EELS
By Al Sarrantonio
They were out on a mirror of green ocean. The land, save for a jetty of sharp rock a hundred yards to the east, a single pointing finger of the island, had disappeared into the hazy distance. At the far curves of the horizon mist squatted, but closer in the air and sea-waves were as sharp as knives.
Davy’s father baited two hooks, whistling between his teeth, but Davy sat with his hands folded in his lap. Despite the warmth of the noon sun, and the brine tartness of the salt air, he felt cold: as if this were early morning and the mists had not yet retreated. He wore his jacket buttoned over his sweatshirt, and clenched his hands together as he turtled his ears down into his jacket’s collar.
The boat rolled gently in the swells. His father, still whistling, now looked at him and suddenly scowled.
“What is it, boy? You sick?”
Davy shook his head no.
His father’s scowl remained; he looked impatient to be back to his baiting of hooks, his whistling.
“What, then? You didn’t have to come, you know; I would have been happy out here alone.”
“Mother wanted me to.”
His father’s scowl deepened. “Your mother…”
For a moment a cloud hung over the boat. But then his father went suddenly back to his tackle, and began to whistle again. Davy was left to contemplate his cold clenched hands, his rolling stomach.
“Father, I’d like to go back…” he said weakly.
“What’s that?”
Davy took once hand away from the clenched other, and pointed toward the finger of rock eastward. “If you could take me…”
“I won’t!” his father snapped. “I told ye before we came out to either come or stay. I won’t be rowing back now. ‘Twould be near two by the time I rowed myself back out. That’s not enough time to make a day of it.” His coarse, unshaved face turned away from Davy, his eyes back on his hook. “You’ll stay, and be content with it.” He added, “You know what I think of you anyway, boy.”
Davy’s hands joined again. If he had had anything in his stomach he would have emptied it over the side.
~ * ~
The sun inched upward. A wheeling pair of seagulls appeared, complained loudly over the boat and circled up and away, disappointed. Davy thought of home, the house on the island, and the chair by the large window in the family room. The hearth fire there was warm. It was dry in that corner of the room, there was no sea-smell in that dry corner…
“Here,” his father said abruptly, thrusting a fishing rod into his hand. It was one that barely worked, with a sticking reel. Davy’s hands opened in benediction to take the rod, but already his father had turned away from him, tending his own two good rigs. With a plop his father dropped one sinker into the water, snugging this untended rod into the oarlock before dropping the other rigged line into the ocean. Davy heard the thin scream of the filament and then its sudden stop as the weighted end hit wet sand far below.
His father turned around and said, “Well? You going to fish it or not?”
Davy nodded and then looked away, out at the tip of his fishing pole. An old sinker was tied there like a rutted lead teardrop, the thin green filament of the hook’s line angled sideways and then curled down to the barbed hook imbedded in the struggling red bloodworm thrashing this way and that—
Davy lay the pole down and heaved his empty stomach. He held his straining face over the side of the boat. A thin acidic line of bile dripped from his mouth into the water.
“Christ’s sake!” his father said behind him. Davy felt the hard dry hands on his shoulders as he was pulled back, his teary eyes looking into the angry red face above him, the hard hand now pulled back as if to strike.
“I’m…sorry, father—” he blurted out, between sobs.
His father’s hand stayed, then lowered, and his father turned away, shaking his head.
“Nothing to be done about it now,” he said, ignoring the boy once more, but pausing to grab the old rig and let out the bail, dropping the sinker and thrashing worm over the side of the boat and into the blank cold waters, before thrusting the pole into Davy’s hands once more.
~ * ~
“Ho! A good one I’ll bet!” his father cried, straining against the sudden fight in his pole. He began to turn the reel’s handle furiously, half standing to stare over into the water, watching the tightened line for signs of the caught beast.
“A fighter!” he laughed—but then the line went abruptly slack. He sat down, scowling once more.
“And you, boy?” he called back, not looking around. “Checked your bait?”
Davy stared at the rod tip, saying nothing, and in a moment his father had forgotten about him, whistling once more, as he pulled his own hook from the water and cut a fresh blood worm in half to replenish it.
~ * ~
Off in the distance, at the hazy edge of the world, Davy heard the long, sad call of a foghorn. In the sky, the sun had turned a sour lemon color as it now sank toward the growing fog. At the limits of vision, gulls wheeled out on the water, diving one after another to hit the waves and then rise again. One of them clutched something long, black and struggling in its beak. Davy turned to stare again at the tip of his own fishing rod.
His father spat over the side of the boat. “Damned fog’ll be here in a half hour or so. Thought I’d get the whole day in but it was not to be.”
Without another word, he went back to his own equipment, checking the extra rod that laid in the oarlock before turning his full attention to his other pole.
A sudden tremble shot through Davy’s hands. The edge of his fishing pole flicked, and then the pole end bent down, straining toward the water.
The pole nearly leapt out of Davy’s hands before he tightened his grip on it. His fingers fumbled for the bail as line unraveled with a thin high screech. “By God, boy, you’ve got something!” his father shouted. “Keep the tip up, dammit! And don’t let so much line out!”
Abandoning his own pole, the old man made his way back to Davy, his face flushed with excitement.
“The way you’re holding that pole, he’ll get away, damn you!”
His father reached out angrily to take the rod from Davy’s hands.
At that moment the bale caught and the tip of the pole bent down into the water, lost in the waves. His father’s face flushed in surprise as he tore the rod from Davy’s hands and fought with the line.
“By God! What have you got on here, boy?”
Standing in a crouch, his father managed to get the pole out of the water and then loosened the bale to let out a bit of line.
“She’s deep, that’s for sure!” his father said. A smile came onto his features as he battled, one eye turned to the approaching fog and late afternoon.
“It’ll be close!”
Humming fiercely through clenched teeth, he began to inexorably reel the line in, letting the catch run when it needed to, but gradually drawing it up from the depths and closer to the boat. The sour-yellow sun was edging the horizon; the mists began to caress the rowboat with their tendrils. Davy shivered and drew deeper into his coat, but his father seemed oblivious now to everything save the thing on the end of the fishing line.
“She’s almost up, boy! Get the net!”
Roused from his chill, Davy moved to his father’s abandoned spot on the boat and lifted the wide net by its handle.
“Hurry, damn you!”
He turned back. His father’s angry face motioned him to hold the net over the side of the boat.
“Damned beast’s about up!”
