“A friend,” I said.
“And him?” Blondie said, nodding at Leonard.
“I jes do duh coffee and put fishes on duh hooks,” Leonard said. “I’s known as Unca Leonard.”
“That’s funny,” Blondie said.
“Why thank ya, suh. I’s got me uh liddle niggra minstrel act I’s been workin’ on.”
The black guy laughed. Mole Face was smiling. Jose finished loading bait, then, sensing tension, disappeared like morning fog.
“Look,” I said. “We’ll go back to the hotel and see what’s up.”
“I’ll go with you,” Blondie said. “I left her early this morning so I could run some errands. She’s supposed to be here. I’m gonna give her a piece of my mind.”
“I wouldn’t give her too much,” I said.
“Yeah, and why’s that?”
“Because I might not like it.”
“And I don’t know you got mind to spare,” Leonard said. “I think you use most of it just getting up in the morning.”
Blondie snorted, looked at Leonard. “Lost the minstrel act, didn’t you?”
The veins on the sides of Leonard’s neck expanded.
“Whoa,” the handsome black guy said. “It’s cool. It’s cool. Let’s not get off on the wrong foot. We’re down here to fish.”
“Yeah, and this charter hasn’t been nothing but a problem,” Blondie said. “I’m ready to chuck the whole thing.”
“Hey,” Mole Face said. “You got some poontang out of it, didn’t you… Oh, sorry, old man. I forgot she was your daughter.”
Ferdinand didn’t say anything. He just looked stunned.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right. Me and Leonard will go check on her.”
He nodded.
We climbed off the boat. Me, Leonard, and the blond asshole.
“You don’t have to come,” I said to Blondie.
“Yeah, but I want to,” he said. “I left her this morning, I told her to hurry along. One thing I hate’s a woman that doesn’t do as she’s told.”
“You asswipe,” Leonard said. “I’ve got a mind to knock your nose on the other side of your head.”
“Don’t push it, buddy,” Blondie said.
Leonard laughed. It actually scared me, and I love him. I figured Blondie, if he had a couple of brain cells left, must have felt his stool go loose.
At that very moment Beatrice came rushing up, breathless. Boy, was Blondie glad to see her. I saw a bit of color come back to his face.
Beatrice was holding her side, showing she had been hurrying. Her hair hung wet around her face. She had on a shorty towel robe, flip-flops, and was carrying a large yellow plastic bag. She saw us staring at her.
“What?” she said.
“You’re making us wait,” Blondie said.
“I’m sorry, Billy,” she said. “Really.”
She almost started to cry. I noticed she had a bit of a black eye.
I took hold of her arm, nodded at the eye, said, “He do that?”
“Wha… Oh, no. I slept on my hand or something. I am fine.”
“She bumped her head on the headboard last night,” Billy said. “When I was putting it to her from behind.”
Beatrice felt me tense. She said, “Please, Hap. Please. I’m not bothered, you shouldn’t be.”
I let my breath out slowly. “All right.”
“You’re not needed here,” Billy said. “In fact, why don’t you and your man here stick to shore.”
“I need them along,” Beatrice said. “They’ll bait the hooks.”
I knew then why she had really wanted us along. She was afraid of this joker.
Billy looked at Leonard. “Now you’ve nothing to say?”
“I was concentratin’,” Leonard said. “Tryin’ to decide how hard I’d have to pull your head for it to come off.”
Billy tried not to show he was bothered, but his bobbing Adam’s apple betrayed him and the Elvis sneer he manufactured trembled. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s fish.”
17
As we boarded the boat behind Beatrice and Billy, Leonard said, “What I suggest is we finish out the day, I whip his ass. If he still wants some, you can have him.”
“We’ll flip for first later.”
Beatrice took us aside, said, “Father will show you how to bait the hooks. It is hard at first, but when you have baited a few, it will be easy.”
