Again to Carthage Read online

“Fine by me, I like it.” Cassidy already had his mask and snorkel on, and once he had pulled on his flippers, he threw the knotted line out behind the boat and flipped backward into the sea, shivering from the mild shock of the coolish water. He had the usual sense of déjà vu in the moment when all the topside sounds muted away to the background and almost all auditory input imploded into the bubbly roar of his own exaggerated breathing.

  He looked straight down on what they had thought was a coral head, but it turned out to be a tuft of purple sea fans with just a few tropicals flitting about, so Cassidy grabbed the rope and pointed straight ahead.

  Winkler goosed the throttle a bit and Cassidy frantically signaled him to slow down as the rushing water nearly ripped his mask off. The draggee couldn’t tolerate much more than three or four knots, a speed that seemed absurdly slow to the driver, but almost scary to the diver.

  The bottom was mostly a plain desert of white coral sand, so anything with any color or pattern stood out. As Winkler steered toward likely looking splotches, Cassidy used his flippers and body angle to arc back and forth behind the boat, covering as much territory as he could, looking for hidden ledges and outcroppings as well as the more obvious coral heads. Occasionally he would drop off the line and dive down to take a closer look at something. Winkler would circle the boat around and pick him up again.

  They were trolling over a nondescript stretch when Cassidy noticed the water deepening slightly and a few patches of fans and grass here and there. Then he passed over a faint line of discoloration and was pretty sure he saw a number of telltale black Vs wiggling around. He dropped off the line and inverted himself in the water, kicking straight down the twenty feet to the bottom. When he reached the little ledge, he gripped it with both hands and peered over into the cool shadows underneath.

  It was always a thrilling sight to him: dozens of pairs of eyeballs on little orange stalks ogled him as the edgy creatures tried to back up farther into the crevice, a forest of antennae waving around in rhythmic defense. Cassidy felt a Pavlovian twitching in his salivary glands: dinner!

  “Whatcha got?” Winkler had pulled the boat around as Cassidy surfaced with a gasp.

  “Nice little ledge, really loaded with bugs,” Cassidy said, breathing hard. The snorkel hung loose as he treaded water. “Give me the hook and I’ll take it down and plant it so we can anchor right on top of it. It’s kind of hard to spot.”

  “You’re not kidding,” said Winkler, handing the lightweight pronged anchor over. “I can’t see a thing.”

  Their method of scouting the bottom seemed like a lot of time and trouble to some people, but they had learned over the years that it was probably the most effective way to locate otherwise undetectable spots such as this ledge.

  Winkler handed down the Hawaiian sling and got into his own gear as Cassidy made his first dive, descending on the far end of the ledge so as not to scatter the creatures, swimming against the tide and away from the ledge so that he could approach it horizontally, flat on the bottom, spear in front and ready. The sling was an underwater equivalent of a bow and arrow, the spear fitting through a hole drilled longways through a thick wooden tube and a loop of surgical tubing held fast by tightly wound cord.

  There really wasn’t much sport in it and Cassidy merely tried to work efficiently, dispatching the creatures as painlessly and with as little fuss as possible. He would pull back on the sling, aim carefully, and let go of the six-foot stainless-steel shaft. The point would skewer the lobster between the eyes and that was that. On the Florida side you had to catch them by hand, but in the Bahamas either a hook or an unattached spear was legal. Cassidy tried to get two or three on the spear at a time to save up-and-down time. Winkler worked more conventionally and methodically, taking one up at a time.

  Soon they were back on the boat in the shade of the Bimini top, munching ham sandwiches, eyeing a cooler holding twenty-three bright orange spiny lobster tails. Winkler motioned at the cooler with his sandwich, a little smudge of mustard on his upper lip.

  “If we can find a couple decent-sized groupers or snappers, we’ll have dinner pretty much knocked. Not a bad morning.”

  “Well, Joe’s boat is going for grouper. That’s almost a sure thing. The tank divers will probably come back with something or other too. Roland will be in heaven.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s going to have to trade us. What’s he after this time?”

  “Trumpet tritons and royal grammas.”

  “Empty seashells and snapshots of purple and gold inedibles. Something tells me we’re in a good bargaining position.”

