Go to the Widow-Maker (101 page)

He did not know why he wanted to shoot it, or why he had to shoot it. But he knew he did want to, and knew he did have to. He really didn’t expect to kill it. The way it was, under the overhang, he couldn’t get a real brain shot. But if he hit it right, so that the spear went forward through the mouth he was pretty sure it wouldn’t attack him. It probably wouldn’t anyway. As a precautionary move, he slowly and stealthily drew his knife from his leg sheath and cut the heavy cord that attached the spear to the gun. The gun was already cocked, both rubbers. Then, holding the knife in his left hand, he swam slowly toward it.

The beast had not moved at all during the time, say ten or twelve seconds, that he had been there. He had swum away a few yards, now he approached it from the tail (which he still could not see), swimming up along its length from behind until he could see the gill slits. It was at least four times his length, he was pretty sure. Then, when he had the gill slits in view, he reversed his position slowly and with very careful movements, so that his feet were toward the shark. Aiming from between his feet at the gill slits, from almost on the very sand bottom now, he tried to aim upward forward toward where the brain would be, trying for a brain shot. When he pulled the trigger and felt the jolt in his arm—that finality—he was already swimming backward along the bottom as hard as he could swim.

It was well that he did. The shark erupted out of the overhang like some kind of projectile, taking most of the overhang with it when it did. It was as if an underwater explosion had occurred. Pieces and chunks of sharp coral sailed slowly through the water, turning in slow motion, exactly the way debris from a topside explosion would have flown more swiftly through the air, and was followed more slowly by a great cloud of sand and coral dust. Pieces of sharp coral stung Grant’s arm and legs and chest, but even so he swam up until at least his head was out of the dust-sand cloud. The shark, whose snout had been almost at one of the little entryways into the coral ring, had swum, plunged, out through this, and—his head above the sand cloud—Grant watched it, gyrating wildly and frenetically, disappear off into the sea into the green fog of the visibility range. The spear had seemed to go on in, and on in, and on in until it disappeared completely through the gills. The head of it must certainly have come out through the top of the head somewhere after traveling through the mouth cavity. Even though it had not been a true killing shot (it had been an awfully tough position to shoot from), that shark was certainly not going to eat anything for quite some time to come. It sure was a damn good thing he had cut that line! Feeling an exquisite satisfaction he could not have explained, and in fact had rarely ever felt in his life except in bed with some woman which of course he could explain, Grant swam on up out of the sand and dust cloud and looked himself over. He had certainly been stung plenty, but he had only actually been nicked, cut a little, by the coral in only four or five places. All the fish around the reef had suddenly disappeared. It was as if a giant electric shock had suddenly shot through the reef making the entire underwater world jump. Grant finally, now, took the time to look around —and off to his right, to the south since he was facing the ship, saw Mo Orloffski lying halfway between the surface and the sand bottom about forty yards away, making incredulous and horrified gesticulations at him.

Grant swam over to him. Orloffski continued his gesticulations Grant wiggled his eyebrows and bunched his nose inside his mask to show that he was grinning. But Orloffski would not accept this. They swam slowly back to the ship together, and Orloffski did not cease his remonstrations, using his hands and arms and shoulders and head, and even his back. The first thing he said when they had handed up their rigs and climbed up the diving ladder was, “You’re
crazy
! You must be out of your ever-lovin fucking
mind
!” And he said it in just about as loud a voice as he could.

The others who were on board, which now included Bonham, Ben and Irma, as well as Lucky naturally, clustered around.— “You know what this guy just did! You know what this dumb son of a bitch just did!” He proceeded to tell them. “At
least
twenty feet, twenty
-five
feet! He’s a nut!” he concluded. “He’s some kind of a crazy ravin fucking nut, I tell you!” Then he turned on Grant. “Have you done things like that before when you was out alone?” He turned to Bonham, shaking his head. “Really, Al! I don’t think you ought to let this guy go out all alone by hisself no morel I mean it! Really!”

All this, from the tough, big, brutal, insensitive, totally unimaginative Orloffski! Grant began to have his first doubt.