We set the boat free of the dock and chugged out into deeper water. The day was hot, the sky blue, spotted with clouds as white as Santa’s whiskers. The diesel exhaust, combined with the motion of the boat, the heat, made me feel ill. Within fifteen minutes I was vomiting over the side. Pretty soon thereafter, Leonard was doing the same.
Billy was sitting in the fighting chair, drinking a cold beer he’d pulled from the ice chest. He laughed. “Couple old sea salts.”
As we hung over the side of the boat, Leonard said, “I’m mortified.”
“Did you bring the seasickness pills?”
Leonard shook his head. “Afraid not.”
It was a long day. I had only thought it was hot. Now it turned hot. The sardines in the big plastic buckets smelled ripe as disease.
Ferdinand showed us how to bait the sardines on hooks. It was harder than it looked. But after only a few fish came off the hooks and I had poked only five or six holes in my hand, and Leonard had managed to rediscover his East Texas heritage by teaching everyone on the boat all the curse words known to humanity in English, we had it going.
A little fishing was done en route, but nothing was caught. We moved out into deeper water. The sea was bobbing and rolling at first, but as we went out farther it became more violent. Not stormy, just active. The diesel smoke that had made us sick before was worse now, and the waves were enormous.
Leonard and I went back to tossing our guts over the side, then dry heaving.
Billy loved our predicament. He had a strong stomach, so therefore he thought he was a strong man. He gave the rod to the black guy, whose name was Landis, and stood near us with his beer, slurping it.
“What you boys need is a big old bowl of greasy chili.”
“You motherfucker,” Leonard said. “I didn’t feel so bad, I’d stick that bottle up your ass, see if it would help you float.”
Billy moved on. The boat chugged on.
Out where it was deep, the waves rose up around us in blue-green mountains, then dropped away, as if swallowed by an earthquake. The little boat rode up the waves, and down the other side, then the mountains appeared again.
I had only thought the cruise ship we were on was small and scary. All I could think about was one of those waves crashing on top of us, carrying us down into that bottomless water.
In time we got used to it enough we could work baiting the hooks. Landis fished for an hour and got bites, the bites took his bait and we rebaited, but no luck.
The guy with the mole on his face took a turn. His name was Jason. He sat down in the chair and slipped on the waist and shoulder straps.
I baited his hook and he sat with the butt of the rod in the swivel and waited. He fished for almost an hour, then there was a click on the rod and the line began to sing like electricity charging through a wire.
“I got something,” he said.
“No shit,” Billy said. “Hold on to him.”
I looked out at the water. The line had gone taut. Jason tightened the drag, jerked back on the rod. The rod bent slightly.
“Now I’ve got him,” Jason said.
“You’ve got him when he’s on the boat,” Billy said.
The fish cut to the right and the line moved with him. Jason hit him again, burying the hook. He said, “He’s not too big. He’s nothing.”
Jason rapidly cranked the fish on deck. It was a barracuda.
Ferdinand came out of the cabin on crutches. He had one hand dangling off the crutches and in it he held a sawed-off baseball bat. He lifted one crutch from under his arm and laid it on the g
round and leaned forward and used the bat to whack the flopping barracuda on the head.
Ferdinand had a pair of shears in his back pocket. He dropped the ball bat, pulled them out, managed himself to a squatting position, put the barracuda’s head between the blades, and snapped down hard. The head nearly popped off. Ferdinand snapped down again, and this time the head came loose. He cut the line that held the barracuda to the rod, tossed the barracuda’s head into the ocean.
He crutched into the cabin, came out with a metal box. He opened it, and quickly, expertly, he tied a large hook to the cut line.
“Bait it,” he said.
I reached into the bucket of stinking fish and did just that.
Ferdinand took a large knife from the box, cut the barracuda open, and dumped its guts into the water. He put the barracuda into a large ice chest just inside the door to the cabin.
Jason said, “That’s my fish and that’s just about my hour.”
“You’re next, Billy,” Landis said.
“A barracuda,” Billy said, “that’s no kind of fish.”
