by Paul Griffin
It was much smaller than the one that flipped Stef’s Windsurfer. Maybe it weighed fifty pounds. This one looked like the kind I’d seen in movies, pale gray. It didn’t have any interest in the bait. It swam alongside the boat, touching it side to side. I shook Dri’s shoulder. “A dolphin,” I whispered.
Dri leaned out over the bow with me to watch it. “She’s a porpoise. See how her nose is rounded?”
“She looks sick,” I said. The porpoise kept sinking and then flicking her tail to come back flank to flank with the boat.
“She’s a baby,” Dri said. “She lost her mom, I bet. Porpoises get caught in fishing nets all the time. They don’t like to travel alone.”
The harpoon sank into her just behind her head. The porpoise thrashed and swam away with the harpoon stuck in her. She swam out the short length of the rope John had tied to the boat’s railing. The rope jerked tight and bent the railing, and we lost our footing. The boat rocked low into a wave and took in water. At first I thought JoJo was crying, but he was laughing.
John yanked on the line and pulled the porpoise close enough to where I could help him drag her into the boat. She flopped and bucked and the harpoon swung wildly. John and I tackled her.
“How could you do that?” Dri said.
“How could you not?” John said. “What’s wrong with you two, sitting there, watching the thing? I thought you were going to pet it. Wake up. Give me the hammer. Come on, so I can put it out of its misery.”
Dri pulled the hammer from the bench cabinet. John swung down on the porpoise’s skull, but it was thrashing so much he only got in a glancing shot.
The porpoise kicked up with its tail. John swung down again, and this time he connected. I heard a popping sound, and then another one when John swung the hammer into the porpoise’s temple. The porpoise writhed and bucked and flopped right out of the boat. It dove and stretched the line. The boat rocked down again, and we took on more water. John pulled out the slipknot to release the line, and the boat rocked back up. The rope ran out and whipped into the water and then we lost sight of it.
“Bail,” John said. “Bail and get the paddles.”
We bailed, the three of us. John and I scooped with the tarp and Dri used the milk crate setup.
“And you thought you were going to catch a shark?” JoJo said. “Yes, Dri, you were right. John certainly knows what he is doing after all.”
I spotted the harpoon a few hundreds yards away. It poked up straight from the water and then went under and poked up again a few yards farther off, and then it sank fast. We paddled after it, but we never saw it again.
“No dignity,” JoJo said. His laughter faded. “I am telling you, the only thing to do now is take that little knife John has there and …” He drew his index finger across his neck. He picked up the hammer and measured its weight. Dri took it out of his hand and he started laughing again, so hard he cried.
NAVIGATOR’S LOG, AUGUST 29, 10:59 HOURS EST
Last night we made contact with two crews who said they might have seen the kids. Further investigation proved these sightings were of the same vessel, but it was a fishing boat. Folks are beginning to wonder just how much longer Uncle Sam is going to foot the bill for this misadventure.
Day twelve …
John lifted the bait bag from the water. The meat hadn’t been touched. JoJo watched. “At what point does it enter your mind that catching anything with that isn’t a remote possibility?”
John dropped the bag into the water and got back to his lookout. The heel of his hand rested on his knife.
“We’re in empty waters, John. Dead water.” JoJo slipped into the water and floated on his back.
“JoJo, wear a vest,” Dri said.
He ignored her and floated off.
“That harpoon would have worked if he’d helped and not just sat there,” John said. “The porpoise. All Lurch had to do was fall on the thing. Look, he said he wants to die, right? And he keeps saying it. We need to be proactive here. When you know it’s coming, why wait to get hit?”
“I don’t think I want to know what that means,” I said.
“You already know what it means, Matt. Like you haven’t thought about it too? Give me a break. You want to wait for him to flip out with the hammer? You might as well hand it to him. It’s going to happen sooner or later.”
“Jo can’t hear you, but I can,” Dri said.
“I want you to hear me,” John said. “The three of us. We have to be together on this.”
“His wounds will kill him first,” I said.
“Then if he’s dead anyway, why not put him out of his misery? Dri, Matt’s in if you are.”
“I didn’t say that,” I said.
“But it’s true,” John said. “I can tell by looking at you. You know I’m right.”
“No, I don’t. I have mixed feelings.”
“Pick one,” John said. “One way or the other. Just make a decision.”
“He’s not himself,” Dri said. “I know him, and this isn’t JoJo.”
“Well, whoever he is, he’s about to go psycho on us. We have one option here, and the longer we wait to exercise it, the more we put ourselves at risk.”
“Do you really want it that bad, John?” Dri said.
“Want what? I have nothing against him.”
“You do, but I’m not talking about that. I mean do you really want to be the last one left? To die alone?”
“We wouldn’t be out here if it wasn’t for you. The three of you. For all your money, you’re idiots. I’m trying to make the best of a rotten situation.”
“The best?” Dri said. “Are you for real? How do you want to do it, John? No, seriously, I want to know. Are you going to choke him? Cut him?”
“One shot to the head with the hammer. That’s all it’ll take.”
“Right, because that worked so well with the porpoise,” Dri said.