Grant had not, of course, known Orloffski had been watching all the time. He had thought he had drifted on off to the southeast and had been totally unaware that he had doubled back south and then further, southeast to the strangely circular reef. He had not wanted to make a fuss. And he had not done what he’d done for any audience. He had done it for some grinding, gnashing, screeching something in himself. And he was sorry Orloffski had seen it. And if he had known that he was there, watching, he almost certainly would
not
have done it. But now it
was
done. And they all knew about it.

Bonham questioned him about it. He explained the situation as it had been, and his plan and his theory, embarrassed now, and beginning to get angry.

“What if he had come at you?” Bonham asked.

“I figured he would go the other way. Go in the direction away from whatever it was had hit him, hurt him. Which, in fact, was what he did.”

“But under that ledge, that overhang. In that position, in total panic, he might just as easily of turned back toward you. What would you have done then?”

“I figured with that spear running through his mouth out the top of his head he wasn’t in any position to bite anything.”

“Bite, hell! He wouldn’t have to bite you. All he’d have to do would be just run into you. Or even hit you with his tail. By accident.”

“I was swimming backward from the second I shot. Swimming backward, upsidedown on my back, right down on the bottom. Would he be likely to hit me there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wouldn’t he be much more likely to take off upward, to get out of there?” Grant persisted. He was beginning to get even more angry.

“I don’t know,” Bonham said. “Yes, that’s true. He would,” he admitted thoughtfully. “But I still think you made a serious mistake in judgment.”

“Where?”

“By even deciding to go after him at all alone like that in the first place! You should have had help around.”

“Help wouldn’t have helped. He was off and out of there so fast you couldn’t—Another diver up above backin me up would have had more chance to get hurt than me!”

“The shot was too tough. Shooting from behind and below and forward, like that. Your own position was bad: for the shot. There was almost no real chance for a killing shot.”

“But I told you I anticipated that. I planned for that.”

“He was too big. He was just too big.”

“Big!” Orloffski interposed. “I ain’t never seen a shark that big in my whole fucking
life!
Not even in a damned marineland aquarium! It had to be a white.”

“Tigers can get that big,” Bonham said. “You say he was sort of brown, reddish brown?”

“That’s right,” Grant said, angrily.

“Tigers that get that big lose their spots that give them that so-called ‘striped’ look, but they’re usually grayish brown, not reddish brown. And you didn’t see his tail?”

“I told you. I—”

“And you didn’t see it?” Bonham asked Orloffski.

“Hell, he was up and out of there so fast—And that cloud, you couldn’t see anything for that cloud—except this crazy guy sticking his head outta the top of it lookin aroun’ like some damned tourist!”

“Well, this is all pretty academic anyway,” Bonham said. “I think you made a serious mistake in judgment. I’ll get some merthiolate for those nicks.”

“Well, I say I didn’t. I say I didn’t because it all turned out exactly like I anticipated it would and like I planned it.” He was really mad now. All this fuss. He hadn’t
wanted
anybody to know about it. Orloffski had ruined his whole satisfaction that he had had.

Bonham was staring at him. There had been a grave quality about his manner all this time, the captain and leader doing his job, his excellent leadership job; and yet at the same time underneath that there had been another quality, a sort of silent, secret, proud and pleased understanding of Grant’s act that somehow Grant didn’t like, didn’t like at all. It was a sort of feeling of approval and of brotherhood—unstated, and passing only between the two of them—and it had made Grant think while they were all talking—curiously enough—of Letta Bonham and what she had told Lucky about her husband, and naturally forced an immediate comparison with his own relationship with Lucky. Now Bonham suddenly grinned, and both bad feelings in Grant got stronger.— “Look,” the big man said, “I like to shoot sharks myself. I love shootin them. But there’s just certain chances that you don’t take, see? In that situation, and in that position, with that big a shark and that kind of a shot, you went just a little bit over the edge. You should have come back and got me. We could have taken a Brazilian rig and—”

“Look,” Grant said thinly, “am I being punished? I mean, I know you’re the captain of the ship and that when you give orders we all obey at sea. But does that apply to the diving too? I mean, am I being confined to quarters? Am I not to have another lung? Or must I go in the big class with teacher?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, of course not,” Bonham grinned. “I only just—”

“Then can I have the lung?” Grant said. “Because I’d like to get back in the water.”

“Help yourself,” Bonham said, and then grinned that grin again.

