Deep Water Blues

Praise for the Writing of Fred Waitzkin

Deep Water Blues

"Since I was a child, the desolate out islands of the Bahamas have been a home, none more dear than the shark-infested, storm-ravaged­, cursed utopia of Rum Cay. … Deep Water Blues churns with the beauty, desperation, violence, and yearning of those fighting to survive on a speck of land in an eternal sea. As a reader, I am on fire. As a son, I could not be more proud." —Josh Waitzkin

Fred Waitzkin effortlessly recreates a singular world with uncanny insight and humor. His language is remarkable for its clarity and simpli­city. Yet his themes are profound. This is like sitting by a fire with a master storyteller whose true power is in the realm of imagination and magic. —Gabriel Byrne

Loved this book. I could not put it down. A lifetime of memories of my own fishing these same waters. —Mark Messier, hockey legend

"Deep Water Blues does what all fine literature aspires for—it transports readers to another time and place, in this case, to a sleepy, lush island deep in the Bahamas. Fred Waitzkin writes about life, sex, and violence with aplomb, and Bobby Little is a tragic hero fit for the Greek myths. Hope to see everyone on Rum Cay soon." —Matt Gallagher, author of Youngblood

"Deep Water Blues has the ease and compelling charm of a yarn spun late in the evening, the sun gone down and the shadows gathering in." —Colin Barret, author of Young Skins

The Dream Merchant

Waitzkin offers a singular and haunting morality tale, sophisticated, literary and intelligent. Thoroughly entertaining. Deeply imaginative. Highly recommended. —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Fred Waitzkin took me into a world of risk and violence and salvation that I was loath to relinquish. It’s a great novel. —Sebastian Junger

"The Dream Merchant is a masterpiece. A cross between Death of a Salesman and Heart of Darkness. I believe that in the not-too-distant future we will be referring to Waitzkin’s novel as a classic." —Anita Shreve

Searching for Bobby Fischer

[A] gem of a book … [its] quest is beautifully resolved. —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

A vivid, passionate, and disquieting book. —Martin Amis, The Times Literary Supplement

I’ve seldom been so captivated by a book. —Tom Stoppard

Under the spreading chess-nut tree there have been many chess books. To my mind this is the best. —Cleveland Amory

Mortal Games

Waitzkin captures better than anyone—including Kasparov himself in his own memoir—the various sides of this elusive genius. —The Observer

Compelling. —GQ

The Last Marlin

A remarkably ambitious and satisfying memoir. —The New York Times Book Review

When Fred Waitzkin was younger, he thought he had it in him to be a good writer. He was right. This memoir of growing up is passionate, often very funny, very tender, and thoroughly engrossing. —Peter Jennings

"Finding purity in the rarefied world of big-game fishing was Ernest Hemingway’s forte, and he imbued it with transcendent significance. Fred does the same in The Last Marlin, but in far more human terms." —John Clemans, editor, Motor Boating & Sailing

Though there is much sorrow and confusion on these pages there is great beauty—a nearly profligate amount of it—almost everywhere you look … clearly one of of a kind and deeply moving. —Jewish Exponent

Deep Water Blues

A Novel

Fred Waitzkin

Illustrated by John Mitchell

for

Bonnie

Josh

Katya

Desiree

Jack

Charlie

Part I

I’ve visited Rum Cay many times on my old boat, the Ebb Tide, trolled for months of my life off the southeast corner of the remote Bahamian island where the ocean is a rich cobalt blue reminding me of a color my artist mother favored in her abstract canvases. Stella’s dark blues were thickly textured like roiling ocean with intimations of agony rising from below like the cries of drowning sailors. My mother hated my fishing life, the legacy of my father, whom she abhorred, but still, I think of her fervent canvases whenever I troll the edges of dark storms, which is often a good place to find wahoo and marlin.

Coming into Rum Cay’s south side after fishing, with the sun behind us, the reefs close to the island were natural stepping stones into Bobby’s tiny harbor, each of them with a resident population of colorful grouper, snappers, jacks, and crawfish. In calm weather, following the string of reefs marked by red buoys was like a game I played on my way home from school, stepping around one flagstone to the next but never touching. Just that fifteen-minute cruise from the blue water past the reefs into the quaint, dreamy marina was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me—each time I did it.

