Looking Through Water

by Bob Rich

  William found the rum and climbed up the ladder holding two bottles of booze. He gave one to Cole, who was piloting the boat with their father’s ashes secured on the steering console in front of him.

  “Thanks,” Cole said, twisting off the wax-sealed cork on his bottle.

  “Cuban rum,” Cole said. “Our dad said it was the best in the world. Cheers.”

  “Wait a minute,” William said, opening his bottle. “Before we toast, how ’bout a little game of chance?”

  “What do you have in mind?” Cole asked.

  “First man to finish his bottle gets to keep the boat,” William said.

  “You’re on,” Cole said.

  They clinked bottles and each took a huge chug. As they stopped to take a deep breath, it looked like each of them had downed about a third of his bottle. They both gulped as the rum burned going down. William tried not to cough or show any weakness, and he knew that Cole was doing the same as he put his bottle down on the console.

  “How far out did you say we’re going?” William asked.

  “Well, it would be sixty miles if we went straight as the crow flies,” Cole said, “but with the wind blowing these waves straight in our face, we’ll make better time by quartering up a little to the north then sliding down some waves when we get close. I figure we’ve got about sixty-five miles to cover. It’s gonna get a little rough on the way over, but the trip back should be like a sleigh ride.”

  “What’s out there?” William asked.

  “Treacherous waters,” Cole said, “isolated as hell, strong currents, and shallow reefs. Cay Sal Bank is just a narrow spit of land. Often used as a place for drug smugglers to off-load their shit onto smaller boats from the Keys. It’s also where our dad hooked up that giant blue marlin he always talked about.”

  It seemed to William that the booze was making his brother a little more chatty and even polite. It didn’t last long.

  “Those clouds out there are looking a little . . . moody, Cole,” William observed.

  “Moody, my ass,” Cole scoffed. “Those are screamers—a real shitstorm. We can turn around if you’re scared!”

  “I’m not scared, Cole. I just want full disclosure. I want to know if it’s a problem.”

  Cole picked up the bottle holding their father’s ashes, looked his brother in the eye, and said, “It’s not a problem, William. You’re the problem. And . . . in the interest of full disclosure, this is no day to be doing this, but honestly I don’t care much about anything these days and least of all you.”

  Saying that, he reached over and put the baling wire handle on one of the rigger clips, raised the clip to the top of the rigger, then lowered the rigger to a horizontal fishing position, thus suspending their father’s ashes high over the ocean.

  “What do you think you’re doing with those?” William asked him.

  He finished hoisting the ashes to the farthest end of the rigger and said, “Dad would have liked the view from up there.”

  • • •

  Back on the rowboat on Loch Loon, Kyle’s voice called out in excitement, interrupting the story. “Grandpa! My bobber just went down! I got a bite! I got a bite!”

  “That’s good,” William told him. “Now keep your rod tip up.”

  Kyle tried to reel line in but all he got back was the sound of the screaming of his small open-face spinning reel as line flew off the spool. “Don’t try to reel when he’s taking line, Kyle. Let him run. Remember, fishing is like being in a prizefight. This is his round,” he said, “and he’ll get tired. Then you can take in some line. That’ll be your round. The fight may go on and on, but be patient. The one who wins the last round, wins the fight. That’s the secret to fightin’ a fish, son. Got it?”

  “Yeah, I think so, Grandpa. What do you think it is?” the boy asked.

  Examining the bend in his fragile rod, William said, “Son, I think you’ve got an Esox lucius.”

  “Say what?” Kyle asked.

  “A great northern pike,” he answered, “a real carnivorous freshwater predator, like a barracuda in saltwater.”

  As the fish stopped running, Kyle reeled in some line.

  “In all the time we’ve fished together, Grandpa, I don’t think I’ve ever caught a big pike,” the boy said. “It sure as hell is pulling.”

  “Hey, steady, son, watch your language. If you curse, you will not catch fish,” the old man told him.

  “Well, cursing sure hasn’t stopped you from catchin’, Gramps,” he said.

