Lord of the Deep (9 page)

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 of 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 perfect 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.

Mikey washed the wound with peroxide, scrunching up his face when it fizzed and foamed up yellow. He rubbed a large dab of antibiotic cream over it, then pinched the cut closed and gauzed and taped it.

Bill opened and closed his hand, then nodded to Mikey. “Good as new,” he said, then went forward and put the boat in motion. A moment later he came back to reset the lines.

Mikey got the bucket and scrub brush.

CHAPTER
14

THEY HAD LUNCH.

It was one-forty-five, but they’d been busy.

Mikey took his twice-used crumpled paper sack and Alison’s clean white box lunch up to the flying bridge. They sat side by side, facing a wake that rolled hypnotically away behind the boat.

Mikey peeked at his lunch. “So,” he said. “That enough excitement for you?”

Alison pulled a thick roast beef sandwich out of the box. She looked at it a moment, then put it back and took out an orange. She dug a thumb into it and started peeling.

“Exciting, but brutal,” she said.

Mikey nodded. “Yeah.”

They said nothing for a while. Alison ate the orange, piece by piece. She put the peels back in the box.

“You don’t like fishing, do you?” Mikey said.

“No, it’s not that. It’s—it’s just that I don’t like how we are sometimes.”

“We?”

“Humans.

“Oh.”

Alison smiled. “But it was definitely the most beautiful fish I’ve ever seen, even prettier than trout.”

“Yeah?”

“I think so, anyway.”

She paused, then added, “I guess I just didn’t like the part where Bill hit it on the head.”

Mikey nodded. It wasn’t his favorite part, either.

They ate, and after they were done, Alison lay out in the sun on the flying bridge with her paperback book.

“That a good book?” Mikey asked.

Alison thought a moment. “Yeah, it’s okay. Kind of boring in places, but it’s about the greatest artist who ever lived. You ever seen
La Pietà
?”

Mikey shook his head. He didn’t even know what that was.

“Well, how about Michelangelo? Ever heard of him?”

“No.”

Alison frowned. “You’ve never heard of Michelangelo?”

“Well . . . not really.”

She closed the book over her finger and shoved her sketchbook toward Mikey. “Write your address in my drawing book. I’m going to send you a picture of
La Pietà.
It’s the most beautiful piece of art ever created. It’s a sculpture in the Vatican. That’s where the pope lives, in Rome.”

Mikey wrote his address in the sketchbook. She must think he was an idiot.

Alison grinned at him. “We’ve got to expand your world some, Mr. Donovan.”

Mikey half smiled, not knowing what else to do or say.

Alison went back to her book. Mikey slipped down to the cabin and sat for a while in the seat across from Bill.

Alison, he thought. She was pretty amazing.

“Have you ever heard of someone named Michelangelo?” Mikey said, looking off into the distance. Then he turned toward Bill.

Bill grinned, as if surprised by such an unusual question coming from Mikey. “Sure,” he said, quickly regaining a more serious face. “Michelangelo was an Italian artist. Probably one of the best ever. He was an architect, too. What’s this all about?”

Mikey shrugged. “Just curious.”

“Well, he’s a good man to be curious about.”

“Yeah.”

They had five rigs working now, two long lines on the outriggers and three shorter flatlines in between.

Cal and Ernie talked on and on about the bull mahimahi, about how it had fought with such fury, how it had tailwalked and scissor-jumped and changed directions so fast you doubted the truth of what you’d just seen with your own eyes.

“That sumbuck was a holy terror,” Cal said. “Good Lord a’mighty!”

“Was even more’n that,” Ernie added. “Just ask my aching back.”

“I think you ought to get it mounted, is what I think. Take it home. Or better yet, hang it in your office.”

“Maybe I should.”

“Oh yeah,” Cal said. “One that big.
Gotta
be a record, wouldn’t you think?”

“Maybe we could take it home on ice. But that might ruin it. What you think the chances are they got a decent taxidermist around here?”

“Be a stretch,” Cal said. “What do you think, Billyboy? Know of any taxidermists worth their salt?”

“I’d say we have some of the best in the world, actually,” Bill said.

Cal shook his head. “Maybe. Maybe.”

Ernie smirked. “Kind a like asking a used-car salesman if he has any decent cars, don’t you think?”

Cal laughed. “Yeah, I suppose.”

Bill turned away.

Mikey watched him out of the corner of his eye. What was going through his mind?

