The Deepest Blue (4 page)

Mr. Wilcox pulls in front of my door. The dome light in the car goes on as Trevor opens the door.

“Call me later,” Rachel says.

I smile and nod, then climb out of the car. “Thanks, Mr. Wilcox.”

“Welcome,” he says in a friendly voice.

Rachel blows me a kiss as Trevor shuts the door, and the car drives off. As I climb the steps to the front door, I realize I have a headache.

I think about the argument with Rachel. My head
throbs. “Oh brother,” I say to myself. I walk to my bedroom, tug off my shirt and shorts, and flop on my bed to wait for morning.

chapter 4

It's six o'clock in the morning. The sky is still dark as Dad and I start prepping the boat for the Robinson's charter. I make sure we have all the food and drinks we need for a group of four tourists, plus me and Dad. The water is calm in the marina, and the boat barely moves in its slip. It's quiet except for the soft sloshing noise of water against the hull as Dad and I move around getting ready.

I pull open the cupboard in the galley. There are four large boxes of saltine crackers, though I doubt we'll need them today. The red streaks of clouds across the sky last night were a good sign for fishing today, according to the old saying, anyway: Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Calm waters and a lot of active fishing lines are what I'm expecting.

“You have a good time last night?” Dad asks as he curls the hose he's been using to spray fresh water on the deck and sets it on the dock.

“Sort of, I guess.”

“Hmm, well that's a little less enthusiasm than I expected. Everything okay?”

I shrug. “I dunno. Rachel is just being weird.”

“Girls are weird,” Dad says. “But that's part of why we like 'em.”

“She thinks I ought to take my college money and buy a car when I'm sixteen.” I come up the stairs from the cabin and grab a towel so I can wipe the water from the cushions on the sailfin chairs. “She thinks I'm just going to take over your boat when you retire and run charters like you do.”

“What do you think?” Dad asks. He moves down into the cabin and brings out the big rubber trolling lures. They look like neon squids and have a huge hook inside for catching big-game fish like blue marlin and swordfish.

I finish drying off the last cushion and toss the towel into the cabin and then help Dad untangle the lures and get them connected to the trolling lines.

“Do you want to take over the boat, or do you want to do something else like go to college and study something important?”

I look at Dad. He stops hooking lures and makes eye contact with me. “I don't know what I want to do. I mean, I love working the boat and all, but I don't know if I'm as good at it as you are.”

“Sure you are, or, you could be if you wanted. But that doesn't mean this is what you have to do. This is what I love. This is how I want to live my life. You might have another dream.”

“What if I don't. What if I don't have a dream at all?” The thought of this makes the muscles in my neck tighten.

Dad makes a puffing sound like he thinks I'm ridiculous. “Of course you have a dream.”

“There's really nothing that jumps out at me,” I say. “There's really nothing that says ‘This is what you're supposed to do with your life,' and it kind of makes me worried.” I finish connecting the last lure, then pull out frozen bait fish. I get the big knife from the tackle box and start chopping the mackerel into thick chunks. I toss the chunks into a bait bucket so they'll be easy to get at when we switch to dropping lines for snapper and tuna.

Dad comes up next to me, and for the first time in a long time, he starts cutting bait with me. “I didn't know what I wanted to do until I was thirty years old. And then it took me nearly five more years to get here and make it happen.” He tosses chunks of frozen fish into the bucket, pauses, then looks me in the eye. “One day, you'll wake up with this feeling in your gut that there is something you need to do. That's when you'll know. And if it doesn't happen until you're thirty, or forty, or seventy-five, or one hundred and twelve, so be it. But when it happens, you better do it, or you'll regret it for the rest of your life.”

“So how did you figure it out?” I asked. “How did you know this was it?”

“One morning after you were born, you must have been—oh, I don't know—maybe three months old. I was sitting on the couch in front of the TV holding you, giving you a bottle, and flipping through the channels.” He sets
the knife down and turns toward me. “You were such a tiny little guy. Anyway, I'm surfing the channels, and I see this program on one of the sports stations. There's a guy who has hooked this marlin, and he is fighting it, and the marlin is jumping out of the water, thrashing back and forth.” Dad pretends he's holding a rod and reeling like crazy, pulling back against the fish. “And then I see the boat, and the ocean, and I'm looking at you and thinking, ‘Wouldn't that be a riot, Mikey?' And your little eyes lit up like you completely agreed with me.”

“I was three months old, and you're saying I helped you decide this was what you wanted to do for a living?”

Dad lets loose a loud chuckle. “Yeah, that's how it happened. For days, I couldn't get that image out of my mind. Of course, I didn't know at the time that this was going to cause me so much chaos. But I don't regret it.” He picks up the knife and starts cutting again. “I got you, and I got my dream. I'm the luckiest man in the world.”

“And you got Maggie, too.”

Dad grins from ear to ear. “And ain't that the icing on the donut.”

“So I guess I don't need to ask if you had a good time last night.”

“Guess not,” Dad says, that cheesy grin stretching farther across his face.

“Ugh,” I say. “I don't want to know.”

Dad wipes his knife on an old dish towel we use as a clean-up rag.

“But what if I don't figure it out?” I say. “What if there's no TV show that gives me a clue?” The tension in my shoulders has worked its way down into my stomach and is worrying itself into a knot. “It's like I don't know who I really am,” I say as I slap the last mackerel onto the chopping board.

Dad chuckles again. “You know who you are,” he says with a matter-of-fact solidity in his voice that instantly makes me stand taller. “The fact you don't know what you want to do for a living yet is completely different from not knowing who you are.”

I think on his words for a moment. “That's really deep, Dad,” I say in a more-than-serious voice.

“Well, I'm a deep kinda guy.” Laughing, we toss the last of the bait into the bucket as the four charter fishermen arrive.

