Lord of the Deep (7 page)

CHAPTER
8

BILL SHUT THE ENGINES DOWN.

Mikey felt it in his ears, the swelling of silence after hours of thrumming diesels. His fear ran wild in the sudden stillness.

He tested the blade with his thumb. Good and sharp.

Cal and Ernie stood back when he came out, nervously switching the knife from one hand to the other. He stopped and wiped his palms on his shorts.

The Crystal-C sat peacefully on the water, rocking in the long, easy blue swells that moved soundlessly toward the island.

The ocean whispered.

Mikey could hear it.

Come.

He stepped back, looked up. Turned to see if anyone else had heard or sensed it.

Cal and Ernie had gone back to the table and Ernie was flipping the cards with his thumbs, then rolling them back within his beefy palms. Cal flexed his right hand over and over. “Damn near worked my arm off.”

Neither of them said a word about having lost the blue marlin. But their faces told anyone who cared to look that they were flat-out disgusted.

Mikey had never felt so alone in his life.

Did no one care that he was about to die?

Alison stood at the transom looking down into the depths. Her gold hair fell forward, hiding her face. Seeing her brought some sense back to Mikey.

He breathed deeply.

Okay.

He eased up beside Alison with the knife and looked down into the water. It was so beautiful, so radiant, a blue of unparalleled brilliance. It wasn’t just color. It was an almost physical feeling, deep and bewildering. Silvery rays beamed up from the unknowable world below.

Alison stepped back.

Mikey sat on the transom and swung his feet over the stern. They just touched the water. It was warm.

He pulled his T-shirt off and tossed it onto the deck.

“What about the sharks?” Alison said. “Like the ones we saw? I mean . . .”

Mikey shrugged, looking into the water.

“You don’t have to go. You can say no.”

“I have to go.”

“Why?”

Mikey thought.

Why?

“It’s my job. And Bill. He wouldn’t ask me to do anything he thought was dangerous.”

Alison started to say more, but stopped.

Behind her, Ernie noisily dug two beers out of the cooler. Mikey looked back. Ernie tossed one of the beers in to Cal.

Cal caught it and sat with it unopened, watching Mikey.

Alison touched Mikey’s arm.

He turned back, but didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. He didn’t want her to see his fear. But he was thankful that she’d touched him, so thankful. It was as if he’d suddenly been surrounded by a soft blanket. He wasn’t afraid of the ocean, no, it wasn’t that. It was that he had to go
alone
that terrified him. With no one to watch his back or his feet, and that’s where the fear was, behind and below him. He could almost feel the gaping monster jaws opening, coming up on him, sucking him down, pulling him in. He didn’t want her to see his fear.

But Alison had touched him.

He turned toward her.

Her eyes were flooded with worry.

Something Mikey didn’t understand passed between them. He noticed that he was gripping the knife so hard his fingers were cramping. He opened his palm, then closed it again around the hard rubber handle.

Then he slipped overboard.

The ocean rushed into his ears, his nose, the warm watery pressure of a billion miles of sea pressing in on every inch of his body. For a moment he heard nothing. But the sounds came quickly, the eerie clicking and snapping of deep water.

It was clear and clean, but the salt stung his eyes. Everything was a blur. He wished he had the face mask, but the old rubber strap had rotted. He spun around, checking for shapes, for moving shadows.

But there was only the soft, empty blueness.

The thought of his feet dangling like edible tentacles made his skin crawl. He pulled his knees to his chest.

Then came up for air. Breathed.

Went back down.

The prop was jammed with a bulge of line around the driveshaft. It would take some time to cut it all away. He’d have to work fast.

Mikey hacked at the bunched line crosswise, pulling it away bit by bit. He sliced his thumb and jerked his hand back. It wasn’t a big cut, but it was a bloody one. Brownish streamers wafted away.

He glanced around, all the way around. But he had to finish the job.

He hacked at the line as blood drifted off his thumb, a small watery haze a shark could smell a mile away. He went up for air only when his lungs screamed for it.

Bill was peering over the edge. Mikey could see his and Alison’s wobbly shapes when he looked up from below the surface.

Mikey came up, gasping.

“How’s it look?” Bill said.

Mikey breathed greedily, his lungs burning. “There’s . . . a lot of it . . . give me five minutes.”

“Take as much time as you need.”

Mikey filled his lungs and went under.

He knew Bill didn’t want him to take as much time as he needed, but he’d allow it if it was necessary. That was one of the great things about Bill. He was fair. So Mikey worked even harder, slicing and slicing.

Watching for movement in the corner of his eye. For dark shadows.

He stopped. There! Did he see something?

He spun around. Looked out and down.

Nothing.

Had he imagined it? He didn’t think so. The crawling skin came back. The prickles. The warm water suddenly cold.

Fear playing tricks.

Yeah, fear, just fear.

He worked faster, ripping the severed line off the driveshaft until his fingers burned. In his near panic, he just missed slicing his thumb again. But he kept on hacking and pulling until he’d gotten it all, until bits and pieces of fishing line drifted away, suspended all around him.

He burst up and gulped in air, acres and acres of sweet fresh air.

Bill was gone. But not Alison.

He handed her the knife.

She took it and dropped it onto the deck, then reached down to help him aboard.

Mikey grabbed her hand. His arms were sapped rubber, powerless. Blood from his cut streamed down the back of his wrist and stained Alison’s fingers.

Bill suddenly appeared. He reached over and grabbed Mikey’s other hand and together he and Alison pulled him out of the sea.

