The Forty Fathom Bank and Other Stories (7 page)

With the Primus going the cabin was quite warm. Yet I suddenly felt cold. I did not drink my coffee, but sat with the heavy mug cupped in both palms staring at the oily film on the thick black surface. The silence, the unfamiliar lack of motion and the glittering star dilating grotesquely through the thick glass in the portlight lens all combined to add to my growing disquietude and sense of foreboding. Everything around me seemed suddenly strange and unreal. It was as if I'd awakened from a bad dream only to find myself in the grip of another, even more disturbing. And, as in a bad dream, an aura of impending disaster, dark and of unknown magnitude, seemed to lay like a sinister presence, not only over the
Blue Fin
's cabin, but over the whole vessel as she lay dead quiet at her anchor in the pre-dawn starlight.

Yet I had no cause to feel guilty, I reflected, trying to console myself. My night thoughts could easily be justified,
not only by my genuinely desperate needs, but by May's mysterious and possibly suspect deal. As for the dreams, whatever they might have symbolized, they were, unquestionably, just garbled reruns of the day's bizarre events and certainly beyond my conscious control. And besides, when the fishing was done and the sharks unloaded, it would be May with his quiet compassion—taking the wheel when I was exhausted, cooking the dinner and even washing the dishes so I could rest—it would be May with his deep inner joyousness and that almost other-worldly serenity who would walk off with most of the profits. If anyone felt guilty, I concluded indignantly, but at once considerably relieved, it should be May.

In spite of my relief, however, I still did not look up. By the light, sweet odor of tobacco smoke I knew May had finished his breakfast. I heard him gather up the plates from the table and set them quietly on the sink, then caught a quick glimpse of his gray sweatshirt as he disappeared up the companionway ladder. If he had suspected anything, either by my expression or behavior, I thought, he certainly did not show it. His lithe, strong body and light step seemed, as always, all innocence and goodwill.

The star was gone from the portlight, and, though the sky was still quite black, I could sense the approach of dawn. My coffee was cold. I put the cup down and lit a cigarette. With May already on deck, probably getting the sardines out of the hold, I knew we'd soon be heading back to the forty fathom bank.

But I felt no desire, or rather, could find no good reason to get up. My thoughts seemed to be groping about for something to hold onto. I tried to visualize the coming day with the sets down and the boat rolling slowly on the long swells, or May leaning back in the shadow of the wheelhouse
smoking his pipe, or maybe dozing a bit. But all I could see was the chart with its myriad symbols and long curving lines marking out the seaward edges of these silent black terraces that descended ever deeper into the abyssal gloom.

No sound came from above; no doubt May was sitting on the hatch baiting the hooks, getting himself ready for another big catch, possibly half again what was already in the hold. My stomach tightened unpleasantly. I found myself hoping, almost desperately, that the sharks had disappeared and nothing was left on the bottom but green sand and crabs.

Suddenly I wished I'd never seen a shark, that livers and Vitamin A, my tantalizing dream of wealth and especially May, with his shrewdly calculated deal, had never existed. But despite my wish, I could not rid myself of the shadowy forms that kept twisting and turning in the murky depths of my consciousness.

Goddamn May and his lousy deal! And there was no way out of it, nothing to do all day but pull in May's sharks and watch him get richer. The tightness in my stomach spread to my chest. My throat constricted. Tears welled up in my eyes. And all the while May, serene in his self-detachment and childlike simplicity, was up there on the deck probably smoking his pipe in the fading starlight, completely oblivious to my suffering.

Or was he?

Slowly, and deep in my mind, eerie thoughts began to take shape. Who was this Ethan May, I asked myself. He was weird but honest, was all the buyer had said. And he lived alone. But where alone with no address but a P.O. box and no home or family that he ever mentioned? Where had he come from with those just bought sea boots and a brand new fishing license? How had he known where the sharks
would be and that a storm was coming? And where would he go when he left with all his money? The questions came rapidly like an interrogation I sensed was moving, inexorably, toward some ominous disclosure I did not want to know about. What if that mysterious deal of May's were not the long shot gamble it appeared to be or May, himself, the honest fisherman the buyer had claimed he was?

A creeping feeling came over me as tales told to me in childhood by that ancient, godfearing grandmother of mine emerged from the misty recesses of my mind, whispered accounts of mysterious strangers, God's secret agents, who wandered eternally over the byways and through the out-lands of the earth searching out the evil in men's souls, of how they tempted the wicked with visions of gold and precious jewels to expose the greed in their hearts.

Of course all this was pure nonsense, I tried to tell myself, nothing more than an old woman's fears venting themselves in primitive superstitions. But my breathing had slowed almost to a stop and my whole body felt suddenly hollow. Nervously I spread the fingers of one hand on the table as if to find in it some evidence of my innocence. The hand, unwashed since the morning before, was dark with accumulated grime. A thin crust of dried shark's blood still clung to the sides of the fingernails. For a moment I could not accept it as my own. Then slowly, and for the first time, it occurred to me that my hands had always been dirty, grubby and sticky as a child and never quite clean as an adult. In its sordidness, my outspread hand seemed somehow to reflect the values and aspirations, the sickly hopes and dreams I had always lived by.

Suddenly, and with the ineluctable clarity of a revelation, my whole life rose up before me, a bleak montage of fears and failures, of self-deceit and rationalizations, of
fantasies of ill-gotten wealth and of whimpering self-pity. And coiled in the depths of this spiritual morass I could see quite clearly the unfounded suspicions that had begun with my first relationship with May and that had culminated in the lethal envy of those malevolent night dreams of mine.

Yet this shocking recognition, this beholding of myself stripped naked and defenseless, instead of destroying me as it could well have done, or driving me deeper into even more secure defenses, was like a resurrection or a new birth into a world devoid of evil.

