Fins

by Randy Wayne White

  In a way, he was relieved. He’d lost his temper, which was dumb to begin with. And what if the airboat had been disabled? They would’ve all been stuck on the same reef with an angry, big-shouldered man who’d cut the fins off sharks while they were still alive—and who’d left Luke and the sisters to be cut to pieces by oyster shells.

  The airboat slowed for a moment. The bearded man was talking to someone on a VHF radio. It gave the boy a chance to get a better grip on the fishing rod and glance at the reel.

  The spool was nearly empty.

  For the first time he heard the sisters calling to him. Their words were swept away by rain and thunder. But they appeared to be okay as they bobbed toward a sandy area where waves crashed but there were no oysters.

  Luke had to decide: Should he hang on to the rod until the line broke? If he did, the rental boat might be towed a safe distance away from the oyster reef. He’d be able to hop overboard and cut the rope off their propeller.

  But what if the fishing line didn’t break?

  What if the airboat suddenly accelerated?

  It happened.

  The bearded man, done talking on the radio, slammed the throttle forward. The airboat reared like a horse, then rocketed off.

  Luke braced himself as the last of his fishing line peeled away. When there was no more line, the impact was worse than he could have imagined. Instead of breaking, the reel shattered because the line was knotted to the spool. He was nearly dragged overboard. He battled to hang on, but the rod was wrenched from his hands. It flew skittering across the water as if in pursuit of the airboat’s propeller.

  The boy got up and cupped his hands around his eyes. By then the airboat was a football field away. Even he couldn’t see exactly what happened when the fishing rod hit the propeller cage. But he heard a ratcheting BANG. Next came the screech of metal on metal. The massive engine revved out of control for several seconds. The airboat zigzagged in a wild circle, and then there was another, much louder metallic BOOM.

  Something inside the engine had exploded.

  Luke, the novice mechanic, thought, It blew a cylinder head.

  Maybe so, because the airboat was suddenly and silently adrift.

  It was a few minutes before sunset. In the dusky-bronze light, the bearded man appeared in silhouette. He stood and looked back. Distance shrunk his size and the width of his shoulders. But his bearish voice carried across the water.

  “You’ll pay for this, you brats!” he bellowed. “Stay where you are—I’m coming. And if you run, by God, I’ll find you.”

  Hearing that was scary enough. Even scarier was when the airboat turned and began to glide slowly, silently toward them.

  How was that possible?

  An electric trolling motor, Luke realized. He remembered seeing it mounted next to the propeller cage.

  The boy grabbed an oar and paddled their rental boat toward the sandbar where the sisters stood among a jumble of waves. But the wind was too strong. It continued to push the boat toward the oysters.

  Finally he gave up and slipped over the side into water up to his hips, sometimes his shoulders. It varied with the height of the waves. With him he took a rope attached to the front of the boat. He used it as a tow line. The inflatable suspenders dug at his neck when every fourth or fifth wave caught him from the side. Staying on his feet wasn’t easy. He slogged and bounced and swam the boat toward the sandbar. When he was close enough, he hollered, “The guy’s after us. We’ve got to get our propeller untangled.”

  The sisters had waded out to meet him.

  “What happened?” Maribel called. “Did his engine quit?”

  Beside her, Sabina clutched her necklace. “That’ll teach that drunkard to mess with me,” she said with a wicked grin. Then grimaced at the sound of a nearby lightning strike.

  Luke realized the sisters hadn’t seen what he’d done with the fishing rod—and it didn’t matter. “We’ve got to hurry. If you two can hold the boat steady, I’ll get the knife and start cutting that rope.”

  “There might be a safer way,” Maribel said. She motioned for the boy to follow. “Come on.”

  “How? He’ll catch us. He has an electric motor on that thing.”

  The older girl pointed to an opening in the mangroves. “Not if we hide. Maybe he’ll give up after a while.”

  “But we can’t get our boat across that sandbar,” Luke argued.

  “If Maribel says we can, we can,” Sabina shot back. “If you haven’t figured out how to do it, the drunkard probably can’t, either. Hurry up and do as my sister says.”

