The Great Shark Hunt
By Andrew Bardin Williams
Based on the novel Learning to Haight by Andrew Bardin Williams
eBook Edition
Copyright 2011 Andrew Bardin Williams
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Adam, his blond mop more windswept than usual, clenched his jaw and pushed forward on the throttle, thrusting the high-powered fishing boat past the Coast Guard station on Bodega Head, into the open ocean. Jack and Nadine were driven back by the g-forces, tumbling in their bench seats at the stern of boat, sinking into the soft foam cushions, holding onto each other for support. Potey, standing next to Adam in the open cockpit unshielded from the spray, widened his stance and strengthened his grip on a metal hold bar fastened to the boat’s hull as spray rose from the waves. The water drenched his clothes and hair and rivulets of water streamed down his smiling, chiseled face.
“Weeeeeee!” Nadine screamed in Jack’s ear as the boat picked up speed. They skimmed over the swells, sashaying back and forth between the waves to minimize the impact. Nadine, her pigtails flapping in the wind, wrapped her arms around Jack’s thin body, holding on tight as the boat bobbed and weaved like a welterweight boxer avoiding a fatal blow. She was beautiful--even while soaking wet--the salty spray giving her face, hair and brow a nice clean sheen. Every three or four seconds, Jack felt their bodies rise up off of the seat. He felt weightless as the boat caught air, his stomach churning slightly--as if with a case of bad gas or nervous excitement.
Adam, wearing bright yellow plastic coveralls to protect himself from the mist, calmly and confidently steered the boat south. They picked up speed as their vessel crossed the channel, its bow pointed at a rocky point rising from the coast. It was obvious to Jack that Adam had done this many times before, spending years piloting the research vessel along the coast, deftly searching for the massive carnivorous fish that lurked under the choppy waves.
“Hey, is that the beginning of Tomales Bay?” Jack yelled over the roaring wind, remembering the map he’d pored over that morning before picking up Nadine and Potey at their apartments in San Francisco. He ran his hand through his wet hair, his once-coifed bedhead hairdo now soaked and matted against his scalp, his pressed shirt now damp.
“Yeah, that’s the opening,” Adam yelled back while pointing to a narrow strip of water just east of the peninsula. “See those rocks right there?” His strong, calloused hand protruded from his plastic sleeve as he pointed to the rocky cliffs directly in front of the boat. “That’s Shark Point. It’s the most northern stretch of Point Reyes.”
Giant waves crashed against the rocks, sending spray fifty feet into the air.
“Do you ever go surfing out he-ah?” Potey asked in his thick Boston accent as he watched a perfect set curl toward the point. He tightened his grip once more, his knuckles slowly turning white.
Adam chuckled. “No dice, man. The waves look good, but they call it Shark Point for a reason. You’d have to be crazy to even think about getting on a board out here. Besides, where do you think we’re going?” He turned the wheel, pointing the boat toward a spot less than a hundred yards from the rocks.
“Seriously?” Jack asked, still yelling to be heard over the engine. “We’re looking for sharks this close to land?”
“Yep.” Adam nodded his head. “They hang where there’s food, and that’s right here, just off the shallows.”
The boat continued to swerve between waves as Jack wondered how he’d found himself on a research vessel off the Northern California coast at six in the morning, tired, hung-over, surrounded by two old friends and a woman he’d just met but was already head over heels in love with.
He’d known Adam and Potey since they were undergrads at Boston University. Potey had been his roommate during their freshman year, and Adam, a year older, was their gregarious resident advisor. All three had made their way west in the few years since graduation, reconnecting in the real world as far from Kenmore Square as possible.
After years of toiling away in a downtown Boston advertising agency with little to show for it, Jack was a recent San Franciscan, having quit his job, dumped his live-in girlfriend and left his hometown to start a new life in California--a necessary change during a restless quarter-life crisis.
Fortunately, he had a built-in support system on the ground, crashing with Potey until he figured things out. Potey had moved out west years before and worked himself up to vice president for a high-tech public relations firm and was living the life of a twenty-first century playboy, texting late night booty calls from his iPhone and twittering about his late-night trysts in 140-character updates: nailin the intern tonight; got her panties down around her ankles; think she’s up for a dirty sanchez?
Jack didn’t have his friend’s inexhaustible thirst for snatch but marveled at Potey’s cold-blooded efficiency as he hit up and subsequently got blacklisted from bars throughout the city’s distinct neighborhoods. Starting with Polk Gulch and moving west, Potey had devoured unsuspecting women in the Marina, the Fillmore, Western Addition, and eventually the Richmond and Sunset. Jack just wished he didn’t have to experience them from the other side of the paper-thin walls in Potey’s downtown penthouse apartment.
Despite his more respectful view of women, Jack didn’t hold the sexcapades against Potey who was actually a good, loyal friend, someone who’d step in and fight a larger adversary if he was giving a friend trouble.
Adam, on the other hand, was somehow getting himself in crazy, unpredictable situations and always lived to tell about it. He was the perpetual student--a thirty year old that had never held a real job who was getting his PhD from UC-Berkeley. Because it sounded cool and helped him pick up chicks, he was studying the migratory habits of great white sharks, tagging a population off Bodega Bay and tracking their movements through the feeding, breeding and birthing seasons. Jack and Potey had run into him at a bar late one night. He was alone, three vodka tonics in, non-prescription Buddy Holly glasses across the bridge of his nose, trying desperately to hit on everyone’s dates as they came up to the bar to order a drink. Immediately recognizing Jack and Potey, he offered to take them on his next field research trip, telling them it would be a gas.
The boat neared the point and Adam cut the engine, drifting the last twenty yards toward his target. The boat began to bob up and down as the waves continued to roll past, first sending the starboard side up in the air, then forcing it to come crashing down as the port side gained several feet of altitude. Jack, Nadine and Potey, still getting their sea legs under them, rolled with the waves, first grabbing one side of the boat, then the other. Adam was the only one used to the motion of the ocean. He deftly stripped off his plastic rain gear and proceeded to walk about the deck, unloading his equipment. He was in sharp contrast to the boorish resident advisor Jack remembered from Boston. Ten years ago he’d been immature, uncertain, horny, a joke to the students on his floor. But now, ten years later out on his boat in the open water, the researcher was calm, collected, confident even.
Nadine held out a hand as the boat rolled, bracing herself with her knuckles pressed next to her butt, her shoulders rigid, her body tense, only her neck on a swivel as the boat continued to rock. One of her pigtails tickled Jack’s neck as they rose into the air, the sensation taking him back several weeks, to the moment they had met. Jack
had been on his way back from a tough job interview when he saw her through the big picture window in front of a laundromat in Potey’s neighborhood. She had been sitting on a counter, waiting for her clothes to dry, her knees bent up toward her chin, reading a worn, dog-eared copy of The Dharma Bums. She had looked up from the book as Jack passed by, their eyes meeting for an instant through the window. She had smiled, showing a set of beautiful white teeth and rich, luscious lips, her shoulder-length hair pulled back in two pigtails that stuck out the back of her head at a forty-five degree angle. The combination of her unique beauty and the fact that she actually smiled in Jack’s direction took him by surprise.
Instinctively, he froze on the sidewalk as every failed pick-up line from Jack’s entire geeky life flashed through his head. He hesitated for a moment, and then he did what he always did, he turned tail and continued up the hill to Potey’s condo. Up the stairs, he flung open the front door and tossed his notebook on the coffee table. It bounced, slid off the far end, and dropped to the floor on top of a worn, soiled athletic sock. He bent down to pick up the notebook and instead came up with the sock. Sprinting into the bedroom, he grabbed