by Derek Hansen
So the Professor’s real name was Anthony. Anthony and, I bet, never Tony. I preferred the name I’d given him. It suited him better.
‘God damn, I’m just gonna have to cut this hook out.’ Fat Boy’s dad looked up. ‘Anyone got a knife? Somebody bring me a knife.’
‘Let me see it,’ I said. Over my fifty years of fishing I’d removed hooks from kids’ fingers, feet and ears; from the backsides of anglers foolish enough to sit on their tackle; and from every item of clothing you care to name. The sleeve of the Professor’s Billabong shirt was a piece of cake.
‘You might tell young Zane Grey to wind the lure up to the tip of his rod before he attempts to cast again,’ I said. ‘Then accidents like this can be avoided.’
Did Fat Boy’s dad take offence? Not a bit.
‘That’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘Hey, Maurice, wind your lure up to the tip of your rod before you cast. You’ll get more distance.’
So Fat Boy was called Maurice. I think my name fitted him better too.
Fat Boy sullenly did as instructed. His cast went all of four metres.
‘Fishing sucks,’ he said.
‘You okay?’ I said to the Professor.
‘Yes, thank you,’ he said. He turned his magnified blue eyes onto me. I looked closely into them to see what he was thinking, but the Professor seemed to have anticipated that. If there had been hurt, pain or even a sense of injustice in his eyes, he had got rid of it. His eyes said nothing and that disturbed me more than anything. Ten-year-old boys shouldn’t have to hide their feelings like that.
‘Need help to untangle the line?’ I said.
‘I can do it,’ he said.‘I’ve had to do it heaps of times.’
I bet he had.
Fat Boy left his rod lying on the end of the jetty and sloped off to watch the Fijians cut up the barracuda. The Professor sat back on his heels and concentrated on untangling the line from Fat Boy’s reel. No two kids had ever polarised me more on the basis of one brief encounter. I loathed Fat Boy and everything about him and I wasn’t very proud of the fact. That only made matters worse. On the other hand, I couldn’t help feeling for the Professor. I’d thought the concept of whipping boys was long gone and was stunned to realise it just came in a different disguise. The Professor was Fat Boy’s whipping boy, no doubt about it. I knew he would finish untangling the line, pick up both rods, both tackle boxes and the video camera and load them onto Marvin’s four-wheel-drive Toyota. I also knew Fat Boy would not lift a finger to help.
Marvin was Fat Boy’s dad. He introduced himself after I’d freed the lure. Now there was a name that fitted. It turned out that Loud-Mouth Marvin and his friend,‘Call me Cord’ Cordell, had been nobodies prior to the tech boom. Both had started companies that amounted to nothing more than a couple of nerds with electronic boxes and ideas that seemed hot at the time. They’d taken their companies public and watched as the price of the stock soared beyond any reasonable or even unreasonable assessment of the companies’ true worth. Naturally, they’d both sold out at the right time and made enough money to buy everything they ever wanted or needed, except manners and common courtesy. Both had traded in their wives for new, younger, high-maintenance versions with enhanced breasts, bleached hair and the brains of Barbie dolls.
‘Good luck, guys,’ called Marvin, as Damian and I finally pulled away from the jetty to do a bit of fishing ourselves. ‘Bottle of champagne says you won’t beat our wahoo.’
The Professor had finally finished untangling the line and was winding up the slack. I wished we could have taken him out with us.
‘Nice guys,’ I said to Damian.
‘Well, that’s the problem when you have a house on a small island,’ said Damian.‘You can’t avoid your neighbours.’
‘Pity.’
‘Marvin wants to come out with us. It’s about the fifth time he’s asked. I can’t put him off much longer without being rude.’
‘Just Marvin?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you should be rude.’
By the time we’d cleared the channel the wind had come up, which put any thoughts of a run up Lighthouse Reef out of the question. Instead we motored slowly around to the lee of the island looking for scad and rainbow runners. We put out lures with barbless hooks on ten-kilo lines and set a light drag. The idea was not to catch fish on the troll but to use the lures to alert us to the presence of the fish we were after. As soon as we got a strike we cast out tiny bibbed lures on our three-kilo gear.
