Deep Cut

by Nick Sullivan

  “Em… I know it’s a clichéd line,” he finally said. “But in this case, it really does apply. Nothing happened.”

  “I know.”

  They walked a bit further. This time Emily broke the silence, stopping abruptly beneath the brilliant red boughs of a flamboyant tree. “I know nothing happened. But I also know what it looked like.”

  Boone started to speak, but clamped his mouth shut when Emily raised a finger at him. She removed her sunglasses, tucking them into the neck of her T-shirt.

  “I came here for you, Boone. I left my life in Bonaire to come here with you.”

  Her green eyes took on a shimmer and once again Boone began to say something, but Emily reached up and pinched his lips shut.

  “Hang on a tick. I’ve got a point I’m trying to make and I’m going to get there.” She released her lip grip. “You’re a very intuitive man, Boone,” she said, her green eyes flashing up at him. “You can sense things… I don’t even know how you do it sometimes. So, you had to know I’m having a few fits of jealousy around Sophie. It may not be rational, but it doesn’t have to be rational. I know nothing happened, I know you two were just sparring, but if you even for a second thought that seeing you rolling around on the ground with her might make me feel a lump in my throat, then you shouldn’t have done it.”

  Boone felt a throat lump of his own as he gazed down at her. Above, the leaves and flowers of the flamboyant tree whispered in the tropical breeze. After a moment he nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Emily watched him for several seconds before the ghost of a smile appeared on her lips. “I think you are. Okay then.” She popped her sunglasses back on her face and grabbed his hand, pulling him back into a leisurely stroll. “You try your cookie? They’re pretty good.”

  The next morning, as Boone and Emily reached the dive shop, they found Fort Bay bustling, numerous cars and trucks already parked, awaiting the week’s delivery of goods from Saint Martin. Two-thirds of the main pier was taken up by a large green-and-yellow cargo ship, the Mutty’s Pride. Sea Saba’s two forty-footers, Sea Dragon and Giant Stride, were moored ahead of the Mutty’s bow and the Shoal ’Nuff was right where they’d left it, on the smaller Fisherman’s Pier.

  “Grocery Day is de only day fresh food comes in,” their taxi driver said, an eighth-generation Saban known locally as Steady Peddy. He waved at a group of people standing near the Customs and Immigration office. “A lot of de restaurants and hotels send someone down, hoping to get de best produce and meats.”

  Boone thanked Peddy and paid him. At some point he’d need to rent a car, but there seemed to be a particular art to driving on Saba and he didn’t feel confident enough to try his hand at it yet.

  Lucky came out of the dive shop to greet them. “Hey, Boone, I want to thank you again for your help with the engine. Got’er patched up and should be good to go.”

  “Glad to hear it. You our captain again today?”

  “Nope. Anika’s gonna run the show this morning.” He pointed toward the dive boat and Anika, wearing a broad-brimmed Panama hat, gave them an enthusiastic wave. “She was pretty insistent. Just as well, I’ve got a lot of things to catch up on and I need to keep an eye on Tropical Storm Irma. See where she’s headed. Set up a few contingency plans.”

  Boone hadn’t had a lot of experience with major storms during his years as a dive instructor on Curaçao and Bonaire, the ABC Islands being outside the Hurricane Belt. In his entire time in those islands, only Hurricane Matthew had come close, and the damage in Bonaire had been negligible. Even his time at the University of Miami had been quiet. “Is there any cause for concern?” he asked.

  “Still early days. It’s not yet a hurricane and several models have it curving up and out. For now, get diving!”

  “Permission to board, Captain?” Boone called out, as he and Emily brought their gear to the boat.

  “Permission granted,” Anika replied with a demure smile.

  They hopped aboard, joining Anika in the cockpit, where she was clearing the whiteboard of Boone’s repair notes and the last dive’s artwork and dive plan. “What’s the plan today?”

  “We’ve got the group of four from Wisconsin again today. Sea is still calm, so you’re in for a treat. We’re going up to Third Encounter.”

  “Ooh, I read about that,” Emily said. “That’s that huge offshore pinnacle, yeah?”

