Go to the Widow-Maker (83 page)

Jim, it seemed, was just about everywhere on this trip, and Grant dubbed him to himself, rather sourly: “Ubiquitous Jim.” And his ubiquity seemed always to place him in proximity to Lucky. He took her off to the other side of the cay to hunt for “booby” eggs, which he cooked for breakfast. During the hours on the ship, he continually took her off forward or aft or below to show her something, explaining to her the intricacies of sailing and the intricacies of its gear, something which hitherto (to Grant’s knowledge) Lucky had shown no interest in at all. On shore in the evenings he cooked her fish especially for her, since she preferred her fish poached to fried, not an easy trick to do over an open fire with no grill. He seemed to know at least as much about sailing as he knew about diving and flying, and he seemed to know at least as much about camping as he knew about sailing. And all of this was made personally available to Lucky, and, of course, to the others, if they wanted to come along and listen.

Jim’s command of sailing lingo and camping lingo was formidable, as was his command of the flying lingo. (He was, for example, in the habit of always saying “Affirmative” for “Yes” and “Negative” for “No” like a pilot.) All of this knowledge was put at Lucky’s disposal. Even Grant, who had done a bit of sailing and had read lots more about it, and who had done quite a lot of camping and backpacking in the Michigan woods and in California, was often unable to understand Jim’s lingoes and had to ask for explanations.

Through all of this Lucky flirted with him. But then she flirted with the captain, flirted with Doug, and even, on occasion, when she forgot herself, flirted with Grant. Grant might have been jealous had he not noted that she flirted with Jim only moderately—not half as outrageously as he had seen her flirt with other guys, or with Jim himself for that matter, back in the very first days in Kingston. Neither did it occur to him to think she might be deliberately moderating her flirting with Jim, curtailing it for his, Grant’s, benefit, or perhaps for nervous reasons of her own. He was incapable congenitally of thinking in such a way.

Jim was obviously captivated by her. But Grant could not blame him for that. And Grant could not bring himself to believe that, even in her present state of fury, resentment and disillusion with himself, she would ever do anything like that to him. He had given her no cause, unless you wanted to count Carol as a cause, and he did not count Carol as a cause. Even if she did, she would not do that to him. (He found that the vague generality of “That” was as far as his mind would go; it balked at anything more specific.) And anyway, he thought rather biliously, she was certainly smart enough to know which side her future was buttered on when that future came to being with him or Jim Grointon. He was determined not to mention it to her. Especially in the light of what he now thought of as her “Fear-of-Whoredom Syndrome” it would be bad, and he was not even going to let on he noticed it. That carefully-studied-out and well-thought-over thing about her morbid overpreoccupation with anything having to do with Whore or Whores had changed a lot of things in his overall outlook.

Besides, he had his own honor to think of. Grant believed that any man who was capable of falling in love with and marrying a woman who was capable of cuckolding him (when thinking generally rather than specifically of himself, the word came easily enough) was a man either guilty of gross misjudgment or indifference, or else very very sick; and in either case deserved what he got. He, Grant, was not any type like that of Raoul-the-South-American to yank his girl, or his wife, out from under a lover and pack her up and whisk her back to New York. He would just simply be long-gone. And he was not the kind of man to hang around and ride herd on his wife to make sure she didn’t do something to him. He would not undignify himself like that.

