Lord of the Deep Page 10

  “You’re a good person, Mikey Donovan,” she said.

  Alison kissed his cheek, then wiped it dry with her thumb.

  And left.

  CHAPTER 3

  SHE WALKED AWAY BACKWARD, leaving with Cal and Ernie.

  Mikey stood gawking.

  Alison climbed up onto the seawall and headed back the way she’d come that morning, her hair brilliant gold in the rich setting sun. Cal and Ernie strode ahead, their arms moving in conversation.

  Alison looked across the water.

  Mikey lifted his hand halfway.

  Then she was gone.

  Bill and Mikey took the Crystal-C to its mooring in the bay. They put her to bed and came back to the pier, all in utter silence. Mikey tied the skiff to an orange float in the small-boat landing. Bill unhitched and removed the outboard from the stern and started toward the jeep.

  Mikey stayed in the skiff, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He looked down at the half inch of water sloshing around his bare feet. A sketch of moss grew there. He rubbed at it with his heel.

  He sighed and pushed himself up and got out of the skiff.

  Billy-Jay was in the jeep, both hands on the steering wheel, yanking it from one side to the other. Mom stood ready to catch him if he should fall. Her car was parked in the next space.

  Bill lifted the outboard over the back of the jeep and set it onto the rear seat. “Where you taking us, Billy-Jay?” he said.

  Billy-Jay turned toward Bill’s voice. “Daddy!”

  Bill lifted him up and kissed his forehead. He hugged Billy-Jay close, so close you might have wondered if it had been a month since he’d seen him. Bill closed his eyes.

  Mom watched, surprise showing on her face.

  Mikey stood behind the jeep, waiting. For what, he didn’t really know. But whatever it was, it was going to be uncomfortable.

  “Daddy!” Billy-Jay said. “You’re hurting me.”

  Bill let go, quickly. “I’m sorry, Billy-Jay. I’m—I’m just really happy to see you.”

  He set Billy-Jay on his shoulders. “Boy, have you got to stop growing. You’re so heavy you’re making me feel old already.”

  Mom put her hand on Billy-Jay’s knee, the look of surprise or concern still there.

  “I went to the doctor today,” Billy-Jay said.

  Bill lifted Billy-Jay’s hands off his eyes. “No kidding. Why’d you do that?”

  “Mommy, why’d we go?”

  “Just a checkup.”

  “Checkup,” Billy-Jay repeated.

  Bill bounced him around as if he were a horse, then lifted him off and set him down on the pier and squatted. “So, what’d the doctor say?”

  Billy-Jay said, “I got a lollipop.”

  Bill ruffled his hair.

  Mikey felt as if he were somehow not part of this. Nothing seemed real anymore.

  Mom touched Bill’s bandaged arm. “What’d you do?”

  “Just a scratch. Loose hook.” He leaned down and kissed her cheek. She put her arm around his back and hooked her thumb in a belt loop.

  “Is it bad?” she said.

  “No, but I think I’ll get it checked anyway, so it doesn’t get infected.”

  “Good idea.”

  Mom stood back and eyed Bill. Then Mikey. “All right,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?” Bill said.

  “Something’s different.”

  Bill raised his eyebrows. “Nothing’s different.”

  “You and Mikey . . . both of you seem . . . different.”

  Bill glanced at Mikey. “Nothing in particular. Just men stuff.”

  Mikey said nothing.

  Mom looked into Mikey’s eyes, then shook her head and reached for Billy-Jay. “Let’s go on home, Billy-Jay. Leave the men to work out their men stuff.”

  Mikey wanted to go with her. But he always went home with Bill. Way it was.

  She didn’t leave.

  Bill took his keys from his pocket. “Let’s go show the doc your handiwork, Mikey.” He slid into the jeep, started it up.

  Mikey glanced at Mom, then went around and got in. He sat with his arms crossed, looking out toward the ocean. Maybe Bill would explain it to him on the way home.

  No, it was too late now.

  “You sure everything’s okay?” Mom said, studying Bill.

