Man Trip (10 page)

“H
ey,” Ledward said, waking me an hour later. “You enjoying yourself out here on the ocean?”

I’d just scarfed lunch down like a starving dog, then dozed in the chair. “Yeah, I love it. In fact, I’ve got an idea. How about we stay here a week?”

“I wish … but we have that six o’clock flight.”

I looked out over the sea. “I could do this all day and all night, and then do it again the next day, and the next one after that.”

Baja Bill called down from the bridge. “Any time you want, you just give me a call. All I need is a day to prepare.”

“We’ll do this again,” Ledward said. “But your mama needs to get used to having you gone first. I bet she hasn’t stopped worrying since we left.”

“Why?”

“How moms are.”

It seemed like we’d left home days ago.

Baja Bill put the boat on autopilot and climbed down. He dug bottles of water out of the cooler and handed them around. “This was not what I’d call a normal day out fishing, Calvin. Usually it’s a long quiet boat ride. But today, you brought us luck.”

“And,” Ledward added, tapping my chest with a finger, “you caught our dinner.”

I’d almost forgotten about the ono.

Baja Bill took out his watch, glanced at it, and put it back on. “Better head back. You got a plane to catch.”

We reeled in all the lures and coiled them up with their leaders. When we were finished, Ledward leaned back on a seat and closed his eyes. “Wake me if I fall asleep.”

“What you mean, if?” Baja Bill said.

Ledward grunted.

Baja Bill nudged me. “Come sit with me.”

I followed him up the ladder.

He kicked the boat off autopilot and brought the engines up. We swung around and sped toward the harbor. It felt great to go fast after a day of slow trolling.

“You did a fine job, Calvin. You can be my deckhand anytime.”

“Really?”

“You bet.”

We rode in silence a few minutes before he spoke again.

“Once I was out with a guy from Montana.
Nice guy. We were about a quarter mile south of here and a lot farther out, and we hooked an ahi, and not a small one, either.”

“That’s a tuna, right?”

“Right, but not just any tuna. This one was a
big
tuna. It was late in the day. We were headed back to the harbor, like now, and
boom!
That fish hit like a hammer. But we didn’t see it like we saw the marlin today. No, this one sounded, went straight down. My angler grabbed the reel and tried his best to stop it from going deeper, but that fish just kept on going, because it took a small lure on a light line.”

“Wow.”

Baja Bill waved at another boat that was also heading toward the harbor. The skipper waved back.

“How deep did it go?”

“Deep. When it finally stopped going down, the pressure on the line alone made it feel like we’d hooked a garbage truck. That light line was as tight as steel. I told the guy,
forget it, you’ll never get that fish back up. Cut the line and let’s go home. But the guy said he didn’t come here to hook a fish and then cut the line.”

Baja Bill chuckled.

“Well, if you didn’t see the fish, how’d you know it was a tuna?”

“Just a guess … until we saw it.”

“He got it back up?”

Baja Bill nodded. “Sure did. And you know what came up with it? Sharks. White-tips, scariest creatures in the ocean. We figured that tuna died from the pressure of going so deep, and as my angler worked it back up, those sharks discovered an easy dinner. All we pulled aboard was the head.”

Ho! What a story!

“It took the guy a couple-three hours to get that fish head up to the boat. We pulled into the harbor after
dark. Believe it or not, my angler took that ahi’s head home and had it mounted!”

Baja Bill humphed, as if that were the craziest thing ever.

“Today it sits over his fireplace somewhere in Montana. He sent me a picture of it, and on the back he wrote:
Next time we’re going to catch the rest of this fish!
”

I laughed.

Baja Bill reached over and messed up my hair with his hand. “Find your dream and live it, Calvin. What’s your life worth if you don’t do that?”

Deep-sea fishing might be my dream, I thought.

“I have a question,” I said. “Why did we let that marlin go?”

“I was wondering when you’d get around to that. You see, most anglers who come to fish off the Kona coast would want to keep a big fish like that, if only to get their picture taken standing next to it. But to me, that’s not a good enough reason to kill a big fish. They’re
beautiful creatures. To fight it and win? That’s enough. Unless you fish as a business and sell it for food, there’s no need to kill something with so much life in it. Agree?”

