“Two of the three hooks have gone right in, barbs and all. And they’ve ripped some skin where they were pulled.”
“My arm? What about my arm?”
I pushed up his sleeve. The cut was clean and it wasn’t deep. I pressed on it and tightly wrapped a bandanna from my backpack around the wound.
“Reel in the lines,” he ordered as he steered us back toward land.
With shaking limbs and blurring vision, I struggled to wind in all the lines. I hooked the lures safely into the rod eyes near the reels so they wouldn’t swing around and snare anyone else. My hands were slippery with blood. It was my blood, his blood. It stained my jacket and pants. I adjusted my cap and got blood on that, too. I set all the rods back into the rod holders while Martin kept the Abracadabra on course. I collected the fishing knife and the gaff from the bottom of the boat and stashed them carefully in the compartment that ran along the side so we wouldn’t stand on either the blade or the sharp gaff tip and incur more injuries.
Martin ordered me to sit down, and he increased speed. We began to bang and thump toward home. I saw him wince each time we hit a big swell.
“Aren’t you going to radio in your injury?” I yelled over the engine and the wind.
“And have a whole bloody entourage of ambulances waiting? No fucking way.” Vitriol laced his words. I hated the way he was cursing. I honestly had not heard him do this before—not in Canada. Not on our trips, either.
“But that would be good, right?”
“This shit with hooks happens all the time—just need someone to push the barbs through the flesh, cut off the barbs, and pull out the shanks. I can drive to the hospital. They can do it there.”
“I can drive you.”
“No, you bloody can’t! You’re fucking three sheets to the wind. Jesus, Ellie.”
“Martin, please don’t swear.”
He mimicked me in a child’s voice: “Martin, please don’t swear.” He shot me a chilling look. “How about you stop popping pills and getting completely blotto every time you face a tiny bloody challenge, huh, Ellie? How about that? This is your fault, you know that?”
“It’s not my fault.”
“If you’d been sober, if you hadn’t been sneaking pills and downing wine coolers while I was fishing, you could have gotten that net under the fish instead of losing it overboard. We would have been going home with a fish instead of a fucking hook in my neck.”
I fell silent, my heart thumping in my ears. Horrified by his language, his vitriol, by how ugly he looked with that rage twisting his face. My gaze fell to the wine cooler bottles that had rolled to the back of the boat. I shifted my gaze to the sky. A vague memory stirred. I’d asked him if he’d brought water. He’d told me to look in the cooler. All I’d found were the cold alcoholic drinks. I’d refrained from opening a bottle. But after more than three hours of trolling back and forth around the FAD buoy with no water, under the relentless sun, with salt drying my lips, I’d buckled and reached for an ice-cold cooler because it was part fruit juice and I was desperate. That was the last thing I recalled before waking up on the bottom of the boat. Humiliation and anger burned into my eyes as a vehemence rose inside me. Hatred—that’s what I felt. It was pure white and black and dark and hot. Hatred for this man. My husband. I truly abhorred him right now. I felt I could kill him, wished I had.
When we neared the Point of No Return, I could see the surf had risen even higher. Throngs of spectators lined the headlands in the late-afternoon sun. I could hear the roar of the breaking waves. Getting into the river mouth was going to be worse than getting out.
THEN
ELLIE
People came running down to the boat launch as we limped in on the Abracadabra. Martin threw the bowline out to Zog as he waded into the water to meet us. Zog began to pull us into the shallows. His son grabbed the gunwale and helped guide us in until we bumped up onto the sand.
The young brunette from the standup paddleboard rental place came running over the lawn toward us, two men following behind her.
“Willow saw you in her scope,” Zog said as he and his son held the Abracadabra steady while I tried to climb out. “She said you guys looked like you were in trouble—are you good, mate?”
Martin was holding my sweatshirt over his neck. Blood covered his arm.
“God, you’re bleeding, Martin,” Rabz said as she hurriedly waded into the water, worry tight in her face. “Ellie, you’re all covered in blood. What in the hell happened out there?”
A woman covered her mouth as Martin removed the balled-up shirt from his throat and showed them all the monstrosity of a purple squid lure that dangled from the hooks in his neck. Someone swore.
“Do you need an ambulance?” yelled someone with a cell phone from the grassy bank.
“No ambulance. Please,” Martin said as I clambered over the side of the boat and fell with a splash onto my butt in the water. I scrambled up onto my feet and waded to shore. I started up the road, wet shoes squelching.
“Ellie?” said Willow, coming up behind me. “Are you okay?”
“It’s her bloody fault!” yelled Martin after me. “She did this! Bloody drunk!”
I began to run. Willow ran after me as I crossed the lawn in front of the SUP rental place, aiming for the shortcut river trail to our home. Blood boomed in my head. My whole body shook with a cocktail of rage and shame and horror. I stumbled, still feeling spacey, and I still couldn’t figure out how or why or what exactly had
