by Landon Beach
Nate heard the sploosh as Hutch entered the water. His eyes searched for any movement, but the surface was flat.
“I’m not sure how far it goes back,” Hutch’s voice echoed up a few seconds later.
“Where are you?” Nate said.
“I’m past the opening toward the interior.”
“Did you hit bottom when you dropped?” Nate said.
“No,” said Hutch, “It’s at least fifteen feet deep. I’m going to swim in and see if there’s anything.”
Hutch began breast stroking further into the cave. His eyes were adjusting as light from the entrance allowed him to see the ceiling, which was higher than he expected, rising around ten feet above the water. Thunder echoed through the cave. Hutch treaded water. Ahead, the cave bent to the right and narrowed.
It was hard to distinguish the surface of the water from the background now, and he was kicking slower and going more on feel than sight. He kept his arms on the surface to alert him of anything in front. He thought he heard Nate yell something down to him but the wind had blown the words apart. He was surrounded by darkness.
Hutch’s feet hit something. It wasn’t the bottom, so he moved over it and was soon swimming forward again. He tried to stand up but sank a few feet below the water. The depth was shallower—no more than eight feet—and after a few more strokes, his feet found the bottom. His head was the only thing that cleared the water for a few steps, but stepping further, more of his body emerged. The air was cool and Hutch kept his hands out in front of him, anticipating the back of the cave. The water was at his waist, no longer getting shallower.
His hands touched rock in front of him. He followed the surface up and just above his head he could feel it level off. He pulled himself up and crouched on a plateau. Putting his hands above his head, he rose carefully searching by feel for the ceiling above. His legs locked and his arms stretched all the way above him—still no ceiling. He put his arms in front of him and walked forward. Five paces in, his hands did not hit rock; they touched what felt like dirt. He grabbed a handful and it fell to the ground out of both sides of his hand as he rubbed his fingers and thumb together. He bent down and started working his hands up from the bottom.
The dirt pile was angled in to the interior of the cave as he rose. He walked side to side on the plateau. The dirt pile ran the entire breadth, which was about three paces wide. Feeling he could do no more without a light, Hutch lowered himself off the plateau. The cold water gave his body a jolt as he pushed off and began swimming toward the opening.
When he arrived at the point directly below the lift, he called up to Nate but heard no response. The sound of splashing came from the cave’s opening. He swam toward it and soon saw Nate coming toward him.
“Thinkin’ ahead, huh?” Hutch said.
“Figured I wouldn’t be hoisting you back up so I decided to join you,” Nate said. “I brought the bottle and your fins and mask; they’re out at the opening.”
“That’ll work,” said Hutch.
“Find anything?” Nate said while lifting the mask off of his face and resting it on his forehead.
“Not sure,” said Hutch. “I’ll tell you about it on the boat.”
“Do you think we should head back with the weather this way?” Nate said.
Hutch looked up at the sky through the hole in the boathouse roof. It was black above them and just as black in the distance. He started to answer but the boom of thunder cut him off. When it subsided, Hutch said, “Normally, I’d say we wait it out. Summer rains beat the shit out of you for about ten minutes and then pass. But this baby isn’t passin’ for a while. It came up on us quicker than I thought it would.”
The two men swam the remaining twenty yards out of the cave. A bolt of lightning shot down from the sky on the horizon, soon followed by an eruption of thunder. The rain needled the water around them. Whitecaps were assaulting the shore as Nate swam over to the ledge where he had put Hutch’s fins and mask and the bottle. He handed them to Hutch and soon they were kicking away from the shore.
✽✽✽
The boat bucked as Nate pulled himself over the transom. The deck was slick and the chilly rain was pelting him as he pulled off his fins and mask. Hutch’s gear was already bunched up in a corner. Queen rocked as waves lifted the boat up and down. Nate made his way toward the wheelhouse and saw Hutch up forward, pulling in the last few feet of the anchor line before the anchor itself appeared and Hutch worked the windlass to secure it. Nate was standing at the door to the wheelhouse when Hutch jumped down on the deck in front of him.
