The Styx (22 page)

Faustus baited the hook on Byrne’s rod and tossed his line overboard. During the next hour the men pulled in a dozen fish: several pompano, two more dolphin of equal size to the first, three of what Faustus called redfish, and a four-foot-long shark the face of which Byrne openly compared to that of a Tamany police sergeant.

Byrne snapped only one line when a dolphin dove unexpectedly and he yanked back to stop it instead of letting it run. His observations of Faustus’ moves and technique were so thorough that several times Byrne would make the correction just before the words were out of the old man’s mouth.

“You’re a quick study,” Faustus said while removing the hook from yet another fish’s mouth. “As I knew you would be.

“But we’ve a much bigger challenge ahead and it’s in water you still have never imagined in your deepest dreams.”

The look in the old man’s eyes was disconcerting in its almost religious anticipation. Byrne found his skin tingling with the excitement to come after already being flabbergasted by the experience of fighting the running, instinctual muscle of big fish with a simple bending length of wood and a spool of linen thread. What could the old Mason now have up his sleeve?

“Into the stream, sir!” Capt. Abbott called out, and when Byrne followed Faustus’ gaze he had an answer.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he whispered, looking out and then down into an opaque blue water that was like no color he’d ever witnessed nor thought possible.

Byrne felt the shift of current below them, the boat being pushed against its will to the north. He looked first to Faustus, but the man’s face had taken on a look of one witnessing a deity. Even the craggy Abbott appeared to have a glint of smile on his slash of a mouth.

“It’s the Gulf Stream, son,” Faustus said. “She’s nothing less than a magical river that circles the Gulf of Mexico and then comes surging round the tip of Florida off Key West and runs like a fire hose northbound to New York and on to Nova Scotia.

“Ships have been using her muscle to take a free ride north for centuries. If you just sat on her in a rowboat you’d float your way to shores of Europe herself without taking a single stroke. There’s a whole troupe of Norwegians who pluck tiny sea hearts off their beaches that were once washed off the shores of the Caribbean and simply got lost in the stream and took the ride for thousands of miles.”

Byrne had no doubt of Faustus’ geography lesson, but it was the color of the water that hypnotized him. He laid his chest across the starboard gunwale and reached down to actually touch the water, convinced that if he scooped up a handful he would have a puddle of blue in his palm.

“This is where the finest of the breed work their own fishing grounds, Mr. Byrne. Where they can run as fast as lightening and strike at will then flash away into their own deep universe.”

Faustus was working again at the rigging. Byrne looked over and saw that he was attaching an odd-looking piece of metal to the end of his line. Oblong in shape, like a teardrop, the thin leaf of shiny tin had a hook protruding from the fat end, and unlike Faustus’ other lures, there was a strange barb at the very tip akin to whaling harpoons Byrne had seen at the city docks. It was obvious by its design that such a hook was not going to slip easily out once it speared through the mouth flesh of a fish.

“I had this spoon custom-made by a friend in Philadelphia name of Samuel H. Jones,” Faustus said, tying the pointed end of the teardrop to his line and clamping a series of split lead weights the size of peas to the line to pull it deep. “Sam claims he caught the most beautiful fish he’d ever seen in Florida on a spoon like this up on the Indian River inlet. A tarpon, he called it, as big as a man.”

The old man dropped the lure into the blue and Byrne watched it glitter in the deep light as it sunk deeper and deeper, maybe thirty yards, maybe forty before he could no longer track it. He looked up into Faustus’ eyes and saw a mixture of anticipation, lust and competition that unsettled him at first and then stirred a tingle in his own hands that he recognized as the energy that came only when he had his metal baton in his palm and the threat of violence in his veins.

“Let’s drag her south a bit, captain,” Faustus called out, and Abbott swung the boat about and set a wide sail. Since nothing was said about casting Byrne’s line, he settled a haunch on the gunwale and was content to stare into the water, the depths somehow haunting, as if calling him to fall in and glide down into its warmth. The sun was high now, the reflection causing Byrne to shade his eyes whenever he looked out to follow Faustus’ line into the sea. Despite the breeze he could feel a light sweat under his shirt and also the sting of sunburn on the back of his neck.

