Stories (2011) (109 page)

After a couple of hours of pushing onward, Jones slowed the
engine, and finally killed it. "You’re up, Mr. Peak," Jones said
coming down from his steering. He got a huge, metallic chest out of the cabin
and dragged it onto the deck and opened it. There were a number of small black
fish inside, packed in ice. Sardines, maybe. Jones took one and cut it open,
took loose one of the rods strapped to the side of the cabin, stuck the fish on
the great hook. He gave the rod to Peak.

Peak took the rod and tossed the line expertly and it went
way out. He sat down in the fighting chair and fastened the waist belt and
shoulder straps and put the rod butt in the gimbal. He looked relaxed and
professional. The boat bobbed beneath the hot sunlight and the minutes crawled
by.

Margo removed her tee shirt and leaned against the side of
the boat. The bathing suit top barely managed to cover her breasts. It was
designed primarily to shield her nipples. The top and sides of her bathing suit
bottom revealed escaped pubic hair, a darker blond than the hair on her head.

She got a tube of suntan lotion out of a little knit bag on
the deck, pushed the lotion into her palm, and began to apply it, slowly and
carefully from her ankles up. Richard tried not to watch her run her hand over
her tanned legs and thighs, finally over her belly and the tops of her breasts.
He would look away, but always his eyes would come back.

He had not made love to a woman in a year, and for the first
six months of the year had not wanted to. Now, looking at MargoPeak, it was all
he could think about.

Richard glanced at Peak. He was studying the ocean. Jones
was in the doorway of the cabin, trying not to be too obvious as he observed
the woman. Richard could see that Jones’s Adam’s apple rode high in his throat.
Margo seemed unaware or overly accustomed to the attention. She was primarily
concerned with getting the suntan lotion even. Or so it seemed.

Then the line on the rod began to sing.

Richard looked toward the ocean and the line went straight
and taut as the fish hit. The line sang louder as it jerked again and cut the
air.

"I’m gonna hit him," Peak said. He tightened the
drag, jerked back on the rod, and the rod bent slightly. "Now I’ve got
him."

The fish cut to the right and the line moved with him, and
Peak hit him again, said, "He’s not too big. He’s nothing."

Peak rapidly cranked the fish on deck. It was a barracuda.
Jones took hold of a metal bar and whacked the flopping barracuda in the head.
He got a pair of heavy shears off the deck and opened them and put them against
the barracuda’s head, and snapped down hard. The head came part of the way off.
Jones popped the head again, and this time the head hung by a strand. He cut
the head the rest of the way off, tossed it in the ocean, put the decapitated
barracuda in the huge ice chest. "Some of the restaurants buy them,"
he said. "Probably sell them as tuna or something."

"Good catch," Richard said.

"A barracuda," Peak said. "That’s no kinda
fish. That’s not worth a damn."

"Sometimes that’s all you hit," Jones said.
"Last party I took out, that was it. Three barracuda, back to back. You’re
next, Mrs. Peak."

Jones baited the hook and cast the line and Margo strapped
herself into the fighting chair and slipped the rod into the gimbal. They
drifted for an hour and finally Jones moved the boat, letting the line troll,
but nothing hit right away. It was twenty minutes later and they were all
having a beer, when suddenly the gimbal cranked forward and the line whizzed so
fast and loud it sent Goosebumps up Richard’s back.

Margo dropped the beer and grabbed the rod. The beer foamed
out of the can and ran over the deck, beneath Richard’s tennis shoes. The line
went way out. Jones cut the engine back plenty, and the line continued to sing
and go far out into the water.

"Hit him, Margo," Peak said. "Hit him. He’s
not stuck, he’s just got the bait and the line. You don’t hit, the sonofabitch
is gone."

Margo tightened the drag, pushed her feet hard against the
chair’s footrests, and jerked back viciously on the line. The line went taut
and the rod bent forward and Margo was yanked hard against the straps.

"Loosen the goddamn drag," Peak said, "or
he’ll snap it."

Margo loosened the drag. The line sang and the fish went
wide to starboard. Jones leaped to the controls and reversed the boat and
slowed the speed, gave the fish room to run. The line slacked and the pole
began to straighten.