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  “All right. See you at home, then. Bye, Mikey.”

  Mikey lifted his chin, his gaze fixed on the white dot of a boat heading in from the razor-sharp horizon.

  CHAPTER 4

  THEY DROVE FOR TWENTY MINUTES IN SILENCE.

  Nothing but the whine of the engine and the sticky air, now thinning and cooling.

  All the way up the mountain to the clinic Mikey wondered what was going through Bill’s mind. He was so quiet. But then he always was. Never said what was on his mind. One of those men who keeps everything to himself.

  Mikey’s neck cramped from looking away from Bill. He had to turn his head back slowly, rocking it from side to side to work out the crick. His teeth were clamped and his jaw ached. At one point when Bill had slowed behind a truck, Mikey almost jumped out of the jeep to walk home.

  He’d never been so worked up in his life.

  It surprised him. It scared him.

  It messed everything up.

  The clinic was a squatty one-level building in a small town way up on the flank of the island. It was yellow, almost green, the color of a painted cinder-block bathroom at some beach park. A surly jungle loomed over it on three sides.

  One dim floodlight barely illuminated the parking lot. Puddles of afternoon highland rain filled the low spots.

  Bill pulled up and shut the engine down. “Coming in?”

  Mikey shook his head.

  He could feel Bill’s eyes all over him. He turned farther away, so he couldn’t see Bill at all.

  “Listen, Mikey, there’s—”

  “I’ll just wait out here,” Mikey said.

  A trembling rose inside Mikey’s gut, the kind you get when you’re about to get into a fight.

  Bill paused a moment, then said, “I was going to say, there’s more to that decision than you see on the surface.”

  Mikey turned toward Bill. “Oh, right. Like more money?”

  Bill looked at him. Sad eyes, Mikey thought. He turned away. So what? He was too angry to care.

  His hands shook. He’d never in his life spoken to an adult like that, and especially not to Bill. His throat started to burn. Tears welled in his eyes, but he willed them back.

  Bill got out and went into the clinic.

  Mikey allowed himself to turn and watch him. He swiped his eyes with the backs of his arms. The trembling subsided. The pressure drained away.

  He sat, his mind strangely blank.

  In a while, he got out and walked over to the edge of the parking lot. There was a line of concrete tire stops at the edge of the jungle, and he sat on one of them with his back to the weeds and bushes. The sun had set and the sky had darkened. The floodlight reflected off a puddle out in the middle of the parking lot. Mikey tossed a pebble into it and watched the reflection scatter.

  He looked down at a string of ants flowing past his foot. They marched silently under the tire stop. He turned and sat facing the jungle, following the ants out the other side and off the asphalt.

  Why should he care about Cal and Ernie? They were fools. It was just a fish.

  No, there was more to it than that. It wasn’t about Cal and Ernie, anyway. It was Bill.

  Mikey sat with his arms crossed over his knees. His mind was wearing him out. He rested his head on his wrist.

  He jumped when someone tapped his shoulder.

  He must have dozed off.

  “Let’s go home,” Bill said.

  Mikey stood, feeling embarrassed or sorry or sad. At least the anger had gone, for now. He glanced at Bill’s arm, now neatly bandaged and taped. He wanted to ask how it
was, and if he had to get stitches.

  But he said nothing.

  Bill put his hand on Mikey’s shoulder and walked him back to the jeep.

  CHAPTER 5

  LATER THAT EVENING, after a quiet dinner and after Billy-Jay had gone to bed, Mikey wandered out to the carport, where Bill was cleaning one of his small reels. Mikey wanted to talk. But everything had grown so awkward now. He had no idea how to even start. He’d already said things he shouldn’t have, or maybe should have, but said it all the wrong way.

  “Mikey,” Bill said, glancing up.

  Mikey nodded.

  “What I’m doing,” Bill said, “is changing the drag washers and line. And lubricating the reel. Want to help?”

  “All right,” Mikey said.

  And he did want to help. No matter what had happened, he still wanted to learn. And he wanted to learn from Bill.

