Thomas McGuane - Ninety-Two in the Shade

Skelton started fishing the first of these flats on the incoming water, poling down light toward Snipe Point. They found four schools of bonefish on the first flat coming in with sting rays, bonnet sharks, and small cudas. They found two schools on the second flat, tailing on the edge of the creek and making a thirty- or forty-foot mud. Olie Slatt hooked his trophy in this second school, an exceptional bonefish. They drifted in on the tide while they fought the fish and Skelton boated it among the niggerheads.

He could hear Dance’s skiff the last ten minutes of the fight, but poled Slatt in on his prize and netted it succinctly. Dance ran right in on them and cut his engine. He climbed into Skelton’s boat with the gun in his hand and asked Skelton where he wanted it. Skelton pointed to the place he had imagined at the shopping plaza some time ago. And the question of his conviction or courage was answered. But this was not theater; and Dance shot him through the heart anyway. It was the discovery of his life.

Dance gave Slatt the heavy gun and sat in the bottom of the skiff next to Skelton.

Instead of shooting Dance, which is what Slatt first thought he owed the republic, Slatt hit him over the head a sledge blow with the gun. He kept hitting until he felt the head jelly under his blows. The empty skiff began to fall with the tide toward the sea.

Then he started the engine. He ran standing up, with Skelton and Dance, two foiled and strangely synchronous lives, in a pile at his feet. The white robe he wore carried behind him and he held the bright trophy to his chest. His jaws were parted slightly to the rush of air.

He was heading for A1A.