When you fish that light over coral you’re asking for trouble, but the scad and rainbow runners were only between one and two kilos. Nevertheless, they could put up one heck of a fight and the shallow water over the reef tipped the odds in their favour.
We caught a few scad to smoke and kept two rainbow runners for sashimi when, wouldn’t you know it, line started to scream off my reel. I thought I’d caught a passing torpedo. Damian spun the boat around and took off after the fish while I did my best to get back some line. The rod and reel was one I used for tailor and bream back home in Sydney. A one-and-a-half-kilo tailor could take off ten metres of line with ease. My problem was the tiny reel only took around one hundred metres of three-kilo line and the fish I’d hooked into would have eaten a one-and-a-half-kilo tailor for breakfast and come back for more.
Line fizzed off the reel and I actually saw the knot tying the line to the spool before the boat had got up enough speed to gain on the fish. I managed about three winds before the fish took the line back. I saw the knot on five more occasions, each time putting us within three or four metres of losing the battle. Fortunately a fish can’t outrun a fast boat for ever and we hot-dogged back half of my line. Now I could use the drag and the spring on the rod to tire the fish. It still took off on blistering runs that had Damian spinning the boat on its axis and setting off in pursuit, but the runs were getting shorter and less frequent. I had to admire Damian’s skill. He seemed to anticipate the fish’s every move. At times like this, the skipper is due as much credit as the angler for catching the fish, sometimes even more.
I glanced at Damian and the smile on his face told me he was enjoying the fight as much as me. We still didn’t know what had taken the lure, only that we had no right to even think we could land it on such light gear. In the open ocean maybe, but we were metres from a reef and continually having to duck outcrops of coral. The fish was tiring but so was I. Veins stood out like twisted cord on my rod arm and the muscles began to cramp from the effort of keeping the rod tip up.
‘Keep winding,’ said Damian.
As if I’d stop.
The fish swung away from the reef and following it took us out of the lee into the stiff sou-easterly. Now we had to battle the wind and rising sea as well as the fish. I took the tops of green waves flush on my face as we backed up on the fish.
‘Keep winding,’ urged Damian.
Only death by drowning could stop me winding and, as another green wave enveloped me, I had to consider the possibility. I wound and wound and the fish took back less and less line. We were winning.
‘I can see it,’ said Damian.
That was encouraging. My arms ached and my eyes burned from the saltwater spray. The boat was pitching and rolling so badly that just staying upright took almost all my remaining energy. But Damian could see the fish. The end was in sight. Of course, seeing the fish and actually landing it were two totally different matters. Two important factors in fighting big fish with under-gunned tackle are the spring of the rod and the stretch of the line. Clearly, the shorter the line becomes as it is wound in, the less stretch there is and the less margin for error. To be honest, we expected to lose the fish at this point. We had no double and no heavy-duty trace.
‘We’ll get one shot at it,’ said Damian. He was standing alongside me with the gaff in his hands. The boat was just drifting before the wind. I nodded. One shot — if we were lucky.
‘I think it’s a walu,’ said Damian, his sur
prise obvious.
‘Walu?’ I said. I envisaged the fifteen- and twenty-kilo monsters we’d caught most evenings in the deepwater channel between the reefs. I had one of those on my line? How could anyone catch a Spanish mackerel on such flimsy tackle and over a reef? I wanted that fish more than any other I’d ever caught, as proof of an amazing achievement, of our prowess and for our joint bragging rights.
The fish came up alongside the boat and rolled onto its side exhausted. Why wouldn’t it be? I was. The fight had lasted almost half an hour.
‘Steady,’ said Damian.
He gaffed the fish effortlessly, as though our boat was sitting in the middle of a duck pond instead of a raging sea.
‘Walu,’ he said.‘Can you believe it? A small walu.’
