I point at the thin spinning rods stowed along the gunwales.
Andrew makes a face. “Must be pretty wimpy fish. We pole-vaulting?” He points at the straight aluminum push pole that rests along the gunwale of the skiff.
“You’ll see.”
The run today is short. Vic throttles down and kills the Merc. The small skiff rises over the backwash, then settles down. An electric whine follows as the big engine tilts forward, angling the prop out of the water. Meanwhile, we’re gliding softly over the glassy surface. Suddenly it’s become very, very quiet.
Vic baits the hooks with live, kicking shrimp. His eyes slowly scan the water for two hundred yards in every direction. Andrew leans over the gunwale and looks down.
“Wait a minute, I can see the bottom,” he says. “How deep is this?”
“About a foot,” Vic replies, staring straight off the bow. He already sees something, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t see what it is.
“A foot?” Andrew asks. “What are we gonna catch, minnows?”
“Shhh…” Vic picks up the push pole and climbs to the carpeted platform over the Merc. He plants the pole in the water and begins to push the skiff forward.
“See it?” he whispers.
Seventy yards ahead to the left a dorsal fin cuts through the flat water. The fin is the size of a playing card and nearly transparent. The sight sends a thrill up my spine. I hold my breath. I’ve waited a year for this.
“See what?” Andrew asks, a little too loud.
“Shhh. Seventy yards at eleven o’clock, coming across the bow.”
“He’s moving,” I whisper.
“Something’s bothering him.” Vic leans into the pole and pushes the skiff ahead. “Maybe he’ll turn this way. Get ready.”
I stay seated, every muscle tense and my eyes straining to keep the fin in view as I grip the butt of the rod and pray Vic can bring me into range for a cast.
Then, just like that, it’s gone. Nothing there but a slight ripple. Vic eases up on the pole.
“What happened?” Andrew asks.
“Something spooked him.”
Andrew looks suspiciously at me. “This is a joke, right? Fishing in a foot of water for fish you can’t see? My old man’s gonna be thrilled he paid for this.”
There’s no point in trying to explain. I scan the broad, flat, blue surface. Here and there a plant or a piece of coral sticks out of the water. About a hundred yards away a large white egret stands motionless, waiting for unsuspecting prey to cross its path. The sun beats down, and I wonder how Andrew’s taking it. It’s so quiet it doesn’t seem possible that we’re still on the planet.
I catch a glimpse of a fin moving thirty yards to the left and my arm shoots out, pointing.
“Shark,” Vic says quietly.
“Where?” Andrew gasps. “Let’s get it!”
“Shhh.” Vic begins poling to the right, away from the shark. Fifty yards away two sets of fins move slowly through the water. “Get ready.”
Once again I grip the rod. Vic poles the skiff swiftly and silently toward the fish. Suddenly I’m in range. It seems like a miracle they haven’t spooked and run.
“About eight feet to the right,” Vic whispers.
I rise slowly in the boat and cast. Plop! The shrimp hits the water and sinks. Almost at that exact moment, both fish veer to the left, away from the bait.
“Bring it in,” Vic whispers. “They know something’s up.”
He starts to pole after them. I reel in and sit frozen in my seat, watching the tails swish gently back and forth twenty yards ahead.
“How come they don’t just disappear like the last one?” Andrew asks.
“They’re not sure.”
Suddenly the fish turn sharply left, almost coming back toward the boat. “Ten feet ahead of them,” Vic whispers with a new urgency.
I rise carefully and deliver the bait. The fish don’t turn away. They’re right over it! A tail fin pops out of the water as one of the bones pokes his nose down at the shrimp.
“He’s got it,” Vic whispers.
line is whipping off my open bail. One… two… three… I crank the reel, setting the hook.
Eeeeeiiinnnnn! the reel’s drag begins to scream. Line peels away. I lift the rod and it arcs like a crescent moon. The fish is running like an express train! This is what I’ve been—
Plip! The line suddenly goes slack. The rod straightens. It’s over. I flop back into my chair in disappointment, consoled only by the fact that I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my fault.
“What happened?” Andrew asked.
