Looking Through Water Page 6

  Totally out of his element, William made a terrible mess of his first try.

  “That’s not what I did at all. Go again,” Leo said.

  On the next try, William formed a loop but lost his rhythm and watched as the fly line dropped limply in the water next to the boat.

  “Use your arm, not just your wrist,” Leo said. “Don’t hold your breath. Third time’s a charm.”

  He was right. William used his arm, slowed down, and managed to get all of the fly line in the air before letting the crab fly land softly in the water.

  From the platform Cole called down, “Two bonefish at twelve o’clock, fifty feet moving right to left.”

  Leo said, “Intercept them, throw toward ten o’clock.”

  William tried. The fly landed at approximately seven o’clock.

  “Jeez,” his father whispered, “can’t you tell time? That’s not even close.”

  Cole said, “That’s okay, they’re turning. Put your rod tip down and strip in line as fast as you can till I say stop.”

  William stripped line in until Cole whispered, “Stop . . . bump it. If you feel him bite, don’t lift the rod, just keep on stripping till he pulls line out of your hand.”

  As he bumped the line, he watched a silvery shadow of a fish stick its tail up and pounce down on the fly. The line grew tight and then started flying off the reel and out of the boat fast.

  “I’ve got one,” William said, giving his companions a glimpse of the glaringly obvious.

  Suddenly, his mobile phone rang and William dug it out of his shorts pocket and put it to his ear. “Hello?

  “Lionel,” William said to Lionel Johnson from his public relations department. “Yes, I’m out of town. They want a comment before they go to press? Well, tell them—”

  Plink. He felt a stab at the other end of the fishing line, then everything went limp.

  Cole jumped down from the poling platform and grabbed the mobile phone from William and threw it as far as he could into the ocean.

  William looked at him as if he’d gone mad. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “You can do one thing or the other, but you can’t do both. Not on my boat.”

  William looked him in the eye and said, “That was an important call.”

  Cole said, “That was an important fish.”

  After a moment of deadlock, Leo shooed Cole back to the stern of the boat and said to William, “Bad form, kid. You flunked concentration, so you’re benched. Sit your ass down on the cooler.”

  William knew that they were both right. As Leo stepped to the bow, William settled in on the cooler top and looked around. Big sharks swam past stingrays burrowing in the mud. Cole poled them by a bunch of barracuda that lay still until they were frightened by the boat and swam away. They poled past a mangrove island and startled a flock of resting roseate spoonbills, a spectacular mass of pink and white against a cloudless blue sky. Last time he’d seen spoonbills was on the rivers of Vietnam.

  The windless day made it easier for the fish to see the boat coming. Cole put them near a lot of fish, but many spooked the minute Leo started casting. Several others just ignored their fly.

  Leo cast well, but when he occasionally messed up, he wasn’t exempt from Cole’s jibes. On one flat, he threw at a large tailing bonefish and the fly hit her right in the tail, scaring her away.

  “Goddamn it, Leo,” Cole shouted, “they don’t eat with their asses!”

  Every so often, Cole jumped down from the platform, fired up the engine, and ran for a while before positioning them on another flat in search of their target species. The rushing wind was a welcome break from the searing heat of the burning sun.

  As the sun rose toward midday, William relaxed. He looked at his watch. It was 12:05 p.m. “Hey, you guys getting hungry?”

  His father said yes and Cole just grunted.

  He opened a bag full of sandwiches marked TURKEY, HAM AND CHEESE, and ROAST BEEF.

  Cole said, “I’ll have ham and cheese, waiter, with a little mustard and no mayo.”

  He tried to open one of the little packets of mustard and it squirted right on the crotch of his new shorts.

  “Nice play, Shakespeare,” Cole quipped, “but I’d rather have it on the sandwich. You’ll never get to be headwaiter that way.”

  William opened another packet, got the contents on the sandwich, wrapped it in a napkin, and started to hand it to Cole.

  “Hold on,” Cole said, looking back over his shoulder at Leo. “I’ve got a big single quartering toward us, left to right at seven o’clock, a hundred feet.”