  Together, the trio pulled the rental boat as far as they could onto the sandbar. Small cresting waves hammered at the back of the boat. Then a series of much larger waves lifted the hull and floated it halfway across the bar.

  “Every fourth or fifth wave is bigger,” Maribel explained. “Everyone, grab the rope and get ready to pull.” After a short wait, she hollered, “Here they come!”

  A pair of waves sailed toward them. They caught the boat and surfed it across the bar into deeper water.

  “Climb aboard,” Maribel ordered. “We’ll use the oars until we get into the mangroves. There’s a creek that leads to a small bay—I remember seeing it on the chart. The man won’t be able to find us there.”

  Luke rowed with all his strength toward an opening in the trees. The airboat was a vague dark shape, difficult to see through the rain and dusky light.

  The man doesn’t have to find us, the boy thought. His dog will.

  TWENTY-ONE

  TRAPPED!

  Maribel was right. The opening led to a ribbon of deep water between the trees. The boat’s oarlocks creaked with every stroke. Like a water spider, the boat glided the trio around a bend into a bay so shallow that a dozen tall white birds hunted in privacy.

  Mangroves stilled the wind. Lightning popped; the sky flickered. Rain poured down in waves, sometimes lightly, sometimes in a soaking deluge.

  Every minute or two Sabina would look back and say, “I don’t see him. He gave up, don’t you think?” More than once, she declared, “I bet that drunkard finally learned his lesson.”

  Luke wanted to believe her but didn’t. The airboat, with its electric motor, could follow in silence. For all they knew, the bearded man was closing in from the other side of the bushes.

  Maribel realized this as well. “We have to stay quiet,” she said. “No talking unless we have to. If he can’t hear us, he won’t know where to look.”

  The older sister found the chart beneath the console. She studied it and whispered directions while the boy continued to row.

  There was another thin cut through the trees. It opened into a bay that, in Luke’s mind, resembled a pond. It was rimmed by mangroves, and a cluster of palm trees marked the spiral of a low hill in what seemed to be a swamp.

  Maribel had more to worry about than just the shark poacher. She also feared they might have to spend the night in the boat. The sun had dropped below the trees. Overhead, purple-gray clouds absorbed the last of the day’s light and warmth. The summer rain suddenly felt as cold as snow.

  It was better, she decided, to stop at a place where they could get out, flee from the man, and find a place to hide if necessary. It had to be a spot with high ground. Anywhere else, they would have to slog through muck.

  We’ll tie up there. Maribel signaled this order by pointing to the hill and mouthing the words.

  Using one oar, Luke turned toward the palm trees. The boat nosed into the mangroves. Sabina lashed the front cleat to a low-hanging branch. Maribel dropped the spare anchor off the stern, then touched a finger to her lips. “Don’t talk for at least ten minutes,” she warned. “If he’s coming, we’ll hear him. If he gave up, we’ll untangle our propeller and start the engine. Okay?”

  Sabina’s was so cold that her lips were blue. Maribel and Luke were shivering, too. In a forward hatch was the last dry towel. The sisters used it to curl up on the deck, out of the wind, to wait.<
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  Luke? With a wave, Maribel invited the boy to join them and share the towel.

  Luke winced at the idea of cuddling close to the Estéban sisters. So he responded in a whisper, “Somebody should stand guard. Don’t you think?”

  It seemed a good excuse until a haze of mosquitoes descended. Bug spray didn’t work in a drizzling rain. The insects bombarded his ears and burned like pepper when their needle-beaks pierced his shirt and every inch of his bare skin. Finally he gave up. Mosquitoes couldn’t bite through a towel, so he accepted Maribel’s offer. It felt weird at first to squeeze in between two freezing girls. But he was cold, too. The warmth of their bodies felt good through his sodden clothes.

  Soon Maribel looped an arm over the boy’s chest. This was startling. When Sabina did the same, he decided it was okay. Huddling together on a stormy night was the only way to stay warm. He began to relax. A fresh wave of rain rocked the boat. Mangrove leaves clattered in the wind. After a few drowsy minutes, he might have drifted into sleep but for one thing—he heard the distant barking of a dog.

