Lobster Boy

by Rodman Philbrick

  “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 harbour. 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 towards 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 harbour, 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.

  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 r
opes 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.

  21

  When the Whoosh Comes By

  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 any more 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 h
old 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.

  22

  Keg Rider

  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.