“She’ll take it if she wants to,” Faustus said once, though the statement seemed to be directed at no one in the boat. “That’s the power she holds, to do what she wants in a sea of possibilities.”

The words caused Byrne to conjure a glimpse of the white of fabric and green eyes of McAdams’ daughter, a recollection that despite his surroundings and the thrill of the day had not left him.

“Ever had a woman like that, young Pinkerton?” Faustus said, and Byrne looked up to see the old man looking at him instead of the water. “One with the power to snatch and hold you?”

If the old man was performing some Masonic magic trick, reading his mind, Byrne would not have been more taken aback.

“No, sir. Never.”

Faustus chuckled.

“Well if you do young man, hold on just as tight as she does and enjoy the hell out of the adventure.”

The pole in the old man’s hand yanked forward and the linen line started spinning off the reel like a strike of heat lightening. He instinctively pulled back on the rod. It bent in a U-shape, and Byrne was sure the laminate would splinter in Faustus’ hands. He could have sworn he heard the sound of cracking wood but it may have been line zinging off the sides of the cast metal.

“My god!” Faustus pointed the tip of the rod toward the water and let the line and the fish run. When he felt the beast turn, Faustus raised the rod, took in a few turns of the reel, and felt just a bit of the weight of muscle that was at its end. Now the surprise had left his face and been replaced by a startled joy.

“Oh, my, lad, what have we got?”

Byrne was staring after the line, watching it rip through the water like a sharp knife through satin and creating a similar sound. Then before his eyes, it went slack.

Snapped, he thought. But Faustus didn’t move.

“Wait, wait, just you wait now,” he said.

The moment Faustus had hooked the fish, Capt. Abbott had again swung into the wind and even he could not keep his eyes from the sea where the linen line now lay like a string of spittle.

“Wait, wait.” The captain repeated Faustus’ words and Byrne felt the hairs on the back of his neck tingle.

The explosion erupted less than thirty yards off the starboard stern. Byrne swore he saw it coming, a sun glint in the depths, a flurry of silver bubbles rising. It then let loose like a fire hose just below the surface, a burst of water sprayed into the air, a fountain that contained in its middle the body of a silver fish like some scaled angel.

Byrne could not have been more stunned if he’d witnessed a rogue firework explode from a Lower East Side manhole cover.

In midair the beast bent its back to match the arc of Faustus’ fishing rod and then twisted its body in a violent shake and plunged back into the sea.

“Christ on a cross!” said Capt. Abbott, the first non-nautical utterance that had come out of the old sea dog during the entire trip. The boat had come to a standstill, rocking in the long waves. Byrne looked at Faustus for a clue. Both old men watched the water and the tip of the rod. Again like a rip of lightning through a cloud the fish burst the surface, flying higher still while shaking its huge body like a dog trying to dry itself with a shiver and twist.

“She’s a hundert an twenty if she’s a pound, sir,” Abbott said, still in reverence.

“And bound to run, captain.”

“Yes, sir. Coming about, sir.”

Abbott swung the boat by pumping the tiller until the sail could catch wind. Faustus made his way forward in the cockpit, keeping the fish on the port side. Again the line went taut as a guitar string and Faustus let it spool out.

“The line will put a drag on her,” he said. “She’ll have to swim against it. All we can do is follow and hope she’s not strong enough to break it.” For the next hour the men worked the line and the boat, Faustus trying to anticipate the moves of the fish, Abbott following his called out direction.

Byrne could already tell from the beads of sweat rolling off the old man’s face and the bend in his back and bow of his shoulders that he was tiring. The joy had diminished from his face, along with a certain degree of grit.

“Damn, she’s strong,” he said in admiration. He took his eyes off the ocean for a second to look at Byrne, who could do nothing but wipe the old man’s face with a cloth dipped in fresh water. “She’ll run for awhile, but at some point she’s going to buck again, son. And truth be known, I don’t think I’m strong enough anymore to match her.”

Byrne turned to look at the captain.

“No. You son,” Faustus said. “First, get my holster out of the bin there.”

