Sacculina Read online

  It was time to go.

  And here they were, after the drive, and the crappy hotel, and the late night. They had actually made it to the dock, miraculously, on time. Made it down to the shitty boat, ready to fish the deep blue waters of the ocean for god-knew-what. And now this fat, sloppy, cartoonish captain, with his long white hair and bushy beard, his thick glasses and his Las Vegas trucker cap, was telling them the weather’s too rough? The waves too high?

  Jim shook his head. “Bullshit,” he said, loudly enough that everyone looked at him, Henry in shock, Jack with a half-smile. Jim stepped past them, right up to the captain.

  “We chartered the boat to go fishing, man,” he said. “Unless there’s a hurricane coming, or you’ve had a Jaws sighting, we’re getting in that boat and we’re going to go out there,” he pointed to the ocean for effect, “and fish.”

  The captain, even more wide-eyed than before, looked to Henry, then to Jack, who simply shrugged.

  “Look,” Jack said, calmly and with good humor, “if it’s a danger thing, we get that. But if it’s just a matter of it not being ideal weather, we’d like to give it a go. My anxious little brother here is a little worried because, well, he really loves to fish.”

  Jim had never fished before in his life. None of them had as far as he knew. But when they asked Jack what he wanted to do, what would be the most fun “out of jail” event they could throw together, he immediately suggested a fishing trip with the men. Not that there were any women to speak of, but Chris warmed quickly to the idea, and who was Jim to complain? Their father called around, found a charter, and scheduled a day. It was easy. They didn’t need to provide poles, or bait, or the boat. It was all part of the deal. Part of the package. It was an expensive package, no doubt, but Henry found a way. Jim thought Henry, in his quiet way, was actually pretty excited about the idea.

  Maybe he could make it back, Jim thought while watching Henry talk through the trip itinerary with Jack and Chris over pizza that first night of Jack’s freedom. Maybe he could make it back to being the father he once was, the man he once was. If not all the way, then part of the way. Enough to add some years to his sad life, to let him wake up a little happier in the morning. Enough to make him their father again.

  “Not to mention he had a few beers last night... well, this morning,” Jack continued, smiling openly at his little brother. “So, look, if it’s a matter of rough water, or poor fishing, we don’t really give a shit. We just want to get out there, into the water and, you know, have a nice time.”

  The captain rubbed a hand over his mouth, looked at Jack, then Jim, then turned and looked at the water. He walked to the edge of the deck, spit over the edge, watched whatever happened to his saliva when it hit the churning water below. He glanced at the sky, the lightening cloudbanks, the oncoming yellow glow of God’s morning piss melting through the slate-gray sky.

  He turned, rubbed his chin. “Alright. I think we can go. But if it gets too choppy, yeah, we gotta come in. My call,” he said, tugging at one suspender. “Captain’s call.”

  Jack clapped his hands together and Jim let go of a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Chris let out a “fuck yeah” and climbed heavily into the boat, causing it to tilt wildly before he found the middle, balancing it out. Henry followed, then Jack hopped in right behind him.

  Jim went to follow, but the captain put an iron-firm hand on his shoulder. He turned Jim toward him, stared into his eyes. Jim swallowed, suddenly terrified of this large, bristly old man. He smelled tuna fish and cigarette smoke on the captain’s breath, could count the coarse black hairs protruding from his nostrils. The captain leaned in close, his firm hand tightening.

  “You look weak to me, yeah? First time on a boat, yeah?” He smiled a little, his wet lips curling deep within the nest of white hair. “Well, when you gotta puke, boy,” he said, in an almost inaudible whisper, “and you will have to puke... you do it over the side, ya hear? Not on my boat. And not in the head, see? Over the side. I ain’t working a mop, ya get me, kid?”

  Jim nodded. “Whatever, man, I got it.”

  The hand squeezed once more, then released. “Good,” he said, smiling wickedly. “Then in you go, sonny. We’ve fish to catch!”

  The captain bounded into the boat, and Jim, still stuck to the dock, turned back without reason, looked once more toward land. He saw their father’s brown truck, alone and dark in the parking lot off the pier.

  Beyond the rim of the hollowed-out buildings, he could see the sun rising in the east, pink and swollen and wrathful, urging him onward, promising him that, ready or not, the new day was coming.

