Dead in the Water Read Online Free PDF

other, these seafaring men. As if the boat perpetually rocked. Must be hell on the inner ear.
    “Matt!” he called. “Hey, Mattman! C’mere!”
    Matt didn’t hear him. The boy sauntered along with the first mate, making broad motions with his hands. Looked so cute, in his baggy black shorts and black running shoes and military green T-shirt. His hair was too long for his flat-top; it folded over on the right side like an Elvis pompadour. Should have had it cut. That was another hangup of John’s: hating to trim Matty’s hair, because finally (thank you, God, again, and please, again) Matty
had
some hair. Chemotherapy was rough on everybody, but roughest on dark-haired nine-year-old boys who liked baseball and heavy metal and paging through their fathers’ gross surgery textbooks.
    Another man joined Matt and the first mate, stepping over the grimy metal lip of a heavy, round door painted the same mint-green. He was an old hippie, with gray hair down to the middle of his back, a braided leather headband, a tie-dyed T-shirt, and a stained white apron. He cradled a metal bowl against his chest and stirred the contents with a wooden spoon as he talked. Then he bent down and offered a taste to Matt. Ye gods, he must be the cook.
    Matt tipped back his head: the turned-up nose, the freckles, the long lashes that were Gretchen’s.
    “Matt!” The name came out too frantic. John flushed and tempered his outburst with a smile.
    The trio turned toward him. He motioned Matt to him, feeling his stomach clench as the boy parted from the men and scampered toward him. Dennis the Menace, the Beaver, Matty the Mattman.
    “Hiya,” John said as Matt approached, and held out his arms for a hug. His stomach burned. Matt had (
had
had) cancer, and his old man had (still had) an ulcer.
    “Oh, Dad.” Matt held back. “C’mon. I’m too old. There’s dudes here.”
    John grabbed his wrists and pulled him against his body. Matt’s T-shirt was damp; the body inside it so damn skinny.
    “Listen, buckwheat, when you’re
twenty-nine
, you still won’t be too old for hugging.”
    “I’ll never be that old,” Matty shot back, and it took John a second to understand that he wasn’t being serious. That he wasn’t talking about
that
.
    “Listen,” John said, crouching down so he was at Matt’s level. He made a face. “This boat. It’s kind of older than I thought it would be.”
    “It was in Viet Nam!” Matty announced. His eyes widened. All eyes. No flesh. He looked like a commercial for one of those save-the-starving children funds they advertised on TV. “It was loaded with ammunition so they could blast the gooks!”
    John blinked. “Oh? Did Mr. Diaz tell you that?”
    Matt shook his head. “Cha-cha did.” He frowned impatiently. “You know, the old guy. He’s the cook. He was on it when it was in Viet Nam. Isn’t that on fire?”
    On fire. John was keenly aware of the crow’s-feet around his eyes when he grinned faintly at his little boy. The Haight and the Summer of Love had never seemed so long ago. Isla Vista, too—burn down that Bank of Amerika—if you wanted to talk about fires. Never trust anyone over thirty, hell; and now his kid used the sacred and arcane vocabulary of the newest new generation, and he was stuck in his own time zone like some old geezer, trying to translate, if not keep up.
    “Well, you shouldn’t say gooks. You know about that. Butlisten, do you like this boat?” He grew serious. “If you want to do something else, we can. We could take another boat to Hawaii. Or we could—”
    “No way! This is neat!” Matt turned to race off.
    John caught the neck of his T-shirt. “Cool your jets, Jack. They’re going to load the deck and they want us out of the way. We can watch from the dining room.”
    “All right! Cha-cha’s making a cake. It’s Mr. Diaz’s birthday.”
    John started to hold Matty’s hand, brushed his shoulder instead. Tea and cakes. Okay, maybe. It wasn’t the