Читать книгу September Remember - Eliot Taintor - Страница 9

Rick woke to sunlight slanting through yellow organdy curtains and the sharp salty tang of mud-flats. He was used to waking in strange beds, in strange hotels, in strange lands—hammocks swung between the tall columns of ramon trees—the narrow berths of coastal steamers—mosquito netting draped over wide brass beds in European hotels from Lima to Hong Kong. This moment of orientation no longer filled him with uneasy fear as it does the infrequent traveler. He enjoyed watching his sleepy mind turn and sniff like a cat to discover its whereabouts. But this place was strange … because it was familiar. Familiar as his boyhood. That was it. Falmouth. He stretched, happy for an instant, and then remembered.

This was Joe’s house in Riverside, Connecticut. Joe had brought him back after the A.A. meeting in White Plains. H. Peculiar Henry, this must be Thursday! Time and Time and Time and Time. The Mantons’ cocktail party had been Tuesday afternoon. And he had not seen Gail since … since…. Remorse hit him. Harder than it had in the dark foxhole of Joe’s car. A different kind of remorse. He had been down for the count then, groggy with self-contempt, self-pity. Now he was thinking of Gail. The poor damn kid with a drunk for a father. He’d fix things up with her somehow. Start being a decent parent … a slender woman in a blue dress with the face of a Medieval saint … a careful man in a precise grey pin-stripe … a fat Italian acting out “I taka the first step so” … and Joe. Joe pulling at his wild red forelock, his voice booming out with its rich intonation of vastness—a vast melancholy and a vast humor. If they could do it he could.

He stretched again, testing his muscles tentatively. The twitching nerves of the jitters had almost gone. Swinging long legs out of the canopied maple bed he pulled on his clothes. Joe must be up. He could catch an early train to town with Joe and see Gail before he went to his office.

The cheerful aroma of coffee and bacon led him to a small dining room where Joe was chatting with a large colored girl in a candy-striped pink dress. American breakfasts were tops, Rick thought. Other nations could beat us at other meals … Italy for lunch—spaghetti with meat sauce and great garlic-rubbed bowls of green salad … England for tea—hot buttered scones and Devonshire cream and strawberry jam. You had to grant the brussels-sprouters a knowing way at the tea table … France for dinner, obviously … but breakfast in America. Especially in New England.

“What train are you taking?” Rick asked, spooning into a dish of fresh applesauce.

“The 8:13. But look, Rick, why don’t you stay out here for a few days? When I called your office yesterday I said you were sick—you were sick, you know—and that you’d be back to work Monday. Stick around and we’ll fill you up with fresh air and as much A.A. talk as you can stomach. There’s a meeting in Greenwich tomorrow night.”

It was decent of Joe but—“I’ve got to see Gail,” he said, watching Joe pour coffee into a large white cup decorated with gold scrolls of hearts and flowers which entwined the word, “Father,” in flourishing letters. Where the hell had Joe picked it up? Probably somebody’s idea of a joke. H. Peculiar Henry, being a father was no joke.

The coffee was good, strong and black. “Any Italian in it?” Rick asked.

Joe nodded, “We mix ’em. Why not ask Gail out for the weekend? Emerald is off on Thursdays, but Gail could come tomorrow or Saturday.”

It might make things easier at that, Rick thought. He could see Joe’s dock through the bay window and a rowboat halfway out of water, tilted on its side in the mud. If he could sit on that dock with Gail and watch the gulls, or row her around the harbor, he might be able to talk to her. How could a man apologize to his own child, explain that he had not really hit her but a whole phony society, without telling her all sorts of things about himself? The things that made him tick … sailing with his father in the old catboat at Falmouth … skating with Adelaide at Lake Placid. He would have to face even that. Talk to Gail about her mother—about their marriage—if he could ever hope to show her what was wrong with Paul. But how could he manage it in the brownstone house where he and Adelaide had lived with such gay security and such unforeseen brevity?

“Call her up now,” Joe urged. “The phone’s in the hall under the stairs.”

But Gail was not at home. Emily said she had gone off to the Poconos for a week. “With the Mantons?” Rick asked in furious certainty of the answer. “I couldn’t stop her, Avery.” Emily was the only person who still called him by his first name.