“Sometimes the barracuda is all the fish you hit,” Ferdinand said. “Barracuda are good to eat. I can sell them to the restaurants. There are people who like to eat them, thinking they are eating a very dangerous fish. They are not really that dangerous.”
“Well, if he’d wanted to mount him he’d have been shit out of luck, wouldn’t he?” Billy said. “Way you snapped it up and cut off its head. What if we don’t want to sell it to a restaurant? Maybe Jason here wants him on his wall.”
“No,” Jason said. “No problem. Go ahead. Take your turn.”
“When I catch my fish, I want him on the wall. So don’t fuck with him. You hear, old man?”
“I hear,” Ferdinand said.
“Let’s let the lady fish,” Billy said.
“That is all right,” Beatrice said. “I see enough fish.”
“No,” Billy said. “I insist.”
Beatrice looked at him, said, “Very well.”
“You don’t want to fish, don’t fish,” I said.
“No, it is all right,” she said.
Beatrice took off the short cloth robe. Underneath she was nearly wearing a bathing suit. There was almost enough cloth there to hide a quarter if someone shaved it around the edges with a pocketknife. The suit was black, one of those things with a string that went up her ass and covered nothing. The top just managed to fit over her nipples. I could tell she didn’t wear that sort of thing regularly. The skin on her buttocks and around her breasts was lighter than the rest of her, which was deeply tanned. Her pubic hair, which had not been waxed or shaved, escaped at the edges like little black tentacles waving to the public. What cloth was there clung to her snugly and showed the shape of what the old romance novels called her womanhood.
Though Beatrice was probably new to that kind of bathing suit, she wore it naturally, as if unbothered by scrutiny, but I thought I saw in her eyes a look I had seen before.
Late at night, while driving, a cat had darted in front of my car, and I’d hit it. When I got out to see if there was hope, the cat had looked up at me, dying, its eyes hot and savage, terrified in the glow of my flashlight. Even out there in the brutal sunshine, Beatrice’s eyes looked that way.
My guess was Billy had bought that little get-up for her and expected her to wear it, and she was doing just that.
I looked at Ferdinand out of the corner of my eye. I could tell from the look on his face he wasn’t happy. That kind of bathing suit wasn’t exactly the sort of thing a daughter wore around her father.
I baited Beatrice’s hook.
She thanked me, seated herself in the fighting chair, strapped in, and cast. She was very good at it. The line went far out and into the rolling water. She put the butt of the rod in the swivel. She took a beer from Jason and sipped it. Billy stood by her chair for a while; then, bored, he got another beer and sat on one of the benches built into the side of the boat.
It was sticky and the bobbing of the boat no longer made me sick. It rocked me pleasantly. I watched Beatrice for a while as she reached inside her yellow bag beside the fighting chair, took out suntan lotion and began to apply it. I observed carefully as she rubbed it on the tops of her feet, up her ankles, all along her legs, and finally her flat stomach and the tops of her breasts. I felt the boss change positions in my pants.
She finished that, took large sunglasses from her bag and put them on, picked up her beer again and sipped it. I began to feel sleepy. I sat against the side of the boat, leaned against one of the benches, drifted off, thought of home, and Brett.
Brett wasn’t as young as Beatrice. Or quite as firm. Or as brown. But God almighty she had it going. I missed her. I wished she missed me too. I wished I was ten years younger, handsome, had five million dollars and three more inches on my dick and my hair wasn’t thinning. While I was at it, I threw in wishing for a pastrami sandwich on rye and immortality.
Of course, wishes are wishes. As my dad used to say, wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first. The same can be applied to prayer. Shit in one hand and pray in the other. Within moments you can determine the real power of prayer.
I was awakened by the singing of the line. I sat up to see Beatrice drop her beer foaming onto the deck, reach out, and take the rod from the swivel.
“You got something,” Billy said.
“No shit,” Leonard said.
The line went tight and Beatrice jerked the rod, hit the fish, and it jumped. It was long and enormous. A sailfish.
“Goddamn,” Billy said. “Look at that. That’s record size. Don’t you lose him. Hit him again.”
