“I’m sorry. Was that why you got sad?”
“Yes. Will you autograph my copy?”
“ ‘To Rosalind Rock, best wishes from Eleanor.’ Something like that?”
Rosalind giggled. Okay. So far so good. “Shall we get wet?”
GENIUS
Back at the boat, Doom donned mask, fins, and snorkel, intending to retrieve his bicycle from the bottom. He clambered fin-footed over the lifelines, regained his balance, and stepped into the drink off Staggerlee’s port side. When his splash bubbles surfaced and dissipated, he saw the bottom of his boat for the first time. Doom had skimmed enough of his father’s copy of Skeene’s Elements of Yacht Design to know vaguely the elements he was looking at—a strong, full keel for directional stability, cutaway forefoot to enhance maneuverability, keel-attached rudder for safety, full buttocks for buoyancy in a following sea, moderate beam to damp the tendency to pitch. He floated in her element, watching for a long time, imagining her bottom in a seaway, bowling along romantically at her optimum angle of heel, kicking waves aside, centers of effort and lateral resistance equalized, himself and Rosalind arm in arm at the wheel. He ran his hand along her sweet bilge curve and slowly swam the curve forward toward the bicycle off Staggerlee’s bow. The bicycle was gone.
A flash of silver caught his eye near the bow. Something big had shot from the shade beneath the dock. Doom looked for it, whatever it was. Behind him! He spun clumsily and came face-to-face with a five-foot-long barracuda…What a face it was. Long jaws tapered to a nasty point, and snaggled teeth, the front ones pointing straight ahead like thrusting weapons, glinted in the sunlit water. The fish hung motionless except for a flickering pectoral fin. Then its heavily armed jaws began to operate slowly and deliberately as if warming up to chew off Doom’s thigh.
His heart pounded. There would be no escape from this toothy projectile. It could swim faster than the human eye could follow. It would sever his leg at the hip so cleanly he’d not miss it until he tried to swim away. Then Doom’s own blood would make the creature crazy. He had heard about those feeding frenzies. Doom risked a quick glance topside. The Annes were filming him in the water. Billows of blood and offal would make the national news. “Simpleton eaten by fishes beneath his own boat.” The Annes couldn’t see the barracuda because of its natural camouflage, black on top, silver below. He could scream and flail the water for help—and depth charges—or die in manly, stoic silence.
But the fish didn’t move, just hung there, watching, jawing the water. Hadn’t Rosalind told him he had nothing to fear from the denizens? But what if this were a rogue, a psycho piscis?
Doom retreated aft to Staggerlee’s rudder post. The barracuda followed as if attached to Doom by rope. Doom could hardly draw enough air through his snorkel to maintain consciousness. The fish stopped five feet away and trained its cold, flat eye on its prey. Still it did not attack…
Maybe it was just curious. Was that too romantic, curiosity in fish? Doom swam tensely toward it, and now it retreated, keeping the same five feet between them. Doom’s fear faded. This thing was beautiful, if you really looked. He had heard somewhere that cautious swimmers shouldn’t wear shiny objects in the water because barracuda might mistake the flashing for prey and strike. But this creature didn’t grow so huge confusing wedding rings with food. Breath came easier. He watched for nearly an hour, and the barracuda watched Doom back. This fish seemed a marvel of evolution. Doom wondered if the fish felt the same way about him. Probably not.
“Ahoy, Captain Ahab, it is I, Fishmeal—” a man called from the dock. Doom recognized the voice, but the caller couldn’t see Doom in the water. He could hide there beneath the bilge, pretend to be out, but that would only forestall the inevitable. The barracuda vanished. Doom didn’t blame it. If Doom could swim like that, he would have vanished, too.
Duncan Feeney stood on the dock grinning from behind his woolly black beard, which ascended nearly to his eye sockets before the follicles petered out. Professor Goode stood beside him, wavering like a sailor in a force-9 blow.
“Hello, Professor,” said Doom when he had climbed up the dock ladder.
“How have you been keeping, Dennis?” said the professor.
“Fine, Professor. Prison wasn’t an unhealthy experience.”
