The Missing Manatee

by Cynthia DeFelice

  Maybe because I didn’t have too much time to think about it, that’s what I did.

  “Good, good, now strip your line in, strip, strip…” Dan was saying to me in a low voice. Then, to the fish, “Eat it, eat it, come on, eat it…”

  And the fish ate! He took my fly!

  “Okay, keep stripping. He’s gonna feel it in a minute,” Dan said. “Wait till he starts to turn and— Now! Set the hook!”

  I pulled back hard to make the hook dig in. And two seconds later that tarpon came busting right out of the water, thrashing its whole body in an amazing, acrobatic arch, trying to throw my hook and escape.

  “Don’t pull back on him now, Skeet!” Dan hollered. “Drop your rod tip—remember, you gotta bow to the king when he jumps. Give him line and let him run. I’m pretty sure he’s hooked in the corner of his mouth. It’s not coming out.”

  I “bowed to the king,” dipping the end of my rod to give the fish plenty of line while it was fresh and full of crazy fight. I let him run, and when I heard the zzziiing! of the line flying off my reel, I shouted, “Weee-oooow!”

  Dirty Dan was shouting, too. “Yee-ha, Skeeter! Look at him go!”

  “I guess that lazy old dog’s awake now!” I hollered. “And he doesn’t seem too happy!”

  At the end of his run, the fish came up out of the water again in a dazzling leap of silver, shaking his head, his big mouth wide open.

  “He’s humongous!” I cried.

  “He’s big, all right!” said Dan, sounding just as excited as I was. “Hundred twenty pounds, hundred thirty, maybe.”

  “He’s a monster!”

  “Yessir, he’s a beauty,” Dan agreed. “Okay, now, okay, let’s get him in. We ain’t got him yet, Skeet.”

  My heart was racing so fast I had to stop and make myself take a deep breath and try to settle down. I knew Dan was right: hooking him was only half the battle. Now I had to get him to the boat. I’d heard enough fishing stories over the years to know that this was the time when Murphy’s Law was most likely to kick in. Apply too much pressure—or not enough pressure—at the wrong time, and the line would break. Leave too much slack, and the line could get wrapped around the fish, or be cut by its sharp gill plates. One of the knots might let go. There was no end to what could go wrong.

  But with Dirty Dan the Tarpon Man coaching me, I managed not to do anything seriously stupid. I fought that fish for close to an hour. Time and time again I’d get him close to the boat, thinking he was tired enough to bring in, and he’d make another furious run, taking out all the line I’d gained. My arms ached from lifting and reeling, lifting and reeling, over and over again. I knew if this went on too long, he could chew through the leader and get away.

  “I’ll let you go, honest,” I called to the fish. “Just let me get you in and touch you!”

  The fish responded by making another run.

  “That run was shorter, Skeet, you see that?” Dan said. “You got him beat now if you don’t let up. Keep the pressure on. Don’t let him rest.”

  When do I get to rest? I wondered. My arm muscles were burning, but I kept the pressure on.

  “Now give him the down and dirty,” Dan told me.

  I knew all about the down and dirty from all the stories I’d heard over the years about catching tarpon. As soon as a fish showed signs of slowing down, you hit him with the down and dirty, trying to wear him out. I lowered the tip of my rod so it was under water, and pulled back on it strong and steady, turning the fish around. When he started coming the way I’d turned him, I switched back the other way.

  “That’s it,” said Dan. “Keep after him. Anything he wants to do, don’t let him. Everything he tries to do, show him he can’t. Turn him around till he doesn’t know which way is up.”

  I gave him the down and dirty over and over again. Man, he was one tough fish. I was beginning to think I was no match for him when finally I could feel the fight go out of him. Soon after, I was able to reel the end of my leader through the eye at the tip of my rod, the sign that a fish was officially “caught.”

  I took a long look at that beautiful creature, trying to memorize everything about it. It was six feet from its head to the tip of its tail! I reached out to touch its big, tough, silvery scales. They were huge, probably four inches across. I’d heard of people pulling one out to keep for a souvenir, but it seemed a sorry thing to do to such a spectacular creature.

  “Thanks,” I whispered.

