The She
Carol Plum-Ucci
* * *
HARCOURT, INC.
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Copyright © 2003 by Carol Plum-Ucci
Reader's guide copyright © 2005 by Harcourt, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
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should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department,
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www.HarcourtBooks.com
First Harcourt paperback edition 2005
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Plum-Ucci, Carol, 1957-
The She/Carol Plum-Ucci.
p. cm.
Summary: After his parents are lost at sea, Evan Barrett and his older
brother leave their seaside home in West Hook to escape bad memories,
but years later even worse questions emerge when Evan is asked to
help a fellow student deal with another sea-related tragedy.
[1. Brothers—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction.
3. Sea stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.P7323Sh 2003
[Fic]—dc21 2003047754
ISBN-13: 978-0152-16819-3 ISBN-10: 0-15-216819-2
ISBN-13: 978-0152-05453-3 pb ISBN-10: 0-15-205453-7 pb
Text set in Sabon
Designed by Cathy Riggs
E G H F
Printed in the United States of America
This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, and events
portrayed in this book are the product of the author's imagination. Any
resemblance to any event or actual person, living or dead, ts unintended.
* * *
To Frank Schaeffer
* * *
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to Tom O'Rourke, formerly of the Coast Guard in Atlantic City, for his help with all sorts of seafaring issues, from the precise wording of a Mayday to what happens when a ship does a three-sixty in the water. Same thanks to Dwight Webster captain of theSuzie Q4out of Brigantine, New Jersey. Guys, just don't be waylaid by my poetic license, capisce?
Thanks to Trey Severs and the other students of Jean Serber's English classes for their help with slang.
My most gracious thanks to Sally Turkavage for teaching this dumb Protestant the Hail Mary and any other Catholic issues I managed to get straight.
Thanks again to my editor Karen Grove, for always being there, and for beating me up good on those first two drafts. My slothfulness is ever indebted to your perfection, woman. I still want to be you someday.
Thanks to Dr. Rafey Habib, most excellent professor of philosophy, for giving me so much to think about for two years in grad school and for helping me out with Saussure for this manuscript. If I thought it were remotely possible to be you, I would want that, too.
Thanks to Ed Okonowicz, author of Terrifying Tales of the Beaches and Bays and its sequels, past and future. Thanks for allowing me to quote and for blessing us all with the salty tales of the coast that make for great bedtime popcorn chomping.
* * *
The old moon is tarnished
With smoke of the flood,
The dead leaves are varnished
With color like blood,
A treacherous smiler
With teeth white as milk,
A savage beguiler
In sheathings of silk,
The sea creeps to pillage,
She leaps on her prey;
A child of the village
was murdered today.
—ELINOR WYLIE
"Sea Lullaby"
* * *
EIGHT YEARS AGO
THERE'S DEATH WEATHER OUTSIDE MY HOUSE. I know about death weather no matter how often Emmett tells me I've got bats in my attic. The wind is rushing off the sound since maybe fifteen minutes ago, making the drapes stand straight out from the farthest window in the living room. Dad forgot to close it before driving with Mom down to where they launched their freighter. I'm listening. Sometimes my ears can hear through the dark, past the ocean and everything that rattles, so as to confuse you.
I've got the red army cornered by the blue navy under the coffee table. Emmett's on the couch reading some fat high school book. Usually he'd be bugging me because he says nine is too old to play navy men, but not tonight, because he's reading with a highlighter pen. At least, he wants me to think he's reading. But I see his eyes looking up, though his head's down, and he's watching the curtain, same as me.
It's like the black dots of his eyes get wider and wider, though he doesn't move. Finally, he's looking down again. But something makes me think he's not really reading. He's thinking of our island's Ella Diablo Agujero, which means "she-devil of the hole," though that's a hard term to spit out. Since the first time I heard her, I just call her The She.
My dad thinks that's funny, and he says now half the islanders are calling her The She instead of Ella Diablo Agujero. I think it's the half that believes in her. The She lives in a hole under the canyon, which is the deepest place where you can fish out there. The She is big, and she doesn't get hungry too often, but when she does, she'll catch hold of a ship over the horizon, and she'll eat it. I heard her shrieking once, right before she bit down on one. Not many islanders can hear The She. Emmett used to say I was baby shit in a diaper; but he had to quit that after The She ate a small yacht and some fishermen we knew. I'd been shrieking on and off all that morning two years ago, when I was seven, because that's the only way to cut the shriek of The She. That night my dad read us the Coast Guard report and mumbled, "The old bitch didn't even spit out half a life jacket."
I'm watching my brother and I know he's remembering tonight's dinner table fuss between Mom and Dad over The She. Emmett's been in on their fights for a couple of years now, always taking Mom's side. Dad was laughing quietly over his coffee mug—telling once again how when a husband and wife set sail on the same vessel, The She gets jealous, and she swallows the boat into her whirlpool and spins it down into the hole under the canyon floor, eighty miles out.
Emmett's allowed to say "horseshit" now without getting sent upstairs, and Dad was shrugging him off, but I didn't like how Dad's eyes wouldn't go along with his smile.
