REDEMPTION by Mark Boatwright

 Print This Post

Neal was in the back room checking the shop’s ancient air compressor for the second time that morning. The belt was slipping and squealing and needed adjustment. He’d need a compressor soon but had to keep this one going as long as possible. A new one was not in the budget this month or any month.

The phone rang at the front counter.

“Andy, would you get that? I’m working on the compressor.”

“Sure thing,” said Andy. “Munising Dive Shop, can I help you?”

Neal could hear him talking. “No, ma’am, he’s in the back. Can I help you?”

After a brief conversation, Andy put the phone down and yelled, “It’s some lady, and she wants to talk to you.”

Neal, on his back with greasy hands and a three-pound wrench slipping perilously toward his forehead, yelled, “Take a message; I’m busy right now!”

Neal could hear Andy back on the phone and saying, “I’m sorry, ma’am, he really is busy. He’s under one of the machines right now. Can I take your name and number and have him call you back a little later?” and then after a long pause, “Yes, ma’am, I’ll tell him in those exact words.”

Andy walked to the compressor room just as the wrench slipped off the big adjustment nut through Neal’s greasy hands and smacked him firmly between the eyes. “Ouch!” Neal cried out.

“Boss, why don’t I work on that belt while you talk to this woman? Her name is Judith, somebody. She said she doesn’t care if ‘you’re up to your ass in horse shit.’ She wants you on the phone. She’s a real bitch, but she sounds like she’s important.”

Neal Carter owned and ran the Munising Dive Shop. The store was a two-story, 1950s weather-beaten wood frame structure on Maple Street just west of the harbor. He lived in its second-floor apartment. Like every such shop around the world, it was filled with dive tanks, a vast assortment of wet and dry suits, weight belts, buoyancy compensators, masks, fins, snorkels, boots, training manuals, and dust.

Needing a respite from the compressor (and likely a Band-Aid) and curious why Judith somebody had to talk to him this very minute, Neal got to his feet, wiped his hands, and rubbed his forehead as he walked to the phone.

“Neal Carter,” he announced briskly into the phone. “Who am I talking to?”

“Well, besides being the real bitch, your assistant referenced, I am Judith Thomas, the CEO of the Neenah Paper Company.”

Shit! thought Carter. He did know the name. Not only was she the CEO of the largest paper company in the state, but she was also a major investor and board member of the Peoples State Bank. The very same bank that, last week, had threatened to pull his mortgage if he didn’t keep up with his monthly payments.

Shit, shit, shit, he thought.

“Mrs. Thomas, if it’s about the mortgage payment, I’ll get it in this week,” he lied.

It was Neal’s dream to own and run a dive shop. When the building came up for sale, he jumped at the opportunity to buy it. That was eleven years ago. But now approaching forty with no life insurance or retirement and still netting only twenty-five grand a year, he was beginning to doubt some of his career choices.

“Mortgage payment? What? No, no. I’m not calling about a mortgage payment. I don’t do that. We have minions who do that, although I’m not surprised you’re on that shit list. I want your services as a rescue diver.”

It was Neal’s turn to be confused.

She continued, “Yesterday morning, my son went SCUBA diving near Sand Point. He went out with the Snelling Dive Group, but he didn’t come back with them, and then that storm blew in off the lake, and they left him. I understand you are familiar with the S.S. Redemption shipwreck and are a certified wreck and rescue diver. I need you to find my son—now.”

Neal shuddered at the name. His first dive on that wreck had been in the ’90s. A hundred feet down in dark, cloudy, icy cold water, poor visibility, cables, and crap all over the deck and in the hold. As a SCUBA instructor and dive master, he deliberately avoided this shipwreck when he did dive certifications with his students. They should quarantine the damn thing, not schedule dive trips out to it, he often thought.