  He turned away and stepped into the boat.

  * * *

  The fumes from the engine were already making Jim sick, and he wondered if it was a good idea after all to brave the whipping wind and wild waves of the angry sea.

  Chris and Jack had cracked open the cooler and were holding cans of Budweiser, their eyes glued to the sprays of water and the broad expanse of ocean beyond as the boat cut through the waves, engine roaring like an angry demon, white smoke trailing from behind them. With every rise and crashing fall as the boat crested wave after wave after wave, Jim was sure the stupid thing would crack open like an egg and spit them all into the frigid water. He shuddered at the cold and at the small stab of unease that buoyed in his guts at the thought of being pushed into the dark sea, swallowed a bubble of bile that came up into his throat. Carefully, he leaned toward the cooler, tossed open the lid, pulled a beer from inside—purposely ignoring the clear plastic bags of sandwiches, frosted with moisture from the processed meat that lay within. He slammed the cooler shut, sat back onto the rigid bench, waited for the boat to crest a rather nasty wave, then cracked the beer and drank. The cold bitter liquid soothed his throat, washed away the unease, cleared his aching head.

  Better, he thought. Much better.

  He looked across the boat, saw his father watching him. Jim nodded, motioned with the beer as to offer one to his old man, but Henry just gave a small smile, his sad eyes twitching away, back toward the sea.

  Thirty minutes later, just when Jim thought he would be forced to jump over the side to escape the teeth-grinding, mind-numbing whine of the motor, the thick, gagging fumes of gasoline, and the constant rise and fall of the boat as they smashed their way into the ocean’s broad belly, the engine abruptly quieted and the boat slowed down.

  The captain let the boat idle, making the fumes and exhaust even worse than before, no longer whipped away behind them, but now settling over the deck like a pungent, poisonous gray cloud.

  “Well, okay, it’s rough, yeah,” he barked from the open standing shelter that housed him. “So, here’s the deal, it’s too rough to fish where I’d like, too rough for you boys, for sure. So, okay, there’s a piece of real estate about another, oh, hour or so out.”

  Jack and Chris shared a quick, wary glance. Another hour? Jim swallowed, lifted his shirt over his mouth and nose, tried not to think about his stomach.

  “Yeah, about an hour,” he continued, as if they’d asked the question out loud. “But, but... it’s deep. Real deep. More than six thousand meters if you can believe it. Cold and dark and still, well, more still than this. Lots of fish. Albacore, Yellowtail, maybe even Barracuda. That’d be a story for your friends, eh? So, that’s my plan. Any objections?”

  They all looked at each other, stupid and sleepy and sea-sick. No one spoke. “Right,” the captain said, pulling off his grimy cap to finger his bald pate, scratch at the long white hairs surrounding his wide dome like an encroaching serpent army, “that’ll be that, then. On we go.”

  Henry spoke up. His wobbly voice timid in the thrashing air, his frame tiny against the wide blue carpet of sea surrounding them. “Captain Ron,” he said, trying to sound authoritative, at least. “Is it safe?”

  The captain turned, looked at Henry, then toward the coast no longer visible to the naked eye.

&nbs
p; “Safe?” he said, and chuckled, a raspy, dark, clunky thing that left his mouth like the exhaust fumes from his vessel’s engine.

  He eyed each of the men, a small smile on his fat, doughy face. His googly eyes settled on Jim a moment, then flicked around to the others before turning his broad belly back toward the controls.

  “Ocean ain’t never safe, Mr. Lowell,” he said over his shoulder, gunning the engine. “Thought you boys knew that!”

  * * *

  Chris was the first to get a bite.

  After a grueling hour Jim would not soon forget, the boat settled in the area the captain had sold them on. Once the engine cut and the fumes cleared, Jim agreed the water did seem calmer than what they had cut through during the last hour. It was a rich, heavy blue, and if he looked down at it long enough, he thought he could make out the black void in lie beneath their relatively microscopic vessel, the deep cold water resting just outside the sun’s reach.

  The boat rocked steadily, the wind strong but not the twisting gusts it had been. The captain set up eight fishing poles, each pointed to the sky in its own iron sheath, the hooks baited, the lines taut as they reached for prey. He’d given two poles for each of them to watch, under instruction to call him over when there was a bite.

