The Missing Manatee (6 page)

Dan took a long sip of butterfly milk, looked at me with his bloodshot eyes, lifted one eyebrow, and said in a low, slow voice, “Hatchet fight over a blonde.” Then he went back to tying his fly.

I remember sitting there, my mind filled with pictures of Dirty Dan fighting with a pirate-y looking guy wearing an eye patch. The pirate-y guy had a hatchet, but that didn't stop Dan. He went after the guy with nothing but his bare hands. While Dan bravely fought, the blond-haired lady cried and begged them to
please stop.

I sure wished I'd asked Dan more questions then. You can blurt out dumb, rude questions when you're a little kid, and people think it's funny, or at least they don't hold it against you. I was determined to ask for the whole story someday, but the right moment never seemed to come along. It wasn't the kind of thing that came up in normal everyday conversation, in which I might say casually, “Speaking of hatchet fights, Dan, tell me about the one you had over that blonde.”

Maybe tomorrow, when Dan and I were out in the boat fishing and talking man to man, I'd have my chance.

Dirty Dan interrupted my thoughts by saying, “We're going to have to take this thing apart.”

He was talking about my reel. “How come?” I asked.

He handed me the end of the line and said, “Pull.”

I pulled.

“Feel that?” he asked.

“What?”

“There's a little hitch in your drag. Could be some rust in there, or a grain of sand. Anyway, it's no good.” He took a drink of butterfly milk. “Come on, let's get this line off here first. You'll want to put on a new one.”

As we unspooled the line, Dan said, “When you go after tarpon, there's a hundred things working against you, Skeet. Most of 'em you got no control over. You've got to pay attention to the things you
can
control, and your equipment's one of 'em.”

I watched Dan take the reel apart, clean it, oil it, and reassemble it. Then we put on a new fly line. He began tying a nail knot to fasten a length of monofilament line called a leader to the end of my fly line. As I watched Dan's thick, rough fingers at work, he asked, “You know this knot, Skeet?”

“I've tried it,” I said, “but I can never get it right.”

“It's a tricky devil,” Dan agreed. “But you need to know it, and the Bimini twist, the surgeon's loop, and the Huffnagle, too, if you're serious about fishing for tarpon.”

I nodded. I was serious, all right. To me, everything about tarpon fishing was incredibly cool. I made a silent vow to get my knot book out and do some practicing at home.

“Now,” Dan said as he worked, “if we tied a regular square knot here, what would happen if you put force on it?”

I thought for a minute. “Well, it wouldn't be smooth like a nail knot, so it would get caught in the eyes on the rod.”

“Exactly,” said Dan. Then he tied on a series of different-strength lines, using the other knots he'd mentioned. “Why am I bothering to do all this?” he asked.

“That first section of line is pretty strong,” I said. “What is it, eighty-pound test?”

Dan nodded.

“Well, the next section is only twenty-pound test. If you used a square knot to tie eighty-pound test line to twenty-pound test, the stronger line would wear on the weaker one, and the weak line would eventually break. Probably when you had a fish on.”

“You got it,” Dan said. “When you're after tarpon, you gotta count on Murphy's Law being in effect. You know Murphy's Law?”

“If anything can go wrong, it will?” I said uncertainly.

“Bingo. Don't forget it.”

Dan held up the finished leader and examined it critically. It looked perfect. Each knot was neat, smooth, and strong-looking.

I whistled in admiration.

“You think I tie a good knot, you should have seen my second wife,” said Dan. “Her nail knots were beauteous to behold, Skeet. I do miss that woman's knots.” He sighed, then muttered, “Too bad she was such a pain in the shorts every otherwise.”

That's another thing I liked about Dirty Dan. How many grownups say what they really mean when they're talking to kids?

Suddenly I felt anxious. “Are you sure that twenty-pound section is strong enough?”

“If it's any thicker, he'll see it and he ain't gonna eat the fly. First order of business is to get him to eat.
Then
we'll worry about how you fight him.”

“How do I get him to eat?” I said.

“A perfectly placed cast,” he answered.

Uh-oh,
I thought. I began wishing I'd spent more time practicing my casting.

