Diary of a Witness

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Will reached over, and he was close enough this time. He reached down and stuck the metal-covered end of the stringer through the fish’s open gills. But it didn’t come out his mouth the way I know Will meant it to. And he damn sure wasn’t going to stick his fingers in with those teeth. So he yelled to Sam to get him the pliers. Meanwhile, I watched the starboard edge of the boat and the surface of the water. They were even more dangerously close together.

  “He’s got to be thirty inches, easy,” Will said. Sam said nothing. Which I took to mean he was probably thirty inches, easy.

  Sam handed over the pliers, and Will reached them into the ling’s mouth and caught the end of the stringer. Caught it on the second try. He pulled it out with a bragging yell: “Ha-ha!” Threaded it through the ring on the other end. Then he sat back and pulled hard, and it slipped into place. Just like a stringer is supposed to do. Tightened down like a leash, wrapped through the gill and out the mouth. But this leash would be pretty hard to break. Will sat back and sneered at Sam. Meanwhile, he wrapped the end of the stringer three or four times around his hand.

  “Told you this was my lingcod day. Told you my luck was about to change.”

  He pulled hard on the stringer, but he still couldn’t pull the fish out of the kelp. He pulled a second time, and the starboard side of the boat rocked disastrously close to the water. He even tried cutting his line, but it was really wrapped around the kelp. It didn’t come free on the fish’s end. Will pulled even harder.

  “Hey, watch out, idiot,” Sam yelled. “You’ll sink us.”

  “I am not losing this fish. Ernie, hand me that knife.”

  I grabbed the bait board and handed Will the knife. He used it to point in the direction of his brother’s face. “This never would’ve happened if you’d gotten me the net when I asked for it.”

  “It was tangled up.”

  “You didn’t try hard enough. Because you don’t want my luck to change.” Will pulled as hard as he could on the stringer, then leaned over the starboard side of the boat with the knife, grabbing strands of kelp, pulling them close to the boat, and cutting them. The harder he pulled, the closer the side of the boat got to the water.

  Sam started reeling in so his line wouldn’t get snared up in the kelp. I was about to do the same, but I never got that far.

  I looked up and saw a really scary swell coming our way. The boat had turned around now, so the starboard side was facing the swells. And the next swell was a really big one. And the side of the boat and the water were only about an inch apart.

  “Will, sit up,” I said. “Sit up a minute. There’s a big swell coming.”

  “I’ve almost got it.”

  Sam looked up and saw what I saw. But he didn’t say anything to Will. He took it out on me instead. “Fat Boy, sit on the port side!”

  I did, and it helped a little. But maybe not enough.

  Will sat up and hit Sam in the head. “Leave him alone,” he said. Then he leaned over to cut the last piece of kelp.

  “Will, sit up! Now!”

  “I’ve got it,” he said. “I’ve got it.” He started to sit up. But as he did, he lifted the fish into the boat, and that brought the starboard side down even farther. Right to the waterline.

  That’s when the swell hit.

  It washed so much water into the boat that it slid me down to the low side, and I just kept going. Right off the boat and into the water. I closed my eyes and held my breath. The water was shockingly cold. I don’t even know how to describe how cold it was. Like being dipped in a glass of ice water. It hurt. It felt almost like being burned. Not exactly, but a little. Really hot and really cold feel a little bit the same. They both sting almost the same way.

  At first I just kept going down, but then I slowed and headed for the surface. There is one thing to be said for fat. It floats. My head bobbed up into air. I still had the rod in my hands. I couldn’t lose Will’s rod.

  I looked around. The boat was gone. Nowhere. Worse yet, nobody. No Will, no Sam. Just me and a great blue heron standing on one leg on the kelp bed. Then I saw one of the wooden oars floating near my head, and the blue-and-white bait cooler bobbing on the water. I saw all three bright orange life jackets. I tried to dog-paddle over to one.

  Just then Will’s head came up, and he raised his right hand to show me the end of the stringer, still wrapped around it. “It’s okay,” he said. “I still got him.”

