John D. MacDonald
College Man
As soon as I’d raced through breakfast that Saturday morning. I headed for the boat yard. My mother caught me as I was going out the kitchen door, saying, “Jud, if you and Dake are going to spend the day water skiing, please don’t do any... crazy things.”
“I won’t,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
Eighteen years old and you’d think I was a little kid. She’s still a little gun shy on account of the way I broke my leg two years ago: Dake was driving the boat, and we were in the Gulf, paralleling the shoreline of Razor Key, and I tried to swing in and jump a low jetty. But the waves broke wrong and I didn’t clear the last inch of it.
I drove the heap down the key to Wally Wilton’s marina, where Dake and I keep the Banshee and work on her. Wally doesn’t charge us any rent in return for our helping him out when he’s jammed up. It’s covered storage, and plenty of tools to work with.
Dake and I bought the Banshee three years ago for sixty dollars. She was in twenty feet of water just inside Narrow Pass, with a hole in the hull as big as your head where she had hit a floating palm bole. Sixteen feet of low, flat, high-speed hull. It took thirty inner tubes to float her, and I don’t know how many hundred hours until she was clean and sweet. She had a ninety horse Gray in her, and we got that running right and had us a lot of boat. Last summer we sold the Gray and bought a ’54 Cadillac motor out of a rear-end collision that was a total loss, and sweated out the marine conversion ourselves. As a marine engine it’s a little cranky, but when it is delivering, we’ve got the most boat in Coral City. And the prettiest. We’ve glassed the hull and put on some real insolent tail fins. Jean Anne, Dake’s sister, painted “Banshee” on one fin, with a bolt of lightning going through the blue letters. Carrying one, without skis, she’ll do a legitimate fifty-two or three. She’ll tow a skier at forty-five, and when you spill at that speed it’s like falling onto concrete.
Dake was in her when I arrived. I looked down into the Banshee and said. “How is she?”
Dake grinned and turned the key. The stack made a gutsy underwater rumble. He cut her off and climbed up onto the dock and we sat there side by side and smoked a cigarette and admired her. The two sets of skis were aboard, the nylon towlines coiled.
“Suppose he doesn’t show?” I asked Dake.
He snapped the butt into the water. “If he doesn’t show, then Jean Anne will know he’s chicken, won’t she?”
“I suppose so,” I said, but I wasn’t as confident as he was.
It had always been the three of us. Dake and me and Jean Anne. Dake and I are eighteen and she’s seventeen. She could go professional in the water ski business if she wanted to, and if Mr. and Mrs. Morgan would hear of it. But they’re stuffy about that kind of thing. They wouldn’t even let her enter the beauty contest. She would have beat the crow that won.
I’d been looking forward to our having a wonderful summer, like always, but this Foster Harmon had to show up. He and his folks moved down from Clearwater. He’s nineteen, a college man. He’s finished one year at Gainesville. That’s where Dake and I are going, but not until fall.
You get to thinking that a girl is your girl. So maybe you take it all a little too much for granted. And in comes another party. Name of Foster Harmon. And Jean Anne flips. And gets a gooey look in her eyes that could turn your stomach. So all of a sudden she doesn’t have any time for all the old routines, and it’s like something bit a hole out of the middle of summer.
This Foster Harmon is not as big as Dake, or as big as me. Five ten, maybe, blondish with mild blue eyes. A quiet type with a quiet way of talking, and always dressed a little too well. Neither Dake nor I could see what there was about him that would send Jean Anne. And we had him figured for a phoney. There was something too smooth about him. So Dake and I had to figure a way to pry Jean Anne loose. Some way to open her eyes. Because Dake figured she was my girl, too.
So the preceding Thursday, on the porch of the Morgan house, when this fellow came in his little red Volkswagen to pick Jean Anne up, we rigged it on him.
“How about you and Jean Anne doing some water skiing with us Saturday?” Dake said in an easy way. “Have you ever done any before, Harmon?”
“Some. Not too much. I’m no expert.”
“Maybe Foster doesn’t enjoy it,” Jean Anne said quickly.
“He ought to have a chance to see how good you are, Sis,” Dake said, “even if he doesn’t want to get on the skis behind the Banshee. A lot of people wouldn’t want to try it behind the Banshee.”
Foster was getting the message. He knew Dake had him cornered, and Jean Anne knew too. It was a lazy conversation, and you couldn’t hear most of the things that were being said.
“What time?” Foster Harmon asked.
“Oh, make it about nine. Jean Anne knows where,” Dake said. We watched them get into the car and drive away.
“Boy might get shook up,” Dake said.
“Might, at that.”
But now it was quarter after nine. And we were beginning to wonder. “If he does show,” I said, “nothing too rough.”
“Just enough to make him chicken out,” Dake agreed. What we wanted from him was one gesture. You make the sign of cutting your own throat. That means cut the speed down. If you’re not used to water skis, and you’re not in condition, it’s all very fine at first. And then your legs start to go. It turns into a very special agony. You don’t know how long you can last. But, behind a boat like the Banshee, you certainly don’t want to hang on until you spill. So you either make the gesture to reduce speed, or you let go of the tow bar and coast until you lose speed and topple gently. It’s chicken either way.
“Here they come,” Dake said, and we got up.
Foster Harmon parked beside my heap. They were in swim togs and carried beach towels. I thought Harmon’s grin was a little tight and nervous. He would know from Jean Anne the sort of things we’d be likely to pull. I took a good look at Harmon when he jumped down into the Banshee. I hadn’t seen him stripped down before. He was lean and the little muscles bunched and writhed under the hide of his back. His waist was narrow and his legs were long and springy, with good calves. There wasn’t any of the softness on him I had hoped for. Jean Anne acted very subdued.
We cast off and went out Wally’s channel to the marker in the Intracoastal Waterway. Jean Anne said, “Tow me out, Dake. I want to loosen up.”
“Won’t have much oomph with three aboard.”
“That’s okay,” she said, and went over the side. I put a set of skis over. When she got her feet in, I tossed her the tow-bar. Dake eased away until the line straightened and then goosed the Banshee. Jean Anne came up like a feather and we headed south toward Narrow Pass. It was wonderful to watch her. Like a dance. Honey skin and white suit and the tangled auburn curls. She swung left and right in perfect form, skittering across the wake, dancing on the oyster bars, skidding toward the pilings, slanting the water up into temporary rainbows.
I glanced at Foster Harmon. He was looking at her like a kid watching candy.
“She’s wonderful!” he shouted.
We went through the pass and the Gulf was flat calm. We headed south toward Coquina Point, knowing most of the gang would be there. The shoreline there is all rocks, so you don’t have to worry about swimmers. There is an old sagging structure that goes out into the Gulf about two hundred yards, a timber and rock groin built a long time ago to prevent erosion. We built a platform on the end. It makes a good take-off point and you can tie up the boats along the side.