| BY MICHAEL JORDANMy dear daughter, Do you remember the story I used to tell you, about two boys who did a terrible, thoughtless thing a long time ago? Remember how you would smile whenever I said that parts of it were true? I guess you were thinking: ‘Here goes daddy again with one of his far-fetched stories.’ And I would smile in return as if to say,’ yes, it’s just one of my stories.’ Smiling, even when I felt like screaming.You’re much older now, and you’re attracted to waterways like I was, and that scares me, and so I’m telling you this: All of it is true. Every single line. I know, because I was one of those boys…Your DadPART ONELast night I woke to find a woman in my room. She wasn’t the same girl that I had brought to the hotel. I had seen her once before, when I was twelve years old. She had tried to kill me back then.I like to sometimes fool myself that things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did if I hadn’t followed Maxie that August.We were fishing near Old Skeets’ bridge, the August sun stinging our backs and the fish refusing to bite. Finally, Max sucked his teeth and said: “Leh we go by the Blacka.”I hesitated. For me, that long stretch of the Lamaha Conservancy that we called the Blacka was strictly out of bounds. It was where naked Rastafarians smoked and swam. It was where little Orin Smith had drowned himself just a month ago, after his father had beaten him badly again with an electric cord. The Blacka was where a man named Michael De Noon had strangled his baby daughter as a sacrifice to water spirits. Some woman had told him he would get a visa to America if he did this. He died of TB in Camp Street Prison instead.I was about to make up some lame excuse when Maxie said: “I know a spot where Ralphie pull up a yarrow long like he arm.” He showed me his own thin, sinewy arm for emphasis.Ralphie was Max’s big brother and the thought of catching a yarrow the length of his arm made me forget about any punishment I would get; like the licks I got when Max and me swam across the caiman pond in the Botanic Gardens to fish on a spot we called Bird Island.Old Skeets was in his yard, his back to us as he sat on a low stool, patiently weeding between some okra beds. He didn’t see when we slipped away down the Tucville back street and into Festival City, then to the back of North Ruimveldt, until eventually, we were on a dam, with the black and silent Lamaha Conservancy—the Blacka—ahead of us.Maxie, my neighbour and good friend—twelve years old like myself — led the way south down the dam. Fish splashed occasionally in the black water, and I felt the familiar stirring of excitement as we headed further south; the thought of catching a giant yarrow keeping me going, even though, behind the trees, the sun was going down.We stopped at a turn on the dam, where the trees were thickest. Max pointed to a spot near a log that had fallen in the water and whispered, “Is right there Ralphie pull up the yarrow.”We baited our hooks, then shifted apart to cast our lines. Max had chosen the spot by the log. I found a spot where the branches of a tree leaned close to the water. I always tried to imagine a spot that I thought the fishes would like. I bobbed my line a few times, then sat back and waited. My cork began to dip frantically and then began to sink. When it was almost out of sight, I pulled on my bamboo rod. There was a splashing and a pink-and white sunfish came into view. Max came over to watch as I unhooked the sunfish and put it on a string. I baited my hook again,NFL Jerseys China, set it at the same spot, and waited. Not a minute had passed before I was pulling up another sunfish, then a nice-sized yarrow. Soon after, I added four tilapias to my string.And now I was having that weird sensation I had sometimes: a feeling of having some sort of connection to the fish; a feeling that I could fish out the entire Blacka if I wanted.Maxie had taught me to fish a year ago, but I was the one who always came home with the longest string of catch. Old Skeets said that it was because I was Cancer-born, which he explained meant I was ‘water sign’. He would sometimes sit on his front step, watching us Tucville boys fish and chuckling knowingly at my strange good fortune.“That is a lucky, lucky boy,” he would tell my mother sometimes.“I wish he had the same luck with his homework,” she would say.Max was still trying his luck at the same spot where Ralphie had caught the giant fish. Every now and then he would pull frantically on his rod and suck his teeth as his hook came up empty. I could sense his impatience.After I had pulled up yet another sunfish he muttered: “Ah going to another spot”. With that, he walked past me and headed further up the dam, and disappearing from view.I was baiting my hook about ten minutes later when I heard Max yell my name.“What?” I yelled back.“Ah got a big one!”I wrapped up my line and hurried in the direction that Maxie had gone. Eventually, I spotted him. He was hauling on a cast-net (I would later learn that he had found it tucked behind a tree). His sinewy biceps were bunched as he struggled with something large that was trapped inside.I helped him to haul the net onto the muddy shore.What was inside the net scared me—I guess Maxie was too. It was about four feet long, it had a pink-and-white colour, and it was like no other fish we had ever seen. It appeared to have no scales; its teeth were tiny and harmless. But,Cheap NFL Jerseys China, to me, the strangest thing was its eyes. They hadn’t that usual fish-eyed blankness. Those eyes appeared to be fear-filled and pleading.We stared back in silence at this strange, beautiful thing, then Max,Jerseys NFL Cheap, still panting a little,Wholesale NFL Jerseys Authentic, said triumphantly: “This gun make Ralphie houri look like stupidness.”I nodded. I didn’t bother to tell him that he had used a net, and that we had always considered that as cheating.“You will have to help me carry it,” he said. This thing weigh ’bout forty pounds.”I stared at the fish, lying silently in the net and staring at us, and the words tumbled out without me thinking.“We have to throw it back.”“What?”“Maxie, we have throw it back. Something funny about this fish…I don’t even think it good to eat.”But it was more than that. I was having that weird feeling, that connection.Max was glaring at me resentfully, but I sensed that he was feeling some of my unease.Now he turned again to the fish. He rubbed his hand along its side, then pulled it back.“It feels so…so smooth,NFL Jerseys From China,” he said, almost to himself.“Leh we put it back,” I said again. “We gun share what I catch.’He glared at me again, but then he bent to the fish and we began to untangle it from the net, while it lay silently, watching us.I really can’t account for what happened next. Maybe Maxie was thinking of how we would be passing Old Skeets’ home, and how Old Skeets would laugh when he saw my string of fish, and Maxie with his fishing rod alone. Maybe he was thinking of how he had failed to bring home a fish bigger than Ralphie’s,NHL Jerseys From China, but just before we tossed it back, Max whipped out his sharp pocket knife, and slashed the fish just below the gill.I gave a shout of surprise. At the same time, I thought I heard that fish emit a human-like-sighing sound, and then Maxie had pushed it back into the Blacka.There was a splash, and the fish sank from sight, and all that was left was a thin streak of blood on the black water, and that sigh ringing in my ears…(To be continued) |
