The Last Karankawas(9)
The engine rumbles, spitting out diesel fumes and exhaust; then the boat is puttering out from the marina into the waters of the bay. The sun, unseen, casts weak light over the horizon, the white tiled roofs and bright pink and green houses of the island’s east side. Jess regrets not bringing a thermos of coffee like the one Rey gulps from. Instead, he pulls the hood of his sweatshirt up over his hair and sits on the bench, damp seeping into his jeans, watching the sparkle of sunlight on the brown water.
There isn’t much to do while the Saigon heads out to the reef where Vinh has a lease to dredge. Jess sits, grabs the seat occasionally to keep from falling when the boat pitches. Sits, and looks at the water, and thinks.
He didn’t tell his mother about the job, or where he would even be that day. Before Dad went away, she used to kiss Jess’s forehead when he went anywhere. Ten cuidado, Jesusmaría, she’d say and make a cross on his forehead with her thumb. She would attend his baseball and football and soccer games, before he focused on baseball for good, brushing the curling strands of dark hair over his brow after games for no reason. That stopped the night gunshots cracked near their house, when tires squealed and Dad screamed at them to get down get down get down, when the girls stopped crying and no bullets had come for them. In the chaos, his heart pounding, Jess ran to his parents’ mattress and flipped it, grabbed the bags of pot and cocaine tucked beneath, then locked himself in the bathroom and flushed them down. He had known for a while, his friends always talked about it, and maybe Mama just refused to see it. She was the one pounding on the bathroom door, screaming at Jess to open it, to let her in, to stop what he was doing, but Dad stayed silent, even when the cops came and took him away. Three years later, Yvonne is the one crossing foreheads and giving kisses. Mama still talking about how important it is to have a real man in the house. Looking at Jess with heavy eyes and a heavier mouth, as if he were a bronze statue that could never be gold.
They arrive where Vinh’s lease begins. Vinh guides the boat into a slow, loping circle around the bay. “This is the dredge,” he announces, pointing to the chain-and-metal basket, about four feet wide, suspended from an arm over the side. He moves some levers, and the dredge drops with a splash. As Vinh eases the boat in circles, the dredge dredges. Jess listens to the scrape, feels it rumbling and stuttering over unseen rock and reef, in his feet, shuddering up through the deck.
The men move without explanation, stopping to talk Jess through the process only when it is clear he doesn’t understand. He learns the rhythm quickly, more quickly than even he expected. Once Vinh decides the dredge is full, he uses the winch to lift its dripping mass into the air. Jess and Rey pull it in and over the stainless steel table between them, where it drops its haul. Soon his jeans are soaked from the spray; Rey wears rubber overalls, which he eyes enviously. “You should get some,” Rey says, but Jess shrugs and responds, “I’m only here for the week.”
Rey hands him a hatchet. He stares at it. The short, squat blade in his hand, his brown fingers around the smooth handle. Medieval, this weapon, this tool. Ancient, even.
“Focus, chamaco.” Rey snaps his fingers, and he blinks up at him. “Like this, ves.”
Jess hacks at a small clump of oysters the way Rey shows him; he works carefully, mindfully. Rey has been doing this for dozens of years—his hands a blur of fingers and blade. Rey shows him how to feel for the oyster, how to sense the different textures and shapes of shell versus reef. Jess feels like a stone carver, creating a lumpy orb from a knot of dark mud. When the oysters appear in his hand, seemingly from nowhere, he tosses them into the pail at the end of the table. Anything smaller than three inches goes back overboard; Rey says they need to keep growing so the reefs won’t die out. Jess smiles at the idea that these little clods of dirt and shell will spawn, grow larger, create worlds beneath the dark water.
It is a kind of dance, set to the oily drone of the diesel engine and the Tejano music Vinh blasts on his little radio. The motions of it spark in Jess’s mind, sing in his muscles like the 6–4–3 double play. Vinh lifting the dredge, dumping its haul; Rey and Jess culling out oysters, sliding them this way or that; the empty mouth of the dredge swinging back out and disappearing into the water again. Shortstop to second to first, smooth as sea glass. On the field, he is the six; out here, he is part of the cycle, too. The wind picks up, but he doesn’t notice. He reaches for another clump of mud and reef.
* * *
He has baseball practice Wednesday morning, so Vinh gives him the day off. Hector’s cousin from Dallas is in town, and the guys gather at the park that afternoon to play a game of touch football. Though Jess is bone-tired, between practice and the bay, he doesn’t want to miss a fun part of his spring break.
The wind off the Gulf is unnaturally cold, tinged with salt but no hint of its usual damp warmth; it gnaws at his lips, his ears, as he jogs from Carly’s house on Albacore to Lindale Park. He makes out a knot of bodies away from the playground equipment, clustered around the stretch of empty field. Ramiro is already there, cornrows like black seams along his scalp, with Carlos and Hector and Hector’s cousin Freddy, a skinny guy in a blue zip-up hoodie and wifebeater. Jess grabs a beer from the cooler; they haven’t bothered with ice.
After shooting the shit and stamping their feet to warm up, they get down to business. Iformation, with Carlos at QB for both sides. Jess takes up a post in the back; familiar energy hums in the tips of his fingers and the balls of his feet, or maybe it is the beer. He hasn’t played football in so long the thrill feels illicit, as if he is cheating on baseball.