  My mouth fell open, and a little salt water lapped in, and I had to spit it out again. “Okay? It’s okay? Dude, we sank your father’s boat!”

  We just looked at each other for a minute. Treaded water. The cold was going from painful to numb. Something banged into the back of my head. When I turned around, I saw it was the other oar.

  “Oh, this is bad,” Will said. Then his big fish pulled so hard that Will’s head disappeared.

  When he bobbed up again, I said, “Yeah. No shit this is bad. Where’s Sam?”

  I know it’s weird. But I really hadn’t thought of it until right when I said it.

  “I don’t know,” Will said. But he didn’t sound too concerned. “When did you last see him?”

  “Before that swell hit. Can he swim?”

  “Oh, hell yeah. He can swim circles around both of us. He’s a competition swimmer.” Will turned all around, looking. “Sam!” We just waited. “Messing with us, that’s where he is. Behind that rock, I bet. He’s fine.”

  I thought I saw a dark look pass over his face, but I might’ve been wrong. Everything was dark just then. Who could tell one dark thing from another?

  I paddled over to one of the life jackets. Slipped it on. Threw another one to Will. It was hard to buckle it, though. I had to hold the pole between my knees and adjust the straps way out, and my fingers didn’t work right. But I got it buckled. Finally. When I looked up, Will had his on, too. He had a look of true panic on his face.

  “What am I gonna tell my dad? We lost everything. Not even just the boat. The outboard motor. All the rods, all the tackle.”

  “Well, you’ve got both oars,” I said. “And the cooler, and the life vests. And this rod.” I held up my right hand. I couldn’t even feel I had anything in my right hand, but I held it up, and the rod was still there.

  Then something weird happened. If there really is a God, I think he’s a funny guy. I think he has a sense of humor. Maybe at my expense. The tip of the rod jerked three or four times.

  “You got something,” Will said.

  I tried to reel up. But my hands didn’t work very well. They were really numb and frozen by then. But eventually I got it up where I could see it.

  “Hey,” Will said. “You caught a nice red.”

  “Yeah, that’s a great consolation. Lost the boat, caught a nice red.”

  “Well, at least you didn’t get skunked.”

  It was red all right. Bright orangey red. I didn’t even know colors like that existed in the fish world. By my standards as a trout fisherman, it was a big fish. Compared to Will’s ling, it was tiny. It hardly mattered at all.

  “Give it to me,” he said. “I’ll put it on the stringer.”

  I went through the motions with him. But some part of me felt like I was watching this whole thing from above. Standing outside myself. Thinking how weird it was to even still be caring about the fish. Treading water, probably eighty feet above the boat, putting the last fish on the stringer. Like nothing had happened.

  I reeled the line the rest of the way in and hooked one of the treble hooks on one of the pole’s guides, then reeled up tight so the hook would stay. I didn’t want to catch myself on it. And I was determined to get to shore with that rod. It was the only piece of equipment I was responsible for. No way was I letting it go.

  I shoved the handle of it into the waistband of my jeans.

  I looked up and saw people standing on the beach watching us. “I hope they call somebody,” I said. “I hope they call it in. Call 911. Maybe they’ll call the Coast Guard or Sear
ch and Rescue or whatever.”

  Will just swam away. I could tell he was going to look on the other side of the rock. I got scared, thinking what if he was wrong and nobody was there. But he said the kid could swim.

  Will’s head came out from behind the rock again. “He probably swam to shore just to show us he can get there before we even start.”

  “We’d have seen him.”

  “I saw him,” he said. “Right there.”

  “Where?” I looked, but all I saw was ocean.

  “I just saw his head pop up, just there. I know I did.” He sounded like it was really important that I believe him. Or maybe even that he believe himself.

  “Hoo-boy, I hope you’re right. Will, I can’t swim all the way to shore.”

  “You don’t have much choice,” he said.

  I think we were about a fifth of the way back to shore when we got rescued. Maybe we weren’t even that far.

  It was Fish and Game who came and got us. I think somebody put a call over the radio, and Fish and Game was close by. Two guys on a sort of pontoon boat. But it had a motor and it was fast.

