I made a cast uptide, waited until the line matched the speed of the current, then began to strip the lure toward the beach. Water was freighting out faster than I could walk. Whirlpools formed at my feet, and swirled over dark water at the drop-off’s edge. It was an intersection where predators would lie-saltwater snipers, awaiting bait that was overpowered by the lunar draw.
As I fished, I noted a buoyant darkness to the east separating itself from a velvet horizon. Soon, the sun would begin diluting shadow with rays of color. The moon had disappeared behind the tree line, but it would be visible from the island’s southern point, where Tomlinson and his painted friends were drumming and dancing.
They hadn’t noticed us land. I was now close enough to feel the percussion of the drums through my ribs, but there was still no indication they saw me. Fishermen, like joggers, are invisible to the uninitiated. And to the un-sober, in this case.
Drum circles attract mystic types, big on celestial rhythms. On full moons, sunrise and moonset are simultaneous, balancing for a moment on opposite horizons. My guess was, they’d keep playing until the moon disappeared into the sea. Especially if Tomlinson was in charge. The man sought balance in everything but the excesses of his own life.
In that way, at least, Tomlinson and Kal Wilson had something in common. The president had refused to lie down until he’d gone exploring. The place we were staying wasn’t just one cabin, it was a camp comprised of several one-room buildings-a kitchen and eating area in one, shower and toilet in another, and a bunkhouse set beneath trees next to the storage shed where I found a little Honda generator.
Nice place. Friendly, too, with its laid-back touches. DON AND JOAN WELCOME YOU, read a sign above the outdoor shower.
The former president insisted on helping me get the generator running before he settled himself in the bunkhouse. He was snoring when I checked a few minutes later. The photograph he carried was on the nightstand, its glass panel flickering with the reflection of ceiling fans overhead.
The last thing he said was, “If the fish are hitting, call me. I haven’t had a morning alone with a rod in my hand since I ran for the Senate.”
Stories I read described him as an “avid angler”-a term used so often that I’d dismissed it as the invention of some PR firm. “Image management,” political consultants call it. The ideal presidential candidate attends church, fishes, wears a rubber watch, and owns a retriever. But there is no contriving the authentic inflections of fishermen. I hear them every morning around the docks at the marina.
Wilson had had almost no sleep, though, so I wasn’t going to disturb the man even if fish were hitting. Which they were. My third cast, I hooked an immature snook. As I led it ashore, a pod of larger snook surfaced behind, including a couple of yardlong females.
Next cast, I came up tight on what felt like a snag’s deadweight, but then I discerned the muscular ruddering of a fish as it turned laterally to the current. I locked fingers over the line, lifted… then lifted again before the fish reacted, accelerating cross-tide so fast that line sizzled as it ruptured the water’s surface.
As the fish moved, I glanced at my feet-the line was clearing while the reel ratcheted. The handle banged skin off my knuckles as I slipped my hand beneath the spool, fingertips creating heat as they touched the line experimentally: too much pressure, the leader would break; too little, the fish might take all my line.
The fish was fifty yards into the backing before it turned, then stripped another fifty yards, running seaward. I began following it down the beach, trying to recover line. I was almost to the drum circle-they still hadn’t noticed me, Tomlinson included-when the fish turned and angled cross-tide again… then began to fight its way uptide.
Until that moment, I’d thought it was one of the big female snook. This behavior, though, was unusual.
I turned and retraced my footprints up the beach, leashed to the fish, my hands sensitive to vibrations transmitted through the line. I could feel the steady oscillation of connective tissue as the fish angled into the current, using its body mass to resist as I leveraged with the fly rod, steering it toward the shallows.
It turned… sounded… then ascended. More unusual behavior. I pumped and reeled, the morning breeze keening through the line I gained.
I didn’t care about landing and killing the fish, although I would if it was breakfast-worthy. I wanted to find out what it was. Swimming against the tide, its erratic descents, didn’t mesh with the behavior of familiar species. I at least wanted to get a look at the thing. So I waded waist-deep to the edge of the drop-off, trying to narrow the point of intersection. The tide was running so hard, it eroded the sand beneath my feet, and I had to keep moving or I would have been swept away.
Then, abruptly, the line went slack. It didn’t break; there was no elastic recoil. It collapsed, like a balloon deflating.
The fish was gone… I thought.
But it wasn’t gone.
The line, I realized, hadn’t broken. The line was moving toward me
… no, it was torpedoing toward me at high speed… hissing now as it ripped the water’s surface.
The fish I’d hooked wasn’t alone, either. Its erratic behavior was explained. A shark’s dorsal fin, two feet high and gray, was tracking the line, closing in so fast that it pushed a bulbous wake like a submarine.
I turned my side to the shark, watching the line as I tried to hurry into shallower water. But the sand was like snow and collapsed under pressure. I could walk but I couldn’t run.
There was no escape. So I stopped and just let it happen, resigned but also fascinated.
The shark was a great hammerhead, as long as our canoe but triple the girth. It had to weigh a half ton. The dorsal was backlit by the dawn horizon; its bizarre head was a transient shadow wider than my shoulders. I lifted my feet from the bottom and let the tide move me as the fish I’d hooked shot past my legs. The shark’s wake followed, close enough that I felt its bulk graze my thigh.
An instant later, water imploded. The hammerhead breached. In its jaws was a barracuda, my chartreuse fly pinned neatly to the hinge of its mouth. Plasticine flakes glittered as the shark twisted and crashed into the water-barracuda scales. Then it swirled massively, so close I could feel the suction created by the hammerhead’s tail stroke.
My feet had found the bottom. I walked and crawled until I was on the beach, the fly rod still in hand.
“An interesting fishing technique, Dr. Ford. But shouldn’t you have a large hook strapped to your butt?”
The president had been watching. He looked fit in running shorts and a T-shirt. He was also wearing owlish, wire-rimmed glasses with tinted lenses-even in photographs I’d never seen the man wear glasses. It had been less than half an hour since I’d left him.
I was laughing, adrenaline wired. “Did you see the size of that bastard?”
“Yeah. You’d look nice in his trophy case.”
I was searching the water. No fin. “It wasn’t after me. It was locked onto the fish I was fighting. Probably didn’t even notice I was there.”
“You’re the expert. But I think I’ll give it a few minutes before taking a swim.” He was a dry one-irony as understatement, a trait common in people comfortable under pressure.
“I thought I told you to call me if fish were hitting.” Wilson put his hand out, not joking now. I realized he wanted the fly rod. He took it, looking around, seeing the sunrise, the painted dancers, then he smiled, touching an index finger to the bridge of his glasses. “God, I’ve missed this. Mind if I see what’s on the other end?”