The Drift

by Chris Thrall

  “Errh . . . errh . . .” stammered Ahmed.

  “And you must turn the key one click to be able to steer.” Saleem chuckled, and, bidding, “Vaarwel, mijn zonen,” he disappeared.

  Ahmed took his foot off the brake and freewheeled the truck far enough down the mountain to start the engine without fear of waking the men in the farmhouse. He soon had the driving under control, with only the occasional crash of gears.

  “Drinky-drinky?” Mohamed pulled a bottle of whiskey from his waistband.

  “Where did you . . . ?” Ahmed needn’t have asked.

  “Ha-ha!” Mohamed took a large swig and handed it over.

  “Now take off the shells.”

  Mohamed obliged, hiding the cartridges and shotgun under the pickup’s bench seat.

  “How did he know?”

  “How did who know what?” Ahmed kept his eyes on the road.

  “The old man. ‘Vaarwel, mijn zonen.’ It means ‘Farwell, my sons’ in Dutch.”

  “He learnt it from the buyers, just like you did.”

  “No, I mean, how did he know we’re going to Holland Land?”

  Ahmed shook his head. “I don’t think we’ll ever know.”

  - 67 -

  “A big one, Jessie! A big one!”

  Out of the depths shot a monster fish, snapping its jaws to rip a minnow from the ecosystem burgeoning beneath the raft.

  “Yellowfin, Papa?”

  “No, this one’s different.”

  Hans continued to jerk the silver-foil lure up and down, making it as tempting as possible, to no avail. He swapped to a trace of mackerel feathers from the fishing kit, but still luck evaded him. The huge fish retreated beneath a patch of sargassum weed trailing across the sea’s surface, and the inquisitive tiddlers kept darting at the dyed-blue attractors but then rejecting them.

  They needed to change tactics.

  Gripping the filleting knife, Hans cut a mesh pocket from the inside of the raft, making sure not to damage the canopy and to leave enough excess material either side of the webbing seams to account for fraying. He took two sections of fiberglass radar pole and taped their ends together to form a V, adding a Bic pen casing as a cross member, the result a three-foot-long double prong onto the tips of which he bound the mesh pocket to form a crude shrimping net.

  Taking great care, he lowered his creation into the water and waited for a minnow to drift away from the seaweed tendrils sprouting below. It was frustrating, since waves lapping against the tubes obscured his line of sight. In a moment of clarity he homed in on one, whipped up the net and . . .

  “Ah!”

  It was too quick for him.

  Hans leant further out and began targeting the fish hiding under the raft itself. Despite several failed attempts, it soon became apparent the weed reduced the fish’s vision – either that or it lulled them into a false sense of security. The next sweep saw one flashing white and silver as it tried to escape the net.

  “Yes! We got one, honey! We got one!”

  The minnow wriggling in his palm presented Hans with a conundrum. With their rations expended, it was tempting to simply gut the fish and share it raw with Jessica. Alternatively, he knew from survival training that placing the fish inside a piece of clothing and then wringing it out would produce a foul-tasting but drinkable liquid. However, he could also use the morsel as bait to try to catch the larger predator.

  The decision made, Hans tied a size eight hook to the handline, its carbon-tempered point honed to such a sharp finish that a slight touch saw a bead of blood well from his thumb. To avoid catastrophe, he took great care not to let it contact the raft’s exposed tubing. He guided the hook into the minnow’s gullet and wove it through the flesh several times. Having cast it over the side, he sat in the doorway jigging the line up and down.

  Hours passed and the light began to fade. Hans was about to give up when the big fish reappeared, shooting past the bait before turning on a dime and coming to a standstill just a few feet from it. Then it hovered in the swell, lining up on the offering as if contemplating its next move. Although intrinsically ugly, the creature projected a mystical quality, as if a throwback to the Jurassic period. A monstrous forehead towered over timid eyes and a comically downturned pout, which hid a row of vicious triangular teeth like those of a piranha. A black dorsal fin tapered the length of its three-foot, green-and-yellow torso to meet a V-shaped tail evolved for power and agility. Hans believed it to be a dorado, or “dolphinfish,” and knew it made good eating.