  The early-afternoon breeze was kicking up a little wind chop as they finished lunch and Cassidy looked over at Winkler, who thought Cassidy’s eyes were looking decidedly bleary.

  “You feel like driving this thing?” Cassidy said.

  Winkler laughed. “I guess I’d better. You look like you might have about five good minutes left.”

  “If that.”

  Winkler cranked up the twin Mercurys as Cassidy hauled in the hook and stored it beneath the sleeping platform. Then he pulled the canopy up over the front of the boat for shade and plopped down on one of the triangular cushions, pulling a pair of flippers and a wad of towel under his head for a pillow.

  The boat skipped along to a rhythmic and hypnotic beat on the wind chop like a child chanting itself to sleep, and it gave Cassidy a happy feeling to watch Winkler steering the boat casually and effortlessly, standing on one leg with his athlete’s innate easy balance, the other leg cocked up on a cooler, his red hair blowing back in the breeze, a nautical Sundance Kid on steroids. The wake flowing in a straight line in back of the boat indicated someone good at the wheel.

  In that beautiful opiate state between sun and sleep Cassidy could see through half-closed eyes the unadorned western horizon and in a quirky mind trick he could sense the entire fifty-mile stretch of deep purple Gulf Stream between the tiny wave-skipping boat and the limestone-and-coral Florida peninsula. He could sense as well the huge pelagic fish that moved through the stream deep and shallow and also all the manatees and sunfish and whales as well as all the German submarines and wooden sailing ships and blockade-runners that had plied it in years and centuries past, some bringing Tories, slaves, bricks; others taking guns, drugs, rum; and some dealing death and leaving burning American boys in oily life jackets within sight of straw-boatered dandies strolling the boardwalks at Daytona.

  In his presleep state he had the sensation of being able to grasp it all at once, as if in a four-dimensional painting encompassing both time and space, his own place in it an inconsequential squiggle of comings and goings.

  10

  Rafting Up

  CASSIDY HAD NO idea where or who he was when he heard Joe Kern ask Winkler, “What’s his problem?”

  “Two speeds,” Winkler said, “full speed ahead and all stop.”

  The boats were all rafted up a quarter mile off the Jack Tar Hotel and the cooking was well under way. The distant noise of children at play carried easily across the calm turquoise water and the lowering sun was preparing for an outrageous show. Winkler sat in the back of the boat minding a huge pot of seawater steaming on the Coleman stove. He was using a piece of lobster antenna to clean the bungies out of the tails.

  Joe Kern sat barefoot on the gunnel helping him, stopping occasionally to take a sip of Heineken out of the icy green bottle he kept close by in a gimbal.

  “Almost seems like an insult to use their own antenna on them that way, doesn’t it? Don’t suppose you have another one of those around?” said Cassidy, yawning and stumbling out from under the canopy.

  “John,” Joe called to his son two boats over, “toss us a greenie for the captain.”

  Cassidy took the beer gratefully as he sat beside Joe and watched the cleaning process. Parched, he drained half the bottle and made a little geck-geck-geck sound.

  “Thirsty much?” said Joe.

  “Didn’t know I was that tired,” Cassidy said incongruously. “How long was I out?” he asked Winkler.

  “Well, dinner’s almost ready if that tells you anything. The whole way back plus most of the cocktail hour, you’ve been gone. Henry wanted to wake you up and get you cleaning grouper, but I made him leave you alone. I loaned him your Rapala blade, by the way. He left his on his dad’s boat. Speak of the devil.”

  Henry was crawling across the gunnel with a basket of freshly fried grouper fingers that he had been taking from one boat to the next. Very tan and slightly overweight, with his neatly trimmed goatee and crisp Panama hat, he looked very Continental and arty, a young and fit Henri Matisse, though in fact he worked for Jim Branch as a real estate appraiser.

  “Which I would like back, by the way,” Cassidy said, nimbly hot-fingering several steaming yellow chunks of fish, “with the point still on it if possible.”

  “Yeah, yeah. What do you think? I used peanut oil.”

  “Incredible. What’s the breading?” Joe Kern asked O-mouthed, sucking air around the fish to keep from burning his tongue.