“Let’s go,” Hutch said and pushed past Nate.
When both men were inside, Hutch closed the hatch behind them and started the engine. He turned on Queen’s running lights and flipped a row of switches that started the wipers on the wheelhouse’s windows. Hutch throttled forward and Queen began to cut the waves as they headed away from the Twin Sisters and toward shore.
“If I’m right, we haven’t seen the heavy stuff yet. I think we can beat it in,” Hutch said and pushed the throttle further forward. He looked back at Nate, who was shivering. They were still in their bathing suits and boots. Hutch grabbed a towel from a locker under the wheel and threw it to Nate.
“Thanks,” Nate said. He dried off and put his t-shirt back on, which was still warm from the sun hitting it earlier.
Hutch did not dry off, but threw on a t-shirt with the Coast Guard crest on the front from the same locker. Then, he grabbed a thermos and handed it to Nate. “Pour two cups for us,” he said.
Nate looked around, “Where are the cups?”
Hutch kept his head forward and pointed with his thumb at the bulkhead behind him. On two nails left of the hatch hung ceramic mugs.
Nate set them down and unscrewed the top of the thermos. Into the mugs poured coffee as black as the sky above them. He handed a mug to Hutch.
Hutch lifted it and downed the coffee.
“Want some more?” Nate said.
“Nope,” Hutch said.
Nate took a sip and nearly burned his tongue off. “What did you find in the cave?”
Hutch told him the rough topography that he had been able to feel.
“Do you think we should go back?” Nate said.
“I think it’s worth another look,” Hutch said.
The rain started to let up and the seas evened. Nate walked over and tapped on a blue tarp in the corner of the wheelhouse adjacent to the helm console. “What’s under here?”
“Take it off and see for yourself,” Hutch said.
Nate pulled off the tarp, exposing a rectangular machine the size of a laser printer. The outer frame was littered with knobs and buttons and the inner frame was the size of a computer screen and made of paper. A metallic arm extended from under the outer frame, with the end elbowing down ninety degrees, its ink tip resting on the paper. “What is this, Hutch?”
“It’s a plotter for my wide-scan beam and sidescan sonar,” said Hutch.
“May I turn it on?”
“Sure.”
Nate turned the machine on and nothing happened. After thirty seconds he looked at Hutch. “I don’t think it’s working.”
Hutch exhaled a laugh. “Probably because I’m not operating either one of my sonars. There’s nothing to print out.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“All you asked is if you could turn it on.”
“Do you like needling people?”
“It amuses me,” said Hutch.
Nate turned the machine off and covered it back up. Hutch looked at him and shifted his eyes back at the water. He throttled the boat down, but not enough for the seas to take over.
“Take the wheel,” Hutch said.
19
Nate came over and grabbed two of the mahogany spindles. Hutch stepped aside and pointed down at the binnacle. The amber glow made his hand look yellow. “Keep her on two-seven-six,” said Hutch as he turned away from the helm.
Nat
e watched as the ship’s heading went to two-seven-zero. “Shit,” Nate said.
Hutch turned back around and looked at the binnacle. “She’s only a single screw, so her ass naturally swings to starboard. Keep the wheel a bit over to starboard to compensate and she’ll drive pretty straight,” Hutch said and then walked over and took the blue tarp off again.
“What are you doing?” Nate said as he steadied the boat back up on two-seven-six.
“Showing you how this damned thing works.”
“You said that you had more than one sonar.”
“Do you know anything about sidescan sonar?” Hutch said.
“A little,” said Nate.
Hutch turned the plotter back on and energized another piece of equipment next to it. “I use sidescan sonar to view the seabed and any structures or objects laying on it, hopefully wrecks or a shit-ton of fish.”
“What do the wrecks look like?” Nate asked.