“Needlefish; coral,” Vic says, offering the two most likely explanations.
“Needlefish?”
“They look like little barracudas. They see the line cutting through the water and think it’s something to eat.”
“Bummer.”
Vic starts poling again. I notice that Andrew, for the first time, is hunched over, peering out at the vast plateau of glassy water. Some green mangrove islands dot the distance, and here and there a white egret stands in the shallows, waiting.
“There!” Andrew points. Two fins rhythmically break the surface, disappear, break the surface again.
“Ray,” Vic replies without looking. He’s already seen it.
“Stingray? Cool.”
Vic poles, we wait. The sun’s lower; some cottony clouds have appeared out of nowhere. High above, a tiny glimmering silver jet leaves a silent vapor trail across the blue.
Down here, there is no sign, or sound, of civilization anywhere.
“This is like a safari,” Andrew whispers.
“Ten o’clock,” Vic whispers.
A lone fin moseys along fifty yards away. Andrew glances at me quizzically.
“Your turn,” I whisper.
Andrew starts to rise.
“Sit!” Vic poles the skiff closer.
The bone and the skiff are on a collision course. Suddenly the fish turns right.
“Ten feet in front of him,” Vic whispers.
Andrew casts. His bait lands twenty feet behind the bone.
“Crap!” He starts to reel it back in.
“Leave it.”
The bone decides to turn right again. Vic poles the skiff hard, dragging Andrew’s shrimp across the bottom. It doesn’t seem possible… but then the bone does what we least expect—it turns one more time.
Suddenly it’s right over the bait. Its tail fin rises.
“He’s taking it.”
Line starts whipping off Andrew’s rod.
“Reel!”
Instead of reeling, Andrew jerks the rod sideways, trying to set the hook.
“Get the tip up!”
Eeeeeiiiinnnnn! the reel screams. The rod bends like a horseshoe. Vic reaches over and pushes the rod tip up as Andrew starts to reel crazily.
“Jeez, what is this?” he gasps.
“A bonefish,” Vic replies, chagrined. He doesn’t think Andrew deserves this. “Stop reeling!”
“But he’ll take all the line!”
“Maybe.”
“Can’t you do anything?”
“Keep your rod tip up and your line tight.”
A hundred yards from the boat, leaving a visible wake, the bone shows no intention of slowing its desperate run for freedom.
“I can’t believe this thing!” Andrew cries as the reel continues to scream. “Can’t you stop it?”
“No. Keep the tip high.”
Another twenty… forty… sixty yards of line comes off the reel. There’s hardly anything left on the spool.
Then the screaming ends.
“He stopped!”
“Reel!”
Andrew starts to reel. The line goes completely slack. The rod straightens. Andrew’s shoulders sag. He stops reeling. “He’s gone. I lost him.”
“Reel!”
“But he’s gone,” Andrew argues. “There’s nothing there.”
“There won’t be if you don’t re
el.”
Andrew gives me a questioning look.
“Do what he says.”
Andrew starts to reel. “What’s going on?”
“He’s coming back toward us.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Because he’s a bonefish. Reel faster!”
Andrew reels like a maniac. Suddenly the line goes tight again.
Vic smiles. “There he is.”
This time the bone takes off across the bow, the thin monofilament line kicking up a spray as it cuts through the water.
Eeeeeeiiinnnn! the reel starts to scream again. Andrew turns the crank.
“Stop reeling. Let him run.”
The rod arcs as the fish shoots through the water.
“That’s not a fish, it’s a torpedo!” Andrew cries.
“Tip up.”
The bone’s second run isn’t quite as long as the first. Andrew reels again.
“Man, my arms hurt. This thing must be a giant!”
“Eight to ten pounds.”
“No way!”
Andrew gets the bone within thirty feet of the boat when it turns and races off again. Eeeeeeiiinnnn!
“I can’t believe this!” he gasps.
I share a look with Vic that turns into a smile.
The bone has two more runs. Andrew holds on to the thin rod, babbling like a little kid at the circus for the first time. Short of jumping off the boat and trying to run across the flat, he’s done almost everything wrong.
