Dad shook his head. “Listen. Plenty guys have problems worse than yours. You want to lie around and feel sorry for yourself, well, that’s your decision. But think about this, is that how you want to live your life from now on?”
Randy turned away.
The boat inched forward, rocking hypnotically in the swells as we trolled through the birds.
“He’s running,” Dad said suddenly. “Jake, come.”
I put the boat on auto pilot and ran aft. The line tightened in Dad’s hand and moved off to the port side of the boat.
“He’s spooked.”
Dad dropped the line. “Take it,” he whispered out into the ocean. “Go on, now.”
The reel clicked, then stopped, and clicked again.
Dad ran into the cabin to the controls, but before he got there, the reel burst awake, screaming as line raced off, bending the rod nearly to the water.
Dad jammed the boat full throttle, just for a second, then brought her down.
I unhooked the safety line but left the rod in place and looked back into the cabin.
“Randy,” Dad shouted. “This one’s yours.”
Randy almost spat when he answered, “I told you I’m
out
of it!” He grabbed his rifle and pumped a bullet into the chamber, then fired out to sea.
The reel screamed, the fish running, running.
Dad looked as if he were ready to wring Randy’s neck. “You take it, Jake,” he said, still glaring at Randy.
I yanked the rod from the socket and jerked back on it twice, striking the fish one last time. Line burned off the reel as I braced against the pull, trying to release the drag and ease the pressure. I worked it back to the fighting chair and placed the butt of the rod into the silvery socket and put my feet on the foot brace.
Line whipped back and forth off the spool, tearing out into the ocean.
“Let him go a minute,” Dad said, running out. “When he slows, tighten up on the drag and hold him.”
The line emptied off the reel so fast I thought there’d be nothing left but a clean spool. The fish managed to rip off five or six hundred yards before I could slowly tighten the drag and choke off the run.
Dad ran back to the wheel and pushed the throttle forward, pulling the boat away from the approaching line. A moment later he let the boat rock in neutral, waiting at the controls.
“I think you got yourself a tuna, Jake.”
The birds moved off a hundred yards or so, now scattered. The weight on the line was so intense I had to hold my breath when I pulled back, teeth jammed, my face ready to explode.
I’d almost forgotten about Randy, thinking only of the fish, when he startled me, suddenly at the transom dipping a bucket into the ocean, one of his crutches lying on the floorboards.
He set the bucket on deck. “You think you can handle this, little man?”
“Pshh. In my sleep,” I said.
He grunted, then hobbled away.
He returned a minute later with a fat natural sponge, which he soaked in the bucket, then squeezed over my head. It chilled at first but ran soothingly down my neck. “Use your legs,” he said. “It’s all in the legs.”
I studied the water. The fish wasn’t running but was still pulling away from me with more muscle than I could return.
I pulled back on the rod until the tendons in my neck ached.
Time passed.
An hour, maybe more.
Dad wandered out every now and then, but mostly he stayed at the wheel.
Randy dragged himself off the fish box to drip another sponge of water down my neck, then on the reel.
“Thanks, bro.”
“Running out of gas?”
“Never.”
Randy patted me on the back, like he would a child. “Just don’t pop a gut, ah?”
Once, the fish made a run, and Dad backed the boat down after it. I reeled in the slack, a few inches. Then the fish stopped and held.
I’d been struggling with it since noon, when the sun was high and the water reflected the cloudless, blue sky. I wondered if I’d end up with only the head, like old Steve from before. But there were no jerks on the line, which was a good sign.
By four-thirty everything had turned gray, and the surface chop had grown restless.
And so had Dad.
“Cut the line, already,” he finally called from the cabin. I couldn’t see him, but I imagined him sitting at the table with a beer, playing solitaire and shaking his head every time a card stumped him.
“No,” I said.
Randy snickered.
Dad came out on the deck and stood beside me. “You got a dead fish. You got a thousand pounds of pressure. Cut it. Let’s go home.”
Dad opened up his pocketknife. “Come on, Jake. You don’t have the juice.”
He reached for the line.
“I can do it! Look at the reel, I’m gaining.”
“Sorry, Jake,” Dad said, bringing the knife up.
Randy’s crutch suddenly appeared between the knife and the line. “Time to let a real man do the work.”
Still holding the knife near the tip of the rod, Dad cocked his head toward me. “Did you hear something? I thought there were only two fishermen aboard this boat.”
Randy pushed Dad’s shoulder with his crutch. “Step aside, gramps.”
Then he turned to me. “Let me show you how it’s done, son.”
“But I’ve almost got it.”
“Nothing is what you got.”
I took a deep breath, then leaned forward and let Dad unhitch the harness from the reel. He winked at me, and I got it. Dad wouldn’t cut a line in a million years. I don’t know why that hadn’t clicked in my brain when he’d brought out the knife.
I stepped out of the fighting chair as Randy took hold of the rod. “I guess it won’t hurt to let you clean up,” I said.
Randy threw his crutch over to the fish box and slipped in around the rod. Dad hooked the harness around Randy’s back. For all our joking, reeling in a dead fish, if it was dead, was nothing but pure hard work.