“You do seem fit. Quite the aquanaut.” Professor Goode had gotten off with a suspended sentence because the judge concluded that a prison term would kill him; besides, no judge interested in public life could sentence an old man that pathetic to prison with the media watching. “I’ve been attending to my critical works. Currently, I’m parsing Crashaw and the Metaphysicals. Perhaps you’d peruse the first draft.”
“I’d be honored, Professor.” Doom felt sad to see the professor so close to death.
“We’ve been searching for you, Jacques,” said Duncan, “but we never thought to look in the drink.”
“You could have just left me alone.”
“But I have an idea.”
“No more ideas, Duncan.”
Duncan and Doom sat around the ship’s table while Professor Goode, limp on NyQuil, fell asleep on the starboard settee.
“This is a fine craft, Dennis. Whose is it?”
“Mine. My father left it to me when he died.”
“Are you going to sell it?”
“I’m going to sea in it.”
“Are you aware that we’re being filmed?”
“Yes.”
“This is a movie?”
“Yes.”
“Is it cast?”
“It’s not that kind of movie.”
“What kind is it, Dennis?”
“A documentary. Call me Doom.”
“Call Me Doom. Very interesting. What’s it about?”
“I mean, I want you to call me Doom. For example, say Good-bye, Doom.”
“Jailhouse moniker? Christ, I wish I’d taken the fall. It’s hell being a man on the run. Identityless. That’s why I raised this beard. Like it?”
“How’s the professor been?”
“Great, never better, mind like a steel trap. He’s behind my idea one hundred percent.”
“He looks like hell, Duncan.”
“It’s okay, he’s a deconstructionist.”
“You haven’t been taking care of him.”
“You haven’t been taking care of him, either.”
“I’ve been in jail, Duncan. That was part of the deal, that you take care of the professor.”
“Wait. Is this a documentary you’re making? Is it? Beautiful! Aren’t you going to introduce me to the artists, Dennis? Doom?”
“This is Anne, and this is Anne.”
“Easy to remember. How do you do, Anne? Anne? I’m Duncan Feeney. The Eleanor Roosevelt concept was mine. I conceived it. That’s what I do. Conceive.” Duncan smiled his charming smile. “Let me put my new conception in succinct terms: Lady Bird.”
“Lady Bird…Johnson?” asked Anne on sound.
“Precisely, Anne.”
“Duncan, you’re not suggesting I write a book by Lady Bird Johnson.”
“You’re the only writer who could.”
“You belong in a home, Duncan.”
“I’m disappointed, Doom. I thought you of all people would grasp the implications and ramifications here. I bet the Annes grasp the ramifications. Don’t they?”
“No.”
“Maybe it’s the climate. You’re probably thinking the hitch in my concept is that coming from us, of Splendor fame, people will think it’s just another fraud.”
“Of course I’m thinking that.”
“Ah, but that’s precisely the point!”
“What is?”
“That they know it’s a fraud! Consider the aesthetic principle at work here. They’ll know it’s a phony, but they’ll pretend it isn’t in order to participate!”
“What?”
“Just like theater! We don’t believe that Hamlet actually stabbed his mother behind the arras. Whoev
er the fuck he stabbed. We pretend we do in order to be astonished. The willing suspension of disbelief!”
Professor Goode moaned in his sleep and began to paw at his face as if arachnids were marching on it.
“Now then, you add in the element of a documentary of the whole process, and there you have another layer of aesthetic ramifications. Documentaries by definition record truth!” Duncan’s eyes looked like two burnt holes in an army blanket. “Only this one won’t. Get it? Do you see the utter originality of that? I told you it was genius. What do you say?”
“I say no.”
“Come on, Doom, Lady Bird won’t fly without you.”
“I landed in jail because of Splendor. Remember?”
“Yeah, but you just said it wasn’t such a bad experience. Besides, they won’t put you in jail for this one.”
“They’ll only pretend to put me in jail?”
“Just think about it, the levels of irony and the manipulation of the medium for aesthetic purpose—let them work on you for a while.”
“I’m sick of irony, and I don’t want to write anymore. I spent two years on the trail, and I had a lot of time to think.”
“What trail?”
“I want something real. I don’t want any more phony things.”
