Swim That Rock (19 page)

The guy grunts and moves his pole to rest in the water, off the bow of the Hawkline.

I ignore Mickey’s grumblings because he’s trying to blame me, and I just focus on the work. The conditions are just right. I’m making the rake head sing, but it’s getting harder and harder to pull this thing up to the surface. I figure at this rate I won’t last till noon. Guys are crossing over one another with their poles; handles are getting locked together; it’s a circus out here. My rake hits the surface again and again, and each time it’s filled to the teeth. I start counting and figuring in my head. I’m thinking I might be able to catch enough today to make a huge dent into that debt we owe Vito.

Just focus on the work.

When I hit the second hour, I decide to put on a pair of cotton gloves. I’m hoping they’ll help me last a little longer out here and keep my hands free of blisters. I dip the gloves in the warm August water, wiggle them onto my hands, and continue pulling the rake. I work quickly, using my shoulders, leaning back and putting all one hundred and seventy pounds of my weight into the rake. It happens over and over again, and it seems there’s no end to the quahogs.

After two hours I’ve already got eight bags on board, about four thousand littlenecks. Before the beach opened, we were getting twenty cents apiece, so I figure I’m making about eight hundred dollars per hour. If I can work ten hours, I’ll make eight thousand dollars. Wow!

Hold it. Stop thinking like that.
I catch myself again.

My head is down, and I’m working the rake, and the ache in my back feels like a sawtooth steak knife being driven between my shoulder blades. The gloves keep getting bunched up, and they are digging their way into my knuckles, so I ditch them. The blisters are coming.

It’s 9:30 a.m., and I’m already tired. I tie the rake off and sit down on the gunwale and hurriedly pick through the catch on the culling board until it’s covered only with littlenecks. I wish I didn’t have to keep stopping to sort through everything, count it, and put them into bags. Maybe I should have taken Darcy out here with me. I think of her back at the diner, probably rushing between booths and tables, prepping for the lunch crowd. She’s definitely a distraction, but a nice one. I throw the rake back in, and I see somebody paddling out in a bright-orange kayak.

Uh-oh, this isn’t going to be good.

I’m thinking that this crazy fool is going to try and bullrake out of his kayak. As he gets closer, I can see it’s a kid. Probably out looking for his dad or selling jugs of water or something. I get back to work, but I keep one eye on the orange kayak. The kid has his binoculars out, scanning the horizon. The next thing I know, he’s paddling right toward me.

It’s Tommy!

I’d give him a wave, but the other guys are all laughing at him and making jokes.

“No-wake zone, man. Don’t make any waves,” one guy shouts.

“You lost? Newport Beach is twelve miles south of here.” Another points toward Prudence Island. The quahoggers are heckling him as he circumnavigates the pack of boats.

I lift my hat and give him a half wave as I wipe my brow with my arm, trying to make it look like I’m not waving at all. Tommy slides in front and drifts down on me, paddling to stay in my path.

“Hey, Jake, I found you!”

“Get in the boat. Can’t you see I’m working here?” I yell at him.

“I’m just out here to help. Chill out.”

“Come on, get on board.” I lift him up by the arm, and we pull the kayak up and lash it to the bow of the Hawkline. When that’s done, I start working the rake again, and Tommy sits on the rail looking at me like,
What’d I do?

“These guys are all staring at me already, so I’m a little self-conscious. That orange kayak got them all laughing at you, and I guess they’re laughing at me too, that’s all.”

“What do you care what those other guys think?” Tommy looks around at the pack of boats surrounding us.

Tommy is right. I actually don’t care what these other guys think. “Yeah, you’re right. Sorry.”

Then Tommy starts looking at all the quahogs in the boat. “Holy crap. Did you catch all these?”

“They didn’t just jump in the boat. Are you sticking around? I could use the help . . . and the company.”

“I’m in as long as you need me,” he says, slapping his hands together and giving me a
Where do we start?
look.