“It was squirming around. I couldn’t get in a solid shot. He’ll be sleeping. We do it then, nice and quiet. He won’t suffer.”
“ ‘We,’ huh? No.” Dri wiped away her tears. “I’m not crying for Jo. I’m crying for you. You have no faith, John.”
“Faith in what?”
“Anything. You tried to keep Matt from standing up for Mr. Carlo.”
“That’s right. You bet I did. And what’s that got to do with this anyway?”
“You want to kill Jo?” she said. “Then do it, but don’t be a sneak about it. Tell him you’re going to do it. Tell him to his face.”
“You really are losing it, Dri,” John said. “Maybe that’s how it plays out in one of those fairy-tale philosophy books you read in prep school, some fantasy of morality, but we’re a long way from there.”
“I know where I am,” she said. “I know exactly. And I’m not so lost that I don’t know what I am too.”
“And what’s that?”
“Still human.”
In all our time on the water, that was as close as John came to full-out laughter. “Human, huh? Human means something else to me.”
“I know what it means to you,” she said.
“You’re not human,” John said. “You have enough money that you don’t have to be human. You can pretend to be while you let the rest of us do the dirty work. You’re a spoiled little brat, and you’re way out of your element.”
“And you’re a coward.”
“Okay, I’m a coward then, fine.” He tightened the rag on the handle of his fiberglass knife to give it a better grip.
“Could you actually do it, John?” Dri said. “Could you muster the guts to kill him? I don’t think so. I mean, I know you’re more than willing to sit back when somebody else does it, to run when the shots are fired, but could you swing that hammer yourself? We’re not talking about some defenseless baby porpoise here. We’re talking about a real live human being. Could you look him in the eye and then take him out?”
“Dri, look me in the eye,” John said. “Yes. Yes, I cou
ld, and I will, if it comes to that. I don’t want to, but if I have to, it’s a done deal, no problem whatsoever for me.” He went back to his fishing. “This is a mistake, not coming together on this. We should have done it yesterday. Every minute we let him be this way, we’re giving him permission to kill us.”
“What exactly is he doing that tells you he’s about to go on a murder spree?” Dri said.
“Aside from taking more than his share of the meat and saying that if we had any dignity we’d slit our throats? He isn’t doing anything at all, and that’s the even bigger problem. We’re all smacking ourselves to stay awake and keep a lookout for a ship, and he laughs at us. We collect the dew off the tarp in the mornings, and he drinks it. We distill and he waits to be served.”
“He can’t do anything anyway with his leg the way it is,” Dri said.
“He can’t keep watch? Where’s the heavy lifting in that? He’s deadweight, and he’s going to take us down with him. He’s used to having all the power, and the only power he has now is to let us live or die.”
“I could see him killing himself,” I said, “and I wouldn’t blame him for it. But why would he take us down with him?”
“Why did those dudes shoot into my father’s van? He’s built that way. At heart, that’s who he is. Sure, he’s everybody’s pal when things are easy, but turn up the heat a little, and now you’re seeing the real JoJo.”
“Even if you were right—and you’re not—he couldn’t hurt us if he wanted to,” Dri said. “He couldn’t hurt himself at this point.”
“He came on here weighing close to three hundred pounds, I’d say. Maybe he’s down to two seventy, and the thirty pounds he burned were water and fat. We’re all weaker than we were twelve days ago. It takes just one last explosion, and there’s nothing we can do to stop him. The fiberglass creaked when he punched it. I thought he was going to put a hole in the boat.”
“You don’t know him,” Dri said.
“Neither do you. You know a medicated version of him who’s got you fooled—who had himself fooled until now. I’m telling you, he’s going to pop.”
“So what are you going to do at this point, John?” Dri said. “Is this one of those ‘If you ain’t with me, you’re against me,’ things? You gonna take us out too?”
“No, I’m just going to keep trying to catch you some dinner, princess. And I’ll keep watching your back too, if only for Matt.” He hit me with those black eyes. “I’m not asking you to side with me over her here. I’m asking you to stand tall for yourself and wake up before it’s too late.”
“If we do this, we’ll never be able to get rid of it,” Dri said. “I’m saying if somehow we’re rescued, we’re still damned.”
“Now you’re scared of going to hell? News flash: You’re floating in it. You’re starting to worry me more than JoJo is right about now, bringing God into this. Just look at us. You think anybody’s watching what we’re doing?”
“I’m scared of what I become if I murder somebody,” she said.
“It’s self-defense.”
“It’s murder,” Dri said. “You’re not touching him, John. I’ll kill you first.”
JoJo screamed. At first I thought he’d overheard us, but he was twenty yards out and upwind of us. He was swimming for the boat. I’d never seen him move so fast. He stopped swimming to kick at something in the water. The water angled up and then dropped with a wave, and I saw it.
Its tail wasn’t flipping up and down the way the dolphin’s had, or even the baby porpoise’s. It was switching side to side.
To: [email protected]
* * *
From: [email protected]
* * *
Subject: DNA SAMPLE CAME BACK ON BODY PART FOUND BY TRAWLER
* * *
Date: Sunday, August 29, 7:29 PM
* * *
It was Estefania Gonzaga. Permission to transfer case status from Missing Persons to Homicide?
