"I was in a boat, chasing pelicans," he begins, clasping his hands together and crossing his legs. We nod, by this time so accustomed to Muck's stories that not an eyebrow is raised.
"We're steaming along, clouds of pelicans rising from all around. Carrie's laughing, I'm yelling. All of a sudden, the motor falls off!"
He leans back in his chair, slaps his knees, laughs at the ceiling.
"Well I was like, 'Blow me! What do I do now?!' I was twenty yards from shore but the boat was rented and we had to return it a good mile or so down the beach. 'What do I do?' I say to myself. 'What do you do in this kind of situation?'"
He looks at us enquiringly. "I don't know, what DID you do?" I reply, dutifully.
"Well, quick as I can, I take note of two points near by, to remember where the motor fell. By this time the tide is trying to take us out, so I know my priority is to get the boat and Carrie back to shore. So I jump into the water!" He cackles. "And I start swimming. I swim as hard as I can, pushing the boat to safety." Muck front crawls from his seat.
"I swim and swim and swim some more. Eventually I get the boat back, get Carrie settled, and turn around to go back to the beach. 'Where are you going?' shouts Carrie," (he cups his hands around his mouth theatrically). "'To get the motor!' I shout, and carry on going before she can say anything.
"So I run along the shore until I find the point where I think I dropped the motor. I swim out to it. A boy is watching me and he knows what I'm trying to do. He just watches and watches as I swim. When I've swam for about five, ten minutes I match up the points that I took when the motor went down. I think I've got it pretty good. So I dive. I swim all the way down to the bottom - it must be a good fifteen feet.
"I don't find it. I'm running out of air and I have to pop up to the surface, quick, or else I'll drown."
"So what did you do?!" the audience cries, captivated.
"I dive again." Splash! goes his imaginary sea. "Same thing. No joy."
His shoulders heave with the remembered effort. "So I dive again."
"On the third dive, blow me! I find it!"
"You find it?!"
"I find it! My first reaction is to grab the thing and try and pull it. But this is a thirty horsepower motor we're talking here." He opens his hands wide and bounces them, weighing an invisible bulk. "There ain't no way I'm going to lift that thing out of the water.
"So what do I do? Well... There was only one thing for it." We can see where this one is going, but the magic is in the build up. "You didn't..." starts Taylor.
"I did!" exclaims Muck, eyes dancing. "I did!
"I eye up the distance to shore. I take a deep breath. I dive again."
He plunges through the air. The imaginary sea goes Pssssssssshhhhhhht around the old man. I submerge myself with him.
"I raise up the motor as much as I can, helped by the lift of the water. And I drag it, a few inches, along the seabed towards the shore. Then I run out of air and I have to drop it - thhdd - and go up for air."
He raises his hands as we return to the surface.
"I take another big lungful. Pop down again. Do the same thing. Run out of air."
More gesticulating, deep gasp. He struggles for oxygen.
"And then I go down again. Little by little, I edge towards the shore, slowly walking my way along the seabed. I feel like a merman or something!" He bares his teeth and shakes with merriment.
"I'm going for about twenty minutes, up, down, like a seal. By this time there is a small crowd of people watching me. I get closer and closer to shore, bobbing up and down as I come up for air. Then I get to the point where I can stand on the bottom, and bit by bit I bend down and drag it towards the beach. The water is up to my chin, then my chest, then my waist. Eventually, when I'm close to fainting, I heave the motor out of the water and in sight of the crowd, who at that point realise what I've been doing all this time. Someone comes to help me pull it out.
"I'm so tired I collapse on the beach."
He hangs his head to the side and we are there with him in his exhaustion.
"I'm lying there, dripping, next to an enormous black motor," he says, head still to one side. "I can't even move. But I've done it! I've actually rescued the motor! So I just lie there and try to recover." His chest heaves.
"Then a man comes up to me. He squats down next to me and he says, with a slight smile.... He says to me, 'What, by God, were you doing out there?"
"And I say...HA...I say..." I can see the punchline almost exploding out of him. He laughs his infectious laugh, claps his hands and concludes with a flourish;
"Chasing pelicans!"
No comments:
Post a Comment