By edRogers
[Reviewed here on the novel’s publication day, October 6, 2018: “Coming soon to a Barnes & Noble store near you?”]
Charlie was dressed and ready to go when the knock came. He opened the door and turned out the light. Edgar motioned his head toward the lobby. “Let’s go!”
The three left their keys on the desk as they walked past. Rufino looked like death warmed over. It would be his last drunk for a while and he had made it a good one. But Charlie was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.
Edgar flagged down a taxi, and ten minutes later Charlie was shaking hands with their new deckhand, Paulo Mendes. He was Charlie’s height, much darker than Rufino or other Costa Ricans, and a little heavier, but with muscles, not fat.
Rufino said something in Spanish to Paulo and he boarded the boat. “He’s from Nicaragua,” Rufino said, “and speaks no English.”
Edgar started the engine and once Paulo came back from putting his stuff below, he and Charlie untied the boat and jumped on as Edgar pulled away from the dock.
Rufino was below making coffee, rice, and beans for breakfast. The rice and beans ended up being what they would eat during the entire trip. Rufino would throw in a little chicken or fish every once in awhile but it was mostly a diet of rice and beans. All Charlie could think was that it filled the hole in his stomach.
The boat was out of sight of Puntarenas by the time the sun rose. The cover over the deck area was a life saver, as the sun’s heat came with its light. Because of their language barrier, Paulo and Charlie ate their breakfast and drank their coffee without conversation.
Rufino hollered at Paulo to come take the wheel. Paulo handed Charlie his dirty plate and coffee cup, and went to take over the steering of the boat. Edgar went below to eat while Rufino threw a bucket over the side and brought back ocean water, which he placed in front of Charlie. He added his own plate to Charlie’s and Paulo’s. “Wash these and put them below. When you finish I will explain what your job will be.”
This was the beginning of Charlie’s education. He learned to handle the knives and bait the long line. It was a 10-hour trip to Cocos Island, and Rufino went over everything five or six times. An hour out from Cocos, Charlie helped drop the nets and they caught a net full of fish to use for bait.
It was dusk by the time the boat was in the shark area. The crew laid line for forty-five minutes. The line went out very fast, so if you missed putting a bait fish on a hook, the line wouldn’t stop. The hook would remain empty, and when the line was pulled back in it would be a reminder of your ineptness. That first night Charlie missed a lot of hooks. Thankfully, Paulo caught some of them. At the end of the line, they tied a beacon buoy and moved to a cove and dropped anchor for the night.
The next morning they were up with the sun. By the time Paulo and Charlie secured the anchor, the smell of hot coffee was coming up from below deck. It was a short run to the line, so they knew it would be a quick cup of coffee.
For the most part, they walked around barefooted except when working, and then they wore rubber boots. The boots were too large but that was on purpose. If a person fell overboard, the boots would come off and not pull him under. The boots also kept them from sliding on the shark blood. Charlie would learn later that the boots also offered some protection from the sharp teeth of the sharks.
Rufino had been right, most of the sharks and fish were dead. The cutting crew, which was Charlie and Paulo, wore gloves with little sharp metal spikes in the palms and on the fingers, which allowed them to hold the slippery sharks. That first day, Charlie held the sharks while Paulo cut. Rufino ran the drum that pulled in the line and kept production going.
With only Paulo cutting, they could bring in only one shark at a time. Because they were burning the clock with only one cutting and losing the day, Rufino decided they couldn’t waste any more time and threw Charlie into the deep end of the pool. “Gringo, get a knife. The first shark is yours, the second one is Paulo’s.” He repeated himself in Spanish.
Charlie was lucky that the first shark was small. As degusting as it was, he soon got into the swing of things.
He glanced up once and saw Edgar taking pictures and suddenly remembered he hadn’t turned on his own cameras. Charlie felt like kicking myself, but there was nothing he could do about it. The remote control was in his bag down below deck. The pictures would have to be taken the next time they pulled in a line.
It was like an assembly line: cut the fins off, get the hook out, throw the carcass overboard. At some point, Charlie stopped thinking and just moved.
Suddenly, Rufino was hollering, “Live shark, live shark!”
