The Helldivers' Rodeo: A Deadly, X-Treme, Scuba-Diving, Spearfishing, Adventure Amid the Off Shore Oil Platforms in the Murky Waters of the Gulf of Mexico

by Humberto Fontova

  I noticed Pelayo's jaw muscles harden and his eyes narrow after a particularly lewd comment by the little Mexican with a shark tooth earring on our left. "Good Lord, " I thought. "Here we go.

  I could already see the news release: WILD FRACAS ON COZUMEL DIVE BOAT LANDS TWO LOUISIANA MEN IN NOTORIOUS MEXICAN JAIL. LOCAL POLICE CHIEF, EMILIANO "EL GUAPO" SANCHEZ, GIVES LITTLE HOPE TO THOSE WORKING FOR THEIR EARLY RELEASE, WHO APPEAR TO BE VERY FEW.

  The hideous vision rattled me deeply and I nudged Pelayo. "Come on man," I stammered. "Let it slide. It's no big deal. We're on vacation. The girls don't even understand."

  "But I do!" he snarled. "Heard what that little bastard just said about Gina?"

  I didn't think Pelayo had much justification. We'd been doing the exact same thing all morning. It was hard enough to resist commenting when the skimpy swimsuits were dry and strategically positioned before the dive. When wet and haphazardly positioned after the dive ... well. I'd need a hundred more pages to list all the advantages of speaking a second language that your wife doesn't.

  But Pelayo wouldn't listen to reason. He shook me loose and started walking over to the giggling dive masters. "Chris, Shirley, Toni, Toni, Cindy!" I suddenly yelled. "Let's walk around to the other side of the boat for a minute. I think they sighted a manta ray over there." An ugly scene was bound to unfold. I wanted them shielded.

  "Be ready for trouble." I whispered to Chris and Tom.

  Chris made a fist and bashed it against the railing. "Don't worry," he snarled. "We'll stomp 'em."

  I pretended to scan the emerald waters around us for the mythical manta ray, but nothing happened. No wild yells, moans, grunts, thumps, or splashes from the other side of the boat. Hhmmm. A few minutes later Pelayo walked around with a big smile on his face. "He said he'll take us out tomorrow morning." He beamed. "Spear fishing, on the northern side of the island."

  "I thought that was illegal down here," Tom said with a bewildered look.

  "Nothing's illegal down here." Pelayo smirked. "For the right price."

  On the boat ride out, the girls had befriended a New Jersey couple who'd spent most of the first dive feeding and petting a huge black grouper that hovered around us. They were on their fourth trip to Cozumel in as many years. "Did you see the beautiful grouper?" The wife beamed at our wives.

  "Sure did." Pelayyo interrupted. "Looked just like the one I speared last week at the oil platforms."

  The couple both grimaced and shook their heads. Our wives rolled their eyes, curled their lips and jerked their heads in the unmistakable gesture of: butt out!

  "Blanz!" Pelayo motioned with his fist. "Shot the big sucker right through the gill plates!" Pelayo's eyes blazed with blood lust. He licked drool from his lower lip. "But I still went to the mat with him. Good thing Chris showed up and finished him off with the ice pick." Chris made muscular jabbing motions in the air to demonstrate.

  "You're ... you're awl id!" the wife cried with her voice cracking. She and the husband walked off. The girls followed, apparently unimpressed with our subtle approach to explaining our sport.

  We mended fences over dinner that night at the well-known tourist trap, Carlos 'n Charlie's. Tequila does it every time. The day's events take on a special charm: You forget the sunburn. Sitting on that sea urchin now seems amusing. The cure involving uric acid even more so. The moray that clamped its teeth around your wife's hand until you diced it with a dive knife now elicits guffaws from people into their third round of half-gallon margaritas. In minutes your wife raises her bandaged hand to beckon the waiter for the fourth. After the fifth you give in and show everyone the urchin wound, about a foot below the fire coral burns that cover your lower back.

  But now, quite a distance from Cozumel, Tom, Pelayo, "On-theBall" Paul, and I were wallowing through four-foot seas in a blinding, horizontal rain that stung our chests like ice needles. In the confusion we overlooked the shrimp trawler directly ahead.

  "Look out!" Paul screeched, while grabbing the wheel from Pelayo. But it was too late. We were already over the trawl. The big shrimper's fantail was covered with Vietnamese flapping their arms and screaming some rapid-fire gibberish that was unintelligible to everyone but Tom, who'd gotten a government-sponsored tour of their homeland and its rice paddies some years before.

  Tom cupped his hands around his mouth and let fly with another string of gibberish that baffled us but seemed to greatly intensify the shrimpers' emotions. One of them jerked a gaff from a wall and started waving it like an ax. He was about four feet tall with a huge hat and was hopping up and down like Yosemite Sam.

