The Fifth Day

by PETER MATTHIESSEN

FOUR days face to face with another man is a long time, especially four hot days of waiting in a Coast Guard dinghy on Peconic Bay. The morning of the fifth day, Dave Winton stiffened once more as he eased the dragging hook over the side for the last time, winced a moment later at the “thunk” of the twin hook tossed heavily into the water on the other side of the dinghy and the vicious hum of the outgoing line sawing back and forth over the gunwales. Joe put his out that way because it was handier, but to Dave the method made an uneasy difference: Joe’s hook, if only because of the haste with which it plunged each morning into the bay, was the one which would find the body.

Dave secured his line around the middle scat and turned to Joe for instructions. Joe Robitelli was already settled comfortably in the stern, just as he’d been for four days: he hadn’t even changed his shirt. The oars were untouched on the floor of the dinghy.

“You want me to start, Joe?”

“Start? Start what?”

“The oars. We have to keep moving around today, don’t we?”

“The picket boat’s gone, ain’t it?” Joe shrugged his shoulders and lay back.

“Sure, but you said the body always shows up on the fifth day.”

“That’s right. Today or tomorrow, or for sure the day after.”

Dave stared at him. Joe dragged a small canvas bag from beneath his head. “Look,” he said, “Good Old Joe finally got wise to himself.”

He hauled two hand lines and a wet bait package out of the bag and spread them triumphantly on the stern seats. “How about that, Dave? And I got six cans of beer to go with it. A regular fishing party.”

“I don’t get it, Joe. I thought we were sure to find the guy today.”

Joe stared back at him. Their faces were uncomfortably close in the drifting boat, and Dave watched him speaking: “Look, for Christ’s sake, I’ve been tellin you to relax for four days now, and today I get you all fixed up here with fish lines and beer, and you’re still yappin!”

With their faces so close together, the voice seemed to come from somewhere behind him.

“Okay,” Dave said, “that was fine the first four days, but sooner or later, we’re supposed to find this guy. Maybe we’re right on top of him now.”

“Look, we ain’t supposed to do nothing but sit out here, so we might as well have a good time for ourselves. If the guy comes up, the guy comes up, but while we’re waitin for him, I robbed some bacon from the galley for bait and got us six beers as a present from the lighthouse boys.”

Dave glanced restlessly at Joe’s present, then watched him rig some bacon rind onto the hooks. Joe, glancing at him, winked and sang mournfully, “We three — are all a-lone —” with pointed emphasis on the “three,” and winked again. Dave bent over for the oars to hide the irritation in his expression; they were pressed against the side of the boat by Joe’s ankle. “What’s up, Joe.?”

“What’s up, Dave?” Joe studied the baited hooks, his brows wrinkled in concentration.

“Look, I’ll do the rowing if you don’t want to.”

“Take it easy, kid. Relax. Have a Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.”

“What about those people waiting on shore? What do you want to do, Joe, keep them waiting all week?”

“Take it easy, will ya? They’re gonna wait anyway. Just take it easy.” There was a taint of irritation in Joe’s voice which denied his smile.

Dave stared at the water eddying silently around the dragging line. Those gloomy people on t he pier in their new vacation clothes, and this guy bragging about beer and bacon. To hell with him. Right now the hooks were fumbling along the belly of the bay like two clubfeet, scraping and turning and raking the seaweed off the rocks in search of the drowned man. This very moment they could be pulling through the rotten clothes like fingernails through soggy paper. Or maybe he was caught in the lines, on his way to the surface.

Dave grimaced and looked at Joe. The latter was leaning back, arms spread and a fish line in each hand, his white cap over his eyes and a cigarette loose in his mouth.

“I guess I’ll row awhile, just for the hell of it, Joe.”

Joe shrugged his shoulders and took his foot away from the oars. His silence irritated Dave. He said: —

“You don’t have to worry about my getting you in trouble,” realizing the idea was ridiculous even before Joe hitched one of the fish lines around a cleat and pushed the cap back with the free hand, unveiling a stare of disbelief.

“What in hell do you mean by that, Davey Boy?”

“Nothing.” Dave licked his lips. “I just don’t feel right about those people ashore, I guess.”

“I don’t give a good goddam how you feel about them people ashore. Didn’t the Old Man tell em go home and wait, but no, they gotta camp out here and raise a stink till we find him. They’d be yellin at us to get out here if there was a hurricane goin on, especially the ones like you, with a lot of dough and no sense. All we’re out here for is to make em happy thinkin we’re doing somethin, understand? We ain’t even got a outboard motor.”

Joe sucked violently on his cigarette.

“So don’t give me this crap about gettin me in trouble, Sonny Boy. The Old Man himself wouldn’t act no different than what I’m doin. I been at this game a long time, and you ain’t nothin but a kid, I don’t care how much dough you got, just remember that.”

There was nothing to offer in defense of a wealthy family: Dave pulled the oars quietly. Joe was still glaring at him as the tension evaporated between their faces.

Then Joe laughed shortly, pulling his cap back over his eyes. “Look, Dave, all I’m sayin is, this bay’s six miles across, and all we got is two lousy draggin hooks and a ten-foot dinghy. There ain’t a prayer of findin the guy.”

