Man Trip

by Graham Salisbury

  I glanced up at Ledward. He gave me a grin and a thumbs-up.

  “Can you see the lure I just put out?” Baja Bill asked.

  “I think so. By the third wave in the wake?”

  Baja Bill clapped my back. “Good eyes. You’re catching on.”

  The new lure plunged, smoked, and wiggled. If any lure was going to grab a marlin’s attention, it would be that one.

  “We’re coming to find you, Big Mama,” Baja Bill said to the sea.

  The engines thrummed as we circled back toward the birds. Ocean water hissed out from under the hull.

  Baja Bill looked up at Ledward. “Let’s trade places. If we get another hit, we need you down here. I’m feeling lucky. I’m thinking big.”

  Ledward set the wheel on autopilot and climbed down as Baja Bill went up.

  Ledward stood watching the lures with his knees braced up against the stern gunnel. I sat in the chair, ready to jump out if anything happened.

  Deep-sea fishing was something else! It grabbed you and took you away. When it was boring and nothing was happening, you sat there thinking about what could happen. And then when something did happen, your mind was on the fish and nothing else in the whole entire universe. Nothing.

  I was hooked. Just like a fish.

  I couldn’t wait to tell my friends about it. Mom and Darci, too.

  I watched the Black Mariah work behind the boat. Baja Bill set four other lines out, too, all of them plunging and leaving smoky trails of bubbles in the wake.

  We ran through the birds again. Flying fish thumped onto the deck.

  I thought I saw something in the water and stretched to look harder. There was a huge dark shadow in the wake. “Ledward!” I said, stumbling out of the fighting chair. “Look!”

  Just as he turned, the ocean erupted!

  A bill and a huge head came out of the water—and a fierce eye.

  The marlin rose … and rose and rose. The neon-blue bars on its side glistened, and when it fell back into the sea, the ocean around it thundered, turned white, and whoomped out in every direction.

  “Jeese!” I gasped.

  Seconds later, a reel screamed.

  This marlin was bigger by far than the one we’d lost, and it was tearing away toward the horizon, taking Baja Bill’s Black Mariah with it!

  Ledward fought the rod out of its chrome holder. The marlin was too big, too fast. He could barely stagger the rod over to the fighting chair.

  I tried to get out of his way, fell, and hit my elbow on the bench seat.

  Baja Bill slammed the throttle down, slowing the boat. The stern rose in the oncoming wake. The reel kept screaming as the marlin ran away with more and more line. Sweat rolled down Ledward’s grimacing red face.

  Baja Bill jumped off the ladder onto the deck. He grabbed my arm and helped me up. “You okay?”

  I nodded.

  He pointed off the back of the boat. “Watch. Keep your eyes right there. She’s going to come up.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  Ledward bent forward, gripping the rod, now alive with line still racing off the reel. More and more and more.

  Far behind the boat the marlin leaped fully out of the water, its tail slashing the air. It was so big I could hardly believe my eyes.

  “Big Mama!” Baja Bill shouted.

  The wild run soon slowed, and Ledward managed to fall back into the chair and start the fight.

  Baja Bill wrapped a harness around Ledward’s lower back and clipped it to hooks on the reel. “You’re going to need this with that one. She could break your back, you don’t watch out.”

  Ledward grimaced. “In fifteen places.”

  The harness was only clipped to the reel. If the fish was strong enough, could it pull Ledward into the ocean?

  He hauled back on the rod, teeth clenched. Veins bulged in his neck. He reeled line in when he fell forward. Gaining an inch here, an inch there. Bit by bit. Pull and reel. Over and over, until he was so sweaty it looked as if he’d just climbed out of the ocean.

  Baja Bill scooped a bucket of water out of the sea and sponged Ledward’s head to cool him off.

  Ledward kept fighting.

  Baja Bill grinned at me. “He’s going to feel like he’s been hit by a truck tomorrow morning.”

  Ledward grunted.

  For the next two hours, Ledward fought that fish closer and closer. Baja Bill went back and forth to the wheel, keeping the line directly off the back of the boat, never letting it run to one side or the other.

