Go to the Widow-Maker (22 page)

But as it turned out Grant was not a snooty type at all. Just the opposite, he was a very regular guy. Almost too regular a guy, if that was ever possible. And Bonham, who was much more worldly and sophisticated than he was ever willing to let anybody know—just as he never let them know about his university education—especially people he had to do business with—found him curiously naive, even boyish, for someone who had made as much money and acquired as much fame as he was supposed to have done—as he obviously
had
done.

Well, maybe that was what artistic talent was. He didn’t know. What he didn’t know about artistic talent was just about everything.

He had taken them out to the Royal Carib that first day. So he could work them in with his one unwealthy tourist, a nice young insurance man from downstate Illinois who was staying there, fortyish and beginning to go to fat, the kind of customer he was more used to handling. He would be able to afford to go out twice to the shallow reef and poke around before he went home to tell his pals at the country club about his skindiving experiences. And this way he could work in three paying lessons all at once and save an hour to spend on his constant cruising of the other hotels. He had to drum more business. The insurance man’s goodlooking wife only watched. Bonham had tried, but she was too scared and he couldn’t talk her into a lesson.

That the boyish playwright was Mrs. Abernathy’s lover was clear from the start to Bonham’s jaundiced but unjudging eye. Didn’t make him no nevermind. Fortunately the woman crapped out at the start. She couldn’t learn to clear her mask even sitting down in the shallow end of the pool. She panicked every time. And when he halfway through got her to put the lung on and lie on the bottom at the shallow end thinking that might help, she couldn’t do that either. He hated to lose the money, but at least now he wouldn’t have to take her out and watch her closely all the time.

Grant, on the other hand, was good. He was completely brave, although for some reason he didn’t seem to know it. He caught on fast, and he caught up with and even surpassed the insurance man, who was on his third day, by the end of the lesson.

The second day he took them to the West Moon Over Hotel, because he had to take the insurance man, who was leaving in two days, out for his first dive on the shallow reef in the morning. The West Moon Over was the ritziest and most expensive hotel in Ganado Bay, and for this reason Bonham didn’t usually take people there for lessons unless they were registered there. But he figured a little publicity couldn’t do any harm. So he stopped by in the morning and told the manager who he was bringing in. Naturally they were glad.

The pool was deserted when he gave Grant the lesson and quite suddenly, after he was all through with what he had to do with mask and lung and looking relieved, Grant began to do springboard diving. They had a regulation three-meter board at the West Moon Over (the only one in town except for the Country Club) and Grant just up and climbed it— and on his first dive did a beautiful, absolutely letter-perfect pike forward one and a half. Then he seemed to get caught up in the emotional spirit of it, Bonham sensed (perhaps because the pool was deserted), and began to do all manner of things: a beautiful layout full gainer to which he added both half twist and full twist; back one and a halfs tucked; flying mares, which was a layout swan held halfway down and finished off with a tucked front one; and then he finished it all off with two fulltwisting forward one and a halfs. Bonham thought he had never seen anything so beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

The woman had come along to watch the lesson, but she didn’t seem to think anything very much of the springboard diving, or of any sports, Bonham decided—any sports which she could not do herself, he guessed. Luckily she didn’t come any more after that second day, and the men could be alone together.

Bonham had been around pools and swimming all his life, and had actually swum backstroke for both his high school in Jersey and for the U. of Pa. He knew what that kind of near-letter-perfect three meter board diving entailed. The high degree of nervous and muscle coordination to start with, and then the work. The literally hours and hours and hours of constant practice, over and over and over, the hard falls and faulted dives that landed you flat on the water on your back or on your face. It was then that he began really to admire Grant for the first time. He did them absolutely beautiful, and he was beautiful doing them. Never mind the intellectual, playwright horseshit.

Bonham had always loved springboard diving, and had always wanted to do it himself. But he had always been too big and too heavy for any regulation board. But he knew what it entailed. He had always secretly cursed his own huge and broadassed build, and Grant up on the board was absolutely beautiful with his tiny hips and the very wide shoulders and muscled, wellturned legs. It was a shame he wasn’t built just a little taller all over and he would be a perfect physical man.