Grandfather Avery used to say, “Avery is a good name, boy. Don’t you ever let anyone make you think that Cabot Rickham would have been a speck better!” Grandfather Avery had been a tall, authoritative man with a crinkly white beard and high leather boots. He would stalk along the Charles and people would turn and point him out as “quite a character.” He had run away from home at seventeen and sailed around the Horn and come back to Boston with tall tales of San Francisco in ’49 and only enough gold for pretty Abigail Bronson’s wedding ring. Later he had amassed a respectable fortune in a respectable manner, but he regarded this as merely the normal and quite dull procedure of a gentleman and preferred to recall his youthful adventures to a youthful audience of one. Avery would sit entranced in a book-lined study on Beacon Street listening to his grandfather’s stories—men had been dropping like flies on the streets of ’Frisco from scurvy and an old miner had told Grandfather Avery to eat a raw potato every day. He had carried one in his pocket and he would pull out the very gold knife he had pared it with and show it to his small grandson. Avery had always been disappointed because he had never pulled out the potato too.

Gail was older than Grandfather Avery had been when he sailed around the Horn. And Gail was a child. A lovely, willful, un-self-reliant child. What had happened to America? It was becoming a country of adolescents. He had known men who were still college boys in their thirties—and proud of it.

Rick’s mind switched back to Emily’s voice on the telephone. “Gail seemed terribly upset when she got home from the Mantons’ party. She wouldn’t tell me what the trouble was and she usually does, but I couldn’t get a word out of her. She just rushed up to her room and started throwing things into a suitcase and dashed out of the house.”

Fury pounded in Rick’s temples. Fury at Gail. Fury at himself. He had failed her again. If he had gone directly home from the Mantons’ instead of barging around the town getting plastered he might have prevented this. Emily had sounded worried and Emily was not the worrying kind. H. Peculiar Henry, was Emily afraid that Gail might elope with that impossible Manton boy?

Rick stormed into the dining room and shouted incoherent phrases at Joe. He was going down to the Poconos. Now. He was going to drag Gail away … by the hair of her head if necessary … from those cheap, ridiculous Mantons. Joe was lucky. Joe didn’t have a daughter who fell for a Lansing Somebody-or-other with a fashion-female mother. He’d be damned if he’d let Gail marry Paul Manton. She came of good sturdy stock…. He was pacing the length of the dining room from the bay window to the pine corner-cupboard and back again.

Joe watched him with a quizzical look. “Easy does it, Rick,” he advised. “That’s alcoholic talk.”

“The hell it is.” Rick flung himself into his chair and gulped the last swallow of cold coffee. “I’m not planning to get drunk if that’s what you mean.”

“You may not be planning to go on another bender, but any alky who gets in a rage like that is sure heading for one. Don’t kid yourself Rick.”

“That’s what you think, Saint Augustine.” Rick’s voice was angry. He was angry at Gail, at himself and at Joe. Joe ought to know him better than that. He wasn’t a weak sister who couldn’t stay off liquor for even one day.

Joe pulled out his watch, folded up the Tribune and pushed back his chair. “I take it you’re going to town with me and then down to the Poconos. And a fine scene that will be. And whatever do you imagine your girl will be after doing, the high-spirited colleen that she is?” Joe had a way of putting on a mock Irish accent when he was most in earnest. “I suppose she’ll be falling into the arms of her loving father. The devil she will! She’ll be off with this lad of hers, or I miss my guess. An’ who’ll be to blame for that, I’m asking you?” He opened the kitchen door and called to Emerald in his normal voice that Mr. Frost would be bringing in a bunch of fish and he’d fry himself a mess of them for supper. She could set the table for one. Mr. Rickham was leaving.

Rick heard Emerald’s rich Negro laughter. “That Mr. Frost, he sure is the fish-catchin’est man I ever see. He knows the ways of all them smelts, flounders, blackfish, snappers and porgies,” she rolled the names off with the relish of a Charleston fishmonger.

Rick followed Joe to the front steps. A tall, round-shouldered man, with great curved eyebrows which gave him the look of a friendly barn owl, was shambling up the walk between rows of late zinnias.

