White Shark (32 page)

Far below, they heard the first ragged
bars of "The Stars and Stripes Forever," and a cheer went up from the
crowd.

Max
zoomed
his
lens and shot pictures of the bishop and the drum majorettes and the band; he
immortalized the Holy Ghosters and the Elks and the Rotarians.

And then suddenly the parade was by them
and heading for the point, and
Elizabeth
was tugging at his arm.
 
He followed her
down the stairs and out of the house, boosted her up to return the key,
then
let her lead him through a maze of back streets and
alleyways paralleling the parade route.

As they neared the point, the noise grew
louder, and the onshore breeze was laced with the aroma of frying fat.

The town of
Waterboro
tapered to an end, like the tip of
a pencil, in a gravel parking lot that overlooked Fishers Island Sound and was
occupied, usually, by sightseers during the day and by teenaged revelers at
night.
 
Today, cars had been banned, and
replaced by pickup trucks and minivans and aluminum specialty wagons purveying
T-shirts, pennants, mugs, buttons, pins, posters and food... fried, boiled,
grilled, skewered, frozen, raw and alive, served on sticks and spits, in
napkins and newspapers and folds of flaky bread.

Along one side of the parking lot, behind
a rickety fence, lay the town's only public beach, a small strip of sand
fronting the harbor.

Though the day was fine and already warm,
the beach was practically deserted:
 
a
baby-sitter, wearing an Indigo Girls sweatshirt, divided her attention between
a copy of
People
magazine and a
two-year-old who toddled along the water's edge, gathering shells.
 
Beyond, in the harbor, sailboats hung on
moorings, bobbing gently from the wakes of launches that ferried yachtsmen to
and from the town docks.

As Max followed
Elizabeth
through the crowd that waited for
the parade to arrive, he was entranced, imagining that he had been transported
to a Middle Eastern bazaar.
 
Though he
recognized only a fraction of the foods piled high on folding tables, and
though he had eaten breakfast only a couple of hours earlier, he was tantalized
by the rich, exotic aromas.

He stopped before a van selling plump
sausages in doughy rolls, and he fished in his pocket for money.

Ahead of Max, threading her way among
couples and families and men discussing the downfall of the Red Sox,
Elizabeth
sensed that she
was alone, and she turned, retraced her steps and found Max smiling sheepishly
at her as he chewed on a sausage sandwich, red grease drooling down his chin.

She started to speak, then took her pen
from inside her blouse and her pad from her pocket, scribbled a note and passed
it to Max.

He read aloud, "Do you
like
eating greasy dead
things?"
 
Then he grinned, and said
clearly, "Sure... doesn't everybody?"

30

It swam back and forth erratically...
confused, tormented,
tantalized
.
 
It could see very little in the foul and
weed-clotted shallow water; its brain registered a cascade of sounds and
impulses, but none was discernible, none appeared to hold promise.

Some of the impulses were threatening, and
although it did not know fear, it had been programmed to preserve itself and
thus to defend itself, so signals of threat triggered reflexive alarms.
 
And yet none of the threats materialized.

Its store of energy was nearly exhausted;
it had eaten nothing since the fat, sleek thing that had wandered close in the
deep.

It had searched near the shores and far
from them, over sandy bottoms and among clusters of big rocks.
 
Living things that had once patrolled the
shallows were gone, or hidden.
 
None of
the vulnerable things, the easy prey, had appeared above; none of the clumsy
things had entered the water from the shore.

It had noticed changes in temperature and
turbulence, but could not connect them with the lack of food.

Now, suddenly, it knew there was food
nearby, but it could not find it.
 
The
water seemed permeated with the fragrance of flesh, but there was no flesh to
be found.

Slowly, carefully, it thrust itself upward
and let its head break through the glassy film of the surface.

Its olfactories were assaulted by aromas
that tripped a flood of gastric juices in its belly.

Its eyes, once their lenses cleared, saw
living things... not just one, but a host of living things, all gathered in a
herd, all taunting it with their smells.
 
Adrenaline pumped renewed energy through its veins.

But then its alarms took control, warning
it that the living things were
too
many, and too far from the safety of its world.
 
It could not feed on them and survive.

Except for two... smaller ones, apart from
the rest, alone at the border between the worlds.

But to take even those two would require a
complex decision, a decision it had been programmed to make but never had,
a
decision that could end its life instead of preserving it.

Conflict tore at the creature's primitive
brain and incomplete conditioning.
 
Survival
had two paths, which warred with each other.

And so it swam back and forth erratically,
and the urgency within its body grew into frenzy.

31

As the parade made the turn around the
point in front of the parking lot, band members ducked out of line and grabbed
cans of soda from friends among the onlookers; Elks took hits from proffered
paper bags; Holy Ghosters accepted linguisas from their awestruck
offspring.
 
Even the youngsters in the
bishop's entourage were not immune to cajolery:
 
one accepted a lighted cigarette from a compatriot in the crowd — like a
relay runner taking a baton — and took a deep drag on it before tucking it
under his robe.