  “You got me there, son,” the grandfather said, laughing. “Now lift up slowly and reel down. That’s the way you fight fish of any size.”

  As Kyle cranked the reel handle, he looked over the side and said, “Grandpa! I can see him! I can see him!”

  The old man looked over the side and saw the fish, too; it was indeed a pike, a beauty, maybe thirty-six inches long with a menacing jaw and green body with white dots. Occasionally it’d roll over on his back, showing its yellow-and-white belly.

  Kyle was getting stronger, and the fish was tiring badly.

  “Keep cranking, son,” the grandfather said. “This is the last round.”

  William grabbed the net and scooped the exhausted fish up to the surface. He was huge and barely fit into the net. William held the fish still in the water by the side of the boat.

  “I did it! I did it,” Kyle shouted, grinning from ear to ear. “I caught that pike!”

  “Congratulations, Kyle,” he said, laughing and shaking his hand. “Now it’s in your blood. You’re ruined for life.”

  “Grandpa?” Kyle asked. “Do we keep him or let him go?”

  “Kyle, that’s up to you,” he told him. “It’s your fish. We can let him go or we can keep him and have our chef at the restaurant cook him for dinner.”

  Looking troubled, Kyle said, “Do I have to choose?”

  “Yes, you do. That’s what we grown-ups have to do every day,” William said. “We make choices in our lives, and it’s not always easy. But you’re lucky today because there’s no wrong answer here, buddy. There are a lot of pike in this lake, and they make great eating—you wouldn’t be wasting it. Or, if you like, we can release him. There is honor either way.”

  Kyle paused to think, then said, “I want to release him,” making his old granddad smile.

  “Okay then,” William said. “Lean over here and watch how I do this. Pike are toothy critters and can take off a finger if you’re not careful.”

  William took out a pair of needle-nose pliers and carefully removed the hook from the fish’s lip. Then he opened the net in the water—and with a thrust of his big tail, the pike was gone in a flash.

  “Wow,” Kyle said, “that was great. Thanks, Grandpa. Now I want to catch one for dinner.”

  “Let’s do it, buddy,” he said.

  They baited their hooks and began fishing again. Kyle leaned back on his flotation cushion and said, “So, you’re heading to sea with Cole and there’s a storm coming.”

  “Yeah,” William said, “there was a storm coming outside the boat and inside it as well.”

  • • •

  By now, William and Cole were pretty well into the afternoon and still running toward their destination. The late-day sun broke in and out of some ominous-looking towering stratus clouds. The wind was picking up and the swells were increasing. Then Cole pulled back on the throttle, bringing them to trolling speed. He put on the autopilot to keep the boat on the correct compass course.

  Cole put down the other outrigger and said, “C’mon down,” as he climbed down the ladder. When he got to the cockpit he set out two trolling lines.

  “What are we doing?” William asked him.

  “We’re fishin’,” Cole said. “Lotta critters out here. Might as well try and catch some nice mahi mahi for dinner. We can grill it up with some lime juice.”

  “So how far are we from Cay Sal Bank?” William asked.

  Cole just gazed out at the angry ocean with its w
aves swelling up in all directions. He seemed to look up at the dark-purple clouds as they twisted and towered. He raised both arms to the raging sea and shouted, “We’re there!”

  Then he examined his rum bottle next to William’s to see that he led the challenge by about an inch. Taking a deep breath, he chugged the rest of his rum, held his empty bottle up, and said, “It looks like the boat’s mine.”

  “Congratulations,” William said. “You deserve it.”

  Laughing, Cole ran another baited hook up one of the riggers and set the butt end of the rod down in a rod holder.

  “He knew he was dying, didn’t he?” William asked Cole.

  “Heart attack, man. There’s no way of tellin’,” Cole said.

  “Why’d he call me then?” William asked. “Why after all this time, after all these years? Why did he call me that night?”

  Cole paused, looked him in the eye, and said, “The tailor.”

  “The what?” William said.

  “He always kept tabs on you through the tailor.”