Mikey rolled over the transom and fell wet and glistening onto the deck. He lay on his back, chest heaving. The sun warmed his face, the sun that had never ever in his whole entire life felt so good, so hopeful and still. So warm. He was alive. He wanted to lie there and sleep forever.

Alison knelt beside him, Mikey’s blood coloring her hand.

Bill said, “When you’re ready, set up the rods. Let’s get back on the road.”

“I’m sorry,” Mikey said. “That was all my fault.”

Bill squatted down on one knee and said, softly, “Maybe. Things happen. But do us a favor, will you?”

He paused, as if for effect.

Mikey sat up, one hand on the gunnel.

“Learn from it.” Bill winked, then stood.

“Already have,” Mikey mumbled.

Bill headed back to the wheel. Passing Cal and Ernie, he said, “I’d like to take another crack at snagging that marlin. He may be mad enough to attack anything we put in the water.”

Ernie said nothing.

Cal slapped two cards on the table.

Bill went to the wheel and throttled up.

Alison sat on her heels, her arms wrapped around her legs. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Mikey said. “Just tired.”

“My dad wouldn’t have been so understanding,” she said. “And Uncle Ernie would still be wringing my neck.” She turned to look back in the cabin, as if hoping they’d heard.

“Bill’s the best,” Mikey said softly.

He struggled up and reset the rods, ignoring the cut on his thumb.

Bill came aft and put the lures out. Finally satisfied, he went back to the wheel.

They trolled in toward the island, then out again, passing over the spot where they’d hooked the blue marlin. After five passes Bill gave up and headed out to deeper waters.

CHAPTER
9

MIKEY SAT WITH ALISON ON THE FISH BOX.

They didn’t speak, and didn’t seem to want or need to.

Mikey’s mind and body were numb. His thoughts came and went slowly and without urgency. Noticing things, yet making no judgments about what he saw. Bill at the wheel, studying the water. Cal and Ernie at the table. Beer bottles bright amber in the sun. Second hand on the clock jumping forward, second by slow second. Alison ignoring her father, yet also drawing him in her sketchbook more than any other subject.

Mikey’s strength slowly returned, but he was still tired. He could sleep for ten or twelve hours if he had the chance.

He was back in the world now. Revived. But he could still remember the feeling of being in the water. The fear. The aloneness. No one to watch his back.

Forget it.

He looked out at the island, so far away. He wouldn’t mind heading back.

He remembered first seeing the Big Island from the Crystal-C when Bill had moved them over from Maui. They’d come on the boat. The mountains from the sea were hazy blue sketches in the distance as they crossed Alenuihaha Channel. The island grew clear and brown and green as they got closer, long black fingers of old lava flows scarring the land.

It was only five months after Bill had walked into his mother’s life. His mom had married Bill on the bow of the boat. Mikey smiled, remembering that perfect blue-sky day. What a great idea, anchoring off Lahaina with skiffs full of friends watching. Mikey’d never in his life seen his mom so happy, so serene and at peace.

Three weeks after that, everything they owned was packed and stowed all over the Crystal-C. Heading out of Lahaina harbor, they looked like the Swiss Family Robinson.

The sun rose as they set out for the island of Hawaii. Mikey’d gone up on the bow and let his face lead, the wind soothing his skin. He was in heaven.

But oh, man, had his mom gotten seasick. So bad she could barely speak. Not him, though. Not even a hint of it. He was made for the sea.

Maybe it was because of the water bed he used to have. His mom had bought it at a garage sale back on Maui. It was just like sleeping on a boat, rocking and rolling. The only problem was the bed had a hole in it. An inch-long stab wound with a glued-on bicycle-tire patch that usually kept the water inside. But sometimes it leaked, and in the mornings when Mikey found his sheet damp, he had to smell it to see if the bed had leaked or if he had.

He smiled, remembering that. He’d never in his life wet his bed. When they left Maui, Mikey gave the water bed to his friend Elroy, whose mother cut it up and made a tent out of it for them. They set it up in the backyard and with white poster paint drew a star and U.S. ARMY on the side. The paint washed away in the first rain, but it was still a good tent.

Now Mikey slept on a real bed that didn’t leak. But it didn’t feel like a boat, either.

“What you thinking about?” Alison said.

Mikey snapped back. “What? Oh, nothing really.”

“Come on.”

Mikey grinned and looked out over the wake. No way he was telling her about the leaky water bed.

They trolled south, the island passing by off the port beam, the long, flat empty sea to starboard. He thought about Alison, still wondering why she acted so weird to her dad.

“When you went in the water?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“What was it like? I mean, was it eerie?”

“It wasn’t any fun.”

“Were you scared?”

“Not really . . .”

He stopped. “Yes,” he admitted. “I was very scared. My thumb was bleeding, you know? And I thought I saw something. But when I looked there was nothing there.”

“Spooky.”

“And then some.”

Alison studied him, smiling with her eyes.

“How’s the cut?”

“Okay.”

“Aren’t you going to put a Band-Aid on it?”

“No. Better to just let it dry out.”

Alison kept watching him.

Mikey crossed his arms. Then uncrossed them. He jumped up and went over to the cooler and got two strawberry sodas and popped the tabs. He brought them back.

Alison took one, still looking at him. She took a quick sip and grimaced at the carbonation. “Bites,” she said.

Mikey nodded. “I like it when it’s ice cold like this, don’t you?”

Alison smiled. Those pale blue eyes. “Yeah.”