Drag

Bonnie, Jack, and Tal take the whole case out to the dock behind the bay house, lay down under the moon and drink. The wood beneath them smells like old blood because it is soaked in old blood.

A dog they don’t know starts pounding up the dock, stops when he gets close enough to notice them. It’s a big yellow lab, balls intact. The dog slips over the side as if he’d rather not explain himself. He swims away towards the moon’s reflection on the rippled surface of the water.

Bonnie has a line out, baited with a strip of squid. The rod is in a piece of white plastic pipe bolted to the dock. She won’t catch anything.

Tal tries to get comfortable. He roots around in a bag of corn chips, and it looks odd. Jack and Bonnie share a glance behind the fancy man’s back.

Jack scratches his stomach. The boat is still tied up at Cici’s. The insurance woman made a lot of jokes on the phone, and so did the local cousin who brought him home. He should feel embarrassed, but he doesn’t. He just feels young and old at the same time.

“Did you check in,” he says to Bonnie.

Bonnie shrugs. “They’ll forget me. Pain in the ass.”

“Mortals.” It’s a joke that Tal doesn’t get.

They are too far from the house to notice what’s not right.

Bonnie’s rod nods four times in quick succession, so she stands to take it up. The reel starts to buzz, and the line goes out fast and far. She keeps the line tight, cranking it back in a little each time the thing on the other end lets her.

“Heavy,” she says, but she’s making progress.

Tal asks, “What do you think it is?”

Jack says, “Skate. Be nice if it was a flounder.”

Bonnie snorts as if her brother has just said something incredibly stupid. She’s almost got it all the way in. Tal is excited, but Bonnie and Jack are struck by sudden sadness. Neither one knows why, but it’s the same feeling for both of them.

The thing comes to the surface. A white, flat part of it breaches in the moonlight, and for a moment it looks surrendered. Bonnie reels it closer, but then it goes black again, twisting and snapping the line. Monofilament curls float on top of the water.

“Shit,” says Tal. “What was it?”

Jack says, “We’ll never know,” as if that’s okay.

Bonnie attaches another weight, another leader, another hook. Puts a tougher bit of squid on, and throws her line out into the night. They can’t see where it lands, but they can hear it.

*

Around three in the morning, Bonnie’s rod starts dancing again. The line peels out and the rod handle bounces around in its holder. This time there are no pauses, no slow downs at all-whatever she’s hooked is making a direct, strong run into oblivion.

Bonnie, Tal, and Jack have dozed off on the dock. Bonnie in Tal’s arms, and Tal with his narrow back against a piling. Jack is just down, on his side with his head on folded hands like a child.

The rod jiggers its way up the pipe, and then it’s out, banging across the dock, losing a few small pieces of the handle works. It smacks into the cardboard crate of empties and sends some bottles over the side before the rod is pulled into the water and away.

It will be a mystery if anyone notices.

The racket wakes Tal and Bonnie, and they decide to go to bed. Tal notices that Jack is one sleepy roll away from falling off the dock, but Bonnie says that’s going to be okay.

*

The yellow dog swims back to the dock. The myth he’d fled into spat him out again. He cries a little because he can’t get back up to where it’s dry. Jack stirs, rolls over, wakes up under water. Goes back to sleep to dream about being cold.

The tide goes out. The dog walks in. Summer will end, somehow.