“I fixed it up for Hank Frost to take you fishing today,” Joe explained. “He said he’d go A.W.O.L. from his boatyard. But I guess he won’t care. Hank is always glad of an excuse to go fishing. Hi, Hank,” he boomed. “Looks as if you’d lost your customer.”

“The hell he has.” Rick surprised himself by his sudden change of mind, the unexpected enthusiasm in his own voice. He hadn’t been fishing since he had gone after barracuda and amberjack off Chinchorro Bank. He lifted his head to the salty tang of the incoming tide.

Hank looked Rick over, then followed Rick’s eyes to the dock. “Nothin’ like a day on the water for what ails you. Nothin’ like it anyhow. Tide’s ’bout right for stripers. We’d better get going. Hey, Red,” he shouted above the whir of the car Joe was backing out of the garage. “Better tell this friend of yours where he can find some fishin’ duds.”

“Emerald’ll fix him up,” Joe called back, turning the car out of the narrow driveway.

Rick pulled on an old pair of dungarees and tugged at a T-shirt to get it under his belt. It must have flapped like a tent on Joe. No luck with Joe’s sneakers. No luck at all. He went down the stairs, envisioning drearily what the mud would do to his tax oxfords, and found Hank on the back porch.

“Dug these up in the garage,” Hank pointed at a large pair of rubber boots, an over-size wind-breaker and a Block Island cap. “Happened to remember that Tony had parked ’em here last time he went out with me. Tony’s a big guy too—for a wop.”

Carrying four oars, two anchors, a tackle box, bait pail, clam rake, two thermos bottles, and a paper bag of sandwiches Emerald had handed them, they made their way to the dock.

“Seems like quite a load,” Rick commented. He had always prided himself on traveling light in the bush.

“We ain’t takin’ nothin’ extry,” Hank said defensively. “Better to have too much stuff here, than somethin’ ashore when we need it. I was aimin’ to try three kinds of fishin’ … that is, if you got the stomick for it. How’s the stomick actin’ today, brother? Mine uster turn over somethin’ awful.”

“Okay.” Rick grinned, remembering the applesauce, oatmeal, fish cakes, bacon and coffee he had stowed away at breakfast—the first real meal he had had in more than thirty-six hours. “The prisoner ate a hearty meal.”

Hank laughed at the old joke. He had shoved the boat off, arranged their junk with practiced neatness, and now directed Rick to let go the painter and hop in.

Hank was in the after-seat, so Rick crawled carefully forward. It struck him as an odd arrangement, but it might mean that Hank was planning to have Rick do the rowing while he trolled. Hank patted the side of the boat affectionately, as a man will stroke the flank of a prizewinning horse. “Nice job, eh? Built her myself down to our boatyard … fifteen-eighteen years ago.” The skiff was round-bottomed with fine slim lines. “Paint her grey so’s the city fellers ’round here can’t foller me too easy just when I’ve picked me a good spot.” He grinned and pulled on the long ash oars.

Rick located the other pair and slid them into the oarlocks, noting approvingly the rims of leather to keep them in place if you had to drop them in a hurry when a fish struck. Hank evidently classified him as a city fellow with a hangover who couldn’t pull his own weight. He’d show him that he hadn’t spent eighteen years in the bush for nothing. “How about our weights?” he asked, resentment showing in his tone. “Wouldn’t the boat balance better if we changed places?”

“How much you weigh?”

“One-ninety, I guess.”

“’Bout what I figgered. I’m one-eighty-four, myself.” Rick was surprised. Hank was a skinny-looking guy. “Had it doped out that when we start trollin’ we’d take turns on the oars. That way you can fish right over my oar, like my old woman does, an’ I can lay my rod at my feet, so’s I can net your fish easy and bait both hooks. If we strike bottom out in them bass rocks I can free both hooks.”

It sounded reasonable enough, but Rick didn’t like being put in the position of an old woman. He gave an angry tug on his right oar and caught a crab. Hank guffawed.

“Don’t you go takin’ no offense now at me comparin’ you to my old woman. That ain’t no insult, Mister. Wait till you see her land a twelve-pounder.”

