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

  Finning closer I focused and-yep, sow snapper, a school of them. Big snapper for this shallow water, I thought, as I cocked an extra band. Thirty feet away I held my breath (no bubbles to spook them) and eased around a beam to ambush the closest and-fortunately-biggest one. When I came around he was staring straight at me from maybe ten feet. But I didn't have my gun up. I started raising it slowly, still holding my breath, and he turned to flee just as I crunched the trigger-SCHLINK!

  Hit a little low. The dreaded belly shot. I hate that on snapper. That delicate flesh makes for a red snapper's exquisite flavor but doesn't hold up well to a spear point. They start spinning and thrashing, making that hole bigger and bigger, and before you get to him flup, he's gone.

  Perfect example here. He swam outside the rig when I hit him, and I followed, looking left, then right, then-whoom! a grey streak shot out from my right. What? A shark! Yes, a real one this time! A blacktip, about seven feet long. I froze in my-well, not exactly tracks-but I froze, just as he chomped into the snapper in a burst of silver scales and shredded flesh. He shook his head twice like a huge bulldog and zoomed off, leaving a cloud of scales and a pathetic little piece of snapper tail slowly drifting with the current.

  Well, that takes care of that, I thought. Who was that masked fish? The shaft dangled below me now, and my pulse rate had definitely edged upward. It had happened so fast, I didn't have the chance to get seriously rattled-I was too stunned. Then I looked around to see if anyone had seen it-nope. Their bubblelines were on the far side of the rig. Too bad. Dialogue is always more credible than a monologue when recounting these events, especially tonight around the fire.

  Forget any more snapper around here, I thought. They shagged ass, along with everything else. For some reason I felt like following suit, so I descended to the very edge of the murk and started swimming upcurrent, towards the rest of the crew. Halfway to them, some grayish-white forms took shape just ahead of me; emerging, then sinking back into the murk. These snapper were bigger. No wonder Pelayo and them were over here. Geezuz, a whole school of sow snapper. And here was one coming around this beam. I lifted the gun and waited ... shluunk!

  Perfect. The old quartering away kill-shot: the shaft entered a little behind the gills and exited through the snout. He keeled over on his side motionless. I like this. No hassle fighting him. No chance of losing him as he thrashes against the cable tearing a big hole in his soft delectable flesh again-to become another shark or barracuda meal within the hour.

  No sir. This one would be my meal, tomorrow night. Pelayo had already tied the bag to a beam in the middle of the rig. I grabbed the shaft and started swimming towards it when everything around me panicked.

  I hate to see this. Schools of them-bluefish, hardtails, mangroves, even the lazy lumbering spadefish and sheepshead blazing by, finning frantically, eyes wide with fear. I started finning a little slower, focusing on a huge shadow I'd just noticed at the other end of the rig.

  He was a huge gray blur at first, darting back and forth, nothing smooth or graceful or relaxed about his movements. Each dart would send another school of fish scurrying off. Each jerk sent a jolt of panic through the water and everything in it. I'd never seen a gray blur quite this big, especially at these rigs.

  I got to the bag, focused better, and saw that he was a hammerhead. His girth was what alarmed me, as big around as an oil drum. Worse, he was erratic. From what I hear, this is when they're dangerous. But I knew there has never been an "unprovoked" shark attack on divers off our coast. Val Rudolfich, Johnny Bonck-guys with forty years of rig diving experienceall confirmed it. So what did I have to worry about?

  For one thing, this was a hammerhead. You don't see these hanging up at dive rodeos-none this big anyway. None half this big. But you often see them on A&E's Shark Week. And they're always mentioned along with the great white, tiger, and bull sharks as potential man-eaters. This guy certainly seemed capable.

  We'd seen hammerheads before. Sometimes they'd circle the boat while we were fishing. Sometimes they'd circle the rig while we dove. But those were smaller, eight to ten feet. Those seemed like harmless fish who'd had unfortunate accidents involving their heads as children and came out looking like the horrible results of some genetic experiment involving Whoopi Goldberg and E.T. Or maybe they didn't listen to their mothers and got their head caught under the leg of a spud barge while playing or something, I don't know.

  But down here this sucker looked huge, burly, vicious, hungry, and positively evil-anything but comical. He didn't seem to want to enter the rig. I kept my eye on him as I fumbled with the bag.

