by Winton, Tom
Propelled by its foot-wide tail, the tarpon immediately dove to deeper water. Gently, I thumbed the revolving spool to prevent it from back lashing. It took every ounce of discipline I could muster not to set the hook. But I knew the big fish needed time to turn the mullet headfirst in its cavernous mouth before swallowing it. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump, I could feel my hopped-up heart caroming off the sides of its ribbed cage. Ten, twenty, thirty more yards I let it swim. Then it came time. I engaged the reel’s spool, let the line yank the rod tip almost all the way down to the water then reared back. Three times in succession I jerked the rod, hard, putting my back and shoulders behind every yank. The needle-sharp hook struck home. It penetrated the powerful fish’s boney jaw.
“I got him! I got him!” I hollered to the others as the silver monster catapulted from the water somewhere out in the darkness. A second later it landed back on the surface, and it sounded like a full grown man had belly-whopped from the bridge. Again water splayed everywhere – this time beyond the glow of the boat’s lights. Way out there in the black, moonless night, the splash created a spectacular light-show of neon phosphorescence. Then the huge fish sounded. It dove deeper and deeper into the eerie depths of the channel. Straining now to hang onto the bouncing, bucking rod, I felt as if I had a crazed mustang tied to the business end of the line.”
“Way to go!” Jackie shouted excitedly, spilling some of his beer on his pants.
“Keep the tip up,” Fred coached, “just like you’re doing.”
I didn’t say anything, neither did Pa or Buster. Calm as could be, they both just watched me. Over the years they had seen thousands of fishermen under pressure. Now they were assessing the way I handled a rod. It was important to me that I impressed them. Real sport fishermen, like all true sportsmen, take deep pride in how well they perform when they do the one thing they are most passionate about.
The mighty fish jumped a few more times then took off like a runaway freight train again. Up to this point I’d been cranking the reel with my right hand, supporting the rod with the other. My left forearm felt like it was pumped-up to twice its normal size. Each time the tarpon had jumped it shook its massive head so hard that the rod tip jolted frantically from side to side. Nevertheless, I thought I had things pretty much under control. But then things changed. My heart stood still when I felt the fish’s broad, swishing tail slapping the line as it sounded once again. Then there was nothing. The line went slack. I was sure that the tarpon frayed the monofilament line and had broken free.
“He cut me,” I said, “unless he’s coming in.”
“He is!” Buster yelled out in a rare display of excitement. “He’s comin’ towards us! Reel! Reel like hell!”
Then Pa chimed in, “He’ll jump again. That’s when he’ll throw the hook – unless you get that slack out. Crank! Keep crankin’!”
With my palms and fingers wet with perspiration, it was tough to keep the reel’s handle from slipping out of my grip, but I managed. And I kept reeling like a madman. Little by little, I brought in the slack until I’d recouped most of the line. Finally I could feel the fish’s weight again. Beads of sweat streamed my forehead and cheeks, dripping off my chin. My breathing was heavy and rapid.
“He’s going to jump!” Fred Sampson bellowed above the torrential rain as it pummeled the water all around us.
“Be sure to bow the rod tip toward to him,” Buster added, “when he breaks the surface!”
Silently, we all watched the line as it lifted out of the cresting waves. The fish was rushing up from the depths. With my bent knees now leaning against the side of the boat for support, I was struggling to keep up with the fish but kept reeling and reeling. I thought all the hard work and excitement would never end. But that thought was a short-lived. What was about to happen would instantaneously clear all our minds.
Not ten feet from The Island Belle’s stern the fish erupted from the water. Up, up, up – water flying everywhere, the creature rose like an angry silver missile. Its entire body cleared the surface and it shimmied and danced atop its sweeping tail.
“Would ya look at that?” Jacky Beers shouted as his wheelchair bumped into my leg.
Right before our eyes, the huge fish suspended itself in the thick humid air. We were so close to it we could clearly hear its massive gills rattling like two loco castanets. Frantically, like a berserk bulldog, it was shaking its head from side to side. Certainly it was trying to throw the hook, but it seemed to be saying to me, “No, no, no, no! You’re not going to win this battle.”
