The Fall Line

by Mark T Sullivan

  “Squaw’s known for big air,” Farrell said.

  The Wave twirled his wayward dreadlock and broke into a troubled smirk that made Farrell think he’d been smoking pot again.

  “Well, the way she’s talking, we’ll be jumping into the ionosphere,” The Wave said.

  “How’s that?”

  “You know her, mon. She isn’t saying.”

  “What’s the book?” Farrell asked.

  The grin cracked and fell away from The Wave’s lips like broken pottery. “Got into the luggage she had delivered early, looking for the files,” The Wave said, handing the ledger-sized volume to him. “She must have them with her. But I did find this.”

  Farrell glanced at the title: The Dividing Line: Photographs by Laurence Didier. He tucked it under his arm. “Ann told me about this. You read it?”

  “Yeah, mon,” The Wave said. “Part of it anyway. Figured the way your cold eyes work, you might have special understanding, see things I don’t. Drop it by the room before you sleep. I’ll get it back.”

  “You pick the lock or break a window to get this?” Farrell asked.

  “Chill out, old one,” The Wave said. “No need for violence if you can avoid it. I just slipped a joint to one of the maids.”

  Farrell locked the door behind him and flopped belly down on the bed. The cover was a black-and-white photograph: a U.S. infantryman climbing the banks of a ravine in a jungle during a rainstorm. His thick eyebrows and sunken cheeks framed huge white eyes that stared past the camera lens, obviously past Didier, who seemed to have shot the photograph from above the soldier’s thin, gnarled fingers, mud-blackened, woof to the weave of the thick, tortured roots of a tree. The soldier had the simple dignity of a man who has suffered unprotected, yet had the skill to survive. It was a mesmerizing shot.

  On the inside flap at the bottom, Farrell found the title to the cover piece: Uprooted, Mekong Delta. 1966. It was a clear homage to Dorothea Lange, the Depression-era photographer, whose work Didier cited in the book jacket copy along with Walker Evans as “influences on my style; let the facts sing.”

  Farrell read the entire preface to the book, searching for clues:

  Like the jobless who walked the Depression’s streets years before they were born, the Vietnam combatants were mostly silent in the first years of the war. We photographers were kept away from the patrols, forced to take pictures of events after they occurred. I noticed when platoons came in from the jungle, the soldiers’ bodies would still carry with them the stigma of the world beyond the barbed wire.

  In 1966, I was granted permission to begin accompanying patrols regularly on forays into the Mekong Delta and the Central Highlands. During these two dozen missions I discovered a shocking, moving, elusive reality: Torn from their roots, dropped into festering jungle, the soldiers on patrol entered the dividing line, a state most of us face only once, the limbo between life and death.

  I have tried to photograph men on that line, pushed to an edge they should have encountered only in old age. It was hard to photograph boys within the realm of separateness. I had to manipulate my camera to register the deep change in these soldiers—what was different, what was important—not just how miserable and scared they were, or how dangerous their predicament may have been; I was after their passion, their spirit, their will. I believe I captured some of that, revealed on the dividing line where we see people stripped to what they truly are.

  At the close of Didier’s preface was an editor’s postscript: “On May 17, 1969, at age thirty-five, Laurence Didier, one of the world’s premier combat photographers, was killed tragically while accompanying members of the 101st Airborne Division in an assault of a ridgeline in the wilds of the A Shau Valley in the mountains west of Hue. He left behind him a wife, Claudette, a seven-year-old daughter, Inez, and a haunting vision of war that leaves the viewer breathless when you consider what he might have accomplished in a longer artistic career.

  Farrell flipped through the photographs. He thought the most powerful one was Divergencies, south of Kien Tuong, 1967. Didier had shot it from inside a transport helicopter, using the blackened interior as a frame to the action outside where reeds taller than a man bent away from the helicopter blade’s wash in a fading plume toward a foggy tree line. A single soldier crouched to the left of the helicopter door, watching two bands of soldiers stream away to either side of the plume and disappear into the screen of vegetation the helicopter wash did not reach.