Max photographed it all, until, just when
he had the pirate smoker in his frame and pushed the shutter release, he heard
from within the body of his camera the whirr of rewinding film.
 
He watched the counter click swiftly back to
zero, then said, "Damn."

Elizabeth
nudged him and raised her eyebrows:
 
what is it?

"Out of film," Max said,
pointing at the counter.
 
"D’you
know where I can buy some more?"

Elizabeth
nodded.
 
She
pointed at Max, then at the parade, and said, "Follow."
 
Then she pointed at herself and used two
fingers of one hand to portray a running figure.
 
She said something else, something that sounded
to Max like ‘ketchup.’

"But how'll I find you?" he
said.
 
"How—"

She put her hand on her chest, then took
his hand and put it on top of hers, and she winked at him.

"Okay," he said, laughing.

She turned away and darted through the
crowd.

It took only a couple of minutes for the
final stragglers in the parade — two boys leading a gargantuan Saint Bernard
caparisoned like a clown — to round the point and head down Beach Street toward
the commercial docks.

The concessionaries were already shutting
up shop, extinguishing fires and bagging trash, hurrying to move to another
parking lot on the other side of the borough, where they would reopen for the
post-blessing feast.

Max bought a candied apple from the last
open stand,
then
ambled behind the Saint Bernard.

As he passed the fence surrounding the
public beach, he saw a little child with its face pressed against the wire
mesh.
 
Its mouth and hands were filthy, s
if it had been eating dirt, and its soiled diaper sagged on one hip.
 
Behind the child, a teenaged girl lay on her
back on the sand, a magazine held above her face.

The child's stubby fingers clutched the
wire, and its big eyes followed Max.

Max looked at the child, then,
impulsively, stepped to the fence, leaned over it and offered the candied apple.
 
"Here y’go, buddy," he said with a
smile.

The child beamed, reached up with both
hands, grabbed the candied apple by the stick, tried to jam the entire apple
into its mouth... and fell backward.
 
The
apple tumbled into the sand.
 
The child
rolled over, clutched the apple and licked at it, gurgling gleefully.

Max turned away and started down the
street.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

As soon as the last food truck had
departed, two volunteers from the Holy Ghost Society appeared on foot and began
to clean up the parking lot.
 
The gravel
was littered with cigarette butts, paper cups, sparerib bones, half-eaten
hotdogs and sandwiches, and sausages that had burst in the cooking and been
shoved off the fire.
 
There were
eggshells and vegetables, squid rings and octopus tentacles, chicken wings and
scattered bits of random entrails.
 
A
sickly sweet odor of olive oil and salad dressing and grease hung like a gas
over the parking lot.

The volunteers wore gloves and carried
camp shovels, and the scooped the offal into plastic bins.

"People’re worse’n pigs,"
muttered one.
 
"Fuckin’ place looks
like a slaughterhouse."

"And stinks like a morgue,"
agreed the other.

Fifty-gallon barrels had been placed
around the parking lot to collect trash, and the volunteers lugged a loaded bin
to the nearest barrel.
 
It was full, as
was the second, and the third.

"Well, shit... now what’re we s’posed
to do?"

"What about that one?"
 
The volunteer pointed at a barrel on the
beach.

His partner shrugged.
 
"Let's try it.
 
I'm not takin’ this crap home with me, for
sure."

Carrying the plastic bin, they opened the
gate to the beach and crossed the soft sand.

The barrel was empty.
 
As they dumped the bin, they noticed a small
child sitting nearby, happily gnawing on something, and even over the rank
stench of garbage they could smell the child.

Ten yards away, a woman lay on her back
with a magazine covering her face.

"Hey!" one of the volunteers
called.
 
"You this
kid's mother?"

The woman lifted the magazine, and they
saw that she was in her teens.

"That'll be the day," she said.

"Well, you know how to change a
diaper?"

"What're you," the girl said,
"the poop patrol?"

Offended, the volunteer said,
"Listen, you..." and he took a step toward the girl.

His partner stopped him with a hand on his
sleeve.
 
"Leave it, Lenny.
 
The
kid's carrying
a
load, so what?
 
You mess with that girl,
the next thing you know you're in court for sexual harassment."

"I'd sooner harass a sheep," he
said, loud enough for the girl to hear.

"I bet you do, too," the girl
said, and she let the magazine fall over her face again.

"Leave it, Lenny.
 
Just leave it."

The volunteers filled the plastic bin
twice more and dumped it into the barrel on the beach, shouldered their shovels
and walked home to wash their hands and have a drink.

32

It lay prone in the shallows, only its
eyes and nose out of water.

Most of the living things had gone, and
the percussive jumble that had thundered on its tympanic membranes had faded
into a distant pattering.
 
Only two
living things remained, and they emitted no threat signals, so its alarms were
silent.

But the tantalizing odor persisted, a lush
stew of flesh scents, stronger than ever, closer than ever.
 
And perplexing, for it did not seem to be
associated with the living things.

It inched forward, pulling itself with its
claws.
 
Its gills opened and closed
rapidly, pumping vigorously; the oxygen content of the surface water was weak
and corrupted with impurities.