The Gentlemen's Hour

25

Forty-five minutes later they jump into the water of La Jolla Cove.

Boone has a mask with a lamp, a snorkel, duck fins, and his Ogie speargun, and now he and Dave, similarly equipped, swim out toward underwater caves, the aforementioned “holes” that gave the place, at least in Boone’s mind, its name.

Caves and underwater holes are good, because that’s where the fish are.

The swim feels good, just a little cold and refreshing on a soft night. Most of the year they’d wear wet suits because the deep current runs cold, but it’s still warm enough in August to go with just trunks.

It’s a fine thing to do, night spear fishing, and they owe it all to a group of nonagenarians collectively called the Bottomscratcher’s Club. These were a bunch of WWII vets who had crashed in planes, sank in ships, and survived amphibious assault landings, and came home to San Diego to find that their adrenaline-hyped systems weren’t being sufficiently fed. So they started free diving in the underwater caves of La Jolla Cove.

If the tight caves, heavy surf, and tricky currents weren’t dangerous enough; it’s worthwhile to note that the only creatures that previously hunted under these waters were the great white sharks attracted by the numerous sea lions, their favorite meal, and that a free diver in a wet suit and fins looks an awful lot like a sea lion.

Actually, spear fishing had been against the law in San Diego up until the formation of the Bottomscratcher’s Club, when a lawmaker observed that if any man had light enough brains and heavy enough balls to tempt great whites in their home territory, he should damn well have the right to do it. The Bottomscratcher’s Club recently disbanded, due to age, but Boone and Dave feel that they’re upholding a fine tradition of courage and stupidity.

And free food.

“Free food tastes better,” is an article of faith in Dave’s cosmology, and Boone can only agree. There is something about the taste of food that you haven’t laid out bucks for that is just, well,

better.

Now Boone and Dave swim over to the cave where they think they’ll have the best luck. Boone spits into his mask, swishes some water around the glass, and fits it snugly onto his face. Then he lays out, swims around for a second, and dives.

They call it free diving because you’re free of most equipment—crucially, air tanks and regulators. What you’re free to do is hold your breath for as long as you can and get as deep as you can, leaving yourself with enough reserve in your lungs to make it back up. Both Boone and Dave are certified scuba divers, and sometimes do that, but on a summer evening it’s easier to just jump in and go.

Boone flicks on his lamp and dives down toward the mouth of a narrow cave. He moves his head to shine the light around but doesn’t see anything but tiny fish, so he comes back up, grabs a breath, and dives again.

He spots Dave about fifty feet away, treading above a small crack in a reef. You want to stay close enough for visual contact but far enough away for safety; the last thing you want is to shoot your buddy with a spear.

Some movement catches Boone’s eye. Turning back to a crack in an underwater rock, he sees a “swish” disappear into it, leaving a roil of bubbles that shine in the lantern light. Boone swims down to the crack and feels it. It’s narrow, but wide enough, and he turns sideways and pushes himself through.

The crack opens into an underwater chamber, and Boone sees the yellowtail tuna below him, flipping its tail back and forth, motoring away. Boone is almost out of breath—he feels that tightness in his chest and the slight physical panic that always comes with running out of air—but he relaxes and pushes through it, diving down closer to the tuna. He raises the speargun to his shoulder and squeezes the trigger. The spear shoots out and strikes the fish behind the gills. The tuna thrashes violently for a moment, then is still, as a cloud of blood billows into the water. Boone pulls in the cord and brings the fish closer to his body.

Time to get going.

Boone turns and heads up toward the narrow chamber.

Except he can’t find it.

A slight problem.

It was perfectly obvious from above, but it must look different from below and in poor light, and as he gropes his way around the chamber for an opening he feels really stupid. This would be a bad, dumb way to go out, he thinks, trying to keep his movements steady and unhurried, fighting the physical reflex to hurry.

But he can’t see it and he can’t feel it.

So he listens for it.

Small waves are coming into the cove, against the cliffs, and the water will go out the chamber and make a sound. He stops still and listens, and then he hears a faint whooshing sound and heads toward it.

Then he sees the light.

Not the light that they say you see before you go to heaven, but Dave’s lantern shining into the chamber from the other side.

Why you dive with a buddy.

Especially a buddy like Dave the Love God.

These guys are

tight

, they’ve hung together since grade school, ditching classes through junior high and high school to go surfing, diving or just roaming the beach. It was like they didn’t have separate houses—if Boone was at Dave’s at suppertime, that’s where he ate; if Dave was at Boone’s at night, that’s where he crashed. They’d sit up half the night anyway, playing video games, watching surf videos, talking about their heroes—and, yeah, one of those was Kelly Kuhio.

Some of the old guys on the Gentlemen’s Hour called them the “Siamese Idiots,” a double dose of gremmie obnoxiousness joined at the hip. (Yeah, but those men looked out for them, made sure that their stupidity didn’t cost them their lives, made sure they never crossed the line.)

Boone and Dave pooled their cash to buy that first van, used it to go cruising the coast together looking for the best waves, and took turns on a Friday/Saturday-night rotation system for dates. The van died a natural death after two years (Johnny B opined that its suspension just gave up the will to live), and the boys sold it for scrap and used the money to buy scuba gear.

Diving, surfing, hogueing, chasing girls. Long days on the beach, long nights on the beach, it builds a friendship. You’re in the ocean with a guy, you learn to trust that guy, trust his character and his capabilities. You know he’s not going to jump your wave or do something kooky that would get you hurt or even killed. And you know—you

know

—that if you’re ever lost in the dark, deep water, that guy is coming to look for you, no matter what.

So Dave’s down there with a lantern, showing him the way up and out.

Boone swims toward the light, then sees the crack and squeezes through, pulling his catch behind him. Then he plunges up to the surface and gets a deep breath of beautiful air.

Dave comes up beside him.

“Nice catch.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“It’s been said.”

“Accurately,” Dave says. “We should head in.”

Because there’s blood in the water, and if there’s anything more attractive to a shark than a sea lion, it’s blood. If any sharks are within a hundred-yard radius, they’ll be coming. Best to be onshore when they do.

“Let me catch a little more air,” Boone says.

“Weak unit.”

Again, accurate, Boone thinks. He takes in a couple more lungfuls and then they swim to shore and climb out on a shelf of rock.

“Beautiful night,” Dave says.

Too true.