“No car?” I asked.
“Fuck the car,” he said. “Goddamn.” He sat down on the shore and took in some deep breaths and shook. His teeth chattered.
“Chilly, huh?”
“Whoever called these bastards dry suits had to be kidding. I got water all inside, and it’s cold, buddy boy, I will assure you. My balls are the size of grapes.”
“Before you went in, or after?”
“Funny. Look, it’s deeper there than you think.”
“I remember it as deep,” I said. “Used to fish and swim here.”
“There’s a mild suck hole too.”
“That I don’t remember.”
“It isn’t bad, but it could trick you. It’s about where I came up. Damn, I’m freezing.”
“I won’t be down long.”
“Not telling me nothing I don’t know. You think it’s cold up here, this is the tropics compared to that water. And it’s dark. So dark, you’ll come up and it’ll seem like the goddamn world’s bright enough to be on fire.”
“If you had listened in your science classes, Leonard, instead of beating your meat under your desk, you would know that it takes more energy to warm a square inch of cold water than it does a square inch of cold air. And absence of light makes it dark.”
“Just listen, smartass. You’re gonna feel numb at first, little confused. Think you’re getting too disoriented, don’t wait till you’re so messed up you don’t know what you’re doing, come up, or yank on the rope and I’ll help you up. I’m not jacking with you, Hap. Water like that will screw you around. Play some serious tricks on you.”
“Gotcha.”
I put the rope through my belt and tied it loosely in case it got tangled. Leonard took hold of the other end but kept his seat.
I pulled the mask down, put the regulator in my mouth, pulled on my flippers, and eased under the water.
It didn’t hit me for a second, but when it did I felt a wave of blackness and paralysis all over. The cold went right through the suit like some kind of freeze ray. It was a feeling like you have when you get something cold on the wrong tooth, only it was my entire body.
It was all I could do to make myself breathe the Nitrox in my tank.
The wave of blackness passed, though, and I could feel something like cold bug feet creeping through my dry suit; it was water seeping in, of course.
I got organized best I could and swam down deeper. I could feel Leonard letting out the rope.
I couldn’t have gone far before I touched bottom, but it seemed to take forever. My head, heart, and lungs felt pregnant with ice. I couldn’t see anything. It was muddy from all the rain and overflow from melting ice. I crawled along the bottom like a crab.
I wanted to swim to the surface, but somehow couldn’t make myself do it. It took all my concentration to breathe from the respirator, keep in mind where I was, what I was doing, and that air and daylight were not too far above my head.
It came to me eventually that I was looking for a car. That struck me as funny. A car in the river. Cars belonged on the highway. I had a car once. I had a truck now, but I had a car once. Leonard had a car. Lots of people had cars. Or did cars have people? It was an interesting thing to think about. If I’d had a pad and pencil, maybe I’d have taken a note to consider that later. No, I couldn’t see well enough to take a note, and paper wouldn’t do so good down here. I’d have to remember about the cars and sort it out later.
I felt a tug, as if wires were attached to me. I couldn’t figure it.
Leonard pulling the rope?
No. That was the other direction.
Did I have another rope on me?
No, I didn’t think so.
The suck hole. I was near that and it was pulling at me.
Had to think. Okay. Underwater. Got air. Cold as the tip of a penguin’s dick. Looking for a car. Honk, honk.
The suck hole was pulling me. My arms were weak, and I didn’t feel as if I could swim. I went with the suction. It wasn’t bad, but it was enough to pull me. It seemed important that I do something, but I couldn’t think what it was.
Then the river bottom went away and there was water and tugging. I was over the suck hole. I had swam over and into suck holes and out again in my time, but I wasn’t this cold then. Beer would keep good in this water, but you’d want to drink it in a warm place. In front of a big fireplace would be nice. Maybe something to eat with it. I really preferred my beer with food.
Something was keeping me from going down.