  I climbed up to the bridge and stood near him, looking down on Ledward and the sea behind us. I could see the marlin underwater, keeping pace, a huge dark monster on the port side.

  “Leader’s coming up!” Ledward shouted. “Get down here!”

  Baja Bill put the boat on slow autopilot and I followed him down to the deck. With both hands on my shoulders, he bent over and looked me in the eye. “We’re going to need your help, Calvin. This is a three-man job, minimum. I’m going to ask you to do something you’ve never done in your life. You haven’t even dreamed of it. I’m going to ask you to tag a nine-hundred-pound fish. By yourself.”

  Baja Bill handed me a razor-sharp boat knife. I turned it toward the sun. It had nicks in the blade. It had been used a lot. I hadn’t done one thing, and already my hands were shaking.

  “And this,” he said, holding up a pole with a small flaglike thing on its tip, “is your tag stick. I’ll tell you what to do with it when the time comes. Tell you what to do with the knife, too. You ready?”

  I nodded, not ready at all. What was tagging? What was the knife for?

  Baja Bill took off his watch and stuck it in his pocket. A band of white skin circled his tanned wrist. He dug around in a drawer and pulled out a pair of tough canvas gloves with long cuffs that went halfway up to his elbows.

  He looked over at Ledward. “How’s she feel?”

  “Hopefully, we have an understanding.”

  Baja Bill pulled me close and pointed toward the marlin gliding just behind the boat in the clear water. Sunlight flashed on her flank. “See those stripes? That she still has them means she’s far from finished, and that’s just where we want her.”

  The marlin looked longer than Mom’s car. Its tail alone wouldn’t fit in the fish hold, where we’d put the ono. “How you going to get it on the boat? It’s so big.”

  “We’re not. We’re going to tag her and turn her loose. That’s where you come in.”

  Man oh man oh man oh man.

  “Okay, Led,” Baja Bill said. “Bring that leader up to where I can reach it, slowly now.”

  Ledward pulled back on the rod, using his back and the harness, then turned the reel lightly. Nobody wanted to see that giant fish go crazy again.

  Baja Bill braced his knees up against the gunnel and leaned over the water. He took the leader in one hand and pulled smoothly toward his chest.

  The marlin moved closer to the boat.

  Baja Bill reached out with his other hand, wrapped the leader around his fist, and slowly drew the marlin closer. “Okay, Calvin. Bring the knife and the stick and come stand next to me.”

  I braced my knees against the gunnel like he did.

  “Now, listen,” Baja Bill said. “We’ve got to do this right.”

  I gripped the knife in one hand and the tag stick in the other. “Ready.”

  “Good. Stand by till I tell you to move.”

  Baja Bill pulled the fish closer, and closer. “Led, back off on the drag a little. Give me a foot or two of line. Okay now, Calvin. I’m going to walk this fish forward, and I want you to set the tag. What you’re going to do is firmly poke the point of that stick into the side of the fish, just at the shoulder, by her dorsal fin. Poke it in and pull the stick back. The tag will stay in the fish—and don’t worry. She won’t feel it. Don’t move till I tell you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Nothing else in the world existed but that fish. B
lood pounded in my temples.

  “Steady,” Baja Bill said quietly.

  He pulled the marlin closer. Its bill, huge head, and back broke the surface, rising up just below me. I could have reached out and touched it.

  “Now!” Baja Bill commanded.

  I jabbed the stick into the fish and pulled it back. The tag, like a small flag, lay wet against the flesh. I dropped the stick to the deck.

  “Now,” Baja Bill said. “Grab the lure, slide it up the leader, then take that knife and cut the leader as close to the hook as you can.”

  “Me?”

  I stared at the eye of the fish, holding my breath.

  “You can do it, just reach out and grab the lure. I’ve got her under control. Don’t think about it. Just do it.”

  I looked at the marlin.

  “You want to touch her first?”

  “The fish?”

  “Go ahead.”

  I reached over and placed my hand on her side. “Ho,” I whispered. “She’s warm.”