  Tom smiled, and screamed some more gibberish; a few of Yosemite's oriental colleagues started laughing. But. Yosemite himself continued his hoarse screeching and jerky pantomime. Then another peal of thunder jerked our gaze skyward. We finally cleared the trawl and lumbered off through the swells and drizzle, a crew of little brown men shaking their fists in our wake.

  We missed the worst of the squall with a three-mile detour. The marine forecast had called for "two to three foot seas."

  "As usual," Pelayo snorted as he spit into his mask after we'd hooked up. "We oughta know by now. What they mean is two times three-foot seas. Hell, it's gotta be five foot seas out here."

  The twelve miles of open Gulf had pounded Pelayo's twentyfoot Aquasport mercilessly-and us within it. Our brains were turning to jelly and our butts to putty. Then, trying to snag the oil rig's beam with the rig-hook while the boat was bouncing around like a cork in the heaving swells had been a real treat.

  Twice I nearly went over, bashing my shins and elbows on the railing as the hull came down off the crest of a wave. Tom, naturally, tried to help. He slipped as we came down from a swell, smacked his head against the rig hook, tripped over an ice chest and gouged his arm with a spear gun point when he hit the floor. The spear gun had been stored carelessly, the shaft pointing up and the point uncovered.

  I'd made a mental note to arrange it on the way out but was distracted by the "clang-clang! CLANG-CLANG!" of the air tanks as we pounded our way out. You'd think we'd get this right by now, but noooooo. So, every mile or so Pelayo would haul back on the throttle. Paul and I would yank the bungee cords into place, jam a few boat cushions here, a towel there, trying to get the tanks arranged nice and snug, nice and sturdy.

  Then we'd hit the first wave--slang! Clang! Clang! The hell with it. Let 'em clang. They don't call us the Dog and Pony Dive Club for nothing. That's when I forgot about the gun. It was actually Tom's own. He'd spent half the night sharpening it, then neglected the little plastic cap. Now his arm was gushing blood.

  "Here," I said, and chucked him a towel from the storage chest. "How bad is it?"

  "Ah, it's nothing." He tried to smile.

  I've known Tom a long time. He'd say it was "nothing" if his freaking arm was dangling from his shoulder by two tendons and bone shards from his scapula were sticking out of his cheek, which is exactly what happened to him in 'Nam, while he was hosing down some VC with a machine-gun from a chopper. Thirty years later the scars still cover half his arm.

  "They shot back," he shrugs, whenever anyone asks him about the scars. I know that tone. It's the same tone my father-in-law used when I'd asked him about Anzio or the Bulge. "I was always in the right spot at the wrong time ... or the wrong spot at the right time," he'd always quip. And that was it. But I knew it took a little more than bad timing to get the two silver stars with oak leaf clusters and the purple hearts my mother-in-law showed me one day while rummaging through his things.

  I never press the issue. The tone is unmistakably, "change the subject, please," the tone of a man who has actually seen combat. They never seem to notice all that thrill and romance that rivets us to the seat at the movie or excites the narrator on the History Channel. Even after six Buds or half a bottle of Crown, I could never get the whole story ... with Tom either. Anyway, this spear gun gouge was a minor matter. He'd been through worse-much worse.

  The water w
as rough and filthy, the sky gray and dreary. No sun to enliven our moods. Now an early injury, before we even hit the water. What a start. Our disco wetsuits never fail to provoke a burst of mirth with guests. Not today. Tom just shook his head with that bent smile. Nothing seemed to help-not even the Village People's classic: "Macho-Macho Man! I got-ta be-a Macho Man!" Pelayo had shoved it into the boom box.

  "It's the perfect theme for a rig dive, huh guys?" Pelayo looked around, starting to bob to the beat.

  Especially our rig dives, where old disco clothes serve as wetsuits. Pelayo looked over at Tom. "Hey Tom," he blurted. "These suits are actually an improvement. Should'a seen us a few years ago. We'd come out here looking like a bunch'a winos."

  "Oh yeah?" Tom looked up and tried to smile, trying to be polite. "Winos hunh? Yeah, great." He wasn't listening. He was busy tending his arm.

  A normal "cajun wetsuit" consists of an old flannel shirt and blue jeans. Those brass zippers don't rust. And the heavy denim protects the flesh-crucial when that muscle-bound torpedo called an amberjack is bouncing you around the barnacle and coral encrusted beams like a pinball. At a recent party Paul held up a stick of cheddar in front of Tom. "This is your arm," he said solemnly. Then he ran it against a grater three times. "This is your unprotected arm against a rig's beam when an AJ or cobia is taking you on his merry ride." Tom caught on immediately.

