Pot Luck

by Nick Fisher

  The game of Fish Head Baseball, as invented by their dad, when they were just tiny bright-eyed boys, desperately competing to impress the man they both thought was the greatest living man on earth, is very simple. Heading homewards at a gentle steam of around four to five knots, with the wheel lashed in position. The first part of the game involves preparation, chucking a few handfuls of fish guts over the stern. The fish guts soon attract the seagulls, also known to the Fish Head Baseball players as ‘fielders’. The seagulls, big black-backed bastards and scary wide-winged herring gulls, being an integral and entertaining part of the game. Seagulls were happy to play the game too because, if they’re quick, they get a belly full of rotting fish to gobble down.

  The rest of the field should include one batter – standing with his back to the wheelhouse, facing towards the stern. One pitcher, chucking pitches from around the transom. And with a bit of luck, about 40 sky-soaring shite-hawk ‘fielders’. Fish Head Baseball is the opposite of conventional baseball in that in Fish Head the batter’s main intention is to be caught out. Being caught out by a shite-hawker gull constitutes a ‘run’.

  To be fair, as a game, it’s more of a team effort than an individual sport. The perfect ‘over’ involves a pitcher tossing a mackerel head at just the right pace and height for the batsman to get his swing to come up under the spinning fish head and thwack it hard enough to launch it in a trajectory that takes it up high above the transom in a smooth arc. The trick is maximising the fish head’s time in flight, and so allowing the gulls time to swoop down. If a hit is big enough to give a seagull time to catch the head in its hard dirty-yellow beak, a run is scored. No catch, no run. If the head spirals down to the sea without being caught by a gull, the batsman is disqualified and has to swap with the bowler. Batting is no easy feat considering a perfect strike has to be achieved on the deck of a rocking boat steering itself across the waves.

  Fish Head Baseball is a messy game too. Slugging rotting fish parts with a heavy baseball bat creates a huge amount of spatter. Pieces of rotting fish spray from the bat across the deck and the transom and the engine box. For their father to allow them to play such a messy game back then was a big deal. A big treat. A baseball game would increase dad’s workload; create a shit-load of extra hosing down for him to do, when he eventually tied up on the quay. So, for the brothers, when they were little, to be allowed to have a game of Fish Head Baseball, swinging at mackerel heads tossed from the leathery work-worn hands of their dad, was very special thing. Something to cherish. Didn’t matter one bit who scored the most runs, it was exciting enough just to have had the opportunity to play. A game of Fish Head Baseball on the steam in made for a big fucking red letter day for little Adrian and Matty. Big day.

  So, now for Adrian to look behind him through the half-open door of the wheelhouse and watch Matty, spliff clamped between his teeth, lob a huge rotting pollack head, fresh from the bait box, at fuckwit Tim, really sucked. To see the game, that once meant something quite sweet and special and innocent to Adrian, played now in such an ugly way, gnawed away at something deep inside.

  A flock of gulls swooped and jeered and dived and shat. Fighting amongst themselves jostling for position, as Tim swings at a spinning pollack head. Adrian can see Tim’s swing is late and snatched, bringing the bat around too fast and way too flat.

  In Fish Head Baseball the strike is all about lift. Hitting the tossed fish head from underneath with the bat moving through, accelerating upwards. Instead, Tim came across the pollack head, his swing all cramped and spazzy, skidding the bat over the top and sending the pollack head off at an angle, clipping the edge of the gunwale, leaving a huge deposit of glutinous slime. Then the head just slid pathetically off the gunwale into the wake behind the boat.

  Gulls aren’t called ‘shitehawks’ for nothing. They have no pride. No manners. No sense of sportsmanship. And so, accidentally dropping a fish head so close into the wake of the boat means half the fielders automatically bale out of the sky above the playing field to go and squabble over the floating debris. They peck and scream and dive-bomb each other for a turn at pecking on the pollack’s soft grey weeping eyes, while the few that are left flying above the boat have to regroup into a tight fielding pattern. The ones that have baled out to fight over the badly struck pollack head will eventually return when the last morsel has been devoured. But an important part of Fish Head Baseball is keeping fish heads ascending into the air for fielders to catch, which maximises the number of seagulls attracted to the boat and so keeps the greatest number of fielders ‘in play’ at any one time.