  They pulled us up and on board, but they both had to grab hold of me and pull, which was just so humiliating.

  One of the guys had really short hair, like his head had been shaved but now he had five o’clock shadow. The other guy was wearing this bandanna on his head like a do-rag. Bandanna Man said, “I know you kids can’t have been out here on your own.”

  “No, sir,” Will said. “My brother was out here, too. We think he swam ashore.” Then he pulled the stringer up.

  The shaved guy whistled. “Nice ling. Must be over thirty inches. Man, that’s a beauty. You catch that, son?”

  “No, sir,” Will said. “My friend Ernie did. I caught this red snapper.”

  I looked at Will but he wouldn’t catch my eye.

  Bandanna Man said, “Who’s the grown-up in charge here?”

  Will said, “Well, my dad. He was gonna pick us up in six hours.”

  The two men looked at each other. Then they started up the motor and we raced at the shore. Got there like ten times faster than it took us to get out. They ran the motor until the boat slid right up on the sand.

  There was a crowd of people waiting for us. Well, a small crowd. Maybe a dozen. And an ambulance parked on the road, but we didn’t need that. We were fine. And a sheriff’s car with the red lights spinning.

  Bandanna Guy yelled out to the crowd. He said, “Anybody see another boy come ashore?”

  Everybody shook their heads.

  I sat on the end of that boat ramp with this stiff gray blanket wrapped around me, but I was still freezing. I could feel my teeth knocking together when they chattered. I tried so hard to stop shaking, but I just couldn’t stop.

  I could still feel the motion of the swells when I closed my eyes.

  The Fish and Game guys were back out on the water, looking for Sam, and there was another boat out there now, too. Some kind of Search and Rescue boat, with a diver on board. And a helicopter kept buzzing back and forth over the water.

  I was thinking, I must be in hell. This must be hell. I’m cold and miserable, I’m starving hungry, Will and I are in deep trouble, we still haven’t found Sam, and I have no way to get home. And it just kept going on, for what felt like hours. I was thinking, If I ever go to hell for real, which I hope I don’t, it couldn’t be any worse than this.

  A minute later the sheriff’s deputy came walking down the boat ramp. “I found your father,” he said. “But he’s in no condition to drive you boys home. You got any other options on a ride?”

  “We could call my mother,” I said. I gave him the number. I wanted to call her myself, but he had to do it from his car, through dispatch. “Tell her I’m okay,” I said as he walked up the ramp. “Don’t forget. She worries.”

  “All mothers worry,” he said.

  I looked over at Will. “I’m staying,” he said. “Here. Don’t forget your fish.”

  He took the red off the stringer and handed me the stringer, lingcod and all.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You think I want my father to know I was thinking about not losing a big fish while his boat was sinking? That I made sure I kept hold of the ling but I’m not sure what happened to Sam?”

  I took the ling. Held it out at arm’s length. It was still marginally alive. It still had teeth. It still looked like the devil. And, sure enough, the minute it came up from the deep, everything had gone straight to hell.

  When she was finally ready to take a breath from bawling me out, my mother left me home and went to get takeout. It was such a relief. I was trying to shut up and just let her get it out of her system. But I felt like it was never going to end.

  “Get sushi,” I said, because I like California rolls, and they’re not too fattening.

  “Honey, we can’t afford sushi every time. I’ll get McDonald’s.”

  I sighed and drew myself a hot bath. I figured it was the only way I would ever get warm again. I’m not weird. This’ll sound weird, but I’m not. I drew a bubble bath. There’s a method to my madness. It’s impossible to see your body through all those bubbles. All through this, something in the back of my head kept saying, Sam.

  I took the phone into the bathroom with me and set it on the bath mat. I just stared at it the whole time I soaked. But it never made a sound.

  After I finally felt warm again, I went into the kitchen and stared at that enormous dead devil-fish sitting on some old newspaper on the counter. That sea monster. It looked like it was staring back at me. Creepy. I had no idea what to do with it.

  Peaches was walking back and forth under the counter, sniffing. Good thing she has really short legs. She could never get up on that counter.