“Ma’am, I saw the article about it in the Munising Beacon this morning. But they didn’t mention the victim’s name and that he was your son. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Mr. Carter, I don’t want your condolences. I want my boy back. And those assholes at Snelling, whom I am suing for incompetence and negligence at this very moment, are too chickenshit to go out and find him. They keep saying the Sound is too rough to launch a dive boat. Mr. Carter, I guarantee you that when I’m done with those people, yours will be the only dive shop left in this city—unless you piss me off too.”

Neal could hear both anger and desperation in her voice.

“Ma’am, I know you don’t want to hear this, but they’re right about launching a boat, and after a day and a night and that big storm, you’re not going to find your son on that wreck. He’s gone, ma’am, and nobody can change that.”

“Don’t you say that! He’s not gone to me. He’s not gone until you or someone with the guts to do it brings me back his lifeless body. That’s when he’s gone, not yet.”

Neal could hear what sounded like sobs. He held the phone to his ear through her long silence as he reflected on the shipwreck. Sunk on July 13, 1889, filled to the gunwales with iron ore and equipment, traversing the narrow passage between Grand Island and Sand Point and broadsided by the James Pickands. The ship lay upright on the bottom of the lake bed, a cold, dark deathtrap.

“Mr. Carter, I understand you are somewhat familiar with the Redemption wreck. I want my son back. Would $10,000 and expenses get you out there?”

It was not a hard question for Neal to answer. “No, ma’am, I’m sorry to say this, but I don’t want to end up like your son. There are seven-foot whitecaps in the Sound right now, and there is no way to keep a dive boat anchored in that kind of rough water. We can barely work in three-foot waves. Even if I could get down to the shipwreck, I’d never be able to count on the dive boat being there when I came back up. It could just as easily flounder and end up at the bottom of the lake.”

“How about $20,000? I’m told that the lake is beginning to quiet down, and it’s only about half a day’s work.”

He could feel the despair in her voice. This was hard for both of them.

“Ma’am, $20,000 is a lot of money, but it won’t do me any good if I’m dead. I can make it happen in a few days when the lake settles, but not this soon after the storm. I can’t reach the wreck with seven-foot waves pounding me and the dive boat. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to wait.”

“Mr. Carter, how much do you owe on your mortgage at Peoples Bank?”

Where was she going with this? Would she really pull his mortgage if he didn’t go after her missing son?

He responded, “About ninety thousand dollars and change, I think. I’d have to check.”

“And how much are you behind in your mortgage payments with the bank?”

He hated where this line of questioning was going.

“Two months,” he grudgingly admitted.

“Okay,” she said, “let’s try this. You go out to that wreck tomorrow and find my boy, and I will pay off your mortgage to the bank in full. You’ll own your dive shop free and clear; how does that sound to you?”

He was stupefied. She wasn’t trying to shut him down. She was just trying to get her son back.

“Mrs. Thomas, I’d be thrilled beyond belief not to have that mortgage hanging over my head, but if your son’s not on the ship, he’s just gone, and when I come back without him, you’re just going to start suing me, which won’t satisfy you either, given that I don’t have much you’d want.”

“Mr. Carter, do you have any children?”

“No, ma’am. I was married years ago, but we never had children. This dive shop is about the only family I could ever afford.”

“You need to know something. Carlton Junior, my son, is my only child. His father died in Vietnam when Carlton was two, and he’s all I have, all I care about. I won’t… I can’t rest until I know what happened to him. I want to know in my heart that everything I can do for my son has been done.”

Now, sobbing, she eked out, “Can… you… understand… that?”

The sound of her crying nearly brought him to tears.

She caught her breath and continued, “I need you to go out to that wreck tomorrow and bring my boy home. If he’s there, you bring him home. I need my son back. Will you do that for me?”

Since the 1950s, divers had been diving the wreck. And, like Carlton Junior, some had not come back. Despite her astonishing financial offer, he had no desire to revisit this cold, dark death trap. He did want to help her, and it was clear that she was desperate, but did her desperation mean he had to risk his life? He decided. He at least had to try, and God knew paying off the mortgage on the shop was worth some risk. But he couldn’t go anywhere until the lake calmed down.