The rope. It had gone taut. Leonard had me. Seemed to me that was supposed to be good, but I couldn’t be sure.
But wait a minute. I was in the suck hole and my feet were touching something.
This wasn’t a very deep suck hole. I wondered how wide it was. Maybe I could put a picnic table down here and have that beer and a sandwich on it. But I’d have to wait until summer. Wait a second. You can’t drink beer underwater. Sure can’t eat a sandwich. It would get flimsy. And taste like the water. The water was dirty, too.
It was so goddamn dark. Had I been down here so long it was night?
What were my feet touching?
The rope was tugging at me. Leonard was pulling me up.
Hold on here. I didn’t ask to be pulled up. I’m thinking down here, goddammit.
I got hold of the belt and unfastened it and let it go. The rope wasn’t pulling me anymore.
I bent forward and touched with my hands what my feet had been standing on. It was something flexible. I got hold of it with both hands and held on to it and my feet floated straight up. What I was holding came loose and I began to float up.
Let’s see, did I want to float up?
Now something had me, had me hard. I wanted to fight against it, but I was holding this thing in my hands and I didn’t want to lose it.
Why didn’t I want to lose it? I could let it go and fight back.
I thought about that, but by the time I decided to let go I was on the surface and Leonard had his arm under my chin and was pulling me toward shore. The sun was very bright. It wasn’t so cold. I could see trees and sky between their limbs. My hands felt numb. I was still holding my prize. I thought I should let it go. All I had to do was have my brain tell my fingers, “Let go, you sumbitches.”
I let go. I was lying on my back. What I let go of was on my chest. A monster bent over me. No, Leonard. He pulled back his mask. He took the respirator out of his mouth. He was calling my name, but it sounded as if it were coming from far away. He was calling someone else too. A person named Shadhad. No, wait a moment. That was shithead. Could he mean me?
“Answer me, shithead. Are you all right?”
“I think so,” I said.
“You took off the belt and the rope.”
“Did I?”
“You did.”
“Couldn’t think clear.”
“The water, smartass. I told you. Too cold. We haven’t got top equipment here and we don’t really know what we’re doing.… You’re okay?”
“Uh-huh. But you can forget finding any car down there.”
“That right?” He picked something off my chest, wiped it with his hand a couple of times and held it in front of my eyes. It was a rusty license plate.
We took off the swim gear and used some Kleenex from the glove box to get the grease off of us, then we dressed and drove into scenic downtown Marvel Creek. We had a couple of Lone Stars and a hamburger at Bill’s Kettle. Afterwards, we splurged and had chocolate pie and coffee.
When we finished, Leonard said, “Course, it could be some other car.”
“How many cars are gonna end up in the middle of a creek like that? And that suck hole is wide enough and deep enough to hold a car during floods and water risings over the years, and when the river gets low, bet that spot’s covered with enough water to keep the car out of sight.”
“What we got is a license plate, though, not a car.”
“It was hooked to a car. It came off
because it was rusted.”
“You know, the boat could really be out there. And with a little luck, the money.”
“Lot of luck. By the way, did I thank you for saving me?”
“Not nearly enough. More humility on your part would be good. I went down there without a rope and pulled you up at great risk to my own life.”
“How great a risk do you think?”
“Real great. I fought the suck hole and the cold and you. I can’t think of anyone braver.”
“Or more modest.”
We went on like that until we were tired, then we found we didn’t want to drive back to the Sixties Nest. Didn’t want to sleep on a cold back porch with butane in our snouts. We got some beer and some cheap wine and rented a room at a rundown motel and stayed up most of the night telling lies and a few sad truths that we hoped the other would think were lies.
