The Young Man and the Sea

by Rodman Philbrick

  Part of me wants to put the harpoon down and just watch. Other part of me wants a big bluefin so bad, I can taste blood in my mouth. I know from how my dad used to talk that he mostly hit the fish when they were directly under him. More or less straight down. But none of these want to cooperate. Like they know how far I can throw and they stay that far away. Slashing at the poor tinker like they ain’t eaten in months, like they’re afraid they’ll never eat again.

  I use the oars to turn the skiff around so I can stand in the bow, which makes it easier to throw and not get tangled up in the rope. I’m holding the harpoon high, checking for streaks under the boat. Watching the amazing fish leap and slash dive and basically go nuts just out of range. Once I see a streak, but it’s gone before I can even think to throw and by then it’s too late.

  I keep throwing anyhow, even when I can’t see anything. Hoping luck will put a fish on the end of the harpoon. Harpooner has to be good, but his best friend is luck, that’s what Dad used to say. Can’t stick a fish without luck on your side.

  I throw until I can’t throw no more. Until my arm is all knotted up and aching and I ain’t got the strength to lift the harpoon to my shoulder.

  It’s like the bluefin know how tired I am, because they give one last flurry of feeding, making tinker explode in all directions, and then suddenly they’re gone. It’s amazing how fast it happens. One second they’re everywhere, the next the sea goes flat quiet and it’s like the fish were never there at all. Like I dreamed the whole thing.

  More like a nightmare than a dream. Seeing all those big fish and not being able to hit one. The excitement drains out of me all at once. Like I’m on an elevator going down, down. What do I do now? Can’t think. Like the mist has invaded my brain and made everything foggy inside my head.

  Okay, first thing you do is sit down before you fall down. There, I’m sitting, what next? You’re thirsty, right? So drink. Lift the water jug up to your mouth and drink. Good. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Okay, what’s next? You eaten lately? No? What about all those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches you brung along? Good idea. Only my hands are shaking so bad, I can hardly open the bag of sandwiches. Partly the shaking is because I’m so hungry. Didn’t realize it until my brain said “food” and then all at once I’m starving.

  I wolf down two sandwiches and the shaking stops. Think about eating a third sandwich but decide it’s better to save it for later. Might be here awhile. Who knows when the big fish will come back. Or if they’ll come back. Fog clears from my head a little and I’m thinking it was really stupid to keep throwing the harpoon even when the fish were out of range. Smarter to wait until you can’t miss, even if that means waiting for hours. All throwing did was make my arm hurt and spook the fish. You got to choose your moment. That’s something Dad used to say, but until now I never knew what it meant, exactly.

  Full stomach makes me sleepy. I decide to take a little catnap while I got the chance. Might as well. Fish come back, the noise’ll wake me up better than an alarm clock. So I lie down in the skiff and pull my cap down over my eyes and use my life jacket for a pillow.

  I’m back home on the dock. Fog is so thick, I can’t see the house. I can hear my mom and dad talking to each other but I can’t see them. They’re looking for me, but for some reason I can’t make any noise. Can’t make noise because I’m asleep, which don’t make sense. Somehow I know I’m asleep in a dream, but it don’t matter, I can’t make noise and I can’t wake up and I can’t see Mom or Dad or the house.Want to call out to Mom worse than anything, but I can’t. Like I’m tied down with soft ropes of fog or something and the fog has got inside my mouth and sucked all the talk right out of me.

  Mom, I want to say, Dad, I’m over here. Keep looking and you’ll find me. But their voices get farther and farther away and it’s just me alone inside the fog and I can’t move or talk and then Mom’s voice turns into a horn and I wake up.

  Blaaaaaat. Blaaaaaat. Blaaaaaat.

  Foghorn. Something coming my way.

  WHEN you hear a foghorn you’re supposed to signal back. That way the other boat gets an idea where you are and steers away. Trouble is, I never thought to bring along a horn. Didn’t even think there might be fog, which is really dumb because I know better. Maybe that’s what the dream was telling me about not having a voice. Don’t matter now, there’s nothing I can do but listen.