“And
this.
” He grinned, making the scar wriggle like a snake, and held up a fly. “My secret weapon.”

It was a cockroach, which was a fairly common tarpon fly. But I'd never seen one that color. “They like orange?” I asked dubiously.

He lifted an eyebrow and whispered, “They're crazy for it. Like alligators after a poodle. You'll see.”

I nodded eagerly.

“
If
you're lucky,” he added. “And if you don't make mistakes.” He tested each of the knots with a final sharp tug, and nodded with satisfaction. “Looks like you're ready, Skeet,” he said.

“What time should I be at the dock?” I asked.

“Six.”

“What should I bring?”

“I'll keep your stuff, so just bring yourself. I got everything else we'll need.”

“Okay. Thanks, Dan.”

“No problemo, Skeet.” He poured himself a fresh glass of butterfly milk. “Here's to luck,” he said, and took a long slug.

“Sounds like I'm going to need it.”

“You're going to need some sleep, too,” said Dan.

That got Mac's attention and he looked at his watch. “Oops, how'd it get so late? Skeet, you'd better get on home now or your mama'll skin me alive and feed me to the sharks.”

I went over to give Mac a hug and say good night to the other guys.

“Sleep tight, Skeeter,” said Earl.

“Okay,” I said. But I didn't think there was much chance of
that.

Eight

I ate a quick breakfast
and got to the dock at ten minutes to six the next morning. Dirty Dan was already in his boat arranging my rod in the side compartment, where it would be safe once we got moving. Dan had a boat that was specially made for fishing on the flats, the big areas of shallow water where tarpon often feed. It was much smaller than Mac's boat, or even my skiff, and could run in only six inches of water. On its side were the words
Tarpon Man.

“Push us off and let's go, Skeet,” he said without taking his eyes off what he was doing. “We got ourselves a bluebird day.”

I looked at the sky. It was still dark, with only the faintest sign of light in the east, and I could see the glitter of stars. When you're hunting for tarpon in the shallows, you need to be able to see them. You want a bright, clear sky with no clouds, and that was what we had, or would have when the sun got higher.

“Great,” I said. I unhooked the bow and stern lines from the cleats on the dock and hopped into the boat.

Dan cranked up the engine, and we motored slowly through the restricted part of the river, sending herons, egrets, and cormorants into lazy flight. Mac and most of the other guides were just meeting their clients at the marina or having a last cup of coffee at Betty's Diner, so we were the first boat to head out.

I loved the river at this time of morning, when it was quiet and peaceful, with a haze of fog hanging over it. I could hardly believe that the day I'd thought so much about was actually happening.

When we left the refuge area of the river, Dan opened it up and we sped through the curves and zigzags. We were hauling! The boat itself wasn't much, but Dan's engine was huge.

He hollered over the noise, “There's a big silver king out here with your name on it, Skeet.”

I was already smiling from the speed and excitement, but I could feel my grin grow wider at that.

We came to the mouth of the river and ran out in the gulf for about forty-five minutes. Then Dan pulled up to a long, deserted stretch of shoreline and cut the engine. He picked up his push pole and jumped up onto the platform above the motor. He was quick for a guy Memaw's age. Immediately, he began to use the pole to move the boat slowly and quietly across the shallow water, his eyes scanning the surface intently.

“Now hand me my butterfly milk, Skeet, and let's catch you a tarpon.”

I was surprised, not only because it seemed a little early for a drink but also because Mac never drank when he had a client in his boat. Some guides did, but Mac said it was asking for trouble. I wasn't a client, though. I opened the cooler, thinking I'd get a glimpse of what Dan had brought for our lunch. There was nothing inside except the bottle of Jack Daniel's, a moldy hunk of cheese in a Baggie, some chewed-up tarpon flies, and a near-empty jar of mustard.

I handed Dirty Dan the bottle and asked, “Where's the rest of the stuff, up in the storage compartment?”

But Dan didn't seem to hear me, he was so focused on the water. I got my rod and stood up in my place on the bow. I looked back at Dan and said, “This is so great! I sure wish I could pay you.”

