Blood Work полностью

“They were from Chicago. My father was a ballplayer. Baseball. One spring-it was nineteen fifty-he got a tryout with the Cubs. They used to come out to Catalina for spring training. The Wrigleys owned the Cubs and most of the island. So they came out here.

“My father and my mother were high school sweethearts. They had gotten married and he got this chance to go for the Cubs. He was a shortstop and second baseman. Anyway, he came out here but didn’t make the team. But he loved the place. He got a job working for the Wrigleys. And he sent for her.”

His plan was to end the story there but she prompted more out of him.

“Then you came.”

“A little while later.”

“But your parents didn’t stay?”

“My mother didn’t. She couldn’t take the island. She stayed ten years and that was enough. It can be claustrophobic for some people… Anyway, they split up. My father stayed and he wanted me with him. I stayed. My mother went back to Chicago.”

She nodded.

“What did your father do for the Wrigleys?”

“A lot of things. He worked on their ranch, then he worked up at the house. They kept a sixty-three-foot Chris-Craft in the harbor. He got a job as a deckhand and eventually he skippered that for them. Finally he got his own boat and put it out for charter. He was also a volunteer fireman.”

He smiled and she smiled back.

“And The Following Sea was his boat?”

“His boat, his house, his business, everything. The Wrigleys financed him. He lived on the boat for about twelve years. Until he got so sick they-I mean, me, I was the one-I took him over town to the hospital. He died over here. In Long Beach.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Not for you.”

He looked at her.

“It’s just that at the end there comes a time when everybody knows. He knew there was no chance and he just wanted to go back over there. To his boat. And the island. I wouldn’t do it. I wanted to try everything, every goddamn marvel of science and medicine. And besides, if he was over there, it would be a hassle for me to get out to see him. I’d have to take the ferry. I made him stay in that hospital. He died alone in his room. I was down in San Diego on a case.”

McCaleb looked out across the water. He could see a ferry heading toward the island.

“I just wish I had listened to him.”

She reached her hand over and put it on his forearm.

“There is no sense in being haunted by good intentions.”

He glanced over at Raymond. The boy had settled down and was standing still, looking down at his reel while a steady torrent of line was being pulled out. McCaleb knew that a squid didn’t have that kind of pulling power.

“Hey, wait a minute, Raymond. I think you’ve got something there.”

He put his rod down and went to the boy. He flipped the reel’s bail over and the line caught. Almost immediately the pole was pulled down and almost out of the boy’s hands. McCaleb grabbed it and held it up.

“You got one!”

“Hey! I got one! I got one!”

“Remember what I told you, Raymond. Pull back, reel down. Pull back, reel down. I’ll help you with the pole until we tire that boy out. It feels like a big one. You okay?”

“Yeah!”

With McCaleb doing most of the pulling up on the pole, they began to fight the fish. Meantime, McCaleb directed Graciela to reel in the other lines to avoid a tangle with the live line. McCaleb and the boy fought the fish for about ten minutes. All the while McCaleb could feel through the pole the fight slipping out of it as it tired. Finally, he was able to turn the pole over to Raymond so he could finish the job himself.

McCaleb slipped on a pair of gloves from the tackle box and climbed down the rocks to the water’s edge. Just a few inches below the surface he saw the silvery fish weakly struggling against the line. McCaleb kneeled on the rock, getting his shoes and pants wet, and leaned out until he could grab hold of Raymond’s line. He tugged the fish forward and brought its mouth up, reached into the water and locked a gloved hand around the tail, just forward of the back fins. He then yanked the fish out of the water and climbed back up the rocks to Raymond.

The fish was shining in the sun like polished metal.

“Barracuda, Raymond,” he said, holding it up. “Look at those teeth.”

THE DAY HAD GONE WELL. Raymond caught two barracudas and a white bass. The first fish had been the biggest and most exciting, though the second was hooked while they were eating lunch and almost pulled the unattended pole into the water. After they got back in the late afternoon Graciela insisted that Raymond rest before dinner and took him down to the forward stateroom. McCaleb used the time to spray off the fishing equipment with the stern hose. When Graciela came back up and they were alone, sitting on chairs on the deck, he felt a physical craving for a cold beer that he could just sit back and enjoy.

“That was wonderful,” Graciela said of the outing to the jetty.

“I’m glad. Think you’re going to stay for dinner?”