  It was time to take a photo and release the fish. I hadn’t thought to bring a camera, and though I knew Mac always kept one to record his clients’ big moments, I wasn’t going to ask Dan if he had one. I knew he didn’t. It didn’t matter. I’d never forget one single thing about this fish, or this day.

  I nodded to Dan. He used the pliers to remove the hook, and my fish slipped back into the water and swam away.

  I reached over to shake Dan’s hand, the way I’d seen clients do when Mac was guiding them, but he grabbed me in a back-slapping embrace. “Good going, Skeet. You fought him like a pro!”

  “Thanks, Dan. I’m—it was—” But for the moment, I had no words for the way I felt. I pounded his back in return, tears of exhaustion and awe and pure happiness pooling in my eyes. All my moments of doubt and uncertainty, of hunger, thirst, and discomfort, were forgotten. I had caught my first tarpon on a fly.

  Ten

  We sat for a while talking about the fish and the fight, reliving every moment for the sheer pleasure of it. At around three-thirty, Dan said we’d better head in. I was putting away my rod when I had a sudden idea. “Hey, Dan! Could we get on the radio to Mac and tell him about my fish?”

  Dan took a sip from his bottle. “No radio,” he said. “I lost a big tarpon one day when my fly line got tangled on the antenna. I was so mad I ripped the darn thing off.” He grinned. “Much better that way.”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. To Dirty Dan’s way of thinking, a radio wasn’t a good thing to have in case of an emergency; it was a possible hindrance to landing a fish. That’s why he was the Tarpon Man.

  “No sweat,” I said, thinking I was glad Mom was at work so there was no chance of meeting her at the dock when we got back. If she knew I’d been out all day with no radio, no food, no fresh water, not to mention with a bottle of whiskey and a gun in the boat—well, I didn’t even want to think about how mad she’d be, at me and Mac both. No way I wanted to be the cause of another fight. Plus, I’d never be allowed to go fishing with Dirty Dan again, that was for sure.

  Thinking of Mom reminded me that I was supposed to wear a life jacket when we were running. Guiltily, I realized I hadn’t worn one on the way out. I’d have put one on for the ride home, but—no surprise this time—there weren’t any.

  I peeked at the bottle of whiskey and saw it was pretty near empty. Uh-oh. Was Dan drunk? He didn’t seem to be. I watched him stow his push pole and let the engine down. He moved around the boat quickly and easily, not stumbling or staggering like drunks in the movies. The whiskey didn’t seem to have any effect on him. So why not just drink water, I wondered.

  Dan asked, “Ready to roll, Skeet?” His voice sounded normal, too, not slurry and mumbly like a drunk’s.

  I gave a mental shrug and said, “Ready!”

  We took off, zooming across the flats, and all my worried thoughts blew away with the breeze. I could hardly believe it: I’d caught a tarpon!

  At Larry’s, I helped Dan secure the boat. I was thanking him for the thousandth time when Blink walked up. Blinky was by his side, a ball in his mouth.

  “Hi, Dirty Dan! Hi, Skeet!” Blink said. Instead of his usual smile, though, Blink wore a worried expression. His eyes blinked even faster than normal, and his gaze flew anxiously from Dirty Dan to me and back to Dan again. He sounded nervous. I noticed he hadn’t reached into his pocket for the flipping quarter.

  “Hey, Blink,” I said, “what’s up?”

  Dan smiled and gave his son’s shoulder a pat. “How’s it g
oing, Blink?”

  Blink seemed to relax a little at that, but he asked, “Is Dirty Dan mad?”

  “Mad?” said Dan. He looked as puzzled as I felt by Blink’s question.

  “Was Skeet bad? Did Dirty Dan have to get mad?” Blink went on.

  An odd expression passed over Dan’s face. Then he smiled quickly and said, “Heck, no. Skeet here got himself a tarpon. What do you think of that?”

  “Skeet got a tarpon,” Blink repeated. “That’s good, Skeet.” I was glad to see his face split into a huge grin. “Skeet got a tarpon.”

  “I sure did,” I said. “He was a beauty. And, believe me, nobody’s mad—except maybe the fish.”

  Blink got a big kick out of that. He kept laughing and saying over and over, “Skeet caught a beauty and nobody’s mad but the fish!”

  Then I saw him reach into his pocket. Before he could say it, I did: “Wanna flip?”