  I'd almost finished untying it when something jerked my shoulder. I gasped up a torrent of bubbles and turned around to see Pelayo pointing frantically at the brute, his eyes bulging in his mask, huge clouds of bubbles billowing from his regulator, his arms flailing in a frantic pantomime. I think he was trying to remember all the signals we'd learned during the certification course. But he looked like a traffic cop on fast forward. Above him I could see On-the-Ball and Tom heading up.

  Anyway, Pelayo's point was unmistakable.There is a very universal type of signal involving the eyeballs: when the eyeballs are about three inches across and almost plastered to the front of the mask, the signal is quite clear-LET'S GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE!

  "YES! YES!" I nodded in urgent agreement.. "Certainly! I'm WITH YA! LET'S GO!" My own eyeballs felt like kiwi fruits. My stomach like a deep freeze. My bowels like giving up. We started finning for the surface. Halfway up we met with Tom who had a snapper on his shaft like a shish kebob. I pointed behind us. His eyeballs told me he caught on instantly. When I looked back I saw why. The sucker was following us!

  I'd always had dreams about this sort of thing. You know, something's chasing you and you can't go fast enough. Now it was happening. So I decided not to look back anymore. Finally we hit the surface. Oh sure, they're "ambushers," I know all that, and he was now swimming normally, but he'd sure been excited before.

  First thing we saw was a crowd of rig workers waving and yelling and pointing at us. We couldn't decipher the yells but had a pretty good idea. Pelayo was yelling, too, in between mouthfuls of Gulf.

  "Shoulda seen him!" He gurgled. "Shoulda seen that big sucker!" Pelayo's eyes were wild. He was spitting out water, laughing, screaming. "He grabbed a freakin' snapper off my shaft! Right off, man!" Another mouthful of water. "And I was holding it! Right on the corner of the rig, man. Almost took my arm off! Scared the living hell outta me!" Pelayo was coughing and screeching. "I see this huge shadow come flying outta the murkthen I see that BIG UGLY HEAD! Five feet in fronta me, MAN!then WHOOMM! He grabs the snapper, jerks it off the shaft! Scales, pieces of snapper all over the place! Like to crap in my disco pants, man! Who-wee!

  We were all cracking up. "Bullshit, hunh?" Tom took out his regulator and spurted. "That stuff this morning about the hammerheads was all BULLSHIT?" He laughed and spurted. Pelayo's boat had a fantail that sat low to the water. This wasn't always an advantage. Today it was a heavenly sight. We hurled our guns, bags, whatever into the boat and lunged for the fantail, BC's and tanks still on.

  Amazing what a little incentive and adrenaline does to the old muscles. A wife asks us to help move a sofa and we whine like it weighs two tons. Here, with almost full tanks on our backs, we sprang out of the water like young seals.

  Now we could hear the guys on the rig. "Big shark! Right behind you!" They kept pointing, waving, gesticulating.

  "Yeah!" We waved and nodded back. The sucker had followed us all the way up. Now it circled behind the fantail. Its top fin and tail jutted almost two feet out of the water as he lumbered around. We had a twenty foot boat-including fantail. So this sucker was at least fifteen.

  Fact is, if he'd been bent on attacking, he had plenty of opportunities. He was obviously after the fish we were hauling up.

  "First time, Tom," Paul said, while taking off his weight belt. "First time we've had one come this close. I swear."
r />   "Red sky at night," they say. "Sailor's delight."

  Too bad this sky was black and gray and lit up with flashes of lighting. The western horizon was ugly. "We're in for it tonight," Pelayo quipped as we idled into the back cove and prepared to anchor. "Lookit that stuff! Hey, On-the-Ball," he continued. "You did fix that rip in the tent, didn't you? Looks like we're in for a soaker tonight."

  "With some nice lighting too ... wow!" Just then the sky lit up and the ugly rumbling followed. BOOM-boom-boom, rumble.

  "That low pressure system's just hanging around, I guess. Though it mighta cleared out from the looks of it this afternoon. No such luck."

  Tom was silent. He has a fear of lighting that always struck me as irrational. For hirn, that is. I mean here's a guy who faced down Charlie in the jungles of 'Nam. What's a little lightning? Or so it seemed to me. Anyway, there was no choice but to press on. "Not much high ground on that island either, hunh guys?" I snapped.

  "Hell no." Pelayo gasped. "Nothing at all. Not a damn tree or anything out here. We're the tallest things around ... by a long shot."

  "And the rods on our tents are all metal, hunh?"

  "Every last one."