And she did. The line went even tighter. Beatrice was pulled forward against the straps of the fighting chair. I could see one of her nipples peeking over the top of her bikini. It looked brown and friendly.
Beatrice tightened the drag. The line veered to the right, wide. Then back to the left, like a thin saw cutting lumber.
“Loosen the goddamn drag,” Billy said.
“It’s all right,” Beatrice said.
“I know fishing. Loosen the drag.”
“So do I,” said Beatrice. “My father owns a fishing boat.”
“Don’t you talk back to me.”
“Sorry,” Beatrice said, and loosened the drag.
I was suddenly up and standing next to Billy.
“You keep talking to the lady like that, and you’ll be swimming home,” I said.
“Lady?” Billy said. “Look at those tits and ass hanging out. You call that a lady?”
At that moment I tensed to hit him, but Leonard took hold of my arm.
“It’s their show,” he said softly. “For the moment.”
I took a breath, stepped away back to the bench, and sat down.
All right, I told myself. This is her game. Let her play it. She wants it like this. She knows what she’s doing. It sucks. But it’s her game.
Ferdinand worked the controls, reversed the boat and slowed the speed, gave the big fish room to run.
“I have one on my wall that’s a record,” Billy said. “And it’s not near big as that one. I’ve never seen one that big. And a goddamn woman hooks it. Don’t you lose it. You hear?”
“Yes, Billy,” Beatrice said.
Acid boiled around in my stomach. I looked at Ferdinand. He was stoic. My admiration for him was fading. Surely he knew the score. He must, or he wouldn’t let this shit go on. And if he knew the score, then that meant he wanted Beatrice to do what she was doing.
Leonard sat down beside me.
“Just be cool,” Leonard said.
The rod was bending. Billy said, “Loosen the goddamn drag.”
“It will hold,” she said.
“Loosen it.”
She did. The line sang, vibrated like a violin string. The fish went wide to starboard.
“Look at that cocksucker run,” Jason said.
The fish leaped.
/> I’ve never seen anything so incredible. Up it went. The sunlight hit the fish and it was many colors. Red and blue and gunmetal gray. Its veins appeared to stand out under its flesh. Nothing like it would look the moment it hit the deck, dying. Its color would fade. It would fade even more on the trip to shore. It would lose all of its real color in the taxidermist’s shop. It would end up dead and mounted on someone’s wall over their couch. A living, twisting, multicolored piece of magnificence turned to a hard, leathery, listless shadow of its former self.
The fish struck the water and disappeared.
The line slacked. The pole began to straighten.
“Hit him again,” Billy said.
She did. With a pull and a grunt. Then she hit him again.
Sweat pops were coating her forehead now, running down her chin and chest. The bathing suit was damp with it. A convention of sweat beads gathered in her belly button and made the bits of exposed pubic hair limp. The muscles in her legs and arms coiled and knotted, as if being braided from the inside. She pressed her little feet hard against the footrests.
“It’s too big for her,” Landis said.
“No,” Billy said. “She can land it. It’s the biggest fucking sailfish I’ve ever seen. It’s a goddamn dinosaur.”
Beatrice worked the line, the drag. It was obvious she knew what she was doing, probably better than Billy, but it was just too much fish. It might have been too much fish for anybody.
Billy poured a cold beer down her back.
“Chill out and hang in,” he said.
I looked at Leonard. “Let me just knock a tooth out.”
“Not yet. Don’t fuck her game for your pleasure.”
Beatrice hit the big fish again, solid, and it leaped. Pinned itself against the sky like a brooch on heaven’s chest. Hung there for what seemed way too long to be natural. Then, finally, even it was overcome by the laws of gravity, and down it went, slicing into the water.
“It’s like a goddamn submarine,” Jason said.
The line went solid again, jerked Beatrice against the straps. They were starting to cut into her shoulders, making red lines.
“You take the line,” Beatrice said. “You want him. You fish him.”
“No, honey,” Billy said. “You’re going to bring him in.”
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