Lord of the Deep Page 7

  “Yes,” Mikey whispered.

  He slid down the ladder and grabbed the polarized binoculars and brought them back up. He turned the eyepiece to focus.

  Blur, blur. There!

  A waterlogged coconut tree is what it looked like. Two or three hundred yards off the port bow.

  Alison moved up next to him.

  “It’s a coconut tree, I think. Here. Look over there. Keep your eye on it, okay?”

  Alison took the binoculars.

  Mikey scrambled down and told Bill, and Bill eased the boat that way.

  “Bring in one of the outside lines,” Bill said. “Replace it with light tackle.”

  “What kind of lure?”

  Bill shrugged. “You decide.”

  Mikey grinned and ran out to make the change. He chose one of Bill’s homemade jet heads. Thirty-pound test reel. He took the rig out and set it up, put the replaced rod in the rack on the side of the boat. He dropped the jet over the transom and let it free-spool out. What was it Bill said?

  Think, think.

  The drag. Set it too light and it won’t hammer the hook into the fish. Too tight, the line could snap. You wanted the hook to sink in as the fish runs.

  Mikey placed the lure and set the drag where he thought it should be, prayed it should be.

  He stood watching the jet work. Now that he was responsible, he understood why Bill spent so long studying the action.

  When he was satisfied, Mikey went back in.

  Bill didn’t even get up to check it. “Nice job, Mikey. I can tell from here.”

  Cal slapped his cards facedown on the table and stretched. “What’s up?” he said, yawning.

  “Mikey spotted a log in the water. I had him change one of the long lines to light tackle. Sometimes you can run into a colony of mahimahi around floating debris.”

  “Dolphinfish?” Ernie said.

  “That’s the one.”

  Cal squinted out the window.

  Mikey wondered why they weren’t more excited about the log. Floating debris could be an absolute gold mine.

  “They don’t get much bigger than fifteen or twenty pounds, do they?” Ernie said.

  “Thirty-five or forty is not unusual,” Bill said. “In these waters, anyway. But the males can get bigger than that. World record is eighty-eight, I think. They may not be as popular as marlin, but I’ll tell you this: you can’t find a better fighting fish anywhere in the world. Or a better eating one, either. In my opinion.”

  Cal frowned. “The one we lost was a fighting fish. In my opinion.”

  Bill nodded. “That it was.”

  Ernie rubbed a hand over his mouth. He gnawed his thumbnail, his beer-colored eyes intense. “We tracked a wounded elk for two days over in Utah once,” he said. “Followed the blood.”

  “Without a dog, too,” Cal added.

  “We finally found it dead in a field of waist-high grass. We don’t like to give up.”

  Bill nodded and turned to gaze out over the ocean.

  “You’re getting us that marlin, right?” Ernie said. “I mean, we’re not giving up on that, are we?”

  “I’ll give you the best I have in me, men.”

  Cal humphed.

  “Well, just you remember,” Ernie said. “We came here for marlin, all right? Swordfish. Don’t waste a lot of our time messing around with this small stuff.”

  Bill raised his eyebrows. “It’s your money.”

  “Glad we all understand that,” Ernie said.

  “But what you don’t understand,” Bill added, “is that marlin like to eat mahimahi, too. Sometimes a log is as good as gold.”

  Finally, Mikey thought. Bill’s getting irritated.

  But that was it. Cal and Ernie went back to their cards, and Bill stepped back into his mind.

  Mikey went back up to see Alison.

  They trolled past the log, three light tackle lures and one long line working the wake. Mikey showed Alison the silvery flashes of light beneath the surface as they passed near the log. Silver glimmerings.

  “Mahimahi,” he said. “Look. Hundreds of them!”

  The Crystal-C passed the log again, then once more. Several fish followed the boat, like porpoises, hugging the hull. “They’re trying to hide,” Mikey said. “Using the boat for protection.”

  “From what?”

  “Marlin, maybe. Probably.”

  Nothing struck the lures.

  Mikey dropped back down to see Bill. “What if we stop and chum, drop baited hooks?”

  Bill nodded. Said nothing.

  “We could cut up the ono.”

  “We could,” Bill said.