  His hands shook.

  Without warning the fish shot for the bait and in an iridescent blaze snatched it and shot downwards.

  Hans couldn’t believe it. In such dismal circumstances the possibility of landing a fish had felt beyond him, let alone a trophy such as this one. He let the spool run free, cradling it gently in his fingers, intent on letting the fish swallow the hook and then playing it for all it was worth.

  His mind raced and he tried not to panic . . .

  If I can land this beast, then I can catch more and more, and our food worries will be over.

  But the excitement was short-lived. The line went slack, and he wound it in to find a frayed end where the fish had bitten it in two.

  “Damn!”

  When packing the fishing kit, Hans figured line with a twenty-pound breaking strain would be more than sufficient. He hadn’t reckoned on these leviathans. Without a wire leader the nylon stood no chance against their razor-sharp bite.

  - 68 -

  The next day brought better luck. Hans worked out why salt water had been contaminating the distillate produced by the solar still. When a swell kicked up, the device drifted to the end of its tether and began jerking through the wave tops, splashing seawater in the evaporation chamber up against the still’s domed sides, which then dripped down to mix with the condensate. Hans reckoned that by pulling in the tether every few minutes to keep it slack, he could prevent this from happening. By the end of the day this approach produced almost a pint of brackish but drinkable water.

  As evening came the elusive dorado returned with three companions. Two looked distinctly different – smaller, with rounded and not jutting foreheads. Hans figured they were females. By now hunger took its toll. With weight dripping off him, Hans experienced a base ravenousness like never before, which emanated from the pit of his stomach and spread through every molecule of his being. His thoughts flicked to a documentary about polar bears he had watched on Discovery.

  It must be the way a wild animal feels when food stocks are scarce.

  He was sure Jessica felt the same, although she never complained.

  With no other option, Hans picked up the makeshift net and attempted to trap another minnow, donning the diving mask and snorkel to get a clearer picture below. He zeroed in on a two-inch-long fingerling with a turquoise-and-silver torso separated by a thick brown dorsal line. It looked like a cross between a young mackerel and a largemouth bass, its bulbous black eyes giving the impression of a permanent state of edginess.

  Using the seaweed tendrils as camouflage, Hans gently raised the mesh and, with a deft scoop, ambushed the unwary fish, jamming the mouth of the net against the underside of the raft to prevent an escape. He drew the mesh toward him, delighted to find the tiddler flapping about in amongst the bottle-green strands of flora.

  Hans caught a number of fry, perfecting his technique in the process, but when he baited up, the dorados took an age to strike and then bit through the line when hooked. There had to be another way.

  During the day the larger fish disappeared to target prey in deeper hunting grounds. Hans took the opportunity to review the raft’s inventory, going through their equipment piece by piece in hopes of finding something to substitute a wire trace. He racked his brain, thinking outside the box to consider all possibilities, such as removing the springs from the strobe’s battery compartment, stretching them out and somehow linking them together. But that would jeopardize their chance of res
cue, and without the proper tools his efforts would likely come to nothing.

  Hans contemplated trimming a ribbon-like strip from an empty water can with the pocketknife. He would have to find a way to secure one end of it to the fishing line and pass the other end through the eye of a hook. Maybe he could heat it with the cigarette lighter and pound it into a smaller diameter using a can of water as a hammer and the chopping board as an anvil, like an oceanic blacksmith.

  Just as he was about to put the plan into action, a thought struck him: Penny’s jewelry-making case.

  Didn’t she make a bracelet for Jessica using the exact type of wire he needed? He popped the two tiny brass clasps and opened the wooden box to find a whole spool along with a pair of small pliers.

  Yes!

  Ignoring the pain, he picked Jessica up and held her above his head. “Oh . . . ooh-be-doo . . . I wanna be like you-ooh-ooh!”

  “I wanna walk like you!”

  “Talk like you toooo!”

