by Watt Key
“You watching him?” I said.
“He’s gone,” Shane replied. “He disappeared. No, I see him. He’s on the surface.”
I looked to my left and saw Scar’s dorsal fin slicing through the top of the water. He seemed to be aiming for Mr. Jordan.
“He’s coming at your dad,” I said. “Get ready.”
19
Scar veered away an instant before nosing Mr. Jordan in the stomach. He remained out of reach, all eight feet of him passing slowly before my face. I saw his eye up close, staring right at me. Directly below the eye, his mouth gaped in a cruel grin lined with hundreds of knife-edged teeth. The teeth are designed to punch slits so that the shark can pull meat from its prey as easy as tearing a page from a loose-leaf notebook.
Mr. Jordan mumbled something again, and then I felt him struggling. I tried to hold on to his arm, but he managed to twist away.
“Hold your dad, Shane!”
“I’ve got him!”
“Come on,” Mr. Jordan said.
I saw that Shane still had a hold of his other arm, but now our protective triangle was open and I was hanging out at one end of it.
“What’s he doing?” I said.
“I don’t know. Crap, they’re all under us again.”
“How many?”
“Three. All three.”
I desperately wanted to look down, but I felt more pressed to get us back into formation. At the same time I knew that it was dangerous to splash any more than we had to. I swept my free arm slowly through the water, trying to reach Mr. Jordan again.
“Keep watching them,” I said.
Then I saw a glint of steel flash past my wrist. I jerked my arm back and saw Mr. Jordan had his dive knife out, slashing aimlessly through the water with it. I’d narrowly missed getting cut.
“Come on,” he murmured again.
“He’s got his knife out, Shane!”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Get it from him!”
I swung around behind Shane and grabbed hold of his BCD. I watched as he worked his way behind his father and tried reaching over his shoulder for the arm waving the knife.
“Give it to me, Dad!” he said.
Mr. Jordan didn’t seem to hear him.
“Give me the knife!”
Mr. Jordan began to struggle, and Shane put his arm around his neck.
“Get away from me,” Mr. Jordan growled.
Shane hugged him close until his chin was over his dad’s shoulder.
“You gotta stop, Dad!” Shane cried. “You gotta put the knife up!”
But Mr. Jordan only struggled more. He began lifting his arm from the water repeatedly, plunging the knife blade down at his imaginary sharks.
“Get away from me!” Mr. Jordan yelled.
“Stop it, Dad!”
“Let go of him!” I shouted. “The splashing attracts them!”
Shane shook his dad and hit at the side of his face. “Dad, stop!” he cried. “Stop!”
Now both of them were splashing and frantic, and it didn’t look like there was any way to reason with Mr. Jordan. And he was only moments from cutting one of us. I jerked at Shane’s BCD, trying to pull him off.
“Let go, Shane! Get away from him!”
Then I heard a tearing sound and a hiss. Bubbles began to rise around us. I brought my feet up and kicked against Mr. Jordan’s back, trying to pull Shane off him, but it wasn’t enough. I smacked Shane’s head, trying to get his attention.
“Let him go!”
Shane went limp and it flashed through my mind that maybe he’d been stabbed.
Mr. Jordan started to yell something, but then the yell was cut off as his face slipped beneath the water. I suddenly realized I was dangerously tied to two people I could no longer control. I reached to my ankle and drew my knife and cut the line that was holding us together. Then I stretched around Shane and cut the line between him and his dad. After shoving the knife back in the sheath and regaining my hold on Shane’s BCD, I pulled my feet up and kicked out at Mr. Jordan again with everything I had. His head slipped through Shane’s elbow and we were suddenly free of him. I grabbed Shane, and swam us backward.
“Grab his line!” I said.
Shane reached out and grabbed the trailing end of Mr. Jordan’s line that I’d cut. Both of us watched his dad flail about with the knife, trying to stay afloat in a deflated BCD. I knew with his weights still attached it was impossible. He went under, then appeared again, looking at us this time with wide, crazed eyes.
“I can’t hold it!” Shane cried.
“Try,” I said, grasping him tightly. “He’s going to kill us all. There’s nothing else we can do.”
I passed one hand quickly over Shane’s BCD to make sure it was still inflated. It felt firm.
Mr. Jordan gasped and went under again. I watched Shane’s arm stretch out and the line slip through his fist.
I spun him around to face me. His eyes were red and wide, and he was breathing rapidly.
I didn’t want to put my dive mask back on. I didn’t want to see what was going on below us. I only knew we needed to get out of there.
I jerked the fins out of my BCD and shoved them at Shane.
“Put them on,” I said.
Shane stared at me and didn’t move.
I held the speargun to my chest with an elbow and clamped one of his fins in my teeth. I went under and grabbed his leg and lifted it and started cramming his foot into the other one. It seemed impossible with everything I was holding. Then I dropped the speargun in my struggle and caught a blurry glimpse of it sinking into the depths.
Panic flooded me. I resurfaced and got a breath.
“Help me!” I yelled.
