The Blue Hole

A story from the Pine Barrens

The Blue Hole

by Thomas Pluck

Jerry knelt by his bedroom door and hoped he wouldn’t be seen. He sneaked out of bed every time his uncle killed a case with his father. Uncle Ozzy had green and blue tattoos up and down his hairy arms, a bristly black beard and eyes black and shiny as a doll’s. He had a voice that shook dust off the shelves, and he told the best stories. Like the one about the Marine he beat in a bar fight by wrestling him to the floor and smothering him with his belly.

“Looks like we’ve picked up a third,” Uncle Ozzy said, pointing to Jerry with one sausage finger. His middle ones were both inked with feathers. For flipping the bird.

Jerry had gotten in trouble for drawing feathers on his fingers with a black Bic pen. The Principal made him scrub them off with green Lava soap.

“Thought you were in bed,” his father said. He was as skinny as his brother was stout, his elbows white and scratchy as a rat tail file.

“It’s okay, Richie.” Ozzy flashed a smile of cracked tombstones. “You like my stories, don’t you?”

Jerry nodded.

“I’ve got to call my ride. Then I’ll tell you one more story.” He used the beige phone mounted on the kitchen wall to call the taxi company listed on a business card he took from his pocket. Then he sat down hard before the dead soldiers on the kitchen table.

“’Bout time this boy had a beer, ain’t it?”

His father’s wrinkles cut his face with thought. “Maybe.”

Jerry climbed into an empty chair. The one his mother would be sitting in, if she wasn’t serving cocktails at the country club. Uncle Ozzy always stopped by when his ship was in port—whether it was Philly, Newark, Brooklyn, or even Baltimore, he always found a ride—but Jerry’s mom always seemed to be working when he visited.

His father pulled the tab off a can of Rhinegold and set it in front of him. “See if you like it.”

Jerry sipped, then fought not to make a face as the bitterness sizzled on his tongue.

“See, he likes it.” Ozzy laughed. His belly didn’t shake. It was as round and solid as a cast iron kettle. “Well, what story you want to hear?”

Jerry shrugged.

“I know you got a favorite.”

He wanted to hear about the naked lady who led him to his ship, but the thought made his ears flush red. “I like ’em all. I want to join the Merchant Marine too, when I’m old enough.”

“Hell you will,” his father clucked. “You’re not raking cranberries, either. The hardest work I want to see you do is pushing your chair away from a desk.”

Jerry had helped his father when the Haynes flooded the cranberry bogs just a month before. It was thrilling to watch the ruby and green berries float to the surface, but it was hard. Like all the work his mom and dad did, it left them exhausted and broken at the end of the day.

“It’s a good life, rough sometimes. You don’t need to work at a desk, as long as you’re busting your brain and not your back. I ever tell you the story of why I joined?”

“No, sir.”

“Take another nip of that beer. You might not wanna finish it when I’m done.”

He waited until Jerry choked down another swallow.

“There you go.” He laughed. Then he crushed his can and cracked another one. “We used to go fishing all over the pines, me and your father. Had a bit of a friendly rivalry. Your old man, he could catch fish like nobody’s business. Bet he still can, if he gave it a try.”

His father rolled his eyes.

“We’d hike deep in the pines, looking for fishing holes the old timers told us about, and we’d haul home chain pickerel as big as your leg, and bullhead cats with mouths like a bucket.”

Jerry’s father took him fishing all the time, and all Jerry caught were fat perch. They tasted good pan fried, but weren’t much of a fight. His father always caught at least one catfish. And one time, a lunker pickerel as nearly as long as Jerry was tall. Jerry had stared into its dead black eye as it gulped air into a low-slung jaw. He hoped his Dad would get it mounted, but instead he dunked it back in the water by the tail, tugging it backward through the tea-stained water until it revived and shot away like a jade missile.

“I’d heard of a pool so blue and bright you could see clear five hundred feet to the bottom, with fish thicker than my arm.” He pumped his thick, tattooed biceps, making the mermaid’s tail wiggle. “The Blue Hole. The one the Jersey Devil bathes in.”

Jerry sipped some more. Adults never talked about the infamous denizen of the Pine Barrens. The kids did. But the adults wouldn’t even use the Devil as a scare to keep the kids from wandering too far. 

“Load of hooey,” his father said.

“I found it,” Uncle Ozzy said. “The real one. Not the one in Winslow, where the kids go to drink and smoke pot. You don’t smoke pot yet, do you?” He leered at Jerry.

Jerry shook his head. He knew what it was, and had smelled the older kids smoking it behind the Wawa. One with a dirty swipe of mustache offered him a puff once, but he jumped on his bike and booked away from them.

“He’s not even in middle school,” his father said.

“I don’t know what kids are up to these days. We just had port wine and lemon juice, now they got crack, whack, whatever. Anyhow, I found the real blue hole. And I swam in it. But I’m sworn to secrecy. On my immortal soul.”

“You’re full of shit.” Jerry’s father said. “Beans. I said beans.”

