Suddenly Colin found the strength to move. He bolted toward the front of the boat, slipped in blood, stumbled, almost fell, regained his balance. When he had gone as far from the revelers and as far forward as he could, he leaned through the railing and vomited over the side.
By the time Colin finished, his father was there, towering over him, the very image of savagery, skin painted with blood, hair matted with blood, eyes wild. His voice was soft but intense. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I was sick,” Colin said weakly. “Just sick. It’s over now.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I’m okay now.”
“Do you try to embarrass me?”
“Huh?”
“In front of my friends like this?”
Colin stared, unable to comprehend.
“They’re making jokes about you.”
“Well…”
“They’re making fun of you.”
Colin was dizzy.
“Sometimes I wonder about you,” his father said.
“I couldn’t help it. I threw up. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop it.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you are my son.”
“I am. Of course I am.”
His father leaned close and studied him, as if searching for the telltale features of an old friend or milkman. His breath was foul.
Whiskey and beer.
And blood.
“Sometimes you don’t act like a boy at all. Sometimes you don’t look like you’ll ever make a man,” his father said quietly but urgently.
“I’m trying.”
“Are you?”
“I really am,” Colin said despairingly.
“Sometimes you act like a pansy.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sometimes you act like a goddamned queer.”
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“Do you want to pull yourself together?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you pull yourself together?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you?”
“Sure I can.”
“Will you?”
“Sure.”
“Do it.”
“I need a couple of minutes-”
“Now! Do it now!”
“Okay.”
“Pull yourself together”
“Okay. I’m okay.”
“You’re shaking.”
“No I’m not.”
“You going to come back with me?”
“All right.”
“Show those guys whose son you are.”
“I’m your son.”
“You’ve got to prove it, Junior.”
“I will.”
“You’ve got to show me proof.”
“Can I have a beer?”
“What?”
“I think maybe it would help.”
“Help what?”
“It might make me feel better.”
“You want a beer?”
“Yeah.”
“Now, that’s more like it!”
Frank Jacobs grinned and mussed his son’s hair with one bloody hand.
15
Colin sat on a bench by the cabin wall, sipped his cold beer, and wondered what would happen next.
Having found nothing of interest in the shark’s stomach, they heaved the dead beast over the side. It floated for a moment, then suddenly sank or was dragged under by something with a big appetite.
The blood-drenched men lined up along the starboard rail while Irv hosed them down with sea water. They stripped out of their swimsuits, which had to be thrown away, and they lathered up with bars of grainy, yellow soap, all the while making jokes about one another’s genitalia. Each received one bucket of fresh water with which to rinse. While they went below to dry off and change into their street clothes, Irv sluiced the deck, washing the last traces of blood into the scuppers.
Later, the men did some skeet shooting. Charlie and Irv always carried two shotguns and a target launcher aboard the Erica Lynn, to entertain customers when the fish weren’t biting. The men drank whiskey and beer, blasted away at the whirling discs, and forgot all about fishing.
At first Colin winced each time the guns boomed, but after a while the explosions didn’t bother him.
Later still, when the men became bored with shooting clay pigeons, they opened up on the sea gulls that were diving for small fish not far from the Erica Lynn. The birds did not react to the roar of the shotguns; they continued to feed and to issue their strange shrill cries, apparently unaware that they were being cut down one by one.
The slaughter did not sicken Colin, as it once would have done, nor did it appeal to him. He felt nothing at all as he watched the birds being blown away, and he wondered about his inability to respond. He felt cool and perfectly still inside.
The guns fired, and the gulls burst apart in the sky. Thousands of tiny droplets of blood sprayed up like beads of molten copper in the golden air.
At seven-thirty they said good-bye to Charlie and Irv, and they went to a harbor restaurant for a steak-and-lobster dinner. Colin was starved. He greedily devoured everything on his plate, without a thought about the disemboweled shark or the gulls.
Well after the late, summer sunset, his father took him home. As always, Frank drove too fast and with no regard at all for other motorists.
Ten minutes from Santa Leona, Frank Jacobs turned the conversation away from the events of the day to more personal matters. “Are you happy living with your mother?”
The question put Colin on the spot. He didn’t want to spark an argument. He shrugged and said, “I guess.”
“That’s no answer.”
“I mean, I guess I’m happy.”
“You don’t know?”
“I’m happy enough.”
“Is she taking good care of you?”
“Sure.”
“Are you eating well?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re still so skinny.”
“I eat real well.”
“She’s not much of a cook.”
“She does okay.”
“Does she give you enough spending money?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I could send you something every week.”
“I don’t need it.”
“How about if I sent ten dollars every week?”
“You don’t have to do that. I have plenty. I’d just waste it.”
“You like Santa Leona.”
“It’s okay.”
“Just okay?”
“It’s really nice.”
“You miss your friends from Westwood?”
“I didn’t have any friends there.”
“Of course you did. I saw them once. That red-headed boy and-”
“Those were just guys from school. Acquaintances.”
“You don’t have to keep a stiff upper lip for me.”
“I’m not.”
“Know you miss them.”
“I really don’t.”
They swerved left, passed a truck that was already exceeding the speed limit, and pulled back into the right lane much too quickly.
Behind them the trucker angrily blew his hom.
“What the hell’s eating him? I left plenty of room, didn’t I?”
Colin said nothing.
Frank let up on the accelerator. The car slowed from sixty-five to fifty-five miles an hour.
The truck tooted again.
Frank pounded hard on the Cadillac’s horn, trumpeted for at least a minute to show the other driver that he wasn’t intimidated.
Colin glanced back anxiously. The big truck was no more than four feet from their bumper. Its headlights flashed.
“Bastard,” Frank said. “Who the hell does he think he is?” He slowed down to forty miles an hour.