Jamie continued reeling in. Then his line jerked hard. He leaned the rod back again-probably the reef, or a bed of sea grass — but then he felt it, there, and there — the unmistakable give and drag of a fish.
"Got one," he cried out.
"You sure?" His dad observed the weight on the line and climbed to his feet.
"Got one," Jamie repeated.
It was fighting now, weaving and twisting. The line went slack. When the charge came he was pulled forward and almost lost his footing. He looked down: browny yellow lichen. Spume churning over his ankles.
His dad grinned. "Set the drag," he said. Jamie set the drag.
They watched over the gray water together. Too dark to see anything. He fought the fish, tracking its every tension, tugging and reeling, imagining its flight through spindling reefs and sand and meadows of sea grass. This was it — this was why you waited. His dad next to him, fired up, talking him through it.
The line went spastic. It convulsed in short bursts. Jamie gripped the rod with excitement — he'd never felt a fish do this before. He glanced at his dad, who was squinting out to sea. Michael and his mum too. The sea was like this. You could wait all day and then, just when you were leaving, it might offer something up — the rubbery back of a whale, the glass-sharp glint of jumping mackerel — something. You wouldn't even know you were waiting till it came and you missed it. In the distance, something disrupted the surface of the glazed water — it was beautiful — beautiful to think it connected to him.
He tugged, reeled, tugged. His mum said, "Oh my God." He couldn't make anything out in the grayness. When she said it the second time he saw it. Wings beating furiously. A seagull. Then he heard the high-pitched screeching. It sounded human, the intonations of a baby girl throwing a tantrum. He continued reeling, the rod stooping lower and lower as he dragged the bird across the water, through the chop and, at last, to the rocks. Now it was quiet.
"Oh my God."
His dad said, "Where's it hooked?"
It had stopped moving. Jamie tried to lift the line but its body was wedged somehow, stuck in the rock scum.
"It's dead," he said.
It was enormous. Blood dyed the top of its plump breast, banded its neck — impossibly red against its white neck. Its webbed feet, limp in the wash, floated like old orange peel. He stepped toward it. The water shook its body. Then he saw, behind it, the sinuous, steely torso of a fish.
"There's a snapper too," he said, twisting around. His mum was staring at him, her face peaked but utterly focused.
"Bob," she said.
"It's on the fixed hook," said Jamie.
"Let him do it," said his dad.
He took another step. Bent down, saw the second hook, the long shanked keeper sunk in above the wing. Barbed into its shoulder and still letting blood. He reached out and suddenly the gull lurched up, screaming, flailing its big wings. Its beak gaped open: he could see right down into its pink, tattered innards. The bird was terrified — leaking something that smelled like dog piss gone off, its shrill squawks corrugating in its throat. He looked into that violent white rush and knew he couldn't touch it. No way. He jerked back and pointed the rod, trying to poke it onto the rocks, but the pliant fiberglass tip spooked the creature even more.
"Stop that," said his dad.
"I'll unhook it," he said, but he didn't move.
Michael stared at the bird, whose cries were tapering now to a dry rattle.
His mum repeated, "Bob."
His dad took the fishing rod from him. He squeezed Jamie's shoulder. "It's suffering, son. You understand?"
He nodded, but he didn't know what he meant by doing that — nodding. The bird's wings were half splayed. He watched it for a long time, churning in the water's guts. He didn't move.
A minute passed. Then he heard Michael digging around in the tackle box, mumbling to himself. He picked things up and threw them back in, metal-sounding. "Nope," he whispered under his breath. "Too blunt." A little later he handed something up to Jamie: a pair of scissors.
His dad watched silently.
So he'd have to hold it. With one hand. Should he hold its head or body? Those huge wings. The fish-flesh writhing behind it. He opened the scissors — so flimsy, with his fingers inside them. He crouched down and then it saw him — the yellow eye with its black heart-and let out a coarse shriek. That smell, that secretion of terror.
"Come on," said his dad.
"I could just cut the line," he said, not looking up.
"You will not just cut the line," said his mum. She said it so scathingly he immediately pictured the bird flying with the nylon leader hanging from one wing, the ball sinker running up and down between the swivel and hook, weighting its body into a sinking spiral.
"For Chrissake, Bob."
"He's gotta do it himself."
"Look at it." "It's his catch." His voice firmed. "He has to do it."
Jamie bent down again. Then he stood up and backed off.
"Jesus," said his dad. There was a weariness in his tone Jamie had never heard before.
"He's crying," Michael pointed out to their parents. His voice was matter-of-fact but his face seemed itself close to tears.
His mum didn't say anything to Jamie. She didn't look at him at all as she climbed down to the water's edge. She bent over and picked up the gull with both hands and laid it on a fiat rock. Then she sucked her lips into her mouth, lifted one of her Blund-stones, and stomped down on the gull's head, once, hard.
***
The morning was blue when he awoke. Alison gone. Had she even been there? Somewhere on the water a radio dispersed its sound. Translucent sand crabs, the size of his fingernails, scurried over his shins. It was a dream. Last night had been a dream-her skin moving against her ribs, so thin over her body he could see the laddering of it. She rocked above him, coaxing her face out of the shadows. The star-drenched sky reeling. I got you, he said, when she slipped.
Now, in the shock of early morning, he was wrenched back into his body. The rocks slimy with moss. The water ice-cold and molecular. Late in the night there 'd been thunder, and heat lightning — all night it had felt like it was minutes away from raining — but it hadn't rained. Already you could feel the day hotting up again. From some dark crevice the smell of a dead animal, rank and oversweet. That evening they'd laid the gull on the water and it was borne out, mutilate, into the gray drift. For hours — every time he'd looked back — he'd seen other gulls, dozens of them, circling in a silent gyre. Making black shapes out of themselves in the dusk sky. Then the light had failed. Here, he thought. He stood up, the soreness returning to him all at once. Here is the saddest place I know.
***
IT WAS AFTERNOON by the time he got home. All morning he'd wandered the dunes and tidal flats — too spent to think — then, strange to his own intentions, he'd set eyes on the courthouse before him. Gone in, sat down in a cool, dim corner.
At home there was a strange car in the driveway, a new-looking four-wheel drive. Out-of-towners. He watched from his bungalow as his dad came around the side of the house with two men. One wore mountain boots and a red polar fleece around his waist and walked quickly, keys in his fist. The other was a suit. His Brylcreemed hair cracking in the thirty-plus heat as he kept pace. They got into their car and did a three-point reverse and dusted down the driveway. His dad still standing by the front veranda. Two beer bottles sweating on the railing. He wore a short-brimmed hat and Jamie couldn't see his face.
Tea was a quiet affair. Every now and then Michael looked at him furtively but otherwise they kept to themselves. Afterward, Jamie plastic-wrapped the leftovers and washed the dishes. Michael dried and stacked. They worked silently, waiting to see if their parents' voices would start up. Michael's studied silence beginning to get on Jamie's nerves. Their dad came out of the living room, grabbed two bottles of wine, and went back in.