Rick laughed and pulled more evenly on his oars. The boat had an easy run, light but steady. As they skimmed under the dark span of the railroad bridge, a train rumbled overhead and Hank shook his fist. “Blasted idjits!” he shouted above the roar. “Hustlin’ themselves into New York City when they coulda stayed in God’s country.”

“Right,” Rick agreed, though he had always regarded this section of Connecticut as too suburban. Not exactly the Great Open Spaces. “You can have my share of New York.”

“Don’t want it.” Hank spat in a southeasterly direction. “New Haven’s my idea of a town. Been Frosts going up there to Yale college since way back. To my way of thinkin’ civilization ends when you enter East Port Chester and don’t rightly start up again till you hit the real south after jumpin’ the states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Them states is amorphous. Sourlands. Why I won’t even go visitin’ an A.A. meetin’ in Jersey. If a man ain’t got the brains and commonsense to get outa Jersey he might as well stay drunk….” Hank cocked an owl eye at Rick, “I get real riled up thinkin’ about this country. American history’s kind of a hobby of mine you might say. Got a lot of old volumes belonged to my Grandfather—set of the Federalist and all Spark’s biographies. Couldn’t rightly say which I like best—readin’ them old histories, ketchin’ me a bigger bass than the old woman, or gittin’ a nice wing shot at a broad-bill. See that little hump of trees?” Hank pointed back toward the stone abutment next to the Power Plant, “That’s Park Island. Good spot for blacks. Broadbills don’t mostly come in this close.”

“You mean you shoot black ducks over there, right under the Powerhouse?”

“The ducks is there, brother,” Hank chortled as if letting Rick in on a private joke, “but these here foreigners, like Joe, don’t take no notice on ’em. Go traipsin’ up to their clubs in Milford or down to Maryland, leavin’ me sittin’ pretty with plenty of broads, blacks, mallards, and an occasional whistler, not countin’ the mergansers which is too fishy for anyone exceptin’ a wop. Ducks is smart. No foolin’. They head into the Powerhouse marsh figgerin’ as how no hunter’ll go so close. No one does but me. I know all the guards at the plant. When they hear shots from the direction of Park Island they can count on its bein’ me. Usually is. Sometimes they investigates so as no saboteur will take advantage of this situation. Mostly, if it’s me, I put up a recognition signal. If it’s not, the guards tell the guy to beat it. Which makes it pretty soft for me.”

South of Park Island was a half mile sweep of marsh, pocked with mudholes. They would be lovely small lagoons at high tide, Rick noted, wishing he could stop rowing to wipe the sweat from his eyes. His T-shirt was soaked and a regular river was running down his spine. Hell, the least exertion seemed to make him drip like a man in a Turkish bath. He had always blamed it on malaria. Nights when he’d have to get up three times—or more—to change his pajamas. Quinine would do that. But so would booze. Maybe he’d been doing a bit of alcoholic dodging all the time. Not being willing to admit that liquor had anything to do with it. His arms felt like bits of spaghetti, but he bit his lower lip and pulled on. Hank seemed able to keep up a regular easy dip of his oars and a regular easy flow of talk. It was all Rick could do to listen. “That’s one of my blinds,” Hank nodded toward some brownish bushes above the rocks. “Be usin’ it real soon now. October’s the sportin’est month we got round Cos Cob harbor—fishin’ kinda merges into huntin’ in October. Feller can pull a blackfish up with one hand and shoot a black duck with t’other,” he chortled, shipped his oars and stretched like a lean black bear in the sun. Pulling out a pack of Wings, he offered one to Rick. Rick’s hand shook as he held the cigarette toward a kitchen match.

“Easy does it, brother—that’s one of our A.A. slogans. Never had to apply it particular to myself. Never was much of a one to rush things.” Hank cocked a kindly but inquisitive eye at Rick. “Reckon you’re the nervous kind?”

Rick nodded. The A.A.s seemed to go in for leading questions—like Kidd Whistler last night. He took a long drag on his cigarette and decided to try the direct attack himself. Giving Hank a friendly grin, he asked, “If you aren’t the nervous type, what was your trouble?”

