Excerpt of Heyoka Blood by Hewitt Schlereth

THERE ARE WATERY GRAVES; there are watery lives. My own aquatic being begins at the end of dock A in the Arkady Island Marina. I live there on my boat.

I had been up all night reading a pre-publication copy of my book. I was eye-sore and weary; felt I'd earned my coming gratifications — vodka on ice, my capacious bunk, eine kleine Mozart twinkling from the stereo.

My hand was in the fridge for the ice when my boat swayed and her mooring lines creaked as someone came aboard.

I waited. Not a sound, but the boat continued to rock. Someone big, careful with his step. The doorway darkened.

"It's me, Hadrian. Tom."

I relaxed and pulled out a tray of ice. "Thomas, it's seven bells in the graveyard watch; almost dawn. I see Venus through the porthole down here. We should be asleep." I twisted the tray over a tumbler and most of the cubes showered into it; the rest clattered into the sink, sounding very loud. "Hadrian, there's something spooky out here."

"What sort of something?" Tom has sharp eyes and he does not spook easily. Whatever it was, I'd have to look. With an inward sigh, I set the ice tray in the sink.

Tom said, "I think it's a body."

My heart skidded. I knew he thought it was Ann Summerlune who hadn't been seen in three weeks. Ogod, please no, my old flame is too young to die.

I pushed the refrigerator door slowly to, and climbed the stairs to the pilot house. Tom is an inch over my sixtwo, but much wider. He filled the doorway, strangling a pair of binoculars in one huge hand, but otherwise not showing his tension. I pulled my binoculars from their bin by the chart table and followed him toward the bow.

All was gray; the water mirror-calm, reflecting no stars, only bright Venus; the other boats around us in a silent wall; our shoes squeaking in the dew on the deck.

Tom pointed over the bow rail, whispered, "There, Hade, in the middle of the basin, about a hundred feet from the fuel dock." He raised his binoculars and I saw what he meant — a blob, a tiny atoll in the slick water. I swung my binoculars to my eyes and focused. Magnified seven times, it was still a blob. Might be a lot of things, I thought.

"Tom, it's a dead skunk, or a tire, or a waterlogged stump. We've had a lot of rain lately; it's just some of the junk that always gets washed down the rivers and into the harbors." I lowered the binocs and inspected Tom.

Maybe my old shipmate had been living a bit too high at the Three O's Salooon? No, not Tom.

"Tom, we're both up too early and out too late. You see a corpse, I see a cat. Remember the Memorial Day we were riding the Stream off Hatteras and it started to snow? By the end of the watch, we were so cold and drained you were seeing rocks and to me the waves were crocodiles?"

Tom eyed me. We've been friends for damn near forty years. I could feel his temperature rising. With one hand he gripped the back of my head and forced my gaze to the lump in the water.

"Look, Wallace. Watch close. Every now and then the water heaves. Wait..." The water swayed. Tom shook my head. "See?"Another sway, another shake. "Look at the surface to the left of the lump." I saw. A slight bulge, as though the water were about to blister. Like a flat sea the instant before a whale breaks through. My stomach joined the slide of my heart. I lifted my glasses again.

But the sun had broken the night; the sky was scarlet; the water wore blood. Now I could see nothing. And there was a tremor in my hands. I took a breath, wound the strap around the glasses and said, "I guess we'd better get the dinghy and have a look."

"Shouldn't we call the police first?"

In retrospect, we should have, but despite the un-ease of my heart and the rising skirl in my gut, I clung to the hope of flotsam after a rain. "Tom, if it turns out to be a dead raccoon or a chunk of junk, we'll look like sixteen kinds of idiot. If it is a body we'll call then."

"Okay," he said. Then, seeing my skiff lashed into its cradle on the cabin top, "We'll take my dink. It's in."

Lights were coming on in the boats around us and at the fuel dock. I leaned into the pilot house, dropped the binoculars into their holder, snatched my cell phone, and we ran as quick as we could over the damp planking of the floats.

Tom's fat old steel ketch barely moved as we leapt aboard. His dinghy was tied off at the end of the mizzen boom to keep it from thumping the hull. Tom untied and tugged and when the dinghy touched the stern, let the thin rope fall onto the heavier one coiled on top of the dink's anchor. He dropped down, straddling the center seat, and held on while I lowered myself into the stern. With the two of us, the water was close to the top edge of the little boat. Tom rowed carefully, the oarlocks clicking softly.

