and kill him there. For a while he’d thought he’d lost a spear, Grointon smiled modestly. There was some discussion as to just which species of ground shark it was. Grointon thought it was the Large Black-Tip, but Bonham and Orloffski thought it was a more than usually dark Dusky (or Shovelnose). Grant studied it and wondered if he would ever have the courage to attack such a creature with a puny speargun, then suddenly knew somewhere deep inside himself that someday he was certainly going to have to try. He would just simply have to. And he hated the thought. Carefully, he didn’t mention this to anyone. Finally he was able to get the excited Raoul off to one side and ask him about the flight.

  “Ho, shoora!” Raoul said. “Hot ass eassy.”

  “He says it’s easy,” Grointon said, coming up in his easy relaxed way. Grant nodded. He knew what he’d said.

  “Bat, hwy you wan’ a go?” Raoul said looking puzzled.

  “Mrs uh Abernathy isn’t feeling good,” Grant said stiffly, making his face flat. “And I want to get her back to Ganado Bay to her doctor.”

  “Hokay! Hwe go!” Raoul said cheerfully.

  “But it’ll cost you more than the regular trip, Ron,” Grointon pointed out. “If you could wait—”

  But Raoul held up a hand. “Hwe mak eet wan hondrad flat,” he said. “Eet ees heemergency. Hwe com back tomorro’ morning, Jeem. Hyou see,” he said to Grant, “hwe got to com back far the hothers.”

  “That’s okay with me,” Grant said. “That’s fine. That’s more than fair.” They all three shook hands.

  Grant went to settle up with the hotel manager. Bonham followed him a ways, and shook hands too. “I’ll give you a call as soon as I get back to GaBay.” Grant thought he seemed sad, and felt good. When he got back to his and Bonham’s room, Carol Abernathy was sitting on her suitcase in the middle of the floor of her own room, he saw through the open door. There was a black defiant look on her face which bespoke nothing of her former ‘repentance,’ and Grant’s stuff in the other room had not been touched. But then he had anticipated as much. He threw everything into his suitcase hurriedly, not bothering with trying to fold and lay flat. The little duffel bag for his minimum of diving gear was no problem.

  Jim Grointon rowed them out to the plane in silence. Raoul was already aboard, he said. In silence they climbed aboard and strapped themselves in. In silence they took off. Raoul circled the hotel once as he climbed, and in the deepening dusk the main building was aglow with lights and very cheerful looking. Grant looked down at it thoughtfully, feeling a sort of immutable sadness. They all would just be beginning to drink.

  Almost the whole trip was passed in silence. Grant had seated himself up front without looking around, and Carol Abernathy had taken her old rear corner seat. Once Jim Grointon came back politely to talk, but sensing Grant’s mood thoughtfully left after a little while. At one point Grant fell asleep for a while and had a nightmare. He had just speared a huge fis
h and it had gone under a deep coral ledge. And now he was trying to swim back up with it, but he was stuck and could not budge it. Pride would not let him let go of the speargun, the pistolgrip of which he could feel plainly in his hand as he pulled and worked his flippers and tried to swim, and so he knew he must stay here and drown. His lungs were bursting, and far above him through the green water the surface undulated and shimmered invitingly like quicksilver. He woke up in a cold sweat.

  He did not know whether Carol Abernathy slept during the trip or not.

  When Raoul revved up over the Yacht Club, which had been alerted via radio to the airport which in turn then telephoned them, they turned their two big searchlights on out over the bay. Raoul in his turn circled back, turned on his own powerful landing lights, and brought the little plane in neat as a pin. They were not unused to the night seaplane landings at the Yacht Club, but they were nevertheless rare enough to be considered occasions and the veranda was crowded.

  As the Club’s peon rowed them all in, Grant could see that Hunt Abernathy was waiting for them on the dock with another figure. When they got close enough, he was surprised to see that it was Doug Ismaileh, one of the few other successful playwrights to come out of the Hunt Hills Little Theatre Group and who, or at least the last time Grant had heard, was living in Coral Gables below Miami.

  Carol Abernathy was waving and smiling at them as though nothing at all untoward or unpleasant had happened.

  15

  ON THE DOCK Carol kissed Hunt deeply on the mouth, a practice which always rather irritated Grant—or perhaps mildly shocked, would be a better term. It was not jealousy so much as that he was old-fashioned enough to believe a woman with a lover should be ashamed to kiss her husband like that. Then, she, too, kissed Ismaileh on the mouth, and gave him a long hard bearhug around his tall thick frame. Doug was one of her living proofs that Grant’s talent had not made and sustained the Hunt Hills Little Theatre Group totally alone.