“We’ve got a long day ahead of us, and I’ll make it worth your while.”

“I’m not doing it for the money, Jake,” Tommy says, waving me off. “This’ll be fun. What do I do?”

I’m relieved that Tommy’s going to stay. It gives me new energy.

“Okay. When I say
Ready up,
grab that rope and haul it in as I pull up the pole, until the rake comes up to the surface.”

“Got it,” Tommy says, getting into position.

“Ready up!”

Tommy grabs the rope and starts hauling.

“Toooooo fast! Slow down!”

The rake busts the surface, and the pole is nearly bent in half from the pressure of the line.

“Come on, Tommy! You’re gonna break my poles.”

“Geez, man, just tell me. Don’t get so touchy.” Tommy looks like a beaten dog with his head hanging low as the other quahoggers look on.

“When you are out here working in this boat, I’m in charge, so you got to listen to everything I tell you and don’t take it personally. Everything has to go right out here, or stuff gets broken and people get hurt. My track record sucks with people getting hurt.”

“I know. So, just tell me what to do and I’ll do it . . . Captain.” Tommy gives me an exaggerated salute.

“Don’t call me that,” I say, thinking of George. I dump the rake onto the culling board. “First thing is to get rid of anything that’s not a quahog, and pull out the undersize quahogs.” I hand him the set of steel rings and point to the smallest one. “If any of them fit through that, throw ’em overboard because they’re undersize. Anything else that fits through this bigger one goes into this bucket.”

“Tiny ones overboard; everything else in the bucket. Got it.”

“But you got to count them too. When you get five hundred in the bucket, you got to bag them.”

“Where do these big ones go?” Tommy asks, holding up one of the large chowders.

“Just put them in the red bucket. We don’t need to count those.”

I kick one of the full white buckets. “This one’s ready to be bagged. Just lay one of those red onion bags across the lip and flip it with your wrists.”

“Like this?” Tommy flips the bucket and the littlenecks rattle into the bag.

“Yeah, like that. Cool. No one ever gets the first one! Great!”

Tommy looks over his shoulder, pleased with himself.

“You’re now officially a picker, Tommy. You know the only thing that’s lower than a picker?”

Tommy is not looking up; he’s just shoveling quahogs, moving rocks. He says, “No, Jake, what’s lower than a picker?”

“A snot.”

I’m laughing so hard I can barely pull the rake.

This is fun. It hurts, but it’s fun.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a brand-new boat slinking through the pack, searching for a space to drop anchor. The guy steering the boat is about twenty years old, pudgy, hair slicked back with gel, and he’s wearing a bright-blue tank top. I watch him as he dumps his anchor to the port side of me. His boat is clean, without a speck of mud on it, and it looks like he just launched it for the first time today. He lets out his line and settles in right next to us. Our boats are nearly touching, and he’s no more than ten feet from Cliff Olson’s garvey. Cliff doesn’t say anything about him invading our space, so I don’t either.

The pudgy guy glances over at me as he’s setting up his rake. He’s doing it exactly backward, attaching his rake first and then trying to hold on to it as he attaches the other sections of pole. His face gets red with strain as he tries to set up. He’s swearing and muttering as he struggles.

“Check it out. Trust Fund Guy is going to dig with the rest of us today,” Tommy whispers to me.

“He looks like he needs some help.”

Just as I say this, the guy drops both his pole and rake into the water. In a split second he loses two hundred bucks’ worth of equipment, and it looks like he’s never dug a quahog in his life. He might not get the chance today.

The guy starts stomping around the boat, throwing his screwdriver against the console, shattering a full bottle of beer in the fancy cup holder. Then he throws another section of pole onto the deck, and it makes a metallic, clattering noise that startles the rest of the diggers. He slumps down on the gunwale, looking completely dejected. I know how he feels. I’ve totally been there.

“Tommy, come hold the rake for a minute.”

“You want me to dig?”