When he surfaced laughing after the last dive, he congratulated him, but not warmly. He made it very casual. “You’re pretty good.”

Grant had grinned shyly and swum over. “I used to dive for a Navy team at Pearl. And then I just always sort of kept it up. I like it because it’s exciting and—well, it’s a little dangerous. You
can
get hurt. And I guess I like that.”

“Sure,” Bonham grinned, “that’s the spice. It’s the same with the aqualung with spearfishin.”

They had seemed to exchange a secret glance of special understanding, of complicity even, which the woman—if she noted it at all—did not acknowledge.

Today, squatting on the jetty with his now gutted and freshly washed-down fish, and still whistling to himself inaudibly and almost tonelessly, Bonham thought back again to the physiological revelation he had had of Grant that day of the first springboard diving. Playwright or not, intellectual or not, Grant was an athlete with an athlete’s basic outlook, and Bonham understood athletes. He was one.

That was why it was peculiar to see him with that peculiar woman. It had never occurred to him before, he didn’t know why, but now he began to think of Grant coming in on the buying of the schooner. It might be a very good idea. He didn’t know how much he was worth of course, or how much he would be able to put up. But anything would help. As far as that went. The woman of course would be against it from the word go. And she was clearly very involved in his life and decisions. How to handle her? He would have to think about that.

Tossing all the fish into the big string bag he kept for catches, he walked back off the dock and up the little rise to where Ali would return with the car. It was too soon to tell, really, about Grant. But if he kept up to that basic athlete’s outlook he had shown with the springboard diving, he would come along and come up to snuff. Too soon to tell. But Bonham would know more about that after those four or five days over in Grand Bank. Almost certainly he would
have
to acquire the passion for diving and spearfishing, given his personality. He didn’t know anything about sailing. But he could learn. In some ways he speculated that Grant would make a better partner, and a better friend, than either Sam Finer or Orloffski.

Bonham had his reservations, which he had not told Grant, about both of them. Especially Orloffski. Orloffski was a crude, cocky, loudmouth, stupid insensitive brute. Smaller than Bonham, he was nevertheless strong as hell and built like a pro football player, and he was a more than adequate spearfisherman and diver. But he was a lousy sailor. Bonham had been out with him on the cutter up in Jersey, and while Bonham knew quite well that he himself could handle the schooner all alone, he had watched Orloffski sail and knew equally well that Orloffski could never handle the schooner himself, though Orloffski loudly claimed he could. In addition, Orloffski was a pretty big drunk. Though they were all somewhat of that. But Orloffski was bad. And Bonham also suspected that he was some kind of a psychologically compulsive thief. That was a lot against. Still, what he was contributing to the deal was considerable. So considerable that the deal could not be swung without him.

Sam Finer on the other hand was very smart. And tough. He had come up along some very hard tough route, and his grammar was as bad as Orloffski’s, but he was a smart businessman. “Bars will always make money, Al,” was one of his theories, “because people will always drink.” He knew nothing at all about sailing and admitted it. He was willing to serve as lowliest crew. And diving and spearfishing he adored. And he had the hard cash. But he was a very bad drunk. Worse than Orloffski. Because when he got drunk, he wanted to fight. Most of the time. And he was a mean fighter. Bonham had already bailed him out of three or four scrapes that might have gotten him killed, or at the least sent to jail. His wife would be coming down with him this time for the first time (they had only been married a couple months), and Bonham had never met her. Sam had met her in New York on a business trip, Bonham thought he remembered. Wasn’t she a model?

Well, we will see. We will see. This first general meeting was going to be very important he knew. Very important. He could feel his hands begin to sweat.

O, that ship! O, that ship! If he could only get his hands on her! Get her, and sail her, and pay her off. So he—so the corporation (but of which he would be both President and Captain)—would own her! He could take her anywhere in the world. He could sail her to Cape Verde and the Canaries and take her in the Mediterranean, if anybody wanted to go there.

And from there he could take her right on around the whole damn
God
dam world, if they wanted to go! A free man, in a free ship, and nobody to tell him one damn thing this or that.

Well, they would see next week. He could hardly wait, and at the same time he hoped next week never came.

