Lord of the Deep (3 page)

CHAPTER
2

MIKEY STOOD with the fleece mitt on his hand. In the dim morning light he saw three people walking along the seawall. Cal and Ernie. And some lady?

This
was Cal’s daughter?

Huh.

As she approached he saw that she was more like his own age, or a little older.

Bill put his hand on Mikey’s shoulder. “Now listen, I want you to talk with Cal’s daughter today. Don’t just go off and sit by yourself. Make sure she has everything she needs, all right?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. What we’re doing now is trying to build a relationship with these men. You’ll understand what I mean when you get your own boat.”

Mikey quickly wiped down the fishing rods that Bill had set on the bunk. He threw the mitt into a drawer. Keep busy, he thought. Don’t just stand around looking like you don’t know what you’re doing.

He picked up the length of loose rope he’d been trying to splice into a loop for the past two days. Bill had been showing him how. It would be cool to be seen doing that when Cal and Ernie arrived at the boat.

Mikey squinted, trying to get a better look at the girl. But she was hidden behind the men. He wondered if she’d be easy to talk to. Did she like fishing, or had she come along only because Cal made her come? He’d seen that before. Last week some guy’s wife came along, but it was obvious that she didn’t want to be there. She didn’t say a word to anyone the whole day.

After they’d come close enough to see him splicing the rope, Mikey tossed it back into the drawer. He went over and snugged the starboard gunnel up against the truck-tire bumpers on the pier. Bill stood next to him with his arms crossed.

Cal and Ernie looked down on them.

“Mornin’, Billyboy,” Cal said.

Bill smiled and said, “Men.”

Cal and Ernie wore shorts, leather deck shoes without any socks, and gaudy Hawaiian shirts Mikey wouldn’t wear in a thousand years. In the gap below Ernie’s chin was a chain with a shark’s tooth hanging from it. He hadn’t had that yesterday. Cal didn’t have one of those, but he did have a gold ring with a red stone the size of a fish eye on his finger.

Cal was some kind of scout for a hunting and fishing club that could send more business to the Crystal-C than Bill ever dreamed of—if the boat could produce fish, of course. Well, it would.

Ernie had three white box lunches tucked under one arm. Cal carried the beer—two six-packs, same as yesterday. He stepped aside and turned to look back at the girl.

She was fifteen or sixteen, looked like, wearing jeans shorts, white canvas deck shoes with socks, and a blue tank top. Her hair was long, straight, and golden. It fell nearly to her elbows.

She was carrying a paperback book and a tablet of some kind. And a small pouch that looked like a purse.

Cal said, “Hold these a sec, would you, Ali?”

She tucked her things under her arm and took the beer from Cal.

Cal pulled a cigar from his shirt pocket and peeled away the cellophane wrapper, glancing around the pier as he did. He lit the cigar with a wood stick match, then crumpled up the cigar wrapper and dropped it.

Mikey watched it fall. “Billyboy, Billyboy, Billyboy,” Cal said, in a long sigh.

As an afterthought, he nodded to Mikey.

Mikey didn’t miss that Bill ignored all the “Billyboy”s. Bill said that most of the time he got great anglers on the Crystal-C. But sometimes he didn’t. He once told Mikey, “Just send whatever you don’t like out the other ear.” Then he laughed and added, “As long as they’re paying the bill, of course.”

The girl pursed her lips and stooped down. She grabbed the cigar wrapper, balancing the beer on her knee, then stood and jammed the wrapper into her pocket.

Cal let out a smoky puff.

He shook out the still burning match and flicked it over the boat into the water. With the cigar in the middle of his mouth, he said, “Fine day, fine day.”

Bill smiled up at him. “I smell action today, men, I do smell some big action.”

“Action would be a real good idea,” Cal said.

Bill grinned.

Cal took the six-packs back from the girl and handed them down to Mikey. Mexican beer. Tecate.

Bill reached up for the box lunches.

Cal put a hand on the outrigger and stepped down onto the boat. Ernie followed in the same way.

Ernie dipped his chin to Mikey. “Get that on ice, boy. Beer ain’t no good warm. And bury ’em deep, you hear?”

“Yes sir, deep.”

“All right.”

Mikey glanced up at the girl, still on the pier.

She looked back at him. Not smiling, not frowning. Just looking.

Mikey took the beer to the cooler.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about another pair of eyes watching over everything he did all day long.

The first bottle of beer he took from the carton slipped out of his hands. It clanked on the deck and rolled away.

“Jay-zus, boy, you want that thing to explode in somebody’s face?” Cal said.

“Sorry, sir.” Mikey grabbed up the bottle.

