Rare Lansdale

  Peak took the rod and tossed the line expertly and it went way out. He sat down in the fighting chair and fastened the waist belt and shoulder straps and put the rod butt in the gimbal. He looked relaxed and professional. The boat bobbed beneath the hot sunlight and the minutes crawled by.

  Margo removed her tee shirt and leaned against the side of the boat. The bathing suit top barely managed to cover her breasts. It was designed primarily to shield her nipples. The top and sides of her bathing suit bottom revealed escaped pubic hair, a darker blond than the hair on her head.

  She got a tube of suntan lotion out of a little knit bag on the deck, pushed the lotion into her palm, and began to apply it, slowly and carefully from her ankles up. Richard tried not to watch her run her hand over her tanned legs and thighs, finally over her belly and the tops of her breasts. He would look away, but always his eyes would come back.

  He had not made love to a woman in a year, and for the first six months of the year had not wanted to. Now, looking at MargoPeak, it was all he could think about.

  Richard glanced at Peak. He was studying the ocean. Jones was in the doorway of the cabin, trying not to be too obvious as he observed the woman. Richard could see that Jones’s Adam’s apple rode high in his throat. Margo seemed unaware or overly accustomed to the attention. She was primarily concerned with getting the suntan lotion even. Or so it seemed.

  Then the line on the rod began to sing.

  Richard looked toward the ocean and the line went straight and taut as the fish hit. The line sang louder as it jerked again and cut the air.

  "I’m gonna hit him," Peak said. He tightened the drag, jerked back on the rod, and the rod bent slightly. "Now I’ve got him."

  The fish cut to the right and the line moved with him, and Peak hit him again, said, "He’s not too big. He’s nothing."

  Peak rapidly cranked the fish on deck. It was a barracuda. Jones took hold of a metal bar and whacked the flopping barracuda in the head. He got a pair of heavy shears off the deck and opened them and put them against the barracuda’s head, and snapped down hard. The head came part of the way off. Jones popped the head again, and this time the head hung by a strand. He cut the head the rest of the way off, tossed it in the ocean, put the decapitated barracuda in the huge ice chest. "Some of the restaurants buy them," he said. "Probably sell them as tuna or something."

  "Good catch," Richard said.

  "A barracuda," Peak said. "That’s no kinda fish. That’s not worth a damn."

  "Sometimes that’s all you hit," Jones said. "Last party I took out, that was it. Three barracuda, back to back. You’re next, Mrs. Peak."

  Jones baited the hook and cast the line and Margo strapped herself into the fighting chair and slipped the rod into the gimbal. They drifted for an hour and finally Jones moved the boat, letting the line troll, but nothing hit right away. It was twenty minutes later and they were all having a beer, when suddenly the gimbal cranked forward and the line whizzed so fast and loud it sent Goosebumps up Richard’s back.

  Margo dropped the beer and grabbed the rod. The beer foamed out of the can and ran over the deck, beneath Richard’s tennis shoes. The line went way out. Jones cut the engine back plenty, and the line continued to sing and go far out into the water.

  "Hit him, Margo," Peak said. "Hit him. He’s not stuck, he’s just got the bait and the line. You don’t hit, the sonofabitch is gone."

  Margo tightened the drag, pushed her feet hard against the chair’s footrests, and jerked back viciously on the line. The line went taut and the rod bent forward and Margo was yanked hard against the straps.

  "Loosen the goddamn drag," Peak said, "or he’ll snap it."

  Margo loosened the drag. The line sang and the fish went wide to starboard. Jones leaped to the controls and reversed the boat and slowed the speed, gave the fish room to run. The line slacked and the pole began to straighten.

  "Hit him again," Peak said, and Margo tried, but it was some job, and Richard could see that the fish was putting a tremendous strain on her. The sun had not so much as caused her tanned body to break a sweat, but the fish had given her sweat beads on her forehead and cheeks and under the nose. The muscles in her arms and legs coiled as if being braided. She pressed her feet hard against the foot rests.