  Hans hugged his daughter tight and vowed to get her out of here. So long as they didn’t give up hope, there would always be a way.

  He cut a two-foot length of wire from the spool using the pliers’ blades. Then, improvising with a pen as a form, he twisted one end into a loop to secure the fishing line to, and the other around the eye of one of the two remaining large hooks.

  “Sometimes I got cross with him.”

  “Huh?”

  “When he wouldn’t share his toys.”

  “Oh.”

  “I told him Mommy said you gotta share your toys, or people won’t like you.”

  “And did he?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Yes. Yes, he is.”

  “And Mommy’s dead.”

  “I know.”

  “If you don’t share your toys, then you get dead!”

  “No!”

  “A boy at school told me JJ got dead because God was upset with him.”

  “He shouldn’t have said that.”

  “I hit him . . . in the face.”

  “I know. I came into school, remember?”

  “Uh-huh. To see Miss Potter because I was naughty.”

  “No! You weren’t naughty. I told that old witch the only thing you did wrong was not hit that bully hard enough. Shoulda given him the old one-two like Daddy taught you.”

  “Penny said I was a good girl.”

  “You are a good girl.”

  “Penny kissed me and hugged me when I went to sleep.”

  “Penny’s real nice – and she loves you, Jessie.”

  “She made me a bracelet.”

  Hans expected Jessica to hold the trinket up, but she stared at her feet. When he looked, her wrist was bare.

  “Look, Jess.” Hans waved the new fishing trace. “Penny’s still making jewelry for us now.”

  “I miss Penny, Papa.”

  “We’ll see her soon, sweat pea.”

  Right on cue, as the sun sunk to the horizon the dorados returned. Through the diving mask, Hans counted an additional fish in the ranks, making five in total. The dorado that had first shadowed the raft was instantly recognizable. It was considerably bigger than rest and, being male, had a massive forehead.

  “Hello, Macheath!” Hans rasped – somewhat out of character for a man averse to anthropomorphizing animals.

  Hans had started to do this of late, ascribing human characteristics to the ocean’s wildlife and weaving an imaginary and colorful narrative into the unfolding picture. “All the world’s a stage!” someone once said, and this is how he framed the situation. Moreover, it was an opera!

  He saw himself as maestro, overseeing the arrangement from a lectern in the orchestra pit. The waves were the percussion section at work, no longer Wagner’s stormy cymbals but brushes stroking the skin of a snare drum. The changing breeze represented the wind instruments. Whales, dolphins and seagulls, when called on stage, would be the strings. Flying fish skittering across the wave tops were punters rushing from the stalls for refreshments during the interval – or worse, fleeing a bad performance. The minnows were the stagehands and callboys working behind the scenes to change the seaweed and algae backdrops, altering the lighting and coordinating the performance. Obviously, Mother Nature took charge of the technical direction. Macheath was the notorious Mack the Knife, the charismatic underworld criminal who wielded a razor-edged blade and influence over his gang of deviants and misfits.

  The latest addition to the somewhat mixed cast, a female, had an ugly cleft jaw, reminding Hans of the salmon he had seen as a teenager while working a summer job in a processing plant in Alaska. Standing by a conveyor belt, he’d trimmed excess fat and removed awkward bones from the prize sides of fish spewing out of the factory’s industrial filleting machines. They would then be boxed, frozen and shipped to a warehouse in Tokyo ready to supply Japan’s endless demand for sushi. Grown in enormous cages floating in the sea, the salmon were delivered to the plant in their thousands, a number of them sporting malformed jaws like this dorado, a consequence of the intensive farming method. He named the newcomer Cio-Cio after the lead in Puccini’s Japanese tragedy Madame Butterfly.

  Determined to try out the wire trace before sundown, Hans netted another minnow and prepared the hook. Dropping it over the side, he felt a pang of trepidation. If a dorado took the bait now, there would be no chance of it biting through the line, and the onus would be on him to play the fish until it tired and then pull it on board. Hans pondered this for a moment, shook his head and wound in the gear. He couldn’t risk losing another hook, and this was not the right time to expand his repertoire of “the one that got away” anecdotes. He imagined holding his hands apart and shaking his head while telling Jessica, “Honestly, it was this big, honey! Oh, and I just lost some more of our precious tackle.”

