Swim That Rock (20 page)

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.

I feel two hands lift me up, and then I see a flash of knife slicing through the murk, and then lots of bubbles as the hands push me up toward the light. My head bursts through the surface, and I suck in air with a roaring noise. Cliff Olson pops up next to me, with the knife still in his hand.

“Jake! Jake!” Tommy is screaming at me from the boat. “What happened?” He lifts me into the boat with some newfound power I didn’t know he had.

“I’m all right,” I gasp, dropping the mask to the deck. “I just got caught up in some guy’s drifting anchor line.”

I look over and see Cliff climbing back into his garvey, like he does this kind of thing every day. Paul jumps over into the Hawkline with a towel and my clothes.

“Jesus Christ, that was some crazy stuff ! You nearly got yourself killed.” He is visibly shaking, and his eyes look like they are going to pop out of his head. “I thought you were just playing a joke like you were some kind of Harry Houdini, until this dude comes jumping across the two boats and dives in with a knife between his teeth.”

We all look at Cliff, and he’s already back on his rake and pulling in a steady rhythm. “Hey, Cliff !” I yell over to him.

“Yeah, Jake?”

“Thanks. I owe you,” I say, still panting like a dog.

“Don’t worry about it, Jake.” He points to a red boat about fifty feet away, where another digger is hauling up his anchor line. “That guy was dragging his anchor because it was caught up in a bunch of old eel traps. I guess I cut you both free.”

“Well, then,
he
owes you.” Tommy laughs, pointing to the guy in the red boat.

Cliff and I are nervously laughing it off, but Paul looks pretty freaked out.

“Did you pull up the rope?” I ask, smiling at Paul.

“What?”

“Your rake, did you pull it up?”

“No way.” He rubs his face with his fat fingers like he can’t believe it. “You clipped it?”

“Yeah. But this time,” I say, “start putting it together from the handle end first. Put the rake on last, and make sure you tie a damn line to the end of it because I’m not diving in after it again.”

“You’re un-freakin’-believable,” he says, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket and grabbing a wad of bills. He holds the money out toward me.

“Seriously, don’t worry about it,” I say, handing him the towel.

“Unbelievable,” he says again as he jumps back into his shiny new boat.

Tommy and I get back to work, and I can still hear Paul muttering to himself. I thought I would be exhausted after nearly drowning, but for some reason I feel even stronger.

“Why did you help that guy?” Tommy asks me while dumping another bucket of littlenecks into a bag.

“Because he needed it, I guess.”

“But the guy is clueless,” Tommy says under his breath.

“Hey, you were clueless when you first paddled out here in that kayak.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Tommy says, nodding.

“Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.”

By 11:30 a.m. the rakes are no longer coming up full. I move up on the anchor line because there’s nowhere to move behind me.

“Are you still catching?” I ask Johnny Bennato.

“Seems everybody’s coming up with about half of what they were catching an hour ago,” he says.

“Me too.”

“Say, you all right?” Johnny asks. “I heard you ran into a little trouble over there. I was so busy dealing with these bozos in front of me, I didn’t even see it.”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“We’re awesome!” Tommy adds, throwing his skinny arm over the console.

Bennato’s pushing the handle of his rake forward with his hips, just like me, really sweating to make the rake work, and he’s pissed off as he starts pulling it up to the surface. “Friggin’ bottom’s all chewed up. There seems to be plenty of stuff, but it’s like working in a newly plowed cornfield. The rake keeps popping out.”

The wind from the north has died, and there’s no tide. All the boats are starting to drift around at different angles.

“The tide should be going out for another hour.” I say this to nobody in particular.

Tommy has caught up with me, and he has everything culled out, and all the buckets are bagged and stacked. Not a good sign.

“I’m thinking of moving,” I say real quietly.

“What?” Tommy looks at me like I’m nuts. “Where are we going to go? There are boats everywhere.”

