Again to Carthage Read online

  “Better be real rhymes this time,” called out Jim Branch. “None of this unwillingness-cunnilingus business.”

  John Kern grinned bravely into the laughter. “Okay, here goes: there was a young man named Cantino … who wooed the fair maids with the vino . . .” Some snickers here. “But he ran out of bread . . . so he made do instead . . .”—an appropriate pause—“. . . with a mail-order device from Encino!”

  Hilarity ensued and Cassidy realized how tired he was when he could not work up much more than a chuckle. Since there were a number of first-timers on the boats, someone was egging Roland on to tell his Robert Vesco story.

  “This is true?” asked one of the redheaded young ladies.

  “Oh absolutely,” Roland said. “Summers in high school and college I used to work for my uncle Stafford, who was a fabulous and well-known chef, mostly northern Italian cuisine. He was working in Miami when Vesco persuaded him to come over here as his personal chef. At the time Vesco was an absolute fugitive, holed up in the top floor of a hotel in Nassau. He had been booted out of most civilized countries, but he had greased every Bahamian palm in sight and he was buds with Bebe Rebozo and Nixon, so he was snug as a bug in a rug.”

  Cassidy saw some backstory whispering going on.

  “Anyway, since Vesco couldn’t risk leaving the Bahamas, he would send his Learjet back to the States to run errands, particularly to make food runs, fresh vegetables and the like. He’d occasionally send it all the way to Omaha to get a load of prime steaks. He believed in living well while remaining out of the clutches of the gendarmerie.”

  Warming to his story, Roland took a healthy slug of his drink.

  “Anyway, Uncle Stafford would sometimes go on these steak runs and one time they got back to Nassau very late at night and on the way back to Paradise Island from the airport, he told the van driver to stop at his house. The other guy, one of Vesco’s bodyguards who was running the operation, says, Stafford, what are you doing? Nothing, he says, and unceremoniously hauls a Styrofoam cooler of about forty pounds of filet mignon into his house.”

  There is much good-natured murmuring and catcalling from the boats.

  “This is a true story, swear to God?” said one of the new guys on Dr. Mortinson’s boat.

  “Absolutely true. I was there in the kitchen doing prep work for dinner the next afternoon when Vesco himself marches in, Israeli bodyguards on each shoulder. He marches up to my uncle, who’s a ponderous huge man, by the way, a Falstaffian sort of man …”

  “Gee, that’s hard to imagine,” Cassidy murmured.

  “And Vesco says, Stafford, you’re the best chef I’ve ever had and I’d hate like hell to lose you. I don’t know what’s come over you or how you thought you’d ever get away with this, but I’ve thought it over and I’ve decided to let it go this time. You return the steaks and promise never to do such a thing again and you can keep your job.”

  “My uncle looked Vesco in the eye and said: ‘Mister Vesco,’ very crisply, he said, ‘Mister Vesco, if you’ll return the $224 million you stole from all those people through Overseas Investments Limited, I’ll return the steaks I stole.’”

  Even the people who had heard the story many times were roaring, and the rum didn’t hurt, but it was mostly Roland’s performance, wrought smooth from the years of telling, that made it so funny.

  When the hubbub had settled down, the new people began asking the usual questions, the first being, Did he keep his job?

  “That’s only in Hollywood,” Roland said. “We were both fired at once and escorted off the island with the clothes on our backs. I was scared to death but Uncle Stafford seemed to be having the time of his life, joking with the pilots about whether we were supposed to be dropped off in the middle of the Gulf Stream. When we got back to Miami, it took him exactly three phone calls to get us both hired at a very nice restaurant in Coral Gables.”

  “Where is your uncle now?” someone asked.

  “No longer with us.” Roland smiled sweetly. “But that’s a whole ’nother story, as they say. Mr. Vesco is currently trying to buy his own island in Antigua, and is also making eyes at Fidel Castro.”

  Cassidy would have liked to have stayed for the music but he knew he was done for, nap or no nap. Joe Kern was getting out his ukulele and Jim Branch his guitar when one of the interior boats next to Cassidy needed to detach and Cassidy used the opportunity to make his exit, after making sure Roland had a ride back to the dock.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Roland said, toasting him with his tumbler. “I am an excellent swimmer.”

  “Roland,” Cassidy said, “I’m pretty sure you’re kidding, but just in case you’re not, get Joe to tell you about some of the sharks we’ve caught in here at night.”

  “No doubt,” said Roland, looking serious.

  Joe was grinning as he tuned his ukulele. “It’s one time fishing you don’t want to catch anything unless you’re armed.”