“Mrs. Thomas, if the Sound settles down to three- or four-foot waves tomorrow, maybe we can get a boat out there and do something. I can almost guarantee you that he’s been washed out into the lake. That’s what happens with these big storms. They stir up the entire bottom, and everything gets pushed around in the lakebed. If we can moor the dive boat securely over the wreck, I’ll look for him, but you shouldn’t count on me finding him even if I do get out there.”

She hesitated. “If you don’t bring him back, how can you prove that you really looked for him and tried your best to find him?”

He started to heat up in anger at her implication that he would take her money while only pretending to search for Carleton, counted down from ten, and caught his breath and eased his anger.

“Well, I’ve done over a dozen search and rescue dives in this lake. You could take my word as a professional, or you could ask anyone in this town who knows me whether I would keep my word to a grieving mother, but I suspect that’s not going to be good enough for you. I do have a headset camera that I often use when I dive. It’s used for commercial divers who need to show not only what they’re doing but where and when they did it. It works great.”

She paused again, “And you’ll be able to show me what Carlton saw?”

“Yes, ma’am. I can even give you a video copy if you like.”

“All right, Mr. Carter, I think that could work. You find Carlton, but if he’s not there, you bring me back a detailed video of the complete dive. At the very least, I’ll be able to know what he saw and what he felt in the last few moments of his life. Is that worth the mortgage on your dive shop and a few hours of work?”

She had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

* * *

It was the second week in November, the same week (in 1975) that the Edmund Fitzgerald sunk not that far from the Redemption. Christ, thought Neal, was that an omen or just typical crappy November weather? He’d already seen the forecast in the Beacon: northeast winds off the lake at twenty to thirty miles an hour. That would still make for a very rough sea and an extremely difficult dive. Would she really pay off his mortgage if he tried but couldn’t find the boy?

To look for Carlton Junior, he’d need help. Neal tried to reach another diver, a friend he’d worked with before, hoping the two experienced wreck divers would improve the safety margin on the dive. Ed Slown, it appeared, had wisely taken off for Cozumel and wouldn’t be back until April. There were no other local divers whom he would risk on this dive. He’d have to go it alone. With that settled, he phoned Ted Langly, a salty old ex-Marine and the dive boat operator he used when he did classes on wreck diving in the Sound.

“Ted, I need you and your boat for a little excursion tomorrow. Mrs. Thomas, the head of the paper company and Peoples Bank, called me today and wants me to look for her missing son on the Redemption wreck.”

“Damn,” said Ted, “I heard about her son being left behind. Those Snelling guys must be shitting bricks right now. I feel bad for her, but it’ll take two or three days before the Sound settles enough to get a boat out there.”

“I know that, but she wants us out as soon as we can make it. She’s hoping I can at least recover his body. I’ve checked the forecast, and we may be down to three-foot waves by tomorrow.”

“Not in my boat, we ain’t. It’s November, and I’ve already stored the boat for the year.”

“Well, get it out of storage and ready to go ’cause you’re the only guy I’m willing to risk with this. She wants us to look, and she wants it done tomorrow. I need you.”

“You’re crazy, you know that, don’t you? We won’t be able to anchor the dive boat in those big waves this soon after that storm. It’s a waste of time.”

“All I know for sure is I promised her I’d try. How would double your normal fee and my paying to re-winterize your boat help with your decision?”

After a few expletives, Ted conceded that it might be possible and hung up to get his boat ready. Neal, too, had to prepare for this extreme dive.

When he was done with Ted, Neal made a few phone calls and learned more about Carlton Thomas’s last dive. The last diver who saw Carlton on the wreck insisted that he was right behind him when he started his ascent to the dive boat. Although the cardinal rule in “sport” diving was that you always had a buddy with you, and you stuck together, Carlton’s dive buddy had left him behind. After a brief search—with an intense and sudden weather front bearing down on them and none of the other divers having enough air left in their tanks to do a thorough job—they pulled anchor and went home one diver short. For this reason, there were always extra spare tanks and a backup diver (usually Neal) on Neal’s dive excursions.

