The Young Man and the Sea

by Rodman Philbrick

  The old outboard sputters to life.

  Sweetness! Nothing sounds so pure and sweet as a motor running when you’re all alone in the middle of nowhere. Minute later I’ve got the skiff headed east again. East for the Ledge. East until the sun comes up. East where the big fish live.

  I look up, hoping to see the stars, but there must be clouds because the sky is as black as the sea.

  Nothing to do but trust the compass.

  You sure this is a good idea, Skiff Beaman?

  I don’t know. But it’s the only idea I got.

  Rule Number Three doesn’t mean risk your life. It never meant that.

  Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll stay in the boat.

  When you were little you were scared of the dark.

  Still am. Don’t matter.

  Had to leave the night-light on or you’d wake up crying.

  That’s when I was a baby.

  Remember what I told you: Being brave isn’t the same as being stupid.

  I’m not being brave. I’m just going fishing.

  Be careful, Skiffy dear. That harpoon is bigger than you are.

  I’ll be careful, Mom. I won’t do nothing stupid.

  It’s not like I think my mom is really talking to me. More like all the things she said are stored inside my brain and come out when I’m alone. Like I know what she’d say about stuff, and how she felt about things, and what she’d want me to do.

  Once when I was about six I did a cannonball off the dock. The water was way over my head and Dad had to fish me out or I might’ve drowned. After they dried me off, Mom asked what was I thinking, to do such a thing? I told her I was learning how to be brave. That’s when she said that thing about brave not being the same as stupid, and that before I could try being brave I had to use my brain and be smart.

  Life is a gift, she said, whenever I did something really dumb, like ride my bike no hands with my eyes closed down Spotter Hill on a dare. Life is a gift and you mustn’t just throw it away.

  So here I am in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, thinking about my mom and praying on the sun to come up soon. Thinking everything will be okay when the sun comes up. When the sun comes up there will be other boats out fishing for giant tuna, same as me. Get in trouble, all you got to do is wave your arms or make some noise, they’ll lend a hand.

  Once when my dad was out on the Mary Rose a storm come on sudden, and the swells broke out in whitecaps and he decided to head in early, just to be cautious. Then a cooling hose blew and he lost power and started to take on water. Dev Murphy saw him and towed him home, which ain’t easy in a heavy sea. Both boats got beat up by the storm, with windows broke and gear smashed and traps lost overboard. When I asked Dad if he had to pay Dev back he said that’s not how it works. Fish and you fish alone, every man for himself. But when one man gets in trouble at sea we’re all in trouble. We’re in it together, so you lend a hand and don’t think of what it costs, because the next time it might be you with a busted motor or a sinking boat and the waves crashing all around.

  Not a soul out here with me at the moment, though. Not even a bird in the sky. Ain’t really a sky you can make out, more a close-up darkness right over my head. Just me and my skiff and the sound of the motor putt-putting along, and the slap of black water on the hull.

  After a time the steep swells smooth out. Nothing to see but the compass. Keep the arrow on the big “E” for east, I know that much. Now and then I flick the flashlight beam out from the skiff, but it don’t catch nothing but water. Water so black, it sucks up the light.

  If you think you’re alone, try singing a song. Somebody’s sure to tell you to shut up.

  Not much for singing, Mom. Not like you.

  I won’t laugh, Skiffy, promise. Go on and sing.

  Can’t think of a song right now.

  Sure you can. Remember your favorite song when you were five years old? The fishing song?

  I do remember that song, or part of it, anyway. Momma’s going fishing, papa’s going fishing, I’m a going fishing, too. Dad bought me a brand-new pole for my birthday but wouldn’t give it to me until I learned that song. Trouble was, once I learned it I wouldn’t shut up. Sang that silly song until Mom said if I sang it one more time her ears would fall off. You promise? I said, because I thought ears falling off was pretty cool, and she got to laughing so hard, Dad had to pat her on the back. Sing it all you want, she said when she got done laughing. Sing it until it wears you out. What about your ears? I asked. I like my ears, she said, touching the earrings Dad gave her for their anniversary. I like my ears and I think I’ll keep ’em. Now you go on and sing.

  My voice sounds real small against the empty all around, but it feels good singing. Let the ocean know I’m here.