  Tom caught on and started chuckling, but without much conviction. Then the sound took over, booming from the tent area this time. A '79 spring break classic, "I feel like BUSTIN' LOOSE! BUSTIN' LOOSE! Gimme de bridge-NOW!" Ah, yes, Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers.

  "Talkin' bout BUSTIN' LOOSE," we chimed expertly on the last stanza.

  Chris and Don were already in from their dive and feeling festive, from the looks of events near the fire. "Y'all nailed 'em?" I asked, as we shuffled up.

  "Talkin' 'bout, Bustin' LOOSE!" was the only reply. Their eyes were intense. Don held up The Perfect Woman by the neck and he and Rick bumped her hip from opposite sides with every "BUSTIN'!"

  Then Chris jumped out from behind the tent, pumping his fists in the air with every "bustin"' and squatting down with every "LOOSE!" And sporting a gigantic Rasta wig. The thing was hideous. We burst out laughing. Rick was boogie-ing and bellowing along. I noticed an empty rum bottle in the fire. Rational conversation was pointless for the moment.

  "Any fish-any big ones?" Tom asked while rooting for beers in an ice chest. His shorts were riding down in the back. Paul pointed and laughed. "Remember Dan Akroyd?" he gasped. "Remember the refrigerator repairman?"

  A dead ringer indeed. But Tom was oblivious. He chucked me a can. I popped it open and drank greedily. "And here . . ." he chucked another over to Pelayo who missed it. The Bud thudded against his shoulder, then rolled in the sand.

  "Hey!" he jumped, suddenly clutching his shoulder.

  "Sorry, man." Tom smiled. "Hey, On-the-Ball!" Tom shouted to Paul, who was changing his shorts. "Ready?" He held up a Bud.

  "Freakin'-Aay!"-and he caught it in mid air.

  "We did all right," Chris finally blurted, shaking his dreadlocks. "Got this freakin' thing in Jamaica." he gasped, winded from all that bustin' loose. "When Cindy and I went on that cruise during Easter. It was the only way to get rid of em. Geezuz, those natives drive you crazy over there. Following you around, pawing Cindy, wanting to braid her hair. She was getting scared. Finally I gave the guy twenty dollars for this thing and he ran off ... well worth it."

  I followed him back out to their boat, where he lifted the ice chest lid. "Yep, a nice haul," I nodded. The box was crammed with nice mangroves, triggerfish, a couple of pompano, a beautiful grouper, too.

  "Who's the chick?" I asked as we splashed back. I'd seen her on the chair near the fire. At first I'd thought it was the Perfect Woman. Then I saw her moving. She was well-tanned.

  "The little quadroon?"

  "I guess," I said. "The one the one with the bikini top and shorts over there ... why? Ya mean there's more than one?"

  "There's two," Chris chuckled. "They're cooks and clean-up girls on the house barge. They're not part of the other group. Boy they stressed that. So don't forget. They're pretty sensitive about it. That outfit has a full-service operation though," he laughed. "Fish-cleaning, cooking, cleaning-everything. Oughta hear these chicks," and here he imitated a black accent: "Shoot man, we does everythang but wipe their butts."

  "Customer focus," I quipped, affecting the lisp of an old sales manager of ours, a flaming bull-fruit who spent all of one month on the street actually selling, but who mouthed all the thricehyphenated buzzwords with true conviction, loved paperwork, and was perky at all meetings.

  "Yeah-yeah," Chris smirked. "Anyway, they've been out here about an hour. We saw 'em fishing when we pulled up after the dive. We invited them over for a drink, maybe a dance. Real nice chicks. Already tidying up the campsite. Oughta look inside the tent. Looks like an army barracks. We're gonna pitch in with a few bucks for 'em, give 'em some fish, too." Chris's eyes shifted over my head for a second.

  "Woooh!" something cold on my bare back. I turned around and there she was. The little quadroon, bikini-topped, her red fingernails around a tall, sweat-beaded plastic cup. She was smiling away. A genuine smile, too.

  Here was a doll, her wavy black hair in a ponytail, green eyes, caramel skin. An orange bikini top straining against two coconuts. She was short but curvy, big hips and ass. She pointed with her chin behind me and giggled. "Guy over there says you like these?"

  I reached for the cup and turned around to see Don, holding up a bottle of Bacardi. "Ye-AH!" I yelled. "Thanks darling!" and I guzzled. Man, how that rum and coke hits the spot after an afternoon of beer. First on the palate, then three gulps later the buzz starts, with all that caffeine and fizzle.