  Blaaaaaat.

  Big old foghorn seems to be getting closer. I can hear a boat engine thumping. Then it seems to be going away and the engine gets fainter and fainter and the horn sounds smaller and then the wake comes through and rocks me like a baby in a cradle and I’m alone again inside the fog.

  “How long did you sleep, you reckon?”

  That’s me talking out loud to myself. Got no good answer because another thing I forgot to bring along is a wristwatch. Figured I’d know what time of day it was from the sun, but the fog has come on thick again and I can’t tell where the sun is, except it feels like I slept for a long time, so it might be afternoon now.

  “Skiff Beaman, you are a darn fool.”

  There. Almost feels good to say it. To speak the truth out loud. Only a darn fool would do what I did. Go to sea in a ten-foot plywood skiff without a thought in my head but catch-a-big-fish. Like there was no room in my brain for what happens if there’s fog, or you can’t find the fish, or you can’t hit the fish even if you find them. Turns out I found the fish all right, but it don’t matter because I’m not big enough or strong enough to hit one with the harpoon. So here I am thirty miles out to sea in a blind fog with nothing but a few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a jug of water. Oh, and a compass in case I decide to give up and go home. Which I ain’t ready for, not yet.

  Why bother? Home is Dad on the TV couch and a boat with no engine and a rich kid laughing while he cuts my traps. Home is where my mom don’t live anymore except she’s still there somehow, in all the rooms of our little house, me and my dad missing her something fierce and not wanting to give up how much it hurts because that would be like forgetting. Home is a rickety old dock and an outhouse with a half-moon cut in the door, and the bright orange flowers my mom called “outhouse lilies.” Home is where everything happens, good or bad, except it’s been mostly bad lately.

  So I’m lying there in the bottom of my little skiff, munching on a sticky sandwich and feeling sorry for myself when the whoosh comes by.

  Whoosh.

  There it is again. Sound of something slicing through the water. Not far away, either. Right on the other side of the plywood hull, a few feet from my head.

  Whoosh.

  Careful, I tell myself. Sit up slow. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t scare away whatever it is that’s making that sound.

  I sit up real slow. And see the tip of a fin over the top edge of the boat. Fin like the curved edge of a knife. A fin as blue as the sky on a perfect day in May. Big blue fin making the whoosh as a giant fish circles my boat.

  Harpoon is lying along the seats with the tip out over the bow. I know what I want to do, but can I do it? Got to try. Now or never. No mistakes allowed.

  I take the harpoon in my right hand while I’m still sitting down, facing the back of the boat. Keep hold of it while I ever so quiet stand up and turn around and face the front. Quiet now, quiet as a mouse. I stand on the seat without making a sound and look over the side into the dark, wet eye of a giant bluefin tuna, close enough to touch, and so alive, I swear I can hear his heart beating.

  I’m looking down on the biggest fish I ever seen in my life. Bigger than me. Bigger than my boat. Bigger than any tuna I ever seen brought into the dock.

  I got the harpoon raised but I don’t dare move, not until it’s perfect, not until I’m ready to strike.

  I swear the giant fish is looking at the boat. Like maybe it wants to know if this is where the chum comes from that brings the mackerel it likes to eat. Can it still pick up on the scent of the bait I was cutting up and tossing over? Is that it? What
’s it thinking? Why is it circling my boat? Or is it circling me? Curious about a small boy with a long stick in his hand.

  I never realized how much bigger a bluefin tuna looks when it’s alive in the ocean instead of dead on the dock. I can feel the power as it swims by, making the boat rock with the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of its giant tail shoving it through the water easy as can be. Man on the dock said the tail can move faster than the eye can see, but this one is going slow, gliding along as easy as can be. Almost like it’s showing off. Look at me, you puny human. Look at my big bad self, you never seen nothing so awesome as me.