Dad said, "I'm not saying I believe any husbands-wives superstitions of the deep, Mary Ellen. I'm saying some of the crew's a little touchy about these things, that's all. If you want to replace Lowenberg while his wife's in labors just don't expect the other crew to be your best buddies."
Mom said, "When did I ever? Goddamn superstitions, they're all just a poor excuse to keep women off the water; Those guys can be satisfied that I've become a flight paramedic—and deal with it once in a while if I want to help out on the freighter I used to own and drive."
I don't like it when they fight. I like it when Mom's peaceful, which has not been this week, so I felt almost glad when Dad caved in, because then she'd be peaceful for a couple of weeks after she had been at sea.
I look from Emmett's pretend-reading eyes back to this curtain, and I can't help it, I'm listening beyond the wind to see if I can hear The She. I can't tell Emmett this. In fact, I can't let him catch me even looking like I'm thinking about it. Seventeen-year-olds are strong, ¡and they don't think nice.
And I know, as sure as I'm sitting on this rug, that The She is real, and she's out there. I can't hear her
tonight, and I'm glad of it. It sounds like plain old wind. Big wind. It's whizzing through the bayberry trees out front, making a shatter shatter shatter, and the ocean is going thunder thunder thunder beyond it. The She makes a different, angry noise. It's the pain of undigested crew down in her guts that makes her moan rise to a shriek. It's a shriek that stays behind the waves, but it's not the waves—it's separate from the waves. I've heard her shrieking about the four freighter ships she's eaten since 1920. She also ate a fishing boat in the 1970s, when my dad was a kid, and when I was in second grade, she ate the yacht with our friends the Gormleys on it.
I glance back at Emmett before moving a few red men closer to my shoe box, where the blue navy is about to ambush them. The navy always wins in my stories. Emmett's eyes are stuck on one spot on the page. He's not reading; he's just pretending.
I look away quick as his gaze darts over to me, as if to say, "Don't you dare start in with your crap, because I am in charge tonight, and I will beat your ass, just like I did when you were seven and scared the piss out of me."
So, I'm playing and playing, not wanting to remember that day, but I can't help it. Mom, Dad, and Emmett were racing around because of sudden storm warnings and the full moon, and high tide was coming, and Dad hadn't cleared his family portraits out of the crawl space yet. Twelve generations of sea captains on the Barrett side, twelve portraits wrapped only in newspaper: He was trying to get them upstairs, and Mom was trying to lock down the shutters with her electric screwdrivet. Emmett was hauling sandbags down to the edge of the property, and I was with him, and that's when I heard her.
It was a screaming so plain from out over the sea, different from the waves, more human, more shrieky. I started shrieking to cut the sound.
"The She! Ella Diablo! She's doing it! Right now, Emmett!"
He had me by both arms, and he started shaking me because I had scared him once already that day. In the morning I had screamed, hearing The She, and then word came in about the Gormley yacht's Mayday. Mom was telling Dad at noon that the Coast Guard wasn't saying the yacht foundered yet, because there was no wreckage. Dad said, "Holy shit, did you hear Evan screaming about The She this morning?"
When Emmett was sandbagging, I started in screaming again, and he was shaking my head loose. I pushed one hand in his face to get him off me, screeching, "Can't you hear that? Can't you hear that?"
Then I was caught between his huge arm and his side and he was whaling the hell out of my thigh, accusing me of trying to upset Mom, until I bit him. He let go, but I'd caught the worst of it, and Mom came around threatening to send me off to boarding school if I didn't quit with the superstitious crew talk. She asked why I didn't think it was a traditional man-devil instead of a woman she-devil, and she stalked off muttering, "My own baby ... You're so lucky that was Emmett whipping on you instead of me..." The She had shut up by that point, so I was quiet.
Dad missed his friends, the Gormleys, but couldn't help getting out one of his books when Mom wasn't looking: Terrifying Tales of the South Jersey Coast.
West Hook has all sorts of theories, from faulty hatches to how maybe all the people working those missing ships got rich quick running drugs, and they went to live it up in South America. My dad says he believes in something out there, though he doesn't say it when Mom's around, because she starts in on him. I don't talk about The She, but I'm always listening, waiting.
Emmett's back to reading again. I move a few more of my red guys, and the rain starts in. It changes from whipping wind to clatter wind so quickly that I can't help looking at him again. Sleet's all tapping on the windows, but he doesn't close the one that's open. His head is still down, but his eyes are back on that drape. They move to the flooi; searching through the pattern on the Oriental rug for something I can't figure out, maybe nothing.
I strain my ears. No shrieks. Just rain. Still, I don't like the way Emmett gets up too slowly and looks out the window onto the porch, the window that faces the sea. We're a hundred yards back from the beach, and a thick patch of bayberry trees lies in between, so you can't see anything. I don't know what he's looking at. Maybe he doesn't know, either. I just know it's weird he went to that window instead of the one that's wide open and threatening to freeze us ... almost like he doesn't want to close it. He wants to listen, too.
