Peter Beagle - The Line Between

Now merrows are tough as they're unsightly, you don't never want to be disputing a fish or a female with a merrow. But to a bull shark, a merrow's a nice bit of Cornish pasty. This one were flapping his arms at the bull, hitting out with his tail — worst thing he could have done; they'll go for the tail first thing, that's the good part. I says to Henry Lee, I says, «Look sharp, mate — might be summat over for us.» Sharks is real slap–dash about their meals, and we was hungry.

But Henry Lee, he gives me just the one look, with his eyes all big and strange — and then rot me if he ain't off like a pistol shot, diving into the surf and heading straight for the reef and that screaming merrow. Ain't too many sailors can really swim, you know, but Henry Lee, he were a Devon man, and he used to say he swam before he could walk. He had a knife in his belt — won it playing euchre with a Malay pirate — and I could see it glinting between his teeth as he slipped through them waves like a dolphin, which is a shark's mortal enemy, you know. Butt 'em in the side, what they do, in the belly, knock 'em right out of the water. I've seen it done.

That bull shark never knew Henry Lee were coming till he were on its back, hanging on like a jockey and stabbing everywhere he could reach. Blood enough in the water, I couldn't hardly see anything — I could just hear that merrow, still screeching his ugly head off. Time I caught sight of Henry Lee again, he were halfway back to shore, grinning at me around that bloody knife, and a few fins already slicing in to finish off their mate, ta ever so. I practically dragged Henry Lee out of the water, 'acos of he were bleeding too — shark's hide'll take your own skin off, and his thighs looked like he'd been buggering a hedgehog.

«Barking mad," I told him. «Barking, roaring, howling mad! God's frigging teeth, you ought to be put somewhere you can't hurt yourself — aye, nor nobody else. What in frigging Jesus' frigging name possessed you, you louse–ridden get?»

See, it weren't that we was all such mates back then, me and Henry Lee, it were more that I thought I knew him — knew what he'd do when, and what he wouldn't; knew what I could trust him for, and what I'd better see to meself. There's times your life can depend on that kind of knowing — weren't for that, I wouldn't be here, telling this. I says it again, «What the Christ possessed you, Henry bleeding Lee?»

But he'd already got his back to me, looking out toward the reef, water still roiling with the sharks fighting for leftovers. «Where's that merrow gone?» he wanted to know. «He was just there — where's he got to?» He was set to swim right back out

there, if I hadn't grabbed him again.

«Panama by now, if he's got the sense of a weevil," says I. «More sense than you, anyway. What kind of bloody idiot risks his life for a bloody merrow?»

«An idiot who knows how a merrow can reward you!» Henry Lee turned back around to face me, and I swear his blue eyes had gone black and wild as the sea off Halifax. «Didn't you never hear about that? You save a merrow's life, he's bound to give you all his treasure, all the plunder he's ever gathered from shipwrecks, sea fights — everything he's got in his cave, it's the rule. He don't have no choice, it's the rule!»

I couldn't help it, I were laughing before he got halfway through. «Aye, Henry Lee," I says. «Aye, I've heard that story, and you know where I heard it? At me mam's tit, that's where, and at every tit since, and every mess where I ever put me feet under the table. Pull the other one, chum, that tale's got long white whiskers on it.» Wouldn't laugh at him so today, but there you are. I were younger then.

Well, Henry Lee just gave me that look, one more time, and after that he didn't speak no more about merrows and treasures. But he were up all that night — we slept on the beach, y'see, and every time I roused, the fool were pacing the water's edge, this way and that, gaping out into the bloody black, plain waiting for that grateful merrow to show up with his arms full of gold and jewels and I don't know what, all for him, along of being saved from the sharks. " Rule," thinks I. «Rule, me royal pink bum," and went back to sleep.

But there's treasure and there's treasure — depends how you look at it, I reckon. Very next day, Henry Lee found himself a berth aboard a whaler bound home for Boston and short a foremast hand. He tried to get me signed on too, but … well, I knew the captain, and the captain remembered me, so that were the end of that. You'd not believe the grudges some of them hold.

Me, I lucked onto a Spanish ship, a week or ten days later — she'd stopped to take on water, and I got talking with the cook, who needed another messboy. I've had better berths, but it got me to Malaga — and after that, one thing led to another, and I didn't see Henry Lee again for six or seven years, must have been, the way it happens with seamen. I thought about him often enough, riding that bull shark to rescue that merrow who were going to make him rich, and I asked after him any time I met an English hand, or a Yankee, but never a word could anyone tell me — not until I rounded a fruitstall in the marketplace at Velha Goa, and almost ran over him!

How I got there's no great matter — I were a cook meself by then, on a wallowing scow of an East Indiaman, and trying to get some greens and fresh fruit into the crew's hardtack diet, if just to sweeten the farts in the fo'c'sle. As for why I were running, with a box of mangoes in me arms … well, that don't figure in this story neither, so never you mind.

Henry Lee looked the same as I remembered him — still not shaving more than every

three days, I'd warrant, still as blue–eyed an innocent as ever cracked a bos'un's head with a beer bottle. Only change in him I could see, he didn't look like a sailor no more. Hard to explain; he were dressing just the same as ever — singlet, blue canvas pants, same rope–sole shoes, even the very same dirty white cap he always wore — but summat was different about him. Might have been the way he walked — he'd lost that little roll we all have, walked like he'd not been to sea in his life. Aye, might have been that.

Well, he give a great whoop to see me, and he grabbed hold of me, mangoes and all, and dragged me off into a dark little Portygee tavern — smelled of dried fish and fried onions, I remember, and cloves under it all. They knew him there — landlord patted his back, kissed him on the cheek, brought us some kind of mulled ale, and left us alone. And Henry Lee sat there with his arms folded and grinned at me, not saying a word, until I finally told him he looked like a blasted old hen, squatting over one solitary egg, and it likely rotten at that. «Talk or be damned to you," I says. «The drink's not good enough to keep me from walking out of this fleapit.»

Henry Lee burst out laughing then, and he grabbed both me hands across the table, saying, «Ah, it's just so grand to see you, old Ben, I don't know what to say first, I swear I don't.»

«Tell about the money, mate," I says, and didn't he stare then ? I says, «Your clothes are for shite, right enough, but you're walking like a man with money in every pocket — you talk like your mouth's full of money, and you're scared it'll all spill out if you open your lips too wide. Now, last time I saw you, you hadn't a farthing to bless yourself with, so let's talk about that, hey? That merrow turn up with his life savings, after all?» And I laughed, because I'd meant it as a joke. I did.

Henry Lee didn't laugh. He looked startled, and then he leaned so close I could see where he'd lost a side tooth and picked up a scar right by his left eyebrow — made him look younger, somehow, those things did along with that missing bit of ear — and he dropped his voice almost to a whisper, no matter there wasn't a soul near us. «No," says he, «no, Ben, he did better than that, a deal better than that. He taught me the making of salt wine.»