  I've seen fishermen with heavy tackle surrender to large amberjack. "Here!" they'll gasp. "Take over for a while!" as they hand the rod to the first mate. " My arms are giving out! Whew!" and they start rubbing their biceps.

  I saw a Saints linebacker do this, and the amberjack was barely forty pounds. Imagine an eighty-pounder on the end of your spear gun. You're down there with him, in his element, surrounded by these shredding devices. Sure, you can let go. But few rig-divers give in that easily. Point is, you're gonna get beat up pretty badly. You want a heavy layer of fabric between you and those beams.

  Paul was already suiting up on the bow, vainly sucking in his gut while working the plastic zipper on his polyester pants. He'd shaken his booty in them seventeen years ago-we all had. But that was a much skimpier booty. Cramming his current booty into the same casing was proving arduous. Not that I had much room to talk. My love handles drooped over the tight polyester cummerbund like a huge roll of boudin.

  "Man, it's been three months since the end of hunting season," I said defensively, while patting my gut. I could see Pelayo snickering while pointing it out to Tom, trying to coax him out of his funk. "I always put on a few pounds between the hunting season and the underwater hunting season. That fishing doesn't require much moving around. We get fat and lazy in the spring. You'll see, by next month I'll be trim again ... throw me a beer."

  Tom was mum. He paced the bow and pressed the towel against his arm. He frowned when he saw me chugging the Bud.

  "Martini's Law, right?" I said, toasting him. "Right? ... you've heard of it?"

  "Sure," he replied. "Nitrogen narcosis ... hits you down deep."

  "Well?" I shrugged. "Why not drink the martini itself? Effects are gonna hit you anyway, right?"

  Tom snorted, nodding in disgust.

  "In fact," Paul said. "When your bloodstream's crammed with alcohol, it has less room to absorb the nitrogen ... or it absorbs it more slowly."

  "Damn right." Pelayo quipped after a hearty gulp."We heard it from a doctor who dove with us."

  "Oh COME ON!" Tom snorted. He finally came alive. "That's the craziest thing I ever heard! Alcohol dehydrates ya. That makes it worse ... where did that guy get his license? A doctor like that, he oughta be in jail. He shouldn't be ...

  "He worked for the state," Pelayo said. "Didn't he, On-theBall?"

  "Sure did," Paul answered. "I remember now, Doctor Fontaine. He was a chiropractor. But he gave medical exams to state employees for insurance ... what a nutcase."

  Tom rolled his eyes ... then chuckled at On-the Ball's dilemma. "You guys weren't kidding," he snorted. "Disco clothes! Incredible. Wait till I tell Elaine. Boy she used to love disco."

  "It's the perfect body suit," Paul quipped while starting to boogie . . . I gotta be, a MACHO MAN! bumpa-bumba-bumba- bumpa! The bass line was infectious. My butt started jerking instinctively as I jerked on my booties. Pelayo was doing the bump with the console railing, his hands clasped together and arms held high, his head pointed downward, like a matador.

  "Got tons of these clothes in backa the closet still." Paul snapped. "Hate to see it go to waste." His finger was pointing skyward now, a la Travolta, his lips pursed and chin bobbing to the beat.

  Ah, the memories ... the memories! Dressed like human peacocks, tottering around on heels while slurping whiskey sours. Strobe lights, foxes in clingy skirts and huge clunky platforms, our pockets crammed with matchbooks scribbled with bogus phone numbers ... no mortgages ... no soccer games.

  "Hey Pelayo," I said. "Tell Tom how it started."

  "Oh geezus," On-the-Ball sighed. "Not again."

  "Yes again," I countered. It's become a ritual when we take new divers out and they start making faces and raising their eyebrows at our get-up.

  "Well," Pelayo started as Paul shook his head sadly. "The wife gave a garage sale last year. Had all my old disco pants and shirts on a ping-pong table in the front yard. Man, I hated to see that stuff go, sentimental value, you unnerstan'. Well, we'd been diving the day before, so I was walking over to get the dive bag outta the backa the truck. My jeans were hanging out of it. They'd ripped pretty bad and the flannel shirt had lost some buttons. I knew I'd have to replace them for the next dive.

  "So I'm walking back past the ping-pong table and some people had drove up and were actually looking at the disco clothes now, chuckling to themselves and I says `whoa!'-that stuffs no longer for sale. And [ snatched it up. It looked perfect to replace the jeans.

  "The next week I brought it on a dive and everybody laughed. The week after that we was all decked out like Travolta. It caught on quick. Shoot, it's the same fabric as those fancy smantzy body suits they try to sell ya at the dive shops for two or three hundred a pop. I mean look at it, polyester don't absorb no waw-da. The guys on the rig always get a big kick out of it. You see 'em leaning over; crackin' up. We just wave."

