by JC Simmons
Wisely erected on pilings, the lab appeared solidly built, strong enough to withstand the forces of powerful southeasters and fierce summer squalls. I did not know if it could survive hurricanes.
We climbed the five wooden steps to the door of the lab. Strong chemical odors wafted from inside. The smell was a cross between a hospital and a sewer; the most predominant odor being formaldehyde.
After seeing the size of the house, I was surprised at the smallness of the lab. But it was build with federal and state funds; built for function, not comfort. The building was twenty feet by forty feet with small windows placed head high. Inside was so crowded with equipment, aquariums, and specimens, one could hardly move about. It was obvious that serious work was taking place.
Even though it was approaching night, the two graduate students were still at work. They were finishing the dissection of a manta ray. A shrimper accidentally caught it in his trawl and radioed the lab and asked if they wanted the ray. The graduate students went out in one of the lab's boats and towed the ray to the beach. Its wingspan was twenty feet with an estimated weight of almost a ton. Rays this size are rarely, if ever, found in this part of the Gulf of Mexico. Work had been going on since early this morning in an attempt to finish with the dissection before dark and the night feeders came inshore.
Anna introduced me to the two lab assistants. One was a big, strapping, rawboned young man who looked faintly familiar. The other was a tiny, unkempt young woman with sun-brunt skin and weather-blown, short, brown hair.
"Jay Leicester," Anna said making the introductions. "Meet the two best assistants a person could ask for, Vickey Fourche and George Lenoir."
They stopped what they were doing, came over and shook hands.
"Hello, Mr. Leicester," the young man said. "I remember you. You're a friend of my dad."
"You Randolph's boy?"
"Yes sir." He smiled.
The last time I'd seen this young man he was fifteen years old, a foot shorter, and a hundred pounds heavier. Now, at six foot four or five, and I guessed around two hundred pounds, he could pass for a pro basketball player or wide receiver in the NFL. He was in his early twenties and, with his reddish-blond hair trimmed in a military crew cut, was the mirror image of his old man, only taller. His gray, sparkling, intelligent eyes danced under thick, blond eyebrows. A smile showed even white teeth. He possessed his father's habit of moving his hands when he talked.
"How is your dad?"
"He's doing great." George fanned the air with wide, heavy paws. "Spent last winter moose hunting in Alaska. Brought home a head with a rack you couldn't get inside this building."
"Well good for him," I said, noticing the young woman had gone back to work, ignoring the chitchat.
"Mr. Leicester is here to look into the shark attack," Anna said, explaining my presence. "He'll be staying at the house tonight."
The two assistants didn't comment. George dropped his eyes; Vickey kept working without looking up. It was an awkward moment, something I had not expected.
Trying to break the calm, I said, "Vickey Fourche. Now that's a good French name. Where are you from?"
She looked up from her work and smiled. "Biloxi. You know Biloxi, Mr. Leicester?"
"Biloxi is my second home. Your Chief of Police is a good friend of mine."
"W.W. is a friend of yours?" she asked with a smile that said a lot. "He's a card, alright. Treated us kids fair. Everybody likes the Chief."
Vickey Fourche spoke with the old Biloxi accent. They pronounce the 'e' and 'r' with an 'au' sound, and eliminate the 'u' altogether. I have a tendency to pick up the dialect if around them longer than a week.
The people who live in what is known as 'Back Bay' are of strong French and Biloxi Indian descent. They have hard, peasant features, not ugly people, but the plain, hard-working looks of men and women of the sea.
Vickey was typical of these people. Even smaller than Anna in statue, she was firmly built. Her eyes were a dark, baleen black and did not show her obvious intelligence. She wore baggy, khaki shorts; a matching, short-sleeve shirt three sizes too big and tied in a knot at the waist. The clothes made her seem a wee person, indeed. She wore no jewelry or makeup. She was barefoot; her feet were wide and callused. Vickey Fourche was woman of the sea, and appeared to belong exactly where she was at this moment.