  “Through Bernard?”

  “Yeah, the old Scotsman, as Dad would say. He called that night and told Dad about your public meltdown. Dad figured you’d need to get out of New York and lay low for a while.”

  William was stunned. “And you went along with it, the whole deal?”

  “I had no say in the matter, did I? Anyway, it wasn’t for you, dummy,” Cole shouted. “It was important to him.”

  William felt his anger growing and shouted, “Important to him? Oh really? Do you know that when my mother was on her deathbed dying of dementia eleven years ago, he left her? Didn’t even have the decency to come to her funeral . . . to honor her, because he was on some fucking fishing trip to Panama and the black marlin were running. You and your mother, the mighty Mrs. Reno, were probably with him for all I know.”

  “Mrs. Reno, my what?” Cole yelled at him.

  “Your mother,” William shouted back. “I saw all those pictures of the three of you in her office . . .”

  “William,” Cole yelled, “you are truly an ignorant asshole. Mrs. Reno is not my mother. My mother was a dancer in town at a joint named Woody’s. I was an angry problem child. A bastard with no father. I was skipping school and getting into trouble all the time. One day when I was fifteen, two buddies of mine and I stole a car, went for a joyride, and got arrested. My mother had enough. She left, just left. Went up north with a trucker. I haven’t heard a word from her since.

  “There I was stuck in jail and Mrs. Reno got me out and offered me free room and board if I would clean up her restaurant every night. I never even met Leo, our father, till I was twenty-one.”

  Cole was wound up now and yelled, “While you were growin’ up in the lap of luxury with your rich mommy and daddy, I was a bastard kid scrubbing urinals, washing toilets and cleaning up drunks’ puke in a gin mill to get by. Now I have you crying up a river and you know what I say? I say fuck you and your dead mother!”

  The rage was back, and William knew it was time. He stormed to the salon and grabbed the rosewood box, brought it out to the cockpit, opened it up, and tossed one of the pistols to Cole.

  Thunder rolled in the distance as flecks of rain began to fall around the two brothers. Cole looked amazed.

  William stepped back, cocked his pistol, and pointed it right between Cole’s eyes. Cole looked at William at first in disbelief; then he slowly cocked and raised his pistol as well till William was looking right down its barrel. Through his anger and hatred, and despite everything, William respected this man’s courage.

  “Say that again, Cole, I fuckin’ dare you to say it again,” William shouted.

  By now the storm was raging and the two brothers were standing in the cockpit of the old fishing boat staring each other down over the sights of their cocked pistols.

  “When did she die?” Cole shouted over the storm.

  “What?” William yelled back.

  “Your mom, when did she die?”

  “Christmas Day, ten years ago.”

  Strangely, Cole lowered his pistol, and his look of rage turned into a look of sadness.

  “He wasn’t fishing,” Cole said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When your mom died, our father was in Panama but he wasn’t fishing,” Cole said.

  “Well, what was he doing then?” William asked, still pointing his pistol at Cole’s head.

  “He was bailing my ass out of Panamanian prison,” Cole said. “I was looking at life for trafficking. They allowed me one call. The only person I could think of to call was Mrs. Reno, who called our dad. He brought a bunch of money and came down there for me. It nearly busted him, but he got me out.”

  William was speechless. He took his finger off the trigger and relaxed his gun.

  Cole added, “And I had no idea about your mother. I’m sorry.

  “I knew how proud he was of you,” Cole went on. “Sometimes on the boat that’s all he’d talk about. It made me feel useless.”

  Now it was Cole’s turn to soften. “I also know that he felt he’d burned his bridges up north and was embarrassed about how he left . . . and now I know why.”

  William’s rage had vanished and he found himself looking at Cole for the first time as his brother.

  Then looking at the bottle of ashes William said, “I would imagine that if I were him, I’d have done the same thing.”

  Cole nodded. With that, William knew exactly what to do. With a quick sweep of his arm, he swung the pistol up and took careful aim at the bottle hanging from the rigger. The gun fired and the bottle full of ashes exploded. The ashes seemed to hang in the air as if in slow motion before they swirled in the wind and disappeared into the waves of the raging ocean.