  Bill handed him a spool of new line. “Always use tournament grade. Don’t settle for second-rate line.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Bill turned the reel in his hands and shook his head. “I’m surprised this thing’s held up as well as it has. It’s just about into its granddaddy years. But a good tune-up will bring it back to life.”

  “Like a car?”

  “Exactly, only more important. If something goes wrong with your car, you get out and walk. No problem. But if something goes wrong with your reel when you got a fish hooked up, you could lose the fish. That’s a problem, since somebody’s paying you because you know what you’re doing.”

  Mikey felt the guilt of losing the marlin flood back. It would probably bother him forever.

  “So you got to stay on top of it,” Bill went on. “You don’t want to lose a customer because you’re too lazy to take care of your equipment.”

  Mikey put the spool down and picked up one of the new washers, turned it over, rubbed it between his fingers, put it back.

  Bill took the old washers out, set the new ones in.

  The night was still. Mikey could hear somebody’s television set. Whoever it was, they had it on loud. You couldn’t see any neighbors from their house. Only one small light peeking through the jungle. Mikey wasn’t sure if it was a house or somebody’s yard light. Everything else was pitch black.

  Mikey watched Bill work, too nervous to say what he had to say. He picked up the spool of new line and studied it, smelled it.

  “Why’d you let them get away with it, Bill?”

  There. It was out.

  Mikey stared at the side of Bill’s face, at the creases edging his eye.

  Bill picked up a small can of 3-in-One oil and thumbed a squirt into the crank. Turned it once, twice.

  “It’s done,” Bill said. “Let’s just drop it, okay?”

  Mikey crimped his lips, feeling the heat again, the hot thing he hadn’t known was in him. Why is he trying to shut me up, as if what I think doesn’t matter?

  Bill wiped his oily hands on a rag. “Let’s have that spool.”

  Mikey didn’t give it to him.

  “The spool?” Bill said.

  The heat burst up, exploding out with a force Mikey’d never known existed before that moment in his life. “How can you just let them walk all over you?” he spat. “How can you just sit there and let them call you Billyboy and let them say the stupid things they say and toss their beer bottles in the water? How can you let them make you roll over like a dog and do whatever they want, even when it’s wrong? How can you lie for them? Doesn’t it make you mad? Don’t you even—”

  “Enough!” Bill shouted. “Don’t you talk to me that way, you hear me? I’m your father, by God, you hear what I’m saying?”

  Every inch of Mikey’s body shook. Everything was out of control, burning him up, sucking him down. “You are not my father and I can say whatever I want!”

  A deadly silence followed.

  Bill glared at Mikey, the dirty rag still in his hands, the muscles in his jaw working. “I think you’d better leave before you get in way over your head.”

  “Fine!” Mikey spat, jabbing a finger toward Bill’s face. He tossed the spool of new line at Bill and spun to leave.

  The spool hit Bill in the chest and fell to the gravel. Bill kicked it away. It sailed past Mikey out into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE NEXT MORNING in the kitchen Mikey sat staring at his spoon. He turned it over and let the cereal fall back into the bowl.

  Bill sat across from him, just like on any other day. No different at all.

  Neither of them said a word.

  Mikey glanced up when Mom walked into the kitchen. Her eyes were slightly puffy with sleep. She smiled and walked over and kissed Mikey on the cheek.

  Then Bill.

  “Morning, men,” she said.

  Bill grabbed her hand and squeezed it.

  Mom took the tray off the high chair and started setting things up for Billy-Jay. He was really too old for a high chair, but it helped him find things when they were set up within the limits of the tray.

  Mikey took a small bite of cereal. It almost made him gag. His stomach was wrapped up tight as leader wire.

  Bill gulped his juice and pushed his chair back. “Be right back,” he said. “Then we can go.”

  “Don’t you dare wake him,” Mom said, wagging a spoon.

  “Just a peek.”

  Mom frowned, but Mikey could see she loved how Bill looked in on Billy-Jay before he left. He was worse than a mother cat.

  Mikey wanted to see Billy-Jay, too.