  “The usual. Crunched-up Ritz crackers and lemon pepper, soaked in milk and eggs first. The secret is getting the oil hot enough. Good?”

  “Henry, you are the maharaja of fried fish. Just leave us some to keep our strength up while we finish these bugs,” Joe said.

  “Yes, please,” said Winkler, who was trying to eat with one hand, balancing a beer in his lap and tossing lobster tails into the boiling water with the other hand.

  “So you guys did some good?” Cassidy said to Joe Kern.

  “Mmm. We went out to the reef lines west of here and trolled some deep lures for grouper. Got a few decent-sized ones and a bunch of rock hinds. I think that’s what he just cooked up, the little ones.”

&
nbsp; “Long as it wasn’t kicking up out there, sounds like fun.”

  “Pretty flat most of the day. Then just a little wind chop. Darned pleasant, all in all.”

  “How big were the big ones?”

  “One was about twenty. Couple in the teens. But we were hitting a hundred feet or so, so even the little ones were some work.”

  “You can have it. I’d rather dive to sixty feet in a current than crank up groupers all the dooh-dah day. Like trying to fish up umbrella stands.”

  “Oh, they’re not bad long as you can get them turned upward right after they hit. But you let even a small one get back down in the rocks and hole up and you’re going to lose your tackle and a lot of line. Ask Henry. Long as he’s been grouper fishing, one got him today. Claimed it was a fifty-pounder.”

  “That right, Henry?” Cassidy called across the boats. “Grouper get your goat today?”

  “Or the Loch Ness monster one.” Henry thumbed his Panama hat back from his forehead. He was hunkered over his stove stirring another batch of fish. “I fumbled with the drag for a second and that’s all it took. Got himself all wedged in and I had to break him off. But he was trophy-sized, I know that all right all right.”

  “Or a two-pound rock hind,” Joe Kern muttered to himself. “Kept telling him about that drag.”

  Joe was the best fisherman Cassidy had ever known. Trim and tanned, though he was in his mid-fifties, he could have passed for young forties. Once Cassidy had been amazed to see him playing very rough basketball at the Y with twenty-year-olds. He was fourth-generation Palm Beach County and before he turned ten he had caught his family’s dinner many times with a hand line out of Lake Worth. He had ancestors who had lived and died without ever having traveled to Miami except by boat. Cassidy’s father and Joe had been childhood friends; Cassidy had grown up calling him Uncle Joe.

  All the while dinner was making, boats came and went. Some arrived and tied on, some went back and forth to the dock, or on other errands, some pulled up close by and dropped anchor, not wanting to get hemmed in. But soon there were more than a dozen of the little boats all together and the laughter and chatter echoed far out across the water.

  Cassidy made his way over three boats to where John Kern sat in the stern on a cooler, using the driver’s chair as a table. A slighter, younger version of his dad, save for the sun-bleached beard, he was entertaining two young ladies Cassidy hadn’t seen before, both redheads and possibly sisters, and Cassidy introduced himself while John was up under his bow canopy fetching something.

  “Can I be of some use?” Cassidy asked John.

  “Not in the least. I’m just chopping for salad. You okay on beer? I was explaining to Susan and Stacey here about the dinnertime division of labor among the boats.”

  “It’s impressive to see men so apparently useful,” Susan said. She was smiling at Cassidy, tapping her wineglass fetchingly against a white incisor.

  “Better save your judgment until you’ve had dinner,” Cassidy said.

  “Oh, we already had some fish that charming fellow brought by. Harry, was it?”

  “Henry. Yeah, you’re right. My dad used to say that no one ever lost any weight on one of these trips unless they got a leg bitten off by a shark.”

  “So, every boat cooks something different. It’s like a movable feast except we don’t go anywhere,” she said.

  “Right,” John Kern said, returning with a bottle of olive oil. “And you try to end up cooking what you caught during the day. Or at least you do if it works out. It’s very satisfying shepherding the whole process from ocean to plate. Or at least that’s the theory. Some people just aren’t any damn good at fishing or diving, so they make side dishes. That’s why I’m chopping lettuce and carrots right now.”

  Cassidy rolled his eyes. John Kern was only slightly less of a fisherman than his father.

