Roger’s eyes narrowed and the point of his vision met on the swirl of water as if on the wrong end of a pair of Zeisses. Given the swirl, the fish was seven to nine feet long at the smallest.
Roger looked slyly around to see if any of his friends, the Epworths, had noticed it. But they were otherwise occupied and had not.
Roger looked again, bending as if to find a nice conch shell like a lady tourist, and the thing rolled again!
The birds were snapping the moiling little minnows, the crows missing and having to move out heavy on the flap because of their sogged feathers.
Then there was no activity.
Roger walked back with the Epworths, helping to carry the bucket of fish they intended to roast over charcoal for lunch. The baby was put to bed. Steve and his wife lay on the divan watching the soap opera General Hospital. The local weather and fishing report came on. The man with big spectacles said the weather was fine but the fishing was no good, apologizing to the world for the ocean this week.
After they had eaten the smoked fish and salad and the oysters Rockefeller, everybody was sleepy except Roger — who pretended sleepiness and went to his room. It was a half hour he waited there, studying the Zebco outfit in the corner. Then you could hear nothing in the house, and he, despite himself, began making phony snoring noises.
Barefooted, he scooted to the kitchen and found the plastic bowl of bait shrimp. He eased the door to, not even the sound of a vacuum sucking on rubber. Then he put on his sneakers and, holding the Zebco unit, he slipped out into the driveway.
Roger was about halfway down the drive, aiming straight for the sea, when a loud voice from the little ugly redbrick house horrified him.
“You!”
It was Mr. Mintner, shouting from his window.
The pale man was holding the windowsill, speaking with his nose practically against the screen.
“Getting any?” shouted Mintner.
There was a horrifying derisive laugh, like rolling tin, and then the window came down with a smash, Mintner receding into the dark of the room. It was two in the afternoon and the house was totally unlit.
Roger was not certain that there had been a man at all. Perhaps it was just a voice giving body to something waxen and then vanishing.
He had never been a coward. But he was unsettled when he reached the sea. He had some trouble tying on the hook. It was not even a sea hook. It was a thin golden bass hook that came with the Zebco kit. He put the bell weight on and looked out, yearning at the blue-gray hole where the creature had shown.
There was not a bird in sight. There was no whirl and leaping of minnows. The water was as dead as a pond some bovine might be drinking from.
Roger stayed near the water — waiting, getting ready.
Then he cast — a nice long cast — easy with this much lead on the line, and the rig plumped down within a square yard of where he’d seen the fish.
He tightened the line and waited.
There was a tug but small and he knew it was a crab. He jerked the line back, cursing, and reeled in. The shrimp was gone. He looked in the plastic bowl and got the biggest shrimp there, peeled it, and ran it onto the hook, so that his bait looked like a succulent question mark almost to the geometry.
This time he threw long but badly, way over to one side.
It didn’t matter.
He knew it didn’t matter. He was just hoping that that crabeating dog wouldn’t show up, and he hadn’t even tightened his line when it hit.
It was big and it was on.
He could not budge it, and he knew he’d snap the line if he tried.
He forgot how the drag worked. He forgot everything. Everything went into a hot rapid glared picture, and he was yanked into the sea, past his knees, up to his waist, then floundering, swimming, struggling up.
Then he began running knee-deep and following the fish.
Jesus — oh, thank you, please, please, yes — holy Christ, it was coming toward him now! He reeled in rapidly. He had gone yards and yards down the beach.
It came on in. He could pull it in. It was coming. It was bending the rod double. But it was coming. He had it. Just not be dumb and lose it.
It surfaced. A sand shark. About four feet long and fifteen pounds. But Roger had never seen anything so lovely and satisfying. He grabbed the line and hauled it toward him, and there it was, white bellied and gray topped, and now he had it on the sand and it was his, looking like a smiling tender rocket from the deep, a fish so young, so handsome, so perfect for its business, and so unlucky.
By this time a crowd had gathered, and Roger was on his knees in the sand, sweating profusely and with his chest full of such good air it was like a gas of silver in him.
The crowd began saying things.
“I’ll kill him with this flounder gig! Everybody stand back!” said one of the young men.
“Ooo! Ugg!” said a young somebody else.
George Epworth was on the beach by then.
“That was something. I watched you through the binoculars. That was something.” George Epworth knelt and watched the shark heaving away.
“Would you unhook him for me?” Roger Laird asked.
George Epworth reached down, cut the line, and pulled the hook out backward through the shank, leaving only a tiny hole.
A man who had been cutting up drift logs for a fire said, “I’ll do the honors. They’re good to eat, you know.”
The man was raising his axe and waiting for Roger to move away.
“Not mine, you don’t!” Roger screamed, and then he picked up the shark by the tail and threw it way out in the water. It turned over on its back and washed in as if dying for a few minutes, whereupon it flipped over and eased into the deep green.
When Roger Laird got back to Louisiana, he did not know what kind of story to tell. He only knew that his lungs were full of the exquisite silvery gas.
Reba Laird became better. They were bankrupt, had to sell the little castle with the dutch roof. She couldn’t buy any more dresses or jewelry. But she smiled at Roger Laird. No more staring at the wall.
He sold all his fishing gear at a terrible loss, and they moved to Dallas, address unknown.
Then Roger Laird made an old-fashioned two-by-four pair of stilts eight-feet high. It made him stand about twelve feet in the air. He would mount the stilts and walk into the big lake around which the rich people lived. The sailing boats would come around near him, big opulent three-riggers sleeping two families belowdecks, and Roger Laird would yelclass="underline"
“Fuck you! Fuck you!”
Even Greenland
I WAS SITTING RADAR. ACTUALLY DOING NOTHING.
We had been up to seventy-five thousand to give the afternoon some jazz. I guess we were still in Mexico, coming into Miramar eventually in the F-14. It doesn’t much matter after you’ve seen the curvature of the earth. For a while, nothing much matters at all. We’d had three sunsets already. I guess it’s what you’d call really living the day.
But then,
“John,” said I, “this plane’s on fire.”
“I know it,” he said.
John was sort of short and angry about it.
“You thought of last-minute things any?” said I.
“Yeah. I ran out of a couple of things already. But they were cold, like. They didn’t catch the moment. Bad writing,” said John.
“You had the advantage. You’ve been knowing,” said I.
“Yeah. I was going to get a leap on you. I was going to smoke you. Everything you said, it wasn’t going to be good enough. I was going to have a great one, and everything you said, it wasn’t going to be good enough,” said he.
“But it’s not like that,” said I. “Is it?”