  But not today, not with Bill in there.

  He got up and took his full bowl to the sink, poured the soggy cereal down the drain. The warm water felt good on his hands. It soothed and slowed his tired mind. He hadn’t slept much last night.

  Minutes later Bill came back and kissed Mom goodbye, then headed out to the carport.

  Mikey waited a moment. Let Bill get out there a ways.

  “It’s still going on, isn’t it?” Mom said. “This thing between you and Bill.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something happened between you two yesterday.”

  Mikey shrugged.

  “Can’t you just tell me what’s going on so I can stop worrying about it?”

  Mikey didn’t answer. He got the lunches from the refrigerator.

  “Mikey?”

  “Mom, there’s nothing to worry about. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  He took the lunches out to the jeep, forgetting to stop the screen door from slapping behind him. How could he explain it to her when he couldn’t even explain it to himself?

  He set the lunches in the jeep, then went into the carport and took out the ice, refilled the bucket and set it back in the freezer, got the beer and soda and water and set them all on the backseat.

  Mom stood in the light of the open door, one hand holding it back.

  Bill and Mikey got in the jeep and drove down to the pier and parked and got out. Mikey still hadn’t said one word to Bill.

  Bill took the outboard and Mikey fumbled with the ice. This time he kept it in the burlap bag, not caring if anyone thought that was a sissy way to carry it. Should have done that the first time.

  Out in the harbor, Mikey sat gripping the sides of the skiff as it slipped past silent moored boats that loomed over them like sleeping whales. One boat had a hull marred by dark rust lines that ran down from its deck holes, the stains ignored by its skipper, as if that part of the boat didn’t matter. If that was my boat, Mikey thought, I’d scrub them away.

  He sat in the skiff facing forward, imagining Bill behind him with one hand on the outboard throttle. Mikey wondered if Bill noticed the rust lines, too.

  Probably.

  Bill hadn’t said a thing about last night. Fine, Mikey thought. He didn’t want Bill to bring it up, anyway. What he wanted was to forget it ever happened. The whole thing scared him. It wasn’t supposed to be like that with Bill.

  None of it was supposed to be t
his way.

  Yet it was.

  Mikey gazed up at the purple gray sky, then out over the ocean, so calm, so glassy. It was the stopped time, a relief, a time before boats coughed to life. Before tourists, beer, box lunches, boiling sun and all the boasting talk.

  He liked this time best of all.

  Even though the 10-horse outboard shattered the stillness, it was part of what the harbor was. The sound belonged there. Like a boat’s clock bell. Like the salt taste in the air. Like the smell of diesel. Like Bill, and the Crystal-C.

  Mikey puffed up his cheeks and let the air out.

  The day had just begun and already he was tired. He felt as if the life were sapped out of him. He slapped his cheek lightly, hoping that would snap him awake.

  When they got to the boat, Bill stepped aboard with the ice, and Mikey worked the skiff to the buoy, tied it off, and climbed aboard the Crystal-C.

  He waited.

  The whole world was silent now. Just the gentle lapping against the hull and distant hush of small waves sweeping over the rocky shore.

  How can I do this? How can I listen to one more dumb joke? But Alison would be there.

  Bill fired up the boat. “Cut her loose,” he called.

  Mikey threw the mooring line into the skiff.

  Bill throttled up and eased the Crystal-C toward the pier. The engines vibrated through Mikey’s bare feet. A boat was more than a boat. It was the air he breathed.

  To fish.

  To skipper.

  To be a man of the sea.

  And now he couldn’t even stay awake.

  Mikey noticed his teeth clamped tight. He opened his mouth and worked his lower jaw from side to side, trying to relax.

  Breathe.

  They tied the boat at the pier. Mikey did his job. Wiped the salt off the seats and windows. Fleeced the rods and reels. Chipped the ice, stocked the drink cooler. Swept the spotless deck.

  Bill checked the lures.

  The engines idled, rumbling low and familiar. The sunrise, still behind the mountain, had begun to lighten the sky so that the island now stood in stark silhouette.