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.

There were six boats and about fifteen of the crowd there. The Turner twins, Danny Riggs, Sue Lehman... just about everybody. Some skin-divers were close inshore, working the holes in the rocks.

Jean Anne dropped the bar at exactly the right moment, went sailing in on a long curve, losing speed until she came almost to a dead stop, just close enough so she could turn and sit neatly on the takeoff platform. When you do it wrong, and either die six feet away, or come piling in so hard you bang yourself up, you get the big jeer from all.

As Jean Anne came in for her landing, Dake made a sharp hard turn and headed in. I pulled the line in. Dake reversed, we nudged, and tied up. Some of the kids knew Foster Harmon. We introduced him to the others. I guess everybody knew the score, and they could pretty well guess what we had in mind.

I took Dake out first and set him up for the thing he likes to do best. I went out so I could build up top speed on a good long run back in, and then made a long, gentle, sweeping curve by the take-off platform. Dake had swung far to the left and at just the right moment he swung back, edging the skis, digging hard, building up his speed to the maximum. We haven’t been able to measure it, but if it is done right, the skier on his big swing, behind a boat going forty-five, can build it up to sixty-five. Dake flashed by, squatting low to cut the wind resistance. He passed the boat. If I’d continued straight away it would have picked up slack in the rope and dumped him, so I had to cut to port, keeping my eye on the line. I’d heard the girls squeal as he slammed by, not a yard away from the platform.

We had it all arranged to let Mr. Foster Harmon stew for a while. Dake took me out, kept it throttled down to build up the wake, and I did six jump spins in a row across the wake until I landed wrong and got dumped. Then Dake took Mickey Reiss out. Reiss is a solid pack of muscle. Mickey is the only one in the group husky enough to ski barefoot. He kicked off one ski, braced his bare foot against the water until he had enough pressure on it to kick off the other ski. He threw water so thick and high you could hardly see him, but he stayed up, the cords and muscles of his back bulging in an incredible way.

The kids coaxed Jean Anne till she gave an exhibition. Though she was a little rusty, she made it a honey, coming by the last time in a reverse swan. That’s where you are going backward on one ski, bent from the waist, arms out as though doing a swan dive, the towbar hooked behind the heel of your other foot. She made it look easy, and smiled as she went by.

Finally Dake nodded at me. I said to Foster Harmon, “Ready for a try at it?”

“Sure,” he said, in a casual way, but there were little knots of muscle at the corners of his jaw. Dake took him out. Harmon got the skis on and sat at takeoff, and when the line came tight he made the traditional pumping motion with his fist. Dake took off hard. Harmon wobbled for a moment and caught his balance. I sat beside Jean Anne. Nobody was doing any talking. Dake headed out and out and out, full throttle, as though heading for Mexico.

“Very, very amusing, I’m sure,” Jean Anne said in a tight little voice.

“Maybe Foster would like a nice long ride.”

“You two are revolting.”

“Thanks, chick. Look at him. He’s horsing around.”

Foster Harmon was, indeed, swinging from side to side as he gained confidence in his balance. And then he became so tiny we couldn’t see what he was doing. There was an offshore breeze. Out where Dake was heading there would be a punishing chop.

Some of the other boats went into action. Next to the Banshee, the fastest is Sonny Edison’s, a stubby plastic hull with one of the big Mercs mounted on the transom. Sonny took Danny Riggs out and tried to shake him off. You can do anything but deliberately put slack in the line. Danny wouldn’t shake. With a tow. Sonny can do a shade over thirty, and that’s good enough for a lot of fun. And the water isn’t concrete when you fall into it. I couldn’t see the Banshee any more. About twenty minutes later I was watching Sue Lehman ride on the shoulders of one of the Turner twins when Jean Anne’s fingers bit into my bare shoulder and she said, “There they are, and I think he’s still up.”

A few minutes later I could see for certain that he was still on the skis. It surprised me. Dake brought him in at such an angle that he couldn’t let loose the first time. Foster Harmon was bent forward to ease the strain on his arms and shoulders. His face had a gray, twisted look. He had the most obvious case of spaghetti legs I have ever seen. Dake made a proper swung and Harmon let go. It looked as though he would make a decent landing. You could tell from his face that he desperately wanted to land well. But thirty feet out his legs just folded on him and he went down. He bobbed up, rested on the skis for a moment, and then came slowly in, pushing them in front of him. Nobody razzed him. He was shaking all over when he climbed up. I helped him. I don’t know why. He stretched out, rolled onto his back and closed his eyes, breathing hard. I could see the muscles in his thighs and calves jump and quiver. Jean Anne sat close to him and they began to talk in low tones. I wandered away. I knew that in a little while he’d feel all right, but when he tried to get out of bed the next morning, he would have a big surprise.

A half hour passed before I had a chance for a private word with Dake. “Looks like he made it.” He looked sore. “I don’t know how. I thought he was gone ten minutes before I brought him in.”

“Jean Anne is pretty sore at both of us.”

“That college boy is gutsy, Jud. Face it.”

And I had to face it, but I didn’t like it. We’d have to think of some new way to show Jean Anne that he was a slick phoney.

In the meantime, I could at least get in some more ski time. It must have been a little after noon when Mickey Reiss and I talked Dake into taking us both out to play crisscross. Dake hates to pull two. It slows the boat and puts the bow too high. So somebody has to be on the bow, and that makes it even slower. Jean Anne agreed to go out on the bow of the Banshee. She stretched out in the sun. Dake towed us in big circles. Mickey and I had a fine old time. You swing in opposite directions, and when you come back you take turns jumping the other guy’s line. The one who jumps has to pull in line to shorten up, or you’ll bang into each other.