The yellow flames in the kerosene lamps had begun to pale. Imperceptibly the black shadows on the painted bulkheads faded into the amorphous shades of dawn. The long night vanished, and in the cool morning light all my confusion and guilt, my deadly dreams and hallucinations seemed to vanish with it. I felt suddenly free, and, I believe for the second time in my life, buoyant. From above I could hear the scratchy sound of a bait box being dragged across the deck and then the familiar, sweeping cry of gulls, no doubt circling and swooping over the stern.

As I stubbed out the cigarette that had burned, unsmoked, almost to my fingertips, I thought of my share of the sharks and the unbelievable fifty-five hundred dollars. The upsurge of pure joy was almost more than I could bear. I went into the galley, scrubbed my hands with scouring powder and brown soap, then gathered up the dishes and washed them quickly. Filled with a marvelous new energy I hurried up on deck concerned now as to how May might have reacted to my strange behavior.

As I'd expected, he was sitting on the hatch, busy with his baiting. His skull cap, cocked jauntily to one side, gave his face a kind of carefree, almost cavalier air that was made even more pronounced by the shadow of a beard.
Only the tassel, which by now had acquired a personality of its own, hung limp on its string like a little dead puppet.

By the tubs which were already baited, I knew I must have been sitting at the table for more than half an hour. Considering the phenomenally high value of the catch aboard, the lonely anchorage and the still lonelier sea on which we'd soon be fishing, most anyone, and especially May with his acute perception, would have found my prolonged and sullen withdrawal at breakfast, at the very least, suspicious and been on guard. But in the quiet smile that greeted me as I stepped out on deck, I could sense no fear whatever. Not even a slight uncertainty. He seemed pleased to see me. And in his thoughtful green eyes, darker now in the early light, I thought I detected a kind of affectionate concern and understanding which later, oddly enough, I chose to interpret as forgiveness.

Yet whether I was again projecting my own special needs into an omnipotent personality I could well have created myself, or whether May, in truth, was all my panicked conscience had revealed him to be, I have never been quite sure. One way or the other, it didn't matter. The last obstacle to my new found joy seemed to have vanished as completely as had my agonizing night thoughts when dawn came. And, for the moment, I thought no more about it. As I went below to start the engine, the tormenting question of how many fish we'd catch or who would make the profit seemed suddenly of no importance. All I could wish for I seemed already to have.

I had always taken pride in my ability to get the engine started. But that morning I had trouble. I pulled on the heavy flywheel until my arms were numb. I could not get a single cough out of it. I removed the igniters and cleaned the points with a file, primed the cylinders with raw gas, blew out the fuel line, checked the carburetor, cleaned the sediment bowl and pulled again. But in the pig-headed way old engines have of demonstrating their independence, and always when they're most needed, the fool thing remained as inert as though it were a solid block of iron.

Finally, sweating and exhausted before the day had even begun, I went back on deck. The sun was up and the air kind of muggy. A white haze covered the sky. May still sat on the hatch baiting. He had rolled up the sleeves of his old sweatshirt and the fine blond hairs gleamed like gold filaments on the clean, tanned skin of his forearms. As he bent over the tub with his legs outspread, I noticed his new sea boots were turned down as usual so the folds came just below his knees, exposing the white fabric of the inner lining. When he saw me come up he stopped baiting, washed his hands in the bucket of seawater beside him, dried them on a piece of rag tucked into his belt and went below. A moment later I heard him tinkering with the engine.

Though my traumatic experience in the cabin had affected what appeared to be a permanent change in my whole outlook, the eerie feeling I'd had about May was still with me. As I leaned against the wheelhouse smoking a cigarette, I found myself listening with mixed feelings to
the dry sucking of the pistons as May spun the flywheel. I wanted to hear the engine start, yet at the same time I half hoped he would fail just as I had. For at this time, any failure on his part would have been proof enough for me of his fallibility and hence assurance of his humanity. To see him come up frustrated and as beat out and greasy as I was, if nothing else, would dispel, I thought, the superstitious fears that had carried over from my frightening revelation.

Suddenly I remembered the chocolate and the orange and how he'd taken the wheel the night before so I could go below and rest, and the wine he'd opened for his birthday, and the red pajamas that had made him look like a little kid, and all at once I felt embarrassed for even having such thoughts inside me. I flicked my cigarette into the water and went down into the engine room again.

Apparently May had gone through the same routine as I had, checking the fuel line, the carburetor and the igniters and pulling on the flywheel. Now he was leaning against the hull looking at the engine with what seemed to me, and for the first time since I had known him, a perplexed frown. His face was sweating and his arms were streaked with grease. And somehow, seeing him leaning against the hull unable to do anything made me feel better. I crawled in beside him and together we stood staring at that stupid hunk of metal that looked for all the world like some impudent brat defying its elders.

Suddenly, just as though the engine had been playing hide the button with us, we both found the trouble at once. The battery clamp had come loose from the terminal. With a shout, I snapped the clamp back where it belonged and May, almost at the same time, gave a heave on the flywheel. The engine started instantly and chugged away as smooth as you please. We went back on deck, both of us laughing
kind of quietly at ourselves. And though nothing further was said, the final barrier between us dissolved away.

Soon after we'd pulled up the anchor, the old
Blue Fin
, her engine idling, was rounding the south end of Año Nuevo Island and heading back once more toward the forty fathom bank.

The ocean, despite its flat, oily surface, looked swollen. The early sun through the haze had a slightly yellowish cast. As we cleared the tip of the island, I noticed the light was still on. During the night, its diamond flash had dominated the darkness. Now, in the daylight, it looked weak and ineffectual with a pale red tint in its owl-like lens as it winked out its cycle on top of the white-painted skeleton tower.