  Pelayo suddenly looked up. "Nobody on this rig though ... or they'd be up there leaning over the rail. Geezum! Think about those poor bastards. How much excitement can they get out here?"

  "They got one helluva lot of excitement when we brought out them German broads-those friends of Cindy's, remember?" Paul smirked. "They wanted to do a little sunbathing like they do on their Mediterranean vacations. That brought the offshore workers out to the railings. And those kraut chicks didn't seem to give a damn. They're used to that type of stuff ... man, maybe we're on the wrong side of the Atlantic."

  Tom was doing his best to be a trooper, but his eyes gave him away. The disco antics had cranked down the voltage a little, but his nervous system was still buzzing. His eyes were too wide. His smile came out bent. Tom was still terrified, but I could tell his spear gun wound had nothing to do with it. He'd already stopped the bleeding. He was thinking of the dive.

  This whole crazy business is what had him spooked. And who could blame him? His last dive had been Palancar reef off Cozumel. Sunny skies. Calm seas. Shallow azure waters. A palmshrouded coastline within sight. He was aboard a spacious, stable craft. He was surrounded by lithe, smiling yuppies encased in their blinding kaleidoscope of elegant scuba-suits.

  Now look at him. Poor guy. Stuck in a twenty-foot boat in heavy seas and a vicious current. Three dudes decked out in skintight angel flights with bell-bottoms that look like mini cast-nets and shiny shirts sprouting collars the size of kites, bumping and gyrating around him. They're putting scuba gear over this get-up. He turns away and watches filthy brown water foam around a maze of rusted steel beams that span the length of a football field.

  What he can't see from here is that those beams descend 500 feet to the
Gulf's mud floor. We'll see that in a minute-hopefully. A hundred feet above, they support a huge platform with engines, compressors, and living quarters for thirty men. The thing emits a hideous industrial racket-non-stop. It's like ten eighteen-wheelers passing you on the highway. Or the engine room of a tanker. This thing has been sucking crude oil from beneath the Gulf, non-stop, for twenty years.

  Tom started diving ten years ago, at the age of thirty-three, when he lived in Florida. Like most contemporary divers his environmental views are fashionably green. His musical tastes turn to jazz. This whole scene must be a nightmare. The scenery, the racket, the rationale for the racket, the disco-suits-he actually looks pretty good considering.

  He was born in California and moved out while young, thank God. If he'd grown up there this scene might cause him to collapse, jerking spastically, bleeding from the ears and foaming at the mouth. This whole thing is an outrage to fashionable California sensibilities ... a scene to boil the blood and foam the brain of any Sierra Clubber.

  If meat-eaters are "cannibals" guilty of "species-ism" and "mass murder" as proclaimed by Ingrid Newkirk of the Fund For Animals-then these people better stay away from south Louisiana. Or come crammed with sedatives.

  In the Fund For Animal's annual "Body Count," which scores states in its "Cavalcade of Cruelty" by the number of animals "murdered" by hunters as reported by Fish and Game agencies, Louisiana was: NUMBER ONE! The last two years running!

  I'll quote directly from "Body Count," on their website: "If Louisiana is a Sportsman's Paradise as its license plates boast, it is an animal's hell. "Louisiana leads all the states in the Outdoor Cavalcade Of Cruelty with 7,376,541 animals killed by hunters."

  And that's just the half of it. Here we are. Here's this rig: a huge steel spider sucking greedily at Mother Earth's molten innards and converting them to lifeblood of the very system bent on shackling, defiling, and mutilating her. Industrial capitalism's very lifeblood courses through those pipes. The black gold will be pumped to shore via pipeline and start the evil process; refineries will belch their flatus towards the ozone layer; they'll poison streams and wetlands with their toxic excreta. Cars will clog the freeways and foul the air with noxious exhaust. Shell Oil will profit, stockholders will gloat, and workers will be exploited. Fossil fuels, pollution, "obscene" profits ... and ye Gods! a boatload of southern drunkards capitalizing on it all, playing macho around the steel legs, killing defenseless fish for the sheer thrill of it between slugs of beer and belts of whiskey, their boat decks awash with beer foam, empty cans, and the slimy blood of huge fish with sad eyes and gaping holes in their flanks. That evening at a marina crammed with the yachts of the oilfield gentry (rich white trash), a forklift will unload the carcasses amidst a drunken din of whoops, high fives, rebel yells, and sexist jokes. Every rule broken, every ox gored, every sacred cow yanked up on a hook and slit open-then butchered, diced, marinated, skewered, grilled, chewed, gulped, and crapped out of rectums reddened and inflamed by cayenne pepper and whiskey.