It was an incredible performance. Watching this prehistoric gladiator, its glistening sides armored with silver dollar sized scales, was an event I’d never forget. I didn’t have time to stop and think about it, but this was one of those amazing images I would be able to pull from my memory for the rest of my life. A picture I’d visualize with life-like clarity.
Finally the tarpon lost out to the law of gravity and it fell – headfirst in our direction. It landed so close to the boat that all of us got a warm saltwater shower. Wiping the spray from his face, Buster said, “I’ve seen ’em land in boats before. I know lots of guides who’ve had bow rails bent, and worse, from big tarpon.” Those last words no sooner left his mouth when thunder boomed and the brightest network of spidery white lightning yet lit the entire sky.
“Hell of a cooker comin’, Sonny. You better get this fish in soon,” Pa said.
“Then we’ll make a run for it,” Buster added with a hint of concern in his voice. “We just might be able to beat this storm back to the dock.”
The fish was tiring. No longer was it making any desperate runs. Instead, it swam slowly in shrinking circles on the surface before us. Leaning back on the rod, I steadily led it toward me. When I got it alongside the boat the old fish tried one last trick. As if suddenly injected with adrenaline, it tried to dart under the boat. Quickly, it yanked the rod tip into the sea water below. I pulled back once again – harder than any other time during the encounter. Finally, he stopped. I’d managed to prevent the line from scraping the hull. But for a few more seconds it was still a standoff – him fighting for his freedom – me fighting just for a moment’s glory. At last, I pulled the fish out from underneath and back alongside the boat. It just laid there exhausted, on the surface, its broad tail waving slowly like a white flag after a battle.
At that exact moment the rain started to fall. Heavy drops the size of dimes started pelting me, the rest of the men, the fish, the boat and the water. As if someone in the dark heavens above had thrown a switch, a blustery cool wind howled in out of the north. Buster grabbed a gaff hook from the recessed storage area in the gunwale, turned his Redman cap backwards on his head so as not to lose it then glanced over his shoulder at the approaching storm. The tarpon was still on its side, head first in the current; its spirit not broken, but its body exhausted.
With a gloved paw, Buster reached over the side and grabbed the leader just beneath the swivel. Gently, he slid the gaff into the fish’s lower jaw and lifted it partially out of the water. We all leaned over the side, assessing it in awe. It was a giant of its species by any sportsman’s standards.
“I’ll bet she’d go one-eighty; one-eighty-five,” Buster said as the rain came down even harder.
“That’s one goliath of a fish,” Jackie slurred, as he gave me a light, celebratory punch in the shoulder.
Still leaning over the side and holding the line, Buster said, “Sonny, get those pliers outta my sheath and pull this hook out.” The long blond hair beneath his cap now lifting wildly, he appraised the position of the fish hook.
I grabbed the pliers, and removed the five-aught hook by rocking it side to side and pushing at the same time.
“Turn around you guys,” Pa then said, standing behind us with his hand protecting the lens of a Pentax. We all turned; Buster hoisted the fish high as he could, and the camera flashed – along with another bolt of lightning. Hurriedly, Pa put the camera back inside the cock
pit, and Buster leaned back over the side. As he lowered the “silver king” back into the water, big waves – seemingly angry waves slammed one after another into the side of the boat. Rocking hard as we were, Buster had all he could do to hold the fish headfirst in the current.
With the rain and wind now coming at us with all the force of a tropical storm, the boat was really rocking and rolling. Pa had had enough. He turned over the engines then bellowed above them and the wind, “Come on! Let’s get the hell outta here!”
“Just a damn minute,” Buster barked back over his shoulder, “I need another minute!”
He was still trying to resuscitate the fish, and it was working. The flowing water of the flood tide was bringing life-sustaining oxygen into the fish’s respiratory system. Side by side, in the pouring rain, the four of us watched as the beats of its tail grew stronger. Finally, when the time was right, Buster released his grip on the tarpon’s lower lip. Able to keep itself upright now, it hesitated for just a moment then slowly started making its way back into the black depths of the channel. Once it was out of sight, and Buster was relieved no sharks had been lying in wait he shouted, “Okay! Kick it in gear!”