Shane reached down like he was about to do something, but I didn’t have the patience for him. I dove beneath the surface again and managed to get the fin strap around his ankle. Then I grabbed his other foot, shoved on the second fin, and strapped it. I came up, jerked my own fins from his back, and crammed them on.
To my relief, Shane grabbed hold of me and started kicking. Then we were both kicking with everything we had.
20
The sharks were gone. Mr. Jordan was gone. The blue water carried Shane and me along, our legs hanging limp below us, the sun beating down on our sun masks. After we stopped swimming I tied us together again, but nothing I did now seemed of any use.
Neither of us had spoken a word since we’d left his dad. Shane seemed too weak, too much in shock to express his feelings over what had happened, whatever those feelings might be.
Mother Nature’s going to finish us off. She’s only holding on to us a little longer for her amusement.
My thirst was torturous and my skin crawled and burned with the thousands of tiny sea lice stinging me. I imagined by now they’d worked their way inside Shane’s wetsuit, too. My body seemed nothing more than a lump of soggy, bug-infested meat carrying a brain. And until the bugs got to my brain I’d have to float like this and feel them eat the rest of me away.
The thought of drowning myself always got stuck like a switch inside me that I couldn’t flip. It really didn’t make sense that killing yourself couldn’t be more of an option, especially when you knew with all certainly you were going to die anyway. But I couldn’t imagine not seeing Mom and Dad again. And I’d have to take off my wetsuit if I wanted to sink, and I didn’t want Shane seeing me naked. I suddenly laughed to myself.
“What?” Shane said through trembling teeth.
“I was thinking that I didn’t want you to see me naked.”
“Why is that funny?”
“Because it’s so stupid. That I would care about something like that now.”
“Why are you even talking about it?”
“I was thinking about drowning. It’s going to be hard to drown as long as I have a wetsuit on. I’d have to take it off. And then you’d see me naked.”
“Whatever,” he said. “I’m just cold. I’m s
o cold and thirsty.”
The neoprene of Shane’s wetsuit was only 3 millimeters, or mils, thick. I had on a 5 mil, and the extra thickness was keeping me a little warmer. Especially now that we’d stopped swimming, the Gulf water was steadily bringing down our core body temperatures. It was probably close to 85 degrees Fahrenheit, but even that’ll kill you if you’re exposed to it long enough. When the sun set again we’d get even colder, and eventually both of us were going to become hypothermic.
I got behind Shane and unclipped the front of my BCD so that it spread open. Then I stuck my arms up the front of his BCD and hugged him and felt him shaking against me. I had never been so close to a boy. I had always been nervous about if and when and how I would find myself in such a situation. Now, even though I wished our circumstances were different, I felt relief to get beyond it. And it was more natural and comforting than I’d expected.
“Is that better?” I said over his shoulder.
He nodded. I felt shivers running up his body like electric pulses.
“We’re going to have to try to float like this,” I said.
* * *
Shane stopped shivering not long after I hugged him to me. I managed to wrap my hands inside the straps of his BCD so I could relax them. Then I rested my chin on his shoulder and somehow I was finally able to drift off to sleep.
I had strange flitting dreams that made no sense. I was at a fancy Cinderella ball and Shane was in a tuxedo. He looked handsome and held my hand, and I was proud to be with him. Then I was standing alone on a beach in a storm. Rain was hitting the calm water like loud static on a television. And this strange noise worked at my ears until I woke and opened my eyes.
It was late afternoon. The sun was setting cool and orange before me and the Gulf water appeared as still as a swimming pool. Then I realized the sound of the rain was still playing in my ears. I lifted my chin from Shane’s shoulder. Not a hundred yards from us, in both directions, for what looked like miles, the surface was boiling and popping with small feeding fish.
“Shane?” I said.
He didn’t answer.
“Shane?”
“What?” he muttered sleepily.
“You see that?”
“What?”
“The fish.”
After a moment he said, “Yes … Is that bad?”
“I think it’s bluefish or something. They’ll probably be scared of us.”
“Good.”
“You still cold?”
“Yes.”
“I know. Me too.”
“I think my legs are frozen.”
“They’re only stiff. Mine are the same way. Try to bend them.”
“I am,” he said.
I worked one of my legs in front of his ankle and put the other behind his knee and bent it slowly. Then I felt him begin to move it on his own.
“That’s better,” he said.
I did the same to his other leg.
“Maybe we should swim some,” I said. “My legs are feeling stiff, too.”
“I don’t think I can. I’m too cold.”
“Try,” I said.
I backed away and fastened my BCD again. I pulled off my sun mask, then pulled Shane’s off, too, and stuffed them into my BCD pocket. Then I started kicking slowly and pulling Shane with me. After a moment he was kicking both his legs, and we put our dive masks on our faces and peered down at the endless blue below.
The popping and splashing of the feeding fish grew louder until we began to see the outside edges of the bait, suspended like millions of bits of glass that jerked and flashed about in giant glittering clouds as far as we could see into the depths. Bluefish and jack crevalle raced through, the clouds dispersing then re-forming. Then the feeding frenzy parted and closed in behind us and continued on all sides like we were nothing more than a small blister on the surface of it. And for a moment I was mesmerized, forgetting about my thirst and the cold water and the sea lice and thinking it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And thinking that if I were to die and slowly sink to the bottom that it wouldn’t be such a bad way to go.