  But Mikey could sense that Bill was hesitant to do that. If the one fish in the fish box was all they were going to catch that day, he’d not want to use it as bait. But if they did use it for bait, they might have a shot at four or five mahimahi, if the conditions were right.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Cal said. “Go back to where we hooked the marlin.”

  Bill squinted out the window. The ocean was silver from the boat to the island now, with the clouding. “One more pass,” he said. “Then we’ll go.”

  Cal pursed his lips. He drained his beer and went out and flipped the bottle into the sea.

  How could they talk to Bill as if he were some idiot who didn’t know what he was doing, as if they were the experts? Did it really not bother Bill? Or was he boiling over and you just couldn’t see it?

  Bill studied the ocean as if Cal hadn’t said a word, as if Bill were in some kind of invisible bubble where insults just bounced away. Mikey thought if someone treated him like that, he’d get angry.

  Mikey went back out into the fresh air.

  He glanced up at the flying bridge. He could see only the top of Alison’s head.

  He turned back and stood at the transom, watching the action of the lures in the wake.

  Jumping, bobbing, diving, twirling.

  “Come on,” he whispered.

  They passed the half-submerged tree one last time. Mikey watched it fade away behind the boat.

  The engines vibrated hypnotically in the floorboards.

  Mikey’s eyes hooded over.

  Bam! Bam!

  Two screaming reels jolted him awake.

  CHAPTER 13

  MIKEY BOLTED TOWARD THEM.

  The two rods bowed out over the transom, bobbing wildly, bent halfway to the water.

  The boat lurched forward.

  Mikey’s immediate instinct was to strike the fish. But Bill had told him he had to give the angler the chance to do it. Some fishermen played strictly by professional game fish rules.

  He turned toward the cabin. Cal and Ernie were facing aft, wide-eyed. Bill was looking back over his shoulder, the throttle jammed full up, in effect striking the fish that way. He let the Crystal-C run ahead for two or three seconds, then brought her down.

  The stern rose in the following wake.

  Mikey grabbed hold of the port gunnel to keep from falling. The boat wallowed and rocked from side to side.

  Two fish leaped full out of the water, two yellow blue mahimahi, one female, the other a huge bull.

  Bill ran through the cabin. Cal and Ernie scrambled up, scattering cards over the table and floor as Mikey waited by the jumping rods.

  Bill shouted to Cal and Ernie, “You want to strike them? Keep it official? Your call.”

  “If it’s just a couple of your small fish, what’s to be official about? You do it,” Cal said.

  Bill grabbed one of the rods and nodded at the other, the one Mikey’d set up. “Mikey! Strike him hard!”

  Mikey unhitched the safety line, pulled the rod out, quickly increased the drag, and swept the rod back, once, twice. He could feel the hook sink deeper, feel it take hold. The clicker still wailed, the fish ripping line away. The rod jumped in his hands, jerking and pulling. Mikey spread his feet apart and braced himself. The fish stole more line, more and more and more.

  In the corner o
f his eye, Mikey saw Bill striking the other fish. A second later Bill staggered back, the fish suddenly off the hook.

  “Damn!” Bill said.

  Mikey stood gripping the rod with his knees bent. The muscles in his arms and legs and back were tight and hard as rock. “Who’s taking this one?” he shouted.

  Ernie scrambled into the fighting chair, motioning with his hands. “Come on, come on, give it to me.”

  Mikey shut off the clicker and eased back on the drag tension with his thumb, then wrestled the rod back and set the chrome butt into the cup on the fighting chair.

  Ernie grabbed the rig, one hand on the rod, one on the crank. Mikey could smell the sourness of Ernie’s sweat. “You want the harness?” he asked.

  Ernie grimaced and shook his head. He sat leaning forward while the fish ran, taking more line off the reel. He had to stay cocked forward until it settled down.

  Mikey glanced into the cabin to check the clock. Bill always did that. It was automatic. You wanted to know when a fish hit and how long it took to board it.

  Bill and Mikey reeled in the remaining lures.

  Mikey gathered them up. He looped the leaders and moved them out of the way.

  “Ho!” Cal shouted. “Look at that puppy jump!”