  Putting the sandwich back in the bag, William resumed his perch to watch the action.

  Leo swung around and pointed the rod toward where he thought he saw the bonefish.

  “That’s him,” Cole said. “When he’s in your range, give him a three-foot lead and let it sink.”

  William’s father waited about ten seconds and made a perfect cast. He didn’t have to wait after that. The bonefish grabbed the fly before it hit the bottom, felt the sting of the barbless hook, and took off.

  The old angler slowly lifted his rod tip, putting a good bend in the rod and letting the fish go where it wanted to go, which was straight away from the boat at a high rate of speed. The reel whirred as the line flew off. On and on the bonefish went, not showing any signs of tiring. Then, about 250 yards from the boat, it stopped, giving Leo a chance to start reeling it in. He lifted up and reeled down, all the time keeping the line tight.

  “Good pressure, Leo,” Cole shouted. “Try and lead him away from those two mangrove shoots. He gets you tangled on one of those, he’ll break you off.”

  The fish took off again but without the same energy as before, then turned.

  “He’s getting tired now,” Cole said, sticking one end of the pole into the mud and tying the line attached to his platform to the other end. Once the boat was staked up, he jumped down and pulled out a large net from one of the hatches.

  “Bring him straight in, Leo. There are a couple of hungry-looking lemon sharks nosing around.”

  William’s dad brought the fish to the boat, and Cole netted him out of the water on the first try.

  “Yes!” his dad said.

  “What do we do with him now?” William asked.

  “We measure and photograph him. He’s got to be at least eighteen inches. Then we release him as fast as we can. No sense killin’ ’em; they’re not good eating anyway.”

  Cole laid the fish down on a yardstick while Leo photographed him.

  “Twenty-one inches, Leo. We’ve got our bonefish,” Cole said, smiling. Cole took the fly out of the fish’s little mouth, gently put it back in the water, held it by the tail, and moved it back and forth a few times, all the while watching for the sharks. The fish hovered for a few minutes, then with a sudden burst pulled away from Cole’s light grip, quickly disappearing into the brackish water.

  “Well done, Leo,” Cole said as he washed the slime off his hands. He stood up and gave the old man a handshake and a big hug.

  “Thanks, Cole,” Leo said. “Let’s have something to eat.”

  Cole looked William’s way. “What’s for lunch again, waiter?”

  The two fishermen talked about their catch and the next target over their sandwiches, all but ignoring William. After lunch, they started again. The afternoon was a lot like the morning. Leo had a few more shots at fish but came up empty. They put William back on the bow for a few chances, which he blew badly. One time he let the fly go too early, watching it sail into a mangrove island behind them. Another, the fly caught the back of his shirt.

  At 3:30 p.m. Cole announced, “Lines out,” and they headed for home.

  “Kind of a slow day,” his father said, but at least they were on the board.

  The ride home was beautiful with the afternoon sun at their backs. There was little conversation. Cole maneuvered into his assigned slip at Lorelei, where they were greeted by Dorado, wagging his tail. Yo
u could tell by the way the old dog walked around, receiving greetings from the regulars, that he was a real fixture at the marina. They stepped onto the dock.

  Leo said, “Thanks, Cole, see you tomorrow at eight.”

  “Bring that twelve-weight tarpon rod of yours,” Cole said.

  William said good-bye to Cole, but he either didn’t hear him or chose to ignore him.

  William stopped at the Outfitters to pick up his clothes. Walking back to the parking lot, he watched his father helping Dorado climb into the truck. The dog managed to get his big paws up on the tailgate, and Leo lifted his rear end up till Dorado could kind of limp into the bed, then flop down for the ride. Hell to get old, William thought.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE CONCH HOUSE

  Leo, William, and Dorado chugged north up Islamorada’s one main road, US A1A, which was called simply “the highway” by the natives. On the way to his father’s house, William spotted a drugstore.

  “Would you mind stopping for a minute so I can pick up some toiletries?”

