Go to the Widow-Maker (21 page)

“I’ll have Ali to run you up the hill,” he called. “But first you got to pick your fish you want”

The Jamaican dock workers, all fiddling around with some small boat or other, had by now crowded up around him until their bare, greedy-looking toes were almost touching the fish, and Bonham suddenly let loose on them that thunderous voice Grant had always suspected him of having. “GO ON! GIT BACK AWAY FROM THERE, YOU BASTARDS, GODDAMN IT!” he bellowed at them, gesturing with the knife. The crowd moved back a reluctant two feet, grinning.

Grant, who was always overly polite to Negroes, was embarrassed but the crowd itself didn’t seem to mind at all.

“Here, come on, Grant! Before these buggers rob me blind.” But when Grant chose two of the biggest grouper to go with his own small one, Bonham shook his head and began instructing him about fish. “Those two there are mangrove snapper,” he said pointing with the knife to the two already gutted fish; “they’re the best in the batch, take them.” Beside them he laid Grant’s now gutted grouper.

“But I like grouper,” Grant protested.

“Okay, take this medium-sized one. Instead of one of the snapper,” he added pointedly. “But not the big ones. They’re grainy.” He proceeded to gut the grouper.

While he talked to Grant, the crowd had begun to edge forward again, and one long slender adolescent boy with appreciably visible ribs had come forward far enough to have one splayed foot on either side of the end fish in the line Bonham had laid out on the pier. “GODDAMN YOU, CYRIL, I SAID GIT BACK!” Bonham hollered, as the feet slowly came closer and closer together around the fish, and threw the knife which stuck in the wood pier six inches from the fish’s tail. Reluctantly the boy, his hands still behind his back and still grinning, moved back away.

Grant had already moved away, still embarrassed. At the car he threw the three fish in the back, their iridescent colors now faded and gone as if they had dried up inward.

As Ali climbed in behind the wheel, Grant looked back once and Bonham who had retrieved his knife, as if sensing the look, glanced up and grinned and waved the knife at him.

Then they were grinding up the hill in the old station wagon.

Grant the hunter was coming home with his catch. But he would rather have taken a beating than go back to that goddamned unhappy miserable but beautiful villa where he had to go, even with the fish.

Down below on the dock, Bonham watched them thoughtfully until they were out of sight.

T
HE EXQUISITELY HONED
knife cut into the last fish, at the vent, easily and pleasurably and Bonham idly watched his hands go expertly, knowledgeably and delicately about their work as if his mind had nothing to do with it. He loved his knife and always sharpened it himself, never allowed anybody else to touch it.

The knife slid up the exact center of the belly to the chin as soft and easy as if moving through water, or into a cunt, and the slippery, slightly sticky guts slithered out on the dock like prisoners released from confinement. This one had been eatin right good. Four completely whole shiner minnows could be seen through the thin belly membrane. Bonham slit the membrane and shucked them out. One of them was still alive. Laughing, Bonham showed it to the Negroes, who laughed too, and tossed it back in the water. “Lucky,” he called. “He day no come up.”

Automatically his fingers probed around inside the cavity making sure everything was out. Then, pulling them out clean, right up to the chin, he sliced all the guts off neatly at the gill. In fact his mind was not on what his hands were doing. It was on Ron Grant.

As he resharpened the knife on the big soft-Arkansas oilstone, he whistled inaudibly under his breath some idiot tune.

You didn’t find a good easy touch like that every day in the year. Most of them who got passionate about diving didn’t have the money to do more than take a complete pool checkout and go out a couple times. And the ones who had money never got interested. In his four years in Jamaica, Grant was only the third. Sam Finer had been the second. Last year. Then, this year, Grant.

He had been sittin in the shop with his feet up on the desk. There was some rocknroll on the radio and he listened to it picking his teeth, feeling the little wood instrument slide stealthily between two of his ivories searching meat. He had sensed rather than seen the shadow fall upon the open door up front, and sat up immediately and began studyin some regulator sales diagrams which lay on the desk for that express purpose. He really knew them by heart. Anyway regulators weren’t all that much different from each other once you understood them except maybe the Northhill which only had one adjustable part compared to the eight to seventeen of the others.