  Nobody seemed to care that the fish on Bill’s line had come off the hook. Mikey figured it was because they had marlin on their minds, not mahimahi.

  The slowly rocking boat rumbled. Exhaust gurgled and spat off the stern. The sound muffled when the pipes sank low and grew loud again when they rose out of the water. Alison looked down on them from the flying bridge. Mikey stuck his thumb up.

  She smiled.

  Ernie fiddled with the drag until he found the tension that worked for him and finally got the fish slowed down.

  He started working it, puffing and gasping.

  No one said a word. Ernie held his breath when he pulled, his face red and tight as a screw.

  The fish exploded out of the sea, a huge, ax-headed bull mahimahi. It leaped and flapped and shook, then crashed back under and came up again and tailwalked across the sea with sparkles of sunlight winking off its broad glossy flank.

  “Look at that!” Ernie shouted.

  “Jeez!” Mikey gasped.

  The fish went under, then burst out again, shaking its massive head, trying to free the hook. Globs of glinting water shattered and showered out around its convulsing body. You could see the plug hanging from its mouth.

  Ernie leaned forward, forced to wait by the ferocity of the fish, the power, the rage. His face was pinched and the sun blazed down on his pinkish white legs and balding head with no hat and no sunscreen. He’s going to be sorry tomorrow, Mikey thought.

  The fish made a run to port. Mikey ran to the wheel and turned the boat so the line remained directly off the stern. No way on God’s green earth was he going to mess up again.

  After he turned the boat and saw that the fish had not moved again, he put her in neutral, set the autopilot, and ran back out.

  Rivers of sweat streamed from Ernie’s hairline, rolling down his cheeks. He wiped at his eyes with the shoulder of his shirt. Cal scooped a bucket of water out of the ocean and poured it over Ernie’s head, then toweled his face dry. Ernie shook his hair and seawater glimmered out around him.

  Alison sat on the edge of the flying bridge, her feet dangling. Her hand sweeping over the paper. She saw Mikey looking and grinned. She pointed her pen at Ernie and flexed her arms like a muscleman, with a serious-looking scowl.

  Mikey laughed silently.

  It took Ernie twenty more minutes to get the mahimahi up to the back of the boat.

  Mikey stood at the transom with Bill and Cal, looking down at it. The huge bull fish paced back and forth just inches beneath the surface, the line angling back from its jaw, taut as a bowstring. Its color was stunning. Brilliant yellows, iridescent blues. Unearthly greens.

  When the leader came up, Bill grabbed it with a gloved hand and slowly pulled the fish closer.

  Ernie started to get out of the chair.

  “Stay where you are,” Bill said. “In case he makes a break.”

  Ernie tightened his grip and sat.

  Mikey grabbed the gaff and handed it to Bill.

  The mahimahi seemed calm now, pacing easily behind the boat. But Mikey knew it was only resting, waiting, watching the movements above.

  Bill stood with the gaff ready. It was the moment before death, and to Mikey it was always the most painful time, the taking of something so perfect from the sea.

  But they were fishermen. This was what they did.

  “Take a good long look, Mikey,” Bill said. “You’ll probably never see one like this again in your lifetime. Not this big, not this colorful.”

  Mikey thought suddenly of Alison and turned. She was standing now, her sketchbook closed over a finger.

  She sees, Mikey thought. She knows.

  “What the spit are you doing?” Cal said. “Gaff the damn thing.”

  Mikey snapped back.

  Bill took a breath, then slowly dropped the gaff under the mahimahi’s lower jaw, so as not to damage the meat.

  He jerked up.

  The fish went insane.

  It flapped and shivered and shook. Its tail churned the sea foamy white. Water erupted and spilled over into the back end of the boat, soaking Bill and Mikey and Cal and even Ernie in the fighting chair.

  Bill whacked the mahimahi once with the fish mallet.

  The fish shuddered.

  He hit it again.

  Then, with a great surge of power, Bill heaved the bull fish up over the transom, grimacing at its weight, trying to take it straight out of the ocean to the fish box. But the fish exploded free of the gaff and slammed down onto the deck. Cal leaped back. Mikey ran for the port gunnel. The bull mahi was nearly as big as he was, flopping and thumping the floorboards and trying to maim anyone or anything it could get close to. Its mad escape had ripped the gaff out of Bill’s hands, and the giant hook clanked to the deck, then bounced up. Its long handle hit Mikey’s leg. Mikey winced and grabbed the gaff and tossed it into the cabin.