"Alright boys and girls," Anna said with practiced authority. "Let's wrap it up. The surf has calmed down, we can gig a few flounder for dinner."
In a short while, I found myself wading waist deep in the surf. It was dark, and I held the lantern for George while he gigged flounder using a five-foot pole with steel barbs attached at the end. We dragged our feet along the sand bottom as we waded through the water, not wanting to step on the back of one of the dozens of stingrays scurrying away as we disturbed their resting place. To be stabbed by one of these skates is a painful injury that takes months to heal. In an hour's time, we had an even dozen; Anna and Vickey had gigged eighteen. The excess, I was told, would go into the freezer.
Back at the house, George grilled the flounder with lime juice, onion, and garlic. Anna and Vickey prepared a fresh salad. To my delight, Anna opened a bottle of cold, dry Chablis, a Grand Cru from the Les Clos Vineyard. It was a wine I knew, and one of the very finest from a good year.
The dinner was outstanding, the conversation friendly and relaxed. Vickey told funny stories about Biloxi and my old friend W.W., the police chief. The camaraderie between these three people was genuine, and absolutely sincere.
When the meal ended, Anna excused herself saying she was tired. George and Vickey said they would stay up for awhile. This was good, as I wanted to talk with them, hoping to learn exactly what had happened the day Anna was attacked by the shark. Also, I wanted to find out what had made them so uncomfortable when Anna brought up the subject earlier this afternoon in the lab.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was still early spring on the island. The temperature cooled enough at night that a fire felt good. George built one in the stone fireplace while Vickey poured us a glass of tawny port. Going to my bedroom, I brought back two of my cigars, offering one to George. He declined, saying that he did not smoke, but that it was okay if I did. To my amusement and delight Vickey said that she enjoyed a good cigar. I handed her one of the Charlemagnes.
The fire burned with brilliant red, blue, and green flames due to the sand imbedded in the pine. When asked how he managed to cut and split the wood, George said he used a heavy, single-bit ax that had to be sharpened often. The wood burned like kindling and the colors were mesmerizing.
Vickey, still barefooted, curled up with a blanket in one of the big leather chairs. She looked tired, but alert. She would stare at the fire and then at me, like I might do something strange at any moment.
Deciding to steer the conversation toward the shark attack first, then get into why they reacted in such an unusual manner earlier at the lab, I asked, "Were both of you present when the attack happened?"
"No," Vickey said sleepily, resting her head on the chair back and looking at the glowing end of the cigar. "George was there, but I had an experiment going that could not be left. I wanted to go real bad, but if I had gone the experiment would have been ruined, and it had taken a whole week of work to get to this point. It was disappointing not to get to go, but after what happened, I'm glad I wasn't there to see it."
"There were other scientists with us," George said, waving his big hands in a sweeping motion toward the beach. "Two Parasitologists were on the island studying blood parasites from our samples. When we decided to make the dive, they gladly volunteered to go along, as a break in their routine."
Rolling the cigar between my fingers, I asked, "Exactly why were you making the dive that day?"
George stood, walked over to the fireplace, twirled and smelled his port. "Someone called the lab on the radio, we monitor channel sixteen, and said the sub was visible."
"What boat made the call?"
Vickey sat up in her chair, but kept the blanket around her. "We don't know if it was a boat. In addition to the marine radio, we monitor one twenty-one point eight, the aviation Unicom frequency. Airborne fish spotters help us a lot; they report fish schools, big sharks, and large congregations of them along the barrier islands. Both radio frequencies come through the same receiver."
"How did you people even know about the submarine?"
That this elusive piece of scrap iron still solicited interest along the coast after this many years still amazed me.
George put another pine log on the fire. "I didn't know about it." He turned and pointed at Vickey. "She's the expert on the sub."
