Peter Benchley - The Deep

“Where did he come from?” Sanders asked.

“The reef, I imagine.”

“No, I mean how did he get here? I’ve never heard of a fish that rolls itself in newspaper and deposits itself on your doorstep.” Sanders chuckled at his little joke.

“Somebody brought him. They do that. A person catches a few fish, has more than he needs, he’ll drop one

Gail said, “Is this what you mentioned before?

Looking after the keeper of the light?”

“Not really.” Treece flipped the barracuda over and scaled the other side. “We take care of our own. Kids’ mother gets sick, neighbors’ll feed ’em and look after ’em. Ever since…” He seemed to hesitate. “They know I don’t have time to go fishing and have to cook for myself, so they leave a little something.” With two sharp strokes, Treece severed the head and tail. He tossed the tail in the garbage.

“You want the head?”

David and Gail shook their heads, looking-with undisguised revulsion-at the fish head impaled through the eye by the point of Treece’s knife.

“It’s not bad, if you don’t have anything else,”

Treece said, flipping the head into the garbage. “But this fellow has a generous carcass.” He slit the barracuda’s belly from tail to throat and scooped out the innards. Then he turned the fish around and made a slit along its backbone. The whole side of meat came free.

“You might heat me up some oil,” he said to Gail.

“What kind?”

“Olive oil. It’s over there by the burner. Dump half a bottle in a pan and fire her up.”

Treece sliced the two fillets in half and dropped them in the pan of hot oil, where they bubbled and spat and quickly turned from gray-white to golden.

Gail made a simple salad-Bermuda onions and lettuce-and asked Treece where the dressing was.

“Here,” he said, handing her an unlabeled bottle.

“What is it?”

“Wine, they say. I don’t know what’s in it, but it goes in most everything-salads, cooking, your stomach. Don’t want to drink too much of it, though. Give you a fearsome head.”

Gail poured an inch of the liquid in a glass and drank it. It tasted bitter, like vermouth.

The sun had dropped below the horizon when they sat down to eat, and rays of pink, reflected off the clouds, streamed in the window and washed the kitchen with a warm, soft glow.

Treece saw Gail toying with her fish, reluctant to eat it. “I’ll risk my mortal bones,” he said, smiling. “If he’s ciguatoxic , you’ll know it in a few seconds. One fellow was lugged off to hospital with the poisonous morsel still in his craw.”

He didn’t use a fork, but broke off a big piece of barracuda with his fingers and put it in his mouth. He cocked his head, feigning dread at the possible onset of crippling cramps. “Nope,” he said. “Clean as a Sunday shirt.”

The Sanderses ate the fish. It was delicious, moist and flaky with a crisp coating of fried oil.

At 9:30, Treece yawned and announced, “Time to put it away. We’ll want to be up early. Have to fuel the compressor on the boat and show you how the air lift works. Ever used a Desco?”

“No,” Sanders said.

“Have to give you practice, then. There’s no trick to it, once you learn how to watch your air line. If it fouls on something, or kinks, you’ll think the beast from twenty thousand fathoms has grabbed you by the throat.”

“We won’t dive with tanks?” Gail said.

“We’ll take some, just in case. That’s another thing: WV11 have to fill them in the morning. That compressor out back makes a God-awful din. But you should try to use a Desco. You never run out of air, unless the compressor on the boat runs out of gas. You use a tank for five hours and you’ll think you’ve been kissing prickly pears. The mouthpiece begins to smart after a while.”

“There’s no mouthpiece on a Desco?”

“No. It’s a full-face mask. You can talk to yourself all you likesing, make a speech, give yourself a royal cussing. You can talk back and forth, too, if you read lips worth a damn.”

They were in bed by ten. The wind whistled outside, swooping up from the sea and over the cliff. As Sanders leaned over to turn off the bedside light, he saw the dog standing, tentatively, in the doorway.

“Hi,” Sanders said.

The dog wagged her tail and leaped onto the bed.

She curled up and lay between Gail and David.

“Shoo her off,” said Gail.

“Not me. I need all my fingers.”

They heard Treece call, “Charlotte!” and the dog’s ears

stiffened. Treece appeared in the doorway.

“Forgive her. That’s her rightful place. It’ll take her a day or two.” He said to the dog, “Come along,” and the dog raised her head, stretched, and went to Treece, who said, “Sleep well,” and shut the door.

The first bark seemed to be part of Sanders” dream.

The second, loud and prolonged, woke him. He looked at the radium dial on his watch: It was 12:10. A faint yellow light seeped around the edges of the closed window shade and flickered on the walls. The dog barked again. Gail stirred, and Sanders shook her awake.

“What is it?” she said.

“I don’t know.” He heard Treece walking in the hall. “It might be a fire.”

“What? In here?”

“No, outside.” He rolled off the bed and pulled on his boxer shorts. “Stay here.” He walked toward the door. “If there’s trouble…”

“If there’s trouble, what?” Gail reached for her bathrobe. “Hide under the bed?”

Sanders opened the bedroom door and saw Treece standing at the front door, naked except for a brief bathing suit. The dog stood beside him. Though Treece filled the doorway, beyond him Sanders could see a glow of firelight and some dark forms.

“What is it?” he whispered.

Treece turned at the sound. “Not sure. Nobody’s said anything.”

Sanders approached Treece and stood beside him, slightly to the side. By the gate there were two men, dressed in black and holding oil torches that sent streams of thick black smoke into the night air.

“Well?” Treece said aloud. He put his left hand on the door jamb and shifted his weight. Sanders saw that the apparently casual change of position put Treece’s hand within easy reach of a sawed-off shotgun that stood in the corner behind the door.

The two torchbearers stepped apart, and between them, walking slowly toward the gate, was Cloche. He was dressed entirely in white, against which his black skin shone like graphite. The firelight sparkled on the gold feather at his neck and on the round panes in his spectacles.

Sanders heard Gail’s barefoot steps on the wooden floor and smelled her hair as she came next to him.

“What do you want?” Treece said, his tone a blend of anger and disdain. “If you’ve business here, state it. Else, be on your way. I’m in no mood for silly games in the middle of the night.”

“Game?” Cloche raised his right hand to his waist and dipped the index finger.

Sanders heard a buzz. Instinctively, he ducked, and there was a thunk against the wooden door frame. A featherless arrow quivered in the wood, six inches from Treece’s head.

Treece had not flinched. He pulled the arrow from the wood and tossed it on the ground. “A crossbow?” he said. “Put feathers on it; it’ll fly truer.”

“Your… friends… are not very prudent,”

Cloche said. “They paid a visit to the government. I told them not to. Now the police are asking about me.”

“And?”

“You know what I want. I know they’re down there-ten thousand boxes of them.”

“That’s myth.”

“Your friends do not think so. They seemed quite convinced when they spoke to Mason Hall.”

Still looking at Cloche, Treece whispered to Sanders, “Go ’round back and make sure nobody’s there.”