  “Momma’s going fishing. Papa’s going fishing. I’m a going fishing, too.”

  Sounds better if I hit the seat with my hand, keeping the rhythm. Wompa, wompa, wompa.

  “Momma’s going fishing! Papa’s going fishing! I’m a going fishing, too!”

  Trouble is, all I can remember is just that one line of the song. There’s something about a cane pole and a fishing hole, but I can’t find it. So it’s just as well there’s no one to hear me acting stupid. Boy in a small boat singing his head off, can’t even recall the whole stupid song. Probably think being all alone in the dark made me crazy or something.

  Maybe I am. Crazy, I mean. What a totally insane idea, take a boat this small offshore this far! What was I thinking? Even when the sun does come up I won’t be able to see land. How will I ever find my way back home?

  The compass, you fool. Stop your blubbering! You got a compass, don’t you? A good, solid compass from the Mary Rose. A compass that always got her home, even in the worst kind of weather. Catch your fish, Skiff Beaman, then head west. Head west for long enough and you’ll bump into land. Might not be the harbor at Spinney Cove, if the current sets against you, but it will be land. Sell that big tuna to Mr. Nagahachi and you can take a limousine home.

  Me in a limousine. The idea makes me laugh, and somehow that gets me off worrying myself to death. Shake my head to clear it and realize I been drenched in cold sweat. Soaked through to my skin. Or that’s what I think at first. Only I can feel the wet in the air as I putt along. It ain’t me that’s in a cold sweat, it’s the dark itself.

  Fog.

  That’s what happened to the stars, you knucklehead. Fog so thick, it melts on your face. Bad fog. Blind fog. White darkness. What they call a real peasouper.

  All I can do is pray for sunrise. Pray the sun will burn off the fog and let me see again. Because if there’s one thing scares me more than being lost in the dark, it’s being lost in the fog.

  THE sun comes up, eventual. It always does, don’t it? No matter how much we fret and worry the night won’t end, the sun comes up. But this time the sun don’t touch the fog. Too thick for that. Fog so thick, you can’t see the sun, only the light it makes. Kind of a dull white glow inside the mist.

  My dad says fog is just a cloud that comes down to eye-level. But clouds are fluffy and pretty and fog ain’t none of that. Fog is not being able to see where you’re going, or which way the waves are breaking. Fog plays tricks with your eyes. Shows you shapes of things that can’t be there. A floating castle. A pirate ship about to run you down. Monster things from your worst nightmare.

  When I was little I somehow got it fixed in my head that fog came from dragons. Must have seen it in a book, fire-breathing dragons, only I got it wrong and thought the dragons were breathing fog. Dragons that had scales like fish, and breath that smelled of seaweed. There’s still part of me believes that when fog comes in on the tide it means there’s a dragon waiting inside the mist. A dragon that will suck you into the fog so hard, you’ll never get out.

  Stop it, fool! Stop fussing about imaginary monsters and stuff you can’t touch. So you’re fogged in, so what? You can still see your boat and the water around it, can’t you? You can see farther than you can throw t
hat big harpoon, that’s for sure. What more do you need?

  Birds, I’m thinking. I need birds. Birds is how you find fish. When fish make a commotion feeding on the surface, birds will circle over and dive. You can see the birds from a long ways off and know where the fish are. My dad says that’s how the first human caught a fish, by watching what the birds did.

  How can you spot birds in fog this thick? You can’t. Plain and simple can’t.

  After a while I stop fretting and settle down. Can’t do nothing about fog. It happens. You got to go with what you got. I got a good little skiff and a pail of bait and a finest-kind harpoon. Probably the first human had nothing but a sharpened stick or a piece of rock. So I’m way ahead, right?

  Right?

  Shut up and fish. Saw a tourist with that on his T-shirt once. Makes sense. Now or never, I’m thinking. So I pry the lid off the bait bucket and cut up some herring and drop it over the side. Cutting it fine so the fish oil will spread. The idea is, attract small fish into the chum slick and the big fish will rise up to feed on the small fish. Sometimes it works and sometimes it don’t and you never know until you try.

