Go Naked In The World

by Chamales, Tom T. ;

  But how do you help yourself without being selfish? Nick asked himself. That is easy. Away from it, it is easy. Here and now it is easy: You do not demand love, that is how. And if you must demand love then whatever you want for yourself you must force upon that which you love and so you become destructive. You and someone else cannot want the same thing. If you do then you have lost your identity. Then the love will turn to hate. It must. You lose your individuality and you hate. Hell, I know that. From the Bible alone I know that. I should read that damn Bible more.

  Sometimes everything is so complex. When you don’t need love you are love. When you need it you can’t have it. And how do you get the guts to give it up when all your life you have been taught you owe it? Well, you have been. I love you so much so you must love me so much. And if you do not get back what you have given instantly you feel cheated. Did it ever occur to you that maybe what you thought was love on your mother’s part, Mary’s part, was not love at all? Was actually comfort for Mary and not love for you. That is a goddamn tough thing to face suddenly now. You don’t want to face it do you Nick—No. You want to run get in that goddamn boat and fish your ass off and tonight get drunk and forget that such a thought ever came into your head. That’s what you want to do. Well, face it. Just for a change, face it. Because, yes, you know that is the way it well might be. Now, here, you do know that.

  That hurts. Hurts. Doesn’t it hurt, Nick? It may be trite that business ‘the truth hurts’. But it does, nevertheless.

  What are you becoming, a goddamn masochist? You came here for peace and the first crack you get at it you sit here and punish yourself. Maybe Old Pete was right. Maybe I am crazy in the head from the war. You keep on talking about yourself and the things you can do but you cannot control yourself. You think Old Pete is weak and ignorant and you are smart and strong. But Old Pete can control himself and you cannot and you cannot defeat him because he has the guts to control himself and maybe that is why you hate him so bad sometimes you could kill him.

  Because Old Pete can give up, can’t he? ‘

  Give up what?

  Give up love. That’s what. He has the guts to do that too. Can you give up love? That’s a joke. Can you give up going back to Chicago? Can you give up Nora? You sneaky sonofabitch. What right have you got to hide in the shadows outside her apartment? You have a lease on her or something? You think humanity has so much dignity but you don’t think she has very much, do you, really now, do you, or you wouldn’t go all hollow empty-sick wondering what she did that night she went out after she left you?

  Maybe she went to the airport to meet her uncle from Kansas City? Maybe. That is if she has an uncle in Kansas City. And the uncle was en route from Kansas City to New York with a short twenty minute stopover in Chicago? That’s a joke.

  I’m full of jokes today. Half hour ago I say no, Old Pete is no fun on a fishing trip because he is worrying about his business and Mary getting laid and I am sitting here worrying about what in the hell I am going to do with myself and about Nora getting laid. Except my worries are legitimate and Old Pete is a shit for having the very same worries.

  There is no question about it. You must be sick in the head from the war. The shrapnel must have somehow penetrated the vanity as well as. the brain. Around the vanity wound blood vessels began to form. When you get excited, which is most of the time, the vessels swell as vessels do and you are carried away.

  You do not want to go to work. You do not want to go back to school. You do not want to stay here and fish because you are afraid there is something you will miss up there. Ah! I caught you. You are afraid they might not miss you enough up there and you wouldn’t want to know that. That’s more like it. You take a good look at yourself, eh Nick. She is not such a pretty picture.

  No. Not pretty at all.

  “The water slows,” Old Gus said. “The tide begins to change, I think. Holy, but it is getting hot.”

  Nick sat up and rubbed the stubble of his beard, squinting at the reflection of the sun on the blue green blue again green again water.

  “Christ but I think clear here,” Nick said. “This is no place for a man that wants to forget things for a while.”

  “Like that tide you cannot forget,” Old Gus smiled. “You can move it and replace it but it is always there. And when you are in it you cannot see it so you might as well get away and take a look. It is dark some days and bright others. That depends on the way you look at it.”

