Mark Mills - Amagansett

‘That’s the truth,’ called Chase from the bridge. ‘Ask old Eric Doucette, he’ll tell you. If you can find him. No one’s seen him since.’

Penrose shifted nervously in his chair. ‘What happened?’

‘Worked a commercial boat out of Old Harbor on Block Island. Experienced bluefin man. Been fishing ‘em since ever, them Nova Scotians. Hooked a large giant out there in the mud hole, just last year it was. Anyhow, he fights it to the boat and it’s laying there in the water, dead as mutton, or so he thinks. He’s wiring it up when that fish comes to life, takes off straight down. Only thing is, Doucette’s got the wire looped round his arm. Gone in a flash. Straight over the side. Still down there probably, cruising around. Who knows, maybe it dropped him off back in Nova Scotia.’

‘That’s terrible,’ said Gayle Wallace.

‘That’s bluefin for you, don’t want to mess with ‘em.’

Chase was right. For sheer brutish power and endurance the bluefin had no equals among the big-game fish. For all their leaps and fancy acrobatics, marlin and sailfish tired quickly, and it was often said that once you’d hooked a giant bluefin nothing else would do.

Conrad rested a reassuring hand on Penrose’s shoulder. ‘You’ll be okay. Just keep the rod butt in the gimbal and your hands away from the reel.’

He turned his attention to the Senator, whose eyes were fixed on his bait some thirty yards astern of the boat.

‘What line are you carrying?’ asked Conrad.

‘Hundred pound.’

‘Won’t be much fun if we hit some thirty-pound schoolies.’

‘A fish is a fish,’ said the Senator.

Asshole, thought Conrad.

‘What’s the record this year in these waters?’ asked the Senator.

‘Cap, what’s the record this year?’ called Conrad to the bridge.

‘Seven hundred and thirty-six pounds,’ came back the reply.

‘Sweet Jesus.’

‘Pappy!’

‘A third of a ton,’ muttered the Senator. More than enough to put the demon of that giant North Carolina bluefin to rest. He adjusted himself in his chair and waited.

And waited.

Half an hour later they were still trolling back and forth on the offshore grounds, the only consolation being that none of the other boats they could see appeared to be hooked up.

The girls had lost interest by now and had retreated to the shade where they were chatting and flipping through magazines. The men, all five of them, were smoking cigars and talking about Yale. Rollo had climbed to the masthead where he was perched on the old automobile seat that served as a lookout. He was scouring the ocean for telltale signs—a surface break, or a darkened patch, like the shadow of a cloud, indicating a school of baitfish.

‘What do you say we anchor up and try chunking them?’ called the Senator to the bridge.

They’d come prepared with a tub of mashed menhaden chum, but Chase wasn’t ready to start heaving it over the side.

‘They’re out there, I can smell ‘em. And the troll bite’s been holdin’ up good all season.’

‘Did he say he can smell them?’ asked Penrose senior.

Manfred Wallace blew out his cigar smoke. ‘He doesn’t mean it literally.’

‘Don’t be so sure,’ said Conrad.

Manfred Wallace didn’t appreciate the comment, or the tone. It rankled him, though not enough to warrant a response.

‘I don’t know,’ called the Senator to the bridge. ‘My guess is they’re settled in.’

Chase didn’t reply. He didn’t need to. The fish did the talking for him. The water just behind the Senator’s bait erupted in a blur of blue and bronze.

‘Holy shit…’

The Senator’s reel came to life, whirring to a mist as the tuna made a blistering run to starboard. Chase eased the throttle forward to set the hook, then spun the wheel hard and opened it up.

Conrad seized the back of the Senator’s chair, turning it to keep the fish lined up. The others gathered round, staring, mesmerized by the sheer speed of the fish—a hundred yards, two hundred…

‘Look at it go,’ said Manfred.

‘It’s not going anywhere,’ said the Senator.

The bluefin stripped two hundred and fifty yards off the reel before sounding.

‘You get a look at it?’ asked the Senator. ‘All I saw was the hole it left.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Conrad. ‘Not a giant. Maybe fifty pounds.’

‘Seventy,’ called Chase.

Either way, the Senator was right—it wasn’t going anywhere, not attached to a hundred-pound test line. It was simply a matter of cranking it in, something the Senator was clearly quite capable of doing. Twice Conrad spotted him back off the drag on his reel, allowing the fish to make another rush. This was done for the benefit of the spectators, to make him look good—man and fish locked in battle.

It was all over in ten minutes, the fish alongside the boat. Conrad gaffed it under the chin and Rollo secured a strap around its tail. Together they hauled it up over the gunwale. It flopped on to the deck, its flanks flashing iridescent blue in the sunlight, grading through bronze to the silver of its belly.

‘Poor thing,’ said Gayle Wallace.

‘It’s your daddy I’m after,’ said the Senator.

‘Bait off the port bow,’ called Chase.

Conrad hurried aloft. In the distance, birds were flocking, with more arriving by the second.

‘Big school of bait comin’ up fast.’

‘What do you think’s driving them?’

‘Well, it ain’t lobsters,’ grinned Chase, edging the throttle forward.

As they drew closer Conrad said, ‘Jesus.’