Randy started to pull but had a difficult time balancing his weight on one foot. He gave us a sampling of some of the words he’d learned in the army, then finally gave in. “All right, get me that stupid stick you made and strap it on.”
Dad raised his eyebrows.
I went in and got the stick-leg off the bunk. The strapping part was kind of awkward, but it held the contraption in place well enough. Randy lifted it and tapped the rubber end on the foot brace. “Too long,” he said, but went on working the fish anyway.
He sank his teeth into the job like a dog on a pig, taking back a good hundred yards of line before stopping to rest.
An hour later all the line was back on the reel. Not bad, I had to admit.
Dad and I stood peering into the water for the first glimpse of whatever it was.
Dad stood back and gave Randy a pat on the back. “Keep her steady, Long John. You’ve almost got it beat.”
The wire leader came inching out of the water. Randy reeled it all the way to the eye on the tip of the rod. Dad reached out over the transom. Hand over hand, he pulled the mysterious fish the last few feet to the boat.
I got the gaff and stood ready.
Randy unhitched the harness and let it fall to the floorboards but stayed in the fighting chair. He took off the stick-leg and threw it on the deck by the fish box.
I gaffed the fish under the gills. There was no explosion of flapping and splashing as Dad leaned over the transom, strained it up over the gunnel, and let it thud to the deck.
“Son of a gun,” he said.
A huge bullet-shaped yellowfin tuna. Dead, but not shark-eaten. The dark blue-black ridge of its back and striking golden fin above shiny silver sides spread back from a huge round eye, thickening out into a fat body.
Dad squatted down for a closer look. “Two hundred fifty pounds, be my guess.”
He glanced up at Randy and laughed. Randy wore the face of a man dead beat into the ground.
Bent and bowlegged under the weight, Dad hauled the tuna into the fish box and spread ice over it.
Randy rose up and set the rod into a rod holder. He flicked his eyebrows at me, then put a hand on my shoulder and, leaning on me, hopped back to look in the fish box.
Dad dug us both a Coke out of the cooler and threw over a bag of Saloon Pilot crackers. “Let’s go home, boys.”
I stowed the fishing rods in the rack above the bunk and sat on the floor beside the table to rewind the loose leaders. The muscles in my forearms were as tight as wet rope.
I glanced back at Randy sitting again on the edge of the fish box, a lone silhouette rising and falling against an empty horizon. He’d only shot the rifle once all day.
Randy reached down to the deck for the stick-leg, picked it up, and ran his hand along its length as if removing dust.
I turned to Dad, but he was dozing at the wheel.
When I looked back, Randy was trying to make the stick-leg stay on, strapping it tighter, then pushing himself up to test it.
I went out and sat on the transom facing him.
Randy took the stick-leg off and threw it to me. “That thing works all right, but it looks like something your dogs gnawed on.”
I half-laughed and turned it over in my hands. “It does, doesn’t it? I’ll make you a better one.”
I stood to throw the stick-leg overboard.
“Wait, wait!” Randy shouted. “How you expect me to get off this tub? Gimme that thing.”
I gaped back at him.
“Come on,” he said.
I lobbed it over.
Randy caught it and set it down on the fish box next to him. “Get me something else to drink, will you, bro? That stinking fish wore me out.”
The lush green island bobbed ahead as we droned closer to the harbor. I stood on the bow with rope in my hands and my mind at peace. I knew now that when it was my turn to creep through those deadly jungles, I’d think back to Randy and that ridiculous-looking stick-leg, and I’d remember how brave he was, stubborning it out to make that ugly thing work just because I’d made it for him.
That would help. That would help me fight my fear. And if I had to limp home, too, I knew he’d be there to help me keep on going.
And that was enough.
o t h e r b o o k s b y
g r a h a m s a l i s b u r y
Lord of the Deep
Jungle Dogs
Shark Bait
Under the Blood-Red Sun
Blue Skin of the Sea
Published by
Wendy Lamb Books
an imprint of
Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
Collection copyright © 2002 by Graham Salisbury
“The Ravine” appeared in On the Edge, Stories at the Brink, edited by Lois Duncan (Simon and Schuster, 2000).
“Mrs. Noonan” appeared in On the Fringe, edited by Donald R. Gallo (Dial Press, 2001).
“Forty Bucks” appeared in Working Days: Short Stories About Teenagers at Work, edited by Anne Mazer (Persea Books, 1997).
“Waiting for the War” appeared in Time Capsule: Short Stories About Teenagers Throughout the Twentieth Century, edited by Donald R. Gallo (Delacorte Press, 1999).
“The Doi Store Monkey” appeared in No Easy Answers: Short Stories About Teenagers Making Tough Choices, edited by Donald R. Gallo (Delacorte Press, 1997).
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Salisbury, Graham.
Island boyz / Graham Salisbury.
p. cm.
Contents: Island boyz—The ravine—Mrs. Noonan—Forty bucks—The hurricane—Aumakua—Frankie Diamond is robbing us blind—Waiting for the war—Doi store monkey—Angel baby—Hat of clouds.
1. Hawaii—Juvenile fiction. [1. Hawaii—Fiction. 2. Short stories.]
I. Title.
PZ7.S15225 Is 2002
[Fic]—dc21
2001032425
April 2002
eISBN: 978-0-375-89008-6
v3.0