  "It’s too big for her," Richard said.

  "Mind your own business, Mr. Young," Peak said.

  Young? How had Peak known his last name? He was pondering that, and about to ask, when suddenly the fish began to run. Peak yelled, "Hit him, Margo, goddamn you! Hit him!"

  Margo had been working the drag back and forth, and it was evident she had done this before, but the fish was too much for her, anyone could see that, and now she hit the big fish again, solid, and it leaped. It leaped high and pretty, full of color, fastened itself to the sky, then dived like an arrow into the water and out of sight. It was a great swordfish, and Richard thought: when we drag him onto the deck, immediately it will begin to lose its color and die. It will become nothing more than a dull gray dead fish to harden in some taxidermist’s shop, later to be hung on a wall above a couch. It seemed a shame, and Richard suddenly felt shamed for coming out here, for wanting to fish at all. At home, on the banks, he caught a fish, it got eaten. Here, there was no point to the fishing but to garner a trophy.

  "I want him, Margo," Peak said. "You hear me, you don’t lose this fish. I mean it, goddamnit."

  "I’m trying," Margo said. "Really."

  "You know how it goes, you screw it up," Peak said. "You know how it works."

  "Hugo... I can’t hold him. I’m hurting."

  "You’ll hold him, or wish you had," Peak said. "You just think you’re hurting."

  "Hey," Richard said, "that’s ridiculous. You want the goddamn fish, take over."

  Peak, who was standing on the other side of Margo, looked at Richard and smiled. "She’ll land it. It’s her fish, and she’ll land it."

  "It’s ripping her apart," Richard said. "She’s just not big enough."

  "Please, Hugo," Margo said. "You can have it. It could have been me caught the barracuda."

  "Look to the fish," Peak said.

  Margo watched the water and her face went tight; she suddenly looked much older than she had looked. Peak reached out and laid a hand on Margo’s breast and looked at Richard, said, "I say she does something, she does it. That’s the way a wife does. Her husband says she does something, she does it."

  Peak ran his hand over Margo’s breast, nearly popping her top aside. Richard turned away from them and called up to Jones. "Cut this out. Let’s go in."

  Jones didn’t answer.

  "He does what I want," Peak said. "I pay him enough to do what I want."

  The boat slowed almost to a stop, and the great fish began to sound. It went down and they waited. The rod was bent into a deep bow. Margo was beginning to shake. Her eyes looked as if they might roll up in her head. She was stretched forward in the straps so that her back was exposed to Richard, and he could see the cords of muscle there; they were as wadded and tight as the Gordian knot.

  "She can’t take much more of this," Richard said. "I’ll take the fish, if you won’t."

  "You won’t do a goddamn thing, Mr. Young. She can take it, and she will. She’ll land it. She caught it, she’ll bring it in."

  "Hugo," Margo said. "I feel faint. Really."

  Peak was still holding his beer, and he poured it over Margo’s head. "That’ll freshen you."

  Margo shook beer from her hair. She began to cry silently. The rod began to bob up and down and the line on the reel was running out. The fish went down again.

  Jones appeared from the upper deck. "I’ve killed the engine. The fish will sound and keep sounding."

  "I know that," Peak said. "It’ll sound until this bitch gives up, which she won’t, or until she hauls it in, which she will."

  Richard looked at Jones. The watered gravy eyes looked away. Richard realized now that not only was Jones a paid lackey, he had
actually made sure he, Richard Young, was on this boat with HugoPeak. He had known Jones a short time, since he’d been staying on St. Croix, and they had drunk a few together, and maybe he’d told Jones too much. Not that any of it mattered under normal circumstances, but now some things came clear, and Richard wished he had never known this Captain Jones.

  Until now, he had considered Jones decent company. Had told him he was staying in the Caribbean for a few months to rest, really to get past some disappointments. And over one too many loaded fruit drinks, had told him more. For a brief time, two defenses, he had been the Heavyweight Kickboxing Champion of the World.