And yet the fish is still there, now exhausted, floating on its side next to the boat. Grabbing the line, Vic brings the bone close without taking it out of the water. The silvery fish has dark stripes. Its eyes are blank and defeated. Vic gently removes the hook, sloshes the fish back and forth in the water to get its gills working, then lets it go.
Slumped in his seat, his arms hanging helplessly at his sides, Andrew shakes his head. “Unreal…”
“Ready to go home?”
“No way. I want to catch another.”
The afternoon winds down. Andrew and I hook four more bones; manage to land two.
Now the sun is a deep orange ball hovering on the liquid horizon. The cottony clouds above are streaked crimson and pink. The whole sky is a huge dome of gradually shifting pastel hues. The water has turned the color of slate. The air is silent, profoundly still.
The fishing’s over. It’s hard to see the transparent fins in this light, but we sit for a moment before heading back. The skiff rocks gently; no one speaks. The sunset is a vast panorama of color. We might as well be a thousand miles away, a million years in the past, or on another planet altogether.
“Time to go, gentlemen.”
We race home over the smooth water, the wind in our faces, the sky turning dark in the east. Feeling tired but satisfied, I hope the people who make beer commercials never get their hands on this.
Andrew’s been strangely quiet.
Back at the dock, it’s dark. We thank Vic and pay him. He turns the skiff around and heads off into the inky shadows with his red and green running lights on. For him it was just another day’s work.
Andrew and I stand under the bare lightbulb at the end of the dock, watching the red and green lights gradually disappear into the dark. Vic’s wake sloshes against the pilings under the pier. Bugs and moths flit around us, crazed by the lightbulb. The kids are still in the pool, screaming.
Andrew turns toward me. “Next year?”
I slap his hand. “Yeah. Save those quarters.”
Todd Strasser
Todd Strasser has written several award-winning novels for teenagers, among them Angel Dust Blues, Friends Till the End, A Very Touchy Subject, Workin3 for Peanuts, The Complete Computer Popularity Program, and Beyond the Reef, along with a trilogy about a musical group (Rock V Roll Nights, Turn It Up!, and Wildlife), a horror series (Nightmare Inn), and a romance series (The Lifeguard). Among his most popular books are The Accident, a mystery about a teenage drunk-driving accident, and Help! I’m Trapped in My Teacher’s Body, a humorous story about what happens when a boy and a male teacher switch bodies. Jake Sherman, the main character in that novel, returns in Help! I’m Trapped in the First Day of School, in which he discovers he can’t get to the second day of school without making some serious changes. Another recent novel by Todd Strasser is How I Changed My Life, the story of a shy young actress and an injured football player trying to discover whether they are meant for each other.
Mr. Strasser has also gained notoriety for his novelizations of popular movies, including Ferris Bueller’s Day-Off, The Wave, Home Alone, and Free Willy. US magazine called him “the most prolific writer” of this kind of book.
When he isn’t writing at his home in Westchester County, New York, or conducting writing workshops for young people in schools across the country, Todd Strasser likes to play tennis, ski, and fly down to the Florida Keys to fish for bones.
Nineteen-year-old Kirsty Fleming knew how to sail. But she wasn’t quite ready for the adventure that awaited her on the Dolphin.
Sea Changes
“If” is such a funny little word, isn’t it? A conjunction, we learned in class, joining two clauses, but really, joining whole worlds of what might have been, or better, what here and now is. Let me start my story by adding up the ifs:
—If I hadn’t grown up with a father who took me, his daughter, sailing on the Norfolk Broads because he had a wife who gets seasick just looking at a boat…
—If I hadn’t done that Italian cookery course when I was only fifteen because my mother wanted me to do something “civilizing”…
—If I hadn’t gone backpacking to New Zealand when I was sixteen…
—If I hadn’t had a letter of introduction to that mad family in Auckland…
—If I hadn’t stepped foot on a yacht called the Dolphin…
Then I wouldn’t be settling down to talk to a tape recorder. I wouldn’t be back in my parents’ Elizabethan cottage just outside of Oxford, England, with a letter on the oak desk offering me ten thousand pounds for my story in five thousand words.