  “Yes. Eye of the Needle, they call it.”

  “Looking forward to it,” Boone said.

  Anika bit her lip in excitement. “I promise you, this will be different from anything you dived in Curaçao or Bonaire.” She shook her head, a shy smile on her face. “I still can’t believe you’re here, the very one who taught me to dive. It’s so small, this world of ours.”

  “And now, you get to teach me. Looking forward to following your lead. Assuming I’m not stuck on the boat, fixing something.”

  “Oh, you’ll be down there with me. Both of you. Chad can stay up top. Speaking of which, where is he? Excuse me.” She pushed past Boone, giving his arm a little squeeze as she did so.

  Boone quickly glanced at Emily.

  One eyebrow arched up from behind her sunglasses, but she didn’t look at him as she adjusted her gear. A smile grew on her face. “You’re wondering if I’m jealous of her.”

  Boone shook his head slowly. “You’re not.”

  “Good boy. Glad to see your intuition is back. No, you look at Anika like she’s a student and she looks at you as a mentor. Sophie… well… she looked at you quite differently.”

  “You guys talking about Sophie?” Chad set a yellow Igloo cooler down on the pier and hopped into the boat. “Man, she is smoking! What I wouldn’t give to—”

  “Oh, hey Sid!” Emily suddenly exclaimed in a loud, cheery voice.

  Chad went white and whirled around to discover Anika crossing the street.

  “Oh, my mistake,” Emily said, dripping innocence. “It’s Anika. Silly me.”

  Boone stifled a laugh as Chad shook his head and grabbed the Igloo, stowing it in a corner of the cockpit.

  “The divers just pulled up,” Anika said as she reached the boat. “We’ll get an early start.”

  After rounding the coast of Saba and heading north for several minutes, Anika cut the wheel to port and started heading out to sea.

  “The Third Encounter dive site is part of a group of sea mounts,” Anika said, over the roar of the engines. “There’s also Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, and Mount Michel. The big pinnacle at Third Encounter is called Eye of the Needle. It thrusts up from the ocean floor to within ninety feet of the surface. This is going to be a deep dive, so help me watch our divers. Short bottom time, no one below 110 feet. With the steep drop-off and the open ocean alongside, there’s a decent chance of seeing some bigger pelagics. Caribbean reef sharks, hawksbill turtles. If we’re really lucky, maybe a manta ray. Sea Saba actually saw humpbacks out here a few years ago.”

  “Tell me about the sharks,” Boone said. Like many divers, he had a fascination with the sleek predators. Bonaire was not known for sharks, and in his time there Boone could count the number of times he’d seen them on his fingers and toes. Not counting nurse sharks, of course. Those docile bottom-feeders were a common sight in most islands.

  “Saba is known for its reefies, the Caribbean reef sharks,” Anika said. “Some dives you’ll see five or six, and some of them can get pretty big. And we’ve got a lot of nurse, too, of course.”

  “Any other kinds?”

  “Personally, I haven’t seen any other types, but I’ve heard we get the occasional hammerhead or blacktip at the deeper sites. And way out that way—” she gestured to the southwest “—the Saba Bank is a huge, protected area. A few fishermen are allowed to go there. There, you might see tigers, bulls, silkies. But here, you’ll see mostly reefies.”

  “Man, d
on’t turn your back on a reefy,” Chad said, joining them at the wheel as he grabbed a cup of water. “They’ve been getting aggressive.”

  “No, they haven’t,” Anika said with annoyance. “You just pick the wrong times to spear lionfish. Are there a bunch of reefies around? Wrong time.”

  The gossamer-finned lionfish was very beautiful, but it was an invasive species with venomous spines and a voracious appetite. Once nonexistent in the Caribbean, they were now everywhere. “Do the dive ops organize culls?” Boone asked.

  “Sometimes,” Chad said. “But I always carry my spear and tube on the boat. Several restaurants pay good money for them.”

  “Well, no lionfish hunting today,” Anika said. “My boat, my rules. We’re coming up on the mooring buoy. Once Chad ties us off, watch me draw up the dive plan and then I’ll do the briefing.

