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in the kitchen. He carried his dive bag to the bathroom, filled the tub with cold water and prepared to rinse out the gear he’d only used once. The black velcro and rubber hoses were crusted over with a thin layer of grit that dissolved as he lowered everything under the clear surface. He cleaned the gear the way he’d been taught—purging mouthpieces, keeping the dust-cap tight, filling the BCD with water and shaking it above his head to rinse it from the inside out. He added his wetsuit and fins to the tub, holding them under the surface, submerged to his forearms. Spray from the tap rushed over his fingers and left little bubbles that clung to his arm hair. It reminded him of the dives with the Costa Rican instructor. The way you could be made a beginner again by the current.

Benicio pulled the water-heavy gear from the tub and slung it over the bar above. He ran his hands along the wetsuit legs, squeezing them dry as best he could. He’d owned this same suit for almost ten years and there was hardly a rip or tear in it. He remembered the long procession of colors and brands that his father had gone through; how he’d torn each new wetsuit with his expanding belly and clumsy bottom-scraping. How the constantly replaced gear gave him a different look on almost every trip. Once, when Benicio was seventeen, he actually lost track of who his father was. It was a gentle drift dive with a hefty tour group from Arkansas. At sixty feet Benicio noticed an outline in the sand—a flounder, big as a loveseat—and grabbed at what he thought was his father’s wrist to point it out. But it was a stranger. She pulled her hand back and shot him beady annoyance through her prescription mask. Benicio swam out ahead of their party and looked back at them. The divers were all big, bright shapes. He couldn’t pick his father out.

He only found him at the end, when they all floated atop a high ridge of coral to decompress before ascent. Howard was hugging the base of a barrel sponge, kicking his feet out now and again to keep himself stationary. Near the base of the sponge was a crust of dead coral, and sprouting from that was a single blue-and-yellow Christmas-tree worm no bigger than a child’s thumb. Howard waved his hand in front of the worm and—shump!—it retreated into its hole. He waited, rapt. The worm remerged, its short little tendrils splaying out one by one. He waved his hand and again it shot back inside.

Howard looked up at Benicio with delight. With wonder. He pointed to the worm—which was emerging yet again—and signed OK, which meant “not dying” but also “this is good.” Benicio returned the OK. The master unsheathed her dive knife and banged it against her tank to get everybody’s attention. She thumbed up at the surface for them to ascend. Howard drifted away from the barrel sponge, but Benicio lingered there for a moment, staring at the tiny animal. He didn’t get what was so special about it. But he sensed, at least, that it was special. Then, with a kick, he floated weightlessly away. He looked straight up to keep his airway open. He felt his breath expand. Up above Howard was already near the surface—his arms extended, like they’d been trained, so those above would see him coming.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexander Yates grew up in Haiti, Mexico, and Bolivia. He graduated from high school in the Philippines, where he returned to work in the political section of the U.S. Embassy after receiving a BA in English from the University of Virginia. He holds an MFA from Syracuse University. His short story “Everything, Clearly” appears in the 2010 edition of American Fiction: the Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers.