Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

He was at a hundred and ten and his pressure gauge, which had pointed twenty-five hundred p.s.i. at the jump-off, now read slightly under eight hundred. It was all right, he thought, the tank had no reserve and no J valve; he would have enough to climb back as the pressure evened out. At a hundred and twenty, his exhilaration was still with him and he was unable to suppress the impulse to turn a somersault. He was at the borders of narcosis. It was time to start up. As soon as he began to climb, he saw shimmers of reflected light flashing below his feet. In a moment, the flashes were everywhere — above and below. Blue glitters, lightning quick. The bodies of fish in flight. He began pumping a bit, climbing faster, but by the book, not outstripping his own bubble trail.

Some fifty feet away, he caught clear sight of a school of bonito racing toward the shallows over the reef. Wherever he looked, he saw what appeared to be a shower of blue-gray arrows. And then it was as if the ocean itself had begun to tremble. The angels and wrasse, the parrots and tangs which had been passing lazily around him suddenly hung in place, without forward motion, quivering like mobile sculpture. Turning full circle, he saw the same shudder pass over all the living things around him — a terror had struck the sea, an invisible shadow, a silence within a silence. On the edge of vision, he saw a school of redfish whirl left, then right, sound, then reverse, a red and white catherine wheel against the deep blue. It was a sight as mesmerizing as the wheeling of starlings over a spring pasture. Around him the fish held their places, fluttering, coiled for flight.

Then Holliwell thought: It’s out there. Fear overcame him; a chemical taste, a cold stone on the heart.

He started up too fast, struggling to check his own panic. Follow the bubbles. Follow the bouncing ball.

As he pedaled up the wall, he was acutely aware of being the only creature on the reef that moved with purpose. The thing out there must be feeling him, he thought, sensing the lateral vibrations of his climb, its dim primal brain registering disorder in his motion and making the calculation. Fear. Prey.

He was running out of air — overbreathing and overtaxing the expanding contents of his tank. The sound of his own desperate respirations furthered panic.

When he had worked out a breathing pattern and reached the first terrace, he found that he had enough to curve his ascent with the slope of the coral. At forty feet, he saw a sandy punch bowl like the one in which he had stopped but the forests of elkhorn were everywhere the same and the anchor line was nowhere in sight. Looking up, he saw Sandy outlined against the surface, coming down at him.

Sandy grabbed Holliwell’s pressure gauge, read it and shook his head in reproach. He pointed to the right and upward along the slope. Holliwell followed the coral ridges as long as he could. The fish in the shallows swam placidly, unperturbed. When he found himself sucking hard on the regulator mouthpiece, he eased up the next thirty feet, taking three breaths on the way. And there, in another dimension altogether, the boat rocked gently, the youngest of the Cuban boys leaned over the side to watch the shifting surface, lost in reverie; his mother thumbed through Cosmopolitan. The shoreline glowed green beyond the hot blur of the beach, the line of banana jungle broken only by a white wooden building on a solitary hill, surmounted with a cross. Holliwell turned over on his back and swam to the boat’s ladder.

The boy and his mother watched as he took off his gear. Before disconnecting the regulator from the tank he checked the gauge once more; it read just a hair over empty at sea level.

“That’s as empty as it gets,” he told the people in the boat. The charge of primary process he had experienced at a hundred and ten feet put him in danger of becoming garrulous.

The boy looked at the gauge. “None left at all?”

“Empty,” Holliwell said. “Just like it says.” He was ill at ease with the boy and he sensed a certain artificiality in his own manner. His own children had not been this age for five years or more; he had forgotten what it was like. Out of touch again, he thought.

“How come is that?” the woman asked.

“Just ran it out,” Holliwell told her cheerfully.

“What did you see?” the boy asked him.

“Lots of great fish,” he said. “And beautiful black coral.”

“And we can’t take any,” the woman said. “Such a shame because it’s so beautiful.”

“I’m sure it looks prettier where it is,” Holliwell heard himself say pompously.

The woman inflated her cheeks and shrugged. She was not a bad sort, Holliwell decided. They chatted for a few minutes. The family’s name was Paz; they lived in Miami, had lived there since 1961. All of their sons were born there. The man was a dentist, she herself was in real estate. They were visiting her brother, who had five hardware stores in Tecan. Holliwell told her that he was a professor; she had lived in the States long enough to remain unimpressed.

Sandy and the middle son were next up; the boy climbed aboard and fixed a smirk on Holliwell. The dive master got out of harness in a single easy motion.

“Now what you want down theah, mistuh?” he asked Holliwell. He was smiling. “I nevah tol’ you go down theah.”

“Just wanted a look, I guess.”

“Sandy made him get out of the water,” the middle son announced. Señora Paz and the youngest boy gave Holliwell dutifully accusatory looks. Then Señora Paz asked sharply after her husband and eldest son. They were under the boat, Sandy assured her, playing among the elkhorn coral.

After a few minutes, the dentist surfaced and climbed aboard. He was elated after his dive and his amiability extended even to Holliwell.

“Where the hell were you?” Dr. Paz asked Holliwell. “I never even saw you.” His English was almost completely unaccented.

“Sandy made him get out of the water,” the middle son said.

“Just down too deep,” Sandy said soothingly. “A bit too deep and de air run out faster.”

“What’s the attraction down there?” the dentist asked.

“Just the drop,” Holliwell said.

“How far you think she drop off dere?” Sandy asked him, laughing.

“A long way,” Holliwell said.

“Nine hundred meters,” Sandy said.

“Is that possible?” Holliwell said.

Sandy let his smile fade. His nod was solemn, his eyes humorous with certainty.

“I’m tellin’ you, mon. Nine hundred meters.”

When the youngest boy wanted to know how far that was in feet, Sandy was uncertain.

“It’s about two thirds of a mile,” the dentist said. “I thought they taught you that in school.”

“Yeah, dummy,” the middle son said to his brother.

“How about that,” Holliwell said.

Then the oldest boy surfaced with an empty tank.

“Orca, orca,” the two younger boys shouted. “Orca surfaces at last.”

The youth’s eyes were shining as he climbed up the ladder. It was hard to dislike anyone, Holliwell thought, when you watched them come up from a dive.

“Gosh,” the boy said to Holliwell, “we didn’t see you anywhere.”

“Sandy made him get …”

Señora Paz hushed her middle son with a frown and a raising of her chin.

They motored back to the hotel dock making small talk. At the dive shack, Sandy, who knew a big tipper when he saw one, helped the Pazes wash and stow their gear and was jolly with the boys. Holliwell put his own gear away and sat down on the dock. After a while Sandy wandered down and joined him.

“How long you been divin’?” Sandy asked him.

“I’ve been certified for two years. I don’t do it much anymore.”