The One That Got Away — 3.0 — -At Sea near La Fortuna, Cabo del Este, Los Cabos, BCS, Mexico
“Ooouuwee, Ooouuwee Baby/ Ooouuwee, Ooouuwee Baby/ Won’t you let me take you on a sea cruise…”
After all these years Jeff Honeycut is still pissed off at me simply because he died in the first paragraph of a story I once wrote (“Captain Honneycutter’s Fish Parade”). That was years ago (that I wrote it and he died) and I’ve told him time and time again that it was just a literary convention of foreshadowing: But he just can’t let it go.
“The VERY first paragraph,” he says loudly, “How could you kill me off in the FIRST paragraph?”
There is, of course, no explaining to him the difficult choices a writer sometimes has to make: nor the fact that he really didn’t die until the very end of the story, a pretty respectable 4,167 words later. Literature just goes over some people’s heads, I guess.
As I write this (Monday 4:31 AM) Honeycut is just waking beneath the palapa roof of the fish camp he shares with his lovely wife Kat. His camp is close to my squat and we are both a short walk from the beach at Shipwrecks where in the early mornings (just before dawn) he launches his Livingston panga (open boat) through the breakers for a day of fishing. He goes out most every day and I go with him about once a week, only lately I have become so involved in this novella writing thing, that sometimes I forget to meet him. This really pisses him off and then he’s start going on again about me and my story and how he died.
So I have to say: Give it a break Jeff: for Christ’s sake you are 104 when you die in the story AND all the fish love you….”
This just makes him shake his head more and then I hear him under his breath muttering: “The first freaking paragraph, I still can’t believe it…”
Obviously Honeycut and I have had some fishing and non-fishing adventures over the past 20 years of life on the Sea of Cortez. And some of the most amazing ones have happened when I am not even THERE. Now that is the sort of friendship you have to love…
For instance: Just a few days ago I was pretty heavily involved in a very difficult (for me) point-of-view-transition, character-development-story-arc-changing thing that I was trying to do in chapter six and it was getting very gnarly, I can tell you, and I started a bit after 2 AM and I just kept banging away at it until the sun was coming up over the water and then I remembered, oh shit, I was supposed to go fishing….
Well by THAT time Honeycut has already been out on the water for at least an hour and, as it happens on that particular morning he’s already landed a sizable dog-toothed red snapper, a couple of respectable sierra mackerel, and is just making his turn to head out toward Inman Banks (a seamount known for it’s concentration of hammerheads and gamefish.)
So anyway, I just keep writing until I run out of juice and then I plan on going down to the beach about ten to help him land the boat and take my tongue lashing like a man.
About 10 AM is about when the adventure began. Honeycut is out near the banks all by himself and he’s trolling a yellow hoochi on the starboard side, a blue-green Rapala in the middle, and a red-striped Mare’s maker diving octopus on the port rod. (okay, I made that last lure up because you-know-who gets uptight if I start writing about the sort of rig he caught the big one on…)
Okay sure you’ve heard this all before: the port rod takes a big hit when the whoo (slang for: Wahoo, also known as ono, also know as acanthocybium solandriepicaticus, a pelagic scombrid gamefish known for it’s speed, strength and fighting abilities.) chomps at the lure and then the reel is going off and the line is going out and Honeycut is saying to himself:
“Frugging writers, I can’t frugging believe it, he kills me in the first frugging paragraph….)
It’s going to be an epic struggle. He’s got to get the other two lines in so they don’t get fouled while he keeps reel-playing the whoo so he doesn’t get spooled (lose all the line on the reel) and meantime he’s got to throttle down, turn the boat so the live line is athwart the beam (coming off this middle of the boat) and about while he is doing all of that he notices the hungry black seal come up next to the boat, raise it’s big head out of the water and smile at him…..
Sea creatures are very interesting in the way they have adapted to fishermen. The seal knows the sound of the reel going off, the seal knows the cut of the line through the water, the vibration of the fish as it struggles to spit the lure, the fine feeling that a good easy meal is coming it’s way, dragged through the ocean by the magic of human ingenuity. Yum, yum, says the seal….
“Frugging writers,” Honeycut is unfazed by the situation.
Though he injured his arm earlier in the season by taking a good tumble on some hard concrete off a three foot wall (ouch) he is so adept in the art of fine fishing, that he get’s all the gear cleared up in no time. Soon he’s playing the giant wahoo, watching the seal swim around the boat licking it’s lips, adjusting the drag (amount of resistance on the fishing line), clearing the gaff stick, bracing the rod in his crotch and then with his third arm he reaches into the cooler and opens a beer. (Okay I made that last part up, he doesn’t have a third arm, but he did manage to open the beer. How he did it is pure speculation….)
All the while he is saying to himself: “The first frugging paragraph….”
It’s just another fish story, I know. He plays the wahoo till it’s pretty exhausted, drags it toward the boat, get’s the boat between the big fish and the seal, waits for the seal to come up for a breath, reaches into the fish sack grabs one of the sierra he caught earlier, tosses the dead fish to the live seal and swiftly grabs the gaff stick, swoops it into the water, gaffs the giant wahoo and in one lurching, tendon-ripping, rotator-cuff-tearing, sailor-swearing burst he swings the fish into the panga and it lands just about where I would normally be sitting.
I have to tell you: It’s almost impossible keeping up with him.
In truth that chapter six transition ate me for lunch. I got spanked by the whole metaphoric character thing and by the time I got down to the beach Honeycut and the Livingston panga were already up on the sand. A small crowd of the Montana Boys were gathered around the boat and it took three of them to lift the wahoo out of the fish-well and put it on the cleaning table. I was reduced to standing in the crowd while Honeycut (his shoulder aching like no-tomorrow) got two invisible guys to hold him up-right while Kat took the attached photo.
Eventually Honeycut saw me in the crowd and he didn’t say anything, shook his head, reached up with his good hand and smoothed his mustache, and I could read his thoughts.
“Fugging writers, fugging first fugging paragraph….”
I’ll tell you, its a life or death struggle out here where the desert meets the Sea of Cortez. There is plenty of disappointment to share around. And that’s even when you DON’T go fishing….