21
When we stopped swimming there was only a sliver of sun left on the horizon. The wide expanse of feeding fish had broken up and existed only in patches like isolated rain hitting the water. I unclipped and hugged Shane to me and pressed my cheek to his cold face. In that way we watched the last of the sun sinking into the water like a dying coal.
The night sky was moonless, but the stars were thick and cast a soft glow over the calm water. Below our feet jellyfish hovered like green and pink night lights.
How can Mother Nature be so beautiful and so mean at the same time? I thought.
I told myself that if I ignored thoughts of hypothermia my shivering would stop. But then all I could think about was my thirst and the bugs and the possibility of dying, which brought me back to being cold and miserable again.
“I think I’m going to die tonight,” Shane said.
“No you’re not,” I said.
“What’s the point in this?”
“If we go, we go together.”
“I don’t know if I can wait.”
“Don’t stop talking to me,” I said.
“I’m so tired of it all,” he said.
“I don’t think you should sleep.”
“Do you think the sharks ate him?”
“We can talk about anything but that.”
“Why didn’t they come after us?”
“I don’t know. They lost interest.”
“I don’t want to go like that.”
“You won’t. He went crazy.”
“You can’t let that happen to me, no matter what.”
“It won’t happen to you. I’m going to stay with you.”
“He never touched me, you know.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t understand.
“I mean, he shook my hand sometimes, like I was a grown-up or something. But he never patted me on the back or put his arm around me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Sometimes I wished he were dead. And I’m wondering now if I got my wish and I’m being punished for it.”
“But you didn’t really wish that.”
“I did,” Shane said. “But it wasn’t like I thought it would really happen. You know, it’s like a bully at school that you don’t want to deal with.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I get it.”
Shane was quiet for a few minutes.
“Shane?” I said.
“What?”
“I’m going to keep talking to you. Every few minutes. To make sure you don’t go to sleep.”
“Okay,” he said.
“I think if you go to sleep you’ll die.”
“Okay,” he said.
* * *
Now it seemed there was no difference between me and Shane. He was a boy and I was a girl, but mostly we’d been reduced to two people simply staying alive. And right there, at that moment, he was the most important person in the world to me. I couldn’t think of anything worse than losing him and being alone. And just the day before I’d hated him with all my heart.
22
The Jordans had been thirty minutes late for their charter. Dad and I heard them arguing outside the dive shop before they came through the door. Then Shane entered in a huff, his dive bag slung over his shoulder.
“Use the old one,” Mr. Jordan was saying to him. “Chill out about it, will you?”
“I liked my new one,” Shane snapped.
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“I want you to put it in my dive bag next time.”
Mr. Jordan dropped his equipment on the floor beside his son’s. Shane looked at Dad and then me like he realized for the first time we were also in the room. I was sure he recognized me, but he didn’t act like it.
Mr. Jordan approached Dad. “How’s the visibility out there?”
“Should be pretty good,” Dad said.
“It was good a couple of days ago. But you never know until you get in the water.”
“You got anything decent we can dive?”
Dad smiled smugly. “Yeah, I’ve got something decent.”
“What? Like that old Lipscomb tug you took me to last year?”
“I suppose that’s where all the other outfits would take you.”
“You’re right, Gib,” he said. “There’s three other dive shops I could’ve gone to today. The only reason I’m standing here right now is because they’re booked up. And unless you’ve got something to offer me that they don’t, I doubt I’ll be back.”
Dad maintained his sly grin for a moment longer, then said, “Well, you came to the right place, Hank. How do a couple of untouched army tanks sound? Three years down. Never been fished or dove.”
Mr. Jordan raised his eyebrows with interest. “Where?”
“About thirty miles out.”
“Whose are they?”
“Mine. I put them out there.”
Mr. Jordan studied him suspiciously. “How’d you pull that off?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Mr. Jordan smiled and nodded slowly. “I see,” he said. “Your big secret spot. Well, you got my attention. So what’s this going to cost me?”
“Two thousand. One dive.”
I looked at Dad. He’d never charged that much. I looked at Mr. Jordan. He hadn’t flinched at the price. He actually appeared to be considering it.
“What about two dives?” Shane interjected.
Dad kept his eyes on Mr. Jordan. “One dive,” Dad said. “Then we head in.”
Mr. Jordan didn’t respond. I could see he didn’t like someone being firm with him.
“Or,” Dad continued, “for your standard four hundred and fuel we can drop anchor at one of those fished-out public reefs like everyone else. Your choice.”
“What’s the depth?” Mr. Jordan asked.
“Hundred and five feet,” Dad said.
Mr. Jordan reached into his bag and pulled out his dive chart and studied it. “That’s twenty minutes of bottom time without decompression.” He looked up. “That’s a hundred dollars a minute.”
Dad shrugged with a take-it-or-leave-it look.
Mr. Jordan dropped the chart back into his bag and looked at his son. “You want to do it?”