Hank blinked. “Fair enough, brother. We kinda get the habit o’ pouncin’ on new members. All with the good intention of givin’ ’em a hand. There’s been a heap o’ fine and fancy explanations o’ my case, but I dunno as I rightly hold much with any of ’em. Joe now—he’s got it figgered that I had some inferior complex on account of the Frost family uster build the solidest small craft to slide down the ways south of Friendship in the State of Maine. Mebbe so. I was always hangin’ round the Yard when I was a kid, admirin’ the prints of early clippers and such and studyin’ on the plans of old whalers. Got so I hated my Pa for turnin’ out toy boats for Yacht Clubs—Snipes and Lightnin’s and Frost-bites. Mebbe that’s why I took to runnin’ round with the railroad gang down to the station, drinkin’ varnish and loafin’ on the streets of Greenwich—my mother uster call it Grennich like the foreigners do—mebbe I was just ornery and wanted to raise hell. Ever hear o’ Gresham’s Law? I read how it applies to money but it fits me like an old shoe. Sorta figgered it was smart to talk like the town bums and ain’t been able to stop ever since. Bad language sure drives out good grammer mighty easy. I’d learned better but I couldn’t speak like an educated person now if I tried. Like I was tellin’ you, Frosts always went up to Yale College—but not me, not Henry Cotton Frost, the Third—own damn fault if you ask me. Own damn fault that I lost the Yard, too. After my Pa died I got so sore at the whole stinkin’ business that I’d go a-breezin’ up to Commodores o’ Yacht Clubs who knew how to ride a fine Wall Street storm, and me half seas over, and bawl ’em out for the baby’s bathtub craft they was orderin’.” He let out a loud laugh at the memory. “Bunch of landlubbers a-comin’ into the Frost Boat Yard not knowin’ the difference between a yawl and a ketch. Great Uncle o’ mine up to Saybrook come down an’ called a directors’ meetin’ and threw me out on my ear.”

“Tough,” Rick commented inadequately.

“Yes and no,” Hank pondered, “War done the Yard a good turn. We’re makin’ P.T. boats now for the Coast Guard. They’re nice honest craft too. I figger my ancestors wouldn’t be ashamed of the Yard any more. And I’m a hell of a sight happier doin’ the job I’m doin’ there than I ever was fussin’ with accounts and profits and losses on them jimcrack lapdogs my Pa called boats.”

Hank tossed the stub of his cigarette overboard and started rowing. “How about tryin’ for stripers first? Then at low water we’ll get clams. Fish for blacks on the first two hours of the flood, which is the best time for ’em on the rocks where we’re headin’. Then we’ll have the last o’ the flood to hit the weaks, which is stickin’ round late this year.”

“You’re a regular fishing clock,” Rick laughed.

“Have to be to get ’em. Some of these foreigners goes for weaks in the up-stream channel at low water and for blacks on the ebb and wonders why they don’t get nothin’ except bergalls,” Hank snorted derisively.

Rick was catching on to the fact that Hank used the term ‘foreigners’ to apply, not to ‘wops’ or ‘polacks,’ but to commuters. It took Rick back to his childhood and to his father’s rage at the ‘summer people’ who were ‘spoiling’ Falmouth when he was a boy. Although the Rickhams had been actually only summer people themselves, they had inherited their house from a great aunt and so had some claim to roots, which Mr. Rickham had assiduously cultivated and vociferously defended even to the extreme and unpopular extent of refusing to contribute to a new golf club.

Hank gestured with a flip of his right oar toward a long wooded point about three miles eastward, black in the seaward shine. “That’s Tod’s Point. Best beach this side of Stratford. And one time we put it over on the foreigners. Had quite a fight with the property owners along Lucas Point to get the Town Meetin’ to rent it as a public beach. Can’t nobody use it much now account of gas rationing. Still and all it’s right for a town on the water to have its own beach.” Hank took two heavy rods of lancewood from the bottom of the boat. The hooks were rigged to a gut leader, which connected to the line by a brass swivel, so that the spoon and hook could turn freely. He pointed out the spot where he had tied a piece of red yarn on each line to mark seventy feet, so he’d know when he had it let out. Rick watched him tie a large kitchen match about a foot above both leaders. This was a new one.

“What’s the idea?”