She was a tall broad, fairly, with her hair cut short around her ears and back of her neck. Light behind her couldn’t see her face. Not a bad corpus, and she didn’t have any slip on. Kind of light in the tits department. And she walked funny; lumpish. Then he got up and she turned and he saw her face and saw that she was old, fifty-three, fifty-five. And there was something else. He at once didn’t like it. Smile—prissy; and highly self-conscious. Pinched in at the corners to make two sort of self-righteous jowls. Was there a make there? Maybe; it was too soon to tell. But she was old enough he didn’t really care.

“Do you teach skindiving?” Prissy voice, too; self-adoring.

“I certainly do, Mam.” He let his face open up in a grin. “Especially to pretty ladies, Mam. That’s my specialty.” He especially made it flattery, and not any kind of a make.

And a remarkable change occurred in her. The corners relaxed so the smile opened out into a real one, and her dark eyes opened more and got deep and friendly, had real warmth. That way she wasn’t really bad looking, for an old one.

“Oh, it’s not for me!” she said in some confusion. “It’s for a friend of mine. My foster-son, really. Who is coming down. Today. He wants—” She reached in her purse as if she knew just where it was and pulled out and held up a wire as if she needed it for confirmation. “—he wants to learn skindiving.”

“Then you’ve come to just the right place, Mam,” he said putting heartiness in his voice.

Then a remarkable thing happened. For no reason that he could see the jowls clamped down again and the eyes got small and undeep again and the anxiety, or whatever it was, came back on her. Curiously, it even showed in the position of her back, which seemed to slightly bow itself suddenly. It was then that he knew she was crazy. Or awful close to it.

“We’re staying with the Countess de Blystein,” she said; very prissy.

“I know the Countess,” Bonham said promptly. “Not well, of course.” He did. He had met her. Everybody in the town knew Evelyn de Blystein a little.

“Well, we are staying with she and the Count Paul. My husband, myself, and our foster-son. His name is Ron Grant I expect you’ve heard of him perhaps?”

“I think so,” Bonham said. He had noted away the nominative pronoun error.

“He’s a Broadway playwright You must have heard of
The
Song of Israphael.
It ran three and a half years on Broadway.”

“I think so,” Bonham said. “Yes.”

“It was a very famous film. MGM brought it out. It won five Academy Awards.”

“Yes. I saw the film,” Bonham said.

Then he did remember it. He had seen it. About Pearl Harbor. About a sailor and a whore. He’d been in the Navy himself in the war, and he’d liked it. There was no bullshit in it. Or not much. But she was beginning to piss him off. Who cared? He smiled at her. “I remember it very well. I liked it.”

“He’s quite famous, you know.” She didn’t come out and say he was very lucky to have such a client, but it was implied.

“Yes, he certainly is,” Bonham had said. “And what is your name Mam?”

“My name is Carol Abernathy. And my husband’s name is Hunt Abernathy.”

“I see. Your husband’s here?”

“Yes.” She smiled that smile. “I think I told you that.”

Bonham ignored that “And will both of you be comin along, too?”

“No, no. My husband won’t. He’s not interested. He’s a golfer. But I thought I might come along the first day to see.”

“You should try it yourself, Mam. You’ll find its very exciting,” he had said, “and, I think, intellectually stimulating. The undersea life here in Jamaica is one of the richest in flora and fauna in the entire world.”

The smile and the eyes had turned shy now. Vulnerable. “Well, I’m not sure I could do it. I’m an excellent swimmer, though.”

“Anybody can do it. You don’t even have to be a good swimmer. I start people off in a swimming pool,” Bonham said gently, “for the first few days. Until I’ve taught them how to use the aqualung. It’s much safer that way. And my way is to teach safely. Actually, I taught my own mother to skindive, and she is almost eighty. She loves it now.” He kept his face completely open.

The woman was smiling ingenuously now, and the eyes and mouth corners were a bit more open. “Well, perhaps I will. Give it a try, I mean. Tomorrow, then?”

“Be glad to have you, Mam.”

“What time, please?”

“After lunch? Two? Two-thirty? Three?”

“Don’t you have to let your food digest for four hours? Before?”

“Not in a pool, Mam.”

“Very well, at three then. Tomorrow.” She offered him the tight priss smile, this time, and turned to go. Then suddenly she turned back.

And her face astounded Bonham this time. It still had the jowly, pinched-corners, priss look, but now the eyes had become like those of some very knowledgeable jungle cat. “There’s just one other thing.”