  Despite the fresh salt air and the lack of fumes from the extinguished motor, Jim had already vomited over the side of the vessel—twice—and his face felt waxy and blood-drained, his throat raw, his stomach tight and pruned. Jack and Chris had laughed, of course, but Jack handed him a fresh beer each time, something to “get the stink off his tongue.” Their father looked a little green himself, but somehow managed, at least up until now, to keep his sea-sickness contained.

  At least now they could settle themselves and finally begin to enjoy the excursion. They kicked back and watched their designated poles.

  They’d been lounging no more than half an hour when the sun made its presence known, the heat causing them to shed their outermost layers, flannels and jackets tossed in a pile atop a box of old rope and stained life vests.

  The sudden jerking of the pole, followed immediately by the whinny of the reel being pulled, brought them alert, and even Jim, sick and miserable as he was, popped to his feet at the sudden adrenaline rush of the moment. Chris all but leapt at the rod, grasping it in two hands and lifting it deftly from the holder, a giant, nervous smile breaking over his face.

  “Whoa! I got one,” he yelled.

  “Let ‘er run a bit,” the captain said from the wheelhouse, watching the distant ocean as if he could see the fighting fish dancing in the dark cold depths. “Give it line, there’s plenty there. Let’s get her tired, yeah?”

  Chris, flushed with excitement—the buzz of the six or so beers only a whisper in his head now, drowned out by the frantic, inherent screams of the hunter—pulled back on the rod, the reel spinning and whining in his hands. He stood, knuckles white, muscles of his bulging arms flexing as he waited for the moment when he could fight back.

  “What do you think it is? Feels strong as hell,” he said over his shoulder to the approaching captain.

  “Yuh, it’s got some speed to her, that’s for sure. Could be anything, there are sunfish that could pull a man clean off a boat, a’ course that’s more down south a ways...”

  “Should I, you know, reel it in?” he asked.

  The captain looked to the reel, slowing now, then back to the sea. He nodded. “Yuh okay, real slow, though. Let’s see what kind of fighter we got here.”

  Chris began to turn the reel, inch-by-inch he brought the line back in, each rotation causing the reel to click in response. The rod was bent over like a thin black rainbow, the exposed line shimmering with seawater in the morning sun.

  “Woo! Yeah!” Jack whooped from behind Chris, all of them watching the pinprick where the line entered the ocean body twenty yards distant. “Bring that little shit in here, big guy.”

  “It’s really fightin’ me,” Chris said through clenched teeth, the reel clicking slowly as he turned it, bringing the catch closer. “It must be a big sucker.”

  The captain put a hand on Chris’s shoulder, gently, his eyes never leaving the water. “Easy now,” he said softly, reassuringly. “Take ‘er slow.” He reached down to the side of the boat and picked a long net off two rubber yellow hooks. He held it up vertically like a wizard’s staff, then extended it over the back of the boat. He reached out with his other hand, gently curled a finger around the taut fishing line.

  “Should hold,” he said, but without much confidence. “Don’t know what you got there... but it’s an angry S.O.B., for sure.”

  They all waited, Chris groaning but obviously exhilarated, the rest of them keeping one eye on his victim, the other on their own poles, making sure they didn’t go taut with a similar catch. They were expectant, a little afraid, unsure of themselves in the strange environment, so far from familiar things. What did they know of fishing? What did they know, these kids from the dusty streets outside Bakersfield, of the great ocean?

  Despite the sport and the adrenaline of the moment, Jim couldn’t shake the sudden feeling that they were surrounded, in a menacing way he could not comprehend, by endless water and unknown creatures. In his mind, the boat was nothing more than a dark blob floating in the bright blue sky of the ocean’s underworld, unaware of all that lie beneath, blind to anything that may lay waiting under the surface of this alien landscape, biding its time before striking. A boat like theirs could easily be toppled by a rogue wave, the passengers tossed into the sea, food for the elegant monsters below. In the deep water, they could be killed even by the curious; against intent they’d have no chance at all.

  Chris was sweating now, his arms shaking, his feet shuffling. Jack stepped to his side, leaned over the edge of the boat.