Small? He was right. It was a small walu, probably no more than eight or nine kilos. On the scale of things it didn’t amount to much until you took into consideration the pathetic three-kilo gear we’d caught it on, the proximity of the reef and the final stages of the fight when we’d had to battle the wind and chop. All things considered it was a hell of an achievement. We shrieked and high-fived and carried on like a couple of kids. That tussle epitomised why we loved fishing. Fish didn’t have to be the heaviest or the longest, just the greatest challenge.
We turned the boat around and returned triumphantly to the jetty. Fat Boy and the Professor were back trying to catch the trevally and baby barracuda. The Professor had on a clean shirt. They reeled in their lines so we could tie up.
‘What did you catch?’ asked Fat Boy.
We showed him our pride and joy.
‘That all?’ said Fat Boy. ‘You ought to ask my dad to take you fishing.’
The wind kept up all night and through the following day. It’s nice to fish every day when you’re on holiday and surrounded by water that offers the very real possibility of catching something memorable. But it’s not essential to go fishing, especially when you’ve experienced a bit of magic the day before. We went snorkelling with our wives instead, to a sheltered beach where coral trout occasionally visited, big parrotfish nuzzled up to coral and small black-tipped reef sharks kept things interesting. The women loved snorkelling there because they could surround themselves in beautiful, multi-coloured tropical fish in less than a metre of water. My wife, Pru, was always more comfortable when her feet could touch bottom. She and Jenny, Damian’s wife, also found the odd collectable shell: nautilus, trochus and kauri shells as well as others with long, elegant finger-like spines. The reef sharks looked on but never came close enough to cause concern.
A golf course ran along the back of the beach like a lush green carpet and the course architects had thoughtfully planted shade trees where beach met grass. The trees not only provided shade and colour but protection from mishit golf balls. A cooler containing a bottle of Bombay gin, two bottles of tonic, two lemons and more ice than we could possibly need made our little piece of paradise perfect.
Sometimes doing nothing beats doing anything else and this was one of those occasions. The women were deep in magazines but Damian and I were both sitting back, letting the sun warm our bodies after our swim, gin and tonics in hand and with as little as possible passing through our minds. I’d once practised meditation and I have to say we were fast approaching a similar state, not so much meditation as profound, utterly pointless daydreaming. When Marvin roared up in his Toyota it was a rude intrusion from another world. We struggled to believe that his arrival had anything to do with us. But of course it did.
‘Anthony’s missing,’ he said.‘I need your dinghy.’
‘What’s happened?’ said Damian.
‘He talked Maurice into taking him diving over the reef. Out there.’ He pointed to the reef way out in front of the bay. ‘He swam away from the dinghy and Maurice almost got swamped looking for him.’
‘Where’s Maurice?’ I said. I almost said, where’s Fat Boy.
‘He came back and raised the alarm.’
‘What!’ I said. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘He left Anthony out there?’ I thought of the wind, the chop, the coral and the sharks.
‘That’s why I need your dinghy. Ours is swamped. I need to go look for him.’
‘We’ll go,’ said Damian.
Some things were already evident. The Professor couldn’t persuade Fat Boy to do anything. The dynamics of their relationship just didn’t allow for that. Secondly, the Professor was far too cautious to swim away from the dinghy in open water. Thirdly, Fat Boy was lying through his teeth. As a consequence of all the above, the Professor was in more trouble than he’d ever been in his short life. That is, if he was still alive.
Damian and I jumped aboard the tray of the Toyota and roared off towards the jetty. There was no way on earth that Damian would lend Marvin his dinghy. The man was a fool on land and a disaster on water. He’d shear the prop off on the reef inside five minutes and then we’d have two problems.
Damian grabbed his fuel tank from his locker in the boathouse and connected it up to the outboard.
‘You stay here,’ I said to Marvin.‘Go get Maurice. We need him to show us where he took Anthony.’
‘He was cold and wet,’ said Marvin.‘I got one of the Fijians to take him up home.’
The Professor was fighting for survival out on the reef and Marvin sent Fat Boy, the only person who knew where the boy might be, home because he was cold and wet.
