bobbing and rolling at first, but as we went out farther it became more violent. Not stormy, just active. The diesel smoke that had made us sick before was worse now, and the waves were enormous.
Leonard and I went back to tossing our guts over the side, then dry heaving.
Billy loved our predicament. He had a strong stomach, so therefore he thought he was a strong man. He gave the rod to the black guy, whose name was Landis, and stood near us with his beer, slurping it.
“What you boys need is a big old bowl of greasy chili.”
“You motherfucker,” Leonard said. “I didn’t feel so bad, I’d stick that bottle up your ass, see if it would help you float.”
Billy moved on. The boat chugged on.
Out where it was deep, the waves rose up around us in blue-green mountains, then dropped away, as if swallowed by an earthquake. The little boat rode up the waves, and down the other side, then the mountains appeared again.
I had only thought the cruise ship we were on was small and scary. All I could think about was one of those waves crashing on top of us, carrying us down into that bottomless water.
In time we got used to it enough we could work baiting the hooks. Landis fished for an hour and got bites, the bites took his bait and we rebaited, but no luck.
The guy with the mole on his face took a turn. His name was Jason. He sat down in the chair and slipped on the waist and shoulder straps.
I baited his hook and he sat with the butt of the rod in the swivel and waited. He fished for almost an hour, then there was a click on the rod and the line began to sing like electricity charging through a wire.
“I got something,” he said.
“No shit,” Billy said. “Hold on to him.”
I looked out at the water. The line had gone taut. Jason tightened the drag, jerked back on the rod. The rod bent slightly.
“Now I’ve got him,” Jason said.
“You’ve got him when he’s on the boat,” Billy said.
The fish cut to the right and the line moved with him. Jason hit him again, burying the hook. He said, “He’s not too big. He’s nothing.”
Jason rapidly cranked the fish on deck. It was a barracuda.
Ferdinand came out of the cabin on crutches. He had one hand dangling off the crutches and in it he held a sawed-off baseball bat. He lifted one crutch from under his arm and laid it on the ground and leaned forward and used the bat to whack the flopping barracuda on the head.
Ferdinand had a pair of shears in his back pocket. He dropped the ball bat, pulled them out, managed himself to a squatting position, put the barracuda’s head between the blades, and snapped down hard. The head nearly popped off. Ferdinand snapped down again, and this time the head came loose. He cut the line that held the barracuda to the rod, tossed the barracuda’s head into the ocean.
He crutched into the cabin, came out with a metal box. He opened it, and quickly, expertly, he tied a large hook to the cut line.
“Bait it,” he said.
I reached into the bucket of stinking fish and did just that.
Ferdinand took a large knife from the box, cut the barracuda open, and dumped its guts into the water. He put the barracuda into a large ice chest just inside the door to the cabin.
Jason said, “That’s my fish and that’s just about my hour.”
“You’re next, Billy,” Landis said.
“A barracuda,” Billy said, “that’s no kind of fish.”
“Sometimes the barracuda is all the fish you hit,” Ferdinand said. “Barracuda are good to eat. I can sell them to the restaurants. There are people who like to eat them, thinking they are eating a very dangerous fish. They are not really that dangerous.”
“Well, if he’d wanted to mount him he’d have been shit out of luck, wouldn’t he?” Billy said. “Way you snapped it up and cut off its head. What if we don’t want to sell it to a restaurant? Maybe Jason here wants him on his wall.”
“No,” Jason said. “No problem. Go ahead. Take your turn.”
“When I catch my fish, I want him on the wall. So don’t fuck with him. You hear, old man?”
“I hear,” Ferdinand said.
“Let’s let the lady fish,” Billy said.
“That is all right,” Beatrice said. “I see enough fish.”
“No,” Billy said. “I insist.”
Beatrice looked at him, said, “Very well.”
“You don’t want to fish, don’t fish,” I said.
“No, it is all right,” she said.
Beatrice took off the short cloth robe. Underneath she was nearly wearing a bathing suit. There was almost enough cloth there to hide a quarter if someone shaved it around the edges with a pocketknife. The suit was black, one of those things with a string that went up her ass and covered nothing. The top just managed to fit over her nipples. I could tell she didn’t wear that sort of thing regularly. The skin on her buttocks and around her breasts was lighter than the rest of her, which was deeply tanned. Her pubic hair, which had not been waxed or shaved, escaped at the edges like little black tentacles waving to the public. What cloth was there clung to her snugly and showed the shape of what the old romance novels called her womanhood.
Though Beatrice was probably new to that kind of bathing suit, she wore it naturally, as if unbothered by scrutiny, but I thought I saw in her eyes a look I had seen before.
Late at night, while driving, a cat had darted in front of my car, and I’d hit it. When I got out to see if there was hope, the cat had looked up at me, dying, its eyes hot and savage, terrified in the glow of my flashlight. Even out there in the brutal sunshine, Beatrice’s eyes looked that way.
My guess was Billy had bought that little get-up for her and expected her to wear it, and she was doing just that.
I looked at Ferdinand out of the corner of my eye. I could tell from the look on his face he wasn’t happy. That kind of bathing suit wasn’t exactly the sort of thing a daughter wore around her father.
I baited Beatrice’s hook.
She thanked me, seated herself in the fighting chair, strapped in, and cast. She was very good at it. The line went far out and into the rolling water. She put the butt of the rod in the swivel. She took a beer from Jason and sipped it. Billy stood by her chair for a while; then, bored, he got another beer and sat on one of the benches built into the side of the boat.
It was sticky and the bobbing of the boat no longer made me sick. It rocked me pleasantly. I watched Beatrice for a while as she reached inside her yellow bag beside the fighting chair, took out suntan lotion and began to apply it. I observed carefully as she rubbed it on the tops of her feet, up her ankles, all along her legs, and finally her flat stomach and the tops of her breasts. I felt the boss change positions in my pants.
She finished that, took large sunglasses from her bag and put them on, picked up her beer again and sipped it. I began to feel sleepy. I sat against the side of the boat, leaned against one of the benches, drifted off, thought of home, and Brett.
Brett wasn’t as young as Beatrice. Or quite as firm. Or as brown. But God almighty she had it going. I missed her. I wished she missed me too. I wished I was ten years younger, handsome, had five million dollars and three more inches on my dick and my hair wasn’t thinning. While I was at it, I threw in wishing for a pastrami sandwich on rye and immortality.
Of course, wishes are wishes. As my dad used to say, wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first. The same can be applied to prayer. Shit in one hand and pray in the other. Within moments you can determine the real power of prayer.
I was awakened by the singing of the line. I sat up to see Beatrice drop her beer foaming onto the deck, reach out, and take the rod from the swivel.
“You got something,” Billy said.
“No shit,” Leonard said.