“You gonna let me tell the story, Richie? I found it by talking to the oldest Pineys I could find. None of them would tell me much. They’d say stuff like, ‘That’s Mr. Scratch’s fishing hole, boy. And Old Scratch takes back what’s his.’” He paused to let that sink in, his deep-set eyes narrowed to slits. “I didn’t believe in none of that. I do now, but the sea makes you superstitious like an old woman.”

“I finally pieced it together from what they let slip. There’s a wooden bridge covered with vines, not far from where they hung Joe Mulliner. Not where they put the stone. Where he was hanged.”

Jerry had heard the stories of Mulliner, who same called the Robin Hood of the Pine Barrens, hanged for treason during the Revolutionary War. How his real grave was never found, and how his ghost was said to wander through the pines, looking for his buried treasure.

“There are lots of old trails in the Pines. And it’s not safe to walk them all. Swamps full of quicksand that’ll hold your boots like cement. Ruins of old mills and glassworks choked with thorns. But I found it. In the middle of nowhere. That bridge near fell apart as I crossed it.”

Jerry’s father slapped Uncle Ozzy’s belly. “Wasn’t the devil who did that.”

His eyes went flat, and his brother quieted. “Whoever built that bridge, if they had a cabin nearby, it had been swallowed up years ago. Or stolen, brick by brick, to make a hunting lodge. But at the other end of that bridge was a hole as blue as a rich man’s swimming pool.”

Parents told them to never swim in the blue holes. That they were colder than the tea-stained creeks that snaked through the pines, and much deeper than they looked. 

“The water still, so it looked like glass. And it was a perfect circle.” He ran a callused fingertip around the rim of his beer can.

“I bushwhacked my way to the edge and looked down. I could see fish circling down there. I tossed a pebble, and it dropped all the way down. Big fish down there, just waiting.

“I put a ropey nightcrawler on my hook and let it drop. Wiggled it around, pulling it away when the sunnies and the perch went for it. I figured a big one might get angry and go for the bait, if I kept it up.”

“Sure enough, this big beauty floats over slow, from the far side. The sun hit it and the scales glowed emerald.”

“A chain pickerel?” Jerry asked.

“Don’t interrupt,” Ozzy said. “Biggest one you ever saw. Its back was dark green, and its belly sparkled. I wondered how old it was, to get so large.”

“Then I noticed the woods have gone quiet. On the other side of the pond, I saw a man in a tweed coat, wearing a funny hat with a feather in it,” he said. “Like they wear in Germany. And he’s smiling at me. With perfect white teeth.” Uncle Ozzy smiled, showing the empty spaces behind his eye teeth, his front pair chipped. “He walked over, and I felt a chill down in my legs. I couldn’t move.

“‘Good day, my boy,’ he said. Had a real deep voice, like a preacher. Made you have to listen. He reached out to shake my hand. Had soft, rich man’s hands. I was too scared to touch him. Like his skin was dough, and I’d stick. And it would never come off.”

Ozzy cracked open another beer. The bubbles hissed out of the steel can.

“He tutted, then frowned down on me. How’d you like to catch that fish? I see your brother take fish from me waters all the time. Bigger than yours. Don’t you want to show him up, just once?”

“His eyes are as blue as the water hole. The words pushed up my throat like puke. He ran a finger along my cane pole, and I said it. Yes, let me catch that fish. Show my brother I’m better than he is.”

He took a long draw from his beer.

“The man smiled and plucked a silver coin from his pocket. Shiny new, but it’s got a big-nosed Roman Emperor on it. He flips it into the water, and it flashes all the way down. I nearly dove in after it, but he held my shoulder back. Felt a stab, like I had to take a hard shit. ‘Look,’ he said.

“That beautiful fish, the coin sure got her attention. It lands on a little shelf right by her. She takes the worm and my pole bent near in half. Had to fight not to get pulled in. His long fingers grip my shoulder, but all I’m thinking of is the look on your father’s face when I lug this fish home. She dashes deep, she leaps to throw the hook, she circles in the weeds. But I got her. Hell, do I have her.”

“You’re gonna scare the boy,” his father whispered.

“I’m not scared,” Jerry said, shrinking into himself.

A sheen of sweat lined Uncle Ozzy’s forehead just beneath the hairline. “Out of the corner of my eye, I see the stranger cheering me on. Stamping his fancy shoes in the sand. Whooping and shaking his fist. He had knuckles so hairy, they make mine look bare.” He held out a scarred fist. His arm hair looked like a second set of sleeves.

“Now this fish was tired. How she didn’t break my line, I don’t know. But I felt it in my heart, that if I landed her, something bad was gonna happen. So I pushed the rod into the man’s hands. ‘Help me, mister! I’m gonna lose her!’ And he’s so caught up that he takes the pole, and yanks the line so hard the pole knocks off his hat. He pulls her in, and when the fish comes out of the water, at the end of line?” He held a beer can tab between callused fingers. “There’s nothing but a scrawny pirate perch.”