Leonard talked about his grandmother, and how fine she was, how he loved her, then talked about his dad, who beat him until he was fourteen and he turned on the old man and kicked his ass, and the old man went away and never came back and his mother died of diabetes and shattered dreams. A stint in the army seemed all right to him. He didn’t talk about Vietnam. He skipped that part, and of course I’d heard it all before and he knew it, but a drunk doesn’t care about what’s been said before, he cares about now and about how he feels, dragging that stuff up is like putting on a good old blues song you’ve heard a hundred times. You know the words, but it still does you good.
He moved on to other things. Sad history became glad lies. He talked about his dogs, about this one—long gone to her reward, of course—that was smart as Lassie. Could jump through hoops and run for help. Another glass of wine and he might have told me how she could drive a car and smoke a cigar, maybe work a couple calculus problems.
But it didn’t get that far. He got limp and paused too long and I told him how I’d lost some plans. About how the future that was not the future I’d wanted. He listened good, like he always did, and what I said was all right. He was with me, knew this line of patter, nodded knowingly in all the right places, way I had with his much-heard story about his good grandmother and his runaway father and his dead mother. Then I told him about Trudy and Cheep, sneaked it in like an inside curve ball. I was looking for a little sympathy there. Figured I deserved it.
“You dick,” Leonard said. “I told you that bitch was poison. Paco told you. Everyone knows what she is but the guys in love with her. Maybe I wasn’t queer I’d love her too. But from my perspective, she’s just a bitch with some patter, and you’re an A-one jackass that can’t tell a hard-on from true, sweet love. Goodnight.”
The thing I like best about Leonard is his sensitivity. Tell you one thing, though, I’d listened to his last goddamn dog story cum lie. He could tell it to the bushes.
Next morning, dull-eyed and slick-tailed, we drove out to the Sixties Nest, ready to deliver our news.
18
After we told them what we found, it took two days to get everything together, make a few plans. They gathered up chainsaws and axes and brush knives and an aluminum boat, and somehow Howard talked his boss into letting him borrow the wrecker for a Sunday afternoon.
His boss must have found him considerably more charming than Leonard and I did. At my worst, I wouldn’t have pissed on him had he been on fire, and at my best, I would have stomped the flames out.
So we went down there on a cold-as-hell Sunday, the sky all funny-looking and threatening rain, and we took the tools and cut a path for the wrecker to get down to the creekbank. It wasn’t much of a path, but by cutting a tree now and then and chopping out some undergrowth, the wrecker, one of those big things with monster tires, was able to get through. We put out a few fishing poles here and there as a disguise, but I thought that was damn silly. Anyone came along and saw all the work we’d done to get that wrecker in, saw our wet suits, and believed we were just dropping a few lines off cane poles was going to have to be a lot dumber than a stone.
Still, that’s what we did. All of us but Paco. He was gone as he often was, and nobody offered an explanation, and I couldn’t have cared less.
I girded my loins and prepared to put on the dry suit. I didn’t want to go back down there, but I knew if I didn’t, Leonard would, and I couldn’t let him do it just because I was a chickenshit. Not that I hadn’t considered it. He offered, and it was tempting, but I made it clear the first round was my baby. My dad always said that if something scared you, thing to do was to face it head-on. Saved yourself a lot of sleepless nights that way. Course, it was an attitude that might get you killed. I wondered if dear old Dad had considered that possibility.
I rubbed myself down with the grease and pulled on the suit and took hold of the wrecker’s hook and cable and went down to the edge of the water.
Leonard came over, said, “Sure you want to do this?”
“Course not.”
“But you’re gonna?”
“Yep.”
“Get in any kind of trouble, I’ll come get you.”
“How you going to know if I’m in trouble?”
“I won’t let you stay down long, oxygen tanks or not. You don’t come up pretty quick, I’ll go down there and get your ass.”
“I know that’s your favorite part, Leonard, but bring the rest of me up with it.”
“Deal.”