Coming aboard was a pissed-off shark that was a good six feet long. Paulo jumped to the side and the shark slid past him and was heading straight for Charlie, who thought about jumping over the side, but then he remembered the sharks in the water.
Paulo jumped on the shark’s back and was riding it like a wild horse. “Charlie, get that bat and hit it in the head.” It was Rufino trying to get him moving. Charlie had frozen when he saw the shark. Suddenly he woke up,ran for the bat, and slammed it down on the shark’s head as hard as he could. Like lightning, the shark’s head turned, its mouth opened, and its teeth sank into Charlie’s boot. He hit it again and it let go of his boot, but it kept moving and Charlie kept hitting it. When he heard his name again, it was Rufino. “Charlie, stop! The shark is dead, it’s dead. You can stop beating it.”
For the first time, Charlie looked at the bloody mess he had made and dropped the bat. And then he ran to the rail and released his beans and rice.
They caught fifty sharks the first day, and when they set the line back out at the end of it, Charlie missed only one or two hooks. The day ended with about thirty-one thousand dollars worth of fins in the storage tanks. By the end of the first week, they were running two lines a day. Edgar said that at that rate they would have the tanks full in three weeks and be heading home.
Charlie had more than enough pictures, so he was no longer messing with the cameras. In fact, he was trying to learn a little Spanish while they were anchored at night. He wasn’t having much luck, however.
Being on a small boat alone at sea brings people together. Charlie found he was starting to like Edgar and Rufino. Paulo he had liked right away. There was no TV, so they played a lot of cards. The only thing to drink on board the boat was coffee or water. Getting drunk at sea was where even Edgar and Rufino drew the line.
It was a hot night with little wind, and everybody was on deck trying to cool off when the call from Mr. Tai came in.
The boat made a three-hour run out to sea and met a large Taiwanese trawler. The crew had to turn the deck lights on in order to see what they were doing. Charlie used his remote-control clicker to turn on all three of his cameras.
They took on two bales of drugs that night, each one three feet wide by three feet high. Charlie caught it all on camera. As they pulled away, he said to Edgar, “I’m guessing that we have a shit load of drugs on board?”
Edgar didn’t look at him. “What’s your point?”
Charlie knew he had to pretend he didn’t care one way or the other about the drugs, so he answered, “What are we going to do about the lines we set?”
He looked at Charlie now, and smiled. “It will be a long night, and an even longer day tomorrow, but we’ll do both.”
Edgar had been right about the long night and day. They ran toward Puntarenas for eight hours before they were met by one of Tai’s boats. The crew unloaded the drugs and headed back toward their lines. They took turns sleeping and steering the boat. But even with what little sleep they got that night, the next day was hell.
A week later their tanks were full and they headed home. No more live sharks had come on board and no mishaps had occurred to speak of. There were extra boots in the wet-gear locker, but, as a badge of honor, Charlie still wore the boots with the shark teeth holes. Although he now felt like part of the crew, he knew he would always be the outsider. But at the moment he didn’t care, he could almost taste the beer to come as he lay half asleep on the deck.
Paulo was steering the boat and Edgar and Rufino were below. It was a good time to retrieve a couple of his cameras and put them away. He got the two with the deck view and put them in his pockets. He had just placed the second camera in a pocket when Edgar and Rufino came back up.
“Charlie, we’d like to talk to you for a minute,” Edgar said.
“Sure, what’s up?”
Rufino jumped right to the point. “We want to buy you out.”
“Hey, I’m pulling my weight.”
Edgar spoke up, “It’s nothing to do with your work. We just think that with your share and an extra twenty thousand to pay off whoever you borrowed the money from, you will have had your adventure and made a pretty good amount of money doing it.”
Charlie really wasn’t looking forward to going back to sea but he needed to be sure he had something on his cameras before he cut loose. “I hadn’t expected this. Can you give me a couple days back on dry land before I give you an answer?”
Edgar smiled. “We’ll be in port for three days.”
But Rufino wasn’t smiling. “Gringo, I think you will be much happier somewhere else. Think hard about that.”
Before Charlie could answer, the two of them were going back below deck.
| Copyright © 2018 by Ed Rogers |
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