He’s talking about fishing on the open water, Erwin, she’d said. The ocean.
Where else would it be?
All right, Ahab. Just stay in the boat, okay?
Don’t worry about me, he had said.
Of course, that was all she did.
There was a little light now. Down the white slope of the yard, Lake Montauk was a snow-feathered plane of ice. Bo’s twenty-one-foot Boston Whaler, a fiberglass ballet slipper outfitted with a Mercury 175, was moored ten minutes away at the marine basin, where the commercial fishermen kept their vessels. He owned, in addition to the Whaler, a larger cruiser with an enclosed cabin, heat, a small fridge, but it was the naked, simple banana boat that he wanted for this excursion. Bo intended to take them deep, in search of blues, a probably quixotic expedition he was insisting on purely for the audacity of putting the other two through the Nordic hell of air so cold that spray from the bow would turn to ice pellets before it hit their foul-weather gear. Their boots would freeze in place on the deck. Their monofilament would sag with ice and lock up the reels. Should one of them be lucky enough to haul something out of the depths, they’d be treated to the spectacle of watching the fish freeze solid within a minute or two of landing on the deck. What sort of man was Bo? Like most men, one trapped by his idea of what he should be.
They drove through the dark to the harbor, again in the freezing, spine-shattering Land Cruiser, Feeney having insisted my father take the back bench so he’d have room to stretch his legs, though yet again he’d been pinned in by all the gear. Something still reeked. Bo backed down to the pier and started unloading. Everything my father carried down to the boat had to go back. Appreciate the help, Bo said, but you can leave the wet gear up there. Easier to get into it by the Cruiser. My father ended up standing guard by the vehicle while Feeney made trips back and forth, carefully selecting tackle boxes, rods, buckets, plastic containers in some preordained order that eluded my father, who moved to help at the apex of every trip only to have Feeney wave him off. No, no, get your beauty rest. Eventually Bo came thumping back up the pier and hopped in the driver’s seat. He revved up the engine and popped it into gear before my father, leaning against the back, could react, and the Land Cruiser slipped out from beneath his hip, sending him sprawling onto the gravel.
Great shit! Feeney said. Always seeking the horizontal, aren’t you, Saltwater? He offered a hand.
You think this is good, wait until we get out there, my father said.
You’ll be fine, Feeney said.
He climbed the gravel track to the parking lot a few steps behind Feeney, who ascended in a sort of crouch. Near the lot, Feeney turned back to my father. My goddamn prostate. I’m either so jammed up I can’t walk or it’s leaking like a screen door.
My father nodded as though this information explained anything.
They got into the wet-weather gear, my father in a new set of rubber boots, rain bib, and foul-weather jacket, all in duckling yellow. Bo’s bibs and boots were the same somber blue as Feeney’s, scarred and caked in fish scales and blood. Feeney’s jacket was dusky red, cracked at the elbows from age and exposure; Bo’s was orange, with a Swedish flag patch on the left chest. It had been his companions’ foul-weather gear he’d smelled in the back of the Land Rover, more powerful than the grease from the reels or the gasoline sloshing around in the jerricans. Mildew and seawater, rotting fish. A Precambrian sense of foreboding, that smell.
The sky to the east was fading to white, a peaceful dawn blooming, and the men’s breath rolled from their mouths in long streams of vapor. Piles of dirty snow took shape at the edges of the lot. The security light flickered off.
All right, gentlemen, Bo said, slamming closed the rear hatch. They walked silently across the lot and down the slope to the pier. Bo boarded the boat first, then Feeney, carrying a battery under his arm, who momentarily summoned some dormant athleticism for the leap down, and then my father, who hesitated as he stepped, his boot levitating above the gap between the frosty dock and the white gunwale, while his brain ran a last-minute calculation, then overcompensating so that his foot shot forward, the wavy gum of his sole’s heel catching the slick fiberglass just long enough to allow him to get his other foot atop the thin edge, where he tottered, Chaplain on the verge, juking and weaving, his boots squawking against the laminate. Bo’s hand shot out and grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled my father down into the boat.
Mother of Christ, you weren’t kidding, Feeney said.
Tide’s running, Bo said, unmoved by the near overboarding. He’d turned his attention to securing the tackle boxes in a compartment below the center console. At the back of the boat, Feeney worked the battery into its compartment, strapped it down, affixed the leads, and scrambled back onto the dock, nimble as a mountain goat, to uncleat the ropes. Bo turned the key, trimmed the prop into the water, and fired up the engine, which chugged three times and then blasted alive with a cough of blue smoke. My father had moved to the bow, where he felt he might do the least damage, and Feeney tossed the bowline to him. He held the damp weight in his gloved hands and, not knowing what else to do, coiled it and stashed it in the cutaway along the inside wall.
All right? Feeney said, and Bo made a swirl with his finger. Feeney tossed the aft line into the boat and leapt in behind