  William looked at the pistol and then threw it into the ocean as far as he could. Cole laughed and did the same with his.

  All of a sudden there was a huge flash of lightning and roar of thunder as one of the trolling lines that Cole had rigged started flying off the reel, which made an angry hissing noise. The rod bent over double.

  Cole looked at his brother and mouthed the understatement of the day: Big fish.

  “How big?” William asked.

  “Marlin big,” he said, then added, “How much were those dueling pistols worth?”

  “I don’t know,” William said, “fifteen or twenty thousand, maybe. Why?”

  “I think we overpaid the fish!” Cole laughed. “You ready for this?”

  “Hell yes!” William shouted.

  Cole grabbed a wide, brown leather fighting belt from a cupboard. As he finished cinching it around William’s waist, the monster fish flashed up from the depths and shot fully out of the water, twisting and somersaulting.

  “Oh my God,” Cole yelled. “She’s friggin’ huge, must weigh fifteen or sixteen hundred pounds!”

  “Dad’s marlin?” William asked.

  “Might well be,” Cole said, “just might well be.

  “All right,” he told William, “when I tell you, loosen the drag on the reel a little by pulling this lever back half an inch so you can lift the rod out of the rod holder and put the butt of the rod in your fighting belt.”

  “Wait a minute, you’re the expert,” William said.

  “That’s right, and I’m also the captain and I gotta run the boat.”

  “Well, don’t you have one of those nice big fighting chairs?” William asked.

  Cole said, laughing, “No, not on this boat. We fight fish the same way we piss, like men—standing up!”

  With that he climbed up the ladder, turned off the autopilot, and nudged the throttle forward a little. “You ready?” he shouted from the bridge.

  “No, wait a minute,” William said, taking a huge swig and finishing the rum in his bottle. Then he yelled, “Ready.”

  “Do it!” the captain ordered.

  William loosened the drag and grabbed the rod and felt the fish’s weight as he lifted it from the rod holder. It was
a major struggle to get the butt section into the rod belt. No doubt feeling the drag pressure change, the big marlin came out of the water and took off at full speed away from the boat.

  The power of the marlin’s surge pulled William to the very back of the cockpit. Jamming his knees into the transom, he held on for dear life.

  Cole, seeing his situation, calmly yelled down from the bridge, “Hey, big brother, you better loosen that drag a little unless you really want to swim with the fishes this afternoon.”

  William did as he was told and bought himself a short breather. As it would turn out, they had bigger problems than that fish. While they fought on, the winds seemed to increase to gale force and the heavens opened up on them. As chains of lightning ripped across the sky, with thunder crashing all around them, they were pelted with a driving rain that felt like hail, and it was. Hailstones, some the size of golf balls, bounced off the deck. Then William’s rod started buzzing with static electricity. He knew that was not good. He was basically standing in a storm holding a long lightning rod. Damn the torpedoes, he thought. He wanted to catch this monster, and there was nowhere to hide anyway.

  Just then he heard Cole yell, “Watch out,” and looked up in time to see a fifteen-foot wave building to hit them broadside. The concussion of the wave knocked William to his knees as he struggled to hold on to the rod. He got back to his feet just to see the ankle-deep water on the deck rushing down into the engine room.

  All of a sudden the running lights went out, followed promptly by the engine going dead. Then there was darkness, rain and the howling winds punctuated by flashes of lightning and deafening explosions of thunder.

  William fought to keep his balance in the cockpit and to keep his line tight on the marlin. On the bridge Cole struggled to restart the engine and keep the boat under some control.

  “What’s going on, Cole?” William yelled.

  “We’ve lost our electronics,” Cole yelled back.

  “That sounds bad.”

  “It ain’t good.”

  With no forward motion the Keys Disease pitched and yawed dangerously in the dark waves.

  “Whatever happens,” Cole yelled to him, “you hold on to that fish. Don’t let her go.”