by Rick Chesler
Very mild traffic passed by in each direction, but he saw no law enforcement presence. Go for it. He made his way back through the sawgrass to his truck while the rain pelted his back. He climbed in and started the engine. Put it in low gear to gain some traction against the muck and then put it in reverse. He heard the wheels spin in place, slinging mud.
Damn! He’d underestimated the precariousness of his situation with the rain flooding the already wet ground. His truck was sinking into the swamp, and fast. He ran his hands through his hair, struggling to think while the mosquitos sucked his blood. He ran back to the bed of his truck and looked for something he could use as traction. He took out the piece of wood he used as a ramp to slide gators up and down from the bed. It was long enough to jam underneath both rear wheels. He got back into the truck and put it into reverse again. This time, the wood gave him sufficient traction to get going, and he gave it some gas as he rolled over it. After one heart-stopping moment when the entire truck lurched while he went through a dip, Kane made it up to the side of the highway.
He timed his merge onto the lane so that he pulled out in between a car and a truck, so that he had vehicles in front of and behind him. Taking a deep breath, Kane drove back to the city.
TWENTY-TWO
Kane got back home without being spotted but he found it hard to put on a happy face in front of his roommates, all three of whom were lounging on the porch.
“Yo, Lyle, what happened to your truck logo? Making so much cash on the side you quit?” Cody asked with a grin. They all looked to his unadorned truck.
Kane caught a can of beer tossed to him by Felix and cracked it open. “I just released the panther,” he said, taking a long pull.
“And what, it stole your truck logos?” Cody asked, looking to the other guys for a laugh, and getting one.
“No, I had to ditch ‘em because a Fish and Game ranger saw me on the side of Highway 41 letting the panther go.” He went on to relate the story of his escape, leaving out the importance of not having contact with law enforcement, deciding that keeping the matches going would be perceived as motivation enough.
“Damn!” Cody sounded appreciative enough with that one word to lift Kane’s spirits some.
The conversation turned to how successful and fun the match with the panther was, to Brandon’s recovery, and then it moved on. Cody held up a finger like he had just thought of a great idea.
“Hey, Kane, since you want to lay low for a bit with the gator thing, you might be into this: Tomorrow a buddy of mine with a boat is going out fishing, told me I could bring somebody. You want to go?”
Kane shrugged as he drained some more of his beer. “Sure, why not?”
#
“What are we fishing for?” Kane grinned from behind his sunglasses as he stepped aboard the eighteen-foot Boston Whaler. Aboard the vessel were Kane, Cody, and Cody’s friend who owned the boat, José.
José looked up from the boat’s console where he was prepping the engine for the trip and grinned. “Figure we’ll head out about twenty miles, where it’s 350 feet deep or so, and do some trolling. Maybe hook up with some dolphin fish, if we’re lucky, a marlin, or even a sailfish…who knows?”
“Sounds good to me!” Kane took a seat in the rear cockpit of the boat and grabbed a beer from an iced cooler to settle in for the ride out to the fishing grounds. The day was overcast, which kept it from being overly hot out on the water, and with mild swells that made for a smooth enough boat ride. On the way out, Cody enlisted Kane’s help to cut the mackerel they had for bait and set up the fishing rigs.
Once on the fishing site, José slowed the boat and monitored his fish finder and other electronics carefully. “A little further out,” he said, before accelerating again. Only five minutes later, he slowed again, and this time proclaimed the area fit for fishing.
“Let’s do this!”
Kane and Cody dumped buckets of chum overboard while José got the lines in the water—four all told, two on each side of the boat. They let the lines out far enough that the fish weren’t likely to be spooked by the sight and sound of the boat itself. Then José got behind the wheel again.
“Eight miles per hour, that’s the sweet spot,” José said as he put the boat back into gear, motoring slow this time—fast enough to make the jigs they had out look like swimming bait fish, but slow enough that their target fish could strike.