  Leo came in, too, and picked up a Florida Keys Keynoter. William was glad they didn’t have any New York newspapers.

  About five miles up the road, his father turned left onto an old oak-lined street called Pippin and then made another left and pulled into the driveway of a small rectangular one-story cottage with a broad front porch that ran the length of the house. The little place looked like it had been uprooted from the Bahamas.

  William grabbed his stuff and followed his father up the porch and into the front door. Dorado walked behind him, looking a little unhappy that an interloper was entering his domain.

  Inside, Leo said, “Welcome to my humble abode. It’s got a living room, kitchen, dining room, john, and two bedrooms, one of which I made into a tackle room. My couch in the living room is old but comfortable. After dinner, I’ll make it up for you to sleep on. Why don’t you shower up while I make us some dinner? I’ve got some fresh yellowtail snapper that I can put on the grill.”

  “Sounds good,” William said. After a long day on the water, he was starving.

  He stowed his rosewood box under the old couch and took his toiletries and a change of clothes into the bathroom to get cleaned up.

  The bathroom looked more like a fishing hall of fame. Every wall was covered with framed fishing photos, most of them featuring his dad and some other guy holding up a huge fish. In most of the pictures, the other guy was Cole. William found himself strangely jealous of Cole for all the time he’d gotten to spend with this man who had walked out of his life so many years ago.

  Showered and shaved, he felt human again. After inspecting the wound on his forehead, he dressed and walked into the kitchen, where his father was grilling the yellowtail. Dorado walked over to sniff his crotch.

  “The fish smells great, Dad,” he said. “Almost covers up the smell of your dog.”

  “It’s you that’s doing it to him,” his father said. “You’re in his space and you make him nervous.”

  “You don’t want to put him out on the porch while we eat?” William asked.

  “Naw, it’s his house, too. He’s got his old bed in my bedroom and he’s comfortable,” his father said, rubbing his arm. “Let’s eat.”

  They walked into the dining room and sat down at Leo’s weathered table, which had two place settings, a bowl with fresh corn on the cob, some french fries on a plate, a salad, and a basket of rolls. His father brought the platter of fish filleted into small strips with lemon wedges on the side. William had a flashback to growing up, remembering that on those rare occasions when he’d had time, his father had loved to grill.

  Leo sat down across the table from his son, and with no ceremony they filled their plates and began to eat. Everything was delicious. There were so many things to say but it was as if neither of them knew where to start, so they made small talk. William asked his father about the derivation of the term conch.

  “After the Calusa Indians inhabited the Keys, it was later occupied by a group of Americans during the Revolutionary War,” Leo explained. “They were British loyalists who did not want to fight against their homeland. They gathered their families and migrated to the Bahamas and here, to the Florida Keys. They were called conchs for their custom of withdrawing into themselves like conchs, paying little or no attention to the outside world.”

  “Those are the shells people hold to their ear to hear the ocean, right?”

  Leo rolled his eyes.

  Over dessert, two scoops of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce and rich, roasted black coffee, Leo continued with the history lesson about the Keys.

  “Completion of the Overseas Highway connecting the islands in 1938 made the Keys much more accessible. People flocked here from the North to enjoy the warm weather and laid-back lifestyle.

  “The fishing is fabulous, but the area also attracted writers, artists, poets, and other people interested in a Bohemian lifestyle. Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Jack Kerouac, and John Audubon came and did some of their best work here. Land’s-end mentality played a big role as well.”

  “Land’s-end mentality,” William asked, “what’s that mean?”

  “Well,” Leo continued, “many people over the years have sought refuge here as a place to get away to, an escape from somewhere or someone else. A last resort, a place where no one cares who you are or what you’ve done. No one here asks any questions. Live and let live is the rule. I guess you could say that the way of the conch is still a time-honored tradition here.”

  Leo stopped there and seemed to stare off into the distance in silence.

  Feeling that this was, perhaps, a prelude to the story that he had come to the Keys to hear, William tried to restart the conversation and asked his father, “Are you now a conch, then?”