That’s right, you heard—ten thousand pounds. The figure leaped out at me, about the only thing I could understand of four pages of small legal jargon signed by someone called Penelope Higgins, Publisher. First, actually, she rang, wanting a reporter to come and do an “in-depth” interview. My father said, don’t consent to a bit of it, in-depth or otherwise. He’s an academic, a child psychologist who writes books on things like child abuse and is always being misquoted. “They always get it wrong,” he said. “Do it yourself, girl.”
So here I am, doing it myself, the talking. After that they will have my tape transcribed onto paper and they will help me edit it down to five thousand “words. I’ve not the foggiest notion what five thousand words looks like.
“Just talk for a couple of hours, my dear,” Penelope said on the phone. “Just tell your story.” If she isn’t the Duchess of something she ought to be. My father, who knows about book contracts and editing, insisted that my letter back say something about my retaining final approval.
So, here I am, a contract signed, feeling a bit of an idiot, but I guess that’s a small price to pay for ten thousand pounds. I’m lying on my patchwork quilt. Bess (she’s my Labrador) is snoring at my feet; the diamond-shaped panes of my attic bedroom windows want cleaning. I can smell old dust, old lavender, Mother’s Benson & Hedges, seawater in my wet-weather gear hanging behind the door, my own Benetton perfume. The scene is pretty, cozy—and doesn’t move. Outside June is bustin’ out all over. Bluebells, jonquils, the copper beech, the apple trees, Mother’s white roses, striped just-mown lawns.
Oh, it’s all a long long way from the rolling sapphire seas of the South Pacific….
Perhaps I’d better explain that these days I’m a professional yachtsperson. Kirsty Fleming, aged nineteen, from Oxford, England. I’ve just been chosen for the British challenge in the Whitbread round-the-world yacht race, the only woman on an otherw
ise all-male crew. I’ve just sailed round the Pacific, the only woman on an otherwise all-male crew, and I wasn’t chosen for my cooking. Well, in a sort of way I was, but I was not the bottom sheet, despite what you may be thinking. On that trip I had a different sort of training, and it was mostly in stamina.
Stamina, I hear you say?
You need more than stamina to race around the world. You need to know about spinnaker poles and knots and rigging and halyards and sheets and guys and splicing and jibs and genoas and navigation and sextants and weather and signals and flags and lights and buoys and rules of the road and medical emergencies and how to sleep in two inches of black water with the boat on the verge of a capsize and an unseen iceberg lurking two miles ahead.
What’s something nebulous and unskilled like stamina got to do with it?
I can’t do this cold—talking to a machine?
Are you listening, in there?
I’m going to call you Martin.
I once had a friend called Martin. He was my first boyfriend, me aged fourteen, him fifteen. But he didn’t like my mother or my father’s demands, too early in our friendship, that he come sailing, make up a threesome on the eighteen-foot day boat we keep on the Norfolk Broads. Martin hated sailing. He came only once and got seasick, and then puked over the wrong side of the boat and the wind blew it all back. So our romance went nowhere. But he was a sweet boy, gentle, nonmacho, and we kept talking. He listened to all my ravings for a year or so. I felt safe with him. He’s at Cambridge now, reading English. He graduates next year.
So listen, Martin.
What? Oh, you want some ground rules. No sailing jargon; no poops and stanchions and heaving to and all the rest of it. All right, I agree with that. Most stories about the sea are so full of sailing jargon you need a nautical dictionary to get past the first page. Ever tried to read Joseph Conrad? As a kid I couldn’t even cope with Arthur Ran-some! So I’ll talk about the sharp end, the blunt end, the kitchen, my bed, ropes. Okay, mate?—as they say in New Zealand.
Oh yes, New Zealand, where it all started. You remember I ran away to New Zealand when I was sixteen? Well, it wasn’t quite running away, not an act of teenage defiance and rebellion, a daughter-goes-missing, headlines-in-the-Daily Mail sort of thing. I just told my parents I was flying to New Zealand next week because it was the middle of winter and I couldn’t stand the snow and school one moment longer and it was either an airplane or a bottle of pills.
Ultimate Sports Page 20