Blue Skin of the Sea (21 page)

Deeps finally spoke. “Give me the fish.”

I stood and lifted the tuna over the center seat. Deeps, a dark gray shadow in the reflected light from shore, pointed to the floorboards by his feet. “Put ‘urn there.” Then after a pause, he said, “What’s your name, boy?”

“Sonny Mendoza.”

“Raymond’s boy.”

I nodded.

“You ever see a shark eat a man?”

“No.”

“Ugly thing. I work long time on a Japanee sampan. Off Kauai, one day, me and a Hawaiian guy was under the boat fixing the prop and three sharks came by. Not big like this one, but big enough. The boat was
loaded,
plenty fish inside the hold—the sharks could smell ‘urn.”

He chopped half the tuna into fine chum as he spoke, then dumped everything out of his bucket onto the floorboards and put the guts and chum into it.

“The two of us came out from under the boat,” Deeps went on. “We yelling to the guys on top—
Pull us up! Pull us up!
First they pull me, then they pull the Hawaiian guy, but one shark come grab the leg. I never hear one man scream like that before.”

“What happened to him?”

“The sharks ate’urn.”

Deeps put a huge chunk of raw meat on a hook attached to about three feet of chain, which was then connected to fifteen or twenty feet of steel cable, and threw it all over the side of the skiff. Then he churned the chum into a mushy mixture in the bucket and threw it out into the water. He washed his hands and the bucket in the ocean and told me to head back to the pier. We left the bait line attached to the buoy.

Fiery light from torches on the grounds of the King Kam Hotel reflected over the water in long, shimmering spears as we pulled up to the small boat landing. A cigarette glowed in the group of shadowy men milling around waiting for us.

Keo squatted on his heels on the lower dock. Uncle Harley gave Deeps a blanket and a beer. I guess Deeps would sleep on the beach.

Deeps walked by me and said, “We check ‘urn in the morning,
boy. About seven.” Then he took his blanket over to the far side of the sandy cove into a small grove of palm trees.

“What was going on out there?” Uncle Raz asked.

“Sitting around, waiting for dark to set the bait.”

Keo wandered over, and within a couple of minutes, he was doing all the talking. “We could have done that without Deeps,” he said. “It’s the same as when we caught the shark out by the lighthouse.”

“This one is three times bigger,” I said.

“Sheese,” Keo said, wanting me to think he had all the answers.

“Setting the bait is the easy part,” Uncle Raz said, breaking into Keo’s complaining. “Tomorrow you’re gonna see why he’s here. When you Ye messing with a big shark you don’t want any mistakes.”

That night I gasped myself awake, popping up on one elbow in a sweat. I dreamed that I was in the skiff, buzzing out into the harbor with a dog that wouldn’t stop yapping at the water. Then the engine went dead, as if it had run out of gas. The dog got even more crazy and barked louder and louder. I peered into the water to see what he was so excited about. Instantly, a shark was charging up at me, rolling over, its eyelids closing and its cavernous mouth opening.
Don’t ever do that again, boy
…
calm down, now
…
you’re not a baby anymore.
The shark slammed the skiff, and sent the dog and me flying. I woke up when I hit the water.
It’s okay
…
it was nothing
…
it was nothing.

I couldn’t get back to sleep for an hour.

Keo banged on my door at six o’clock. We got to the pier at six-thirty, Keo trying to look as smooth as Uncle Harley behind the wheel of the Jeep He still hadn’t let me drive.

We parked on the pier, the sun an hour from breaking over
the top of the mountain. Dad had gone down to the harbor long before.

I felt a little dizzy and the palms of my hands sweated.

Deeps stood on the pier with the blanket folded under his arm, gazing out toward the buoy. Dad sat with Uncle Harley in his truck, drinking coffee. I went down to the skiff and Keo went over to talk to them.

Deeps and I hummed past the end of the pier into the harbor, the water calm, almost glassy. Through the thin hull of the skiff the ocean felt like a sheet running under my feet. A sheet to wrap a dead body in—the parts the shark might leave behind.

I shut the engine down when we got to the buoy. Deeps worked up the cable.

The bait was gone.

Deeps looked off toward the horizon, running his finger over the edge of the steel hook. He coiled his cable and chain neatly into the bucket. “Let’s go back,” he said, quietly.