It was good that damn woman, that Mrs. Abernathy, wouldn’t be around either. Over there maybe he could talk some to Grant without her influence bein around all the time to offset him every night at home.

O
N HIS THIRD TIME
out with Bonham Grant speared his first sting ray. And quite erroneously at least for a while—he decided he had reached a plateau of some kind.

They had gone out, this third trip, to inspect the wreck Bonham had told him about the day before. It lay just off the western end of the harbor mouth in about fifty feet of water. Apparently it had happened during the war Bonham said, when this freighter, a sort of modified Liberty ship carrying American war supplies for somewhere, had tried too late to get out of Ganado Bay Harbor ahead of one of the rare hurricanes that hit Jamaica. It had sprung a leak due to heavy seas, been abandoned, and then had been washed onto a reef there by the winds, where it broke up and sank. US Navy divers had salvaged what was salvageable in her, and the rest was still there broken into huge chunks scattered across the quiet sand.

They had not meant to fish particularly but had taken the spearguns with them anyway since as Bonham said you never knew when you might see something either good to eat or exciting to try. That was exactly how it turned out.

The smashed and broken ship, parts of it lying as far as sixty and a hundred yards apart, filled Grant with a nervous awe for what the sea could do, for what power it could have when really agitated, as he lay on the surface in the lung looking down at it. Impulsively and a little fearfully, he raised his head and looked up into the world of air: the sun was shining brightly, glints of it sparkled cheerfully off the water, the wash rolled him gently and almost lovingly, the air was soft. Rolling over to the right he surface-dived and planed straight down not bothering with the anchorline in his new-found familiarity with the lung. On the quiet sand bottom, which registered 55 feet on the depth gauge Bonham had sold him, the light was almost as bright as it was up in the air.

They had only brought down one gun. It was Bonham’s, a triple rubber variety with a stainless-steel spear which Grant didn’t know the name of, and Grant was carrying it. Bonham carried the same still camera he had brought out with them the first day, an Argus C-3 in William’s plastic case, which Grant suspected Bonham was in the process of trying to sell him. He took a few shots of Grant inspecting various huge chunks of the wreckage and was just in the process of motioning Grant to come over and exchange gun for camera so he could try it out himself, when he looked down at the sand and motioned Grant violently to come. When he did, Bonham descended a few feet and pointed at the sand.

For several long moments Grant could see nothing. Lying side by side, their shoulders touching occasionally, he looked down over the end of Bonham’s pointing, agitated finger and stared and stared. Finally he saw the thing. Buried in the sand which faintly outlined its form with only the top of its head and its eyes actually showing, was a small sting ray a foot-and-a-half, two feet across. As if in some peculiar way sensing it was being observed with malevolent intent, the ugly little thing heaved itself out of the sand and began swimming slowly away like some delta-shaped airplane with flappable wings.

Agitatedly, Bonham motioned for Grant to follow. Grant nodded holding up the speargun questioningly, but Bonham shook his head as if it was hardly worth a spear shot and the subsequent reloading, and drew his knife and glanced at Grant. Grant touched the heavy hilt of his own big knife strapped to his calf which Bonham had also sold him, and finally shook his head. He felt ashamed and cowardly, but he didn’t know enough about it, about how to go about it. Agitatedly, Bonham thrust the camera at him and took off swimming slightly upward.

Again Grant became aware of the almost rapaciously sanguinary quality in the big diver, as he watched. Everything in the sea was his enemy, would hurt him, even kill him if it could. And he in turn would kill it, damage it, destroy it every chance he got, and give no quarter or mercy. Grant watching him felt as if he were looking back through misty eons of time at the history of his race.

Swimming slightly upward, Bonham leveled off about six feet above the ray. It didn’t take him long to catch it though he didn’t appear to be swimming strenuously. Then from above it he dove straight down. His knife was held in his right hand with the butt buried in his palm and the fingers extended along the hilt. The grip made Grant think of a matador holding banderillas. Just above the ugly little creature he braked, leveled, then dipped down with incredible delicacy and stabbed the knife squarely into the head just behind the eyes, wrenched it free and drew back.