Grant nodded; “Thanks,” and went to get the lung.

Lucky of course was furious with him. Over the shark incident. She had followed closely all the talk about it. Now she came over to him as he was getting another, full tank out of the row of tie racks. “I think you’re really crazy,” she said. Grant went on set-faced with the work, and she walked away. She went up forward where Irma was waiting for her, looking very much like the good Jewish mother who wants to help but can’t. He refused to even look after her.

But when he was back in the water, speargun in hand, knife strapped to leg, he thought about what she had said. His first doubt had come when he heard all that Orloffski—whom up to now Grant had always thought of as totally brave, totally
physically
brave, if stupid—had had to say about what he had done. What he had done with the shark. Now Lucky’s remark compounded the doubt. Was he really maybe going off his rocker a little? Some way? How did one know? If one was going off? Maybe he was; maybe he was going a little kooky with all his woman troubles, wife troubles, cuckold troubles, cruise troubles, skindiving troubles, Bonham troubles. Maybe he was. He felt totally reckless now, really reckless, fuck-it-all reckless, as he swam out toward another reef, further to the west than the circular one where he had seen the shark. He felt recklessly ready for anything, just about anything. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, he found nothing. Or nothing of much importance. He did shoot four lobsters (four tails was all his little bikini could hold) and one large grouper, which he left dead on the bottom under a small rock while he himself went on. That was all though, and finally when his air began to run a little low, he came back and picked up the big grouper and dragged it by the eyeball sockets back to the ship. The others were all just returning. In a short time they were under way under sail, and in an hour they were back at the dock of all the Greens at North Nelson, all tied up, all sail secured, all ready to relax, drink, have fun, eat and the rest of it.

“I’m going up to the Weather Station to send that radiogram,” Lucky said to him as soon as they were off the wharf and on the white crushed-coral path up to the hotel.

Grant stopped, in the middle of the path. Ben and Irma were in front of them and moving on. Nobody was behind them. In spite of the tone of her words, which was tough, quite tough, there was a strange look of appeal on her face, her lovely Italian face. Grant felt suddenly as though he had never seen her before, as though he had never even met her before. He suddenly felt like, suddenly had the wild idea of, introducing himself to her. Instead he said nothing.

“The Station is just up beyond the hotel,” Lucky said, as if he didn’t know where it was, “and I’m going to send it.”

Grant nodded. “You do that,” he said with a set face. “And I,
I
, am going back down to the boat—to the
ship
—and have a few drinks with the boys.” He turned on his heel.— “
No,
I didn’t fuck Jim Grointon!” Lucky said after him. Without answering he went back on down the path toward the wharf. When he reached the ship’s rail across the long wooden length of the wharf without having turned his head one millimeter to look back once, and then stepped on board turning naturally as he did so and looked back up the path, she was no longer anywhere in sight.

He had said he was going to have a few drinks with the boys, and that he did. That he did, in spades. The Surgeon and his girl were still there on board, with Bonham and Orloffski,and they had a few with them but soon they wandered off toward the restaurant. Then there were only the three of them, himself, Bonham, and Orloffski. Cathie had already gone up to the hotel to shower. In the end the three of them did not even eat dinner with the others at the hotel restaurant, but stayed aboard drinking while Bonham fried them up some of the fish that he could cook so deliciously, and after they ate they went on drinking.— “What the hell!” Bonham growled a little drunkenly, in the first even partially open reference Grant had ever heard him make to his relationship with Cathie. He lolled back in the cockpit. “I deserve a night off once in a while. With the boys. Even
I
deserve that!”

Grant had done a fair amount of drinking all through the day of spearfishing, more certainly than he had the day before, and of course it was all accumulative: that drinking, the drinking before the fish, the drinking with the fish, the drinking after the fish. He was unable to remember later just when he became drunk. The three of them sat on board with the bottle —before long it was bottles—exchanging skindiving stories (a few of which of his own Grant now had from his days with Grointon)—ha!
old Jim Grointon
—talking about the old days in the war, in which Mo Orloffski had been a S/Sgt in the Quartermaster Corps and Bonham had been (because of his previous sailing training) a navigator on first a Flying Fortress and then a Superfort. Finally it got around to talking about women they had laid. Back in their youth of course, and all present company totally excepted.