Randy White - Shark River

Ransom seemed very cool, knew just what she was doing as she moved toward the edge of the deck, still holding the ring high. “You want this ring, Clare?”

“Ain’t that what I jus’ tell you? It for our people, sistren.”

“Then let my brother go.”

That confused him. “Your brother? Your brothren, he down there fuckin’ with the sharks. How I gonna let Izzy go?”

“No, man. That my brother. You let him go.”

It took a couple of seconds for his brain to process what she meant, then he laughed, amused. “This fella your brother? I let him go, all right. I’m gonna throw him down there with the sharks, let them decide dark meat or white meat.”

“No, you let him go now, damn you!”

“Don’t be swearin’ at me, sistren. You give me the ring, then I release this fella. As it say in the Book of Amos, ‘Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto Me, O Children of Israel saith the Lord.’ You do yourself righteous, my sistren. This your chance to please the living God of Abraham and Isaac, He Whose Name Should Not Be Spoken.”

“You know your verse, Clare. That much I give you.”

“Yes, I do. That from the Holy Piby. The one true Bible. Now give me the fuckin’ ring!”

Ransom was looking at me, looking into my eyes as Clare pushed me toward her. She stood there holding the ring high as bait, telling me something. I listened to her say, “My brother? You ready for what I’m gonna do?”

Clare said, “What you gonna do when? Give me that ring, that what you gonna do right now or I’m gonna rip your boyfriend’s head off. That exactly what I’m gonna do, my sistren.”

She was still looking into my eyes. “You want the ring, Clare? You want it real bad? Then you jump in there with the sharks and get it.” I watched as she tossed the ring in a high arc into the air; watched the ring spin and glitter down, then implode like a bullet slug on the surface of the water.

“You crazy girl! You one crazy bitch!” Clare had made a clumsy, last moment lunge to intercept the ring, but didn’t even get close. He’d taken his hands off me to do it, and I had to fight the urge to use the opportunity to spin away, jump down to the lower deck and escape to the marina. Leave Ransom there alone and run for my life.

I wanted to do it, but I couldn’t.

Instead, I stepped in behind Clare and hammered him in the small of the back with my right elbow. Drove the same elbow down on the side of his neck when he stumbled. Then tried my best to duck under his arms when he swung around to grab me.

I wasn’t quick enough, though and, once again, I was trying to battle my way out of the big man’s stranglehold. I could hear Ransom screaming at him to stop, as the world began to grow drab and gray once more. I knew I had to find a way to break that hold, or probably die, so I let my body go limp and my head fall forward, as if I’d passed out. When I felt Clare relax his grip, keyed by my sudden weight, I didn’t hesitate. I slammed my head backward and felt it strike a cartilaginous mass-his nose. Heard a phlegmy groan as I slammed my head into him once more. Then I dropped, turned, and drove the pad of my open palm into his chin.

Clare’s face was a mess; he was still stunned from the crushing blow to the nose. Even so, the shot to the chin didn’t drop him. When he stumbled backward, I caught him by the throat; slid my thumb and forefinger in and nearly behind the delicate laryngeal. As I pushed with my hand, I tripped his feet out from under him, then held his entire weight against the rail above the shark pen. His eyes were wide, probably from lack of oxygen, but terror, too. He knew what was down there.

I held him, my muscles creaking with the strain, pretending as if his three-hundred-plus pounds was an insignificant mass, no problem at all holding him with one hand. I wanted him to look into my face and believe that I held his life in my hands. Wanted him to feel the same demeaning realization that I’d felt, knowing that whether I lived or died was his decision to make.

I counted on his not knowing the truth about sharks-that it’s difficult to get them to eat even fish in captivity. That the only real danger of going into the water with them was the chance of being rammed if they panicked.

I held him there as he used both hands to try and pry my fingers free, squeezing, squeezing, and I said, “The way you’re bleeding, those sharks are going to be all over you, Clare.”

He could barely form words, his voice hoarse. “Don’t let me fall, man. I do anything you want. Don’t let me go there.”

“They missed your buddy. I doubt they’ll miss again.”

“Please, man. Please. I can’t even swim.”

I said, “Can’t swim? Good. Those sharks are bottom feeders,” and pushed him hard over the railing.

His falsetto scream was terrible to hear-but oddly gratifying, too. He hit the water with the grace of a boxcar and came up blowing water out his nose and still screaming.

Clare was wrong about not being able to swim. Apparently, he’d never been properly motivated before. I watched him doggy-slap his way to the buoyed netting and throw himself over into shallow water where Izzy was already wading to shore.

“We ain’t done with you yet, Ransom girl!” Clare was holding his face in obvious pain, his Rasta cap pouring water as he slogged across the muck bottom. “The Lion of Judah, He save me from the water demons, but He not gonna spare you!”

Ransom gave it right back to him. “You Jamaican trash-you come back to this island, the police gonna arrest you and put you under the jail!”

Which didn’t seem like a bad idea. I had not the slightest desire to test myself against Clare ever again. To Ransom, I said, “You go in, call the Sanibel Police. Just dial 911, tell them it’s for me. I’ll stay out here and make sure they don’t come back.”

Now Izzy was yelling threats as Ransom stepped closer to me and said, “Call the police… man, you think that’s a good idea?”

“Hell, yes, I think it’s a great idea. You want those two creeps following you? Maybe jump you when I’m not around?”

“Yeah, but the police, man. They listen to what Clare and Izzy have to say, then maybe they come askin’ about that ring. It down in the water, they know where that is. Or the seventeen thousand dollars. Then maybe they contact the Bahamian government, and I got to answer all kinds of more questions. Like how’d I get enough money to buy me one of them satellite dishes for my new TV, which I plan to buy soon as I get home. Or how’d I afford that fancy red sports car which I’m gonna buy, too. A car like that, on Cat Island where we only got a little piece of one paved road, it gonna be seen. Which means people gonna notice, man.”

“You and Tucker,” I said, disgusted. “Two of a kind.” I was watching Izzy and Clare hurrying into the mangroves now, looking back and still yelling at us, but giving it less and less, eager to get the hell away. Probably convinced we really were going to call the police.

I looked at my left arm. The bandage had been ripped away and I was bleeding again. “You go inside. Over the sink, there’s a little first-aid kit. You get that, and I’ll be right in.”

“Where you goin’?”

“Is that ring really worth something?”

She shrugged and made a noncommittal face. “Man, I just thought it somethin’ pretty ’til Clare tell me. But them Rasta people, they sit around at their reasonins, smokin’ their herb and talkin’ shit, I don’t think they know what’s real, what isn’t. Haile Selassie, he the king of all the Rastas, they think he God. So, yeah, it could be worth some money.” She looked from me to the water. “What about them big sharks, though?”