An Opening Re-do

Lefty leaned away from the rail. He pulled several feet of hose aboard. He pulled until he could pull no more. He pressed against his knees, which were wedged into the lower rail, and lurched forward and snatched a few more yards of hose and wrenched himself backward again. The hose was slippery and stiff. It was not flexible like a regular rope. It was not easy to hold. Seawater, heavy and cold, chilled his fingers, seeped into every nick and scrape to seethe and burn, soaked his jeans and tee-shirt where the hose brushed him as he pulled it by. Behind him the hose twisted over the hatch cover. It slid beside the air compressor lashed to the opposite rail. It fell off the stern and back into the sea. Ahead of him, on the other end of the line, Jake clung to his orange float-ball, around the base of which he had coiled a part of the hose. One end of the hose was hooked to Jake’s regulator. The other end was connected to the air compressor. The 500 foot length of yellow hose in between was a makeshift rope. It was the latest injustice, and the only connection between him and Jake that mattered, other than money, and Lefty threw himself forward and grabbed at another couple of feet of hose. He pulled himself back. Jake flapped his flippers on the surface behind him. The flaps were all splash and no go. In his wetsuit he looked like a seal bobbing in the kelp forest canopy, the mass of tangled kelp between Jake and the boat thickening with every pull.
The kelp was a growing heap of shit-colored leaves and vines.
“Son of a bitch,” Lefty said. He reached ahead and wrenched back. Over the rail the hose jolted up out of the ocean, dripping water, then settled back as boat and diver inched closer together. “Son of a bitch.”
“What’s the problem?” Pete said.

Pete, who owned the boat, stood in the shade in the cabin eating an apple. He was barefoot and dripping. He’d peeled his wetsuit off down to his waist and now absently rubbed at his head with the beach towel draped over his shoulders, staring beyond Lefty at the island behind them. It was the last day of the trip. Lefty recognized that stare. He wasn’t used to seeing it in Pete’s eyes. It was the end of the trip look he’d often seen in Jake’s eyes and had felt in his own, the sense that soon he’d be away from the boat, away from the water, away from his crewmates, away from the stink. The boat couldn’t hit the dock soon enough.
“More of the usual bullshit,” Lefty said. “Jake’s stuck. He wants me to pull him in.”
Pete stepped out onto the deck and squinted.
“So?” he said.
Lefty made a couple of turns with the hose around the top rail to keep Jake from falling away. He stood up. His back and shoulders dully ached. He shook his hands to encourage blood and warmth back into them and reached up to the sky, stretching. “So, when you come in, or anybody else comes in, I pull and you clear the way, and everything’s fine. We work together that way. But this shit is bullshit. Look at him. He’s wrapped himself and his picking bag in nine miles of kelp.”
“So?” said Pete.
Lefty thought what to say, but he hadn’t thought the conversation this far ahead. He was stuck. “I’m just sayin’,” he said.
“Hey,” Jake yelled. “God damn it. Hey!”
“Alright,” Lefty yelled back, “alright.” He uncoiled the hose and pulled. “I mean look at this,” he said to Pete. “Have you noticed the current? It’s almost against the side here.”
“Saw that,” Pete said. “Looks like you’re pulling us around into it. Bet you didn’t think you had it in you.” He paused. “What’d you make for lunch.?”
Lefty lurched ahead and pulled back, his frustration rising. “So I’m not pulling him to us. I’m pulling us over to him.”
“Kelp’s tougher than most people think. When you think about it, you’re pulling yourself closer to a pot of gold.”
Lefty grunted.
“That’s how this works. When he’s happy, you’re happy.” He turned his apple in his fingers and made a last, snapping bite. He tossed the core over the side. “He’s picking urchins now like it was his own boat. He gets rich, and I get rich, and then you get rich. Simple. Where’s lunch?”
“Nothing’s for lunch, yet,” Lefty said on the lean-back. “I’ve got my hands full at the moment.”
Pete stepped back into the cabin and tugged a faded blue sweatshirt over his head and twisted it down over his body. No matter how often Lefty had seen it, the contrast between Pete’s deeply tanned face and arms and his pale shoulders and middle was jarring.
“What were you doing up here when we were down there picking?” Pete said. “Stroking it?”
Lefty pulled again and brought them a few feet closer to Jake and his float-ball. Jake blew his nose into his palm and rinsed his hand in the water. A white worm clung to his mustache under his left nostril.
“Hey, brother!” Jake yelled. “Let’s go. I’m getting cold.”
“This really is bullshit,” said Lefty.
“That’s not bullshit,” said Pete from the cabin. He’d pulled a package of Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies and a jar of peanut butter from the cabinet beneath the galley sink and was carefully spreading peanut butter over the flat side of a cookie. “Bullshit is spending the last hour picking urchins and thinking about lunch and all the while the deckhand’s up on deck, all dry, dicking around instead of making lunch like he’s supposed to be doing. That’s bullshit.”
Lefty grunted and pulled. For the first time that day he noticed the quiet. He’d shut the air compressor down when Jake appeared on the surface. The compressor’s racket echoed away. The quiet was immense, all around, very close, broken only by far-off shushings as breakers broke on the rocks of the island behind them, broken by Pete’s thoughtful crunches through cookie and peanut butter, broken by Jake’s ineffectual flipper flapping and nose-blows, broken by the faint zipper sound of the air hose sliding across the top rail, zip, zip, zip, followed by a grunt and a slap and a splash and a shuffle of feet as Lefty threw himself forward to grab a few feet more.
“Whatever,” Lefty said to himself.