“Ketches the seaweed and keeps it from coverin’ the bait.” Hank looked pleased with himself and directed Rick to fish on the outside because a hooked bass is apt to rush inshore to break the line over the rocks. Hank put a long sandworm on one hook, so that the whole shank of the hook was covered and the tail left dangling. He reached for the other rod but Rick grabbed it first.

“Hey, I’m not your old woman. I guess I can bait my own line.”

“You sure keep your finger right on the trigger, brother. Yes sir, I bet when you was liquored up good you got into plenty o’ fights.” Hank winked one owl eye amiably. “No need to take offense. There’s particular tricks to every kinda fishin’. I was just aimin’ to show you some of the way I been pickin’ up for the last forty years. Reckon you could show me some yourself. What you ketch down South America?”

“Barracuda and amberjack.” Rick could feel the throb of the motor launch, the pull in his arm sockets against the tug of the great fish, the smell of salt spray, see the sudden arc when the barracuda curved across the sky, but before he had a chance to get going on a modest description Hank pointed a nicotine-stained finger toward a couple of boats that were putting out from shore near the Riverside Yacht Club. Rick had noticed a varnished skiff shoving off from the seawall in front of a red brick house and a graceful woman in blue slacks and a yellow and red plaid shirt picking red and yellow zinnias in a garden that sloped to the water’s edge. The foremost of the boats Hank indicated was a white, round-bottomed job with lines similar to Hank’s craft. Trailing it was a broad red skiff.

“Bert ’pears to figger it’s a good day for stripers too.”

“What?”

“Bert Sammis. Guy in the white boat. Knows his fish all right. Ain’t exactly Neptune but the fellers in the red boat acts like he is. Always hangin’ ’round to see which way Bert’s headin’. I’ve seen Bert hide hisself in a crick bed to throw ’em off … damn nuisance how they trail ya. Them guys’d pull into two inches o’ slime if Bert did.”

Now the varnished skiff was squishing through the water only twenty feet away. “Hi, Hank,” the bow oarsman yelled, a ruddy-faced fortyish man in a peaked red hunting cap.

“Hi, Jim. Nice day.”

“Sure is. You aimin’ for stripers?”

“Yep. Ought to be bitin’ real good.”

“You think Mead’s Point worth tryin’?”

“Should be. Tide’s right.”

“Looks like Bert’s headin’ for Greenwich Cove.”

“Could be. Bert’ll git ’em if they’s there and they had ought to be there.”

“Thanks, Hank. We’ll keep out of your way.”

“Hell, it’s a free ocean. Riparian rights stops at high water mark, brother. Luck, Jim.”

“Luck, Hank.”

The varnished boat pulled ahead and further toward the middle of the harbor. Hank watched it quizzically. “Guess I got Jim puzzled. He don’t know whether to follow Bert or me. Feller with him’s a funny guy. One of these here commuters, but mostly he commutes from Old Greenwich to Cos Cob. Gets on the train in the mornin’ and hops right off agin at the second station. Keeps his fishin’ togs and junk down to Jim’s place. Scared his wife’ll ketch on as how he ain’t goin’ to New York.” Hank chortled. The varnished skiff was taking a wavering course, first heading toward Goose Island ahead of Hank and Rick, then edging over toward Bert’s boat and its dogged red follower.

“Nice boat he’s got though—for a flat bottom. Round one like this is better for trollin’, but that skiff is good for duckin’. I’m buildin’ me a Barnegat sneak box now over to the Yard. When I get me any spare time. Only good idee ever come outa Jersey.”

Three other boats were waiting off Goose Island. One beside the faithful red followed Bert; Jim and two others swung in behind Hank. “’Pears to be my day,” Hank grinned, obviously pleased.

Rick’s shirt was drying in the warm September sun. He could feel the tension going out of his arms and strength seeping in, as he reeled out his line. A small green heron stood aloof on one brown rock, while a flock of neat black and white terns crowded gregariously on another. Suddenly Rick’s rod was nearly wrenched from his hands. The reel shrieked like a startled kingfisher.

“It’s a big one,” yelled Hank. “Play him careful. Don’t give him no slack whatever you do. And remember, easy does it.”

After stopping the slight headway on the boat with one back push of the oars, Hank dropped them and began reeling in his own line. He kept his rod tip at extreme distance from the boat and at right angles to it, knowing well that bass love to dive into rocks and to snarl one line over another. This was obviously a patriarch of basses—from the way Rick’s stout pole was bending—and he seemed to know all the tricks.