“Okay. Maybe I feel like getting a little exercise.”

Joe flicked his cigarette over the side. It stuck on the flat bay water like a leaf on the mud. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what you wanna do, Davey, get a little exercise.”

And grinning sagely, Joe settled back and closed his eyes. Dave pulled steadily on the oars, prodding his blunder through his mind. Dave, the Rich Kid, making trouble for Joe Robitelli, the best-liked man on the station — Dave the Rich Kid . . .

2

DAVE cut viciously at the bland-faced water, and the oar, skating over the surface, arched a leaf of spray onto Joe’s shirt. Joe’s thick brown hand came up slowly, pushed its fingers over the drops, then drifted upwards to his cap, which was pushed back over the forehead. His eyes opened slightly, bright with a momentary suspicion, but widened abruptly at the spectacle of Dave’s reddening face. One hazel eye winked in a sleepily patronizing manner before the thick hand rose again, methodic as a derrick, adjusted the cap over the eyes, and fell back over the stern.

Any day but today he might have been a stumpy Italian fisherman sleeping in the sun, his short legs sprawled in the bottom of any small boat in the world, but today he was a tough Brooklyn guinea with his cap over his eyes and a smelly shirt on his back, who didn’t give a damn for the water, the sun, the morning, but especially not for the drowned man softening somewhere beneath them, nor the frightened family in their new vacation clothes who waited for the fifth day on the pier.

Dave spat noisily into the water. It was bad enough rowing around in the sun with two hooks dragging without having to watch a guy like this take it easy three feet away. And worst of all, Joe was right. There was no sense in rowing, no sense at all.

Dave rowed furiously, then rested the oars again. He watched the water fall in pointless drops from the blades. The body was sure to be off in the other direction.

Amusement deepened on the face of Joe; Dave waited for the brown hand to rise to the cap, then dipped the oars again in the teeth of the smile. But the smile judged him with confidence: —

“How you doin, Dave?”

“All right. It’s getting kind of hot.”

“Yeah, it must be. That’s okay, though, as long as you’re gettin your exercise, ain’t it, Dave?”

The smile broadened. Joe pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket and flicked one up. Dave refused it with a nod.

“The fish ain’t bitin so good.” Joe pulled the cigarette from the pack with his lips. “I guess there was plenty to eat the last few days here in the bay.”

Joe secured the fish lines to the stern cleats and brought his hands up behind his head, chuckling at the subtlety of the implication.

“Why not boat them oars and take it easy, Davey Boy? You ain’t provin nothin.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“Okay.” He was watching Dave pull the oars in over his lap, and Dave, uneasy, drew a cigarette from his own pocket and lit it before he remembered. He glanced at Joe’s expression.

“First of all you didn’t like the fish lines and beer, and now my cigarettes ain’t good enough for you,” it said.

“I didn’t feel like one a minute ago,”Dave said. Joe didn’t answer. They sat still in the hot boat until he spoke.

“I guess you got a lot of dough in your family, huh, Dave?”

“Lay off, Joe. What difference does it make?”

“No difference. I’m just askin. It ain’t nothin to be ashamed of.”Joe opened a can of beer without looking at it. “Like this guy we’re lookin for, he wasn’t ashamed of it. He bought himself a little boat to take the family joy-ridin.”

“So what?”

“So he got himself drowned.” Joe laughed.

“And you’re not sorry for those people?”

“Sure I’m sorry. Sorry as hell. Still and all, they shoulda gone home like they was told.”

“So we’re not going to do a thing.”

“Sure. We’re gonna float around and look at the scenery until the guy pops up and asks for a beer.”

Joe was smiling again, but the corners of his smile pointed down instead of up. Dave shifted on the seat. The sun was hot on his back, and his legs were cramped. What in hell was so funny. From where he sat, Joe’s grin looked six inches across. And dumbly, he watched Joe lean forward and lift the oars from the oarlocks and lay them along the gunwales on top of the scats: total defeat, and to resist would be to expose himself again.

He eased himself onto the floor of the forward part of the dinghy, his back to Joe.

“That’s a-boy, Dave, relax. Enjoy ihe scenery.”

Joe’s laugh ruffled through his hair, fell back with a triumphant clatter into the stern. Good Old Joe. One more smile and he’d ram an oar down Good Old Joe’s throat: suppose that family was watching them from shore? Even the drowned man must be waiting for them now. He might be two inches under the dinghy, or rubbing softly against the drifting hull. Perhaps even Joe was nervous about him. People said he’d pop up like a rubber ball on the fifth day.

3

DAVE stirred uncomfortably as he peered at the water of the bay. Not a sound, not even a gull. Just the heat and the dry paint smell of the dinghy and Good Old Joe in the stern, worrying about someone else’s wife. Dave laughed at this idea, and the laugh caused a suspicious stir behind him.

Joe’s voice was loud in the silence of the bay. “You hear how it happened?” The tone was innocent.

“How what happened?”

“The rich guy.” Joe pronounced the words slowly. “The rich guy that got himself drowned.”