He's thinking about The She growing jealous of lovers on a ship, about the canyon that my parents have to pass over. It's only been three hours since they left. I know he's thinking what I am, because I ask him, "Whereabouts are they?" and he doesn't have to look at his watch.
"About eighty miles southeast." He keeps his back to me, staring into the black. Finally, he turns, steps over my army men, and moseys back to Dad's office as I hear the radio warbling. I follow him as far as the kitchen.
I can hear Mom's voice coming out of the ship-to-shore. "Goliath to West Hook. Emmett, are you there? Over."
Wind shrieks through the radio, sending my heart into my neck. But I remember how the wind always shrieks when we get caught in a storm on the ship. It's a different shriek than hers, it's separate, though the radio makes every sound seem together.
"West Hook. I'm here. Over."
"Emmett, shut the south-face window in the living room before you turn in. Your dad forgot. Rain coming. Over."
"It's here, Mom. Where are you? Over."
"Coming into the canyon. Got off course a little bit. Somehow. Over."
"What do you mean, 'somehow'? Over." He thinks them getting off course makes no sense, which it doesn't. The Goliath is more than three hundred feet long, and the pilothouse has every finder known to man on it. Depth finder current chaser; wind reader automatic navigator weather fax.
"Uh ... don't know. Loran receiver says we're well into the canyon, but we're not. We've only got depth of twelve hundred yards. We misplaced a few hundred somewhere. Over."
"You see any swells break when you crossed? Over."
He's asking because sometimes the swells break into waves right at the edge of the shelf. I'm always asking Dad if I can drive through them.
"Uh..." I hear Mom laughing. "There's a lot of white stuff winking at me right now, Emmett. Hard to say. Looks sort of like ... black-bean soup, coming to a boil in a pot. Weird water tonight. Why? You worried?" Her laughter rings through, and she says, "Over."
"No. Over."
I know he is. If not worried just ... itchy, antsy. I can tell things like that about the people in my family. They can't tell about each other; but I can tell about them, and Emmett is itchy.
"Good. In case you start to worry, think of the ninety steel girders we've got down in the hold. You know how much that weighs? We're not going to wander too far off course, functioning computer or nonfunctioning computer Over."
"Yeah, I know. I just ... I don't know. Where's Dad? Over."
"He just went to spit over the stern. He's coming in ... Let me put him on..."
Spit over the stern is something Barrett sea captains always do in a storm, because it mixes their body with the sea so they can "reach an agreement" with her if they have to. I don't like that Dad is deciding to spit.
"Barrett here. Over." My dad's voice rings through.
"It's just me, Dad. Mom says you're off course. Over."
"We're over the pit of the canyon. I'm sure of it. Never underestimate a captain's intuition. It's this fancy-schmancy new depth finden You know how I hate technology, but, hey, it was Mary Ellen's boat before it was mine, and if she wants to use up her trust fund loading it up with contraptions, well, God bless her. How's Evan? Over."
"Playing with his army men."
It's a real say-nothing answer but I don't miss the little click in his voice. It tells me I've been making him nervous. He's been thinking about The She and blaming it on me. I can tell he's stalling about getting off the ship-to-shore.
"Dad, what's it look like from the stern? Over."
I don't like my dad's laugh. It's his dinner table laugh, from when he was trying to
laugh off the superstition about a husband-wife team bringing bad luck to a voyage.
"Weird, I have to say. Your mother's describing it ... Yeah. Black-bean soup being stirred in a boiling pot. Over."
They're all laughing now. I can hear Mom in the background. I rush up to the doorway of the office to stare at Emmett. There's a warning barreling up my throat. But I know it will sound like baby shit in a diaper. Still, the image of a stirring pot fills my head, some giant, invisible she-devil finger spinning the waves slowly, then fasten and fasten and faster.
He has his back to me, and he's leaning on Dad's desk, staring out at the rain and sleet beating against the black window, hearing the sounds of the angry ocean.
"Black-bean soup, huh?" He's stalling, stalling ... doesn't want to be alone with me. "Don't let the DEA hear you say that. They'll be going through your hold with a toothpick, and you'll never make it to Jamaica without paying that late penalty. Over."
Some boats run drugs when cargo is short. One boat tried to fake a disappearance and sent a Mayday saying The She was after him. He got caught, but I could have told the Coast Guard he was a liar; because I didn't hear The She when he was supposed to be getting his boat eaten.
Dad's talking again, and I don't like the sound of it. They're talking about the water, and cracking jokes about the Bermuda Triangle, and they're sort of laughing, but still.... "Emmett, here's the weirdest thing. The wind. Can you hear that wind whipping? Over"
"Plainly, yeah. Over."
"Well, when you go out on the stern, you can't feel it. You can hear it, all right. It's like it's coming from everywhere ... and nowhere. Over."
Emmett gets silent for a long moment. "You ever see anything like that before? Over."
A long cackling came, like a spitting between the sounds of shrieking winds. Dad doesn't answer the question. His voice gets louder and clearer, like he's got his lips pressed right up to the handset, like he doesn't want Mom to hear.
"Emmett, you know what's in my desk drawee bottom, left-hand side. I know you don't like to hear about it, but ... do it for the old man, okay? Over."