Quick as were the two men, and alert, the bass was quicker, more alert. He rushed toward the boat so fast that Rick’s fastest reeling could not take up all the sickening slack, then he cut over toward shore, leaped out of water right over Hank’s singing line, dove back, and toward the very bottom. The glimpse they had showed him enormous.

“Twenty pounder!” Hank gloated. “Hold him, boy.”

But now the big fish was coming at the boat again, on Rick’s side. Though there was a slight pressure on that zigging green cord it was not fish, it was the weight of Hank’s line and bait and swivel added to the slack in Rick’s. A black-streaked silver form shot under the boat, leaped out of water again five feet from a brown boulder awash in a tangle of weed on the inshore side. The fish went down in the weed. Rick reeled on. In came the end of his line, limp and empty. Empty not only of fish but of Hank’s line, too, and of its own swivel and leader and spoon. The bass had cleverly yanked it over a sharp edge of rock six feet above the end of the metal leader.

“Sufferin’ Portygee!” was all Hank said, then with infinite sadness slowly reeled in his own line.

Rick said nothing. But his eyes were dancing. This was fishing! Fishing worthy of Chinchorro Bank or Ambergris Cay or Key West or Avalon. And this was the mouth of Cos Cob harbor, where commuters complained they caught only bergalls.

Hank pointed to his tackle box, rusty, salt-caked from the wear of twenty seasons. Rick rigged on a new spoon and swivel and leader, put on a huge sandworm, then added a smaller one—hoping against hope to lure that big fish out again.

Hank grinned. “We’ll never see him again.” He spat a brown stream on his own intact bait, which swirled out astern as he leaned on the oars.

After two more turns around Goose Island Hank headed for the reef making eastward from Murderers’ Island, a half mile offshore. “Uster git my best ’uns here,” he muttered.

Rick had let his line out ten feet beyond the red thread which once had marked seventy feet, but now marked only perhaps sixty—what with the piece the big bass had taken. He was idly watching the pearl-backed gulls on Diving Rock when his hook caught on something very solid.

“Hold it, Hank, I’ve caught the bottom.” Hank stopped the boat with one quick backward bite of the oars, then gently urged it sternward.

“Reel in slowly, don’t put no pressure on it or you may cut the line again on a rock, leastways bend the hook.”

Suddenly Rick’s reel sang again, thirty feet of line went directly away from him fast.

“Bottom’s movin’ eh?”

Then the line went slack, and Rick’s heart went sick. To lose two big ones in fifteen minutes, that would be too much!

“Reel him, reel him, don’t give him no slack to spit out that hook.”

Sweat cascaded off Rick, rolled down his wrists, covering his hands. His wet thumb slipped off the reel ratchet—giving the fish more slack. He was cursing himself audibly, furiously. Why must he show himself such a duffer to Hank, he who had fished all the Seven Seas, muffing everything like a dub.

“Slow but sure, haste makes waste, easy does it. You ain’t lost him, he’s still there. See that!” The line tightened again, went off southward in the general direction of Oyster Bay across the Sound. “If it’s bottom it’s an earthquake.

“Take it easy, this’ll be a long fight, but we’ll get this one.” Hank was grim, tense, but he had finished reeling in his line and he was reaching for the landing net.

The gesture gave Rick new confidence, he forgot his shakes, forgot the sweat which was blinding him, and bent over the reel. The fish was sulking now, coming in gradually, with only an occasional sideways rush of three or four feet.

Rick had the click off the reel now to save wear. The taut, wet line came in steadily, silently. A dark shape was rising into view, black, heavy-shouldered. Not built like a striper, Rick thought, but he pushed his mind back on his job.

“Don’t let him bump the boat now, easy now, don’t reel no more, hold him right there, I can get ’im.”

Hank’s sinewy blue-denimed arm snaked the net at the end of the long handle under the dark fish. He lifted hard, there was a splash, and Rick’s heart sank again. But Hank had slid his other hand down the net handle, leaning way over the boat side as he did so. Rick instinctively leaned the other way to prevent a capsize, and in doing so he brought the fish in nearer. The gunwale dipped to within an inch of the water, then held as if it rested on a rock. This boat was truly “built right.”