“Oh yeah, the rich guy. The rich guy that got himself drowned.” Dave paused. “Well, the way I heard it, Joe, this rich guy bought himself a little boat to take his family joy-riding and got himself drowned.”

Under the noon sun, Dave’s rage swarmed through him like fruit flies in a heated jar. He crouched in wait for Joe’s reaction, afraid at the same time to turn and face it. Joe’s tone, however, conveyed no hint of the wound.

“That’s right, Dave, but how did it happen?”

“I don’t know exactly,” he parried. “The guys told me he tried to make it ashore to get help after they capsized.”

“He tried to make it ashore okay, so he could save his own tail. I guess you thought he was a goddam hero or somethin.”

“Yeah, I guess I did. I guess I thought he was a goddam hero or something.”

“Well he ain’t. He run out on his wife and kids.” Joe’s voice was suddenly angry. “It’s bad enough havin these rich guys get salty on us and gettin hung up on sand bars and makin us risk our necks to save theirs, but I never thought they was all yella.”

Joe’s innuendo barged clumsily through the other words of the exchange, which hung in the silence overhead as if unwilling to drift away over the empty bay.

“Oh sure.” Dave nodded his head philosophically. “That’s the thing about rich guys, Joe. You wouldn’t believe it, Joe, but all rich guys are yellow. The richer the guy, the wider the yellow streak, every time.”

Dave turned to face Joe, excited to see his smile waver, fall away entirely.

“Don’t get smart with me, Davey Boy. I’m wise to you. Just don’t try that sarcastic line on me, understand?”

“ What’s the trouble, Joe?”

“ Look, Sonny, I’m warnin you, don’t get so smart if you don’t want a smack in the mouth’ll last you a long time, understand. So watch yourself.”

Dave eyed Joe a moment in silence, vaguely conscious of the beer smell on his breath. He felt his own smile flutter mournfully on his face, like a white flag in a dead man’s hand; it didn’t belong there, not because he was afraid but because the game was over, and now he was suddenly so angry that he spoke with difficulty, in a gasping, distant voice: “C’mon, Joey Boy, relax. Smile. Laugh. You don’t care about the rich guy, you’re just out here for the laughs, remember? You wouldn’t want to smack me in the mouth, would you, Joey Boy?”

Dave felt the unspoken support of the drowned man and laughed loudly, savagely, but Joe didn’t hit him, only flipped his beer can over the side and hauled in the fish lines. And aware for the first time of the picket boat coming up behind, Dave groped aimlessly for the bow line. Joe grinned as they rigged the lowered pulley to the dinghy. “It’s okay to shoot your mouth off with the boat comin, Davey Boy, but I’m gonna take you up behind the boathouse as soon as we tie up.”

He watched Joe’s raucous reception on the boat, his easy way with the other men, and going back, Dave’s anger fizzled away in wide, erratic circles over the bay, like a stray wasp, until it disappeared entirely. The boat was early, he’d made a fool of himself, and he was going to have his head knocked off for nothing. They hadn’t even found the drowned man. To hell with the drowned man, anyway.

Dave stepped onto the pier and turned to wait for Joe. Joe stood foremost in a grinning knot of men; Dave sensed that he was expected to act, and turned away. He stopped short at the sight of the corpse, in a chorus of quiet laughter.

The water was sliding out of the drowned man’s clothes and escaping through the slats of the pier. Dave listened to its uneven tick on the dead water around the pilings. The terrible apathy of the carcass only made him wonder why they hadn’t wrapped it up in canvas and taken it away before the family arrived in their new vacation clothes. Joe was right: they should have gone. This thing couldn’t mean anything to them any more.

Looking away, he saw the Old Man coming down the road to the pier, attended by two men with a stretcher, but the breeze, tacking momentarily, shocked him back into the dead man’s presence. He stepped away, shouldering Joe.

“That’s why they come for us early,” Joe said. “The fifth day, just like I told you.”

Joe glanced at the bulging mask without interest and turned back to Dave.

“Five days in the water don’t do much for a guy.” Joe studied Dave’s expression.

“He don’t look much like a hero, huh, Dave? Imagine a family hangin around five days to have a look at that.”

“Okay, you win.” Dave stared at the face again and sat down abruptly on the edge of the pier. “Only leave him alone,” he muttered, his voice far away. “Why don’t you leave him alone.”

“I ain’t botherin him none.”

When Joe laughed, Dave opened his eyes. He saw the proferred cigarette in the dark heavy hand, but he could not move. Joe tapped the cigarette against the back of the hand.

“Here they come,” he said.

They watched the drowned man’s family approach the foot of the pier, like a knot of sheep unsure of their footing, then glanced at the stretchermen, who were pushing the body onto a rusty square of canvas.

“Snap it up, you guys.” Joe’s tone was angry under his breath. “C’mon, Dave,” he said. He hurried down the pier after the men from the picket boat.

Dave stood up, but his legs moved uncertainly. The sun was very hot. He watched the other men meet and pass the oncoming family, both groups moving shyly, in single file. Most of the men had removed their caps.