  “Blood gets hot in all that fighting.” Baja Bill smiled. “All right, cut her loose.”

  I pulled the lure up and held it, then slipped the blade under the thick leader and cut the line. The hook stayed in the marlin’s bony jaw as the fish drifted away from the boat. The hook looked small, like an earring. The marlin probably didn’t even know it was there.

  Ledward climbed out of the fighting chair and stood next to us holding the rod.

  The three of us watched as the monster fish sank. It woke, realizing it was free, and surged down, diving into the deep blue sea.

  Down, down, down.

  Gone.

  “That hook will fall out within a week,” Baja Bill said.

  Ledward grunted. “And I’ll be asleep in five minutes.”

  I looked at the knife in my hand. I did it. I actually did it.

  Ledward and Baja Bill both grinned at me. “You one of us now,” Ledward said. “A fisherman. A real one.”

  “Hey,” Ledward said, waking me an hour later. “You enjoying yourself out here on the ocean?”

  I’d just scarfed lunch down like a starving dog, then dozed in the chair. “Yeah, I love it. In fact, I’ve got an idea. How about we stay here a week?”

  “I wish … but we have that six o’clock flight.”

  I looked out over the sea. “I could do this all day and all night, and then do it again the next day, and the next one after that.”

  Baja Bill called down from the bridge. “Any time you want, you just give me a call. All I need is a day to prepare.”

  “We’ll do this again,” Ledward said. “But your mama needs to get used to having you gone first. I bet she hasn’t stopped worrying since we left.”

  “Why?”

  “How moms are.”

  It seemed like we’d left home days ago.

  Baja Bill put the boat on autopilot and climbed down. He dug bottles of water out of the cooler and handed them around. “This was not what I’d call a normal day out fishing, Calvin. Usually it’s a long quiet boat ride. But today, you brought us luck.”

  “And,” Ledward added, tapping my chest with a finger, “you caught our dinner.”

  I’d almost forgotten about the ono.

  Baja Bill took out his watch, glanced at it, and put it back on. “Better head back. You got a plane to catch.”

  We reeled in all the lures and coiled them up with their leaders. When we were finished, Ledward leaned back on a seat and closed his eyes. “Wake me if I fall asleep.”

  “What you mean, if?” Baja Bill said.

  Ledward grunted.

  Baja Bill nudged me. “Come sit with me.”

  I followed him up the ladder.

  He kicked the boat off autopilot and brought the engines up. We swung around and sped toward the harbor. It felt great to go fast after a day of slow trolling.

  “You did a fine job, Calvin. You can be my deckhand anytime.”

  “Really?”

  “You bet.”

  We rode in silence a few minutes before he spoke again.

  “Once I was out with a guy from Montana. Nice guy. We were about a quarter mile south of here and a lot farther out, and we hooked an ahi, and not a small one, either.”

  “That’s a tuna, right?”

  “Right, but not just any tuna. This one was a big tuna. It was late in the day. We were headed back to the harbor, like now, and boom! That fish hit like a hammer. But we didn’t see it like we saw the marlin today. No, this one sounded, went straight down. My angler grabbed the reel and tried his best to stop it from going deeper, but that fish just kept on going, because it took a small lure on a light line.”

  “Wow.”

  Baja Bill waved at another boat that was also heading toward the harbor. The skipper waved back.

  “How deep did it go?”

  “Deep. When it finally stopped going down, the pressure on the line alone made it feel like we’d hooked a garbage truck. That light line was as tight as steel. I told the guy, forget it, you’ll never get that fish back up. Cut the line and let’s go home. But the guy said he didn’t come here to hook a fish and then cut the line.”

  Baja Bill chuckled.

  “Well, if you didn’t see the fish, how’d you know it was a tuna?”

  “Just a guess … until we saw it.”

  “He got it back up?”

  Baja Bill nodded. “Sure did. And you know what came up with it? Sharks. White-tips, scariest creatures in the ocean. We figured that tuna died from the pressure of going so deep, and as my angler worked it back up, those sharks discovered an easy dinner. All we pulled aboard was the head.”