  By dropping a short crappy strike into the sea, Tim just blew the field open. Far as Matty’s concerned, he’s had enough of pitching good balls to Tim’s shitty batting. Tim had now flat-hit three on the trot and cost them at least half the available sky fielders. So Matty took the bat from Tim and told him to go pitch instead. Matty wanting to show him once again how to properly swing at a fish head.

  Adrian wants to look away. He doesn’t want to see spotty fucking prick-wad Tim do the thing his dad used to do for them. Doesn’t want to see Tim bowl a fish head at Matty. It made him feel sad. At the same time, Adrian found it hard to look away.

  Matty has broad muscular shoulders, thick-knotted biceps and when his brains aren’t too sizzled, he can really swing the bat like a fucking pro. When they were boys, even though Matty was two years Adrian’s junior, Matty was always the big hitter. Adrian had a good eye. Adrian had tight hand/eye co-ordination. But he could never swing with the explosive muscle power that Matty could muster.

  And so Adrian watches Matty prepare to swing. Sees him suck on the joint, inhale a thick wreath of smoke up the side of his mouth and then wind the metal bat back high over his right shoulder.

  The pollack head leaves Tim’s hand at waist height, spinning end over end. And for a few moments, it seems to Adrian that everything now goes in slow motion. It’s all glorious Technicolor slo-mo from the nano-second the fish head leaves Tim’s sticky teenage paw.

  Later, Adrian would play the pollack head-toss over and over in his mind. Remembering it in every detail. The head reaches Matty slightly too high and too close to his right arm. But Matty’s footwork is swift. He brings his right leg in, to give his body more height, as the bat – already on its way – accelerates in a low back swing. Reaching its lowest point and then, turning upwards, faster, all the while gaining pace, increased by the swivel of Matty’s hips as he seamlessly throws his weight behind the bat. The swing powering forward until it finally makes hefty contact with the lemon-sized pollack head. The meat of the bat – the sweet spot – making a solid connection with the bottom half of the spinning head. The head is upside down when the bat rips into it. The top of the skull where it’s struck being the most solid part of the head and so the part able to give Matty’s powerful strike the biggest amount of lift. A squashier part of the head would have caved and crushed absorbing too much of the force and so decreasing its potential to climb.

  It saddened Adrian, but he had to admit it was the perfect Matty slug. Big crunch with a beautiful follow through, the bat’s finishing point being perched high over his left shoulder in a perfect symmetrical ending to the swing.

  The pollack head climbed on up, spinning as it lifted, 50, 60, 70 feet above the deck, with a long high graceful arc, curving way behind Kitty’s stern.

  Just like Matty, Tim also looked up to watch the spinning head. Adrian now catching a glimpse of Tim’s throat, white and spotty topped with a ring of grime, from the collar of his grubby fleece. Tim turning around now as he watches the head of pollack, still climbing, while the gulls swoop and dive into position, jostling to intercept the head.

  One huge herring gull, half as big again as all the black-backed gulls, bullying his way in, wings outstretched, to exactly where he calculates the head will stall in mid-air, before it starts its descent. The stall being the easiest stage of the curve to catch the whole head cleanly in the hacksaw-like jaws of h
is beak.

  Tim watches the big herring gull. Tim’s body all turned around now, his back to the wheelhouse, his front pointing out towards the propellers with his face angled upwards to watch the big gull as it checks its flight-path, angles its wings, its red eyes all the while focussed on the twirling prize. Tim’s mouth hangs open. His jaw slack, watching, waiting, following the spinning head, as Adrian now becomes aware of Matty, stepping forward towards the stern. Towards Tim, the baseball bat still in his hands. Only now he’s cranking it back again over his right shoulder.

  As the big herring gull’s beak opens in slow motion, his last blink seems to take an age, the skin slowly closing over his piercing red eyeballs. Then his eyes are open again, pierced, fixed, its beak wide, angry, ready to catch. The pollack head reaching its zenith beginning to drop. As crunch! The beak snaps shut on its prize, just at the very same moment as the baseball bat crunches into the base of Tim’s skull.