“East of here. There’s no one working over there.” I nod with my chin toward Rumstick Rock.

“Don’t you think there’s a reason no one’s working over there?”

“Listen.” I lean in close to Tommy. “The wind is going to pick up any minute, and we’ll try working that mud drift out there.”

“Wind?” Tommy licks his finger and holds it up into the stagnant air.

“Trust me, it’s going to blow, and all these guys are going to end up in a tangled mess.”

“You’re the boss,” Tommy says.

As I look back at the mountain of quahogs we’ve caught, I don’t feel like a kid anymore. I feel like I’m a Hi-Liner, like Dave Becker. Gene would be proud of me. So would my dad.

“Let’s just pull up to the top of our anchor line and eat some lunch.”

“Sounds good to me. I’m starving.” Tommy pulls most of the anchor line in as I rinse my hands in the water. The salt stings my palms. There are three burst blisters on each hand. The skin is hanging off in little flaps, and I try to press them back into place, but it’s useless, so I just bite off the extra skin and spit it overboard.

“I hope you got more for lunch than that,” Tommy says, leaning into the anchor line.

“Nope, that’s it,” I say, offering him my hand. If Tommy weren’t here, I might have gone home by now.

We tie off, and I hand Tommy a loaf of bread and open the other can of beef stew. We eat as if we are starving, scarfing down the bread and stew without taking time to breathe.

“Gene always says that August is the only time when you can really predict the weather out here. The mornings are cool with little wind, and then in the afternoon you get a warm southerly breeze.” I hand the jug of water to Tommy. “That’s what we’re waiting for, so let me know when you feel it.”

“Yeah, right.” Tommy laughs. “I can’t feel anything. My arms are blasted.”

As his words empty into the air, a southerly breeze comes, slight at first, just a tickle on the back of my neck. It’s as if Gene is right here with me.

“Haul the anchor, Tom. Haul it fast.”

I smack the rake into the rake holder and resurrect the engine. The smoke and noise from the engine arouses everyone’s attention. I can hear a guy from Greenwich Bay in a light-green boat talking loudly.

“It’s about time this place clears out of all these kids and peckerheads.”

“Hey dick-for-brains,” Bennato yells at him. “My money would be on the kid. He’s outcaught you, you jackass.”

The Greenwich Bay guy starts throwing his rake around and smashing stuff on his deck. I decide to swing the boat by Johnny Bennato, when I notice Tommy stacking the bags in a big mound to show off our catch.

“Don’t do that. Lay them out flat,” I call back to him.

“Why? It looks wicked awesome.”

“We’re not here to show off. Just get them down low.”

Tommy reluctantly pulls the bags down and lays them in two rows of ten bags each at the stern.

“Where are you going, Jake?” Johnny asks over the engine noise.

I kill the engine and slide right by his starboard side, speaking in a hushed voice.

“I’m setting up for the mud drift out east of here because the wind is going to blow this afternoon from the south. Gene and I killed them in the mud one foggy day near the line out east. I figure it’ll be even better than here.”

Johnny hauls up his half-full rake. “I’ll see you out there.”

A few guys like C. J. and Becker are on the move too. I can see the guys in the pack getting all tangled up with the freshening breeze. Johnny leans over his rail so I can hear him better and says quietly, “A lot of these guys can’t work in the mud. They’ll be going home soon.”

I slowly navigate my way out of the pack, with Johnny following me. I see that Cliff Olson is also pulling up his anchor now.

“We are going to mow ’em now, Tommy, you watch.”

I pull the boat due south, almost even with Rumstick Rock, and kill the engine. I take the hard-bottom rake off the end of the pole and put on Gene’s mud rake. It looks huge with its wide basket and three-and-a-half-inch teeth. I’m wondering if I can even pull this big rake when the wind picks up.

