Coasters. Gerald Duff

the captain said, finishing up the last rig and giving it to Teddy. “They’re a bottom feeder. Let it out until it won’t go any further. When you feel one of them hit, jerk him fast before he backs into the rocks.”

      “Oh, he’ll hide from you, then?” Marsue said, flipping the lever Waylon had pointed out to her. The weighted bait slid into the water with a whirring sound of the line off the reel. “Doesn’t want to come in the boat with us, huh?”

      “He’s reluctant to leave his element,” Waylon said, moving away to cast his own line into the Gulf. “Afraid he won’t be able to breathe right.”

      “Maybe he should learn to hold his breath,” Marsue said, leaning forward to look over the side. “I believe I’ve got there.”

      “Flip that lever I showed you the other direction,” Waylon said. “And get ready to catch a big one.”

      “I hope he’s not afraid to hit it,” Marsue said. “Suppose he’ll keep his mouth shut?”

      “Not if he hadn’t eaten anything in a long time. Not if he’s hungry enough.”

      On the other side of the bow, Leo jerked his rod tip up and began to reel, the line singing and throwing off a spray of water as he leaned back and worked the mechanism. “I got one on,” he yelled. “First strike of the day.”

      The captain moved toward him and reached out to catch the line as the hooked fish broke surface. “A grunt,” he said. “That’s what I figured the way he was coming up.”

      “Aw shit,” Leo said. “No good, huh?”

      “It’s good, all right,” the captain said, unhooking a dark-colored fish about a foot long and opening the compartment in the floor to throw it on top of some ice. “You filet it and cook it real fast.”

      “Leo will cook it fast, okay,” Marsue said over her shoulder. “I flat guarantee you. Won’t you, honey?”

      About then the tip of her rod dipped, and before Waylon could turn to see what Marsue would do with the strike, something hit his bait and moved powerfully downward as he gave a jerk in response.

      “Don’t let him back into the rocks,” Captain Metcalf said. “Reel him quick before he cuts the line on you.”

      “I guess I ought to be doing the same thing,” Marsue said, pulling back on her line as she reeled.

      “Yes ma’am,” the captain said, looking in her direction, “but I believe you got yours coming along fine. This’un here’s the one I’m worried about. I believe it’s bigger than the man that’s hooked him.”

      “That’s the story of my life,” Waylon said, rearing back on the rod with his left hand and trying to reel with his right against the weight bowing the tip down. His foot slipped in some water on the deck, banging his knee against an upright. “Everything I hook always outweighs me.”

      “Did you set your drag?” the captain demanded, fumbling at the mechanism of Waylon’s reel.

      “No, I never remember to do that, neither,” he said and felt more line strip off as the fish, still well-submerged, moved at an angle away from the boat.

      “Don’t horse him,” Captain Metcalf said. “Let him do what he wants to do.”

      “That’s all I ever do,” Waylon said. “And I still don’t gain an advantage.”

      “If he can’t horse it, maybe he can pony it some,” Marsue called from her side of the boat as she pulled an undersized red grouper out of the water and swung it into the boat.

      “Is this one big enough?” she said to the captain.

      “Not that one, no ma’am,” Metcalf answered, taking it off the hook and lifting it toward his face. Leaning forward, he made a kissing sound in the vicinity of the grouper’s nose and tossed it back over the side.

      “Did you just kiss that fish?” Leo asked in an amazed tone.

      “I kiss everything I don’t keep,” the captain said, “before I throw it back.”

      “I’m going to remember that,” Marsue said, reaching into the bait box for another squid to put on her hook. “Sounds like a damn good policy.”

      “Why do you do it?” Leo asked, looking ready to laugh at a witty reply. “Kiss a fish like that?”

      “I don’t know. It always just seems like the right thing to do.”

      The Gulf Princess was the last boat of the day in at Bud’s Marina. The woman who had been working the calculator behind the counter when Waylon last saw her was standing at the end of the dock with both hands on her hips watching Captain Metcalf and his party proceed through the No Wake area of the channel. She didn’t offer to catch the tie-up line when Metcalf lifted it toward her, and he had to ask Teddy to hop off the front end of the still moving vessel and wrap the rope around a cleat.

      “Sorry we getting in so late, Libby,” Metcalf said. “We had to go way out past that Sunoco platform before we got into any keeper grouper.”

      “Your radio broke, Bill?” she said, still standing in the same position but backed up a little to allow Teddy to get past her.

      “To tell you the truth, I’m afraid it needs working on, and that’s a fact. These folks can tell you I was trying all afternoon to talk at you.”

      “I’ll testify to that,” Leo said, hopping from the boat to the dock and giving Metcalf an exaggerated wink after he had turned his back to offer his hand to Marsue. “The way it was cracking and popping, I believe that radio must’ve got seawater in it.”

      “Well, ain’t nobody left around here this time of day to help you all unload your fish,” Libby said. “If you got any.”

      “We got them, all right,” Leo said. “Didn’t we, partner?” He looked to Waylon for confirmation and laid his hand on Marsue’s shoulder.

      “I hope to shout,” Waylon said. “At least you and your wife and Teddy did.”

      “You get some of these,” Leo said as Marsue started up the dock toward the building at the end of it. “Share and share alike.”

      “I don’t want but one or two,” Waylon said. “That’s all I can use.”

      Later, the grouper and grunt and amber jack divided and distributed among three styrofoam chests, Waylon remembered the borrowed hat on his head and walked over to the green Cherokee where Marsue was sitting in the passenger seat looking in a mirror on the visor as she poked at her hair with a brush.

      “Thanks for letting me use your cap,” he said. “It saved my delicate complexion.”

      “Live the Dream,” she said, reading the words off the visor and then, turning back to the mirror, looked at Waylon through the reflection.

      “Everyday and in every way,” he said to the green eyes in the glass looking back at him.

      “You can keep the cap,” Marsue said. “For a souvenir.”

      “I’d be glad to, if you sign it on the visor for me like the baseball stars do at these card conventions.”

      “You got a ballpoint?”

      “Always,” Waylon said, digging a pen out of his pants pocket. “Be prepared is the scout’s motto.”

      Marsue took the pen and turning the cap upside down wrote something on the underside of the visor and handed the cap and the pen back to him.

      “That a Beaumont number?” he said.

      “To be called only between ten in the morning and six in the afternoon weekdays. Don’t leave any messages.”

      “I don’t talk to machines,” Waylon said, setting the cap back on his head. “Enjoy