  Trained in Kenpo and Tae Kwon Do, he had gone into kickboxing late, at thirty, and had worked his way up to the championship by age thirty-five, going at a slow rate due to lack of finances to chase all the tournaments. It wasn’t like professional kickboxing paid all that much. But he had, by God, been the champion.

  And on his second defense, against Manuel Martinez, it had gone wrong. Martinez was good. Real good. He gave Richard hell, and Richard lost sight of the rules in a pressed moment, snapped an elbow into the side of Martinez’s temple. Martinez went down and never got up. The blow had been illegal and just right, and Martinez was dead and Richard was shamed and pained at what he had done.

  He had the whole thing on videocassette. And at night, back home, when he was drunk or depressed, he sometimes got out the cassette and tormented himself with it. He had done what he had done on purpose, but he had never intended for it to kill. It was an instinctive action from years and years of self-defense training, especially Kenpo, which was fond of elbow strikes. He had lost his willpower and had killed.

  He had told this to Jones, and obviously, Jones, most likely under the influence of drink, had told this to Peak, and Peak was the kind of man who would want to know a man who had killed someone. He would want to know someone like that to test himself against him. He would see killing a man in the ring as positive, a major macho achievement.

  And those glowing yellow shins of Peak’s. Callus. Thai boxers built their shins up to be impervious to pain. Used herbs on them to deaden feeling, so they could slam their legs against trees until they bled and scabbed and finally callused over. Peak wore those shins like a badge of honor.

  Yeah, it was clear now. Peak had wanted to meet him and let it lead up to something. And Jones had made at least part of that dream possible. He had supplied Richard, lured him like an unsuspecting goat to the slaughter.

  Richard began to feel sick. Not only from the tossing of the sea and the smell of the diesel, but from the fact that he had been handily betrayed, and that he had to see such a thing as a man abuse his wife over a fish, over the fact that Peak had caught a lowly barracuda, and his wife, through chance, had hooked a big one.

  Richard moved to the side of the boat and threw up. He threw up hard and long. When he was finished, he turned and looked at Peak, who had slid his hand under Margo’s top and was massaging her breast, his head close to her ear, whispering something. Margo no longer looked tan; she was pale and her mouth hung slack and tears ran down her face and dripped from her chin.

  Richard turned back to look at the sea and saw a school of some kind of fish he couldn’t identify, leaping out of the water and back in again. He looked at the deck and saw the bloodstained shears Jones had used on the barracuda. As he picked them up, and turned, the line on the rod went out fast again, finishing off the reel. Peak began to curse Margo and tell her what to do. Richard walked quickly over to the rod, reached up with the clippers, and snapped the line in two. The rod popped up, the line snapped away, drifted and looped, then it was jerked beneath the waves with the fish. Margo fell back in the chair and sighed, the harness creaking loosely against her.

  Tossing the shears aside, Richard glared at Peak, who glared back. "To hell with you," Richard said.

  Two days later Richard moved out of the Hotel on the Quay. Too expensive, and his savings were dwindling. He got a room over a fish market overlooking the dock and the waters of the Caribbean. He had planned to go home by now, back to Tyler, Texas, but somehow the thought of it made him sick.

  Here, he seemed outside of the world he had known, and therefore, at least much of the time, outside of the event that had brought him here.

  The first night in his little room, he lay fully dressed on the bed and smelled the fish smell that still lingered from the closed-up shop below. Above him, the ceiling fan beat at the hot air as if stirring chunky soup, and he watched the shadows the moonlight made off the blades of the fan, and the shadows whirled across him like some kind of alien, rotating spider.

  After a time, he could lie there no more. He rose and began to move up and down the floor beside the bed, doing a Kenpo form, adjusting and varying it to suit the inconvenience of the room’s size, the bed, and the furniture, which consisted of a table and two hardback chairs.

  He snapped at the air with his fists and feet, and the fan moved, and the smell of the fish was strong, and through the open window came the noise of drunks along the dock.