  Farrell brooded over the picture. He imagined Inez reading this book, idolizing and emulating her father in the way only a child who has lost a parent can. He flipped over on his back to scrutinize the patterns on the ceiling. As a boy, locked in his room, he studied the plaster for hours, seeing vast mountain ranges, Shoshone warriors on horseback, swirling whirlpools. Tonight all he saw was Inez. Clearly she was haunted by her father and his theories. What were hers? They certainly weren’t the same. She’d taken it in another direction Farrell couldn’t fathom. He trudged down the walkway to The Wave’s room, knocked, and when the door opened, handed the book back.

  “She trying to be her daddy, or what?” The Wave asked.

  “We all do,” Farrell said. “But there’s more.”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “I don’t know. I think we should let her lead until we figure it out. You talk to Page about any of this?”

  “Not me, mon,” The Wave said. “He’s plenty edged after that race, hasn’t said much. Anyway, I figure him for the gray corporate suit: Don’t thrash in the water, you might attract sharks.”

  “Let’s keep it that way for a while,” Farrell said. “I haven’t got it straight where he fits in.”

  The Wave ran his fingers through the spare strings of his beard. “I’m off to see my strong-legged maid friend, mon. She says she has a friend, you want to come?”

  Farrell shook his head. “I need some sleep.”

  Back in his room, he could not find unconsciousness. He flitted in that semi-drugged world between sleep and alertness, Inez’s face reappearing, her lips parting, yelling “Go, Collins!” until Farrell jerked awake, shivering and sweating. He breathed very fast, disoriented in the new room, until he understood it was just a bad dream. He shut his eyes, he drifted, and she appeared again. Suddenly, Inez was Gabriel, who sat in the brilliant sun on a fishing boat off the tip of Baja California. Farrell had been invited south to review the deals he’d already consummated. There had been more than twenty transactions by this time and they had become almost routine. Still, in the back of his mind was a growing anxiety; he had talked to enough of his former colleagues at the international division of the bank in Chicago to know that there was little chance of a peso devaluation. Gabriel had involved him in something he did not understand and that, more than anything, had brought him to Baja. Lena had wanted to come, but at the last minute Dr. Crukshank asked her to work.

  Cordova was there on the boat with Gabriel. He hung over the side of the red Bertram 43 sportfishing boat to test the temperature of the water with his fat hands. In his dream, Farrell could see Cordova clearly. He could hear again the throb of the muscular engines and the low-frequency modulation that had pulsed up the length of his spine. He could see the sun screeching off the waves like sheets of aluminum foil. He could feel the steady sweat roll from under his baseball cap to smear his sunglasses.

  They’d had no bites in the early hours. Cordova had left the deck and taken a scout’s perch on the flying bridge. Emmanuel, the scrawny captain, who seemed to be patched together from pieces of overripe banana peels, stood next to Cordova. To Farrell, the juxtaposition of the two made the obese dove boy seem like some bronze fishing Buddha, searching for enlightenment through the binoculars he’d plastered to his forehead ever since they’d hit deep water.

  “What’s he looking for?” Farrell asked.

  Gabriel stroked his finger along the thick monofilament line that stretched away from the rear of the boat. “Birds,” he said. “Circling bir
ds just above the swells. You see them like that when big fish chase bait to the surface. The birds dive to the schools to feed.”

  Gabriel bent to an ice chest and lifted out a frozen flying fish. He opened the fish cleanly with a knife, inserted a hook and lead weight, then, last, sewed the whole thing up in four quick loops. He reeled in the left of three poles, attached the new bait, and cast it off the side.

  “Too bad we couldn’t get you down here earlier,” Gabriel said. “The blacks and blues tend to run in November and December. Today if we’re lucky, we’ll hit into stripers, not as big. But who knows? We may get lucky and strike one of the brutes that run this ridge.”

  Farrell fingered the pole. “You think this little rig will hold on to something that big?”