"Hit him again," Peak said, and Margo tried, but
it was some job, and Richard could see that the fish was putting a tremendous
strain on her. The sun had not so much as caused her tanned body to break a
sweat, but the fish had given her sweat beads on her forehead and cheeks and
under the nose. The muscles in her arms and legs coiled as if being braided.
She pressed her feet hard against the foot rests.

"It’s too big for her," Richard said.

"Mind your own business, Mr. Young," Peak said.

Young? How had Peak known his last name? He was pondering
that, and about to ask, when suddenly the fish began to run. Peak yelled,
"Hit him, Margo, goddamn you! Hit him!"

Margo had been working the drag back and forth, and it was
evident she had done this before, but the fish was too much for her, anyone
could see that, and now she hit the big fish again, solid, and it leaped. It
leaped high and pretty, full of color, fastened itself to the sky, then dived
like an arrow into the water and out of sight. It was a great swordfish, and
Richard thought: when we drag him onto the deck, immediately it will begin to
lose its color and die. It will become nothing more than a dull gray dead fish
to harden in some taxidermist’s shop, later to be hung on a wall above a couch.
It seemed a shame, and Richard suddenly felt shamed for coming out here, for
wanting to fish at all. At home, on the banks, he caught a fish, it got eaten.
Here, there was no point to the fishing but to garner a trophy.

"I want him, Margo," Peak said. "You hear me,
you don’t lose this fish. I mean it, goddamnit."

"I’m trying," Margo said. "Really."

"You know how it goes, you screw it up," Peak
said. "You know how it works."

"Hugo... I can’t hold him. I’m hurting."

"You’ll hold him, or wish you had," Peak said.
"You just think you’re hurting."

"Hey," Richard said, "that’s ridiculous. You
want the goddamn fish, take over."

Peak, who was standing on the other side of Margo, looked at
Richard and smiled. "She’ll land it. It’s her fish, and she’ll land
it."

"It’s ripping her apart," Richard said.
"She’s just not big enough."

"Please, Hugo," Margo said. "You can have it.
It could have been me caught the barracuda."

"Look to the fish," Peak said.

Margo watched the water and her face went tight; she suddenly
looked much older than she had looked. Peak reached out and laid a hand on
Margo’s breast and looked at Richard, said, "I say she does something, she
does it. That’s the way a wife does. Her husband says she does something, she
does it."

Peak ran his hand over Margo’s breast, nearly popping her
top aside. Richard turned away from them and called up to Jones. "Cut this
out. Let’s go in."

Jones didn’t answer.

"He does what I want," Peak said. "I pay him
enough to do what I want."

The boat slowed almost to a stop, and the great fish began
to sound. It went down and they waited. The rod was bent into a deep bow. Margo
was beginning to shake. Her eyes looked as if they might roll up in her head.
She was stretched forward in the straps so that her back was exposed to
Richard, and he could see the cords of muscle there; they were as wadded and
tight as the Gordian knot.

"She can’t take much more of this," Richard said.
"I’ll take the fish, if you won’t."

"You won’t do a goddamn thing, Mr. Young. She can take
it, and she will. She’ll land it. She caught it, she’ll bring it in."

"Hugo," Margo said. "I feel faint.
Really."

Peak was still holding his beer, and he poured it over
Margo’s head. "That’ll freshen you."

Margo shook beer from her hair. She began to cry silently.
The rod began to bob up and down and the line on the reel was running out. The
fish went down again.

Jones appeared from the upper deck. "I’ve killed the
engine. The fish will sound and keep sounding."

"I know that," Peak said. "It’ll sound until
this bitch gives up, which she won’t, or until she hauls it in, which she
will."

Richard looked at Jones. The watered gravy eyes looked away.
Richard realized now that not only was Jones a paid lackey, he had actually
made sure he, Richard Young, was on this boat with HugoPeak. He had known Jones
a short time, since he’d been staying on St. Croix, and they had drunk a few
together, and maybe he’d told Jones too much. Not that any of it mattered under
normal circumstances, but now some things came clear, and Richard wished he had
never known this Captain Jones.