  “Yeah, I guess I am,” Leo said. “A freshwater conch, which is what you become after being here more than seven years.” Leo pushed himself gingerly out of his chair. “Listen, kid, I’m not feeling so great. Think I’ll go sit on the porch and get some fresh air.”

  “You okay, Dad?” William asked.

  “Yeah, just a little tired,” he said. “Would you mind clearing the table?”

  “I still have a lot of things on my mind that I think we need to talk about.”

  “I know, son, we will, I promise,” Leo said. “But not tonight, okay?”

  His dad and Dorado walked outside, and William cleared the dishes. He looked for a dishwasher to stack them in and, finding none, decided to wash and dry them by hand. It was a tiny kitchen and finding a place to put everything away was easy, so he did that as well.

  William walked out on the porch to find his dad smoking a cigarette, listening to a New York Rangers hockey game on a transistor radio, and once again rubbing his arm, old Dorado curled up at his feet.

  “Your arm all right?” he asked him.

  “Yeah, it’s fine,” he said. “I think I must have strained it the other day when Cole and I were pulling traps.”

  “Crab traps?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Every resident down here is allowed to put out five stone crab traps. Cole and I pull them every Thursday evening, rip off one claw on each if it’s big enough, and release the crab. Doesn’t hurt ’em and in a couple of months it grows right back. It’s like pickin’ apples on a tree, and the boiled legs are delicious. Cole and I have a bet to see who catches more by the end of the season.”

  “So, this Cole guy,” William asked, “is he your best friend or something? I mean, what’s up with him?”

  “What do you mean?” his father asked.

  “Why is he such an asshole?”

  His dad chuckled and looked away off into the distance. “He’s got his own reasons.”

  “I don’t get it, Dad,” William said to him, reaching over and turning down his radio. “Why do you do this?”

  “Do what?” he asked.

  “Live like this,” he said. “Down here in this shack? What are yo
u trying to prove? I know damn well you left the company with plenty of money.”

  “Proving things is a young man’s game, William. I’m seventy-five years old. I just want to fish.”

  “Fish?”

  “Yeah, fish. Is that so hard to understand?” he asked, looking at his son.

  “There are more important things in life than fishing, Dad.”

  “That’s right, son, there are,” he answered, “but I’ve pissed most of those things away.”

  William started to say something but thought better of it. His dad snubbed out his cigarette in a sand-filled coffee can and said, “Listen, son, I’m shitcanned. I’m gonna shower and turn in now. Big day tomorrow. We’re going after our tarpon.”

  “Okay,” he said, “you got anything to drink around here?”

  “My doc says I gotta take it easy on booze now, William,” he said, “so I keep the house dry. There’s a bar about a mile up the road on the left, Mrs. Reno’s place behind Marker 88 restaurant.”

  “Can I borrow your truck?” William asked as they both stood up.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “You’re gonna be drinking, right?” he asked. “What kind of a father would I be if I let you drink and drive? And besides, that truck’s a classic.”

  “Dad, I’m—”

  “Walking,” he said, making a little walking motion with two fingers.

  “Okay, Dad,” he said, “I’ll see you tomorrow. You sure you’re all right?”

  “If I were any better, I’d cancel my life insurance.”

  Now William knew where he’d gotten that expression from.

  CHAPTER 9

  MRS. RENO’S

  William walked out the door and down the quiet street toward the highway. The full moon was rising and lit the way as tree frogs and crickets chirped away. An occasional dove cooed by the side of the road. A startled blue heron took wing and flew off squawking into the gentle breeze. Traffic was light on the highway. He walked past Lookout Lodge Resort and turned left at a neon sign that said MRS. RENO’S CONCH BAR and underneath it WELCOME ANGLERS. Crossing a car-filled parking lot, he followed a green neon arrow that pointed down a wooden plank pathway through dark mangrove woods. Multicolored tiki lights were strung on trees along the winding trail. As he came to a clearing, he could hear music in the distance.