Caught

by Lisa Moore

Slaney came down the stairs of the hostel and Roy Brophy was standing at the common room window watching the surf. He was wearing new jeans and a rope belt and a white cotton shirt with a Nehru collar.

  Brophy was looking out at the sailboat. The new sails were up and the sun on the white canvas was very bright and the sea was full of sparkle.

  Roy, Slaney said. Patterson turned around.

  Doug, how the hell are you? The men shook hands. Patterson gripped him hard and he met his eyes. Slaney’s hair was longer, curly and black, and his eyes looked bluer because of the tan and he’d lost weight.

  Heard you had quite a trip, Patterson said.

  Quite the wind, Slaney said. Not something I’d like to try again, let me tell you.

  She’s looking pretty good out there now, Patterson said. They both turned toward the boat. Patterson had a jocularity, Slaney thought, that was a notch too upbeat. The handshake had gone on for a second too long. The man was perspiring.

  Thanks for coming down, man, Slaney said.

  No sweat, Patterson said. I’m happy to help. I know how things work down here. I have to look out for my investment.

  They serve a half-decent breakfast here, Slaney said. You want something?

  I’m ready to hit the road. It won’t take us an hour. You guys are planning to sail tomorrow, right? We go to the bank and get the money and the authorities are waiting on the sailboat for us the next day. We hand over the money; they count it. You guys are good to go. I don’t foresee difficulties. We want to get you guys back to Vancouver, start turning a profit.

  That sounds good, Slaney said.

  Sound good to you? Patterson asked.

  That sounds fine.

  They thought it was the potholes before they realized a flat. They rolled into a garage on the side of the road. Slaney jacked up the Jeep and removed the tire.

  There were chickens running around in the gravel outside and a clothesline with a few rags on it. There was a child on a weathered stoop with a doll. The little girl had on a faded red dress and when the Jeep came up the drive in a cloud of dust she stepped back inside the house and watched them through a screen door. She stood in the shadows of the hallway but one knee, covered in the red skirt, was pressed against the screen.

  A man in a white undershirt took the tire from Slaney without a word and dunked it in a trough of water and slowly turned it, holding the tire upright with just the tips of his fingers.

  Three men appeared from the fields behind the house. They gathered around the tire and watched and didn’t speak much. Whatever they said was in Spanish. Brophy stood with his hands on his wide hips, his back to the men, looking at the wall of tools.

  Look at that, Slaney said. A jet of bubbles rose in the water near the tire’s rim and the man lifted it out and held it up to his chest and Slaney could see a piece of green glass jammed in the rubber. The man brought it over to a work counter and Slaney and Brophy went outside to share a joint.

  You have a family? Slaney asked.

  I’ve got a daughter and a son, Patterson said.

  And you got a wife, Slaney said.

  Wife and kids, Patterson said. I’d say you’re about my daughter’s age. Give or take.

  You’re a contractor, Slaney said.

  I’m a contractor, Patterson said. Almost twenty-five years.

  I just want to know who I’m dealing with, Slaney said. He could hear a bell tinkling nearby. It sounded clear and eerie, a tiny warning bell. Something was rustling in the dirt on the other side of the garage.

  I’m here to get your money and make sure it goes through the proper channels, Patterson said. I’m acquainted with the people down here.

  You’re a friend of Barlow’s, Slaney said.

  I’m close to retiring, Patterson said. But a little extra wouldn’t go astray. I have expenses. Friend, I would say no. Not a friend. I figure a man has one or two friends his whole life, if he’s lucky. That’s if he’s lucky. My brother is my friend. My wife is my friend. Barlow I would call a business acquaintance. I met Barlow because somebody gave me his name. Somebody knew I had some capital I wanted to invest. I called him up.

  You called him up, Slaney said.

  I called him up, asked if he wanted to get together, Patterson said. He took a long drag on the toke Slaney passed him and dropped it into the dirt, pressed down on it with the toe of his shoe. A goat had come around the corner of the garage. It looked at Slaney with its yellow eye, the vertical black pupil. The goat opened its black-lipped mouth and baaed at them. Then it trotted away, the bell piercingly sweet.