Hazy sunset, day twelve …
The shark didn’t seem to be in attack mode. It circled JoJo slowly. It was longer than the dolphin that flipped Stef’s Windsurfer, maybe by two or three feet, but it wasn’t as thick. It probably weighed as much as the dolphin. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from remembering just how much damage the dolphin caused without using a single tooth. JoJo screamed and cursed as the shark’s circles tightened.
We paddled the boat toward JoJo almost as fast as he swam toward us. The shark moved lazily until JoJo kicked its flank. Its body snapped into a C, almost like it was about to bite its own tail. Then it went under. The fin came up and moved fast, first away from JoJo and then right back at him.
I swung out a paddle to JoJo. Dri wrapped her arms around my waist to anchor me. JoJo grabbed the paddle. Just like in the movies, the shark went for the leg first, the bloodiest candy. Its mouth opened and then the hammer struck the top of its head.
John swung down a second time, but the shark was gone. We helped JoJo into the boat. He was so freaked out he pulled me into the water as he tried to pull himself out of it. I don’t think I was in the water for more than a couple of seconds. John and Dri yelled for me to grab their hands, but I didn’t need any help. I pulled up on the bow of the boat and flung myself into it, no problem. My guts burned from the adrenaline surge. I would have wet myself if I had any water in my bladder. The rush of energy buzzed through me and settled in the roots of my teeth. My molars felt like they were going to crack. I tasted metal.
“It’s okay,” Dri said. “We’re all okay.”
JoJo yelled at her in Portuguese. I got that he was telling her to stop saying that. That we definitely were not anywhere in the vicinity of okay. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. His fingertips were deep into the skin on her arms. She groaned and tried to peel away his hands. She scratched at a sore on his shoulder. He screamed and flung her off. Her head smacked the bench cabinet. Blood drops hit the water on the boat deck and spread out like exploding red stars. JoJo stepped toward Dri.
It had all happened so quickly, or too quickly for me to realize I had to stop it, but now the fear that had come from being in the water a few feet away from a shark was being replaced by the fear that JoJo was so out of his mind that he was going to kill Dri. I pushed between them and drove the heels of my hands into JoJo’s chest. A shockwave lit up my left arm from my wrist into my elbow, like I’d punched concrete. JoJo came back at me with a fist to my shoulder. The force of the punch tumbled into my spine, my legs. That one shot took me off my feet. I hit the floor of the boat hard enough to see stars, except they looked more like bits of electric static. The sky was a grainy video, fuzzy streaks of clouds against a speckled, hyper-blue background. John put himself between JoJo and us, hammer raised.
Dri begged, “Please, stop.” I don’t know whether she was talking to John or JoJo or both, but neither seemed to hear her.
JoJo wasn’t focused on us anymore. He was looking out into the water. He pointed out the shark and hyperventilated. The shark circled the boat slowly. It was well beyond arm’s reach, too far away to get hit with a hammer, but close enough that I saw notches in its fin.
I had rolled over onto my hands and knees to watch the shark. The adrenaline was washing out of me, and I was so dizzy I started to fall when I tried to stand. The best I could do was sit, my back against the side of the bench seat cabinet. I wanted to throw up, but of course my stomach was empty. Dri was checking out my scalp. Her fingers combed through my hair. She was freaked. “You whacked your head really hard,” she said.
“You too,” I said. Her hand was bloody.
“No,” she said. “I cut my finger when I grabbed the edge of the bench to break my fall.” The bench seats that battened the cabinets were plastic and chipped. She showed me the wound. It wasn’t bad, a nick in her fingertip.
“You hit your head too though,” I said. “I heard a bock.”
“So did I,” John said.
JoJo was pale and sweaty. He shivered and chattered to himself and pulled his hair as his eyes tracked the shark.
“You still believe in God, Dri?” John said. “Because that right there was the answer to our prayers.”
Dri ignored John. “Jo?”
“Why’d you pull him out?” John was talking to me now. He was right up in my face, so JoJo wouldn’t hear. Not that JoJo would have been able to hear anything but his own moaning. It was so loud the boat vibrated with it, an ugly hum in the fiberglass.
“JoJo?” Dri said.
“Two birds, one stone, Matt. He dies and we wouldn’t have blood on our hands. Idiot.” John eyed the shark. “We’re stuck with that thing now, you know? It’s ours. Yes, we have a nasty hammer, but no way it’s just going to swim away from a boat full of meat.”
“You should be happy,” Dri said. “All you’ve been doing the past week is trying to draw one to the boat.”
“That was when I had a harpoon,” John said. He dropped the hammer and went to the bow and pulled the bait bag out of the water.
“Hey,” I said to John. “Why’d you hammer it?”
“What?”
“You’re yelling at me for pulling JoJo out of the water, but you’re the one who saved him. Why?”
“Because … I don’t know.” John tore the bait bag from the towline and threw it as far away from the boat as he could.
“Matthew, let me see your eyes.” Dri put her thumb tips to my eyelids and lifted them and leaned close to look into my pupils.
“I’m okay,” I said.