The following morning, Neal, with his dive bag packed, met Ted down at the municipal dock where his boat was moored and ready.

“So, what’s the forecast?” he asked Ted.

“The sea is running three to five feet but may ease up later tonight.”

“Too late. I promised the Thomas woman we’d do it today.”

“We’re going to take a hell of a beating out there,” Ted replied.

“Yeah, I know, but I promised we’d try. Let’s get this done.”

And with that, they slipped free of the sheltered city dock and slowly rolled and swayed through the whitecaps on their way out to Sand Point and the yellow mooring buoy anchored to the stern of the Redemption. Ted drove the boat as Neal, bouncing from one side of the ship to the other, donned his SCUBA gear.

As Neal pondered the dive, he did not doubt that this was a search and recovery, not a rescue. Carlton would not be stuck somewhere on the ship waiting to be saved. He’d be two days dead. Not a fun dive in the best of weather. The bay had calmed down some, and the sun was out. That would help, but securing an anchorage to the wreck buoy would not be easy. Ted had brought an eight-foot boat hook to help snag the buoy line that ran down to the wreck’s stern. If they could catch the line and hang on long enough to attach a cleat line from the dive boat, then despite the waves, they would stay somewhat close to the Redemption. But the waves were hammering the boat, and it was all either could do not to get tossed out into the lake as they grabbed for the line. After half an hour of trying to secure the boat to the mooring, Ted was ready to return to town.

“Neal, the waves are just too damn high. This isn’t going to work; we’re bouncing around like a brandy cork. I don’t care what the old lady says. We’ll have to try tomorrow or, better yet, the day after.”

Neal had what he hoped was a better idea: getting in the water. He was already nearly suited for his dive. He switched the headset camera on. It would work all right if he didn’t land on his head. Knowing the seas would be somewhat calmer about ten feet under the waves, he pulled on his tank and BC and finished donning his mask, fins, snorkel, dive knife, and light. Then he grabbed the boat’s cleat line, wrapped it in his hand, and slowly crawled to the port gunnel, hand over hand in the bouncing boat, eased himself up, and then on the down swill of the next wave, flipped backward out of the ship and into the lake. He’d been right. At ten feet, there was much less bouncing around, but he could not find the mooring line to the wreck in the dark, gloomy water. After ten minutes of swimming in wider and wider concentric circles, he finally found it. He tied the dive boat’s cleat line to the Redemption’s mooring line. It would stabilize the dive boat in one place for him to return to and provide a decent vector down to the Redemption. Ted and the dive boat would take quite a beating on the surface, but there was nothing Neal could do about that except get the damn dive done.

The water temperature called for a bulky, but warm, dry suit, but the tight confines of the ship’s interior and the rats’ nest of rigging demanded a thinner, more flexible wet suit. To compensate for the suit’s lack of insulation, he’d brought a thermos of warm water to pour down the back of his neck between his skin and the neoprene—an old ice divers’ trick. But with all the flopping and bouncing around on the boat, he hadn’t remembered to use it. That was his first mistake today. On this dive, he couldn’t afford another. It would be freezing. He emptied the extra air in his buoyancy compensator at the mooring line and slowly glided down the thick yellow rope. At thirty feet, he stopped to clear his ears, and again at sixty. At this depth, the water was nearly black, and he dug out his dive light and continued to ease down, hand over hand, to one hundred feet and the stern of the Redemption. All two hundred and sixty feet of the ship sat upright on the lakebed as cold and dreary as that fateful Saturday in 1889 when she’d sunk. Today, with the storm hardly past, there was about ten feet of visibility. There were no waves at this depth, but the back-and-forth swell and a strong current constantly tried to pull him off the ship. He’d have to swim hard, hang on to the deck railing, or be washed out into the lake. Not a great day for a dive, especially looking for a body.