  Your friend Barlow is a good cook, nice people he hangs around with, he’s got a nice girl. They’re nice people. They had me over. Singing and talking, it was a very nice evening. A young man, intelligent, doing his university, seems ambitious, and I think to myself, Okay, maybe. I’ll take a chance on this guy.

  You’re in it for the money, Slaney said.

  I know Hernandez, Patterson said. This is a couple of days’ work for me down here. Take a few days. This is money should my daughter decide on a university education. I see her as maybe a lawyer.

  The man in the white undershirt walked past them with the tire then and Slaney went back to the Jeep with him and they had the tire back on in a few minutes.

  Patterson peeled off some money from a wad he had in his pants pocket and the man looked at it and took a blue elastic band off his wrist and put it around the bills and put them away.

  Slaney and Patterson drove along a dirt road for fifteen minutes more. The only thing they saw on the road was a barefoot man on a horse with a rope that was tied to the horns of a dusty white ox that plodded behind.

  They found the bank and parked in front of it. The beach was a short walk away. The Jeep was hot to the touch and Slaney was sticking to the seats. He closed his eyes for a moment.

  He was thinking of Hearn’s girlfriend with her hand pressed flat against Brophy’s chest. How she had shoved Brophy into the corner and interrogated him.

  She had not trusted Brophy either. But Hearn wanted the trip to be a success. He wanted it so badly he was willing to talk to a guy who phones up cold, out of the blue. A guy he’s never heard of.

  I’ll be at the beach, grabbing a bite to eat, Slaney said. Want me to order you something?

  No, I’m careful about the food here. I’ll find you when I get out of the bank, Patterson said.

  I’ll be here, Slaney said.

  Don’t worry, I’ll find you.

  Slaney sat where he had a view of the beach and a view of the front doors of the bank.

  The timbers that held up the thatched roof of the little restaurant were painted jaunty blue and the counter along the back wall was tiled in blue and white. A man was cutting the heads and tails off fish he was pulling from a bucket on the concrete floor. He slapped each fish down on a counter of sheet metal slathered in blood and guts and each time he brought the knife down a cloud of flies rose and settled. After every fish tail he scraped the cleaver blade over the skim of red water on the counter and sluiced it into the bucket below.

  The ocean was greenish and the sand was as white as could be and a woman with a beautiful body in a white bikini stood up from her towel. Her hands swatted at her ass, brushing off sand, and she pulled on a scuba mask and fitted a snorkel into her mouth. It made her eyes bulge and her mouth look surprised and dumb. She put on flippers and walked toward the ocean like the flamingos Slaney had seen in the zoo, picking up her knees. Slaney ordered a beer and some beans and rice and fish.

  He reminded himself to have a good time. He had never liked the idea of heat but it had got inside him on the last trip and it had unlocked a slow longing for salt and cold drinks. The desire for something was on the tip of his tongue, a word or belief, something half articulated that he realized he could wait for; whatever it was, he didn’t hav
e to force it.

  Slaney had cleaned off the tin plate with a tortilla and pushed the plate aside and he’d finished his beer when Brophy came out of the bank and walked down the hill to the beach with a duffle bag. The afternoon enveloped Brophy in a rippling jello of heat, and he appeared warped and elongated in the waver, the duffle bag dragging one shoulder down. When he spotted Slaney, he lifted a finger in a weak salute. Brophy’s shirt was soaked through and sticking to him and he looked cold and white like raw fish.

  Drink? Slaney asked.

  I’d like to get going, Brophy said. Slaney stood and counted out some money and tucked it under the plate and he looked out at the ocean.

  There was a commotion on the beach. Someone was screaming. A woman on the beach was crippled up and bent with the effort of making herself heard. Begging and pointing toward the water. Flinging her arm out toward the horizon, grabbing at people.