“Mam?”

“Ron—Mister Grant—plans on going to Kingston to actually learn his diving, I believe. From a man named Georges Villalonga?” She pronounced it French.

“I know George,” Bonham said. He pronounced it American. “But I don’t think he’s in Kingston any more. I think he went out to the West Coast to work for US Di—”

“Whether he’s still there or not, I would like very much for Mister Grant to do all his diving here, in Ganado Bay.” The voice still had its tight priss sound, but now there was a very sharp edge to it, too. A very sharp edge. “I’d much rather he didn’t go to Kingston at all.” She paused. “Do you follow me?”

Bonham had stared expressionlessly into those eyes for quite a long moment. “I think so, Mam. You mean you’d like him to do all his learning and diving here with me because you trust my ability. Well, I’ll certainly try to help all I can.” Then he made himself grin. “Naturally, I wouldn’t like to lose a good, high-payin customer to Kingston.”

She didn’t smile. “Good. We understand each other. Good-by.” And she turned and stumped—lumpished—herself, in that peculiar prissy bent-backed walk, out the door.

“Mrs. Abernathy!”

She turned back in the doorway.

“Would you mind telling me who sent you to me?”

“Why, yes,” she smiled. “The manager of the Royal Canadian Bank.” She turned and left.

By now he was absolutely certain she was crazy. Just how or in what way, or why, he didn’t know enough to know. Things a guy had to do to make a living. That kind in divin you had to watch very carefully. Be prone to panic. He hoped she didn’t go. But maybe the guy—the boyfriend?—wouldn’t want to go either if she didn’t want to go. Some were like that. Damned women. Well, if he watched her close. He hated to lose two customers right now. Or even one.

Letta’s salary was hardly keepin them goin this month. And this was February.

Well, he had a pool checkout at the Royal Carib this afternoon. One unwealthy tourist.

Probly, he thought as he had gone about getting the gear ready at the back of the shop, this Grant would turn out to be some kind of half-fag highfalutin snob type. If his gir—if his foster-mother was any good example. Well there was no accountin for tastes. As the old woman said as she kissed the cow. But why didn’t she want him to go to Kingston? If they didn’t get so terrible bad he couldn’t stomach it, he could do it. For the money. That kind, the richies, always wanted the top luxury treatment and anything else made them turn up their noses. He would give it to them, if he had it. If he ever got it, ever got a chance to get it.

Deliciously—but with a grinding jealousy of acquisitiveness— he let himself dwell as he worked on the
Naiad
and his trip down to Kingston to look her over. There was hope there. If he could ever get her.

You met all kinds of kooks in this business. That dame, for instance. He was pretty damn sure this Grant would turn out to be a highbrow prick.

The weight of it on his broad back had made the tanks heavier as he carried them out of his old station wagon to go the Carib. That and the fact that he knew he’d have to do it. For the money.

And just think, someday they would all be dead.

The sudden thought opened up a hollow in Bonham, of amazement, disbelief, fear and depression. What he’d like to do this afternoon was go out and kill himself a shark. Whenever he got to thinking of his own eventual, inevitable death, and sometimes it lasted for days, the only thing that could snap him out of it was to get Ali and the boat and go out to his “Ol’ Shark Hole” where there was almost always one or two hangin around and diving down deep and viciously with his fury and his fear spear himself one of those evil foulsmelling bastards with a killing head shot, a six or seven-footer Blue or Tiger or shovelnose. Even if he didn’t make a killing brain shot and had to cut the line, he’d get himself a hell of a ride out of it. And they weren’t goin to do anybody much good after that with a spear through their head from top to bottom through both jaws! Their brothers would take care of them down the line!

Suddenly he wanted very badly to go. He didn’t take any buddies or his customers on these expeditions and usually went alone, with just Ali. Ali thought he was nuts. But it cleansed you and fixed you up, took everything bad away, everything. After that he felt like a man again. After that, a man didn’t have to worry about getting laid.

But he had this pool checkout today.

God! how Letta hated it. When he went shark shooting. Screamed like a fishwife. At the thought of his wife another hollow opened in him, but this one was of a different kind, too painful to bear, much worse than the death depression, and he suavely covered it over with a layer of something else, so it would not appear to be there. He had gone back to thinking about the
Naiad,
and about the equipment for the pool checkout.