The Girl of the Sea of Cortez (19 page)

He had the jug far enough back now, and he tied off the primer cord and picked up the squeeze generator and closed his eyes, envisioning the falling dynamite. His imaginary perspective was from the seamount, looking up, and he saw the two sticks falling in a slow spiral toward him, and almost on top of him, and so he squeezed the generator once, then again, then again, and he heard the wheel turn faster and faster as power built and built …

There was a sound of ripping as the primer cord detonated, and then as Jobim opened his eyes the world before
him erupted. The water beneath the two boats bulged and burst, and in graceful slow motion the wooden boats disintegrated. The force of the explosion directly underneath them separated their planks and dispersed them, and as the bulge of water ruptured, it blew the four men upward, in disarray, like circus clowns on a trampoline.

In a microsecond before the unleashed energy reached Jobim’s raft, he thought he had miscalculated and was going to follow the men into the air. But the rubber tubes lashed to his raft absorbed enough of the first hammer blow so that when the raft was heaved clear of the water it did not come apart, and it slapped back down on the sea in one piece, rocking crazily. Even his anchor held; all he had to do was keep from being rolled overboard. He reached into the plastic bag and brought out a powerful electric torch, one of those used to illuminate the surface of the sea for night fishing over the abyss. He did not turn it on, but knelt on his raft with the light in his lap, and waited.

There was new turmoil as the men hit the water and sank and came up again and screamed, their shrieks tumbling over one another, unheard, for each man listened only to himself.

“Help!”

“I can’t swim!”

“I’m hurt!”

“Oh, God!”

“Mother of Jesus!”

“I’m drowning!”

“Mother of God!”

“Help me!”

“Save me!”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!”

“Help help help!”

Eventually each man found a piece of debris to cling to,
and their panic subsided and transformed into anger and outrage and bickering and worry about drowning and drifting away and being eaten by prehistoric monsters of the deep. Floating in the sea in daylight was bad enough; at night, it was the stuff of nightmares. These men were fishermen. They knew what kinds of things lurked down there, and they knew there were things they did not know, things that had bitten off steel leaderwire and straightened giant hooks, things that came up in the night to feed.

If only they could have the security of feeling their feet touch solid bottom … but out here, if their feet had touched anything, they would have gone into shock.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes it was. I felt something.”

“It’s in your head.”

“There it is again. Oh God!”

“What? What is it?”

“It’s dead!”

“What’s dead?”

“It’s a fish! A dead fish!”

“Where? Where?”

“There’s one! Oh God!”

“I felt one! It’s all puffed up!”

“There’s another one! They’re everywhere!”

“Jesus!”

“I’m sick!”

“I told you that fuse was too short!”

“You fool!”

“Somebody must have … Oh God! Another one!”

“How far is it to …?”

“Don’t think about it.”

“We’re going to drown!”

“Stop it!”

“All of us! We’re all going to die!”

“Shut up!”

“Holy Mary Mother of God …”

“Shut
up
!”

“I’m drifting away!”

“Kick this way, then!”

“I am, I am … Oh God! Guts!”

“Forget it!”

“There it is again!”

“What is?”

“It brushed me!”

Jobim switched on the torch, and the four floating men were stunned by the cone of light. They gasped and tried to look behind the light, but the beam was too strong, and they had to close their eyes or turn away. For a moment, they must have thought they were saved, for there were weak smiles. But when Jobim said nothing and did not move toward them, they knew they were not to be rescued, at least not now.

Jobim waited until he was sure their minds had passed through befuddlement and worry and into true fear, before he spoke. Then he spoke slowly and made his voice as low as he could, trying to sound like an oracle or a cave creature or, in any case, something mysterious and menacing that each of the men would recall in private moments and that would make them shiver and the hair rise on their arms.

“We are Los Vigilantes,” Jobim said, and he paused for dramatic effect. “We have followed you and found you out, and we know you. You are evil men.”

“No!” cried one. “We’re just …”

“Quiet!” Jobim roared. He wished there were drums and thunder behind him. “You are evil men, and evil gets what evil gives. You would take the food from the mouths of babies
and bring pestilence upon the land.” (Words like that had to be effective, he thought. After all, that’s the way they talk in the Bible.) “You will die.”

“No!” the four voices howled in chorus.

“All men die. There is a time for dying, and your time will come. But perhaps not today.”

Silence.

“Perhaps not tomorrow.”

Silence.

“But be warned. Your faces are known to us now.” He moved the light among the men, so the core of the cone, the brightest spot of light, shone briefly on each face. “One of us will always be with you, through all the days of your life. And when next you sin, know it will not be a secret sin, for the one of us who is with you will know.” Jobim stopped. Something was taking shape in his mind, something mischievous. “You will not know who we are. We might be your closest friend, perhaps your brother. You can trust no one. No one. Never again.”

Slowly the circle of four men was growing wider, for they had not had the wit to hold hands and so were drifting apart. In a moment, Jobim would not be able to keep all four within the beam of light. “If ever you return to this place,” he said quickly, “or to any other place to do the deed you have done, bid farewell to your loved ones, for you will not see them again.”

Jobim switched off the light and sat still, hoping to appear to have vanished.

There were a few moments of silence. Then the men realized several things at once: They were not, after all, going to be rescued; if they were to survive, they would have to stay afloat until either they reached land or daylight came and a passing boat could pick them up; and, finally and most alarming,
like ripples from a rock dropped into calm water, they were spreading farther and farther apart.

“Where are you?” called one.