“You’d be surprised,” Hutch said. “Since they’re in cold fresh water, the hulls stay preserved. That’s the big difference between diving on shipwrecks in the Great Lakes versus the warm waters of the tropics; the shipwrecks on the Great Lakes still look somewhat like ships. The ocean’s saltwater corrodes wood and metal, and after time all that’s left of a wreck is a pile of ballast rocks. So, if I cross over a wreck out here, and the equipment is working properly, the plotter will draw something that actually looks like a ship.”
“Neat,” Nate said and kept fighting with the wheel.
“Indeed,” Hutch said. “The term ‘sidescan’ usually refers to using a ‘fish’, also called a ‘towfish’, which looks like this.” Hutch opened a locker beneath the plotter and pulled out a device that was around four feet long and looked like a torpedo. “When I’m using my sidescan sonar, I tow this behind my boat with around two-hundred feet of coaxial cable. I lower it to a certain depth and it gives me a picture of the bottom.” Hutch held the fish over the plotter with one hand, treating the plotter like the sea bottom, and moved his free hand from the fish down to the plotter. When his hand hit the plotter, he bounced it back up toward the fish. “The fish transmits small pulses of sound which are absorbed and reflected back by the bottom and any other underwater objects. The strength of each returned pulse together with the time that the pulse traveled provides an underwater picture.”
Nate watched as Hutch put the fish back in the locker. “So, the piece of equipment you turned on next to the plotter is for the fish?”
“No. What I turned on is my other sonar. It’s hull-mounted and instead of being called sidescan, it’s called a wide-scan beam. It basically works on the same principles but is a lot less accurate than my fish because as the boat goes, so goes it. You pretty much have to have dead-calm seas to operate it. I prefer using the fish, but sometimes I don’t feel like fussing with the cable. The hull-mounted takes the flip of a switch and a little adjusting. Since you wanted to see something, I fired it up.”
Nate now noticed that the mechanical arm on the plotter was moving back and forth slowly across the paper. “Where is your hookup for the fish?” Nate said.
“It’s a piece of cake. I’m against computers, but I do own a cheap laptop. The coaxial cable from the fish hooks into my laptop through a USB connector. Simple as that. Mrs. Hawthorne installed the software on the laptop. The program draws a picture like this old plotter, except it’s digital and on the screen. The only pain in operating it is that I’ve got to set up my towing winch in the stern to run the cable out. And, of course, make sure I’ve got the cable deep enough so some dip-shit boater doesn’t cross my wake too close to the boat and get his screw all tangled up in my cable.”
The plotter completed its first drawing and the paper advanced. Hutch stopped the machine and studied it for a minute. He took out a pencil and recorded the latitude and longitude from the GPS monitor mounted on the bulkhead above the forward set of windows.
“See something?” Nate said.
“Probably not. Like I said, the equipment acts squirrelly in bad weather, although we’re not rolling too much. We’re over a drop-off and it doesn’t always like that either.”
“But we’re getting closer to shore.”
“Ever heard of a blue hole?” said Hutch.
“A blue hole?”
“I’ll take that as a no,” Hutch said. “It’s created when the ceiling to an ancient cave system collapses. Dean’s Hole off Long Island in the Bahamas is probably the deepest. When you snorkel there, the sand goes from five to six-hundred feet deep in just a few kicks. The drop off we’re over is the closest thing we’ve got to a blue hole. The depth drops from thirty to three-hundred feet and then rises back up to fifty-feet again. It’s like a crater. The gradual drop-off doesn’t occur until you get past the Twin Sisters.” Hutch shut down the machines and threw the tarp back on. “Throttle us back up.”
Nate did and then asked, “How much do the sonars cost?”
Hutch exhaled a laugh again. “Why is everything with your generation cost-related? Most of you just run things up on a credit card anyways. Don’t have the discipline to save enough to buy things that are important. You don’t live within your means. Instead, you live in the moment and think it’s all owed to you.”
“I don’t,” said Nate. “My father taught me the value of a dollar a long time ago.”
“Then your pops is a smart man,” Hutch said.
“He was a smart man,” said Nate. “Why do you make so many assumptions about me, Hutch?”
Hutch was silent.
“It wouldn’t be fair if I made assumptions about you, would it?” Nate said.