He spent the rest of the day squatting on the seawall watching the water.

That evening Deeps set his line again, but this time with a hunk of beef and two eight-inch steel hooks and four five-gallon buckets of cow guts from a slaughterhouse up the hill.

When we went out to the buoy the next morning the cable held. Deeps smiled and winked at me.

I squinted into the water, but couldn’t see anything. I shuddered deep inside, the dream with the dog still haunting me.

Deeps began pulling the cable in.

“We got him,” he whispered, the lines on his forehead furled into a tight scowl. The muscles in his neck stood out like strands of wire, and the cable around his fists made the skin go white. “This one’s big as a cane truck.”

A dark mass moved out from under the skiff, a huge, quivering shadow circling around below us like a submarine.

“Put the pole by my foot,” Deeps said, the cable giving slightly. I moved the powerhead closer. Keo would’ve let me drive the Jeep for a month to have been here instead of me. Sweat started to bead on Deeps’s head. He pulled the shark another foot closer.

“You’re not going to shoot him
now,
are you?” I asked.

“No worry—just give me the pole when I tell you.”

“But that thing’s bigger than the
skiff,”
I said.

Deeps wound the cable around one hand and pulled, then around the other. “I said no worry.”

I dug my fingers into the wooden seat. I wanted to pace, I wanted to feel the concrete of the pier under my feet. I could see the shark’s eyes.

I stopped breathing.

Deeps pulled the shark closer, never taking his eyes off it. Uncle Raz may have been right about Deeps knowing what he was doing, but Uncle Raz was sitting on the pier, and so were Dad and Keo.

A small whirlpool sucked at the side of the skiff as the shark’s tail swung by in a sudden burst. A few feet of cable hummed out over the wooden gunwale. Deeps grabbed at it, and slowed the shark’s run. Maybe it didn’t even know it was hooked.

Dizziness overwhelmed me, a quivering sensation that ran across my forehead, and turned my stomach hot. Fear had struck me many times before, but never like this—the kind Deeps’s dogs could smell. I saw the dream shark again, blasting up at me, at the yapping dog.

“Wait!” I yelled. “You can’t take a chance on killing it in a boat this small. It’s too
big.”

Deeps snapped around and glared at me, about to say something, but turned away, back to the shark, still holding the cable taut. He pulled the shark closer.

“
What if you miss?
Or what if you hit him right but he doesn’t
die? He could turn this thing over with one hit!” My whole body was shaking.

But all Deeps wanted was the shark. He stared at me through slits where eyes should have been. “Get hold of yourself, boy. I don’t miss.”

“But what if you do?”

“Goddamn
it!
ShetT
Deeps threw the cable back in the water. “Take me back to the pier.”

I started the engine and moved us away quickly. Deeps turned his back to me as I wove the skiff through the buoys in the bay, my legs trembling.

A solemn conference of fishermen began as soon as we got out of the skiff. Deeps stood among them. They had to get a bigger boat for the shark.

I waited off to the side.

Keo came over. “What happened out there?”. “Nothing. The shark was too big for the skiff.”

“It looked like you were yelling at each other.”

“It was big. We got excited about it.”

Keo shook his head. “I didn’t think Deeps was such a pan-tie.”

I shrugged. “It was too big, that’s all.”

Keo spit and walked away.

What was I going to do if Deeps wanted me to take him back out in the skiff?

The conference broke up and Uncle Raz walked over. “Come on,” he said. “We’re going to use my boat.” He called to Keo. “You boys are going to see something today. Deeps says the bugger’s a three-man fish.”

Soon Uncle Raz was walking the
Optimystic
gently out to the buoy. Keo and I lay on the bow, hanging over the edge, searching the water. Usually we stood, but this time we weren’t taking any chances. When we got to the buoy, we climbed up on the
roof of the cabin. Dad and Uncle Harley waited on the after-deck, with Uncle Raz still at the wheel of the idling boat.

Deeps put a shotgun shell into the end of his aluminum powerhead. “Okay,” he said. “Pull ‘urn up easy.”

Uncle Harley fished the cable out from under the buoy.

Dad stood by with the gaff, a huge barbed hook on the end of a four-foot staff.

Uncle Harley pulled in on the cable, looping the line only once around each fist in case the shark took off and he had to let go quickly. The shark paced upward, a lethargic gray mass that disappeared under the boat, then reappeared, back and forth, growing larger as it rose to the surface.