  The crunch of human bone sends a vibration through the deck that Adrian would swear he could feel in his teeth. A crunch he could feel at 30 feet, over the roar of the engine, the vicious cacophony of the gulls and the crash of the sea. A crunch that sends Tim’s body head first over the transom down into the churning white froth pouring from Kitty’s propeller.

  Matty hardly even looks as Tim’s body hits the water and spins away like a ragdoll in the wake. Matty simply tosses the baseball bat into the sea over the stern and slowly turns to walk back up the deck to the wheelhouse.

  Adrian can’t move. This moment is a freeze-frame. A live pause. An out-of-body experience. As Matty now leans into the wheelhouse past Adrian’s frozen stare, to reach the GPS plotter controls, where he calmly presses the prominent red button, with the bold capital letters ‘MOB’ embossed across it.

  Man Over Board. Pressing this button creates an emergency waypoint registered on the GPS.

  “Man overboard,” Matty says quietly, smiling as he picks up his Zippo and lights the dog-end of the joint still hanging from his lips.

  Adrian swings the Kitty K around 180 degrees and points her back through the tail of her own wake. Scanning the water on either side of the fading froth, searching to catch sight of Tim. There is no sign. Adrian not daring to take his eyes off the water in case he misses the boy. In case, God forbid, he accidentally runs over him with the prop. He doesn’t take his eyes off the surface of the sea, but he can feel Matty, standing beside him, huffing out a cloud of bitter-sweet dope smoke that billows into Adrian’s face.

  “Don’t go too fast,” says Matty. “Last thing we want is to fish him out alive.”

  Adrian sees a flash of white. The skin on one of Tim’s wrists, exposed, where his fleece bunched up when he hit the water, pushing his sleeves up to his elbows. Tim face down in the water. His arms outstretched, neck bent forward. Not moving. The water round the back of his neck, at the base of his skull, is coloured. Something is seeping out of Tim, making the green blue sea turn brown.

  Man Overboard exercises are part of every licensed skipper’s training. The protocol dictates when such an accident occurs; any deck hand should immediately shout ‘Man Overboard’ and point exaggeratedly in the direction of his fallen crew member. Crew are taught to continue pointing at the man in the water, without lowering their arm or taking their eyes off him, all through the ensuing manoeuvres. This is for the skipper’s benefit, because the first thing a skipper has to do is look at his GPS to hit the MOB button. The quicker the exact location of the fall is electronically recorded, the better.

  Then, should the fallen man not be found immediately after the boat swings round, there’ll always be a reference point; a firm record of precisely where it was that he fell overboard. This also provides useful information for the skipper of the lifeboat that may get sent out to conduct a wider sea search. The lifeboat’s coxswain calculating, using tide tables and electronic data, the exact rate and direction in which the fallen crew member should have drifted. So, if they don’t get to him while he’s still alive, at least they have a good idea where to go to intercept his corpse.

  Matty isn’t following protocol. He isn’t pointing at the boy in the water, or shouting distance and direction to help guide his skipper’s steering. Matty is standing in the wheelhouse finishing the joint. While Adrian flings the gearbox into neutral and runs out on deck, leaning right over the gunwale as soon as the Kitty is close enough for him to make a lunge with the boat hook at Tim’s downward-facing body.

  Leaning as far as he can over the starboard side, Adrian tries to jab the bend of the boat hook into the neck of Tim’s fleece. The bright steel curve of the boat hook in the water showing clearly that the stuff seeping out of Tim’s head is red.

  “Fuck’s sake, help,” Adrian says, as he tries to pull Tim’s head and shoulders out the water with the hook. Tim’s soaking back pressed against the hull. Even straining with both his hands, with the hook twisted deep into Tim’s sopping fleece, Adrian still can’t shift the boy any higher out the water. The weight of Tim’s sodden clothes and the angle making him impossible for one man to lift.

  Adrian turns at the sound of the winch jib roller rattling, to see Matty, calmly stretching a length of pot rope through the jib and round the winch wheel. He ties a running bowline in the rope and tosses the loop-end at Adrian. Matty getting ready to winch Tim’s body out like a crab pot.