With the camera running, Neal quickly gazed over the top deck and the bridge, guessing that if Carlton were here, he’d be pretty obvious. The current continued to pull at him, but he planned to give Mrs. Thomas all the video she could ever want of her son’s last dive. Hanging on to the ship’s handrail, he circumnavigated the top and outside of the vessel from the stern to the bow and back. No Carlton. Finding an open hatch in the stern, he pulled himself tight to its edge, ensuring his tank did not hang up on the hatch frame, and slipped into the hold—the most dangerous part of the wreck. No Carlton here, but very dark and creepy. The rear storage area was crammed with rusted clumps of unrecognizable machinery, jagged and broken wooden hatchways, and dangling cables and ropes everywhere. Sand and rusted iron ore covered the inner deck. If Carlton was here, he could be anywhere.

At this depth and water temperature, he had about thirty minutes of air to search the wreck and return to the dive boat and the surface. He’d already used half his air tying off the dive boat, getting down to the wreck, and searching the outer hull and surrounding area. Neal slowly maneuvered through the passageway toward midships, lingering at each hatchway and inspecting crew quarters, cargo holds, and any nooks and crannies big enough to hide a body. He checked his dive computer: twenty minutes of air remaining.

As he moved forward, there was a glimpse of movement on the outer edge of his visibility. Was that real? He swam slowly down the main corridor, surrounded by rotted timber and old, rusted equipment. The debris was thicker here. If Carlton was in the bow, he didn’t want to join him, entangled in cable and gear and out of air.

Again, a flicker of movement ahead. He eased forward through the tangle of rot and tackle. Something was there, but what? Could the Thomas boy’s body have gotten entangled in the bow line ropes at the front end of the boat? Neal wondered. Nearing the bow, he squeezed through the cables and rotted wood and pulled hard at the last tattered hatchway obstructing his view of the inner bow platform. As the hatchway gave way, a large wooden plank from the overhead deck careened down toward Neal. He turned, trying to sprint out of the way, but there was no room to escape it. The timber silently crashed into the back of his tank, wedging him face down and tight to the inner deck. He reached overhead and behind him, feeling the size and rough texture of the massive beam. He pushed up at it with his arms, with all his strength. There was no movement. It felt more like a heavy oak tree than just a plank. He had a little wiggle room, but not enough for him and his air supply. He knew what he had to do. Alone in the dark, cold water, pinned to the deck, and running low on air, there was only one option, and his life depended on it. He had to give up the air tank.

Releasing the buckles on his tank, he twisted it from behind to his side. Now, he and the tank were face to face. He struggled to regain his composure and, drawing in one last gasp of air, slid and pushed the tank through the narrow gap between him, the plank, and the deck. There was enough space to free the tank, but then came the hard part. Facing his precious air supply, he wiggled and squirmed beneath the timber. The left shoulder of his neoprene wet suit snagged on a large spike above and behind him. He squirmed at the snag for precious seconds but could not free himself. Christ, he thought, do I have to peel this off too? He had twisted his body so far around the beam that he could now brace his flippered feet against the inside of the hull. Bending his knees, he pushed hard against the hull, and then, finally, the suit ripped, releasing him from the beam and allowing him to squirm toward his air supply. His heart was hammering. The air was all that mattered. He slid out from under the timber, grabbed up the regulator, and sucked the precious air into his lungs. His heart continued to pound as he strapped the air tank back on. He was done with this death trap. It was well past time to get out.

Turning toward the back of the wreck, he eased past the cables, rotted wood, and crew quarters, working his way toward the central passageway. Ahead was the stern hatch he’d used to enter the hold. But as he reached the corridor leading to the hatch, there was a sudden spasm of movement immediately to his right. He jerked back, nearly dropping his light and instinctively clawing for his regulator. Storming down the companionway was the biggest lake trout he had ever seen. The ship was empty. Unless Carlton had been reborn as a lake trout, he’d joined the hundreds of other lost souls now inhabiting the lake’s depths. There was nothing Neal could do for him, nothing anyone could do.