  “I look bad.”

  “Sure,” Old Gus said. “And I use manure to fertilize the tomatoes that you eat from my garden with such relish.”

  “I heard about you when you were young in Greece. And you had balls. It wasn’t easy for you then, either.”

  “I didn’t make it easy.”

  “Maybe I get that from you,” Nick said. “Maybe it’s in the family. In the blood. That’s a good one. In the blood. Of all the bullshit excuses that’s one of the biggest ones—if your offspring acts like you want them to act then they’re of your own good blood. And if they don’t act exactly the way you want them to then there is a bad streak of blood somewhere and you know it is not on your side. The whole world is full of bullshit like that.”

  “So you have to be the same as the rest of the world. That is what you are saying,” Old Gus said still smiling that sweet sad smile. “Well, that’s your business. I thought we came here to fish.”

  “I came here to fish. But I came so I might feel clean again, too. I felt clean here once. Once, here, alone, before the war when I felt young and was sitting on one of these beaches watching the sun go down and there was a fresh breeze from the gulf in the early spring. I felt cleaner than I ever felt anywhere. In church or any place. No, I felt like that up in Wisconsin, too. I was alone that time, too. It was like you really knew what God and everything was. It didn’t last long. Only a second. It was very odd. And made you feel all serene and clean even though your body was sweaty dirty and you smelled of fish. It is funny that it only happens alone.”

  “You are lucky it happened.”

  Nick stood up. Stretched. Studied the tide. Looked off to the east over the mangrove keys and saw that several miles inland it was raining.

  “There’s a good wind from the gulf,” he said to Old Gus. “I don’t think it will rain here.”

  ‘“No, it will not rain,” Gus said. He was standing up now, too. “But, holy, it is hot.”

  They began to walk toward the boat carrying what equipment they had taken ashore with them. They packed the equipment carefully in the boat and got in and cast off.

  Nick ran the boat up two keys and anchored far out in the channel, close to the sand bar.

  “Now,” he said to Gus, “cast as far as you can, as close to that key and that log that protrudes. Try to cast up into the shallows near the mangroves. Work the bait slow because the tide is swifter down below than you think. Reel three or four times then pull the rod up so that the bait comes off the bottom then allow it to sink and hit the sand. Then pull the rod up again to give the feather bait a looping motion off the sand. If she is there she will strike the bait as it comes up, hard. What will attract it will be the lead head of the feather hitting the sand. I will show you.”

  Nick made a long cast and the dude fell softly into the shallows about eight feet from the shore. “I don’t think you will get a strike in the shallows,” Nick said. “The big ones will hang in the deep of the channel. Anywhere after the drop off.”

  Nick began to work his bait slowly, rhythmically, expertly. “If they do not hit using a slow action, try a different quicker action—reeling once, then pulling up the rod tip once, shortly. But the big ones usually hit on a slow action.”

  “What do they think this bait is?” Old Gus asked.

  “No one knows. But most experts think it to be a shrimp.”

  Gus made his cast, falling far short of the sand bar.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Nick said. “They are liable to take it practical
ly under the boat.”

  They worked the spot for over fifteen minutes, then slowly the tide began to change, the sun came through the clouds again and they could see the bottom under their boat some nine feet down, then suddenly out about fifteen yards, towards the pass, Nick saw two great snook.

  “Reel in slow, Gus,” Nick said softly. “And do not talk. Look,” he motioned his head.

  And Gus saw the two great snook, swirling on tot) of the water, oblivious it seemed to their boat, to anything. There was a great twenty pound female and about a fifteen pound male and they were swirling belly to belly, the male sliding forward pressing against the female, then together diving, then the female sliding forward, pressing the roe from each other’s bodies round and round in large beautiful arcs, then upwards again towards the surface with the sun shining on their golden backs and their silver bellies, and like some live yet jet-propelled thing leaving streaming behind a wake of milky white roe, then swirling down and up again, drifting away with the tide now going out, Nick carefully lifting the anchor so their boat might drift with them, swirling poetically oblivious now to a great school of tarpon nearby.