“You catch a tarpon, Skeet, that'll be pay enough.” He took a drink from the bottle, set it down between his feet, and kept poling. “Okay, now, till the sun gets higher, we're looking for rollers,” he said. “You see any, tell me where and which direction they're heading in, and I'll try to get you in a position to cast.”

I'd read as much as I could about tarpon, and asked Mac about a million questions over the years, so I knew about rollers. Tarpon are weird in the fish world, because they come up sometimes to breathe. When they break the surface to grab a gulp of air, it's called rolling. You can see their backs then, or maybe a glimpse of a dorsal fin, and you can also tell which way they're swimming.

Spotting rollers sounds easier than it is. They're up for only a second, and it takes a lot of experience to be able to tell which direction they're heading in—experience that I didn't have.

I never saw anything, even though I was looking hard. But a minute later Dan said, “There.” He began poling faster but just as sneakily toward whatever he had seen. “Oh, they're high and happy, exactly the way we want 'em, Skeet.”

I squinted my eyes, but didn't see anything.

“Okay, get ready. There's fish coming. See that nervous water?”

When fish are moving, the water above them looks different, sort of quivery, or “nervous.” I've seen it sometimes when Mac's pointed it out to me, times when the water was dead calm and glassy. But today there was enough of a breeze to give the entire surface a ripple, and all the water looked quivery.

I nodded, but the truth was, I didn't see what he was talking about. As far as I could tell, the only thing that was nervous was
me.

“They're coming left to right at two o'clock, about a hundred twenty feet. You see 'em?”

My heart was pounding like crazy. Dan's directions were perfectly clear, or should have been. I knew that if the boat was a clock face, the bow where I stood was twelve o'clock. But I was so anxious that I had to stop and picture a clock, and think about whether two o'clock was to my left or my right. Right. Okay. But forget about calculating a hundred twenty feet. Instead, I turned to see where Dan was looking.

“Okay, okay, they're at a hundred feet. You ready?” asked Dan.

“Yeah.” I started to lift my rod to cast.

“No! Not yet! Wait till they're closer. You see 'em?”

“No,” I admitted desperately.

“One o'clock now, eighty feet out. Okay, get ready. Ready? Go ahead and cast—now!”

I did, but my timing was way off. Instead of landing softly and enticingly in the fish's path, the fly landed with an ugly splat right on top of them. They spooked and took off, leaving only a muddy swirl where they had been. Casting to a real fish sure was different from casting to a pop can in the yard.

Dan took a sip from the bottle.

“Sorry,” I muttered miserably.

“No sweat, Skeet,” he said calmly. “You'll get the next one. The important thing is learning from your mistakes. Do you know what you did wrong?”

“Everything,” I said.

Dan didn't disagree. He just asked, “What was the main thing?”

I thought for a minute. “I never really saw the fish before I made the cast,” I admitted.

Dan nodded. “You'll get better at spotting 'em as the day goes on,” he said. “For right now, you don't
have
to see 'em as long as you put the fly where I tell you. Now, what kept you from doing that?”

“Jitters, mostly, I guess.”

“It happens. You'll settle down.” Dan was more confident of my improvement than I was. “Take another cast,” he directed. “Forty feet, nine o'clock.”

I did my best.

“Sixty feet, eleven o'clock.”

We did this for a while. After every cast, Dan helped me figure out what I had done wrong. I was concentrating like crazy, and he was watching me real closely and analyzing every move I made.

Then he took the rod. “See that gob of seaweed floating over there?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“I'm going to cast toward it. Watch how the line lays out on the water.”

He made a beautiful, smooth cast. The fly and all the line landed lightly and delicately on the surface at the same time.

“Wow,” I said. “That was
perfect.
”

“Now, this time, watch my back cast. To get that nice, soft landing you gotta keep your loop tight on the back cast and time your forward cast just right.”

“Wow,” I said again, after he'd demonstrated. “That was amazing.” What else was there to say? Dirty Dan wasn't known as the Tarpon Man for nothing. If he'd been casting to a fish, there was no way he wouldn't have caught it.