  His body became coated with sweat, and, pausing only long enough to remove his drenched shirt, he moved into new forms, and finally he lay down on the bed to try and sleep again, and he was almost there, when there was a knock on his door.

  He went to the door, said through it: "Who is it?"

  "MargoPeak."

  Richard opened the door. She stood beneath the hall light, which was low down and close to her head. The bugs circling below the light were like a weird halo for her, a halo of little winged demons. She wore a short summer dress that showed her tan legs to advantage and revealed the tops of her breasts. Her face looked rough. Both eyes were blacked and there was a cut on her upper lip and her cheeks had bruises the color and size of ripe plums.

  "May I come in?" she asked.

  "Yes." He let her in and turned on the bare bulb that grew out of a tall floor lamp in the corner.

  "Could we do without that?" she said. "I don’t feel all that presentable."

  "Peak?" he asked, turning off the light.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, bounced it once, as if to test the springs. The moonlight came through the window and settled down on her like something heavy. "He hit me some."

  Richard leaned against the wall. "Over the fish?"

  "That. And you. You embarrassed him in front of me and Captain Jones by cutting the line on the fish. He felt belittled. For a moment he lost power over me. I might have been better off you’d stayed out of it and let me land the fish."

  "Sorry. All things considered, you shouldn’t be here. Why are you here?"

  "You didn’t work out like he wanted you to."

  "I don’t get it."

  "He wants to fight you."

  "Well, I got that much. I figured that’s why Jones got me on the boat. Peak had plans for a match. He knows about me, I know that much. He knew my last name."

  "He admires your skill. He has videos of your fights. It excites him you killed a man in the ring. He wants to fight a man who’s killed a man. He thought he could antagonize you into something."

  "A boat’s no place to fight."

  "He doesn’t care where he fights. Actually, he wanted to get you mad enough to agree to come to his island. He has a little island not far out. Owns the whole thing."

  "He thinks he can take me?"

  "He wants to find out... Yes, he thinks he can."

  "Tell him I think he can, too. I’ll mail him one of my trophies when I get home."

  "He wants it his way."

  "He’s out of luck."

  "He sent me here. He wanted you to see what he’d done to me. He wanted me to tell you, if you don’t come to the island, he’ll do it again. He told me to tell you that he can be a master of misery. If not to you, then to me."

  "That’s your problem. Don’t go back. You go back, you’re a fool."

  "He’s got a lot of money."

  "I’m not impressed with his mone
y, or you. You’re a fool, Margo."

  "It’s all I’ve got, Richard. He’s not nearly as bad as my family was. He at least gives me money, attention. Being an attractive trophy is better than being your father’s plaything, if you know what I mean. Hugo got me off drugs. I’m not turning tricks anymore. He did that."

  "Just so he’d have a healthy punching bag. A good-looking trophy. 'Course, he’s not treating you so good right now, is he? Listen, Margo, it’s your life. Turn it around, you don’t like it. Don’t come to me like it’s my fault you’re getting your ass kicked."

  "I could leave a man like Peak, I had another man to go to."

  "You sound like you’re shopping for cars. You see what kind of money I got. You’d leave Peak for this? You want a dump like this? A shared toilet?"

  "You could do better. You’ve got the skill. The name. You’ve got the looks to get into movies. Martial arts guys can make lots of money. Look at Chuck Norris. Christ, you actually killed somebody. The media would eat that up. You’re the real McCoy."

  "You know, you and Peak deserve each other. Why don’t you just paint bull’s-eyes on yourself, give Peak spots to go for next time he gets pissed."

  "He knows the spots already."

  "Sorry, Margo, but good-bye."

  He opened the door. Margo stood and studied him. She moved through the doorway and into the hall and turned to face him. Once again the bugs made a halo above her head. "He wants you to come out to his island. He’ll have Captain Jones bring you. Jones is taking me back now, but he’ll be back for you. It’s a short trip where you need to go. Hugo told me to give you this."

  She reached into a loose pocket on her dress and brought out a piece of folded paper, shoved it toward him. Richard took it but did not look at it. He said, "I’m not coming."