She looked again at the glowing end of the cigar and then at me. "I've heard about it all my life. My family runs shrimp boats. All the shrimpers talk about it. When they're working in the area, they warn each other about its presence. A lot of them have ruined trawls by hanging the nets on that submarine."
I knew about the sub, had seen it from the air on two occasions. Our Navy sank it during World War Two. It is only in about fifty feet of water. However the location, between two barrier islands with strong tidal flows, is murky most of the time. On those rare days when the water is clear, the sub's dim outline can be seen from a boat. The shape is obvious from the air.
"It was interesting," George said, sitting back down and pointing to some imaginary spot in the ceiling. "Whoever called gave the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of the sub. I wrote them down. I'll never forget them…thirty degrees ten north, eighty-nine degrees zero four west."
"Knowing the exact coordinates does not surprise me with all the new low-cost Loran and GPS systems on the market today."
"I guess not." George scratched his chin, thinking about it. "We have the GPS systems on the lab's boats. They are the new, lightweight, hand-held versions. These units have more features than I can figure out."
"I'm familiar. Installed one in my airplane. Keeps me from getting lost."
A pine log exploded in the fireplace, sending a shower of sparks out onto the dry wooden floor. George jumped up and stomped them out." Vickey laughed at his antics.
"Was the main reason to make a dive on the sub merely for a break in routine?"
George stared at the fire. "The sub should have made an excellent artificial reef. There are no coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico. Anna was excited because it could have proven to be an important find for a Marine Biologist."
Thinking about the sub for a minute, I asked George, "Was anyone concerned with live ordinance still lying around after all these years?"
"Yes. One of the Parasitologists was a UDT officer in the Navy. We discussed the possibility of live ammo, and everyone agreed not to touch anything without letting him look at it first."
"That was smart, a lot of divers have been killed because of old ordinance."
"It wasn't old ammo that did the damage that day," Vickey said, blowing cigar smoke at the fireplace.
Nobody said anything.
Finally George stood again, waved his arms around with great animation, and said, "I was excited about making the dive, not only from my interest in the sea life, but I'd never dove on a wreck before. The Parasitologist said that the lens from the periscope alone would be worth a fortune, assuming it was still there and we were able to retrieve it."
"What time did you arrive on the dive site that day?"
Vickey threw off her blanket, padded over to the fireplace, and flicked ashes from the cigar into the flame. "We'd gotten the call on a Monday afternoon around four o'clock. It was too late to make a dive that day. Anna decided we'd leave at first light the next morning. This would give us plenty of time to get all the equipment ready. It was then that I made the decision not to go. My experiment would have ruined."
"It's only about ten miles from here to the dive site," George added. "I'm sure we were anchored at the coordinates by seven a.m."
"How was the weather that morning?"
George looked quizzically at me. "Flat calm, hardly any swell running. Why? What difference does the time of day and the weather make?"
Deciding not to try and explain, I asked, "How was the visibility in the water?"
"We could barely see the outline of the sub. I didn't make a dive, so I don't know how the visibility was under the water. Everything happened on the first dive."
"You weren't on the first dive?"
"Bill Williams, the UDT man, and Anna decided to make a recon dive to see how the conditions were. If they were okay, and this was in fact the sub, then we'd all take turns diving. One person would remain in the boat at all times, that's standard practice. I know you and my dad used to dive together, Mr. Leicester. You understand."
"Yes, I'm with you. Now I want you to take it slow, George. Tell me everything about that day as you remember it."
"I have told this so many times…" He rolled his big gray eyes.
"That could be a problem. You may be overlooking something important by retelling it so much. Start it over fresh in your mind. Pretend this is the first time you've ever told it to anyone. Think hard for every detail. There may be something you've neglected because you thought it unimportant."
George leaned forward, put his head in both hands, and sighed. "I remember everyone getting up real early, like four a.m. There was a lot of activity going on. Anna was excited, she wanted to be sure we had plenty of extra air tanks on board, all the underwater cameras loaded, and plenty of extra film. She wanted sandwiches fixed, and plenty of fresh water. If conditions warranted, she planned to stay all day, or until we ran out of air, or got too tired to dive."