  There was a swimmer a long way out. Slaney could see someone’s head, a silhouette, far away, or it was a buoy. He gripped the wooden railing that separated the restaurant from the beach and leapt over it, and ran to the edge of the water. He yelled over his shoulder to Brophy to come help.

  Somebody’s drowning out there, let’s go, he shouted. He’d taken off his shoes as he ran and when he got back later the shoes were still there, but far apart from each other. He remembered taking one shoe off, because he’d had to hop-hop with his foot in both hands before he could toss it. The other one must have come off by itself.

  He’d taken off his T-shirt too. He would have no memory of doing that.

  Another man with a lifeguard ring was ahead of him and got to the drowning woman first. This man and the woman were going under together and whatever they said was underwater. She must have been shouting, You’re coming with me. And he must have shouted, No, you’re coming with me.

  But the language was bubbled and came out silvery and wiggling and broke apart before it got to the surface. On the surface there was just the sucking up of sky and foam and the language went in backwards and garbled and on the surface there was love and desperation and a war of save me, save me.

  She was the kind of strong that could hoist a car over her head if she wanted, but what she wanted, with all her might, was to drown the guy who got there first.

  The guy was speaking Spanish. Slaney didn’t hear it but he formed the impression it was Spanish. He was from there and handsome, these were Slaney’s impressions; and he also had an animal strength, just like the woman, and if they ever made love, the two of them, children would burst out of her forehead and all that was wrong would be okay. But they were not making love, there was so much hate it boiled the water. She threw her arms around and she sank back down and was gone from them for long stretches so they could only see her white bikini like a glimmer of light in the murk and the blooming flower of her hair.

  She was going to stand on the Mexican guy’s shoulders to keep her chin out of the water whether he liked it or not. She had the authority of a person who refuses to see reason, or is lit up with a reason all her own. She wanted the Mexican guy to be standing on the shoulders of another man, possibly Slaney, and for there to be more men all the way to the bottom. All she really wanted was a lungful of air.

  The guy had a family, Slaney thought, he had that look, or that was another one of the impressions formed later, on the drive back. Like Slaney, the guy had ended up in the water without ever considering what he was doing.

  They had not thought, None of my business. They had not thought, What about if something happens out there, or that she deserved what she got for being so bloody stupid, for wandering out so far. And they had found themselves in an awkward threesome where she had laid down the law: she would get what she wanted any way she could. The claw marks on Slaney’s back were something when they got out.

  And the Mexican guy, too, was bleeding from the corner of his eye. She had taken pieces out of his face with her fingernails.

  Slaney popped her in the jaw. It was her jaw or her temple and he was not careful. No decision was made. It was done before he knew it. He could not remember it but he knew it happened, the way you know something someone tells you. He knew it second-hand. He would never have believed it if he hadn’t been told by a reliable source. He was the source. It was exactly the right measure of violence. He’d never hit a girl before. He had time to think that.

  She was still wearing the mask and the water was sloshing inside the glass window and her eyes were screaming but — and this he could swear to, this was something he’d never seen before and did not want to see again — he saw the eyes roll back in her head. First a fluttering of one eyelid that looked flirtatious. A nerve with a mind of its own in her eyelid. The ecstasy of giving up. He saw that.

  That’s what he hadn’t wanted to see. It was a bad precedent. If giving up felt that good he might like it. That’s what he thought. He never wanted to try it. Giving up was all or nothing. The woman had given up.

  The Mexican guy was swimming away and Slaney lost sight of him from one wave to another. There, not there. He was swimming out toward the horizon and Slaney found he was yelling over the waves and he had to prop her up, and really, the situation was boring. They were almost done and where did that bastard think he was going? The guy came back with the ring. He had gone to get the ring.

  She had knocked the ring out of his arms and he’d got it back and Slaney had her in a loose headlock, face up, and his other arm linked into the ring.

  Then there were two other men. And it was just as well because Slaney was done and the Mexican guy was done too. The other two guys lifted her out of the waves and when they did Slaney thought to put his feet down and saw he was up to his waist. The hardest part was the last few waves that drove him into the upside-down sand and he crawled out on his hands and knees.