“Hey, boy,” Ernie said. “Get us a couple of beers, would you now? Make yourself useful.”

Mikey got the beers and wiped them dry.

Pried off the caps.

Set the bottles on the table.

He sat again in the seat across from Bill.

Idiots.

Mikey tried to think about other things. What about Bill’s arm? Was it throbbing? It had to be. Jeez. Or was he immune to pain, too? Mikey wondered if fish felt pain. Or did they just get mad when they got hooked and feel nothing?

Later, Alison came down from the flying bridge but stayed out in the sun-filled stern cockpit. She sat in the fighting chair, still reading her book.

Mikey went aft and sat near her on the port gunnel.

“I can’t even imagine it,” Alison said, suddenly looking up. “I mean, getting a hook that big in my arm.”

Mikey nodded.

“There’s a fisherman here a while back who lost a finger,” he said. “Got it tangled up in a wire leader while he was gaffing a yellowfin. The tuna decided to run and took his finger clean off.”

“Okay, let’s change the subject.”

Mikey nodded.

But he wanted to finish. “He just wrapped up the stub and went on fishing,” he said.

“Mikey!”

“Right.”

He watched the lures. He was feeling better now, not thinking so much about losing the marlin. The water looked cool and clean. Alison was nearby. Sun was all over the boat and ocean. Supreme fishing day. It could hardly get better than this.

Alison marked the paperback and took up her sketchbook. Mikey watched her work on a drawing of a fish leaping out of the sea. Definitely the mahimahi.

A few minutes passed.

Mikey got up and went in to see how Bill was doing.

“Get me a bottle of water, would you, Mikey?” Bill said.

“Sure thing.”

Mikey got it and brought it back.

Alison came in with him. “Don’t you think we should go back? What if your arm gets infected?”

Bill glanced at the bandage. “It won’t. Mikey doctored it up pretty good.” He smiled at her. “But thanks.”

Cal and Ernie were playing blackjack now.

Mikey and Alison watched.

When Bill told them he had a set of poker chips, they got them out and used them, threatening that they were going to change them into real money at the end of the day. Cal lost almost every hand.

“Where’s my luck gone to? You’d think I’d never played this game.”

“Forget money,” Ernie said, all smiles. “You can pay me in bourbon.”

Cal
humph
ed. “You underestimate my ability to make a comeback, little brother.”

Alison glanced at Mikey and rolled her eyes.

Mikey laughed.

Neither Cal nor Ernie even once asked Bill about his arm. They could at least have wondered how it felt, or something. Anything.

“Hey, sweetie,” Cal said, turning to Alison. “Come sit up here and help your old dad teach this weasel a lesson, would you?”

Alison gave him a look that said You have
got
to be kidding.

Cal said to Mikey, “She’s the luckiest or smartest blackjack player I’ve ever known, boy. I’m not kidding.”

“Luckiest,” Ernie said. “What do you get if you line ten blondes up ear to ear?”

Cal didn’t answer this one.

“A wind tunnel,” Ernie said, and laughed at his own joke.

Alison glared at him.

“What?” he said, opening his hands.

“I’m trying to imagine you with a heart.”

“What’d I do? It was a joke.”

Alison shook her head and handed Mikey her sketchbook. “Hold this while I show this redneck what a wind tunnel can do.”

Cal slid over and made room.

“Show no mercy, Ali. None a-tall.”

Ernie grinned and dealt two cards to Alison and two to himself, his second card face up. Eight of hearts.

Alison peeked at her cards and tapped the table.

Ernie gave her a card.

Mikey didn’t know this game, but Alison sure seemed to.

She tapped again, and Ernie gave her another card, grinning. She took it and wagged a finger, telling Ernie that was all the cards she wanted.

Ernie peeked at his own hand and dealt a card to himself. He grinned.

“Set her down, sweetheart,” he said.

Alison spread her cards on the table. “Twenty,” she said.

Ernie tossed his cards on hers and swept them all up.

“Ha!” Cal cheered, slapping Alison on the back. “I love you, love you, love you! Do it again.”

Alison beat Ernie eight times straight.

“Okay, we’re even,” Ernie finally said to Cal. “Get her outta here.”

“Sure, sure, no problem,
heh-heh.
” Cal kissed Alison’s forehead. “That’s my girl.”

Alison gave Cal a hug, then hopped back down to the bunk. She looked at Mikey and flexed her arm.