Our Collective Hearts

Abstract

JIM SAYS THERE WAS A TI M E they were thick?he means the fish, and they were thick off the coast lounging in the sun, the sun-baked waters off the coast, rising to some errant anchovy, surfacing like some slow U-boat rolling under the blue surface, touching the surface with mouth and forked tail, rising in the kelp beds and rocky prominences of this coast. Yes, says they were thick once, and we would wait in some rocky cove or thick kelp bed swinging back and forth, back and forth on the anchor rope, waiting for that first rise or thrashing in the late spring that announced the stirring of these creatures that meant that these fish, the Yellowtail, had arrived, arrived from the south somewhere thrashing and twisting in the azure calm of not so open water fenced by underwater forests of kelp. There was a time says that the blue-green backs of these fish were up so thick that a soul could get up from the railing or the stern and walk across those lazy fish sunning themselves between the kelp strands, but walk we did not says; it was these blue-green and silver and yellow monsters we were after, and we could throw everything at them?blue and white or green and yellow or just silver jigs, white feathers, green feathers, blue feathers, rubber things that looked like living squid, shiny or dull bits of metal with large hooks that should look like some live excited fish. . . . We came prepared but perplexed; we came with it all?paraphernalia in old redwood boxes, black plastic and chrome reels, rods especially made that were thick at the bottom and light at the top. I can feel the bait swimming faster, faster, says?the whole world down there twitching at the rod tip the sixty or maybe seventy pounder coming up for a wounded bait fish and chasing the little ones under the kelp, and of course would have to say that that wounded bait just happened to be at the end of his reel, rod and line, a thin line so that monster of a Yellowtail would not detect the transparent string drifting from the stern. Well you know the rest, like any fish story with the music playing, maybe Mozart or Beethoven, and the stern gently rocking and someone asking for a beer or a hamburger in the galley. Then the splash on the stern and someone, maybe the captain maybe me says, Tail on the corner but everyone's quiet as reel locks into gear with a click and that fish, that monster Yellowtail, turns with the bait and the reel sings and sings and someone says, Jim's on, he's hooked up and howling again like a wolf. That monster fish, he turns straight out from the stern like his tail was on fire, out and under and around the branches of those submarine trees of kelp. And I ask, Jim can you stop How do you stop him? Too big says. He is too big?seventy or eighty pounds at least or more; there's no way to stop that fish. Just hang on Jim, someone says, but that fish