  Next came the muffled voice of a man who ordered the pit bull, “Find those brats!”

  Luke sat up. The voice seemed to come from the other side of the island they were on. Not far away.

  “What’s wrong?” Sabina yawned. “Don’t tell me you need that stupid bucket again.”

  She hadn’t heard what the boy had heard.

  “Maribel, listen to me,” Luke said, giving the girl a shake. “He’s on the other side of the island. I know it—and he’s coming this way.”

  “Who, the shark poacher?” The older sister raised her head, then lay back. “Maybe you were dreaming. No one can hear anything in a storm like this.”

  In a hurry the boy got to his feet. “It wasn’t a dream. Start cutting that rope off the propeller. The dog’s after us. If she finds me first, we might be okay. So I’m going to go check.”

  “Check where?”

  “The island,” he said.

  Maribel sat up. “No! We’re staying together, like we’re supposed to.” She spoke in a harsh whisper.

  Luke knelt and spoke into her ear. “I have to. If I don’t, the dog will lead the guy straight to us. Then what do we do? The dog likes me—she wants to like me, anyway. I’m sure of it. If I can make her trust me, she’ll stop barking, and then the guy won’t be able to follow her.”

  The boy sensed the older sister wavering. “I won’t be gone long,” he promised. “While you’re waiting, try the radio again. It can’t hurt.”

  He, too, had been thinking about the airboat’s strange antenna. It might have caused the static that prevented their calls for help. Now that the airboat’s engine was disabled, maybe their little radio would work.

  “I don’t like splitting up,” Maribel said. “At least take something to protect yourself with.” She reached for the closest weapon she could find—the amber-colored tagging pole—and forced the boy to take it. “It’s better than nothing,” she said. “And the moment you find that dog—or if it tries to bite you—come straight back here. Understand? I shouldn’t let you go at all.”

  Sabina had been too cold to focus on Luke or what he had planned. She did now. She watched him scamper into the mangroves toward higher ground, carrying the pole as if it were a spear. Her imagination trailed the boy up a steep shell mound to a clearing beneath unseen palm trees.

  The girl’s hand moved to her necklace. A sense of dread had turned the string of beads to ice.

  “The farm boy’s right,” she whispered to her sister. “We’ve got to get our engine started. The drunkard’s coming—and I think he plans to kill us.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE

  A clearing beneath palm trees, high atop a mound of shells, was unexpected in a mangrove swamp—an Indian mound, just like the mounds where Luke lived. He was pleased after fighting his way uphill through rubbery roots, then briars. There was a breeze up here, and he could see an expanse of water below.

  But a hill is a dangerous place to be during a thunderstorm.

  “Stay away from trees, and get indoors as fast as you can,” he’d been told by every doctor who had examined him.

  The same doctors had warned that his grandpa Futch was wrong when he’d claimed, “The same person never gets struck twice.”

  It could happen.

  The boy distanced himself from the tallest trees. Using the tagging pole as a cane, he found the mound’s highest peak and looked down. Every few seconds a silent flare of lightning brightened his view of the bay. The rumbling darkness that followed gave him time to wonder why the pit bull had stopped barking.

  It also gave him time to witness the shark-poaching gang at work.

  The fishing trawler he’d seen earlier was anchored in the distance. What he hadn’t noticed was a pole attached to the back of the trawler—another strange-looking antenna. It towered above the water. As he watched, something odd happened: A thread of yellow light leaped from the clouds. At the same instant a silver thread shot upward from the antenna. The threads joined into a dazzling burst of lightning that exploded into forks of simmering blue.

  Like the flash of a camera, the patterns they created lingered behind Luke’s eyes.

  He rubbed his eyes, confused. Why hadn’t the fishing trawler caught on fire? The vessel had just taken a direct hit yet appeared to be unharmed.

  The boy scratched at the burn scar on his shoulder and thought back to a stormy night in Ohio. He had witnessed something similar there.

