The Forty Fathom Bank and Other Stories by Les Galloway Read Free Book Online Page A

children. Suddenly I felt a great longing to take them, all at once, in my arms and feel their tender live warmth close to me. Then I thought of how I would break the news to my wife about the fifty-five hundred dollars, and how she would just look at me startled and unbelieving, and then when she saw that I was serious, that I had the signed receipt for the sharks and the amount of money to be paid in cash all stated in writing, of how her eyes would fill with tears. Of course the children would not understand, but they would feel the effects of it soon enough in the good food and the new place to live and in the changed attitude of their parents. Yet, we would haveto be careful. Even that much money, though more than I could have saved in a lifetime, could be dissipated all too quickly even on necessities. Actually, it would take four or five times that much and properly invested to guarantee any real security. Fifteen tons would do it. Fifteen tons of soupfin sharks. How odd to be lying awake in the middle of the night in a lonely anchorage mentally balancing the tonnage of sharks against one’s future security and happiness. But that was how it was, I thought. Fifteen tons of small gray sharks, and they were all out there somewhere, at that very moment, swimming around, feeding on the forty fathom bank. Yet ten tons of them already were safely stowed in the
Blue Fin
’s hold. Two-thirds of all that I would ever need, and more coming in tomorrow.
    Suddenly, like a black shadow, the thought passed over me that three tons belonged to me.
    Three tons only. All the rest was Ethan May’s and whatever else we might bring in the next day. A kind of silent sickness went through me, a sickness born of envy and fear. But I had more money right now, I reasoned, than I’d ever dreamed of having. This is what I told myself. If it had not been for May, I’d have less than nothing. I would not even have been able to pay for the expenses incurred on the trip to Half Moon Bay. I owed everything to him. But I could not rid myself of the knowledge that there was something like eighteen thousand dollars worth of fish aboard and that better than twelve thousand dollars of that was May’s share.
    The rumble of the surf on the reef had faded to a low murmur like a far off freight train in the night. The
Blue Fin
must have turned with the tide change, for the pale dancing circles disappeared quite suddenly. In the darkness, the stench of sharks lay heavy on the dank sea air. What wouldMay do with all the money he would get, I wondered. Would he still live in a little furnished room down in the Tenderloin somewhere? For some reason, probably because of the General Delivery address on his fishing license, I pictured him living in a furnished room or in one of those old hotels around Third Street with a public bath down the hall and wooden rockers in the lobby where old men sat and watched the street. And he had no one, the fish buyer said. Most likely his parents were dead or far away in another country. And his tranquil self-sufficiency, that made unnecessary even his need to talk, had probably put marriage completely out. Then what would he do with twelve or fifteen thousand dollars? Gamble it all away? He was a gambler, there was no doubt of that. No one in his right mind would have made a deal like the one he had made with me. And he had made similar deals before and lost. Probably he got a kick out of playing his hunches, the buyer had said. But even if he didn’t gamble all his money away, what then? Would he give it away? But to whom? And for what? Certainly it would never go for any useful purpose like feeding and housing a family and getting kids an adequate education. What he’d probably do would be to blow the whole works before the next spring.
    This last disturbed me so that I sat up in my bunk and lit a cigarette. Everything seemed so unfair, I thought bitterly. Those who needed nothing always seemed, by