On the other hand, while he would not undignify himself, the shark incident that he had came very close to undignifying him all by itself. This happened on the fifth or next to last day, when the breeze having fallen, they were diving on the windward reefs to the north and east of North-East Cay. The captain had anchored them over a likely spot, and being already still dressed out from the last dive while the others were not, Grant had gone over the side alone, feet first and holding his mask against his face in the approved manner with his left hand, his double-rubber Arbalete in his right hand. When the bubbles of his entry cleared, he saw below him in water about forty-five feet deep a “rockfish” (that was the only name he had ever heard them called) nosing around some sparse coral growth. He had hyperventilated and gone for him, spearing him with a head shot which while not a killing shot left the fish flapping his tail only very feebly. He remembered noting at the time that because of the head shot there was no blood spoor in the water. Then something shot past him on his right, heading for the fish. Through his mask he could tell that it was a shark even before its hide began to sandpaper his right side along the ribcage, although he was so close he could not even see the dorsal fin. The only way to describe it was that a totally silent express train was passing him inches away at speed. It was at least half as big again as the one he had taken, up above Morant Bay. The curved, muscled, faintly muscle-pulsating sandpaper sheet of its flank continued on past him, on, and on, and on. It was abrading his side. For one insane moment he thought it might just not ever stop, as though its length was in fact endless. Then the gun was jerked from his hand with numbing force. Instinctively he moved both hands, the good one and the numbed one, to push the thing away from him where it was hurting him; but by then the shark was gone. So were his fish, spear and line. He watched the shark plane slightly left, then pass out of sight in the green fog beyond visibility range. The shock of the force was so great it had snapped the stout line, and his gun—which was supposed to float but which was waterlogged from so much use—was sinking slowly to the bottom below him. Grant was astonished, amazed, disbelieving, and somewhat in a state of physical shock. He hit for the surface as hard as he could swim.

It seemed to him afterward that he swam up so hard that he literally swam himself right up out of the water until he was only knee-deep. Whether this was true or not, he was hollering “Shark! Shark!” as loud as he could as soon as his head was out. Then he started to swim for the boat, only a few yards away, looking behind him between his feet every few strokes. When he reached the ladder and grabbed it, he looked up and saw that Doug, Lucky and Jim were all looking over the side and laughing at him, laughing uproariously. Automatically he stopped himself from climbing up.

“What the fuck are you laughing at?” he said. “The biggest shark I ever saw just stole my fish, and damn near rubbed off my whole right side doing it.”

“You came up out of that water all the way to your waist before you fell back,” Jim said. Grant saw him glance with amusement at Lucky. “Where’s your gun?”

“He yanked it out of my hand,” Grant said. “As a matter of fact my hand’s still numb from it. It’s on the bottom. The line snapped.”

“Well, climb on in,” Jim said with amusement. “I’ll go and get it for you.” Then they all three began laughing again.

“I can get it myself,” Grant said stiffly. “Thanks.”

“Well, here. Take my gun,” Jim grinned. He handed his loaded but uncocked triple-rubber gun over the side butt first.

“I don’t need a gun for that,” Grant said. “There’s no more fish down there now anyway.” He swam away from the boat, hyperventilating, looked once all around the wide circle of his visibility range, then dove for the gun lying openly and bright blue on the bottom, and looking strangely incongruous among the coral and sparse gorgonias. When he climbed into the boat, he became aware that his knees were shaking violently and tried to hide this as they all started laughing again. He turned away to get a beer out of the icechest, aware that his back and neck were stiff with hurt pride which he could not relax.

He was aware that Jim thought he had panicked. He himself did not think he had. On the other hand he had certainly been shocked by the suddenness and unexpectedness of what had happened. He sat down with the beer, so that the shaking in his knees would not show, and tried to grin at them, and at least partially succeeded.

“You certainly looked funny,” Lucky said and there was a malicious glint in her laugh. (Later, when they were alone, she would tell him coldly: “Well, if you’re going to do these stupid silly things, you’ve got to expect things like that and take your chances.”— “You don’t exactly seem to feel that way about Jim,” Grant would counter guardedly. And she would come back with, “That’s his profession. You, you’re supposed to be a playwright.”)

“I guess I did,” he said, answering her now, in the boat. “But you should have seen that shark.” He raised his arm to show them his side. It was exactly as if someone had taken a metal comb with file teeth and raked several series of parallel lines horizontally across the tender skin of his side below his armpit. Jim Grointon grinned at him amusedly and said, “I’ll get some merthiolate for that.” Then all three of them looked at each other and burst into laughter again. “It’s only because you looked so funny,” Jim grinned apologetically. Grant found he was able to laugh a little with them. But it hurt.

That night around the campfire they discussed the whole thing again. There certainly
had
been some danger involved for Grant, especially if the shark had hit him by mistake, and even Jim admitted this. And, Lucky put in, she had been well aware of this. Very well aware. And it was that very awareness that had made her, after her first quick fright, so furiously angry at him, at Grant.