Pa didn’t need to be told twice. He gunned it immediately and The Island Belle lurched forward. All the rest of us grabbed onto the side so as not to take a tumble and crash into the stern. As we clutched the fiberglass another nasty bolt of lightning struck nearby. Only two hundred yards away, this one lit up the swimming beach on the Bahia Honda State Park shoreline. Once Pa got the boat up on plane we all made a dash for the cockpit. It surely wasn’t the safest place to be in a storm like this, but we all felt a bit more secure in there. Nobody said a word as we sped out of the channel and into the unsheltered waters of the now turbulent Atlantic.
Thrilled as I was to have caught the prize tarpon, this was no night to be cruising in a boat. Oh sure, when I was still with Wendy, back in New York, I had been in my share of rough seas. Several times, while winter fishing for cod off Montauk Point, the boat I’d been on had to head in early because of snow and rough seas. But this was different. I was far more nervous this time. The electrical storm’s highly-charged winds were energizing the ocean’s surface into a frothy mess. Out in the darkness, all around The Island Belle, legions of menacing, white-capped demons seemed to be doing some kind of angry, ritualistic dance. I’d never seen anything like it before. The waves seemed to be charging us from all directions. They were tall waves too, huge breakers and close as they were to one another, only made the situation all the more precarious. Between the waves, the rain and the ungodly wind it seemed like Mother Ocean had been possessed – like she was searching in the darkness for something to sacrifice.
Able as the cruiser was, it was barely making it over the top of each wave. And each time it cleared one, the bow pounded back onto the water so hard my teeth chattered. I could live with that, the rain, and the wind, but there was all that lightning as well. It was now cracking all around us, sometimes two bolts at once. And the thunder, it was deafening. Every time it resonated the entire boat shivered as if it were scared to death. Even with all the beer Jackie had drunk that day, I could still see plenty of fear in his eyes as he clung to the back of Buster’s seat.
Buster had taken over the helm for Pa, and I could hear the tenseness in his voice when he said, “Damn! I hate lightening!”
“I don’t blame you,” I shouted, as the horizontal rain whipped into the cockpit. “I’ve never been in a T storm like this one.”
“’Bout four years ago,” Buster came back, “I was standin’ on the dock behind the house and got knocked plumb on my ass by a strike.”
“You get hurt?”
“Nah, but when it first hit I thought it was all over. I remember smelling this ... this sulphur like smell – like burning matches.”
With the danger we were now in, the last thing I needed to hear about was Buster being hit by lightning. But I was his guest and, like everybody else onboard, I was doing the best I could to hide my anxiety.
“What was it like? What did it feel like?” I asked.
“Felt like somebody came up from behind and whacked me square on the top of the head with a lead pipe.”
“Yeah,” Pa then said. “I told ’im to come in off that dock.”
“Hell, Pa, how many times I got to tell you? ’Cept for some nasty clouds just startin’ to show on the horizon the whole sky was clear.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Pa came back again. “They were dark, nasty, ink-blue clouds. And I told you it wasn’t safe out there.”
There was an uncomfortable pause in the conversation then. Obviously the father and son had been down this road before, more than once. In an attempt to lessen the tension between them, I said, “I didn’t know that lightening from a storm that far away could hit somebody.”
“Well it sure got me! I’m lucky as hell to still be here.”
For the next ten minutes, nobody said much of anything. Nervous eyes clicked back and forth and we all flinched every time thunder boomed overhead and lightning lit up the cockpit. Laboriously, the boat ploughed ahead until, suddenly, we were out of the storm. Quick as you could snap your fingers we passed through the outer edge of the god awful, life-threatening squall. Just like that the wind let up, the rain ceased, and the sea settled into smaller, smoother waves. The storm was still following us toward Wrecker’s Key, but we were finally out of it and would easily beat it back to the dock.