  “You want me to take it, just for a bit? Let you rest?”

  “Hell no!” Chris said, so loudly it seemed blasphemous in the blue cathedral of sea and sky. “Ain’t no way I’m letting some fuckin’ fish get the best of me, man, no way no how.”

  “All right, all right...” Jack said soothingly, smiling. He glanced at the captain, who shrugged, as if saying, you asked for it, here it is. Good luck.

  Minutes passed, and Chris kept turning the reel, and then, finally, about ten yards out, something broke the surface.

  “What the hell is it?” Chris asked.

  “I... well, I dunno,” the captain said, sounding uncertain, confused. “Looks like a sea bass, and not a very big one, but I’ll be damned if it ain’t fighting like a shark.” He poised the net over the water, feet spread apart, braced. “Keep ‘er coming now...”

  Suddenly, in a flash of slick gray and a burst of spray, the fish leapt from the water, no more than ten feet out, wriggling in the air as if it were being electrocuted. It crashed back down, vanished.

  “Holy shit!” Jim yelled, a stupid smile plastered across his face. “Did you see that thing?”

  He punched Jack in the shoulder and the brothers smiled at each other, just two little boys again, in awe of something wondrous.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Henry asked.

  Henry stood timidly to the side, stiff and unaffected. His eyes were fixed on the broken water where the fish had slipped below the surface and out of sight.

  The captain turned on Henry, annoyed.

  “What’s wrong with it is it’s pissed off!” he said, and gave that dry chuckle again. Jack laughed as well, buzzed on Budweiser, loving the freedom and thrill of the moment.

  “No, I mean, I know...” Henry said, embarrassed. “But it doesn’t look right.”

  “Well,” the captain replied, “it’s gonna look like dinner if the big man here can get ‘er in the boat.”

  Jim studied his father, who shrugged and continued staring at the sea. His disconnection to current events was palpable, the emotionless of him in sharp contrast to everyone else on the boat, a shadow in the bright sun.

>   “There she is!” the captain yelled, and Jim leaned forward, could see the thing wiggling in the water, just a few feet away now. It was big, but not huge, and he couldn’t help feeling let down the by averageness of the fish. It was maybe a foot-and-a-half, a streaking, snaking thing. “Just hold ‘er there...”

  The captain dipped the net into the water, brought it up from underneath the fish, surrounded it. He angled the pole upward, lifting the netted fish high into the air, its fight now diminished to twitches and the occasional flop, spraying them all with its oily wet residue. Jim studied it as the captain moved the net back into the boat.

  Henry was right, he thought. It did look strange. It looked very strange.

  It was longer than he’d thought, now that he could see it closely, maybe two feet, and thick, like a child’s thigh. But the skin was wrong. It was... lumpy. There were black, pinecone-sized knobs on it. A bunch of them.

  The captain whistled. “It’s a nice fish, although the liberals frown on keeping the sea bass, but I ain’t gonna say nothing. Here, get the hook outta there while I hold it. You!” he barked, his eyes on Jim. “Open my fish hatch, right there.” The captain nodded his head at a handle in the boat floor, and Jim, without time to be pissed for being ordered around by the fat bastard, bent over the handle and hauled it upward, revealing a mildewed basin below.

  Chris was finishing with the hook, but frowning as he worked, disgust on his face. “What’s that on him?”

  The captain held the netted fish over the deck, let it hover over the waiting hatch. He looked at the fighting, desperate creature, squinting at the black knuckle-shaped protrusions that dotted its head and side. Jim counted at least five of the things.

  “I’ll be damned,” the captain said, moving as close as he dared, the fish’s glass eye staring back at him. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say those are barnacles.”

  He tapped a finger through the netting, poking one of the hard crustaceans near the fish’s head that all but covered one of its wide, black eyes. “Ain’t that something,” he mumbled, then slowly lowered the fish, still tangled within the large net, into the hatch. He flipped the rod and the fish dropped out of the net and onto the plastic bottom of the hold. It flopped madly, dying slowly from lack of water-fueled oxygen, suffocating on air. The barnacles stuck to the fish scratched the white plastic, scraping savagely as the fish twisted and wrestled out its life.