  Ten minutes later, seven divers slipped beneath the waves. Having three divemasters guiding four divers would normally be considered overkill, but in this case Boone and Emily were largely along for the ride, learning the site as they kept an eye on their Wisconsin quartet. The dive began very differently from a typical Bonaire dive: they followed the mooring line down to a low plateau and then left it, swimming into a wall of empty blue water, the bottom vanishing completely. Boone noted Anika checking a compass from time to time. He took a moment to look at each of the recreational divers—everyone seemed calm and focused on Anika. He glanced over at Emily, her distinctive green and gray wetsuit and lime green fins making her easy to spot. At this depth, the greens had begun to wash out, but her fins were still the brightest of the bunch. He flashed a quick OK sign, and she returned it, then opened her eyes wide, sweeping her arms out in an expansive gesture. Boone took this to mean Look at all this open ocean! He nodded back and flashed another OK sign as an affirmative.

  Diving back in the ABC islands meant largely hugging the reefs, with the occasional wreck dive. Here, swimming blindly into the blue was equal parts exhilarating and disorienting, with nothing but water on every side and the abyss below. But then, out of the blue ahead, a dark shape began to form. A school of horse-eye jacks floated nearby, their silver flanks flashing. As the divers drew nearer, the shape’s features sharpened and the Eye of the Needle was revealed. Nearing it, more and more fish appeared, some in the blue waters surrounding it, others swimming in and out of the nooks and crannies of the coral, all of them drawn to this upthrust focal point in the middle of the sea.

  At this depth, colors became muted, but even so, Boone could tell the pinnacle was completely armored in colorful corals. Anika began a gentle circle around the pinnacle and the Wisconsin divers followed, Boone and Emily bringing up the rear. The group made several circuits of the Eye, and Boone was happy to see no one pushing the depth limit. As he reached the far side on the third time around, he felt a tap on his arm. Emily. She placed her flattened hand vertically on her head, like a dorsal fin. Shark. She pointed. About twenty feet below them, out in the blue, a grayish-brown shark swam gracefully toward the pinnacle. It was hard to precisely gauge size underwater, but Boone guessed it had to be nearly seven feet in length. After a moment it turned and headed back into the blue, where it faded from view. Then another appeared, the same species, but smaller than the first. Boone was just pointing it out to Emily when two loud clangs sounded. A tank banger. Boone looked to the front of the group, noting other heads swiveling to and fro. Sound travels much faster through liquid than through air, and the human brain has trouble determining the direction of sounds underwater. In this case, the context soon made it clear where to look. It was a deep dive and their bottom time was nearly up. Sure enough, it was Anika. Up ahead, she was signaling the divers with a hand gesture that it was time to swim back to the mooring line.

  Back aboard the Shoal ’Nuff, the Wisconsinites excitedly discussed the dive while Boone freed the boat from the mooring. Emily joined Anika in the cockpit and the young Dutch girl offered her the wheel.

  “Lucky said you’re quite the skipper and I should let you drive a bit.”

  “Lucky’s a wise man. Where too?”

  Anika pointed toward the slopes on Saba’s western flank. “You see that gray area? That’s a spot that had a landslide. We’re going to the left of it.”

  Emily throttled up, bringing the little boat just above cruising speed. “Everything’s so close here!”

  Boone joined them. “What’s that little building there?” he asked. A small white building sat atop a sheer cliff and as they drew closer, they could see what looked like zig-zagging walls leading up to it, rising almost vertically from the sea.

  “That’s the old customs house. And those steps leading up to it used to be the only way you could bring goods onto Saba.”

  “Sophie told us about this,” Boone said. “The Ladder, right? Her great-grandmother carried a piano up that?”

  “That’s how the story goes,” Anika said.

  “Bugger!” Emily swore, throttling down. “Who’s this wanker?”

  A catamaran off the port bow that had looked to be stationary suddenly leapt forward, heading for their mooring ball.