  The big bluefin is so amazing and so beautiful, I almost forget what I need to do. Almost but not quite. My dad used to call it “getting froze up.” Man out in the pulpit of a tuna boat, he’s waiting for hours for a chance to throw and when the chance finally comes, he can’t do it. Like the fish sort of hypnotizes you into not throwing the harpoon.

  Froze up. Come to think of it, that’s sort of what happened to Dad when Mom died. Except he ain’t on a tuna boat, he’s on the TV couch. Stuck on how miserable he feels.

  Never mind your father and the couch, Skiffy. Concentrate on the fish!

  She’s right. There’s plenty of time to worry about my dad later. So I wrap both hands around the shaft of the harpoon and plunge it straight down at the biggest part of the fish. Straight down with all my might. Straight down so hard and fast, I fall halfway out of the boat and my face is an inch from the water and I’m looking down and I don’t see nothing.

  Fish disappeared. Gone in the blink of an eye.

  Had my chance and missed. Again.

  I groan and roll over and rub my knee where I bumped it and then I fetch the harpoon and pull it into the boat. That’s when I notice the barb is missing. Must have come loose when I fell down. Great. Harpoon without a barb is just a long stick. Then I remember the barb is attached to the keg line, so all I got to do is pull the line in and put the barb back on the harpoon.

  Who knows? If I drift around for another hundred years or so, I might find another fish as big as the one that got away. Anyhow, I put my hand on the line and give it a tug and then a weird thing happens. The line slips through my hands.

  Line is running out of the tub, over the side of the boat, and straight down into the water.

  For a moment I can’t make my brain figure out what that means, line running out of the boat, and then I stand up and shout, “FISH ON! FISH ON!” at the top of my lungs.

  Nobody around to hear me, so it’s like I’m shouting to myself, to make me believe what happened. I hit the big fish! He’s got the barb in his back and he’s diving deep, dragging line out of the tub. I’m so excited, I fall down again and crack another shin but I don’t even care that it hurts because I got a fish on the line.

  My dad used to talk about the first dive a bluefin makes after it gets hit. They call it “sounding.” Most often a fish will go right to the bottom and stay there for a while, until it figures out what happened. Sometimes a fish will run right across the surface, skipping and leaping and trying to shake the barb loose. Other times a fish will give up and die right away, if the barb got buried deep enough.

  My fish hasn’t quit, not yet. Line’s whipping out like he’s running clear across the ocean. Already the tub is more than halfway empty and the line is still running. I’m staring at it, trying to figure the best time to throw the keg over the side. Wanting to check the knot that holds the line to the keg, but I don’t dare, there isn’t time; whatever knot I tied will either hold or it won’t.

  When there’s about a hundred feet of line left in the tub, I go to pick up the keg. And that’s when a loop of line snags in the tub. Without thinking about it I reach my hand out to clear the snag.

  Big mistake.

  Snag whips around my wrist, fast as the blink of an eye. There’s no time to get loose of it. There’s no time even to take a deep breath or get ready for what happens next. Because the moment the snag closes around my wrist, the line jerks me over the side and the next thing I know I’m flying out of the boat and into the water.

  Into the cold water and down. Pulled down by the fish that hooked me. By the fish that’s trying to kill me.

  IT happens so fast, I don’t have time to take a deep breath. One second I’m in the boat, the next I’m underwater. Water so cold, it makes my bones ache, but I don’t care about that. All I care about is getting the line off my wrist and kicking back up to where there’s air. Air is all that matters.

  Cold water makes my eyes sting bad, but I can see what I got to do, sort of. See the loop of line snagged on my wrist. Probably cutting into my skin, but I can’t feel it. Can’t feel nothing but the panic exploding in my lungs and the cold, stabbing pain in my throat. A fish must feel like this, getting yanked from the nice safe water into the air, where it can’t breathe.

  Get loose. No room in my head for anything but “get loose.”

  I’m scratching at my wrist, prying under the loop of line, but it’s way too tight.

  Think. You got to think how to get loose.

  I follow the line out with my other hand and try pulling on it, maybe get enough slack to slip it off, but the line slips through my fingers and I can’t get a grip.