“Hold steady,” Deeps said. “I got to hit ‘urn just right. If I miss the spot, he’s gonna go bananas.”

Deeps held the powerhead with both hands, pointing it down into the water like a spear, waiting. When the shark’s head appeared from under the boat, he struck down, jabbing the powerhead behind the eyes. The shark turned just as it hit.

The charge exploded, muffled by the water. White foam erupted off the stern, soaking Dad, Uncle Harley, and Deeps. The wounded shark hit the hull of the boat, sending a vibrating
thunnnck
through my body. The tiger’s huge head rolled over, dark eye passing, massive cavernous mouth jarred open, blood pouring from the foot-wide mass of pulp where the powerhead had torn into the skin above his gills, a foot off the spine.

“Damn!” Deeps said.

Uncle Harley threw the cable out and moved back from the transom. The shark sank in a bubbling confusion of red, green, and white, water whirlpooling down into the spot where it had been.

Deeps thrashed through his bucket for a fresh charge and reloaded the powerhead, then went back to the transom. “Let ‘urn get used to the wound, then we pull ‘urn up again.” He
took two steps to the port side, then turned and paced back, checking the water around the buoy, swearing.

We waited about ten minutes, then Dad gaffed the cable and Uncle Harley started pulling the shark back up again, now having to work harder for it. The tiger resisted, but moved slowly upward, and Uncle Harley was able to get it back to the boat.

Again Deeps waited with the powerhead out over the water, taking his time. Uncle Harley was as tight as a rock trying to keep the shark within reach.

Deeps jabbed the powerhead down again. The back of the shark arched as the charge exploded, the thrashing tail sending a wash of red water into the boat, reaching even Keo and me on the roof. Dad leaned out over the transom and hooked the gaff into the shark’s flank, just behind the eye. The muscles in Dad’s glistening bare back stood out in ropelike bumps as he gripped the shaft and tried to keep the shark from shaking it out of his hands.

The shark slowly went limp, jerking in feeble spurts, sinking back into the bloody water, into the cloud of pulverized flesh that broke away and drifted off its back like silt.

“Got ‘urn! Broke the spine!” Deeps said, like a kid. He threw the powerhead onto the deck and grabbed the cable out of Uncle Harley’s hands. With Dad and Uncle Harley’s help, he dragged the dying shark closer to the boat and secured it to the stern.

Uncle Raz looped the
Optimystic
around slowly. A crowd of people started cheering as we approached the pier. Uncle Raz smiled and waved at them, and held his fist up in the air.

Deeps jumped off the boat and went to swing the fish hoist out over the water. Uncle Raz put the boat into neutral and let it idle while Keo jumped to the pier and secured the bow. I threw him the stern line.

Deeps dropped the huge hook down to the water. Dad and
Uncle Harley threw a cable loop around the tail of the tiger shark, and Deeps slowly pulled it out of the water.

The crowd went silent, then broke into amazed murmurs as it emerged.

It measured out at thirteen feet, four inches, and weighed 1,186 pounds. It was so long that we had to hang it out over the water. Deeps gaffed its head and together with four men lifted its nose up over the lip of the pier and laid it out on the concrete.

People crowded in as Deeps cut into the stomach. The place fell dead silent when he reached in and pulled out a whole turtle, not yet digested.

Then, working quickly, as if worrying that someone else might claim his trophy, Deeps cut into the shark’s head, going after the jaw and teeth.

Keo squatted next to him and pulled the flesh away as Deeps carved into it. Soon Keo’s hands were covered with blood and scraps of meat.

After Deeps had hacked the teeth free, Keo and Uncle Raz shoveled the guts into a fifty-gallon drum, then cut up and removed the shark in sections. Uncle Harley backed his truck up to haul away the meat.

Keo came up to me after Uncle Harley had driven off with the shark. “Want to come with me to take Deeps home? You can drive the first half,” he said, dangling the keys in front of me.

I’d had enough of Deeps. But … “Okay.” I reached for the keys.

Keo snapped them into his fist.

“First, I want to know what went on with you and Deeps in the skiff. I know what I saw, and you’re not telling me everything. You got scared, didn’t you?”

Just then, Deeps walked up and stood next to Keo, holding the shark’s jaw. Keo flinched and stepped aside.