  Blink found that hilarious, too. He said, “No, Skeet, I say ‘Wanna flip?’ Remember? I say it. Then we play.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “I forgot. Okay, you say it.”

  “Wanna flip?”

  “Sure.”

  We played one game, and I was happy to see he’d forgotten about Dan and me being bad or mad or whatever he’d been so worried about. I said, “Blink, I’ll play again, but I’ve gotta get something to drink first.”

  “And I think I’ll go take a shower and sit in the air-conditioning for a while,” said Dan.

  “Okay, Dan. Hey, thanks,” I said as he turned to go. “That was so great. It was the best day of my life. Really, I mean it.”

  Dan smiled. “You did good, Skeet. Tell Mac I said so. You coming, Blink?”

  “Skeet and I are going to play again, Dirty Dan,” Blink answered.

  “All right. You come on home after, have some supper.”

  Blink and I went into the marina, followed by Blinky. I didn’t have any money with me, but Larry said to take whatever I wanted on credit. Blink announced to the whole store that Skeet caught a tarpon and it was a beauty and nobody was mad but the fish, so after I slugged down a can of soda, then another, I told the story to Larry and Blink and Blinky and two guys who were hanging around. They were as attentive an audience as I could have hoped for, and they had a lot of questions, too. So I opened a third can of soda and a bag of chips and sat down on the old wooden stool by the counter. I finally had a good fish story of my own, and I figured on taking my sweet time telling it.

  Eleven

  When I got home, Mom wasn’t back from work yet. Memaw looked up from the newspaper she was reading, and her blue eyes got real big. “Why, Skeeter,” she said, “your face is redder than my good boots!”

  I glanced in the mirror and groaned. I’d forgotten sunscreen, along with everything else. The constant, blaring sun was another aspect of Florida living that freaked Mom out. She worried all the time about sunburn and skin cancer. It was a real concern for fishing guides who were out on the water all the time, and another problem Mom had with Mac’s way of life.

  “Come on in the bathroom with me right now,” said Memaw. “Let’s get something on that before your mother gets home and has a conniption.”

  Memaw doused me in aloe gel, talking the whole time about an ad she’d seen in the paper for a Chinese restaurant called the Golden Moon, which had just opened in town.

  “I’ve never been to a Chinese restaurant, old as I am. Can you believe it? First chance we get, I want to take you and your mama there. We’ll try everything on the menu, even if it sounds peculiar. I hear they do cook some peculiar dishes. But we won’t be squeamish, will we, Skeeter? I’ve never been squeamish a day in my life and I don’t intend to start now. I can’t abide people who won’t try new things, can you? Where’s the fun in that?”

  Memaw loved trying new things and she loved going out to eat. She always said that any meal she didn’t have to cook was a good one.

  As soon as I was able to get a word in, I told her about my tarpon, and she got just as excited about that as she’d been about eating Chinese food. Then Mom came home and I told the whole story again, but not until after she had her “conniption” about my sunburn. Memaw’s aloe had made the burn feel cooler, but it hadn’t done anything to hide the redness.

  Mom put more aloe on me, fussing the whole time. “Didn’t your father give you sunscreen?” Luckily, I didn’t have time to answer before she went on. “And that Dan! You’d think a grown man would act more responsible, especially when he’s in charge of someone else’s child.”

  “Mom, you make it sound like I’m a little kid,” I protested. “It’s not Mac’s fault I forgot to use sunscreen, or Dan’s either. Besides,” I lied, “this sunburn looks a lot worse than it feels.” Seeing how upset she was, I hoped more than ever that she’d never know all the parts of the story I’d left out.

  By the time we’d eaten dinner and I’d called Mac and told the fish story again, I was beat. It wasn’t until I was in bed and about to drift off that I realized I hadn’t thought about the manatee all day. I got up and dialed Mac’s number again.

  “Hey, Mac, I forgot to ask you. Did you talk to Earl today? Did they find out anything about who killed that manatee?”

  “I did talk to him, and they haven’t learned a thing,” Mac answered. “Earl feels bad, ’cause he says they’re not really trying. It’s like he told you the first day—they’re busy, and there’s nothing to go on.”

  The news—or lack of it—was about what I’d expected, but it was still disappointing. “Okay,” I said. “I was just wondering.”