The wind and the waves start to build. I can see guys leaving with loaded boats. The sound of a thousand straining engines screaming with effort fills the air. To the west of us a cloud of smoke rises from a boat that is on fire near the lighthouse. I can see the fire department rushing to launch their boat at the ramp on Barrington Beach.

“You feel that wind now, Tommy? It won’t be long before all their anchors will start failing. You’ll see a cluster of boats snarled together in ten minutes.”

“Glad we’re out here, then,” Tommy says, looking around. There are only a handful of boats working this area. I throw the rake in and move toward the bow so the boat will cut through the waves. I just manage to hold on. Waves slap the side of the boat, and the rake is singing along,
tick, tick, tick,
as the quahogs find their way in.

“Ready up!”

The line strains from the bigger rake, and Tommy is helping me more and more as the day wears on. The rake hits the surface, bouncing in the chop, and it’s jammed to the teeth with littlenecks.

“Wow! You
are
amazing,” Tommy says as the quahogs hit the culling board.

“Keep telling me that, because I don’t know how much longer I can hang on. My hands are a mess.”

The Hawkline is riding low. I can feel the momentum of the overloaded boat slam into each wave as we head south, getting ready for another mile-long drift. All afternoon, boats pass us heading home, looking at us like we’re crazy. Little do they know we’re catching four bags each drift.

I’m working directly off of the bow now, quartering into the waves and leaning back. My shoulders no longer just hurt; they ache from the strain. The sun is getting lower in the late August burn that leaves the western sky almost pink.

“Let’s take a swim.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tommy says, rinsing his hands over the side.

The boat is drifting north toward the beach, so I set up the anchor off the bow, and it catches in the mud. All the people who were standing on the beach, gawking at us quahoggers, have gone home.

I start to strip down.

“You going in naked?” Tommy asks, looking at all the houses right up against the shore.

“Yeah, I’m too tired to care, and I don’t want to spend the rest of the evening working in wet underwear.” I hang my clothes off the steering wheel and jump in. Tommy follows my lead.

We’ve got the radio blaring, and Tommy is singing along as he swims on his back. I swim around behind the old engine and look at it from the waterline. It’s a greasy mess with oil and smoky soot all over it. I am amazed at how it still starts up each time. I continue to swim around to the east side of the boat, inspecting the hull.

“Look at the boat, Tom. She’s down below the waterline, full of quahogs. I’ve never seen her so low.”

Tommy swims around to my side.

“We have a problem.”

“It’s no problem. We’ll just take it slow, that’s all.” I say this, still looking at the underside of the gunwale. Tommy grabs my shoulder.

“No, we have a real problem.” He’s whispering now. “Jay Miller is drifting by on the other side of our boat.”

“So what?”

“Janna is on board, picking for him,” Tommy says, wide-eyed.

“Perfect. Now’s your chance, Tommy.” I laugh. “You should swim over and say hi.”

“What are we going to do?” Tommy looks worried.

I peek around the bow and see her from the back. She’s beautiful from every angle, with her long legs and blond hair. I start giggling uncontrollably at our situation. We’re both hiding behind the Hawkline and watching her prance around the boat in her bikini.

“We can’t swim forever. Let’s just quickly hoist up onto the port side and get our clothes on while she’s working,” I suggest.

I swim up and make the first move to get on board, swinging my leg over the rail. I fall to the deck and lie there for a second.

“Is the coast clear?” Tommy whispers from the side of the boat.

“Yeah. They’re not looking, come on.”

I hear Tommy struggling, trying to get in, and it sounds like he’s banging himself up pretty good on the side of the boat.

“I need a hand,” he yells out. I look over, and Janna has her back to us. Jay is huddled under his console, trying to light his pipe. I quickly jump to my feet and reach over the rail and grab Tommy’s wrists and pull.

“Come on, kick!” I’m ordering, and Tommy is kicking, but I just start laughing, and all the strength drains out of me again. I can’t help him at all. I reach over with both arms under his armpits and use my knees to pull him over the rail.