"Go on."
"I was running the boat. When we rounded North Point it was still dark. I hit a snag on Raccoon Spit and Anna scowled at me. I was getting in too close to the beach and she waved me out. She wanted nothing to stop the dive that day, especially me running the boat aground."
"How long did it take you to reach the site?"
He leaned back in his chair, rubbed his chin. "There was some trouble getting the GPS locked on to the satellites, but after that it was no problem getting to the coordinates. I'd say half an hour, at most."
"Were you able to see the sub clearly from the surface?"
"We could barely make out the outline of a large shape on the bottom. It could have been anything, grass, dark sand, a sunken shrimp boat. I circled slowly, and we dropped an anchor directly over the spot. Anna and Bill were in the water ten minutes later. The plan was for a twenty-minute dive. If it was the sub, then they'd surface and we'd get a marker down, and the cameras in the water. Three people would dive together, one would remain in the boat."
"Were you wearing wet suits?"
"Yes, we all were. It was chilly that morning. I think the water temperature was around sixty-eight degrees."
"What color were the wet suits?"
"We all wore the same kind of suit. Black with yellow stripes running down the sides of the arms and legs."
I remembered a study done in California on the yellow color. It was referred to as 'yum yum yellow,' because it attracted sharks. The report did go on to say that it was probably as much what the natural food supply looked like, than the degree of the color. Further, it stated that the reflective ability of a color, rather than the tint, could be an attractant.
"What happened next?"
Vickey coughed, changed position in her chair, and concentrated on the glowing coal at the end of the cigar.
"They'd been down about ten minutes, Bill came up out of the water like he'd been shot from a canon. He surfaced near where the anchor rode entered the water, screaming some unintelligible word we could not understand, then went back down. A minute later we saw Bill and what was left of Anna surface about ten yards away, on the portside of the boat. Bill screamed again, and we both jumped in to help."
George was becoming excited and more animated. Trying to slow him down, I asked, "Had you seen the shark at that time?"
&n
bsp; He stopped, frozen into position, looked sideways at the floor as if trying so see into the past. "No. We were in the water before I saw it. A tiger shark, the biggest I've ever seen. He was at least fifteen feet long, and was still trying to get at Anna. Bill kept placing himself between the shark and Anna, but it ignored him, trying for her. Bill is one brave man, I'll tell you that."
Vickey scrubbed her feet on the wood floor, wrapped up in her blanket, found a curl in her hair, wrapped it around a finger.
"I'll never understand why the shark wouldn't attack us. It had to move us out of the way in order to get at Anna. I don't think it bit her again after she surfaced."
Walking over to the fireplace, I knocked the ashes off my cigar. Looking George straight in the eyes, I said, "You think Bill was a brave man, but you and the other scientist were pretty brave, also. It takes a lot of guts to get in the water with a feeding shark, especially after it had already bitten Anna."
George seemed embarrassed. "We hadn't seen the initial attack. Bill had. We didn't know what had happened when we jumped in. It was only after we were in the water that we saw the shark. I don't know if I could have gotten in the water if I'd known what was going on."
"Sure you would," Vickey said matter-of-fact.
"I'll never forget that head. The snout was short and bluntly rounded. The eyes were deadly, black, and unfeeling. It had a huge mouth. It was scary. I'd never seen a tiger over ten feet. I know they are reported to grow to thirty feet, but not around here."
"That's true." Vickey sat up in her chair and twirled the cigar in her fingers. "I've never seen a C. Cuvieri over ten or twelve feet in the Gulf."
"How bad was Anna when you got her in the boat?"
"It was terrible. The only thing holding her together was the wet suit. Every time Bill would pull the suit open to look at the wounds blood would spurt all over. When I saw her I got sick and threw up over the side."
"What'd you do then? Radio for help?"