Byrne was used to taking orders, and conceded that Faustus was the one in charge. He went directly to the bin and realized what the man had asked for. Holster? He glanced back at the old man, who was back to the business of horsing the fish.

Byrne began pawing through the bin, searching for and finally finding a dark leather holster wrapped tightly and pressed into one corner. He pulled it out and stood with a .36 caliber Griswold revolver in his hands. What the hell was he planning to do, shoot the damn fish?

“Strap it on, lad,” said Abbott without looking. “Loose like.”

Byrne uncoiled the belt, buckled it around his waist and notched it so the old leather settled on his hips, the gun handle at his right side, all the while wondering what the hell.

“OK,” he said.

Faustus grinned at the gunslinger pose.

“Get rid of the gun, young Pinkerton, though I do not doubt your proficiency with such a mechanism.

“And slide the holster round to the front. Next time she gives us a lull, we’re going to stick the butt of the pole right into that pocket. That way you’ll be able to use that back of yours, son.”

Byrne got the picture, pulled the gun and held it for a second in his hand, the familiar weight of it and the warm metal against his palm. He laid it in the bin and then twisted the holster so it was positioned between his legs and moved to Faustus’ side. On the old man’s command he grabbed the pole with both hands and they jammed the butt down into the holster. For the first time Byrne felt the power of the fish below.

“Jaysus.”

“You got that right, Irish,” he heard the captain say behind him.

“Now, son. Visualize the line below. It’s working in a long curve. The beast pulling it this way and then changing course and pulling it the other,” Faustus waved his hand in a wide motion to describe the movement. “When you feel the pressure ease, you know she’s changed course and you’ve got to move the tip to make sure the line doesn’t snap when it catches up to the turn.”

For the next hour Byrne felt and listened, watched the line, leaned back with the holster digging into his crotch but glad for the leverage it afforded him. His own young muscles began to ache and each long minute he gained respect for Faustus and the fish. While he worked, Faustus talked, giving him what knowledge he had. The old man also fed him fresh water so he wouldn’t have to take his hands off the pole. At one point Abbott removed his own captain’s hat, doused it in the drinking water and then without a word unceremoniously flopped it on top of Byrne’s head and left it there, the shaded coolness running down his face and neck.

All three men could feel the fish slowly turning its easterly course more and more to the north to follow the current of the Gulf Stream.

“Path of least resistance,” Faustus said. “Just like all living things when we tire.

“But beware of the heart in this one, she’ll give it one last try to escape.”

The Florida sun was now in the western sky. Byrne could feel the tightness on the skin of his neck like it had shrunk as it sizzled under the direct heat. They were into the third hour, but he had refused to ask how long this could go on. His back felt like one giant muscle, bunched and aching. At Faustus’ instructions he’d let his arms extend, giving up on flexing them except to reel a small amount of line when he felt the need. The wind continued to blow but mercifully did not increase. Their ride on the swells had become so rhythmic there was almost a music to it.

Byrne was about to turn the rod again when the line went slack.

“No pressure,” he said, alarm in his voice. He let the tip go down toward the water and looked at Faustus. “Did it break? Has she broken it?”

“No!” Faustus reached out to push the rod back in high position. “She’s turning on us. Reel the line, son. Reel the line.”

Byrne spun the handle. Abbott stalled the boat into the wind. All three stared out to the northwest, waiting.

Sun glanced off the wave fronts and tossed deep blue shadows on the backsides. Each glimmer on the sea’s surface caught the men’s attention. Byrne’s knuckles were white on the sweat-stained wood of the rod, his fingers nearly numb as they worked the reel.

The captain saw it first, his sea-trained eyes, despite their age, picked up the silver below the surface.

“There!”

A finger jutted out due north.

Again came the rise of silver and the rip of water. The fish was closer this time, like she needed to see who had beaten her. The long body cleared the ocean but not nearly as high as the first times. The twist was not as violent. The buck was almost listless. But the shine of scaled flesh was even more spectacular in the glancing sun.

After the splash no one said a word. Byrne felt the tension return to the line but it was decidedly feeble.

“Keep reeling,” Faustus said.