I pulled the mask down and Howard let out some slack on the cable. I went into the water, swam directly toward the suck hole. It obliged by dragging at me, and I went with it. It was as dark as before down there, and just as cold, and I had to work not to get tangled in the cable. A mild feeling of panic moved over me, but I put my mind on my business and swam with the current. It wasn’t as bad this time. I could feel the pressure of the cold against me, but I must have gotten myself greased better this time or my suit put on tighter, because no water was seeping in.
When I was in the suck hole, I turned with my feet up and felt to see what had given up the license plate. It sure felt like a car bumper. I ran my gloved hands over it some more. Yes sir, what we had here was a genuine automobile. I got the hook attached by feel, hoped it was secure, grabbed the cable, and followed it up rapidly. It took only a few seconds, but when I broke the surface, I felt as if I had been down forever.
Howard got the winch going. It whined and pulled taut, paused, started whining again. Before long our catch broke the surface. I couldn’t tell what color it had once been, because it had long since adopted the gray and green of the creek bottom’s mud and mold. The rear window was mostly busted out, and what glass was there was flimsy-looking, as if it were not glass at all, but crinkled plastic. The tires looked like black chamois rags wrapped around the wheels. The windows were down, to help it sink no doubt, and water and mud the texture of a sick man’s shit rushed out of them.
When it was on the bank, we gathered around it.
“It’s a car,” Howard said, “but is it the right car?”
“Softboy said he had some partners,” I said. “Check for bones.”
Time and fish would have long since taken care of any bodies in the car. Bones might have washed off or been carried away by larger fish, but if the car had gone into that suck hole and lodged there early on, just maybe they had been preserved. And if not, there might be some other evidence there that would tie the car to Softboy.
The doors wouldn’t open, so Howard got a bar and went to work. When he popped them, mud oozed out. Trudy and Howard got shovels and started scraping. It wasn’t too long before Howard found a skull. He wiped it on his sleeve until we could see that it had a large hole in the left side and a smaller one in the right.
Trudy dug around in the backseat until she came up with another mud-covered skull. She brought it out on her shovel and Howard took hold of it and scrubbed it with his sleeve. This one had a small hole in the forehead, and at the back, one the size of a fist.
“I got a feeling Softboy lied about his partners,” Leon
ard said. “Those are close-up shots. Small one’s the entry wound, big one’s the exit. I think he finished them himself. Money’ll make you do things.”
“He didn’t seem that way,” Howard said.
“Well, things aren’t always what they seem,” Leonard said.
“One thing, though,” Howard said. “He told the truth about the car. And you know what that could mean.”
We had the fever then. I tried to figure where Softboy might have wrecked the boat, and decided the best thing to do was to check both sides of the bridge in the deeper water, see what we could come up with. Leonard and I took turns going in. It was surprisingly deep on either side of the bridge and I thought maybe they had dredged there, preparing to dig the great waterway that never happened.
We swam along the bottom, and at first we panicked at everything we touched. Some of it was the usual garbage: cans and bottles and plastic containers that had once housed soaps or colas, all manner of crap that belonged at the dump and not in the water. Sometimes there were big things and we hooked the winch cable to them and Howard hauled them out. There were a number of fifty-five-gallon drums full of who knows what, and tires and wheels, the occasional transmission or lawn mower, and of course the ever popular irregular shaped rock.
No boats. No pieces of boat.
I was less fearful of the water now, and I tried to keep that in mind. Over-confidence is the way to give your soul to the devil an inch at a time. The dry suit was pinching me some. Water was starting to seep in, and I could really feel the cold. We dove and we dove, and by late afternoon I was exhausted.
We had found neither money nor boat nor boat pieces, and Leonard and I came out of the water and out of our drippy suits and dressed in our clothes for a little warmth and a break. Paco showed up with sandwiches and coffee, and he and Howard went off down the bank to talk about something or another.
The money fever was fading. I thought about how long ago the boat had gone down, and all that could have happened to it over the years, and a mild depression moved in. If it had broken up when it wrecked, it might have gradually been carried away, and the money with it. It could have long since made the sea.