  Cassidy cranked the Mercurys and puttered just far enough from land to be out of mosquito range. As the boat swung gently around on the anchor rope and hung, he could hear the hum of the hotel’s generator across the water, the faint singing and laughter from the boats, and the occasional sudden panicky splash of something big chasing something small.

  The clean cotton case on the camping pillow felt cool and delicious on his sun-fevery face as he sensed a tidal wave of sleep coming on relentlessly and pleasantly, strains of distant and familiar lyrics coming to him across the smooth water as if from a child’s nap dream:

  Now de fishing’s good near your island …

  dat’s why I come back for more …

  but when you swim me boat ’round naked …

  I follow you back to de shore …

  singing island woman … island woman …

  making me forget who I am …

  11

  Out by the Buoy

  ROLAND WASN’T IN his room so Cassidy wandered around to the coffee shop in the lobby to find him working on a double order of French toast and fresh strawberries.

  “You missed it last night at the Sit and Be Damned Lounge,” Roland said, pouring him a cup of coffee from the carafe. “More than acceptable steel drum group called Bimini Traffic Jam, shamelessly drunken limbo contest, many young ladies.” He crunched a piece of bacon thoughtfully. “Mostly Canadian schoolteachers on holiday package tours. Also the two from our group, who asked about you, by the bye.”

  “I wouldn’t have been any good to anybody. I slept so hard that when I woke up I thought I was camping on the coast up in Maine. Took me a good thirty seconds to remember my name.”

  Roland offered—without much enthusiasm—a piece of French toast.

  “No, thanks. Still full from dinner. Bimini Traffic Jam, huh? That’s pretty good. Those guys always come up with good names. Heard a group in Nassau once called Square Grouper Bonfire. So what are you thinking about doing today? More pictures?”

  “John Kern said you two were going fishing?”

  “We talked about going out by the buoy and casting some tube lures. Why?”

  “May I join you?”

  “Roland! Of course you can join us! I’ve never known you to show any interest in fishing at all at all, other than just hoping something would end up in the pan.”

  “It occurred to me that I ought not remain so completely ignorant of the process, repugnant though it may be in some aspects. I assume we will be going after one of your billfishes? Your majestic blue marlin, perhaps?”

  Hmmm. Cassidy eyed him carefully. Had he been reading Hemingway?

  “Nothing so elaborate today. This is just messing-around kind of fishing. Out by the buoy there are always some big barracuda or jacks maybe, and they just love tube lures. It’s as close to sure-thing fishing as you can get. It’s like if your cousin is visiting from Ohio and you want to be sure to hook him up to something that feels like it’s going to pull his ass overboard so he can go back and tell everybody in Akron about it, well, this is what you’d do.”

  “What can you do with barracuda? Are they edible?”

  “Well, you can eat the smaller ones if you’re hard up. They’re oily and fishy, though. They smoke up okay if you have the time, sort of like sailfish or jacks or something like that. The bigger ones aren’t worth the risk. They sometimes have this toxin called ciguatera, which will make you sick as hell.”

  “Hmmm.” Roland sniffed.

  “Or kill you,” Cassidy added cheerfully. “But they’re fun to catch!”

  “I would have preferred the majestic blue marlin, but … Say, this form of fishing doesn’t have anything to do with worms, does it?”

  “Only to the extent that they are the end to which all fishermen come.”

  “Eh?”

  “Go get your zinc oxide and meet us down at the concrete pier. I’m going to go over to government dock to top off the tanks and get some ice. John Kern will be waiting.”

  By the time they got out to the orange and white buoy the tide was peaking, so Cassidy turned the engines off and let the boat drift. The three of them sat for a moment, enjoying that sudden tranquil state when internal combustion is instantly replaced by the cry of gulls, lapping water, and the muted thunk of a rusty buoy.

  It was still early enough to be coolish, and even Roland was enjoying sitting out from under the Bimini top, his closed eyes upturned to the warming sun. His nose was hidden under a layer of zinc oxide but for once he wasn’t wearing some kind of huge headgear. Cassidy thought that he heard him purring.

  Cassidy nudged John Kern, who smiled when he saw Roland’s rather regal pose.

  “Do you have any lures made up?” he whispered to Cassidy.

  “Don’t think so. We’ll have to do some. There’s a spool of
tubing under the platform, and I’ve got wire and hooks in the tacklebox.”

  “What are you two whispering about?”

  “Nothing. We didn’t want to disturb you. We’ve got to make some tube lures before we can do anything.”

  “Make them? Are they not commercially available?”

  John Kern and Cassidy looked at each other. In fact, neither of them knew.