On the rear deck, Kane and Cody opened another beer and settled down for the wait. Kane was glad to be back on the ocean again, to feel the salt spray and see that never-ending expanse of water that reminded him how big the planet really was—so infinitely bigger than a prison cell. He had to find a way to stay out of there…
“Earth to Kane, what’s up, man, you okay?” Cody waved a hand in front of his face. Kane blushed behind his sunglasses, suddenly aware he’d been caught spacing out, daydreaming about perma-freedom.
“Yeah, man, sorry. Just thinking about that panther again. The match, it was pretty intense.” He thought it was a pretty smooth comeback, all things considered.
Cody shrugged and nodded at the same time. “It was pretty wild, wasn’t it? I thought—”
José’s shout of “Fish on!” interrupted them. Kane turned to see one of the rods on the right-hand side of the boat bending over with applied pressure. Cody moved to the pole. “I’ll take the first one, cool?”
“Go for it.” Kane watched as Cody picked the rod up out of the holder and put the butt end into a harness he wore around his waist.
“Dolphin!” José called from the wheel. “Big jump!” The gold and blue fish, also called mahi-mahi or dorado in other parts of the world, were known for their acrobatic evasive displays when hooked. Cody doubled down on the rod, reeling while pointing the tip down toward the water and then using his muscles to pull the rod back up again to repeat the process.
“Put your back into it!” José called out. While Cody fought the fish, Kane moved to pick up the gaff, a pole with a large hook on one end used to boat the fish. Cody let out a whoop as the game fish executed a spectacular leap out of the water, its iridescent scales glistening before landing close to the boat. Kane moved up to the stern of the boat with the gaff, next to where Cody fished.
“Here it comes!” Cody pulled hard on the rod and the fish came to the back of the boat. Kane leaned over with the gaff and hooked it, then pulled it up and over the transom. It landed on the deck, leaving a blood slick where it flipped around.
Cody and Kane high-fived.
“That’s one!” José said. “Dinner tonight! Let’s get the line rigged again and back out there.”
Kane and Cody wrangled the fish into the fish hold, then got the line back out. By that time, José was already plowing along at trolling speed, churning a swath through the slow rolling swells. More beers were opened, but this time they didn’t have long to wait for another strike.
“Same pole again!” Cody exclaimed.
“Who rigged that one—they got the magic touch,” José commented from the helm.
“Pretty sure I did,” Cody said, lifting the rod from the holder. But this time, he handed it to Kane. “Your turn. Use the harness.”
Kane placed the butt of the rod in the holder at the center of the harness worn like a belt around his waist. He’d been deep sea fishing a couple of times before, in California, but it was a long time ago. He wasn’t ready for the power at the other end of the line. The fish, still unseen below the surface, pulled hard away from the boat and Kane’s knees slammed into the transom. He took one hand off the rod to steady himself against the boat while the fish continued to run.
“It’s fast,” Cody commented as the line sizzled off the reel, flecks of water ejecting from it.
“Let it run a little,” José advised from the cockpit. “I’ll back it down if we need to, but for now, let it run.”
Kane took the advice, flipping the lever to allow the line to slip freely from the reel. The idea was to give the fish some bre
athing room, to keep it from panicking to avoid it breaking the line, which it might be able to do with repeated full force maneuvers. As expected, the fish ran with the line, taking it further from the boat.
“Better lock it down now,” José advised, and Kane flipped the lever to keep the line from spooling out. Immediately, he felt the pull of what had to be a large fish. Then, almost a football field away from the boat, the animal jumped.
“Shark!” Cody yelled.
“Shark?” Kane said, planting his feet more solidly and bracing himself for a long fight. “What kind?”
“Looks like a mako,” José said. “They jump like that. Let’s see if we can boat him, it won’t be easy.”
He turned out to be right about that. A half an hour later, Kane still battled the big predator. After a couple of more jumps closer to the boat, they could see it was about eight feet long.