  Instead Hans took the last size eight hook, and, using the wire and pliers, bound it tightly to the remaining section of radar pole to form a gaff. Then he wrapped the lashing around with duct tape for additional strength. As a safety measure he heated a Bic pen lid with the cigarette lighter and squeezed it flat. Snipping off the shirt pocket clip left him with a protective cap that slid snugly onto the gaff’s unforgiving tip to prevent any mishaps.

  Having recast the handline, he let it sink a few feet and was just wondering if a fish would take interest when a dorado hit the bait and line peeled from the spool.

  Yes!

  His first instinct was to wake Jessica and share his excitement, but he paused, figuring it better to focus on the task in hand and come up with the goods. He dropped the spool in his lap and began handling the line itself. There would be plenty of time to rewind it later – he just had to make sure not to let it tangle into a bird’s nest. As the fish yanked the nylon in an effort to run deep, Hans let it slip through his grip, using his fingers and palms as a brake to deny the frantic creature any slack with which to break loose.

  For ten minutes – to Hans it seemed like seconds – the dorado fought as if possessed, determined to free itself from this terrifying predicament. But the creature soon tired, and its attempts at diving reduced to tokenism. Hans kept his guard up, not taking his eye of the beautiful fish as it jackknifed on the surface, allowing him to draw it toward the raft. He reached behind, groped for the gaff and pulled off the protective cap with his teeth.

  The dorado lay on its side, completely spent of energy with the exception of its piercing black eyes, which appeared to fixate on its captor. Hans lowered the gaff and, with a jerk, attempted to impale the exhausted prey behind one of its gill plates, only the wiry hook bounced off its armorlike scales.

  In a quick change of plan, Hans went for the midriff, experiencing immense satisfaction when the barbed point pierced the dorado’s soft white flesh and lodged in its underbelly. Hans expected the dorado to react to the pain and make a final break for freedom, but it did neither. So seizing the moment, he lunged, grabbing his prize by the tail to pull it aboard the raft.

  The
fish exploded into life, thrashing wildly, its two-foot length of sheer muscle spraying the raft’s interior with blood, mucus and scales. Hans dived on his bounty, determined not to mess things up at this stage, the dorado’s flailing torso smashing against his bony rib cage and knocking the wind out of him. Unable to reach for a knife, he resorted to pummeling the fish’s head with his fist again and again until it finally lay still, with only the odd death throe as testament to the ordeal.

  “Mullet fish, Papa?”

  “No, not a mullet.”

  “Yellowfin?”

  “No, sweet pea. Not a yellowfin. A dorado.”

  “Are we going on Future for a barbeque?”

  “No. No barbeques at the opera, Jessie.”

  As the dorado passed into the next life, a strange thing occurred. Its spectacular iridescent sheen slowly changed from all the colors of the rainbow into a hideous dull green. Moments later it flickered through shades of black and gray, as a log does having turned to ash in a fireplace.

  Hans watched in awe and sadness as this most marvelous of beings and determined adversary made the ultimate sacrifice so the two of them could live. He had never felt this way before. He had hunted and fished all his life. He had taken human life on more than one occasion. Yet it took this god-awful scenario for him to appreciate what life truly meant. It was as though the dorado represented his and Jessica’s struggle to survive, a scene so powerful emotion overcame him.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Tears rolled down Hans’ emaciated cheeks. Not even Jessica lying against him could stop his outpouring of grief. Finally, he knew he had to give it up. By expending this precious energy, his soul was attempting to kill him, to run his body past the point of no return. Hans could not let that happen. He could never break his promise to his little girl.

  Drifting into oblivion, he was far too tired to register the hefty thump on the bottom of the raft.

  - 69 -

  The young Moroccans stopped to collect their clothes and books from the locker at the ferry port before continuing on to the yacht. Ahmed pulled up at the harbor entrance.