‘Where did he say they went?’
‘Out front of the beach, he said.’
I dimly recalled seeing a dinghy way out over the shallow part of the reef. I’d figured it was one of the Fijians collecting shellfish for dinner or spearing painted crayfish. Either way, I’d assumed it was someone who knew what they were doing. It never occurred to me that it was two reckless boys.
‘I think I know where,’ I said to Damian.
He engaged gear and we took off, leaving Marvin standing on the shore.
‘You know the marker out past Homestead Point?’ I shouted.
Damian nodded. Of course he did. He was the owner and I the visitor.
‘Start there and work north once we’re in line with the beach.’
You have no idea how big an expanse of water can be until you start looking for something or someone. We were out of the main force of the wind but there was enough of a blow eddying around the island to put a chop on the water and lift spray off the top of the waves. Damian slowed and tilted the leg of the outboard as high as he could. Most of the reef was between two and five metres deep but parts rose up to within forty-five centimetres of the surface. With the dinghy bucking like an untrained colt on the chop, it was all but impossible to gauge the depth of the water.
‘See anything?’ asked Damian.
I shook my head. I tried to stand but gave that up immediately. It was far too rough. Part of me feared that the Professor was already drowned but another part recalled how deliberate he’d been untangling the line on the jetty. There was a kid who thought about things and was very calculating in what he did. But what would he do?
‘Turn off the motor,’ I said.
Damian hit the kill button.
‘What’s up?’
‘I think we’ve a better chance of hearing him than seeing him,’ I said.‘He’s a bright kid, bright enough to find a shallow part of the reef and hang on.’
So we drifted and listened, drifted and listened, knowing the further downwind we went the more chance we had of hearing him if he called out. As the dinghy swung in the breeze I could see the beach where minutes before my only concern had been to finish my gin and tonic before the ice melted. It’s funny how quickly things turn around.
‘Help!’
Damian and I heard the Professor at the same time. We’d heard him, now we had to work out where his voice was coming from.
‘Over here!’
‘There!’ I said.
‘There!’ said Damian.
We were pointing in different directions.
‘Over here!’
The kid’s voice grew fainter the further we drifted. Damian pull-started the outboard and we slowly zigzagged back upwind. Twice we bottomed out on the coral only to drift back free again. Damian killed the motor.
‘Over here!’
The Professor’s voice was louder, clearer, and Damian and I both pointed in roughly the same direction. That was encouraging. I wanted to call out to the kid, to tell him to keep his chin up, but I knew I’d get nowhere shouting into the wind and, besides, the Professor had probably already worked that much out for himself.
Damian cut the motor again.
‘Over here!’
This time we heard the Professor loud enough to get a clear bearing.
‘I think I know where he is,’ said Damian. ‘He’s not drifting which means he’s hanging onto something. The only thing I know of around here is a pole the Fijians have concreted into the coral to mark a hole in the reef. It’s more of a stick actually.’
Damian took bearings off Homestead Point and slowly motored forward.
‘There he is!’
I looked where Damian was pointing but the wind and spray still blinded me and I struggled to make out the Professor’s head and shoulders. He was exactly where Damian had hoped he would be, clinging to the pole. If we hadn’t thought to look there, we never would have seen him. The kid had kept his wits about him and his wits had kept him from being swept away.
‘Tell him not to come to us,’ said Damian. ‘We’ll come to him.’
I passed on Damian’s instruction but needn’t have bothered. In clinging to the pole the Professor was clinging to life itself. Nothing could make him let go until he was in the safe hands of his rescuers. As Damian gently nudged the dinghy up to the pole I reached over, grabbed the Professor and hauled him aboard.
Despite the relatively warm water and the tropical sun, the wind had played on his wet skin and chilled him to the bone. His lips were blue and he shivered uncontrollably in my arms. I wrapped him in my towel, eased off his face mask and held him as tightly as I could. This time his eyes hid nothing. The kid had been scared almost to death. He was still sobbing against my chest when we tied up at the jetty.