  “You hardly ever see this on an out tide,” Nick whispered. “They say when they spawn like this on an out tide they go drifting out to sea through the pass together and never return,” he said very softly to Gus, but his own eyes fixed fascinated on the spawning fish.

  “It is like poetry,” Old Gus whispered.

  “And ballet,” Nick whispered.

  “And beautiful music. Like all those things all at once,” Gus whispered.

  “We could hit them in the head with an oar,” Nick said. “They would not stop. They are having their fulfillment and they will not stop for anything. Oh God,” Nick said almost sickeningly. And Gus turned and looked at him and saw that he had gone all pale, then Gus looked back at the swirling fish and coming at them swiftly was the dorsal fin and the great ugly head of a ten-foot hammerhead shark, and wham the water erupted, there was a sudden thrash and water spraying and down went the shark and blood flowed upon the water intermingled with the milky white roe and the tail of one of the snook drifted aimlessly out with the tide.

  They did not speak for a moment.

  “I should have brought my rifle,” Nick said suddenly, meaningly. “I would have liked to shoot that sonofabitch. Right in the backbone so that he could not sound and would be hooked to the surface and drown of the air.”

  “I have never seen anything so beautiful, I think,” Old Gus said.

  “You will see it again. You will never forget it. I have never forgotten it. Not ever. I could hardly believe it when I first saw it,” Nick said starting the motor and running back to where they had been anchored before. Slowly he dropped the anchor and made his cast. Then Gus made his cast. Midway of his retrieve Gus’s line seemed to snag. “I think I’m—”

  “Hell, that’s him,” Nick said quickly. And—zoom—out went Gus’s line, and out not fifteen feet from the boat the water opened up as the big snook came out, up, gills spread, eyes angered, water spraying, then down.

  “For Christ’s sake don’t thumb that reel,” Nick said. “Palm the handle.”

  Before Gus could get his thumb off the reel and hold the flat of his palm to the spinning handle the snook had taken off in one long rush with the tide nearly one hundred yards of line and blood was pouring from Gus’s thumb, then the fish seemed to stop all together.

  “Jerk it, Gus,” Nick said. “He’s trying to rest on you. If you let him you will be with him for an hour or until he loosens that hook.”

  Gus jerked on his rod and the fish took off again heading towards the key and the mangrove roots then far out over one hundred and twenty-five yards from the boat he came up straight out over flopping on its back, then sounded, going again for the key.

  “Holy. Holy,” Old Gus was saying. “I have never had a fish fight like this.”

  “If he gets into those groves you’ve had it. He’ll crash in there if he can. Even beach himself. It’s a male and they’re tougher than the females. Pull on the pole slowly so you turn its head. He has to go in the direction of its head. If it goes up against the tide it will wear out quicker. Turn him against the tide.”

  Slowly Gus began to turn the fish, and suddenly the fish took off again this time heading inward and upward at the same time.

  “Turn him just a little more,” Nick said. Gus’s thumb was bleeding like hell now and Nick was grinning watching him play the fish.

  Gus was not used to palming the casting handle and continually kept on reverting to the use of his thumb. The fish jumped three times more and twenty-five minutes later Gus began to bring him to the boat and thirty minutes after the strike Nick reached over the gunwale and taking a chance as the fish ran once swiftly near the surface near the boat put the gaff to him with one desperate stab. Gus was bleeding like hell from his thumb, and sweating like hell from the sun, and smiling as he looked at the fish on the floor of the boat.

  “We better get that hand fixed,” Nick said.

  “I have never fought such a fish,” Old Gus said.

  “We had better buy you a spinning rod and teach you how to use it,” Nick said. “Or you won’t have any thumb left. There is a fishing camp across this sand bar. Over in those groves. We can run over the sand bar with the tide this high. We will fix it there.”