  So I get to work, chopping and cutting. Fog? What fog? Oh that fog. Does it bother you? Heavens no. Love the fog. Hope it stays forever. You hear that, Mr. Fog? Stick around and see what happens.

  I’m cutting up herring and dropping it over the side for most of an hour before I hear the first little splash. Splash like a pebble makes. Figure it must be my imagination, but then there’s another little sploink! And then a bunch more, like rain on a puddle.

  Come on, fish! Over here. Feed your way up the chum slick, all the way to my boat.

  Minute later, there it is. The nervous, zaggedy shape of a mackerel just beneath the surface, working the chum slick. Small mackerel, what we call tinker size. Maybe five inches long. Then another and another until there’s a whole school of tinker mackerel darting up to nibble on the chum, fighting one another for the pieces I been cutting up and dropping into the water.

  I’m grinning so hard, my face hurts. It’s working! And tinker means I must be pretty near the Ledge, where the big fish come to feed. Got the mackerel in my slick, come on big tuna! Come on and take a bite. Show me your fin and I’ll show you my harpoon.

  Only trouble is, I got just one bucket of herring. One bucket, that’s all I had room for, and already it’s halfway gone. So I start cutting even smaller, and putting less pieces in the water. Barely enough to keep the slick water shining with fish oil. The tinker don’t seem to mind, not at first. They’re having a fine time swarming in the slick, darting around like small, speckled rockets. Grabbing bits of herring and shaking it like dogs with a bone.

  “Hey, little fish. Stick around for the big fish, why don’t you?” Bad habit of mine, talking out loud to fish. Makes it less lonesome, hearing the sound of my own voice. “Come over this way, Mr. Mackerel, you missed a piece. Ooh, don’t let the bad boys get it! Fight for what’s yours! Go on and eat it before somebody else does, or before something bigger eats you. Good. Here’s another piece. More you eat, the bigger you’ll grow. Bigger you grow, the better your chance.”

  Try to pick out one particular fish for a conversation, but they’re swarming, so I keep losing ’em in the crowd. Can’t tell one from another. Which makes you wonder, can they tell themselves apart or do they think all together? Are there bully fish that take advantage, and weaker fish that keep losing out? Must be. That’s the way it is with most creatures, from what I can see. Birds, dogs, cats, and people, too. Which means there’s nothing original about Tyler Croft. He comes from a long line that goes all the way back to the mean molecule. Mean old Tyler ever heard me talking to fish, he’d have himself a good laugh.

  “Hey you! Psst. Yes, you. Funny-looking one with the pale spots.” I flick a little chopped herring on the water and watch it settle. Watch the skittish fish watching me, watching the chum, trying to decide what to do, eat it or run away. “That’s lunch,” I tell ’em. “Don’t worry about the bill, lunch is on me.”

  Fish scoots in, inhales the speck of chum. Fish scoots back into the school. Back behind the boat. Getting farther from the boat because I’m running out of chum. Trying to stretch it out, give the tinker just enough to stay in the vicinity and not a speck more.

  Come on, Mr. Bluefin. Can’t you smell the chum? Can’t you feel the baitfish feeding? Ain’t you hungry?

  Tinker stay in the slick for an hour or more and then blink! They’re gone, just like that. Like somebody flicked a switch.

  Gone. And with ’em any hope of finding a big tuna.

  I sit there inside the fog and curse myself for a fool. What was I thinking, bringing only one bucket of bait? Did I really think it would be that easy? Was I thinking at all?

  Answer: Mostly I was thinking about the money I’d get for the fish instead of how to get the fish in the first place. Like if I could only get out to the Ledge, it would happen automatic. As if a hundred boats didn’t go out every day and come back empty. Big, fancy boats with thousand-dollar trolling rods and gold-plated reels and radar and radios and fancy fish-finders and gallons of frozen chum. If boats like that come back empty, what can you expect from a plywood skiff with one pitiful bucket of salted herring for bait?

  Nothing, that’s what. And nothing is what I got.

  So there I am, drifting in a world made of white mist and feeling mighty sorry for myself when all of a sudden I hear a splash. Not a little tinker-size splash.

  A big splash.

  FIRST thing I do is grab the harpoon and stand up in the stern of the skiff. Trying to balance myself and the harpoon and keep my heart from pounding so hard, it makes my ears hot. All because of that splash. Sound of a giant bluefin tuna crashing into the water. What else could it be?