  “What if your boat didn’t catch anything and you can’t cook?” asked Stacey.

  “Your boat tells knock-knock jokes,” said John Kern.

  “Hey, speaking of which, I appreciate your taking Roland today,” Cassidy said.

  “Hush now,” said John. “I didn’t need to be on the same boat with Dad and Henry when they get going. Besides, we had a great time. He knows more about tropicals even than Mr. Branch. And plus it gave us a good excuse to hang out with Susan and Stacey. Everyone on Dr. Mortinson’s boat wanted to snorkel shallow too.”

  “Oh, you’re Roland’s …” Stacey said.

  Just then the boat tipped alarmingly in Roland’s direction as he stepped on the gunnel and squirmed laboriously down beside Cassidy, huge smile on his face. John Kern looked around in mock alarm at the comically overcrowded boat. “Man the pumps,” he called.

  “Clever,” said Roland. “I see you’ve met these gorgeous creatures.” He was smiling benevolently at them, and they in turn seemed all atwitter.

  Cassidy looked at John Kern, who smiled back. It was this thing about Roland and women, though to Cassidy’s knowledge he’d never been on a date.

  Roland wore flip-flops, Bermuda shorts, and for some reason a huge floral kimono that seemed perfect for the occasion. There was a red blotch in the middle of his forehead where he had missed with the sunscreen, and he carried an umbrella and large tumbler of ice and some pinkish orange fluid.

  “Whatcha got there?” Cassidy asked.

  “Beefeaters and tonic, dash of bitters, half a Key lime. Don’t know what you call it. Joe Kern made it for me. What do you call it, John?”

  “Beefeaters and tonic, dash of bitters, half a Key lime,” said John Kern.

  “Ah,” said Roland, taking a healthy slug.

  “So, Roland,” said Stacey, “John and Quenton were explaining about how all the boats contribute to dinner. What is your boat doing?”

  “An excellent question, Miss Parsons. Mr. Cassidy, what is our boat contributing to this repast?” This without a trace of irony.

  “We are providing the Panulirus argus,” Cassidy said. “We call them bugs or sometimes crawfish. They are, in fact, the elusive spiny lobster. Harry Winkler just set them a-boilin’ a little while ago and they should be just about close to perfect. And none too soon if you want my opinion. I could eat a horseshoe crab.”

  The platters went back and forth and round and round. Because the stoves were small, the cooking went on for some time, and some of the cooks stood down and were relieved so they could eat. From near and far one could hear exclamations of gastronomical wonder, particularly from diners on their first trip over. There were pearly white lobster tails boiled simply and quickly in seawater, served with melted butter and Key lime halves. There was more of the fried grouper, big golden chunks, served with tartar sauce and lemon wedges. From Bill Eaton’s boat Cassidy was delighted to see some wonderfully fragrant pieces of hog snapper grilled delicately on mesquite coals. Dr. Mortinson, no fisherman or diver, had made his usual huge bowl of pigeon peas and rice, and the modest John Kern turned in an excellent salad of young greens with chopped yellow squash, snow peas, and vine-ripened tomatoes, fetched fresh that morning from Miss Emily’s roadside stand. Someone had gone to see the conch man that morning and there was a wonderfully tangy ceviche.

  Beverages were served. Everyone had a killer you had to try. Drinks made with Mount Gay Rum, or RonRico Coconut or Cockspur, Appleton or Havana Club. There were drinks with coconut milk and gin, drinks with vodka and star fruit, drinks with anything and pineapple juice. There was Red Stripe beer, St. Pauli Girl, Heineken, and Kubuli from the Dominican Republic.

  There might have been alcoholics in the group, Cassidy knew, but most of them were too young to know it yet. Cassidy didn’t think he was one, but he wasn’t sure. He was certainly capable of overdoing things, and not just booze. He figured it was that thing—the thing about going too far—that maybe made him a good runner and a good diver and sometimes a harebrained poet. It made his life exhilarating and sometimes ridiculous at the same time.

  It was getting to be homegrown entertainment time, which usually started with some well-worn limericks. There was the old hermit named Dave who lived in a cave and had sexual proclivities best left undiscussed.

  “I’ve got a new one,” John Kern said. “Been working on it for a month.”