A quick lift by Hank and the fish lay writhing and flapping in the net coils on the bottom of the boat. Hank was on it like a cat on a mouse.

“Great Mother Mackerel,” he exclaimed, “it’s a blackfish! An’ a grandaddy. We won’t take no more chances on this ’un.” He opened his clasp knife; with a crunching sound the fish’s backbone was severed.

Hank opened his tackle box and got out his scales. He put the scale hook under the tough upper lip of the fish. Rick noticed the lower lip was even bigger and tougher, like some enormous hard negroid human lip. Teeth showed, blunt crunching teeth, as big as a man’s incisors but blunter—to crush clam shells with.

“Eight pound and a quarter, second biggest I ever see! Boy, you sure seem to ’tract all the big ’uns. An’ you break the rules—first time I’ve heard o’ blackfish caught by trollin’.”

They paddled idly to a shining strip of sand beach on the north side of Murderers’ Island and got out of the boat to stretch their legs and “take the weight off’n our tails,” as Hank put it.

A few minutes later Hank became abstracted in watching a swirling patch of water between two small rocks a few yards from the northern end of the beach.

“Don’t move, look!” he whispered, “them two rocks where the water’s swishin’. Ain’t no tide current there, somethin’s movin’.” Distinctly they saw the head of a large fish poke out of water, rub angrily against the farther rock. It fell back, then lifted and rubbed the rock again. This time they could see most of the back with the long dorsal fin, a silver back, with longitudinal black stripes.

“A striper,” whispered Rick, “spawning maybe.”

“No Siree, t’ain’t spawnin’. That’s your bass, Mister, an’ it’s tryin’ ter rub your hook outa its mouth against that rock. In all my fishin’ days I never seen the like o’ that!”

Again the head rose, rubbed angrily at the rock. Rick was moved with quick compassion, as he’d been when he’d seen a wounded duck try to escape the jaws of a swimming retriever.

“If on’y we had a shotgun now.” Very cautiously Hank picked up a large stone, rose to throw it. A silver streak shot for deep water.

They trolled for bass while the sun rose higher and hotter. Rick peeled to his shorts, smeared himself with sunburn lotion he had found in Joe’s bathroom despite Hank’s contemptuous advice that “too much sun is bad for the human body.”

At noon they beached the boat with a sharp grck grck on the shelving beach of Sand Island. Hank opened a paper bag of lunch which Emerald had provided; he flourished a thick rye bread and cheese sandwich southwestward toward the narrowing head of the Sound. “If you look sharp down thataway you can spot the Empire State buildin’ … that is if you care to see it. Most folks seem to think it’s somethin’ remarkable.”

Rick followed Hank’s scornful glance and saw faint lavender shadows seeming to rise from the horizon waters like a mirage. “Hell’s delight, I’d just as soon forget New York.”

Hank grinned approvingly.

Rick unscrewed the top of a thermos jug and poured hot coffee into red plastic cups. “Think of all the dives in the shadow of that building. Think of all the poor dopes sitting in smoke-filled rooms drinking. Beer leavings in glasses, the sour smell of whiskey spilled on sawdust, and wet chewed cigar butts. And here we’ve been all morning out in a boat in the clean sun and wind—not drinking.”

On a near point of land Rick could see an apple tree. How glad apple trees are, he thought, lifting their gnarled limbs like tough old men basking in the soft September sun, still vigorous, still loving life.

Off the eastward marsh grass a great blue heron dropped angrily between two white gulls which had been poaching on his fishing grounds. Easily capable of eluding the heron with their greater speed, the gulls seemed to decide good-naturedly that there was enough fishing for all, for they flew up-harbor a quarter of a mile, chuckling to each other as they went.

A clump of trees on Tod’s Point was filled with the elliptical forms of sleeping night herons. A pair of fish crows flew in and out of the branches scolding, but they could not ruffle the solid languor of the great hunched herons.

“You got quite a manner o’ speakin’, brother,” Hank chuckled, “Yes, sir, here we been sittin’ in the clean sun and wind—not drinkin’!”