“Here!” two answered at once.

“Come this way.”

Splashes, swimming.

“Not that way! This way!”

“I did!”

“What’s that?”

“Another dead fish. They’re everywhere!”

“We’re going to drown!”

“Shut up!”

“Shark!”

“Where?”

“I guess it wasn’t.”

“Jesus …”

Jobim sat on his raft and listened. The voices faded quickly, for the tide was strong. They would be many miles away by morning, and probably miles from each other as well, for each man was an object of different density and buoyancy and resistance to water movement and would thus move at a different pace and be subject to different eddies and currents.

One or two might be picked up by boats, for there was occasional ferry traffic between the Mexican mainland and the Baja peninsula. They would be dropped at the ferry’s next port of call and would have to work their way home, begging rides from village to village to island. And when they got home, what would they say had happened? Suppose one of their comrades had arrived before them. How would they coordinate their stories?

One or two were certain to drift onto uninhabited ground, there to scratch for survival until they could attract the attention of a fisherman going by or a family out to gather wood.
There were lizards to eat if you could catch them, and a rattleless rattlesnake that tasted good if you could bite it before it bit you, and birds’ eggs if you could find the nests hidden in the crevices in the high rocks. There wasn’t much fresh water, and what there was lay in stagnant pools that probably contained bacteria that would make you sick. But you could survive.

Jobim doubted that any of them would die, and he did not consider himself responsible if one of them should die: He had cast them into the water whole and healthy and in good weather. Anyone should make it to shore who did not do something stupid.

Furthermore, if one or more of them did die, Jobim would have considered it justice, for in his opinion what they had done to the seamount branded them as no more worth preserving than a rabid bat.

Soon the voices were gone, and there were no sounds except the soft slapping of the water against the bottom of the wooden raft. Jobim pulled his anchor. As the killick came up and he reached for it, his weight shifted to one end of the raft, and that end dipped beneath the surface of the water. A big gold
cabrío
floated onto the raft, into Jobim’s lap.

The concussion of the dynamite had not only killed the fish, it had disfigured it. Its belly was swollen; its tongue had inflated like a balloon and filled the yawning mouth; its eyes bulged from their sockets and stared in blank perplexity.

The seamount was dead now. It would be many, many months before life returned in any profusion, and years before it returned to anything like normal.

No, he would not be sad if one of the men did not make it all the way home.

P
aloma waited for silence, and then waited some more, in case Jo had turned around and rowed back and was lurking nearby. At last she ducked her head underwater and came out beside the pirogue. She was alone on the sea.

She pulled herself up onto the overturned bottom of the pirogue and examined the hole Jo had dug with his harpoon. It was about the size of her fist, easy enough to patch with wood once ashore, but big enough to keep her from getting to shore.

She tried to think through her choices. She could stay with the overturned boat until she drifted onto land—tonight or tomorrow or the next day, or … It might be many days, and she might succumb to thirst or exposure. And suppose the
weather went bad. To try to ride out a
chubasco
by straddling a hollow log was suicidal.

She could abandon the boat and swim for home. Absolutely, positively not. Not worth considering.

Or, she could try to patch the pirogue here and now.

With what? She had no wood, no canvas, no leather, no nails or tacks, no hammer. She could plug the hole with herself: She could sit on it. But then she couldn’t paddle, because every time she moved the hole would open and water would rush in. She pictured everything she had brought with her, analyzing its potential to be shaped into a plug. Her hat? No, the straw fibers were too loosely woven; water would pour through them. Her flippers? She could cut one up and fit the piece of rubber into the hole. But the rubber wouldn’t stay; it would float free. The glass faceplate of her mask? She had no way of securing it to the wood.

Her mind evaluated every item and discarded it. And then, as she looked at the wood fibers, she saw beside them other fibers, closely woven though not as thick as the wood, and she had the answer: her dress. She could stuff her dress into the hole, and it would keep the water out. The fabric was already saturated with salt water, so no more could penetrate it. And packed tightly in a ball, the cloth fibers would bind and become nearly waterproof.

She peeled the sodden shift up over her head, then ducked under the pirogue and, from the inside, packed the cloth into the hole. It made a tight plug—nothing that could survive a pounding in a heavy sea, but secure enough for an easy paddle on calm water.

She ducked out again, hauled herself up onto the bottom, and reached over and grabbed the far edge. Bracing herself on one knee, she pulled, and there was a liquid sucking sound and a pop as the suction broke and the pirogue jumped free
of the water and righted itself. It was still full of water, though; only an inch of freeboard stuck above the surface. Since the boat was a hollow log, it would not sink, but if Paloma were to climb aboard, her weight would drive the pirogue’s sides down flush with the surface. Every minuscule movement she made would tip the boat and allow more water to slosh aboard. She could not bail it out from inside.

So she clung to one side with one arm, and with the other hand began methodically to splash water overboard. She forced herself not to be impatient, for she knew that this was what she was going to be doing for the next several hours, probably well into the night. And she did not hurry, for she didn’t want to tire herself and risk a cramp in an arm or leg. She could stop a cramp, but a muscle that had once gone into spasm was sure to cramp again unless it was rested for hours. Each succeeding cramp would be harder to relieve than the one before, and she did not want to be forced too early to use extreme remedies. It was said that the only way to relieve a terrible cramp was to cause worse pain elsewhere in your body, the theory being that the mind can only focus on one pain center at a time and it will concentrate on the most severe, and will thus stop sending cramp signals to the afflicted muscle.