  I know how to fillet a fish. If a trout is twelve inches or under, I usually cook it whole. But if it’s a big one, fourteen inches or more, I fillet it. But this guy … I took my fillet knife out of the drawer and held it up to the fish. It wouldn’t even reach all the way through to the spine. I couldn’t figure out where to start. I was tempted to throw it in the outside trash. But it’s a crime to waste a big fish like that. Any fish. I’m not big on the idea of sin, but if there was ever a sin, it’s to kill an animal and then not even eat it.

  I called Uncle Max. Thinking, Sam.

  I said, “Uncle Max, I caught this big, giant lingcod, like over thirty inches, and I don’t even know how to fillet it, and I was wondering if you could drive down tomorrow and help me.”

  He said, “Oh, had a good day, huh?”

  I said, “No. It was horrible. It was the worst day ever. This big swell sank the boat, and we had to be rescued, and Mom is royally pissed that we went out on a boat without a grown-up, and we still don’t know where Will’s little brother is.” Halfway through saying it, I started to cry. I hate to cry. Hate it. Even when I’m all alone. In front of somebody, it’s the worst. But if I was going to cry in front of anybody, at least it was Uncle Max.

  “Oh,” he said. “I guess that explains why you want me to drive down. Instead of just telling you how to fillet it over the phone.”

  “I guess,” I said. It was almost like he was trying to get me to say I needed help. Which is a really hard thing for me. But he was right, of course. I was really asking him to drive down because he was my uncle Max. Sometimes you just need your uncle Max.

  “Okay. Will do. Just gut it and put it in the fridge, and I’ll leave as soon as I wake up in the morning.”

  My mother came back in with three bags from the fast-food place. Scary to think what she ordered wouldn’t even fit into two bags.

  I said, “Thanks, Uncle Max.” And got off the phone.

  While she laid it all out on the table, I slit the belly of the fish and pulled the guts out onto the newspaper. Considering the size of the fish, there weren’t a lot of guts. More like just what a trout would have. Or, in this case, a dozen trout. I used my knife to cut them away at the ends and righ
t behind the head, and then I stuck the front end of the fish in the kitchen sink and scraped out the blood vein as best I could. Rinsed it inside and cleaned it out with four or five paper towels. Wrapped the fish in plastic wrap, round and round until it was all covered.

  “Come on, Ernie,” my mother said. “It’s going to get cold.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  But I wasn’t right there. I had to find space for that monster in the fridge. This was no small task, believe me. We have lots of food in our fridge. I had to move things around. Stack things on top of other things. Take out a bunch of stuff like ketchup and mustard and salad dressing and jam and jelly, stuff that would survive on the counter until morning. Then I managed to wedge the fish in on a lower shelf, but I had to stack some stuff on top of it.

  I balled up the guts in the paper and ran it out real quick to the outside trash. I knew it would stink by morning. I also knew Peaches might knock over the inside trash in the night.

  When I got back, my mom was sitting at the table, not eating. Just letting her food get cold. I sat down. She’d gotten me two Big Macs, a giant fries, a supersize soda, and one of those deep-fried apple pies. I was so hungry from not having eaten since breakfast. I never even got to eat my lunch. It ended up at the bottom of the ocean.

  “Why didn’t you start?” I said, picking up a Big Mac.

  “Put it down,” she said. I did. I didn’t know why. I just knew it was no day to go pushing my luck. “Before we eat, we’re going to say a prayer for that little boy. What’s his name?”

  “Sam.” It was the first time I’d said it out loud for so long. Sam.

  “Right. We’re going to say a prayer that Sam Manson is okay. And that they find him before it gets dark.”

  We sat there in silence for a minute. Our heads bowed. I don’t know if I should call what I was doing praying. I’m not so sure about the whole God thing. I’m not saying there isn’t one, but I don’t know. And if there is, I’m not sure I like him. I guess I shouldn’t think that, but it’s true. But I wanted Sam to get found real bad. So I hoped real hard. Maybe that’s all a prayer is. Just hoping real hard that things turn out okay.