  Cal leaped back again and again, trying to avoid the powerful tail as the fish slammed across the deck like a loose fire hose, wham! bam! , flapping, slipping, sliding, careening off the fish box, thwacking the base of the fighting chair, splattering blood and slime over Mikey’s feet and legs, the noise deafening, the vibrations in the floorboards monstrous and terrifying.

  Bill tried to grab the fish, tried stomping his bare foot down just in front of the tail, but the fish erupted from under his foot. Bill tried to grab it in his gloved hand and the tail smacked him in the face, sending him reeling back.

  The lure hung from the mahimahi’s mouth. The leader followed, dancing on the decking. The hook looked as if it would break free any moment. Mikey thought it was a miracle that it hadn’t come out while the fish was in the water.

  “Get a towel!” Bill shouted.

  Mikey ran into the cabin and sprinted back out. He threw a towel to Bill. Bill caught it just as the lure cut free of the fish’s mouth and sank into Bill’s forearm. It went in deeper than the barb. The fish flailing on the leader jerked the hook even deeper.

  Bill gasped.

  He threw the towel toward the mahimahi’s eyes, ignoring the giant hook stabbing into his arm, ripping deeper. Dark red blood drooled down onto the fish and splattered on the deck. Bill blinded the fish with the towel, and the enraged mahimahi slowed and calmed.

  Mikey grabbed the fish mallet and tossed it to Bill.

  Bill caught it and beat down on the massive head until the bull fish shivered pathetically, slower and slower, hopelessly slower, its life escaping.

  Bill breathed deeply, gasping for air. He sat back and took the towel away. Wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

  Mikey gaped at the bloody jaw working.

  Open, closed, open.

  Immediately, the brilliant colors began to dull, the pe
rfect yellows and greens and electric blue spots slipping forever away, slipping, slipping away.

  Gone.

  Bill knelt on one knee, head down, still catching his breath. Blood streamed down his forearm.

  “Judas Priest!” Ernie said. “Do you know you have a very large hook in your arm?”

  Bill glanced at the hook as if noticing it for the first time. He tugged at it, winced. “Mikey, get me a clean towel,” he said.

  Mikey got a fresh towel and gave it to Bill.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Some,” Bill said, wincing. “Take the leader off.”

  Mikey worked the leader off the lure.

  Bill took the towel and gently wrapped it around his arm, around the blood and the lure.

  He stood.

  “Let’s get him on ice before the sun saps any weight out of him. I’ll be real surprised if this isn’t a record fish.”

  Mikey stared at Bill. He’s got a huge barbed hook sunk in his arm and he’s thinking about the fish losing weight?

  Together Bill and Mikey picked the mahimahi up and set it in the fish box with the ono. They sloshed what ice they had in the drink cooler over it. Forget the beer and soda pop.

  Bill stood back and surveyed the damage in the stern cockpit. A long scar of silvery slime stretched across the deck where the fish had thwacked and slid. Ugly dark red blood splotches marred the white paint along the gunnels and transom. Bill’s blood and the mahimahi’s blood. It was all over the deck and fighting chair, on Mikey’s legs, and on Cal’s and Bill’s.

  In the fish box the dull-colored mahimahi lay with its eye frozen in death. Mikey closed the lid and put the thin vinyl mattress back on top.

  He went into the cabin and got the first-aid kit. Bill removed the towel, soaked blotchy red. The bleeding had stopped except for where it leaked slowly out around the shaft of the hook.

  Mikey studied the wound. The hook was sunk deep. He looked up at Bill. “How we going to get it out?”

  “Not we, you.”

  “Me?”

  “Hurry up. It doesn’t feel that great,” Bill said.

  Mikey dug the barbed hook out of Bill’s arm with a knife sterilized by a match and rubbed clean in alcohol. Bill’s face went ashen, but he didn’t pass out. The man is made of ice, Mikey thought. He himself would have screamed bloody horror if Bill had done that to him.