  He lay there and waited to breathe. When he pulled himself up, the woman broke out of the thick crowd that had surrounded her. The other man had gone. The Mexican had been swallowed up in a separate crowd that had gathered. The woman came over to Slaney and put her arms around his neck and rested her head on his chest. He put his hand on her heart. He was feeling the heartbeat. It was so off-kilter and bewildering. Her skin was bewildering and a strand of her hair and the way she pressed against him and her crazy little beating thing of a heart under his hand. That was just an instant, of course. Then it was over and she went back to being whoever she was and Slaney looked for his T-shirt.

  Brophy was standing in the sand in his black socks. He held his shoes, a finger hooked into each heel. Slaney picked up his clothes as they headed back to the Jeep. He remembered he had to pay for the meal, and then he remembered he had paid already.

  You want a beer? Brophy said.

  No thanks, I’d like to get moving, Slaney said.

  I have a heart condition, Brophy said. I couldn’t leave the money. My heart is bad. I would have just been in the way out there. You would have had to rescue me.

  Let’s go, Slaney said. I don’t want to be out in the dark with all this cash.

  There was only that brute thing, Slaney thought. There was only the pop he’d given that girl and the way she had allowed him to keep her alive and how important it had been for her to succumb.

  They drove back to the hostel. Brophy said he’d like to help Slaney with the boat, if they needed help on board, but he couldn’t do heavy lifting. Slaney invited him in for a drink and he bought a couple of beers from the maid and they sat out on the deck of the hostel in wooden lawn chairs.

  He’d had a clogged artery a while back and his arm would tingle, Brophy told him. He’d wake up; the arm would be asleep. There would be pins and needles. This was his right arm, hanging off his shoulder. He’d spent a weekend drinking at his brother’s stag and then the wedding and he’d turned grey.

  The colour of that there, he said. He tapped the grey weathered wood of
his armrest with his finger. Everything went funny. It had a funny aspect.

  My vision, he said. He swayed a hand in the air. My son came to get me at the airport and I told him. My arm, I said. Brophy touched Slaney’s arm as he said it.

  I told him I’d been throwing up, and I broke a sweat right there at the luggage thing.

  The carousel, Slaney said. Brophy was stirring the air with his finger. He nodded. Waiting for my luggage.

  He was the one that said a heart attack, Brophy said. He called it. My son called the damn thing.

  Slaney had the suitcase of money for the Mexican authorities tucked in under his chair.

  What he thought was this. He believed the story about the heart attack, but it had a different cadence than everything else Brophy had said. He was thinking: the heart attack is true, but everything else has been a lie.

  They were relying on the Mexicans to be corrupt. It was a hell of an assumption. It was easy for Hearn. Hearn was in Vancouver. Hearn was getting ready for the life after his life of crime. As if there wasn’t a tide of events to swim against. It was a merciless quality in Hearn. He didn’t respect those who doubted themselves.

  Hearn was a contemptuous bastard to those who had doubts.

  Brophy was talking about his condition. He said there were things he’d had to give up because of his heart. He spoke about diet.

  You wonder if it’s worth it, Brophy said. Slaney took a quick peek at him then, glanced over. Because this statement had come from a deep place, a peeling down of facade. Brophy wasn’t aware that he’d said it out loud.

  It was a tone of disappointment. The guy was deflated. He was sick and unsure of himself. Why hadn’t Hearn checked him out? It wasn’t Hearn with a yacht full of weed parked under the noses of the Mexican authorities, owing for fuel and supplies.

  Slaney felt the teeter-totter inside him shift. He was dropping from trust to doubt. If he had to pinpoint the moment. There had been a moment and it was when Brophy spoke about it all being worth something.

  He had spoken with the authority of a man who had suffered. He was a broken sort of man, Slaney decided. He had been broken not by something big, but the grinding of a thousand small things to which he himself had agreed. He had made concessions.