Air flowed to Ben via the hose from Miss Dotsy’s compressor, which ended in a cracked second-hand, second-stage regulator he clamped in his teeth. The air churned through this old equipment tasted as if it had first passed over a swamp before arriving in his mouth. Such a crude rig might have earned a Gallic sneer from the Speedo-and-beanie set on Cousteau’s Calypso, but it put Ben hands-on to his catch. That’s what he wanted. Tonging oysters from the surface, or even dredging them, was working blind and too damn slow. Oyster seasons were getting shorter as the bay’s pollution killed off shellfish stocks. Ben needed to earn. There was somebody special. Ben had plans.
Until that macabre discovery, the silt was clearing much too slowly. Ben passed his time grubbing and groping in the chilly dark as he often did, humming Plastic Houses by Chester River Runoff, the one bluegrass band he genuinely admired. The lyrics railed against malignant suburban sprawl, and spoke eloquently to Ben’s humor, which was as foul as the weather threatened to become with the new storm, named Polly, freshening in the south. The times, it seemed, were leaving Ben behind with little hope of catching up, even if he wished to.
Then, out of nowhere, a rogue current shoved Ben, and sluiced the suspended sediment away as if drawing back a curtain. And there he was. A dead man. Obviously a drowner, kneeling near the edge of the oyster rock. Toes mired in the mud as if in final prayer. The prayer had gone unanswered, like a collect call home from a kid who’s mooched off his folks one time too many.
The dead man’s longish white hair floated in a halo. It was bedizened with small spottail shiners, and a lone mummichog far from its shoreline school; all darting in and out of the gently waving locks. What Ben could see of the cadaver’s face was blanched, puffed. It was down here only a few days at most. Water and its denizens break a body down fast and ugly. Ashes to ashes, flesh to fish-food.
A late season blue crab dined on an outstretched hand. Spatulate crab legs and the dead man’s finger bones all beckoned to Ben. Come closer.
Ben had seen dead bodies before, battle trauma mostly. More men than he cared to remember had died by his own hand. A proud nation thanked him for every target terminated. That was in another country. A dead soldier in a foreign desert was a damn sight different from a bloated sailor’s body in home waters. A drowner spasmed the bitter tang of bile into the back of Ben’s throat. They were a common enough tragedy here. Usually drunken boaters in summertime, but there were others from closer. Not for the first time, Ben considered the irony. On Smith Island where he was born, raised, and made his home, many watermen eked out a living on the Chesapeake, but could not swim a stroke in it.
Whatever Ben’s deeper feelings on the human condition, this deader was less a tragedy than he was an interruption to his work. The legal hassles of revealing a body to the proper authorities would cost him precious time on the bottom over the next few hours and days. Ben was torn. He checked his watch again, glanced into the nearly empty milk crate. He should have gotten out of the water ten minutes back and avoided all this. He could still abandon the corpse and its ensnaring problems, and get topside to hunt more plentiful oysters elsewhere. The day’s catch was altogether too light, and too late. It would not even cover gas. Surface and earn, or take a moment more to quash a growing curiosity. Ben still wondered if he knew the man.
With the air hose trailing behind, Ben paddled and slogged across the bottom toward the remains like Diver Dan, that leadfooted 60’s TV hard-hat he’d caught in reruns as a kid. With every step, his leaky old wetsuit traded the warmer water next to his body for a chilly, brackish slurry. Ben knew exactly what a winning NFL coach went through when the ice chest was dumped over his head. Ben had no hot locker room shower close by, and he certainly had no cheering fans. Early hypothermia was Ben’s constant pal down here, and it was always trying to kill him.
A collapsed airman’s Mae West life-vest floated around the body’s neck, obscuring much of the face. Worked for Ben. Though it billowed slightly, Ben still recognized the dead man’s coat as an old green Army field jacket. Not uncommon gear among Smith Island’s war vets. There was something weird about it. A spark of familiarity flashed through Ben’s cold-wracked mind. His synapses fired, but the timing was off, like an old jalopy engine in need of its spring tune-up. Maybe this was a friend of his. Possibly a neighbor. God forbid, not a relative. There were few enough of those. Then, beyond the corpse’s shoulder, Ben saw the wreck.
More trudging, and Ben stood in a low whirl of silt by the bow of a beautiful Nantucket Lance. Finders keepers. It was about twenty-five feet long, and way fancier than his own Miss Dotsy.
Ben’s ancient boat had classic sweeping Chesapeake lines laid up out of marine plywood. She was powered by a humble Atomic Four engine that belched smoke, rattled, and snarled, and though loud and dirty, it was as reliable as a Timex. Throttle wide open, Miss Dotsy could do only ten knots at best. That’s with a following sea.
This fiberglass water rocket lying before him on the bottom had a center console, and three big Mercury 225 Pro XS engines slung off the transom. Far too much power for such a small boat. This baby would shit’n-git, flying over the water with a hydroplane’s kiss and spank, barely under control at full throttle. It was not really a racer. It was a hauler, a modern-day rumrunner.
That point was driven home when he saw some kind of cargo tied down under a tarp with canvas web strapping. With his old dive knife, Ben slashed a strap, untucked the tarp’s corner and raised it. The water silted out again. Took a few moments to clear. He saw a bunch of stacked footlockers. Or ammo boxes? Ben could not be sure in this poor light. Whatever, it was salvage now. His salvage. Losers weepers. Maybe there was some old estate silver in the boxes. Or at least some interesting junk that some collector might covet at the Crumpton auction.
He aimed his dive light at the closest box. The bolt, the lid hinges, the usual points of vulnerability were all internal. That was strange, but okay. Maybe the boxes themselves could fetch a price. He probed the lock with the tip of his knife. No joy. The keyhole was really a flat slot. Ben twisted the blade hard. It snapped in half with a cracking ping. Damn. A new knife would be expensive, another setback in trying to save up. Maybe something in his kitchen drawer would fit the sheath.
As Ben pulled the broken end of the knife from the lock, a recollection suddenly wraithed into his mind. Mental gears began to grate, to scream, and then mesh and hum.
Like the dead man, the boat was also vaguely familiar. Though Ben was sure he had never actually seen this craft before, he had heard something like it described on many long winter nights as one man’s ideal. A pleasure boat, yes, but with speed enough to outrun a Natural Resources Police patrol. It was not a workboat. Not for lawful work anyway. It was a poor waterman’s fantasy. Not quite practical, but certainly modest next to the mega-yachts of the rich and diminutively hung.
Yes, Ben noted the vaunted Raymarine radome perched high on its pylon. And there was the latest generation Garmin GPS. And independent fuel lines, tanks, separators, and batteries for each engine. Check. Extreme-duty Lenco trim tab. Present. Many other custom details, redundancies, and failsafes Ben recalled hearing about lay foundered right there in front of him.
The man who had spoken so wistfully of this perfect go-fast boat had vanished fifteen years ago. Ben felt sick with horror. He had not recognized the decomposing face, but he had zeroed-in on the dead man’s fantasy-come-true.