Quivering from the bitter cold, the trauma of being trapped under the timber in the bow, exhausted and already down to his last few sips of air, he eased his way to the back of the wreck. He found the stern hatch and used it again to escape the hold. From there, it was a few yards over to the thick yellow mooring cable, a careful ascent one hundred feet up to the surface, the open blue sky, and the rocking and heaving dive boat. Ted pulled him back into the boat and eased him onto the deck. With Neal vomiting, coughing, and shuddering in the bow, Ted released the bow line and headed the boat back to Munising.

Neal sat shivering and coughing under an old tarp that Ted had thrown over him for warmth. What had he achieved, he thought? Mrs. Thomas would get her video, but unfortunately, not her son. Carlton belonged to Lake Superior. Neal had failed to find Carlton and, in the process, nearly died.

He trembled and thought about his life. He’d failed as a husband. That was clear enough. Without the Thomas woman’s largess, he would fail as a dive shop owner. And he’d spent years failing to satisfy his dream of having a dive shop with international prominence. Why, he thought? He loved diving, and for the past several years, he had loved developing the shop and creating a community of like-minded divers. But, more than ever, the shop was holding him back, and the icy-cold Lake Superior waters would never be the dive capital of the world. But he had thought that if he worked hard enough, the shop could become something special—a focal point for divers. Sitting in the bow of the bucking and rolling boat, he knew he was done with Lake Superior’s frigid cold and the Upper Peninsula’s long, snow-packed winters. Was he done with diving as well? That he didn’t know.

* * *

Neal floated, minimally dressed in a dive tank, buoyancy compensator, mask, fins, snorkel, and dive knife. Instead of a heavy neoprene dive suit, he wore an outrageous red, blue, and yellow Tommy Bahama T-shirt and white cutoffs. The waves fluttered so gently that they were almost like kisses. The day was delicious. He watched his student divers enter the water. Some were beginning to show some grace, even a little skill; others would forget to hold their masks or add air to their BCs before they backflipped off the boat and into the water. He was there to teach and help, but once everyone was squared away and breathing air, to show them this uniquely precious and incredibly fragile world.

Around them was the warm Caribbean Sea. Above, a balmy azure sky; below, stunning formations of staghorn and brain corals and thousands of fish so colorful Andy Warhol could have painted them. He watched the divers easing toward the seabed and the corals thirty feet below. Even from his surface perch, he could see a spiny lobster scurrying away from an unawares diver toward its coral shelter.

He discharged the excess air in his BC and slowly eased down among the students. He was there as an overly qualified nanny to watch over the divers, but he was also there as a guardian of the coral.

“Look all you want, but you never, never touch,” he would expound constantly to his students.

Neal and his group finished the dive and returned to the dive boat, every diver beaming from the adventure they had just shared in another universe. Neal counted heads, confirming that all the divers were back on board the boat, and they headed back to dry land.

It was January, fourteen months after Neal’s last “cold water” dive. The C&S Dive Center was running two shifts a day, six days a week, with night dives on Saturdays. Ed taught basic open-water classes, Neal taught the advanced courses, and they took turns on the night dives. They had retail shop staff, a maintenance guy, maids, two dive assistants, and a harried bookkeeper, and they hoped they could afford to buy their own dive boat by next year. Neal had never been so busy or happy in his life. If the divers wouldn’t come to him, he would go to them. His last dive on the Redemption and the buttload of money from Mrs. Thomas—who’d not only paid off the mortgage but also bought his building to create a Munising Shipwreck Museum in tribute to her son—had been enough. Neal had tracked down Ed Slown, and the combination of Ed’s and Neal’s money and a bank loan had afforded the partnership enough cash to purchase and partly refurbish a rundown motel and pool for their new Cozumel dive center. Although several other dive shops were on the island, few offered motel accommodations as part of their dive package. It was a small thing, but the rooms were rustic, neat, and clean; the pool allowed the divers to rinse off the saltwater, and the diving was superb. Soon after the grand opening, the place crawled with well-heeled customers.

Done with his day’s work and hungry for dinner, he had just entered the office to drop off the day’s paperwork when the phone rang.