“Well, I’m frankly disappointed to hear that Dennis Loomis has caved in to middle-class pressures. The professor will be devastated.”
“Look at him, Duncan, he’s devastated now. Is he really writing about Crashaw?”
“Of course not. He’s a NyQuil freak. Let me be frank, Doom. The professor has his heart set on Lady Bird. In his state I personally think the disappointment will take years off his life. Please, Doom.”
“Everything is different now, Duncan. I’m different now.”
“I’m desperate, Doom. I need something! It’s hell out there!”
“I’m sorry, Duncan.”
Duncan began to sob. His shoulders bounced with it. “Excuse me, Doom. Pardon me, Anne. Could we cut, Anne? I’d like to cut now.”
But the Annes never cut. That was the whole point of cinéma vérité. They filmed Duncan sobbing.
“I’ve tried, Doom! We’re dying out there in the world!”
Doom watched him cry for a while, watched the professor in troubled sleep slap his toes together, the soles and uppers on both shoes separated, and then Doom melted.
“Look, Duncan, there are some things happening here. I can’t go into them right now, but I might need you and the professor. Maybe I can find you a place to stay for a while.”
“Have you got something going down?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Big bucks?”
“Naw.”
“It’s not cheap keeping an old man. He needed a double root canal and a triple bypass.”
“I might be coming into some money soon.”
“Yeah? Really? Soon? How soon?”
“I don’t know just when.”
“We’re with you, Doom. Whatever’s coming down, you can count on us, no questions asked.”
“Nothing’s coming down.”
“…You realize that this boat is worth a bundolo, don’t you, Doom? I have a keen eye for boats.”
“You still don’t get it, Duncan. I don’t want to sell this boat. This boat is the best thing that’s happened to me in years. I live here. This is home.”
“Okay, Jesus, it was just a thought.”
That night Bert, Doom, and Marvis Puller went sailing. They sailed out ten miles into the Atlantic on a broad reach and back on a fetch. Then they practiced setting and dousing the spinnaker. When they returned, Doom read a library book about the Gulf Stream. It said that the Stream carries a volume of water one hundred times greater than all the world’s rivers combined.
OZZIE’S GOODS
Next morning, two hours before dawn, Doom used Staggerlee’s own head, left the valve up, then ate breakfast at the Flamingo Tongue. Dawn was indeed making eyes at him while she poured his coffee.
“Yesterday I saw a big barracuda right under the dock,” said Doom.
“Must be old Smiley,” said Arnie.
“Smiley?”
“Yep, that ’cuda’s been down there long as I can remember. I used to see that fish when I was a kid catchin’ bait for Able Munger. Remember Able?”
“He was a total asshole.”
“Arnie—” cautioned Archie with a nod at Dawn.
Dawn rolled her eyes at Doom.
“He was a anal orifice.”
“Fully puckered.”
“Man used to drop dead fish on you off the bridge as you come through the Cut.” This, of course, was in the days before Big Al Broadnax had the bridge over Bird Cut blown up. “You got some big-time Yankee TV type on board’s gonna tip you fifty bucks, you don’t want Able Munger droppin’ six-pound rock hinds on his head.”
Doom estimated that the skippers were in their sixties. If they saw Smiley when they were kids, then that made Smiley fifty years old, maybe more. Was that possible, or were they pulling Doom’s leg? He made a mental note to read a barracuda book.
“Old Smiley won’t touch lures, cut bait, live bait, nothin’. One wily fish.”
It was still dark when Doom, Marvis, and Captain Bert cast off Staggerlee’s dock lines and motored out through Bird Cut into the ocean. The tide was slack. A plume of tannin-brown bay water fanned out a mile to seaward. When the tide turned, the ocean would return the bay’s water and add some of its own. Then a plume of clear seawater would fan out into Small Hope Bay. Four times in twenty-four hours the ocean and the bay exchanged fluids like active lovers.
Doom asked for the wheel, and Bert gave it over. Doom had given the Ozzie problem some thought. He had cut out the bottom of a gallon gas can, put Ozzie’s gift-wrapped goods inside, and taped the bottom back on. His plan was this: in Doris’s boat, Ozzie would anchor as close as he could to Buoy Number 41 marking the entrance to No Hope Channel, which led through a maze of low mangrove islets, shoals, and sandbars called the Marls. Doom explained to Ozzie that Number 41 was a flashing 2.5-second green light, visible for five nautical miles, which according to the chart was situated four miles northwest of Ponce Pass on a bearing of 280 degrees magnetic. “You can’t miss it, Ozzie.”