“Try me,” Hutch said.
“Let’s start off with something that isn’t an assumption: you steal fuel from that local marina—”
“That owner is a—”
“Fuck-up. I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s right for you to do it. Now, assumptions. I could assume that since you don’t pay for fuel, you probably didn’t pay for your sonar systems. If I had to guess, one of your old Coast Guard buddies swung a deal for you. Then, it wouldn’t be a long shot to assume that you’re not only a thief from the local town, you’re a thief from the service that provided for you and your fami—”
He heard the door to the wheelhouse open and then slam shut behind him. Nate stared back at the binnacle. The only sound he could hear now was the wipers.
20
The rain did not let up and Nate arrived home, soaked, at six p.m. The Jeep was in the driveway. He parked his bike in the garage and ran through the rain toward the house. He opened the screen door and saw another note from Brooke taped to it.
The Sawyers had invited Brooke and the Gibsons for drinks at a pub called McCleod’s and he was invited too if he felt up to it. If not, there was taco salad in the fridge. The time she had written the note was 5:15 p.m. He took off his clothes in the kitchen and walked naked down the hallway to the utility room. He threw the wet clothes in the washer and headed for the bathroom to shower.
Nate kept returning to Hutch’s exit from the wheelhouse. For an instant, Hutch had lost his composure. Hutch had left Nate alone in the wheelhouse the rest of the trip, and when he had returned to bring the boat next to the dock, he was solemn. The anger had left, replaced with a blank, distant look. When he had shut off Queen’s engine, he had put his hand on Nate’s shoulder and said, “Sorry about gettin’ pissy. You made your point.”
“I was out of line,” Nate said.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Hutch said. Then, they had shook hands.
✽✽✽
Randall McCleod stood behind three feet of mahogany at his rightful place in the bar that he had named after himself. It was quarter after nine and the summer folk had started to pile in waiting for him to help them get sloshed before getting into their expensive vehicles and driving drunk back to their beach estates.
“Randy, I need six shooters for table three, and three long-neck Millers for table two,” said Christina
Allen, McCleod’s only waitress and, at some point, the servicer of almost every McCleod’s regular.
McCleod wiped the sweat off his forehead, couldn’t afford air conditioning—which didn’t keep the crowd away—and tipped his head back to acknowledge the order. His shoulder length grey ponytail bounced on his neck. He should have fired her awhile back. She ended her shift early every night because she was drunk and leaving with a customer, but it was usually around one a.m. and he could manage the last hour himself. Plus it was summer, and some help was better than no help. She was hanging on to her one-time nomination to the Homecoming Court during high school, and ever since—beyond the sex McCleod couldn’t understand why—people still lined up to kiss her ass.
McCleod filled Christina’s tray with the drinks and gave her the same wink he gave her whenever they chose to rekindle their own romance, which was usually in the middle of winter when all anyone in Hampstead ever did on the weekends was drink. And why shouldn’t bartender and barmaid hook-up? McCleod was once a high school standout in football with plans to attend college on a scholarship, make the NFL, and come back and save everyone in Hampstead. For one semester, he was on track. Then his grades went in the toilet, and he’d been in Hampstead tending bar ever since. He was six-two, two-forty, but the flooring was elevated behind the bar making him look closer to six-eight to customers. And for non-locals, that’s what he told them his height was when they asked. And why shouldn’t he?
Christina shook her ass at him and disappeared into the growing crowd. He wondered how many she had had already.
“Randy, can a guy get a fuckin’ drink around here?”
McCleod didn’t need to look where the voice was coming from. He simply went to the tap, poured a stout, and shoved it down the bar. His brother raised the new glass and said, “Many thanks.”
Most people considered Randall McCleod a shining star compared to his brother. At thirty-five, Troy McCleod was fourteen years younger than Randall, and his birth was rumored to be an oops. Seventeen years removed now from blowing out his ACL and blowing up his life, Troy was a local fisherman, fishing but mostly drinking in the summer and collecting unemployment during the winter. Ice fishing was too cold.