  “Stom klootzack!” Anika swore, grabbing the radio mic. After a moment she shook her head and hung it back, muttering to herself. “Not worth it. Head south, opposite the rockslide. We’ll dive Hot Springs instead.” She grabbed her cell phone from a dry bag and snapped a photo of the catamaran as it receded into the distance. “All the Saba dive operations play nice with each other and we usually know who is going to be where… these Saint Martin pleasure boaters can be a pain in the ass. But Customs House is a good night dive, and our divers are skipping the afternoon dive to go hiking and do a night dive instead. We’ll do Customs tonight.”

  In minutes they were moored and everyone relaxed on the deck, enjoying oranges and drinks from the cooler. After a dive, particularly at a deep site like the one they’d just visited, divers had to take a surface interval, allowing the body to off-gas the extra nitrogen that built up in the tissues at depth. Too much nitrogen in your body and you risked decompression sickness, also called the bends.

  Anika was covered up as usual with long sleeves, pants, a Panama hat, and a bandana pulled up over her face. Chad stripped down to shorts and headed for the bow to work on his tan. Anika shook her head, dropping her bandana to pop a slice of orange into her mouth.

  “I like the look,” Emily said, gesturing to Anika’s clothing.

  “I saw some of the Sea Saba crews doing this and thought it was a good idea. Most sunscreens have a couple of ingredients that are absolutely lethal to coral.”

  Boone nodded. “Yeah, they were talking about banning those chemicals in Bonaire.”

  “I tried using a reef-safe sunscreen but it’s white and makes me look like a vampire,” Anika said, laughing. “Of course, when I dress like this, I also look like a vampire.”

  “No, you’ve got more of a mysterious desperado vibe going on,” Emily offered.

  “Oh, I like that much better. So, Chad is going to lead the next dive, if that’s all right. He always insists on doing this one.”

  “This dive site, Hot Springs… where does that name come from?” Boone asked.

  “Once we get down there, you’ll see some yellowish patches on the bottom. Stick your hands into the sand.”

  “Is it hot?” Emily asked, intrigued.

  “Just warm. But if anyone thinks Mount Scenery is extinct, all they have to do is put their hands in there to know something is still going on.”

  After the dive, they headed back to Fort Bay. The Mutty’s Pride was still at the main pier, so Anika took over the wheel and maneuvered them to the berth they’d left from. Boone helped tie up and assisted the Wisconsin divers with their gear. Two of them were looking intently at the viewscreen on an underwater camera.

  “I’m telling you, it’s a nautilus!” one of them said, a blond woman in her late
twenties. “I watched a nature show about them. They’re kind of like a squid with a shell on its back.”

  The other diver seemed skeptical. “I dunno, Amy,” he said. “Nautiluses are only in the Pacific.”

  “Yeah?” said Chad, sidling up to them and tossing a lock of hair aside as he gave Amy a grin. “That’s what they said about lionfish… and look at them now! Naw, this lovely lady is right—that’s a nautilus shell. That’s why I brought you over to it. Pretty cool, huh? Musta gotten out of an aquarium of something.”

  Boone thought that highly unlikely. The nautilus, an ancient cousin of the squid and octopus, had never been seen outside of the Indian and Pacific oceans. He caught Anika snickering under her bandana and sidled over to her, grabbing Emily by the arm as he passed. “What?” he whispered.

  She leaned into them. “That ‘nautilus’ he thinks he discovered is the reason he always wants to do that dive, so he can show off to the divers. That shell is a lawn ornament someone put down there. Chad still hasn’t figured it out.”

  “Oh, that is rich… and you let him go on about it?” Emily said.

  “I always catch the divers later and tell them… and then beg them not to tell him.”

  “You cheeky imp,” Emily said, clearly impressed. “It’s always the shy ones, hiding under bandanas. We’re gonna need to go for drinks.”

  “I’d like that,” Anika said.

  “Am I invited?” Boone asked.

  “Nope!” Emily chirped. “You can take Chad out for a beer while Anika and I have sophisticated tropical drinks, and she tells me all about what you were like back in Curaçao.”

  Anika laughed. “Maybe Martini Night at Scout’s? They have karaoke.”

  “Karaoke! Oh, Booooone… guess what, now you’re invited.”