  “Come on, fish,” I whisper.

  But that’s all. Just the one splash, then nothing for the longest time. Harpoon starts feeling heavy, so I rest it on my shoulder and try to breathe normal. Listening hard, but I can’t hear nothing but the slurp of water around the skiff.

  Maybe I imagined that big splash out there behind the fog. Maybe I wanted to hear it so bad, my brain obliged. Or it was the fog playing tricks on my ears. Sometimes the fog makes a faraway noise seem close by. Hear a man talking and you think he’s right next to you but really he’s on the other side of the cove, clear across the harbor. So maybe the big splash came from miles away.

  Maybe.

  Then the fog gets bright and I realize it ain’t my heart making my ears hot, it’s the sun. Sun shining down through the fog, burning a hot blue hole in the sky. Sunlight never felt so good. Sun hits the white mist and the mist starts to get thin and wispy and then a little breeze stirs and the wall of fog starts to back away and I can see a fair distance, as much as a half mile or so.

  Sea don’t seem so empty with the sunlight making it look almost alive. Then I see it ain’t just the sunlight glittering on the water. Something is happening back there in the last of my chum slick. A rippling just below the surface, like something is trying to get out.

  My brain starts clicking. Should I put down the harpoon and start the motor and steer toward the ripple? Or would the noise of the motor spook whatever it is? Before I can decide, a whole bunch of tinker mackerel explode from the water and scatter in all directions. Looks like a fountain of fish, hot and silver in the sunlight.

  These tinker ain’t feeding. No sir, these tinker are on the menu. Because before the little fish can get back underwater, a huge tuna comes up behind them and launches itself into the air like a fish-seeking missile.

  A giant bluefin!

  The big tuna hangs in the air long enough to catch the sunlight and then wham! back into the water with a mouthful of the little fish.

  Never really knew what they meant by “take your breath away.” Now I do. That big fish takes my breath away and he won’t give it back. Whew! I come thirty miles in the dark and fog for this. Giant tuna going airborne. Heard all them
stories my dad used to tell, about five-hundred-pound fish flying ten feet into air, like they were launched from a cannon. Big fish that can leap clean over a boat. Giant fish that think they can fly. Fish in such a frenzy to feed, they don’t notice a man with a harpoon.

  It’s all true.

  Then, much closer, a pale streak underwater. Slant of light catching a big fish ten or fifteen feet below the surface, streaking like a torpedo, so fast that the eye can’t hardly keep up. Half-moon curve of the tuna’s tailfin is nothing but a blur, accelerating from zero to fifty in a heartbeat. Makes me wonder how I’ll ever get a harpoon into a thing that moves so fast.

  Bluefin must be reading my mind, because one comes out of the water much closer to the boat — blue and silver and dripping in the sunlight — but it’s back in the water and going deep before I can think to lift the harpoon, let alone throw it.

  You got to be ready, but how do you know where the next one will come up? There! Another big bluefin whooshing along the surface like a speedboat, throwing a wake, chomping on tinker. Looks pretty close, so I heave the harpoon and pray for a strike.

  Pitiful throw. Harpoon goes sideways and sort of doinks into the water. Misses by a mile. Meantime I fall across the stern and crack my elbow. When my elbow stops throbbing I pull on the line and draw the harpoon back to the boat. Tuna must be having a good laugh. You see that? Stupid kid can’t throw worth beans.

  Hard to believe my dad once harpooned eight of these amazing critters in a single day. Eight in one day! They still talk about it down the harbor, the time Big Skiff got eight fins and bought himself a pickup truck and a gold necklace for his wife and a bike for his boy, all with cash money.

  When the line is coiled I stand up again, holding the harpoon shoulder high. Looking for the streaks in the water, trying to figure where a fish will come up, hoping it will be close enough to hit. I take another throw and this one is better but it still misses. Or maybe I was throwing at a shadow, hard to say. Tinker mackerel exploding like hard rain all around, but the bluefin are deeper now, driving the tinker up. Working together, half a dozen big tuna, keeping the little fish in a big ball so they can slash in and feed from underneath.