‘Even he couldn’t walk on that lot,’ muttered Chase.

The surface of the ocean was churning with life. And death. Gannets and gulls swooped and slammed on to the water from above, snapping up sparkling baitfish, while hundreds of frenzied school tuna flashed to and fro, their distinctive sickle fins scything through the chop. Every now and then one would break clear of the water in its eagerness to kill, jaws snapping at the silver mist of baitfish leaping before it. There were other fish present too, striped bass and bluefish, both fearsome hunters, and also ready to take to the air for their prey, but no match for a speeding bluefin. A couple of sharks lazily patrolled the fringes of the melee, biding their time, allowing the tuna to tire themselves out.

It was as if two invisible hands had corralled all living creatures from the surrounding waters into five acres of ocean and ordered them to fight it out amongst themselves. Conrad had once seen a school of large stripers rip through a pod of menhaden—and a shocking spectacle it had been—but he had never witnessed anything on this scale, the whole savage cycle of life in the ocean laid bare for human eyes.

And in that moment, staring down from the flying bridge, Conrad saw himself reflected back: blind, raging, unmerciful. Inhuman, but not unfeeling. That was the worst of it, what marked men out, their curse—the clean, sweet taste of vengeance, the deaths of those you had known atoned for on the altar of the battlefield, their lives memorialized in the letting of yet more innocent blood.

‘Well?’ said Chase.

‘Huh?’

‘I said best go ready them rods.’ He spat a stream of tobacco on to the boards at his feet. ‘And the idiots what’s holdin’ ‘em.’

The Zephyr edged into the fray and they took their place in the upper orders of the food chain. It was merely a matter of dropping a live bait over the side; the hit would happen within a matter of moments.

Chase nosed the boat back and forth through the seething waters, glancing over his shoulder every so often, swinging the wheel to keep the lines from tangling. By the time the other charter boats arrived on the scene, each member of the party had hooked and boated a tuna, including the girls.

It wasn’t enough, though. They wanted more. And they got them. For almost an hour they got them. They were small fish, in the thirty—to fifty-pound range, but after hooking a half-dozen of them even the Senator was ready to vacate his chair.

The bite dropped off when the sharks moved in, scattering the tuna. The chop gradually subsided. Apart from a few gulls swooping for scraps, there was little evidence of the carnage they’d witnessed, and shared in.

Conrad dropped the tuna into the hold, piling ice around them, while Rollo swabbed the deck, slick from the blood of the throats they’d cut.

The Wallaces and their guests celebrated with Champagne, faces flush from exertion and exhilaration, talking excitedly. Glasses were raised to the skipper and his crew, though not offered to them, and when the table was laid for lunch Conrad and Rollo withdrew to the flying bridge.

Rollo had come armed with sandwiches made for him by his mother, which he insisted on eating at the end of the swordfish pulpit, legs dangling either side of the narrow gangplank. He was more withdrawn than usual, and had been all day. Conrad observed him, concerned.

‘He’s a good boy,’ said Chase. ‘Not the sharpest chisel in the tool box, but a good boy.’ He proceeded to give an account of his association with the Kemps over the years, and his rags-to-riches rise from Jersey plumber to Montauk charter-boat captain.

Chase enjoyed the sound of his own voice, which was fine by Conrad; it allowed him to keep one ear on the conversation rising up from below. The talk shifted from the economic regeneration of Europe, to communists, then to politics and presidents. Manfred Wallace said it was unfair to expect the nation to choose between an ex-haberdasher and a man who resembled one of those little grooms on top of a wedding cake. This was the cause of much amusement, with the Senator laughing the loudest. The discussion then turned to Manfred, to upcoming elections, to his candidacy. There was talk of the State Senate and of District 26, of the New York City Tax Commissioner and of other favors that could be called in.

Conrad felt the bile rise in his gullet. Thinking that the heat was getting to him, Chase suggested that he put on his cap. The clatter of crockery gave way to the smell of coffee, and Conrad pictured the scene, pictured himself heading below, what he would do, how easy it would be.

‘Conrad!’

It was Rollo at the end of the pulpit, pointing towards the southeast.

‘You see ‘em? Swordfish!’

Chase was on his feet now, squinting. ‘Well, damned if they ain’t,’ he said.

Some half a mile away two swordfish were finning, lazing on the surface.

‘You want to break out the gear?’ asked Conrad.

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘I crewed for Jake Minton back in ‘39.’

‘He still owe you money?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Damn right he does. Tightest sonofabitch that ever lived. You know what he said once, to his own brother? Ed’s broke, busted flat, needs to borrow a bit, but Jake says he can’t help out, says he’s got this deal with the bank, an agreement, says the bank won’t go into fishing if he don’t go into lending money! You believe that!?’

‘What about it?’ said Conrad.

It was the opportunity he’d been waiting for, the scene already playing itself out in his head.

‘Swordfishin’,’ muttered Chase. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘The boat gets to keep the fish and there’s another fifty in it for you.’

‘Let’s go swordfishin’.’

Heading below, Conrad addressed himself directly to the Senator so the outcome would be assured.

‘Senator, you ever harpoon a swordfish?’

‘No.’

‘Want to give it a shot?’

‘Damn right I do.’