  They ran over and got Gus’s thumb fixed and came back. Nick got two snook, each about eighteen pounds, and Gus lost two, and Nick tied into a small tarpon and lost it on the first jump. They had worked out towards the pass following the channel and the line of keys as the tide went out. About three in the afternoon, with clouds all spread and the sun coming down hot, Nick said: “I think we should call it a day.”

  “I am tired,” Old Gus said, “from the fish and the sun. But it has been a wonderful day. One I will not forget,” he smiled.

  They made the run out through Caxambas Pass with its wide white sand beaches and the row of palm trees along the beach on the south shore and the old beachcomber’s shack set in among the trees, then turned north and followed the beach running the motors wide, the sea spray hitting their faces and letting them know from the salt sting that they had absorbed much more sun this day than they had believed, seeing two schools of large tarpon working on what Nick thought was a school of jacks or maybe mullet, and saw one large sea turtle and two people fishing in the surf from the white beach, the boat refusing to plane out because of the now rougher sea hitting them broadside, then turning into the calm-of Big Marco Pass and docking.

  Nick threw the fish onto the dock. The dockmaster, still working on the motor, turned and glanced as the fish flopped onto the dock, then turned his head away as if he didn’t notice. Nick went over to him and got a big piece of canvas to cover the equipment that they were leaving in the boat.

  “How didja do?” the big man asked.

  “All right,” Nick said.

  “Good boat, ain’t it?” the dockmaster said.

  “The motors run well. She’s not too good in a heavy sea.”

  “She wasn’t built for a heavy sea, youngin,” he said.

  “I know that,” Nick said.

  Nick cleaned and filleted the fish. He had a hell of time fighting off the mosquitos and flies as he cleaned them. He threw the head and tail over the edge of the dock and the crabs went to work on them before they hit the bottom two feet down. He saved the roe which was red in the lone male and white in the two females, telling Gus that they would have the roe scrambled in with their eggs in the morning. Gus thought that would be fine. Then Nick wrapped the fillets in newspaper and walked back to the Inn and rewrapped the fillets in wax paper in the kitchen, and tagged the fillets with his name and put them in the deep freeze.

  Then they went up to Nick’s room and had a drink. It was very hot. They decided to nap then go over to Molly’s beer joint before they ate dinner. Nick showered before he napped and was quickly asleep and when Gus woke him it
was almost eight. They decided to eat first and then go to the beer joint. They ate stone crabs dipped in butter and had beer with the crabs. It was much cooler in the early evening. Then they went upstairs to put on some mosquito repellent before going over to Molly’s. Nick belted two shots of whiskey before he put on the repellent.

  There was a good fresh-from-night wind from the gulf and no clouds in the sky and an abundance of stars in the sky and the moon was coming up bigger than Nick had seen it since Burma. It was a good half mile walk.

  Molly’s was very crowded with the same old sea creviced faces that it was crowded with every night. It was an old wooden building with a creaky old wooden floor and half of the building jutted out over the water of the bay and when the piano player was not playing you could hear the water lapping underneath whenever, which was seldom, the talk quieted enough. The islanders were boisterous people. Nick sought out big, old, fat, toothless Molly and she remembered him. He introduced her to Gus. They sat down at one of the old wooden tables with the twisted steel-framed chairs and Nick saw his old friend Larry from the fishing camp down at Caxambas and Larry came over. He was mostly Indian. They shook hands around. The piano player was playing loudly.

  “I hear you fished my pass today,” Larry said.

  “And you heard we got three and lost two,” Nick said.

  “That’s as good as anyone this year. You look old.”

  “I went to war,” Nick said. “How come you didn’t go to war?”

  “I’m too old.”

  “You are like hell,” Nick said. “You’re not over thirty, thirty-two, are you?”

  “I’m forty-five,” he grinned. He had about the whitest, most perfect teeth Nick had ever seen. He was dark, not Indian dark, but sun-tanned layer upon layer dark and looked something like a younger Jack Dempsey, Nick thought.