  Hands weak, getting weaker.

  No time. No time!

  I’m kicking, trying to get back to the surface, fighting the steady tug on the line.

  Air! Must have air!

  The surface is shimmering above me. Looks like a silver mirror made of liquid. Beautiful. Air bubbles coming out of my mouth rise up and melt into the shimmering silver mirror. Never seen nothing so pretty.

  MUST HAVE AIR!

  Who’s making all the noise? Shouting while you’re underwater? That’s really stupid. Can’t shout underwater, you fool.

  Relax. Quit fighting. Open your mouth and inhale. You know you want to. You have to inhale something, right? Maybe your lungs can take air out of the water like a fish. Mom always said you were part fish, right? So breathe underwater and prove it.

  I open my mouth and try to inhale but nothing comes in. I can’t get my throat unstuck; it’s like there’s a ring of ice around my neck.

  SKIFF BEAMAN, DON’T YOU DARE BREATHE WATER!

  Can’t help it, Mom. Got to breathe something. Got to. Got to. Got to.

  Don’t give up! Listen to me! Rule Number Three! Never give up! The surface is right above your head! Kick! Kick! Kick!

  Too far away. Can’t make it. So tired.

  Try, Skiffy, try!

  I kick and kick until there’s nothing left in my legs. I want to laugh because it’s so funny, getting drowned by a fish. Funniest thing in the world. But my throat is closed and the ice has gone into my lungs and laughing hurts too much. Good joke, though. Really, really funny.

  Rule Number Three: Never give up. Don’t ever give up!

  Blackness shimmers down from above. I’m inside the warm dark.

  Time to sleep.

  Coughing hurts so bad, it wakes me up. Is this drowning? Water in my mouth, making me choke, but there’s air, too. Real air. I’m at the surface, bobbing up and down. Voice in my head made me wake up, but I can’t remember what it said or how I got here.

  Choking and coughing hurts worse than drowning. Plus I can’t see because my eyes are drenched in salt water.

  KLANG!

  Back of my head whacks into something hollow. Turn around, flailing my arms, find the keg bobbing next to me. Grab hold. Pull myself up, so my shoulders are clear of the water. Hug that keg with all my might while I get my wind back.

  What happened? Can’t put it straight in my head. Okay. Hand tangled in the line, I remember that. Getting yanked into the water. Tried to get loose and couldn’t. Thought about inhaling water but couldn’t do that, either.

  So why am I alive?

  When my eyes finally clear up, I see why. There it is, circling inside the wall of white fog. The giant bluefin back on the surface, swimming in a big circle aro
und me and the keg.

  Does it know it almost killed me and then saved my life?

  I want to shout out to the fish, ask it where my boat is, but my throat hurts too much.

  Figure my little skiff can’t be too far away. Somewhere inside the wall of fog. Got to find that boat before too long or the cold water will kill me. Already I’m so numb, I can’t hardly feel a thing from the neck down.

  Cold water is sucking the heat out of me. And they say if your blood gets too cold, you die.

  Hang around the town wharf, you hear about it all the time. How falling out of a boat can kill a man if he stays in cold water for long. They say in the wintertime, with water close to freezing, you ain’t got but ten or fifteen minutes before your heart quits beating. Summer water takes longer. Figure maybe an hour or two.

  Part of me wants to let go of the keg and swim around looking for the skiff before I’m too weak to move my arms. But the keg is helping me float, letting me get my strength back, and if I let go I may never find it again. Then where’d I be?

  If I was wearing my life jacket it might be different. Keeping hold of the keg wouldn’t be so important. But like a darn fool I left my life jacket in the bottom of the boat, under the seat. Life jacket don’t do much good if you don’t wear it. My dad must have told me that a thousand times, but I guess it didn’t take.

  Too late to worry about that now. Mistake’s already been made. Worry about keeping your head above water. Worry about holding on to the keg. Worry about finding the skiff. Can’t be far, can it? No wind to speak of. Nothing to move it but the tide and current, and that same tide and current is moving me and the keg in the same direction.