Until now, he had considered Jones decent company. Had told
him he was staying in the Caribbean for a few months to rest, really to get
past some disappointments. And over one too many loaded fruit drinks, had told
him more. For a brief time, two defenses, he had been the Heavyweight
Kickboxing Champion of the World.

Trained in Kenpo and Tae Kwon Do, he had gone into
kickboxing late, at thirty, and had worked his way up to the championship by
age thirty-five, going at a slow rate due to lack of finances to chase all the
tournaments. It wasn’t like professional kickboxing paid all that much. But he
had, by God, been the champion.

And on his second defense, against Manuel Martinez, it had
gone wrong. Martinez was good. Real good. He gave Richard hell, and Richard
lost sight of the rules in a pressed moment, snapped an elbow into the side of
Martinez’s temple. Martinez went down and never got up. The blow had been
illegal and just right, and Martinez was dead and Richard was shamed and pained
at what he had done.

He had the whole thing on videocassette. And at night, back
home, when he was drunk or depressed, he sometimes got out the cassette and
tormented himself with it. He had done what he had done on purpose, but he had
never intended for it to kill. It was an instinctive action from years and
years of self-defense training, especially Kenpo, which was fond of elbow
strikes. He had lost his willpower and had killed.

He had told this to Jones, and obviously, Jones, most likely
under the influence of drink, had told this to Peak, and Peak was the kind of
man who would want to know a man who had killed someone. He would want to know
someone like that to test himself against him. He would see killing a man in the
ring as positive, a major macho achievement.

And those glowing yellow shins of Peak’s. Callus. Thai
boxers built their shins up to be impervious to pain. Used herbs on them to
deaden feeling, so they could slam their legs against trees until they bled and
scabbed and finally callused over. Peak wore those shins like a badge of honor.

Yeah, it was clear now. Peak had wanted to meet him and let
it lead up to something. And Jones had made at least part of that dream
possible. He had supplied Richard, lured him like an unsuspecting goat to the
slaughter.

Richard began to feel sick. Not only from the tossing of the
sea and the smell of the diesel, but from the fact that he had been handily
betrayed, and that he had to see such a thing as a man abuse his wife over a
fish, over the fact that Peak had caught a lowly barracuda, and his wife,
through chance, had hooked a big one.

Richard moved to the side of the boat and threw up. He threw
up hard and long. When he was finished, he turned and looked at Peak, who had slid
his hand under Margo’s top and was massaging her breast, his head close to her
ear, whispering something. Margo no longer looked tan; she was pale and her
mouth hung slack and tears ran down her face and dripped from her chin.

Richard turned back to look at the sea and saw a school of
some kind of fish he couldn’t identify, leaping out of the water and back in
again. He looked at the deck and saw the bloodstained shears Jones had used on
the barracuda. As he picked them up, and turned, the line on the rod went out
fast again, finishing off the reel. Peak began to curse Margo and tell her what
to do. Richard walked quickly over to the rod, reached up with the clippers,
and snapped the line in two. The rod popped up, the line snapped away, drifted
and looped, then it was jerked beneath the waves with the fish. Margo fell back
in the chair and sighed, the harness creaking loosely against her.

Tossing the shears aside, Richard glared at Peak, who glared
back. "To hell with you," Richard said.

Two days later Richard moved out of the Hotel on the Quay.
Too expensive, and his savings were dwindling. He got a room over a fish market
overlooking the dock and the waters of the Caribbean. He had planned to go home
by now, back to Tyler, Texas, but somehow the thought of it made him sick.

Here, he seemed outside of the world he had known, and
therefore, at least much of the time, outside of the event that had brought him
here.

The first night in his little room, he lay fully dressed on
the bed and smelled the fish smell that still lingered from the closed-up shop
below. Above him, the ceiling fan beat at the hot air as if stirring chunky
soup, and he watched the shadows the moonlight made off the blades of the fan,
and the shadows whirled across him like some kind of alien, rotating spider.

After a time, he could lie there no more. He rose and began
to move up and down the floor beside the bed, doing a Kenpo form, adjusting and
varying it to suit the inconvenience of the room’s size, the bed, and the
furniture, which consisted of a table and two hardback chairs.