“No, don’t pull it or you’ll mess it up. It’s half full.” I jump onto the bow and pull out a set of scuba fins, mask, and fifty feet of coiled rope from the storage hold.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ll be right back,” I say.

The pudgy guy’s boat is so close it’s almost touching ours. I get his attention by clearing my throat loudly.

“Can I come aboard?” I ask.

“Sure, but I don’t know what you’re gonna do. I just lost the friggin’ rake, pole, and clamps. All gone!”

“I know. I saw it happen. The good thing is you’re on an anchor, and you haven’t moved, so it’s probably right under us,” I say, jumping aboard his boat. I take a look around, and this guy is set up. Everything looks like it just got unwrapped from the store: new poles, perfectly clean rubber deck mats, pristine white fiberglass culling board, even the buckets are new.
Who the hell buys their buckets?
I ask myself.

“So what’re you gonna do? Dive for it?” he asks, eyes wide.

“Yeah. Unless you’re going to do it,” I say, holding the fins out to him.

“Dude, I can’t even swim,” he says, shaking his head.

“It’s settled, then. But we got to be quick. Those boats are drifting back on us, and they’re not going to be too happy with us just sitting here.” I nod toward the two boats in front of us about twenty yards away.

Stripping down to my underwear, I put on the fins, tie a snap hook to one end of the rope, and hand the other end to the guy.

“What do I do with this?”

“Just hold on to it. I’m going to hook the other end to your rake,” I say, snapping the hook.

“Why are you doing this for me? I don’t even know your name.”

“I don’t know. I guess I just know what it’s like to be stuck in a bad situation,” I say, looping the rope around my waist and stepping over the side. “My name’s Jake Cole.”

“I’m Paul,” the guy says quietly, almost embarrassed.

“Okay, wish me luck.”

I jump in the water and take a couple of huge breaths as I try to determine where the rake might be in relation to the boat.

Right under me.

I dive straight down into the dark. The sound of outboard motors and the clanging of poles against boats is a dull roar in my head. Fifteen feet down, my hands hit the muddy bottom, and I pinch my nose and blow out to relieve the pressure. My ears pop with a loud squeak, and immediately I begin to sweep my hands across the surface of the mud, searching for Paul’s rake. I can feel the quahogs all clustered together right under the surface, and part of me wants to start picking them up.
Keep searching. You’re running out of air.
My lungs are burning, and there is a convulsive tug in the middle of my chest that is telling me to get to the surface. I take one more sweep with my hands and feel nothing. I kick hard toward the surface.

“Holy crap. You were down there for like an hour! How’d you do that?” Paul is leaning over the rail, looking pale and worried.

“My dad,” I say, panting, “would get me to swim underwater . . . retrieve things under the dock . . . I just got used to it, that’s all.”

“Yeah, my dad makes me retrieve things too,” Paul says with a curious smile.

“I can’t see a thing down there.”

“It’s no use, man. I’ll just head in,” Paul says, slapping the side of the boat. “My dad is going to kill me. He just bought all this stuff for me last week. Said it would be good for me to earn a hard day’s pay. This sucks.”

“I’m not through trying. I can get it.” I look over at Tommy. “How we doing? Those boats getting close?”

“You’d better hurry up,” Tommy says nervously. “They’re starting to give me some nasty looks.”

I head back down, popping my ears on the way. This time I find the section of pole on my first sweep.
Bingo.
I feel my way down the pole till I find the rake and grab it with my left hand, using my right hand to unhook the rope around my waist. I snap the hook onto the rake and begin my ascent.

Suddenly, everything goes wrong. A sharp web of rope hits me, and I spin around, twisting through the murky water. There’s a sudden tug on my leg as it wraps me in its noose and pulls me back down, dragging me across the bottom. I frantically pull and tear at the rope around my leg, kicking the fins off as my breath leaves me in a flurry of bubbles.

I’ve got to free myself.

All I want to do is breathe.