  “Hey, did you get a picture of that tarpon?” Mac asked.

  “No camera,” I explained. “But that’s okay—”

  Mac interrupted to say, “’Cause you’ve got a picture in your brain, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “And that isn’t ever going to fade.”

  I nodded. Then, remembering we were on the phone, I said, “I can still see it clear as anything.”

  “I know, buddy,” said Mac. “I know.”

  The cool thing was, he really did know.

  “Listen, Skeet, I’m leaving tomorrow to trail the boat down to the Keys to meet a client. I’m going to fish him for four or five days, depending on how things go.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay. Is it that guy from Chicago who talks on his cell phone the whole time you’re out in the boat?”

  Mac chuckled. “The very same. He’s sure got a funny idea about ‘getting away from it all.’ But what the heck. He’s okay, and he’s a big tipper, if I can find us some fish.”

  “You will,” I said.

  “Listen, buddy, you have a good time on the rest of your vacation, and I hope you hear something about that manatee soon.”

  “Yeah, me, too. Well, have fun, Mac.”

  “I’ll try. And I’ll call you when I get back in town.”

  “Bye.”

  In bed, as I drifted off, I had a funny thought about parents and kids. Mom tried, but she didn’t get why tarpon fishing was so incredibly cool. And Mac tried, but he wasn’t the type to make sure I ate lunch, wore sunscreen, went to bed on time, and stuff like that. Maybe that was why parents came in pairs, at least at the beginning, so one could cover the stuff the other didn’t.

  Now that Mom and Mac weren’t together, maybe I was going to have to take care of more things for myself. I kind of wanted to think about that a little, but I must have fallen asleep two seconds later, in spite of my sunburn.

  When I woke up the next morning, the dead manatee was on my mind again, along with my tarpon. I stretched and groaned at the pain in both arms. It was a good kind of pain, though, a badge of honor.

  I lay in bed, flexing my arms and thinking. Earl had hypothesized that the manatee’s killer towed the dead body behind a boat and cut it loose someplace way out in the Gulf of Mexico. But it was possible, I reasoned, that the manatee hadn’t been taken so far out. And depending on the wind direction, it might
have washed up on shore far from where I’d found it the first time, but not too far. It was possible, also, that the killer had towed it into the tangled maze of the backcountry. Either way, there was a chance that if I went out in my skiff looking, I’d find it. And if I did, we’d have some evidence of a crime, and with that, maybe somebody would actually work on finding the killer.

  A little voice kept telling me it wasn’t likely that I’d find the body, but I’d felt the same way about the odds of my catching a tarpon, and look what happened. Anyway, I thought, I was on vacation and had the time.

  I told myself I could work on my English paper. But then I remembered I only had to write a first draft. No big deal.

  I didn’t need much convincing to go cruising around in my boat. I grinned, thinking, And this time I’ll take plenty of food, sodas, and fresh water, and put on a ton of sunscreen. I needed another eight dollars before I could get a radio antenna, but it was a clear, calm, sunny day, and I wasn’t worried about the weather.

  As it turned out, Mom said I could go, but she insisted on putting sunscreen on me herself this time. I tried not to flinch as she touched my reddened skin. She also gave me an extremely stupid-looking hat with a big brim and earflaps, and made me promise to wear it. I didn’t argue, though, because at least she was letting me go. Greasy with sunscreen from head to toe, smelling like a giant coconut, and looking just as ridiculous, I finally got out of the house.

  I took off the hat as soon as I was out of sight. Then, steering the skiff downriver, I knew I had to make a decision. Was I going to look for the manatee’s body floating out in the gulf or washed up onshore? The idea of trying to find something in miles of open ocean was discouraging, so I decided to search the channels that crisscrossed among the saw grass and mangrove keys closer to shore. The tide was almost high, so the water was deep enough for my skiff, and I’d have several hours before it dropped too low to run the boat in the backcountry.

  I began at “the scene of the crime,” which was how I’d been thinking of the place where I’d found the manatee. Then I took the first channel that branched off the main river. I kept my speed slow so I could scan the edges of the mangroves for anything out of the ordinary, the ordinary being mangrove roots and the small fish and crabs that sheltered beneath them, and the occasional buoy or piece of trash left behind by humans.