The Robertson charter consists of a father, his two sons, and one son-in-law. They are from Toronto, Ontario, and I can tell right away that only the father has ever been on a boat before. The other three all look to be in their thirties, and they all look like they think Moby Dick is going to send them to Davey Jones's locker the minute we leave the marina. I decide we might need a box of saltines at the ready, and I break out a box just in case.

We head out about twenty miles off shore. The water is calm and the deepest blue—the kind of blue you see in pictures of Earth from the space station. Dad waves at me from the wheelhouse as I pull out lines off the big reels and get them set with bait or lures.

“On a day like this, I'd give anything to be a fish,” Dad says as he climbs down the ladder from the wheelhouse to the deck.

“Not with the Mighty Mike around,” I say. He claps me on the shoulder, and we toss lines into the deepest blue for the Robertsons.

It's a successful charter, one of our best of the season. We haul in red snapper, grouper, bass, and king mackerel. The time flies because we are so busy reeling in lines, baiting the hooks, and stowing fish in the hold—the big ice box welded to the back of the boat deck that keeps the fish from going bad. Seagulls flock around, flapping and calling as we pull in catch after catch. Even the son-in-law, who I find out after some joking and questions is a lawyer, has a grin on his sunburned face. There is cheering from the men as the fish slap and thrash on the deck until I can pull out the hooks and get the catch stowed.

As we make our way back to the dock, I feel the bone-tired sleepiness that wants to take over, but there is still so much to do. We back into the slip marked with our sign, M
IGHTY
M
IKE
D
EEP
S
EA
F
ISHING
C
HARTERS
. Three women wait as we pull in. I help the four men out of the boat and then start unloading our catch. Dad finalizes the business details with Mr. Robertson, Sr., while I hang the largest four fish caught on the hooks beneath our sign for the trophy pictures. The biggest catch today is a black grouper, a huge ugly guy weighing in around eighty pounds. I have to struggle to get him hoisted, but I slide him on the trophy hook.

“And I thank you kindly,” Dad is saying as he shakes the older man's hand.

“We'll look forward to seeing you next summer, then,” Mr. Robertson says. “And next time we'll bring the ladies along.” He wraps his arm around a thin woman with frosty, white hair. The men pose by the trophy fish, arms wrapped around each other's shoulders as the women snap pictures and smile. The son-in-law even pretends to kiss the grouper as his wife laughs and the camera flashes. They each thank us again.

“You folks have a nice evening and enjoy the rest of your visit,” Dad says. And with that, they walk away.

“So am I loading this for the fish market or getting ice to take it home?” I look at the pile of fish on the dock.

Dad looks at the impressive catch. “I'll get the bucket and get started. You rest a few minutes. You've certainly earned it today.”

Jack Sutton pulls the
Lolly Gag
into the slip next to us. Three kids climb off the boat before it's even tied up to the dock. Frank, the first mate, looks about ready to toss the kids into the water. He ties off the lines and then helps a younger lady off, followed by a man who looks like he needs a vacation from his vacation.

“You found the mother lode,” Jack calls over to Dad.

“Neptune was kind to us today.” Dad is pushing a large, rusted trolley—kind of like a wheelbarrow—over to the big ice machine behind the fish market.

I grab the freshwater hose from the dock where we left it this morning, turn on the water, and hop back on
the boat. It sways and rocks from the sudden shift of weight as I begin washing blood, scales, and salt water off the deck.

Frank is tossing the
Lolly Gag
's catch onto the dock. Some snapper, an albacore tuna, and a big trigger fish are all they have to show for the day's work.

“That's a big trigger,” I say as Frank hangs it up on the
Lolly Gag
's trophy hook.

“It's ugly,” says a girl who looks to be about ten.

Then Frank tosses out the best prize of the day. It glistens blue and yellow, its blunt head looking like the fish crashed into a wall as a baby.

“Nice dolphin,” I say, tossing the hose onto the dock.

At that, the small girl begins to cry. Frank looks at me as if I've called him some obscene name.

“It's not that kind of dolphin, honey,” the woman is saying to the girl. “This is a fish called a dolphin, not a mammal. Remember?”

I look at Frank, a sturdy, muscular guy with dark hair and skin like tanned leather. He rolls his eyes, shakes his head slightly, and then hooks the dolphin in a trophy spot—though I doubt there will be any pictures from the looks of this group.

Jack finishes his business with the dad, and the family scuttles away, the little girl still sobbing in loud, shrill cries.

“Swallowed the bait into its gullet,” Frank says, his voice flat and businesslike. “Pulled the hook out and brought half its guts with it. Little girl kept yellin', ‘Put it back! Put it back in the water!' but it wouldn't do no
good. I tried to explain, but she didn't understand. Cried like that the whole trip back.”

I laugh. “Sorry.” And I am sorry. We've all had a group like that: a passenger who gets seasick and barfs in the head instead of over the side; the whiny kid who gets into everything he's not supposed to or hooks himself or someone else with a big lure; the tourist who wants to tell you all about his boat on the lake back home in agonizing detail.

Dad comes back with the trolley loaded with ice, and we start tossing in fish. “The Robertsons are taking about half the catch, so I'll take it to the market. I'm selling some of the snapper to the market, too, and I'll have them clean some for us. We should make a few dollars with a catch this size.”

What isn't taken by the people who hire the charter, we get first dibs on. What we don't take, we sell by the pound to the fish market. Then they sell it to the stores and restaurants. The arrangement works out well for everybody.

The fish delivered, the boat cleaned, and everything stowed, Dad and I hop in the truck. We toss the cleaned fish into a cooler in the back, and I notice a big bag labeled M
AGGIE
in Dad's lopsided handwriting.