  With no choice and no time to lose, Adrian slips the wide loop of the knot down the handle of the boat hook and manages to pass it under one of Tim’s heavy, floppy arms. Before he has a chance to get the other arm into the loop the winch begins to whine, as Matty presses the rubber control button.

  With the boat hook still tangled in his clothing and the rope biting into his neck and shoulder, Tim’s body is hoisted out the water until it hangs over the gunwale, swinging from the jib. Watery blood dripping from his fleece.

  Matty stares at the white face and the rivulet of blood that cascades down over the collar. Matty’s own face blank of emotion. He looks like he’s daydreaming. Adrian manhandles Tim’s corpse to the deck and loosens the rope now biting into his flesh. Then he releases the boat hook from the twisted clothing. Adrian falling to his knees, thrusting Tim’s head back, clearing an airway. Just like they taught on his Marine Service compulsory Day Skipper course module. The one called ‘First Aid At Sea’.

  Adrian had practised and demonstrated on a hard rubber dummy that was only a torso with no legs, which Owen, the big fat ex-miner instructor, called Legless Lucy, even though it was clearly a man’s torso. Owen had gone through the steps, clearing an airway, listening to the chest, compressing the chest, pinching the nose, blowing in through the mouth to inflate the chest. But it’s all pointless. Tim is as dead as fuck, although blood is still leaking from the back of his head.

  Adrian’s hands and legs covered in Tim’s blood. Matty looking down at his brother.

  “You killed him,” says Adrian, knowing he’s stating the obvious. But can find no other words.

  “I just saved you, and me, 16-and-a-half grand a piece,” says Matty.

  “What?”

  “Made everything fuck of a lot simpler.”

  “You killed him!”

  “Accident. You told me yourself. Time and time again. One in four commercial fishermen die at work.”

  “Fourteen!”

  “OK, one in fourteen fishermen die at work. And, this is the one.”

  “I don’t believe … You … just–”

  “He would’ve run his little mouth off to any fucker would’ve listened,” says Matty. “From the moment he stepped foot on the quay.”

  “But…”

  “Old Bill would’ve known all about us, in a blink. Someone would’ve got wind and then someone grassed us up to make a quid,” says Matty. “Or else to cut a plea deal.”

  “You…”

  “Done us a favour. Done you a favour.”

  “You’re fucking crazy.”

  “Call the coastguard,” says Matty. “
Now. Report it. We got the MOB mark logged. Tell them what happened. He was lashing pots on the roof of the wheelhouse when he slipped, or missed his footing, or something. You don’t really know, ‘cos you were at the wheel. Next thing you heard a sickening crash and then me, I called ‘Man Overboard’.”

  “I …”

  Matty looking down at Tim’s white face. “Must’ve hit his head on the hauling jib as he fell. Say that. Cos when we got to him, he was face down, in the water, bleeding out.”

  “We can’t just–”

  “Ring ‘em. Do it now,” says Matty. “That way it looks right with the times and all. Enough time for you to try CPR and shit, and not get a response. Then… soon as you could, you called it in. So…”

  “What?”

  “Call it in!” says Matty. “You’re the skipper.”

  God, she looks cute in her stab vest. Was something about a woman in a stab vest that really works for Tug Williams. Has to be a fit woman, with a proper figure. Not like one of them great lardy, lumpy ones worked back in the nick at Weymouth. Like Jackie, who just ate doughnuts all day from the Krispy Kreme counter in Asda. Doughnuts for breakfast. Doughnuts for lunch. Doughnuts and a Cornish pastie for dinner. Sitting at the desk in the Custody Suite, signing in perps, sometimes she’d have a pastie, a doughnut and two meat samosas.

  You’d think it’d spook her they were just called ‘meat’. Not any specific kind of meat. Like lamb or pork or beef. Just ‘meat’. She’d warm them up in the break room microwave, and stink up the whole suite.

  He likes Jackie though. She’s a great Custody Suite Sergeant. Knows when to be tough and throw on the cuffs. But never resorts to force as a first port of call, like so many of her colleagues do. Jackie was smart. Could talk the birds out the trees. Tug had seen her make violent drunken repeat offenders cry with shame at finding themselves banged up in a cell, once again, due to be sent up in front of the Magistrate first thing.