“But you notice he didn’t go for you,” Jim pointed out. “He went for your fish. The fact that he bumped you and scraped you up was not deliberate, it was a pure accident.” Jim had had a number of such encounters himself, though never, it was true, close enough for the shark to actually scrape him. “Probably because I’ve made it such a habit to keep looking behind me. I’ve always seen them coming in. We humans are naturally hampered by our particular kind of eyesight. Most fish can see forward with one eye and backward with the other, and register both impressions. Then we hamper ourselves further by our masks, which is exactly like putting blinders on a horse. And there’s no sound, no footsteps or crackling twigs in the sea to warn you. So you have to keep looking back.” Jim had had a number of fish stolen from him by sharks at close range. Never once had the shark tried to go for him too. Only twice had sharks ever come straight after him, and both times he had been down-current from wounded, bleeding fish so that the shark might well have mistaken him for the source of fish blood. Both times he had swum straight for the shark as if to attack him, once with a movie camera once with an unloaded spear gun, and both times the shark had veered off and started to circle. The moment he placed himself up-current from the bleeding fish, he was ignored. “Guys have tried all sorts of experiments with all sorts of blood, beef blood, hog blood, even human blood. None of them ever seemed to attract shark much. Only fish blood seems to do that. I’m not talking about the mob feedings that happened to guys off sunk ships durin the war, naturally, but about normal circumstances.”

Grant, lying on the warm sand before the red coals and flickering flames of the fire, could remember one of these, and for the first time in a long time thought of his old aircraft carrier, now lying rusting away somewhere on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. He also thought of Jim facing down the two sharks with nothing but a camera or unloaded speargun to bump them in the nose if they came on in. He was not sure he would ever have the courage to do that.

“I’m convinced of two things,” Jim went on, “about shark. One, they’re total cowards and scavengers. And two,” he paused here and let the dramatic pause build up, “I’m convinced they know who we are.”

“We? You mean humans? Sharks know?” Grant said.

“Maybe not consciously. But I’m convinced that the word’s gone out in the sea, however consciously or unconsciously, in whatever manner fish communicate, and amongst the regular fish as well as shark, that there is a new predator loose in the sea. A predator which is a direct competitor to shark, and which has even been known to attack and kill shark themselves. And I think that’s why, divers at least, they’re very leary of.”

“That’s hard to believe,” Grant said.

“Not so hard. I’m damn sure they communicate in some fashion or other.” Jim rolled over and up to sit on his knees. “Well, shall we go out tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Grant heard himself say, and felt his neck and upper back becoming stiff again. “Why not?”

“No reasons,” Jim said lightly. “Anyway, we’ll have to make some provisions to look after you better, so this pretty wife of yours won’t worry.” He smiled a sort of private smile over at Lucky.

“I’d worry anyway,” Lucky said in a thin short voice.

“Just the same, you let me get in the water first after this, okay?” Jim smiled at Grant.

“Of course, if you say so,” Grant said evenly. “You’re the white hunter on this expedition.”

He had done other things like this before, Jim, made small dramatic appearances, usurped a sort of parental superiority—generally for Lucky’s benefit; had acted out small dramatic roles, almost always for her benefit too; and Grant had never called him on any of them. And there was still all that other business, the sailing lectures, the camping lectures, the tern egg hunts, the elaborately laid-on process of poaching her fish for her instead of frying it. And yet in spite of all of this, or perhaps even because of it, a curious closeness had been growing up, had grown up, among the five of them on this trip. Perhaps it was simply that there were no other humans anywhere around, nobody else at all to share or participate in any of it, and that this drew them together so closely and gave them the sense of sharing something nobody else would ever have a part of. In any case the close warmth among the five of them seemed to add to and enhance everything that happened. Doug noted it, and commented on it to Grant. And after the first couple of days even the crusty old captain was pulled into it and drawn out to talk, telling longwinded Conrad-like tales of his gunrunning days in Cuba and South America as they sat around the campfire in the night. It appeared quite probable that he might once have worked for Lucky’s ex-fiancé Raoul. He would not, he was moved to confess to them finally, the very last night they were there, be caught dead skindiving, and could not understand anybody who would. Then the next day they packed up everything, boarded the little ship, spent a last two hours spearfishing without spectacular adventure, and set sail for home, their cruise completed.