I thought for a moment. “Yeah. It was too big, anyway.”

“Ha!”

“Okay, but why did we stick a tag on it?”

“Research. Each tag is bar-coded. When we get back to the harbor, I’ll fill out a form with the same code. I’ll record the date, the location, and the size of the fish and send it in. When someone catches a fish with a tag he reports it, then you get the information on the tag and you know how much it’s grown and where it’s gone.”

Research? Mr. Purdy would be interested in that.

“A while back, a guy here hooked a small marlin and tagged it. He guessed it was about a hundred pounds. He turned it loose, and a year later someone caught that same fish way down in the South China Sea. It weighed
around two hundred fifty pounds. So people who study fish got some good information.”

“Wow.”

“All life is amazing, Calvin.”

I nodded. I’d never thought about that before.

“You ready to go home and face that bufo problem Ledward said you had? Mow that lawn?”

“He told you about that?”

“Some girl problem, too?”

“What?”

“Don’t worry. Your secrets are safe with me.”

T
he bufos down by the river were croaking loudly when Ledward and I got home that night. I was so tired I could hardly get out of the jeep.

Streak leaped around us like a flea. I scooped her up with a grunt. The driveway
rocked gently, my mind still thinking I was on the boat.

“Looks like you missed me, huh, girl?”

She licked my face. One thing about dogs: they’re always really happy to see you.

As the light in the garage popped on, Ledward grabbed the ice chest we’d borrowed from Baja Bill. The cleaned ono sat wrapped in butcher paper on a bed of dry ice.

Mom and Darci came out, Darci with a chocolate ice cream cone. I was so hungry I could have eaten the box the cones came in.

“I was beginning to worry about you two,” Mom said, giving me a hug. “So how did your man day go?”

“It was awesome,
Mom. I caught an ono! That’s a big fish that looks like a barracuda, and you can also call it a wahoo. We got it in here.” I tapped the ice chest.

Mom peeked inside. “Whoa,” she said. “That’s a lot of fish!”

“This boy was born for fishing,” Ledward said. “He’s a real angler.”

Darci pulled on my T-shirt. “Did you like going on a plane, Calvin?”

“Yeah. It was cool.”

Like I flew on planes all the time. No big deal.

Darci grinned. “Me and Mom are going to fly to Kauai.”

“You’ll like it, Darce.”

Mom smiled and pulled Darci close. “You men must be hungry.”

“I could eat this entire fish,” Ledward said. “But it’s late. How’s about tomorrow I come over, put it on the grill with lemon and butter?”

“It’s a date,” Mom said.

While Ledward packed the fish into the
freezer and some in the fridge for the next day, Mom made us toast and fried eggs on rice. I gobbled mine down with shoyu—what Willy calls soy sauce. Nothing could have tasted better.

As I ate, I looked around.

“Where’s Stella?”

“At the movies with Clarence.”

Dang. I wanted her to see I caught a fish. I wanted Clarence to see it, too.

After we ate, Mom brought out some cookies. “So, did you get pictures of your trip?”

Pictures?

She looked at Ledward. “You
did
bring a camera, didn’t you?”

“Oops,” he said.

Mom stared at him.

Then at me.

Then back at Ledward. “The biggest thing Calvin has done since he went to see Johnny at the auditorium and you didn’t take a camera?”

Johnny was my dad—Little Johnny Coconut, a famous singer who had a hit song called
“I Love Sunshine Pop.” He and my mom were divorced, and now he lived in Las Vegas.

Ledward opened his hands. “Forgot.”

“No,” Mom said. “You didn’t forget, because it was never in your head to begin with.”

Ledward gave me a guilty look. “Sorry,” he said. “I should—”

“I’ve got it all right here, Mom,” I said, tapping my head.

Mom sighed.

“Got to say good night,” Ledward said, pulling his keys out of his pocket. “I’m beat.”

As we walked Ledward out through the garage, I saw a note stuck under my garage-bedroom door.

I grabbed it.

“What’s that?” Mom asked.

I unfolded it. And groaned.