  Gabriel tilted his chin up, but Farrell couldn’t tell where he was looking because of the thick black sunglasses he wore. “Little rig? You could pull in a fish over three hundred kilos with that.”

  “It just looks too delicate to do it,” Farrell said. He took a long breath. “Like our system. There’s more money coming in than I expected.”

  Gabriel reached for another fish. “This is a problem?”

  “It will be unless we can find another way to explain the sudden increase in the cash the bank has had to deposit with the Federal Reserve. I think there’s too much to use the currency exchange houses any longer.”

  Gabriel gripped the stiff pectoral fins that enable the flying fish to glide when they leap free of the water. He pushed the heavy needle through the flapping abdominal wound, accidentally sticking himself in the finger, flinched, then pulled the needle from the finger and held it up so Farrell could see the deep magenta drip to his palm.

  “I’ve thought of this already,” Gabriel said, wrapping the finger with his handkerchief. “It can be solved through a chain of jewelry stores a friend of ours owns in Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego.”

  “Wholesale?”

  “In Los Angeles,” Gabriel said. “The volume of work—especially in emeralds, which have such a floating value—would account for the substantial deposits. Everything would be covered in shipments of the jewels from South America that carry an invoice claiming a much heavier weight in the gemstones.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The money we deposit with you and which you transfer overseas is actually for emeralds, gold, and the like which will only exist on paper,” he said. He cast the fish off the rear of the boat.

  “That still doesn’t get rid of the money that is finding its way back to my vaults.”

  Gabriel watched the line play out in the boat’s wake until it was taut. “What would you suggest?” he asked.

  Farrell paused. While he wanted to know exactly what Gabriel was up to, he didn’t want to anger him. He gave him an off-handed answer in hopes that his friend would reveal himself. “Real estate,” Farrell said. “It’s stable and the values are changing so rapidly, a lot of money could disappear.”

  Gabriel cupped his hands to his brow, turned, and yelled to Jorge: “Pajaros?”

  “Tres, quatro graviotas,” Jorge grunted from behind the binoculars.

  “Pity, I’d thought there were more,” Gabriel said, bending to take a third fish from the box. “Okay. Move a quarter of the money into deals where short-term appreciation is likely to be substantial: anything you see in San Diego that will work. The rest we will invest at Jorge’s discretion in Dallas, Houston, and Denver. These places are bust, are they not?”

  “Ever since oil plunged,” Farrell said.

  “Good,” he said. “They will make decent returns in the long run. We are in no hurry.”

  Gabriel did not offer more. Finally, Farrell asked: “So how long will it take to get all of your friends’ money out of Mexico?”

  Gabriel leaned back and sailed the third bait fish far off to the left of the boat. He turned, hands on his hips, and raised his glasses so Farrell could see his brown eyes. “Are you unhappy with your compensation?”

  “No,” Farrell said honestly. “I just would like to know where I’m going. This all seemed so clear when we started, but with the increased cash, it just seems murky lately.”

  “Murky?”

  “You know,” Farrell said. “Dirt in the water.”

  Gabriel held his palms out to Farrell and smiled. “I’m taking you where you’re going,” he said. “You will be a wealthy man and help many people in the process. What more is there to know?”

  “A lot, I think.”

  Gabriel drummed his fingers on his thighs, licked his lips, then said: “You told me once that your wife believed ignorance is bliss. Perhaps she is correct.”

  Farrell shook his head. “Ignorance is a sleepy happiness, like a sedative. Problem is, I like exhilarants, speeds, always have.”

  Gabriel inspected Farrell closely. “I thought bankers are taught early not to ask too many questions.”

  “We are,” Farrell said, coming straight back at him with the thousand-yard stare. “But silence is directly proportional to the size of the bank, the local laws, and the risk.”

  “So it’s a question of responsibility?”

  “I am the sole person in charge of the international branch.”

  “That you are.” Gabriel paused, then seemed to speak less to Farrell than to the wind. “My fear is that you are in this to satisfy some childish need for excitement. If I make it any more than that, you may falter and I may suffer. I do not like to suffer.”

