Peter Benchley - The Deep

There seemed to be no social order, no evident neighborhoods, among the houses they passed.

Generally, the houses on the right side of the road, with spectacular ocean views, were large, well kept, and obviously expensive. Those on the left, nestled close together on hillsides, were smaller. Every puff of breeze was rich with thick aromas, sweet and sour, spicy and fruity.

They passed through Devonshire and Smith’s Parishes, turned left on Harrington Sound Road, and followed the long causeway across Castle Harbour to St. George’s Island. A sign indicated the town of St. George to the left; they went right, across the Severn Bridge, and rode along the narrow road paralleling the airport toward St. David’s.

They had expected to ride into a tidy, contained community. What they found, instead, was a random assembly of limestone cottages connected by dirt paths. It was as if someone had taken a bagful of cottages ten thousand feet up into the air, and then emptied the bag carelessly, letting the contents scatter on the hillsides. Only one building seemed properly placed: a lighthouse at the top of a cliff.

They stopped on the side of the road, and Sanders unfolded the map he had gotten at the hotel.

“This is it,” he said. “It has to be. That’s St. David’s light up there.”

“Let’s ask somebody.”

“Sure. Ask any one of those thousands of people.” He waved his arm at the hillside. There were no bicycles, no cars, no pedestrians. The town seemed deserted.

Fifty yards away, beyond a turn, they saw a hand-lettered sign that said, “Kevin’s Lunch.”

“It looks empty,” said Gail.

There was no door on the frame of the shack, but the remains of a bead curtain hung in tatters from a reed pole across the top of the doorway. Sanders rapped with his knuckles on the wall. There was no response. “Anybody there?”

They walked through the doorway.

“What you want?” said a voice at the far end of a long counter. The man wore no shirt, his skin was dark brown, his belly fat and hairless. His eyes were black holes above globular cheeks.

Sanders said, “We’re looking for Romer Treece.”

“Not here.”

“Where can we find him?”

“He not a bloody goddamn tourist attraction.”

“We’re not tourists,” Sanders said. “That isn’t why we want to see him. We want to ask him about a ship.”

“He know ships,” the man said, less belligerently. “For sure. How bad you want to talk to him?”

“What?” It took Sanders a moment to realize what Kevin meant.

“Oh. Yes.” He took a five-dollar bill from his wallet and put it on the counter.

“You not want to see him very bad.”

Sanders started to say something, but he looked at Gail, and her expression said, Let’s get out of here. He put another five on the counter. “Is that bad enough?”

“Top of the hill, by the light.”

Gail said, “He lives in the lighthouse?”

“Right there by. It’s his light.”

The lighthouse sat on a flat promontory, so high above the sea that the light itself needed to be only fifty or sixty feet above the ground. There was a well-marked path directing tourists to the front of the lighthouse. A small white house, surrounded by a picket fence, was nestled in the lee of the light. The word private was painted on the gate. The Sanderses leaned their motorbikes against the fence, opened the gate, and walked down the short path toward the house. On each side of the front door, where there might have been flower beds, was a bathtub-size vat filled with a clear liquid. In the vats the Sanderses saw dozens of pieces of rusty metal-spikes, buckles, boxes, pistol barrels, and countless unfamiliar objects.

Gail held up the towel-wrapped bundle. “You suppose that’s stuff like this?”

“Looks like it. That’s probably a chemical bath, to clean stuff off.”

The front door to the house was open, but there was a screen door, closed and latched from inside. Sanders knocked on the frame and called, “Hello? Mr. Treece?”

“There’s pamphlets in the bloody lighthouse! Tell you all you want to know.” The voice was deep, the accent similar to, but not identical with, English or Scots.

“Mr. Treece, we’d like to ask you about some things we found.” Sanders looked at Gail. When he turned back to the screen door, he found himself staring up into the face of the biggest man he had ever seen.

He was nearly seven feet tall, and his chest was so immense that the sleeves of his T-shirt had begun to separate at the seams. His hair was black, cropped in a crew cut that rose from a sharp V in the middle of his forehead. His nose was long and thin, and it had a noticeable bend in the middle-as if it had been broken and never set. His face seemed triangular, an upside-down pyramid: wide, high cheekbones above hollow cheeks, a thin-lipped mouth above a sharp, jutting chin. His skin was brown and dry, like overdone bacon. The only facial feature that betrayed the presence of blood other than Indian was the eyes: light powder-blue.

“We’re not tourists,” Sanders said. “The man at Orange Grove said you might be willing to look at some things we got off a ship.”

“Whatman?”

“The bell captain.”

“Briscoe,” said Treece. “I’m not his bloody handmaiden.”

“He only said that no one else could help us, and that you might.”

“What ship?”

“ Goliath .”

“Nothing worth a damn on that scow. Least if there is, no one’s ever found it.” Treece looked beyond them to the gate. “You rode all the way out here on those things?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what’d you find?” Treece unlatched the screen door and stepped out onto the path, closing the door behind him. “Is that the stuff there?” he said, pointing to the bundle in Gail’s hand.

“Yes.” Gail handed him the bundle.

Treece squatted down, set the towel on the path, opened it, and looked at the forks and spoons, the pewter cup, the razor, and the butter plate. “That’s Goliath trash, no question.” He stood up. “You got your answer. Was it worth the ride?”

Sanders said, “There was one other thing.” He motioned to Gail, and she took the ampule from her shirt pocket and passed it to Treece.

Treece let the ampule rest in the palm of his hand. He stared at it, saying nothing. Sanders saw the muscles in his jaw move, as if he were gritting his teeth.

Finally, Treece closed his hand around the ampule.

He raised his head and looked at the sea. “God bloody damn!” he said. “Thirty-two years, and finally the sonofabitch comes true.”

“What—”

Treece spun on Sanders, cutting him off. “Who else has seen this?”

“Well…” Sanders stammered.

“I said

who else!”

“Last night,” he said, “a man tried to buy it from us. A black man. He said he was

interested in the glass. And a waiter at the hotel saw it, too.”

Treece laughed-a laugh of anger and contempt.

“Glass.” He held his fist under Sanders’ face and opened it, forcing him to look at the ampule. “You know what’s in there? Morphine, pure and sweet, enough to give a man a week’s holiday in the stars. It’s no surprise someone tried to buy it from you. It’s proof of the legend.”

“What legend?”

Treece looked at Sanders, at Gail, then back at Sanders. “I’d as soon not tell you, but now they know you found it, they’ll be letting you know soon enough. Come along.”

They followed Treece around to the back of the house.

He led them into the kitchen, a large and airy room with a view of the sea. Bottles and vials of chemicals, Bunson burners and tools—dentist drills, forceps, knives, hammers, chisels—were strewn about everywhere, on the counters and on the one round table. He motioned them to chairs at the table.