Barry Hannah - Long, Last, Happy - New and Collected Stories

They were trash and insignificant.

Today George and his son Steve were out casting in the surf and catching some small whiting. Roger waded into the water, feeling the warm wash over his sneakers, and then stood straddle legged, arms behind his back, rather like a taller Napoleon surveying an opposing infantry horde from an unexpected country of idiots.

Two-thirds of the world was water, wasn’t it?

There were king mackerel out there, too, and big snapper. But Roger had no funds to hire a boat, and all his wonderful gear was back in Louisiana in his garage, every line coiled perfectly, every hook on every lure honed to surgical sharpness, every reel oiled and soundless. As for what Roger had here at Mexico Beach, it was the cheap Zebco with a light-medium — weight rod, the whole thing coming out of a plastic package from T.G.&Y. at a price of twenty-four dollars — such a rig as you would buy a nephew on his eleventh birthday.

Roger’s friend George Epworth was having a good time with his son Steve. They were up to their hips in water, casting away with shrimp on the hook. They caught a ground mullet, which Roger inspected. This kind of mullet is not the leaping vegetarian that is caught with a net only. Roger looked on with pursed lips. Then there were some croakers, who gave them a little tussle. It was fine kid sport, with the surf breaking right around the armpits of the fellows. Steve’s wife, Becky, had made a tent over their baby, and Anna Lois, newly a grandmother, was watching the baby and reading from one of Slade West’s encyclopedias of sea life. George was a biochemist back at Millsaps College in Jackson. Anna Lois worked for the state crime lab, and their ocean time was precious. They liked everything out here and knew a good bit about sea chemistry. Roger envied them somewhat. But he had only a fever for the big one, the one to write home about, the one to stuff, varnish, and mount, whereas none of these fish were approaching a pound, though they were beautiful.

Roger was wondering what in the deuce was so wrong with him and his luck now.

Not just the fish.

Not just the fact that his Reba had gone a bit nuts when menopause came on her.

Not just the fact that she bought a new dress every day, and from high-priced boutiques, and that she stayed in the bathroom for an hour, making up — but that she emerged in earrings and hose and high heels only to sit on the couch and stare at the wall across from her. Not at a mirror, not at a picture, not at the television, not smoking anymore, not drinking, not reading — which she had loved — just sitting there with a little grieving smile on her face. She wasn’t grouchy. She just sat, staring with the startling big gray eyes that had charmed Roger to raving for her back in college days. They’d just had their twenty-fifth anniversary, Roger and Reba.

Further, his luck with money recently. Why, he’d had near a hundred-fifty thousand in the bank, and they were thinking about living on interest for the first time ever when bang , the offshore-drilling speculation in which they had the stock exploded and the money was gone.

It made Roger so tired he had not the energy to track down the reasons.

As for Nature, Roger was tiring, too. He had a weary alliance with Nature — the roses, the wisteria, and the cardinals and the orioles and the raccoons round the deck on the rear of his dutch-roofed little castle. But he was not charmed much now when he went out there and looked.

Were his senses shutting down? He who had never had to use even reading glasses and about whom everyone said he looked a decade younger than he was? At least?

Roger Laird was about to turn and go back to his room, shut the curtains, write in his fishing log something that might give him an idea as to what was wrong with him, when something happened out beyond the breakers.

He saw it roll, and he saw a fin of some kind stand up.

Then it rolled again!

A rising shower of small fish leapt up and the gulls hurried over, seconded by the crows, quacking but not knowing how to work the sea as the gulls did.

The big fin came up again!

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.