Ozzy bent the tab in half between thumb and knuckle, and dropped into a crushed beer can.

“He snapped my cane pole in two. Didn’t even unhook the fish. Pole sank and dragged that little perch all the way down. He hissed through his teeth and pointed to his hat. I bent down to give it to him. “That’s when I see his shoes. Or what I thought were shoes. They’re shiny and black, and round, like horse’s hoofs.”

“And his legs don’t look right. They’re bent like a goat’s. When I look up, he doesn’t have the same face. He’s got horns, and wings. And the long horse face of the Jersey Devil.”

Jerry gasped, and his father was quiet. Staring across the table at his brother. 

“The only place to go was into the blue hole.”

His father let out a sigh. “Don't you ever swim in a blue hole, Jerry.”

“What your father said. I had no choice. When the Devil shrieked, I dove straight in. And that water was colder than anything I’ve ever felt, even the North Sea.

“And it was clear. I could always hold my breath, so I stayed under. I thought he might fly over and pluck me out the water like an eagle taking a fish, bring me back wherever he lives.

“Then something gets hold of my legs.”

“Probably just a cramp from the cold,” Jerry’s father said.

“Maybe. I’ve got my shoes and dungarees on. Could’ve pulled me down. But I’m the best swimmer for miles around. Am I right?”

Jerry’s father nodded, looking at the dead soldiers on the table. “You’re right.”

“Something’s pulling me down. The water’s crystal clear. Like it’s not there at all. And I see the coin.”

“At the bottom?” Jerry croaked.

“There was no bottom,” his uncle said. “Nothing at all. It didn’t even get darker. I’ve sailed over the deepest parts of the ocean, but I never felt like there was no bottom. But I did when I was swimming across that hole.

“The coin’s flashing like an eye, slipping off the edge of a sand shelf. It starts flipping, and I grab it. And when I do, I see the below.”

“Like looking straight through the devil’s blue eye.”

“I kick to the surface, my lungs are burning. I can barely feel my legs, but they’re free. I crawl up the bank, and thorns cut my feet. I kicked so hard, I lost my shoes. I take a big breath, and the Devil’s flying across the blue hole straight for me. Shrieking like a banshee, with that horned horse’s head, flapping wings as wide as a condor’s. 

I don’t where I found the stones, but I threw the coin right in his face.”

Ozzy drained his beer and let out a grumbling belch. Crunched the can in his fist, and held out both tattooed middle fingers, one over the other, in a cross.

“It went right through him. But he changed. Back into the stranger. Looking at me like he’d been cheated. He’d been beat, and he didn’t like it. He picked up his hat, set it on his head, and stepped into the water. Couldn’t walk on water like J.C., though. He sank slow, like the coin had. Before the blue swallowed him up he said, ‘You tell anyone about my fishing hole boy? No matter where on God’s green earth you plant your two feet, I will reach up and take what’s mine.

“In his hand was the fish. He crushed that poor little pirate perch and bit her head off. I felt his blue eyes on me as he sank all the way down.”

The silence was broken by three quick jabs of a car’s horn.

“One for the road.” Ozzy peeled back the tab of the last beer. Drained half, suds fizzing away in his beard. “That’s why I’m a sailor, so I’m never on land in case the Devil comes looking.”

“Kid’s gonna have nightmares,” Jerry’s father said. “You probably just got mad you lost that fish and broke that pole over your knee.” He rubbed the back of Jerry’s neck.

“I won’t have nightmares,” Jerry said.

But of course, he would.

Ozzy ruffled Jerry’s hair, then stood with a stretch. “Time to go. I’ll send you a postcard from Amsterdam.”

He pulled on his peacoat and Greek fisherman’s cap and wobbled to the door. Jerry hugged him and breathed in the salt on his coat.

Ozzy lifted him up. “Don’t go swimming in the pines. Not with friends. Not alone. Save it for the creeks, where you can see bottom.”

They watched his bulk shuffle out into the murk. He climbed into the cab, a repurposed Camden squad car. He pressed his big palm to the rear window as it drove away.

His father bolted the door, then told him to wash up.

Jerry did, then climbed under the blanket, thankful his window was closed against the chill. The moonlight glinted off the portrait on his trophy shelf. Uncle Ozzy, his mother, and his father on a pier on Delaware Bay. Uncle Ozzy ready to ship out. Not long before Jerry was born. Her smile between their two sly grins.

His father came and tucked him in against his will. “About time you get to bed. If you can’t sleep, it’s your uncle’s fault.”

“I’m not a baby no more.”

“I dunno, I was pretty scared myself. Might ask you to tuck me in.”

“How’d you get so good at fishing? Did you meet the man in the woods?”

His father smiled, glancing at the portrait. He slicked back his oiled hair. “I couldn’t tell you if I had, now could I?”

Then he clicked out the light.

When Jerry didn’t get a postcard, they blamed it on the mail. They never learned if his uncle made it to the ship that night, was washed off the decks in a storm, or fell into an Amsterdam canal. They never saw him again.

—

© 2021 Thomas Pluck.