From the shape of the last circle, I knew Dake had had enough and was bringing us in, so we quit horsing around and got ready to peel off. I was looking at the Banshee, admiring her. I guess Jean Anne knew we were coming in, so she was getting up, ready to step back over the windscreen, down into the cockpit. Dake was standing at the wheel, looking back at us. And all of a sudden, directly in front of the speeding Banshee, I saw a damn fool skin-diver pop to the surface. I yelled, but I knew Dake couldn’t hear me. Maybe my expression, or some sixth sense, warned him. He snapped his head around. I didn’t see how he could miss the stoop in the mask.

It happened in a crazy kind of slow motion. Dake has good reflexes. He gave a hard yank on the wheel, taking no time to brace himself. The Banshee seemed to jump sideways. It skinned past the fool in the water. Dake lost his grip on the wheel, waved his arms wildly and went over the side. Jean Anne fell headlong over the windscreen, down into the cockpit. I saw that, just as the lines went slack; then they came taut and dumped both of us. I had the crazy idea of hanging onto the tow bar and trying to work my way up the line to the boat, but the weight of my body in the water tore my hands free.

We were about ninety yards from the take-off platform. I don’t think I ever swam faster in my life, but it was an endless distance. I must have been ten yards from it when there was a warning yell. Sonny Edison’s big Merc brayed with power, and Foster Harmon was yanked by me on skis. I had one glimpse of his face and it was set like marble.

All I could think of was what a hell of a poor time it was to go skiing.

I was first out of the water, then Dake, then Mickey. As soon as I looked back, I saw the picture, and it was so bad I felt physically sick. There was no sign of Jean Anne. She was on the floorboards, probably knocked out, maybe badly hurt. The Banshee was at full throttle. You could hear her clear, high whine. I cursed Dake and myself for not putting an automatic throttle on her. I knew the steering was tight. It was possible to predict her course after watching her for a few seconds. She was making a big circle to port, maybe a half mile or a little better in diameter, and when she came back she was going head-on into the jumbled rock of the shoreline at fifty miles an hour. You could see the twin towbars leap clear of the surface, dancing in her wake.

And there went Foster Harmon on the skis, behind Sonny Edison’s boat, with Sonny at the wheel. They could do thirty. The Banshee was doing fifty. They were inside the circle, coming around on an interception course.

Dake, beside me, said harshly, “The damn fool can’t do it. He can’t. He doesn’t know how to do it.”

But to me, when the light dawned, it did not look so ridiculous. I had thought Harmon hadn’t realized what had happened. But suddenly I knew he had seen it, and during the time it had taken me to swim ninety yards, he had figured out the only possible way of doing it, had slammed into the skis and gotten the plan across to Sonny before the others, most of them better skiers, could break out of the trance. There was no chance of jumping from Sonny’s boat into the Banshee. The only way it could be done was to kill the speed differential by swinging wide and hard on the skis, and hope to God you’d get somewhere near fifty miles an hour at the right time and place.

One girl was sobbing and another was making little screaming sounds. Both the Turner twins were cursing in choked voices, saying all the dirty words they knew. I knew Harmon couldn’t do it. I knew we’d lift Jean Anne’s broken body out of the rocks, out of the splintered wreckage of the Banshee.

The Banshee had reached her farthest point and was on the way back in. Sonny made his turn way inside her and then, well ahead of her, began to swing wider. He was crouched low to cut wind resistance, and he was doing a masterful job of gauging relative speeds and the proper interception course.

He locked onto a parallel course, a towline length away from the Banshee, and a hundred yards ahead of her. The Banshee was coming on like a rocket, narrowing the distance between them. Harmon swung wide to port and hung out there, edging his skis, looking back at the Banshee. Then he ducked low and came swinging back hard. He was too late. The Banshee would be by. He would have been too late had not Sonny cut perfectly to port at the precise moment to send Harmon scooting like a stone on the end of a string. For a moment he was even with the bow of the Banshee, and then as he dropped back, he let go of the tow bar, and plunged over the gunnel into the Banshee. One ski went high in the air, turned lazily and plunged into the wake forty feet behind the Banshee. We saw Harmon clamber very slowly to the wheel. The whine died. The Banshee slowed abruptly, coasted, and lay dead.

Everybody was jumping up and down, yelling and beating on each other. I looked at Dake. He wore a wide, frozen grin, and the tears were running down his cheeks.

Sonny eased over to the Banshee, grabbed the bow line and towed her to us. Jean Anne sat up, looking very dazed. Right in the middle of her forehead was a lump as big as half a plum, and it was turning to a plum color.

Foster Harmon was a mess. His cheek was laid open. He had a broken wrist and collarbone, a badly sprained ankle and torn ligaments in his foot. He was in a lot of pain, but he was able to look up at Dake and me and give a funny kind of a grin and say, “Jean Anne warned me you guys were going to make it rough, but I didn’t know it was going to be this rough, fellows.”

Well, it isn’t the sort of summer I thought it would be. We ski, but not so much. When we do, Foster Harmon does most of the piloting, because his arm is still in a cast. But mostly we go on picnics on the sand bar out beyond Turtle Pass. We load the Banshee up full. Dake usually brings Sue Lehman and I bring Nancy Riggs. And Jean Anne is, of course, with Foster. No complaints. The way I figure, he’s almost good enough for her. And in a funny sort of way, he earned her. Lately he’s been giving me and Dake the scoop on the fraternity he belongs to at Gainesville.

It sounds all right.

Content

John D. MacDonald
College Man