  "The Cuervo Gold!" someone yells from my right. And there's Rick, standing on an ice-chest, taking a chug. He finishes just in time to join the rest of us in the second stanza: "The Fine Colombian!"

  And yep, there's Bob, right behind him, holding up a doobie. "Make tonight a wonderful thing! Say it again!"

  We don't miss a beat. This is the theme song from Chris's twoday bachelor party in 1980. Held right here on Breton Island, by the way.

  Gene and Glenn are two buddies that we hang with during the Rodeos. They had passed on the afternoon dive, choosing to stick around the campsite. Glenn fished, with the occasional nip no doubt. Gene, from the looks of it, mostly nipped with an occasional cast. He was never much of a diver anyway, or fisherman, or hunter-more of a "social sportsman." He came along for the ride with his chums. He usually sits around the campsite drinking and cooking and stuff. I think his best spear fishing bag was three triggerfish; never has shot a deer. But he never misses a trip.

  Chris snickered as Gene staggered by, enveloped in rum fumes. "Lit up," Chris whispered with an eye-roll. Then he turned around, caught Pelayo and Paul's attention with a wave and a whistle, and pointed back to Gene, who was bent over, grabbing a tent cord with one hand while he poured from his half-gallon of Bacardi into a forty four ounce big-gulp cup with the other. His head swayed, his enormous torso jerked spastically every few seconds (hiccups). The man had put on weight massively of late.

  Could it be? Was this the same "Gene-Gene the dancing machine?"-or "Mat-cheer?" My parents dubbed him thusly at my twentieth birthday party, if memory serves. They came home from their friend's party to find their den and living room a swirling, bumping, gyrating mass of boogie-ers. The very house shook from the feverish disco beat.

  Gene, as usual at the time, was stealing the show-his legs a blur, his knees rubber, his hips seemingly hinged with ball-bearings. He spun the lovely dark-eyed Gina like a top, caught her in his arms, jerked her onto his shoulders. Barry White was their favorite music. "Gene Kelly," my parents finally explained. "Your friend's another Gene Kelly!" The name stuck. For a while there, Gina and Gene seemed bound for the altar.

  Now look at him. Still single, with the silhouette of Barry White-almost. Also, Barry still has hair. Gene's started thinning during LSU. Now his head looks like Danny DeVito's. We'd been mocking him mercilessly. "Mr. Manatee" we yelled when he hit the water
around lunch. Glenn, his fraternity brother while at LSU, attempted to defend him. "He ain't heavy," he'd say draping his arm around Gene's shoulder. "He's my brother!"

  Sounds stupid, I know. But after six beers it slayed us every time, especially when Gene's had twelve. Later he'd been laying near the water and we all came up and plopped around him, then started writhing around, snorting, bellowing, covering ourselves with sand, mimicking those elephant seals on the Discovery Channel. He laughed and joined in, moving his arm like a big flipper and bellowing heartily. It was early yet.

  Now he was bent over, eclipsing a hefty portion of skyline while pouring his next drink-but vainly. Half the rum spilled on the sand. Hopefully that's where most had gone, because the bottle was half empty-a half-gallon, no less.

  A horrible feeling, we knew it well. Gene had probably peaked an hour ago. The buzz was backfiring now. No more giddiness. You close the eyes and the head starts spinning. Too late to cut down now, you went over the hump. You blew it. No more fun. Now eat something, take two aspirin, and zonk out.

  But he wasn't having that. He wanted that buzz back, dammit. Another eight ounces of rum or so, mixed with ten of Diet Coke. Now some ice ... a little more rum ... ah, yes ... "Whooh!" he yelled with his first sip. A little more Coke? Hell no! He grabbed the rum bottle again and splashed in another four ounces or so, and about ten on his arm.

  "This oughta be good," Pelayo looked around and smirked. Gene didn't hear him. We used to laugh at a friend in this condition, egg him on, spur him to more drinking and lunacy, then stand back for the show. But something about Gene's face stifled us, though none of us was purely sober at the time.

  "Hey, Gene!" Paul shouted, holding out a package he'd just pulled from the cooler. "How 'bout some salami?"

  "Yeah!" The houseboat gals added. "Eat something ... you should eat something." Paul had been talking up Missy and Nicole (their names, I finally learned) since we came in from the evening dive, sitting on his cooler, one on each side. Pelayo kept pointing at him and smirking. "Yeah, Gene" Glenn added. "Genoa salami and provolone cheese. It's dynamite. I ate half this afternoon while On-the-Ball was diving."