Last Tide
The fog drifted in ghostly tendrils along the smooth dark waters of the Puget Sound . Sputterings and rumblings of outboard motors, which pushed wood and metal through the dark, could be heard to mark the passing of unseen numbers of fisherman on the early August morning. In one such 16 foot aluminum Lund , two men could be seen, illuminated by the white light of a Coleman propane lantern. One looked on in abject silence as the other, with studied confidence, deftly cut herring at precise angles as he steered with his knee.
Small sharp slaps of the water, and the whisper of a fishing knife slipping across a cutting board were, for a brief instant, the only sounds that could be heard. It was well past the hour of the dead, but perhaps death didn’t carry a wristwatch. These were the morbid mental wanderings of one man’s mind just before he felt he must shatter the silence or go mad.
“I don’t know Marty, I’ve never fished with a downrigger before.” Jim Zahn said, breaking the misty pre-dawn silence of the Puget Sound . Jim looked on the rugged lantern lit profile of Marty Shore
As if touched by divine talent, Marty Shore spat a glistening brown stream of tobacco juice in a fabulous arch that passed out of the sphere of lantern light, more than fifteen feet from the boat. He spoke low, and slow, as he leveled his empty gaze at Jim. “You tryin’ to teach me how to fish, boy? In my own boat? I been feedin’ my family for thirty years outta these waters. They been eatin’ well too. Every one of 'em fat.” The volume of Marty’s voice never changed; it never raised; it never changed pitch, but a cold dread ran all along the length of Jim’s spine all the same. “You try givin’ me advice again, I’ll kick your sorry Bellevue ass outta my boat, and you’ll be luck I don’t tie you to my anchor line first.” Marty leaned his compact frame toward Jim. “Are we clear, Boy?”
“Uh-huh” was the best response Jim could come up with. He didn’t think now was the time for anything humorous. He had been regretting for over an hour that he had begged Marty to take him fishing. This feeling had just increased exponentially. He remembered his discussion of the fishing trip with a buddy at work. Jim had told his buddy how he was going to be learning how to fish “The Sound” from the best. To this his friend Daryl had responded that the fish were biting so good on the Sound this summer that all you had to do was shake your dick at them and they’d jump in the boat to get at it. Daryl had insisted that learning a few new fishing tips was not worth spending a day in a boat with the scariest son-of-a-bitch this side of the Mississippi . Jim was just thinking that he had come to agree with Daryl and was seriously considering faking an appendicitis attack to try to cut the day short with his guide, when the master spoke.
“Okay, your line’s ready, Boy. I’ll hook on this weight. See how you do it?” Marty didn’t wait for a response. “Then you loosen up the drag on your real a little. Yeah, like that. Now, back off the drag on the downrigger. Not that much! Okay, there. Now, let it bail out until it reads 80. Then you tighten it back down. Don’t light up a smoke though. You’ll have a fish on your line before you could dig that pack of smokes out of your shirt pocket.”
“Wanna bet?” Jim said, taking a risk and trying to gauge his mentor’s mood.
“Ten, or fifty, what’ll it be?”
“I can’t afford fifty.” Jim said, not knowing how Marty would react to losing fifty dollars before the sun had even come up.
“Okay, Pussy. “ Marty spat contemptuously. “You’re on.”
Jim watched as Marty quickly set up his line, and noticed that he didn’t put it into the water. “Aren’t you going to fish?”
“Don’t want to get our lines tangled.”
“So you say. Here I am coming up on eighty. There we go. Tighten it up.” Jim murmured “Like that?” He asked and caught the nod from Marty. Jim decided he’d test Marty’s mood a little farther and was reaching for his Marlboro Lights when the tip of his fishing rod began to dance.
* * *
An hour later, Jim and Marty were setting up to catch their last two silvers. They had been throwing back “Humpies” left and right, and were sticking to silvers for the day. It hadn’t even become fully light and the two were about ready to head in with their limits. Jim, not only had given up his plan to fake appendicitis, but was considering recommending Marty for sainthood.
Marty had kept them fishing the same area since they started, but now decided to change his tactics for their last two fish. Jim didn’t see and point, but he had long since ceased to question Marty’s expertise in this fishing expedition. Jim figured if he wanted to keep his next month’s paycheck, he had better keep his mouth shut. He was already close to a hundred dollars down from taking Marty’s bets.
The two were making a pass near a buoy a bit south of their previous location and Jim was letting out line. Marty was holding back on his bait as Jim had noticed him doing all morning. Suddenly, the tip of Jim’s pole dropped hard. He turned to give his guide another “well done,” but noticed a strange, anxious look on Marty’s face.
“That don’t look right,” was all that Marty said.
As he worked at bringing up his catch, Jim said, “This thing must be huge.” He slowly heaved up on the pole. Then he let the tip drop as he quickly reeled in, trying to keep up with the fishing line before he lost any headway.
“No, it just ain’t fightin’ any. Might even be dead.”