Then in the late afternoon, after tying the boat, while the sun was still up, you might be lucky enough to hear the lush singing voice of Flo, the daughter of Rosie, Rasta’s ex-girlfriend­, who had a little pig farm just outside of town. Flo was a savvy, spirited lady with a love of jazz standards, particularly those of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. She played a collection of their music on her little tape recorder while walking the sandy road to work each morning from the village of about sixty souls, while holding hands with her little girl. In the afternoon, Flo took down billowing sheets from a line beside the clubhouse maybe a hundred feet from the feeble docks. Many afternoons I watched and listened as she folded laundry from Bobby’s cottages and sang wind-tossed ballads about lost love and regret. Whenever she sang God Bless the Child or Summertime to her baby, I had to wipe my eyes. All the boat owners looked up when Flo began singing. Then she’d suddenly stop mid-verse to give a hug to her three-year-old daughter who played nearby, next to one of Bobby’s fish sculptures, and sometimes the little girl handed her mommy clothespins or stuffed the sweet-smelling sheets into Flo’s straw basket.

Many times, I’ve made the long ocean voyage to Rum Cay to troll off the southeast corner of the island. But my fishing ardor has often been dwarfed by surprises onshore, where breezy sensuous nights plunge me back into the yearnings of a younger man and where I’ve met maimed and beautiful people on the dock and a few that were evil beyond redemption.

~

In the spring and early summer, the best fishing months in the southern Bahamas, a dozen custom sportfishing boats and several opulent yachts are tied up in the tiny marina, each of them owned by a successful businessperson, usually an older man. In the evening, before dinner, music blasts from big speakers on the boats—a bedlam of sounds—crews exchange marlin shoptalk while carefully washing and chamoising the boats to an immortal glow. As the sky darkens, powerful underwater lights snap on from the stern of each boat showing off an aquarium of sharks, snappers, and tarpon swimming in the harbor. Also, on many of the boats, young women in G-strings and little or nothing else bend over the stern pointing and oohing and aahing at man-eater bull and tiger sharks.

A few ragtag local men from the tiny village have ambled down the dirt road to the dock. They carefully avert eyes from the mostly nude girls while begging for a piece of fish from deckhands who usually keep fish heads and carcasses for the locals, as well as a few whole barracudas. Barracudas are sweet tasting, but one in a thousand is poisonous. Most white men don’t eat barracuda, but locals are comfortable with the odds.

Also, tied to the dock with frayed lines, a sailboat, once a graceful sailing sloop, rots in the harbor. Her gear is rusted out, rudder glued in place by a heavy rug of seaweed and barnacles, sails and rigging long since ruined, no lights inside, apparently abandoned; and yet, she’s parked alongside this glistening fleet of custom-built yachts like a freakish mutation. Suddenly, a man pokes his head out of the companionway like a diver coming up for air. He breathes the heavy night air, smells the delicious meal drifting from the club, and looks around a little, then he goes back down below. When I look more closely, there is a dim battery light showing from one of the murky portholes. Mike lives inside this relic. From what I can tell, he has no money, lives on rice and scraps of fish and whatever Bobby might bring him from the kitchen. Bobby Little, the owner of the marina told Mike he is welcome to live in the marina forever. FOREVER! Bobby Little always thinks big.

Every couple of years, whenever I manage to visit the island, Mike greets me with a pleasant, casual expression as if he’d just seen me the day before for coffee and Danish. He asks me about my writing and I ask about his. Mike has been writing a novel for years. On one of my last visits to Rum, he read me some pages about a man who lives in a world between the living and the dead. Mike is drawn to the dead level as Lawrence Durrell describes the poor exhausted creatures he paints so wonderfully. Mike is a steadier writer than I am, always looks beneath the glaze, and doesn’t take time off for trolling the southeast corner. I asked Mike when he would finish his book, and his wry expression suggested that my question was absurd.

~

Up on the hill, in the clubhouse, the grand dinner is now winding down. Bobby’s guests are stuffed with tuna carpaccio and filet mignon. They sip fine cognac while waiting for Bobby’s surprise dessert. His desserts, served at the edge of the deep blue water, are incomparable. Dale Earnhardt holds court at one table with several friends. Mark Messier is on the other side of the room. A guest from one of the other tables comes over to shake hands with The Captain, and the men exchange a few remarks about this year’s prospects for the Rangers. There are about twenty-five people at the tables. They will soon return to