Body of Water

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Chris Dombrowski. Body of Water

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For the Pinder family

and for my father, who took me fishing,

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THE SUN SANK, DIMINISHED, AND EVENING’S COOL FELL IN. Water-tired, the rock of the wave-cresting skiff in my bones, I sat at the dinner table, which overflowed with loud conversation and the promised lobster, as well as poached red snapper, its fins the color of my neck after initial exposure to Bahamian sun, the skin under my shirt collar radiating with warmth. We ate under an awning in plastic chairs around a picnic table covered in a plastic gingham tablecloth. Dressed in khakis and a white pearl-button snap shirt, David didn’t say much but leaned in to listen to our talk, and each time he cleared his throat, or said so much as “Pass the salt and pepper, please,” Meko and several other local guides at the table went reverently silent, their glory stories put on hold. After a while I felt obliged to include the elder statesman in the conversation, so I asked David to tell me one of the wildest things he’d witnessed in his four decades of guiding: a trivial question, but I couldn’t think of another way to lure him out.

Fully functional or not, David’s cataract-lidded eyes bored straight into mine, as if my pupils were something of great interest to him, as if they were a pair of tailing bonefish he did not want to lose sight of.

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