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Trunk Bay on half the postcards in the Virgin Islands. Below were little markers with arrowsan underwater trail through the coral reef. Jacques Cousteau by the numbers. All assignments should be like this one, he thought, and snorkeled to the far side of the islet, which made a rough oval about the size of a football field. |
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Few sights compared with this coral reef. The place was a miniature Grand Canyon under warm, opalescent water and furnished in polychrome formations in domes, plates, thickets, fans and populated with damsels and grunts, red squirrel fish and filefish, French angels and parrots, and millions of tiny silver herring looking like pelting rain. He spotted two spiny lobsters poking out from a coral cavity. (That's what he'd order for dinner, he decided. To celebrate.) He had hoped to see sharks, but the people back at the dive shop said they never came into the bay. You had to go to the outer reefs. Would have been perfect. |
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But Jerry was not too disappointed. Everywhere he looked, something was eating something else. Halfway around the island he spotted a patch of spiny black sea urchins. With a rock he smashed one and watched as dozens of fish appeared from nowhere, drawn by a cloud of guts. He crushed five others, making a spreading plume of viscera, and in an instant there was a feeding frenzy. Normally docile parrots and wrasses were suddenly in tugs of war over the scraps, flashing before his eyes like antic rainbows. Amazing how vicious the reef really was beneath all the cosmetics. (Mother Nature was surely a widow.) And highly efficient. No such thing as a fish dying of old age. The reef was a perfect recycling mechanism, kept in balance by predation and fear. Maybe that explained why fish had lidless moon eyes. Living in a state of constant alarm, ready to eat or be eaten at any moment. |
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Jungle eyes. What he called them back in Vietnam. The look he loved. |
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Jerry swam around for another twenty minutes until he noticed the old man making his way along the rocks, the orange snorkel like a carrot leading him on. Morning exercise, and right on schedule. |
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Jerry moved to the shore rocks and stood up so that he was half out of the water. |
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"Hello there," he shouted. |
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The man, who was maybe twenty feet away, raised his mask out |
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