“That’s an adult shortfin mako right there,” José said.
After more reeling, Kane got the shark to the boat. He watched it swim, still capable of short, quick bursts of speed even after the tiring fight. Cody came over with the gaff, but Kane stopped him.
“Hold it.” He got a faraway look in his eyes.
“What?” Cody watched the shark at the end of the now short length of line, thrashing its tail against the side of the boat.
Kane shook his head. “Nothing, it’s crazy…”
“What?” Cody said, making it clear that he knew Kane had had some kind of idea and he wanted to hear it.
Kane looked back to José and quickly back to Cody. “Before we gaff it…” He hesitated yet again.
“Out with it, man. What?”
“What if we could keep it alive all the way home?”
Cody looked confused. “You mean so the meat stays super-fresh?”
“Why don’t you guys get it in the boat first before you start worrying about how to keep it fresh?” José said, a hint of irritation in his voice. “I don’t really want to lose that lure if I don’t have to, either.”
Kane spoke to Cody with renewed urgency. “If we can keep it alive until we can get it to the tank…” He raised his eyebrows at the end of the sentence, until the rod jerked hard and he had to tend to fighting the shark. But the next time he was able to look away, he could see that Cody’s wheels were turning.
“You mean, we fill the tank like half full of water? Will that work?”
Kane explained how the tank was in fact designed to hold water to full capacity, but that they hadn’t been needing to fill it very high so far because of the type of animals—alligators and the croc, the panther. “Imagine the action we’d see with a mako shark!” Kane daydreamed aloud.
Cody looked over the side at the thrashing ocean predator. “You think anyone would even try?”
Kane also watched the shark for a few seconds before nodding “Waist or shoulder-deep water so they can stand, maybe a small, simple weapon like a knife….”
Cody looked back to José. “We’ll make it worth your while if we can get this mako home alive.”
At length, José shook his head. “You guys are crazy. Put him head first into the bait well and make sure the aerator is on. Have the tank ready and waiting and it’ll probably make it.”
TWENTY-THREE
Kane spent the rest of the fishing trip on the phone with Boyd trying to convince him that it would be worth his while to have the tank set up somewhere they could have a match. In the end, he agreed to get back to him after he found a place. “But make sure you call me if it dies.” Kane told him he would, and for the rest of the boat ride back, he, Cody and José discussed logistics, including how to get the tank filled with saltwater.
The shark was still alive and well by the time they motored back into the harbor, with one-third of its body, including the tail, protruding from the bait tank.
“Where are you going with it?” José asked as he docked vessel. “Because if it’s going to die, I’d rather filet it so we can barbecue it this weekend. Makos are good eating.”
Kane shook his head. “This is going to be a catch and release, with a little detour between the catch and the release.” In the bait tank, the mako whipped its tail back and forth, spraying Kane and Cody with water.
José frowned. “I just hope you guys aren’t going to waste some good meat.” Then he hefted the dolphin fish from the ice. “I’ll take this guy to actually eat, then.”
Kane placed another call. “We need that location, Boyd.” Kane’s face took on a confused expression while Cody listened to his side of the conversation. “Warehouse? I guess. What about getting the seawater in there? All right.”
He put away his phone and addressed Cody. “He says he’s got it set up in an abandoned warehouse in Florida City.”
“And the water?”
“Says he’s working on it now, that we should bring the shark.”
As they discussed on the trip back, the plan was to wrap the mako in wet, saltwater-soaked towels and transport it directly to the tank in the back of Kane’s pickup. Cody would ride in back along with a few buckets of saltwater to dump on the fish’s gills as they made the trip over.
Kane pulled his truck as close to the boat dock as possible, opened the lift gate, and made a space for the shark in the bed.
“This thing’s heavy!” Cody called from the boat, where he and José had the mako wrapped in soaking towels and were trying to lift it.
Kane shook his head. “It’s got to be five or six hundred pounds. Maybe with three of us, we can do it.” He jumped back onto the boat.