As we drew near, he turned the boat and backed toward the black whatever-it-was.

It was a human head, and it was abuzz with flies. The fan of dark hair around it swayed in the light swell. Ann's hair was dark, and she always wore it long to mask a strawberry mark on her neck. "Closer," I whispered through a tight throat.

Tom edged us in. Below the surface I now saw a white shirt with a collar. To cover her birthmark Ann usually wore shirts with collars.

My throat was so tight now I wasn't sure I could talk. I pushed out a wispy "Pass me an oar."

The brass oarlock rattled as Tom lifted an oar and slid it into my back-stretched hand. With it, I pushed at the mass of undulant hair.

My hands were so cold the water felt warm. I picked up an odor a lot like skunk, but clenched my teeth and forced the oar farther. An ear came clear. With the tip of the blade, I levered the collar down and there was her birthmark, raw as a wound, red as the dawn.

"It's Ann." I dropped the oar.

Flies exploded into the air and whined onto us. Flailing at them with one hand I got the oar, tossed it to Tom and opened my cell phone while Tom used the oar to paddle us clear.

The boat turned from the lopsided thrust, and I was caught full in the face by the sun. I winced away and my dazzled eyes picked up a fishing boat running toward us, its lights still on, its nets swaying in swags. From its bow wave, hundreds of sparks were shooting into the air; falling; flashing up again. Minnows and menhaden leaping for their lives before a pack of bluefish!

My heart and my stomach congealed. That gang of saltwater piranha was going to slam right into Ann.

Tom saw me staring and looked over his shoulder. "What the..?" His glance froze on the boil of bait-fish. "Oshit. Blues."

"Tom," I wheezed, "we have to tow Ann ashore...get her out of the water..." I pointed. "Fuel dock."

He snatched up the other oar, slammed it into its lock. The little boat's joints creaked and cracked as he forced us toward Ann again. Retching, I pushed an arm into the stinging flies to grab her hair.

Oshit, I was still holding the cell phone.

I let it fall into the water and scooped up a mushy handful of hair. Turning to sit, I came off my knees, lost my balance. My butt landed on the transom. The back of the boat went under. Water poured in.

Instinctively, Tom strained away from me to get the stern up. "Hadrian! For crying out loud! We don't want to be in the water with a pack of blues! Leave her. We'll call 911 from shore." His voice wavered as I had never heard it before. Tom, my rock in many a jam, wobbly as I was.

I too lurched toward the bow to level the boat, and Ann's hair came out in my hand. I threw the sodden mess from me and hissed at Tom, "Dammit, man, I will not leave her to the blues."

Tom's eyes slitted, his big flat face went paler than I'd ever seen it. I was asking too much.

I lunged past him, grabbed the end of the anchor line, yanked off my shoes, whacked Tom's shoulder and croaked, "I'll get a loop around her. Take the rope to the dock and pull her in. I'll swim."

He blinked. I shook his arm, put my face right up to his, "Tom, just — do — it."

Tom said nothing. For an instant I thought he would swat me overboard. But without a word, he stretched out to take a full sweep with the oars and I slid hastily in. The water was thin, didn't want to hold me up, wanted me under. I could feel those torpedoes with teeth hurtling at me. Why wasn't Tom moving? I slapped the transom of the dink. "Tom!" He was frozen. I coiled up and shoved the dink with my feet, "Tom! Go! Go!"

Down slashed the oars. The water leapt into foam. With a crack, the little boat shot away. I prayed to the rope flowing over the transom: Ogod, don't snag, don't snag, and turned to save Ann.

By the time Tom reached the dock, I had a bowline around her and was yelling for him to haul. Trailing the line, he leaped from the dinghy, turned and hauled so fast his hands were a blur. The rope came taut with a twang and a bloom of spray. Ann's body surged away.

As I rolled into the fastestAustralian crawl I ever did, my eyes took in the oncoming fishing boat and the geyser of baitfish dancing above the razor jaws beneath.

Fishboat, baitfish, bluefish, me-charging for the fuel dock.