Bill held the stern line taut and reached up to help the girl aboard. She took his hand and stepped down onto the boat.

With five people aboard, the Crystal-C suddenly felt a whole lot smaller to Mikey. Out on the water, the deck of a boat was all the world you had. What was he going to say to this girl, anyway? What Bill would say? That didn’t help, because he knew what Bill would say—all kinds of ocean stuff that Mikey still had to learn. Why can’t we just go on out and fish? Who needs to talk? But Bill had said, “Charter fishing is as much about people as it is about fish, Mikey. Don’t forget that.”

Ernie rubbed his hands together. “Let’s go. We’re burnin’ daylight.”

Mikey glanced toward the mountain. Daylight was a while away yet.

The girl headed into the cabin, brushing past Mikey. Her eyes were blue, and so pale they surprised him. He wanted to stare at them. You didn’t often see eyes like that. He tried to smile. Probably looks as fake as it feels, he thought.

Her face flushed slightly. She looked away, then sat at the table. She set the tablet down. And the book,
The Agony and the Ecstasy.
Mikey’d heard of it, but he didn’t know what it was about. It was kind of fat.

Bill went to the wheel.

Out on deck, Cal stood gazing at the black silhouetted mountain above and beyond the village, rising into the purple gray sky. “We’d better catch something today, by God,” he mumbled to Ernie. “This is . . . embarrassing.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Ernie said.

Mikey looked into the cabin to see if Bill had heard. If he had, you couldn’t tell.

“Set her loose, Mikey,” Bill called.

Mikey scrambled up onto the pier. He untied the bow line and threw it aboard, then ran aft and untied the stern line and tossed it down on deck. He leaned out over the gap between the pier and the Crystal-C and shouldered the boat away and jumped aboard.

Bill throttled up and headed out of the harbor.

The engines grumbled, sickly sweet diesel exhaust swirling up and into the stern cockpit. Cal stood looking back, his knees pressed up against the transom. Ernie sat on the fish box.

Mikey stepped up onto the starboard gunnel and quickly spidered his way forward. There he coiled the bow line and laid it neatly on the deck near the forward hatch cover.

He then worked his way aft and coiled and stowed the stern line, doing it all perfectly, doing his job.

He wondered if anyone had watched him.

CHAPTER
3

THE SKY TURNED A PALE GRAY VIOLET, and golden light fanned out behind the island. Soon the sun would burst up over the mountain and flow down onto the silver black sea and turn it blue, and the island would ripen to greens and purples and browns.

Behind the boat, the village grew small. Scattered lights along the shore winked like campfires. It wasn’t possible that the world could be more beautiful than it was from a boat in Hawaiian waters, Mikey thought.

Well, from what he knew of the world, anyway.

Mikey shook his head.

Better get to work. What to do next?

Get the rods out and put them in their chrome holders. But which ones did Bill want to use? Every day was different. Bill made his choices by the weather, the currents, the shape of the terrain in his depth recorder. Even superstition.

Mikey went into the cabin.

“Which rods should I take out?”

“Let’s run four lines for now,” Bill said. “Two one-thirties and two fifties. I’ll come back and pick out the lures in a minute.”

Bill glanced over at Cal and Ernie, now at the table with mugs of steaming coffee, both of them squeezed onto the bench seats with the girl.

She looked bored, gazing out the window at the dark coastline. Or was she watching everyone in the window reflections? Watching him?

“I figured we might troll on out to the marlin grounds,” Bill said. “That okay with you?”

Some fishermen wanted to get out to the grounds right off, go straight for the big fish. Bill thought that was a waste of ocean. Not far offshore there was a shelf where the currents often churned up a morning of exciting action. Smaller fish, but scrappy fighters. Some anglers, though, wanted swordfish—the other name for marlin—and nothing else. Big game.

“I guess,” Ernie said. “You’re the one supposed to know these waters.”

Mikey studied Ernie, his big arms and balding head. Maybe these guys knew about lakes and streams, but they sure didn’t know much about saltwater game fishing. They thought they did, but they didn’t. They had no idea that they would never in their lives fish with a skipper more skilled than Bill Monks.

Ernie saw Mikey looking and said, “Hey, boy, got another one for you. Why do they put bells on cows? You know that one?”

Mikey shook his head.

“Because their horns don’t work.” He laughed at his own dumb joke as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever told.

Mikey half smiled. It was way too early for this stuff. Jeez.

“Mikey? The rods?” Bill said.

“Oh. Right.”