“This is your idea, you get the head end,” José said. Then he pointed to Cody. “And you get the tail. I’ll carry the middle.” Kane and Cody reluctantly agreed, with Kane taking up position just behind the head at the gills. The shark snapped its jaws a couple of times but then became still when the men started to lift it.
They managed to roll it onto the dock, eliciting a few stares from curious onlookers. From there, they climbed out and repeated the process, this time staggering over with their thrashing burden to Kane’s truck. They just managed to lift it up and onto the bed, and then Kane was able to slide the fish into position.
They loaded the buckets of saltwater in the back and then Cody crawled in next to the shark. “Try not to drive like too much of a maniac. Don’t need a live shark rolling all over me.”
Kane gave him an evil grin as he got behind the wheel. “Let’s go.”
“Good luck you crazy bastards,” José yelled after them as Kane pulled out of the parking lot.
#
As Boyd had promised, the tank was set up in an abandoned warehouse, on the first floor. The place was decrepit, with windows broken out, construction debris littered around the floor and surrounding property, but it had four walls and a roof, and plenty of room to hold their event. What’s more, it was pretty close to get to from Homestead, but also not a place that experienced heavy traffic. Boyd did well for such short notice, Kane thought, inspecting the place.
He stepped up to the tank for a closer look through one of its clear panels. There was about a foot of water sloshing around at the bottom.
“I know, I know,” Boyd said, anticipating Kane’s remark about the water level. “We’re going to need a lot more water. We’ll get it. But I figured this should be enough to put it in here for now.”
Kane nodded. “Better than a bunch of wet towels. Let’s get it in there.”
He, Cody, and Boyd carried the animal from the truck to the tank. It was a lot of trouble, but they managed to carry it up the stairs to the tank’s small platform. From there, they unceremoniously dumped the fish into the tank. It lay there for a moment, no doubt stunned. For a few seconds, they doubted it would recover, but then it began to swish its tail, tentatively at first, and then with more force. Finally, it began to propel itself around the tank.
“We need to get more saltwater in there,” Kane said after observing the mako for a few seconds.
They thou
ght about the best way to do that. Boyd told them that the same company that made the tank also makes big bladders that hold liquid. “For hazmat cleanup and stuff. They can hold seawater, though. I don’t know how we’d fill them, though, and move them around. Would be super-heavy.”
“Sounds too industrial,” Kane said. Then he turned to Cody. “Hey, what about those old 55-gallon drums in the yard?”
Cody furrowed his brow. “Drums? Oh yeah, over by the canal, right?”
“Right.”
“Those rusty old things?”
Kane shrugged. “Four of those are 200 gallons, if they’re not rusted out. Who do you think is home right now?”
Cody checked his watch. “Probably Felix.”
Kane placed a call on his cellphone. “Yo, Felix, are you home now?” He nodded to Cody and Boyd. “Cool, hey listen: we need you to check out those metal 55-gallon drums in the yard. See if they’re all rusted out, or what. Can you do that?”
Kane put the phone on speaker while he waited for his roommate to check the drums. In the meantime, he watched the mako’s back and dorsal fin protruding well above the waterline as it tried to move around the tank.
“That shark could kill somebody, couldn’t it?” Boyd asked at length.
Cody nodded. “Sure could. Or even just bite your hand off, no problem at all.”
“Would you go ten minutes standing in there, Cody, if the water was waist high?” Boyd asked.
A doubtful expression formed on Cody’s face. “Not so sure. Maybe. Depends on how big the pot was, I guess.”
“What about you, Lyle?” Boyd continued.
“What about me?”
“Would you go in there with it?”
Kane considered the mako some more before replying. “Would I get my same house cut and also the fighter’s cut?”
Cody and Boyd exchanged glances. Boyd nodded. “I think that’s fair.”
The shark beat its tail back and forth, churning the shallow water to foam while Kane watched. “I’ll think about it.”