James Hall - Blackwater Sound

Andy took three.

Morgan wasn’t sure if she’d seen right. Her mind so foggy. Her tongue so swollen, she could barely speak. Maybe he took one more wrap for extra measure, because the fish was huge, maybe he made a mistake, or she was simply wrong about what she thought she’d seen.

A.J. backed the boat slowly.

‘Okay, Andy. Pick your spot, jab it in hard and true.’

Johnny edged closer to his brother, gaff at the ready.

Slowly the bill appeared as Andy hauled it up.

‘Jeez, it’s way over a thousand pounds. Maybe fifteen hundred.’

Andy had the fish at the transom. Its bill was longer than any she’d ever seen in photographs, on walls, anywhere.

Johnny leaned over the edge to touch the fish.

‘No, Johnny. Let Andy do his work.’

The fish must have seen their shadows because it shied away. Andy braced his knees against the transom, leaned back, using all his weight to drag the fish back into place. Morgan could see the muscles straining in his back, in his arms and shoulders. A wiry boy, narrow-waisted, wide shoulders and rawhide-tough. But the fish was strong, very strong.

Andy cocked his arm, held it for a second, then plunged the point of the harpoon into the second dorsal.

‘It’s set, Dad! I felt it lock on.’

He shouldn’t have done it. Shouldn’t have turned his back on the fish to beam up at their father. With a fish that big, it was reckless. But he was so proud, so hungry for a morsel of their dad’s approval. In that half second his back was turned, the fish swung back and made a slow pirouette, disappearing into the transparent blue.

Andy was jerked backwards, his hip banging against the transom. Johnny reached out for him but it was too late. Andy lurched overboard, his hand trapped in the wire. Morgan heard his scream, heard it stifled as he was dragged under, saw him moving quickly through two feet of water, three, four, five, saw him turning back toward the light, trying to swim one-handed toward the surface, a useless stroke against the horrific power of that fish. She saw his face, his blond hair pulsing like a jellyfish around his head, she saw his white flesh turning blue, blue as the water, blue as the fish.

‘Reel, Morgan! Reel, goddamn it!’ A.J. was screaming.

A second later he was beside her. He tore the rod from her hands, cranked the fish back up, cranked. But the line continued to unspool, the sharp ratchet of the reel clicking faster than she’d ever heard it.

A.J. heaved back on the rod, tightening the drag as he did, pulling with all his weight, all his life and breath and muscle.

Morgan couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe. A dull paralysis had taken hold of her. Shock and terror and utter exhaustion.

She rose from the fighting chair, watched the water, saw a flash of white. Andy’s face, his shorts, something. Down in all that blue, his body dragged deeper and deeper into the airless depths. A bear hug crushed her chest, a pressure greater than bones and flesh could possibly withstand.

Her father was groaning as he reeled against the power of that fish, winning back a few feet, a few more. Johnny dropped to his knees, holding to the transom as if he were seasick, peering out at the water. From the flybridge Darlene screamed. Her boy, her precious son. Her wail ripped apart the air.

And then the crack of a rifle shot as the heavy monofilament snapped.

Her father crashed against the side of the chair and crumpled to the deck.

Without a thought, Morgan kicked off her boat shoes, climbed onto the transom and dived into the water and clawed her way down into the blue. She swam deeper and deeper until the light was flickering in her head and the crushing pressure against her chest was unbearable, then swam deeper still, squinting into the blurry distance, into the blackwater depths where the sounding fish had disappeared, but she could make out nothing in the darkness of the cold currents.

Then out of those murky depths a trail of bubbles rose toward her, a ghostly silver cloud climbing fast, spreading out, surrounding her, tickling across her bare arms, her belly.

Andy Braswell’s last breath. Her brother. Her love.

Thorn had brought along the .357 magnum not because he was worried about being attacked by pirates, but because he wanted to give the pistol a long-overdue burial at sea. Maybe have a little ceremony, just he and Casey, say a few words, something short and funny, then sling the goddamn thing out into the water. Stand around afterwards and watch the ripples die out, have a sip of wine, put his arm around Casey and hold on.

She didn’t know yet about the gun being aboard. He’d told her about some of the violent incidents in his past, but if he got too specific, she always winced and turned away. Casey had inherited her light and airy view of human nature from her hippie parents. Growing up in Islamorada in an apartment above the gift shop where they sold rolling papers and hookahs and conch shells and custom-made sandals. Now in her late thirties, after years of waiting tables, Casey had started a roadside business in Tavernier, selling life-sized manatees and alligators that she made from plaster casts, then painted in garish sunset colors. The manatees and alligators stood up on their hind legs and gripped US Postal Service mailboxes in their flippers and claws. She was doing well with the mailbox stands. You saw them on nearly every street in Key Largo and Tavernier. People dressed up their manatees with goggles and snorkels or straw hats, cocked fishing poles and scoop nets up against the gators. Put witches’ hats on them at Halloween and white beards for Christmas. Lately, Casey had moved on to a few non-Keys animals. One of her new creations, a full-sized, neon pink buffalo, now stood like some crazed sentinel between Thorn’s house and the water’s edge, where it stared out at the sunsets.

The .357 was inside his tackle box that lay on the deck near where Casey was sunning. When he finally landed the sea trout on his line, he was going to let her know what he had in mind. He’d been holding on to the damn thing too long, and now that they were several hours out into the deserted Florida Bay, it seemed like the right time to dump it.

For the last two years a long string of wonderfully unremarkable days had come and gone. Each night the breeze stirred the curtains and the cardinals trilled their evening song, each morning at first light the mourning doves lowed from the upper branches of the tamarind tree, and almost every hour of the day palm fronds tickled against the tin roof like the whispers of angels. Not even the weather seemed to vary, with steady tropical trade winds pouring up from the south, a constant cinnamon-scented flow.

But even amid that unceasing peace, Thorn often jerked awake in the middle of the night, sheened with sweat, thinking about the pistol wrapped in oily cloths, tucked in a bottom drawer of his desk across the room. He thought about its history, the dark karma that clung to it. More than once he’d taken it out of the desk and walked out to the end of his dock to pitch it into Blackwater Sound, where it would sink into the silt and begin its long chemical unraveling. But something in him had resisted. Some wary voice had murmured in his ear. You are not finished with it. A bad day is coming.

But now, by God, he was determined to heave the thing away. Far enough from shore where no one would ever stumble on it. Far enough away from home that Thorn would forever be beyond its magnetic field. Today he would officially and irrevocably lay down his arms and the voice would go still, the fist in his stomach would unclench, and the days would once more stretch out lazily ahead of him, and he’d take one easy breath after the next, savoring the juicy Florida Keys air for the rest of his stay on earth.