When they’d gone out past the lighthouse, Bill brought the throttle down to trolling speed. He set the wheel on automatic pilot, then squatted below the bunk across from the table. He pulled out a drawer and went about choosing his lures.

Mikey came back in and watched closely. There was so much to learn, all of it steeped in mystery. Especially choosing the lures, which Bill called plugs. How they worked made no sense at all to Mikey, because none of them looked like any fish in the sea. They looked like toilet-paper holders. Fish ate fish, not toilet-paper holders.

Bill said the plugs weren’t supposed to entice fish to eat them. They were supposed to enrage them. Marlin, especially, hated them and attacked them mercilessly. It made no sense at all, but it worked.

Bill picked out two straight-runners and two chrome-headed jets. He handed one of the straight-runners to Mikey. “Feel that.”

Mikey took it. “Heavy,” he said.

It was a lure that Bill had made himself. Mikey wouldn’t have chosen it in a million years. It was nothing but a shiny chrome tube filled with lead. A wire leader ran to the hooks through a hole bored in its center. Its face was flat, looking kind of like a roll of silver dollars with a rubber skirt on it. Why would any fish want that? Why would it enrage them?

“See this flat head?” Bill said. “That keeps the plug running below the surface on a straight track, like a bullet. Not very many fishermen have faith in a plug like this, but it works.”

“Works for what? Marlin?”

“Ono,” Bill whispered. “They strike at anything, but straight-runners are their favorite. That’s our secret, huh?”

Mikey nodded.

“Hit this thing like a lightning bolt, you watch.”

“Don’t worry.”

Bill grinned. He checked the hooks and the rubber skirting that hid them. “Look. Here’s the thing. The angle of the line and the flat head keep it digging in the water. That’s what makes it run straight.”

Mikey stored that away. Another secret.

He stood and followed Bill out onto the stern deck. Mikey staggered a bit as the boat lurched in the gentle swells.

The sun’s glow brightened the sky behind the mountain. It wouldn’t be long before it spilled over the top.

Mikey attached the two jets to the swivels on their leaders. Bill did the others, all the time studying the water.

Mikey was aware of the girl watching him. He wondered what her name was. Ali? Cal had called her that. Why hadn’t anyone bothered to introduce her to him?

Focus on what you’re doing, Mikey told himself.

Think. Learn something new.

Mikey watched every movement Bill made. When Bill stared into the wake, Mikey stared into the wake. “When you look at the water, don’t just see water,” Bill said. “See color for depth. See current, how it’s moving. Read it, listen to your gut.”

Bill set out the flatlines first, the chrome jets, dropping them one by one over the transom. There was some exact distance he wanted them to run behind the boat, and Mikey knew that was part of what made a skipper great—or mediocre.

Then Bill held up a straight-runner and checked the two giant hooks hidden in the rubber skirting, then checked the skirt itself, one more time. When he was satisfied, he dropped the plug overboard and let the line free-spool out. After a moment or two, he shut off the run, set the clicker on, and yanked one last bit of line off the reel.

“Watch it work in the wake. You’ll know when it’s placed right. You’ll get a feel for it.”

Mikey squinted. He couldn’t even find the lure, let alone watch it. He thought he could see the little spurts of white water that looked like the lure. Maybe.

Bill set the other long line, then rubber-banded it to the stinger line on the outrigger and let go. The outrigger hoisted the line up and away so the shorter flatline could work under it and not get tangled.

Mikey wanted to ask when the lures should run straight. Or zigzag across the wake. Should they make bubbles? Should they dive and jump, or run deep and not come up at all?

But he didn’t want to ask now and look like he didn’t know what he was doing in front of Cal and Ernie, and especially the girl. He’d watch, do what Bill did. Learn like that.

Bill clipped a safety line from each rod socket to each reel. If a rig went overboard, they’d be able to haul it back. Then he went back to the wheel and took the boat off autopilot.

Mikey stood with his knees braced against the transom. He tried to study the action of the lures, but the girl was still on his mind.

Talk to her.

But what about?

Nothing came to him.

He crossed his arms and studied the wake. It was hypnotic, flowing out and out and out, roiling with bubbles, smooth in the center, and the plugs making little spurts of ocean every now and then.

The sun broke over the mountain and dropped color down onto the sea. Mikey turned his face to the warmth.

The engines droned.

He glanced into the cabin.

Cal and Ernie had taken out a deck of cards. Cal was shuffling them, bridging them in the depths of his palms and releasing them, then banging the edges on the table and doing it all again.

The girl now stood in the aisle, facing aft.

Her eyes met Mikey’s.

She tilted her head, slightly.

Mikey smiled and looked away.

He turned back.

She was still looking.