Right away everybody except Buster stepped out onto the deck and headed straight for the beer cooler. Pa grabbed two cans and went back into the cockpit with his son. Fred and Jackie struck up a conversation about what we’d just been through. And I looked out at the starry half of the dark Florida sky in front of us. With The Island Belle quickly picking up speed now, I reached into my pocket for my cigarettes. They were soaking wet, but that was okay. All that really mattered was that we were safe now. Or so I thought.
It wasn’t long before Buster eased back on the throttle, and we rounded the buoy leading into Wrecker’s channel. The area around the bridge was a no-wake zone so we approached it ever so slowly. The low hum of the idling engines was the only sound to be heard in the dark, Florida Keys night. That is, until we passed through the two rows of towering concrete pilings. The moment The Island Belle cleared the bridge and came out the other side Jackie Beers suddenly let out a scream so loud it could probably be heard all the way down the channel to the trailer park.
“OH HELL! LOOK! IT LOOKS LIKE THE STORE’S ON FIRE!”
Instantly, we all jerked our heads to the port side. The boat was still moving ever so slowly across the water, but we could only get one quick glimpse down the Overseas Highway before the road and store would be obscured by the surrounding trees. But that was more than enough time. We could all see small orange flames on the roof of the wooden building.
“Sons of bitches,” Buster growled, stretching his words out in a vengeful, hateful tone. “They did it, Pa! They fucking did it!”
“Look! There’s a car!” I blurted out. “See it? See the red tail lights? It’s pulling away from the store.”
“I see them!” said Fred Sampson. “It’s too damn far and dark to tell what kind of a car it is. But it is definitely a car, not a truck.”
“Yeah, the bastard’s heading south,” Buster added, as the two red lights and the store disappeared behind the tree line.
Jerking his head back toward the windshield Buster goosed the throttle and we sped straight toward the dock. Only a couple of minutes passed before he brought her down off plane, but when he did we were approaching the wooden structure too fast. Slam! The Island Belle rammed into a piling. The boat jolted hard and, at the exact same moment, ear-splitting thunder boomed directly overhead, again. The storm had caught up with us. Thin streaks of erratic, white lightning scratched the clouds, but it didn’t stop Fred. Lickity-split, like a cat, he was up on the bow tying a line to the dock.
Now shifting the big
engines from reverse into neutral, Buster told Pa to finish tying her up. The current was already pulling the stern away from the berth, but there was no time to dillydally with that. Buster, Fred and I leapt off the bow onto the dock, and when we hit the wooden planking Fred let out a howl. “Ohhhh shit! That hurts!” Wearing just flip-flops he’d landed on his left ankle with all his weight. His foot had broken through the thong on the rubber sandal and two huge splinters spiked into his foot when it slid. Buster and I paused to take a look but Fred blurted, “Forget about me. Get the hell down to the store, quick!
Buster and I raced off the dock, rounded the cistern alongside the house then kept going across the lawn and into the jungle. As we dodged trees and bushes in the blackness, I felt all kinds of unknown things crunching beneath my feet. There was no stopping. We had to get to that store before the fire got totally out of hand. Then, just as we reached the curve in the shell road, it started to rain. It poured. Big, heavy drops started beating the palmettos and trees all around us. I could smell the musky scent of the woods as a black crowned night heron protested our arrival. “Kwawk” it cried out from somewhere in the dark woods as we pushed through the heaven-sent tropical downpour. We didn’t take the road. Instead Buster said, “This way!”, and led me through a shortcut. Side by side, with rain dripping off the bill of his cap and streaming down my face, we dashed through a stand of pines, slipping and sliding on a soaking wet bed of dead pine needles.
There had been two separate fires set at the back of the building. The first one had climbed up the wall of the convenience store; the other, thirty feet down, behind the bar. Both were started on the outside, after the back wall had been doused with gasoline. The good news was that it hadn’t gotten out of hand. By the time Buster and I came huffing and puffing up to the building, the windblown, pelting rain had all but extinguished the flames. And it was still coming down hard as ever.