“What, I gotta be Horatio Hornblower to get my goods?” Ozzie had responded. “How ’bout we just meet at a stoplight on land?”
No, Doom was adamant. He’d been lax long enough, and now he was thinking. Ozzie was supposed to wait at Number 41, pretending to fish. When he saw Staggerlee, he was to hail her and say he was running low on fuel, and Doom would pass him the gas can of goods. Ozzie would take his goods out of the can, put Doom’s gratuity in, and return the can. There were, however, some holes in the plan. For instance, he’d have to tell Bert the purpose of the trip before in good conscience Doom could enlist his help. Marvis wanted to come along for the ride, so Doom had to tell him too. Marvis and Bert had big mouths.
Captain Bert went forward to the mast and set the mainsail. Doom killed the engine. Then Bert set the number-one genoa. The twelve-knot breeze from the east meant that Staggerlee could sail to Ponce Pass on a gentle beam reach. Sails trimmed and drawing, the wheel came alive in Doom’s hands, and his Ozzie-anxiety vanished for the moment. He was sailing his own boat. The false-dawn wind felt soft and moist on his face. He pulled the bill of his Total Immersion cap close over his eyes for concentration and listened to what his boat was telling him.
“You need a proper course to steer. Always plot yourself a course, no matter what,” Bert cautioned.
“I’m steering 165 degrees magnetic. I plotted it last night. Off Possible Pass, we turn onto a heading of 225 degrees.”
“Hey, I thought you didn’t know anything.”
“I’ve been reading my father’s books. There’s only about a four-degree variation around here, but I took that into consideration.”
“You’re a fast reader.”
“I don�
��t need much sleep.”
According to the speed log, they were making a steady six knots. Bird Cut south to Ponce Pass was a distance of 9.5 nautical miles. Thus, Doom calculated, if they maintained a VMG of six knots, they’d arrive at the pass in eighty-five minutes. Plus another three miles from Ponce Pass to the No Hope Channel marker—according to Doom’s father’s Weems & Plath nautical slide rule, they would meet Ozzie’s boat at 0615.
“Bert and Marvis,” said Doom in a gentle voice, “I appreciate you helping me sail, but you mustn’t ever mention this trip to anyone.”
“Goes without saying,” said Marvis.
“My lips are sealed,” said Bert.
“That’s great. But, well, you did tell the Annes that I own Omnium Settlement.”
“See, Bert, I told you he’d be pissed.”
“I’m not pissed—”
“Hell, Marvis, you told them, too.”
“Only after you already shot your mouth off.”
Bert was embarrassed. “They told me all about their cinema verity business…I’m sorry, I got all excited.” His shoulders sagged.
Doom felt the weather helm tug the bow to port. Spots of glowing phosphorescence tumbled in Staggerlee’s quarter wave; she felt strong, steadfast, and ready for the open ocean. He didn’t want Captain Bert to brood, so he called him Skipper and asked him sail-trim questions, soaking up the concepts.
The curve of the sun had topped the horizon when they turned to enter Ponce Pass between Tequesta and Cormorant Keys. The double-dogleg channel was deep enough, but one had to stay in it. Pelicans walked on the edges. Doom grasped the concept of red-right-returning, but he grew confused in the twists and turns.
“Watch it, watch it. Port, port—”
“Take over,” said Doom, trying to sound calm, but his heart was racing.
“That’s okay,” said Bert, grateful that it was Doom’s turn to be embarrassed. “Ponce’s always been kinda tricky.” Once through, Bert pointed almost dead ahead. “There it is. That’s the place.”
Doom broke out his father’s binoculars and looked over the bow. “I’ve got it, and there’s a small boat just to the south of the buoy.” It was an olive-drab aluminum skiff with an outboard, but nobody was aboard. A fishing rod hung over the stern, its monofilament line shining in the new sun.
Apparent Wind Page 8