T. Parker - Full Measure

“We’re fishing Glorietta Bay tomorrow. You’ll have to do without us for a day.”

“That’s a good thing.”

Patrick fished out the carburetor parts and let them dry on the bench. He poured the solvent into a bucket so labeled, snapped the lid, and set it back with those for motor oil, two-stroke oil, gasoline, and diesel. He hoisted himself up on the bench and sat for a while, drinking the liquor and pondering things. He wondered how Myers, following so meticulously in his own footprints that night on patrol, December 10, 2200 hours, had tripped the IED but he, Patrick, did not? Then again the flash and for the thousandth time Patrick saw Myers come apart in all directions and Zane flayed in the light. He hoisted the memories into the hatch in his brain and tried again to close the lid forever.

After getting the carburetor back in place and their fishing gear together, Patrick stood at the workbench with a pencil in hand and his new pad of graph paper. His “business plan,” lacking college finesse, was a series of short sentences pertaining to how he’d like his guiding career to evolve. He read through some of them: By age thirty you will have three boats, and by forty, four, and by fifty, five boats and that will be enough... Remember as a guide you must be optimistic but predatory and never lose track of your purpose, which is to make sure your clients have a good time on the water... Be generous with casting tips and instruction but don’t micromanage... Remember that the fishing can be good even when the catching is bad... Invest 30 percent of your profit to build your business, and save 30 percent for when you can’t work.

This all seemed well and good but Patrick was too tired to add anything now, so he took two blankets from one of the rough-hewn storage cabinets built fifty years ago by his grandfather, folded one lengthwise twice, and laid it on the deck of the skiff. He turned off most of the barn lights but left the door open, then set a wide sheet of plywood from the low point of the boat to the floor. He climbed in and laid down and covered himself with the second blanket. The dogs came up the ramp and curled up beside him for short while, then clambered back down the plywood and trotted off. He thought of Zane and how he had loved him purely, how the war had demanded that pure love, then refused to let him take that love home. Another good reason to hate the war. And he thought again of Myers and Pendejo and Sheffield and the others, how his heart was heavier for Zane than for any of them. This was one of his several shames, and one for which he judged himself harshly. He heard the coo of a pigeon high in the beams, a flutter of wings, then nothing.

At sunrise Glorietta Bay was a silver mirror and Fatta the Lan’ glided confidently upon it. Patrick swung into the bay and looked out to the Coronado Bridge arching from mainland to peninsula, the night lights still on, traffic steady. The eastern sky was indigo over orange. He gunned the Mercury, felt the propeller bite and the bow lift.

Ted stood on the foredeck, legs braced on the railings, a fly rod at the ready. “This thing rides sweet!” he called back to his brother.

“We’ll see how it does offshore!”

“Are we going outside the harbor?”

“After we fish the bay. You’re good with that?”

Ted turned his big body and looked back at Patrick. “Guess I better get my sea feet.”

“We’ll take it easy.”

Frowning, Ted turned and squared himself against the railing. Patrick brought the boat west and anchored almost under the bridge. He logged his coordinates on the GPU then into a small notebook he planned to keep in a plastic bag near the radio. It felt good to be inventing a future. Cars thrummed high overhead.

Ted cast out a perch fly and Patrick watched the sinking line slide deeper and deeper out of sight near one of the bridge caissons. Sea bass were ambushers and tended to cruise structure, so the caissons were a good bet. There were halibut, perch, corvina, mackerel, barracuda, occasional bonefish and sharks, and the lesser skates, rays, dogfish, lizardfish. The bigger game fish were mostly offshore and not commercially accessible in Patrick’s seventeen-foot skiff. His business plan called for a new boat, double the size and range of this one, by his twenty-seventh birthday, five years from now. He planned to keep the Mako so that a partner, or even an employee of his, could continue with the bay clientele. The offshore sharks, dorado, and tuna promised tougher fishing and bigger money, but the client base was smaller. The bay was where he’d find clients, run up some numbers, build a base and a reputation.

“I just got bumped,” said Ted.

“Bring him back.”

Ted stripped in his fly, paused, then stripped in again and the line tightened straight. “Oh, yeah... come to Theodore! ”

Ted set the hook, then let the fish take line. Down in the blue Patrick watched the animal flash and be gone. “Trophy, Pat?”

“Monstrous. A Web site fish!”

“Yeah, baby!” Ted looked over at Patrick, his face merry. The tip of his uplifted rod dipped with the strength of the little fish. He was up on the balls of his substandard feet, back straight, his left arm tucked formally behind him, his right arm raised like a conductor. Patrick smiled at the simple pleasure a fish can bring. Gift from a hidden world, he thought. A fish on the line keeps the demons gone, and that’s what he would offer his clients. It was a mystery to him why all people did not fish.

Ted let the bass take the line for a sound, then brought him up in long, firm strips. Patrick looked down at the animal still trying to break free, gills pumping, its freedom cut down to inches. Ted lifted the fish out and swung it into him, gently catching its lower jaw between his big forefinger and thumb. He set his rod against the railing and held the fish up to the new sunlight and removed the perch fly with a pair of hemostats. He turned to Patrick with a conspiratorial wink then lifted the fish to his lips and kissed it. He kneeled and set it back into the water. Patrick watched it hover for a second, there then not.

“Tastes kind of fishy, Pat.”

“What if we catch fifty?”

“Remember that lizardfish that got me?”

“I thought you’d learn after that.”

“You going to fish or what?”

“Immediately and right now.”

“Pat, when I’m out here with you I’m as good as I get. Maybe that sounds dumb.”

“Good is good, brother.”

“Out here nothing gets into me but the good stuff.”

“Don’t start all that.”

“Out here the bad things never even start, is what I’m saying.”

Ted turned and leaned into the rail and Patrick took his five-weight from the rod holder. He pried off his sneakers and stepped aft, flicked out his fly and patiently stripped line onto the deck while he watched Ted cast. For all of his big brother’s bulk and general gracelessness he had a nice delivery, side-armed and languorous, with hard stops on both the back cast and the fore. Patrick thought of last night’s revelations from Archie, and of Ted’s biker father, and as Patrick watched, the damaged beginnings of his brother made Patrick love him in a new and different way.

As the sun rose they caught and released bass near the bridge, and later perch near Marina Park and bonito off Shelter Island. Patrick used the electric trolling motor for stealth. He caught a legal halibut and let it go with a glancing thought about tonight’s dinner. Ted tied on a steel leader and landed a nice barracuda, cavalierly kissing its dangerous snout while Patrick watched, vowing to disallow such foolishness on his guided trips. That shouldn’t be hard.