  Their 4-H meeting had been held in a barn north of Pioneer, the nearest village. When lightning struck the roof of the barn, nothing bad had happened—aside from the noise and a strange metallic odor that had filled the hayloft.

  “I bet those lightning rods saved us,” their 4-H leader had said while the storm raged above. “Farmers who don’t mount lightning rods on their houses and barns are darn fools.”

  When it was safe, their 4-H leader had led them outside to view three tall steel rods spaced along the highest part of the barn’s roof. Each rod was strapped to a copper wire. The wires led to copper stakes buried next to the barn.

  Instead of setting the barn on fire, the lightning bolt had zapped one of the rods. The jolt of electricity had followed a wire harmlessly into the ground.

  Yes … that explained it.

  In Luke’s mind, the second mystery was solved. The shark poachers had equipped their boats with similar protective rods. That’s why they could fish during storms when no one else was out.

  Could the strange antennas also interfere with the use of a small radio?

  The boy thought about it until he saw something else from the top of the hill. A third boat had arrived. It circled away from the fishing trawler in a slow, methodical way. In his head, he pictured several men dumping a long net off the back of the boat. The net would be strong enough to trap a school of sharks below.

  Or was he wrong about a third boat? Maybe it was the airboat. It was possible the bearded man had gotten the engine started and had joined the fishing trawler in deep water.

  Luke felt hopeful—until he heard something fast and heavy charging up the mound toward him through brush. He hefted the tagging pole as if it were a spear and backed away. Whatever it was, the thing kept coming. Shells tumbled. A thick branch broke like a rifle shot. He thought about running, but to where? No way would he endanger the sisters by leading the bearded man and his dog back to the rental boat. The man had threatened to beat their butts raw.

  Luke stood and faced whatever was charging toward him.

  Clouds had muted the last bronze rays of sunset. The light that remained was milky silver, like fog. Beyond the palm trees, bushes churned as something—or someone—tunneled closer. The sound of heavy panting pierced the patter of falling rain.

  The boy took a serious gamble. He patted his leg and called, “Here, girl … over here. It’s me.” He spoke in a cooing voice, hoping it was the dog.

&n
bsp; The bushes ceased moving. The sound of heavy breathing became a low growl. Then the pit bull launched itself into the clearing on four stiff legs. The animal hesitated. It sniffed the air. The animal’s black eyes found Luke, and then it charged, barking wildly.

  From shadows below the mound, a man’s voice commanded, “Find them brats. Get ’em. I’m on my way!”

  Luke started to run but gave up after several long strides. He couldn’t outrun a dog. So he turned and waited. When the dog reappeared from the shadows, he took another risk. He crouched low. He placed the tagging pole on the ground, then dropped to his knees so he and the pit bull were at eye level.

  The dog noticed. It stopped beneath a palm tree not far away. Its stubby tail wagged briefly. The animal whimpered as if eager to make friends. But it was undecided—probably for fear of the punishment that would come later.

  “Good dog … good girl,” the boy whispered. “Yes, you are.” He clapped his hands and spoke sweetly. “Come here, you big baby. Don’t listen to your owner. He’s nothing but a big bucket load.”

  The pit bull glanced back, as if it understood. The animal whimpered and whined—then stiffened at the sound of its owner’s voice. The dog had no choice but to obey when the man yelled from somewhere nearby, “Don’t let ’em go. Sic ’em, you dummy. Why’d you stop barking?”

  Fangs bared, the dog crept toward the boy as if stalking wounded prey.

  Luke backed away several yards. He knew he should be frightened. But he wasn’t—not of the dog. And the bearded man? Luke could probably outrun him. Once again, the boy knelt and spoke softly. He held out his hands to prove he was harmless. Despite this, the pit bull came toward him at a trot, still growling. Its black eyes glittered in the misty light.

  Uh-oh. The dog was going to attack no matter what, the boy realized, because that’s what it had been commanded to do. Worse, he had abandoned his only weapon. The tagging pole, with its steel dart, lay on the ground between them, the dog barking wildly now, close enough to leap after a couple of strides and sink its fangs into Luke’s throat.