  “That’s a penetrating analysis coming from a grown man who spends his weekends throwing himself off the side of speeding boats.”

  Gabriel allowed himself to smile. “Yes, yes, it is well known that we of Latin blood have this problem with the cojones.”

  “A need to prove your manhood, perhaps?”

  He made a half bow. “Something like that, but more a desire to trust only those who make a commitment the same size as mine.”

  “I hope this doesn’t mean we’re about to measure something else,” Farrell said.

  Gabriel laughed. “No, no pendejos here. But you can see my predicament. For all that you’ve done for us, I do not know you the way I know Jorge.”

  “I think you read me fine,” Farrell said. “You’re the mystery man.”

  At that moment the flying bridge creaked under the stubborn weight of Cordova, who rose from his chair as he had hundreds of times as a child to point toward flocks of birds.

  “Graviotas! Cientos!” he bellowed.

  Gabriel leapt to his feet and Farrell after him. Even without the binoculars they could see the birds, gray and white, reeling and diving toward the churning surface of the blue water; and over the low throb of the engines came the piggish, angry cries of birds at feast.

  Emmanuel tore the wheel to port and accelerated toward the flock. Within minutes they were among them, a teeming cloud that arced and spun and screamed in frenzy. The rank, oily odor of carnivorous gulls filled the air. Farrell was pelted by crap and scraps of the flesh that had been skewered from the boil just below: hundreds of the little fish snapping their tails and dorsal fins, leaping in terrorized flight before the unseen predators, driven into tight schools where the sharp beaks accelerating above the water could stab and gorge.

  “Hookup!” Gabriel roared. Now over the squawk and the chuck of the birds came the high, insistent pule of the bail gear releasing yard after yard of thick line after an insistent escaping energy.

  Gabriel and Cordova, who had miraculously appeared on the deck to hold one of the dense, compact rods, dragged Farrell to the fighting chair. Cordova stuck the rod into the butt plate affixed to the seat of the chair, clipping it to a harness so it wouldn’t fly out of the boat when the gear was set. He leaned over Farrell, shielding him from the sun and adjusting the harness. The dove boy’s bugged achromatic eyes were level with Farrell’s own. Cordova’s breath was more noxious than the smell of the birds.

  “Breathe through your nose with the fish,” Cordova advi
sed. “Move with him as he moves. Don’t rely on the strength of your equipment; sometimes the marlin shakes free no matter how hard you’ve set the hook.”

  Farrell ground his teeth together, huffed, then sneezed in anticipation. Gabriel shouted something in Spanish to Emmanuel that Farrell couldn’t make out. The tenor of the engines changed from a growl to a gurgle. Cordova reached to the bail and threw it.

  The engines quieted, the rod tip slackened. The only noise was the distant cry of the birds.

  Farrell was saying: “We’ve lost him,” when the first surge came, yanking him forward in the chair, a steady, cracking tension which raced into his knees and lower back. Farrell thought, this is how the moon must command the tides.

  He fought from his center against the rolling gravity, body against body, Farrell’s need to see the fish against the marlin’s desire to be free. On Gabriel’s direction, Farrell went with the fish, pitching forward as it sounded. He drove off the foot braces, becoming a lurching, pointed source of gravity himself. The boat turned to the west, to the sun. Bombs of light burst off the ocean skin and blinded him again. Farrell shut his eyes to drop into a pure physical discourse with the fish.

  He felt it change direction. He opened his eyes to trace the shining line out to starboard, there, off the bow, where the marlin had run; and he leaned back, cranking the gear. With the next pitch, the marlin, a big striper, jumped free of the water 150 yards from the boat. It twisted and snaked its spear beak around and toward the boat. Out there on the water its body crashed away and flat like the victim of a judo flip, scoring the air with flaring, silver liquid.

  “Brilliant!” Cordova cried from behind his binoculars. “He almost cut the line with his spike!”

  “That fish is on to stay,” said Gabriel, slapping Farrell on the back. “Work him toward us.”