Damn, he thought. He considered letting it go to voice mail, but it could be his partner, Ed, needing something.

“Hello, C&S Dive Center,” he said.

“Good evening, Neal. This is Judith Thomas. How are you?”

“Oh, Hi, Mrs. Thomas. It’s good to hear from you. We’re doing pretty well. It’s the height of tourist season, and our motel and dive shop are booked solid for the next two months. How are things up in Munising?”

She laughed. “Well, it’s January and cold as hell, but other than that, everything is going pretty well. I’ve just about got the museum up and running, and that’s part of the reason I’m calling. Do you remember that thumb drive video you made for me last November?”

“Yes, ma’am, I doubt I’ll ever forget that dive. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I had the video reformatted so we can use it on a big screen projector, and I plan to play it on a loop on one of the walls in the museum, but I’ve got one little problem that I think you can help with.”

“What’s that?” Neal asked cautiously.

“Well, the video is excellent, particularly the part when you were trapped under that big beam, but you didn’t narrate the dive when you were in the wreck. I’ve got no audio.”

“Ma’am, I had a regulator in my mouth trying to breathe. I couldn’t talk.”

“Yes, yes, I know, you needed to breathe, so I have another offer to make you.”

Neal shuddered. Not again—he was never going back to that wreck.

“Neal, I want you to come back up to Munising for the museum’s grand opening and do the audio for the video. We open in two weeks. You narrate the dive you did over the first week we’re open, and we’ll splice and mix the best of what you say into an audio we can add to the video presentation. What do you think?”

“Mrs. Thomas, I’d be honored, but at the moment, I’m up to my butt in paying customers. Can it wait until June or July?”

“Neal, I hate to press, but I want this. You know, I heard from my building manager, a little birdie named Andy, that you need a dive boat to really get your business rolling. I happen to know of one for sale here in Munising. I understand that Ted Langly is considering retiring and moving to Arizona or Florida or something like that. If I explained it to him just right, do you suppose he and his boat might retire in Cozumel instead? I’ll buy you the boat, and I’ll bet you can talk Ted into holding off his retirement for a few years. I understand that he adores Piña Coladas. You could have a dive boat and a skipper for your business before next season. Is that worth a few days of voiceover work for my video presentation? I’ll even pay for airfare and a few nights at the Hampton Inn.”

He laughed. This audacious woman always seemed to know which strings to pull.

“Piña Coladas, huh?” chuckled Neal. “I’d have sworn Ted was a Jack Daniel’s kind of guy.”

==========

AUTHOR BIO:

The author is a Marine Corps veteran who served two tours of duty in Vietnam. He is also a SCUBA diver who has dived on the Smith Moore (a.k.a., the Redemption). He is a native of southeastern Wisconsin and a retired grant writer previously working in the Health and Human Services genre. He enjoys reading, writing, hunting, fishing, the great inland seas, and virtually anything outdoors. He has a short story published by Straylight Literary Arts Magazine, a flash fiction published by Bright Flash Literary Review, and a free-verse poem pending in Woods Reader.

==========

WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “Redemption”:

Author Mark Boatwright subtly sets up the conflict in his opening paragraph, along with part of the setting and character. That’s quite an accomplishment for four sentences. The next several short lines complete the setting, and a few lines after that we’re entrenched in the story and interested in knowing exactly what’s going on.

Only then does the author take a quick break to fill in a bit of backstory—done as transition while Neal contemplates what to do—before bringing us right back and showing us Neal’s frustration. During the conversation with Judith Thomas, we learn more about his situation (shown, not told). As the story continues, the author drops in more pieces of backstory while keeping the narrative moving forward until the reader is firmly anchored in the story. It’s a well-done narrative from beginning to end.

What we also liked about this piece is that is takes us on a harrowing adventure brought to life by the author’s background and expertise. And even though Neal doesn’t find her son (he didn’t expect to, and neither did the reader), we’re still treated to a satisfying and emotional ending.