  Ho! What a story!

  “It took the guy a couple-three hours to get that fish head up to the boat. We pulled into the harbor after dark. Believe it or not, my angler took that ahi’s head home and had it mounted!”

  Baja Bill humphed, as if that were the craziest thing ever.

  “Today it sits over his fireplace somewhere in Montana. He sent me a picture of it, and on the back he wrote: Next time we’re going to catch the rest of this fish!”

  I laughed.

  Baja Bill reached over and messed up my hair with his hand. “Find your dream and live it, Calvin. What’s your life worth if you don’t do that?”

  Deep-sea fishing might be my dream, I thought.

  “I have a question,” I said. “Why did we let that marlin go?”

  “I was wondering when you’d get around to that. You see, most anglers who come to fish off the Kona coast would want to keep a big fish like that, if only to get their picture taken standing next to it. But to me, that’s not a good enough reason to kill a big fish. They’re beautiful creatures. To fight it and win? That’s enough. Unless you fish as a business and sell it for food, there’s no need to kill something with so much life in it. Agree?”

  I thought for a moment. “Yeah. It was too big, anyway.”

  “Ha!”

  “Okay, but why did we stick a tag on it?”

  “Research. Each tag is bar-coded. When we get back to the harbor, I’ll fill out a form with the same code. I’ll record the date, the location, and the size of the fish and send it in. When someone catches a fish with a tag he reports it, then you get the information on the tag and you know how much it’s grown and where it’s gone.”

  Research? Mr. Purdy would be interested in that.

  “A while back, a guy here hooked a small marlin and tagged it. He guessed it was about a hundred pounds. He turned it loose, and a year later someone caught that same fish way down in the South China Sea. It weighed around two hundred fifty pounds. So people who study fish got some good information.”

  “Wow.”

  “All life is amazing, Calvin.”

  I nodded. I’d never thought about that before.

  “You ready to go home and face that bufo problem Ledward said you had? Mow that lawn?”

  “He told you about that?”

  “Some girl p
roblem, too?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry. Your secrets are safe with me.”

  The bufos down by the river were croaking loudly when Ledward and I got home that night. I was so tired I could hardly get out of the jeep.

  Streak leaped around us like a flea. I scooped her up with a grunt. The driveway rocked gently, my mind still thinking I was on the boat.

  “Looks like you missed me, huh, girl?”

  She licked my face. One thing about dogs: they’re always really happy to see you.

  As the light in the garage popped on, Ledward grabbed the ice chest we’d borrowed from Baja Bill. The cleaned ono sat wrapped in butcher paper on a bed of dry ice.

  Mom and Darci came out, Darci with a chocolate ice cream cone. I was so hungry I could have eaten the box the cones came in.

  “I was beginning to worry about you two,” Mom said, giving me a hug. “So how did your man day go?”

  “It was awesome, Mom. I caught an ono! That’s a big fish that looks like a barracuda, and you can also call it a wahoo. We got it in here.” I tapped the ice chest.

  Mom peeked inside. “Whoa,” she said. “That’s a lot of fish!”

  “This boy was born for fishing,” Ledward said. “He’s a real angler.”

  Darci pulled on my T-shirt. “Did you like going on a plane, Calvin?”

  “Yeah. It was cool.”

  Like I flew on planes all the time. No big deal.

  Darci grinned. “Me and Mom are going to fly to Kauai.”

  “You’ll like it, Darce.”

  Mom smiled and pulled Darci close. “You men must be hungry.”

  “I could eat this entire fish,” Ledward said. “But it’s late. How’s about tomorrow I come over, put it on the grill with lemon and butter?”

  “It’s a date,” Mom said.

  While Ledward packed the fish into the freezer and some in the fridge for the next day, Mom made us toast and fried eggs on rice. I gobbled mine down with shoyu—what Willy calls soy sauce. Nothing could have tasted better.

  As I ate, I looked around.

  “Where’s Stella?”

  “At the movies with Clarence.”