Jim didn’t know why, but he was feeling that prickly sensation along his spine again. “Should I just cut the line and let it go? If it isn’t anything we want to keep we might as well let it go before we even bring it up.”
“No! No, we ought to see what it is, at least.” Jim was thinking this was the first time during the day that Marty had seemed to have gotten riled up. He hadn’t even wiped that sleepy look off of his face for the last ten strikes. All of a sudden, a spark seemed to have been lit under him. Jim guessed that Marty had played the same fishing scenario over and over for the last 30 years without anything out of the ordinary happening. It must have gotten to the point of being tiresome if nothing unexpected turned up.
“Don’t jerk up on the line like that. You’ll snap it. Just pull up slow and steady. Let him come up through the water at his own pace. There you go.”
“Can you see it yet, Marty?”
“Sometimes fishin’ is slow work, son. Just keep at it.” Jim wondered at being elevated in rank, in Marty’s book, from boy to son. “Well I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch.” Marty shouted. “Hey, you gotta’ weak stomach?”
“No, not really.” Jim grunted as he wrestled the weight up with his pole. “Why do you ask?”
“Cause if you puke in my boat, you’re cleaning it.” Marty answered, never raising his eyes from the murky green waters of the Puget Sound .”
“I don’t puke.”
“Betcha fifty bucks you do today.”
“You’re on!” Jim spat quickly before Marty could take it back. He figured he could make back at least some of his losses on the day. Jim leaned over the side to get a look at what he was bringing up. He was so shocked at the sight of the shirtless corpse, which looked like it might be a young man, suspended five feet below the surface that he lost hold of the fishing pole he was using. Through the swirling eddies of plankton and green tinted water, the man’s pants, held up by a black belt, appeared to be a pale green, though Jim assumed they were actually white. At least, they probably once had been. Through the imperfect light of the morning the men could not make out any more details.
Marty sprang from the back of the boat and lay hold of Jim’s pole on the first bounce. A bloated body doesn’t sink fast, and this one looked as though it might already have been floating up on its own, so there wasn’t much worry that it could have dragged the pole over the side in any hurry.
“Boy, that’s a $150 setup you almost had to pay me for, alongside the other $150 you owe me.” Jim guessed he had just lost ground on the Marty respect scale again.
“Huh. . . $150? Wait a second. I haven’t puked. That’s going to bring me back to 50.
“We’ll see.” Marty said confidently. Jim watched as Marty called for Coast Guard help on his radio. “They’ll be here in about twenty minutes.”
“I heard.” Jim responded.
“Well help me get it in.”
“What? No way. What would you want to do that for?”
“What? No way. What would you want to do that for?”
“Cause if we lose it before the Coast Guard gets here, they’ll think we made it up, and they might fine us. I’m not sure you can afford that. You’ll be eatin’ Top Ramen for the next month as it is. Hand me that boat hook. I’ll wrap it around the belt and yank it up.”
“Okay, but I’m not touching him.” Jim said weakly.
“Whatever you say, Pussy.” Marty then jabbed the boat hook toward the belt, but the body’s bloated abdomen deflected the pole several times before he got it caught up. Eventually, Marty was able to bring the body close enough to the boat that he was able to run a length of rope through the belt and secure the body in case they lost their grip on it. “Okay, now you can cut your fishin’ line”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Let’s stow the gear so it ain’t in our way. I guess we’re about done fishin for the day.” After the men had packed away the fishing equipment in the sixteen foot boat, Marty announced that they were going to bring the body aboard.
“What the hell for?”
“We keep it hanging off right here in the open, something’s gonna start trying to snack off it. You want to tell its family, and the Coast Guard you let that happen? Don’t worry, Pussy, we’ll loop this rope under the armpits. You won’t hardly even get your hands dirty.”
After a few minutes, the two, men had the line around the body and were trying to lift it clear of the water. Jim had worried about it being gross when Marty had insisted on bringing the body in. Now he realized, it was going to be hard work, too. The body, which had floated lightly, didn’t seem so light as they tried to lift it up and clear over the gunwale. The boat tipped, though not enough to put it in danger of flipping. As the men brought the shoulders above the gunwale, the head flopped toward Jim. Hearing the clunk of the head against the cold aluminum side of the boat, Jim wondered that the body wasn’t stiff with rigor mortis, like on TV. Frozen, he stared at the cracked and pale purple blob that had swollen to fill the mouth. There was a wet belching sound and gas escaped past the tongue, followed closely by an insect that scurried out of the mouth and dropped into the bottom of the boat. When the sour, sweet smell of decomposition hit him, Jim lost his hold on the body, and lost another bet.
“I guess maybe we better just leave him tied off on the side here until the Coast Guard shows up.” Marty chuckled darkly past a smirk. “Gotta’ hand it to ya’. You didn’t get none of that puke in my boat.” Tucking chewing tobacco into his lip, with dirty hands, Marty said, “I guess you got time for that smoke now, son.”
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