  “I doubt it,” Cassidy said. “There’s nothing to them really. I guess maybe a Yankee would pay for one, but nobody else. We’ll show you how to do it.”

  Roland actually paid attention as they set up a little assembly line. Using a well-worn pair of needle-nose pliers, John Kern cut lengths of leader wire three feet long while Cassidy cut eighteen-inch lengths of orange surgical tubing with a fillet knife. Then they both set to work pulling the wire lengthways through the tubing and twisting big treble hooks onto the ends. On the other end of the wire, they made a loop for the connector and wrapped the excess wire around and around. Using the needle-nose pliers, John Kern put a little lock knot on both ends of each lure and they were done. In a few minutes they had made a dozen.

  “There you have it, my friend, several weeks’ supply of tube lures.” Cassidy handed one to Roland.

  “I’m sure I don’t understand.” Roland looked at it from different angles. “What do the fish think it is?”

  John Kern and Cassidy wrinkled their brows.

  “Hmmm,” said John Kern. “That’s a good question. Nobody knows really. All we know is that barracudas go completely wild for them. Other things too. Big jack crevalles, pompano, lots of things. But nobody has any idea what the fish think they are. Some kind of eel, maybe? All I know is that my dad taught me how to make one when I was about eight years old and that they work great.”

  Roland’s face clouded over.

  “What’s wrong?” Cassidy asked.

  “I’m beginning to think that I’ve been brought on some kind of nautical snipe hunt,” he said unhappily.

  “What are you talking about?” Cassidy said.

  “I’ve never heard of a fishing trip where a catch was almost guaranteed, and even the variety of fish and the very type of unlikely lure specified in advance. I can see that I am to be made an object of your japery.”

  “What’s he saying?” John Kern whispered.

  “He thinks we’re making fun of him,” Cassidy said. “That it’s a practical joke.”

  “There’s one way to find out,” said John Kern, handing Roland his Penn Senator casting rod, now rigged with a tube lure. “If you can get that lure to land within ten feet of the buoy and get it back on board this boat without having a fish at least hit it, then I’ll buy your first drink at the Sit and Be Damned Lounge tonight. Here, let me show you an easy way to cast …”

  Cassidy watched entranced as Roland readily took the rod and allowed John Kern to guide his first cast.

  “Roland, you’ve been on dozens of fishing trips with me and I’ve never—”

  “Oh, I don’t mind playing the fool in your little farce, but I want you to remember in the telling that I most assuredly was not— Oh my!”

  The lure had landed with a splash very near the buoy and instantly disappeared in a violent flash of white-bellied scales and splashing water.

  “’Cuda,” said John Kern quietly. The new fisherman was doing some kind of excited little two-step jig.

  “Stand still and get your rod tip up,” said Cassidy, placing his hand in the small of Roland’s back to guide him. “Yank back on the rod a couple of times to set the hook. That’s it, really hard. Once more. Okay, you got him. John, you want to take over while I get the boat?”

  Cassidy got the engines started. The fish was taking line off the reel in steady rasping jerks and Cassidy knew that John Kern would have set the drag correctly and that the fish would be paying the maximum price for all the line he got on this first run. The barracuda was heading toward open water, away from both the buoy chain and the boat, so Cassidy kept the boat in neutral.

  “Ho ho ho!” Roland said, grinning hugely. Cassidy had to smile too.

  “That’s right,” said John Kern, “he’s slowing now. When he stops for a second, pull up on the rod and try to get some line back. That’s it, just a little at a time. He’ll take off again once he’s had a little rest, but at least you’ve made him pay for it. That’s it, get a little more. Here he goes again!”

  The drag began its high-pitched pulsing screams as the fish sensed itself going in the direction of danger.

  “Whee!” Roland said.

  But John Kern glanced back at Cassidy, who nodded, put the boat in gear, and began following the fish.

  Cassidy and John knew what Roland did not: there wasn’t a great deal of the thirty-pound test filament left and a fish like this was perfectly capable of running every bit of line off a reel, snapping it off, and swimming happily out to sea dragging a few hundred feet of line. Putting the boat into the equation could give Roland a little extra margin, as long as the fish didn’t go straight down, which was unlikely.

  “That’s it,” said John Kern. “He’ll get tired again, then you can get some back.” John went to the front of the boat, put on some sunscreen, and got a baseball cap out of his bag. He came back to Roland’s side and put his fingertips under the rod to feel the pressure.

  “Okay, he’s about done. Get some of your line back.”

  “This is … this is …” sputtered Roland happily, out of breath.

  “I know.” John smiled. “Don’t talk, keep reeling. Cass, he’s coming back.”

  Cassidy put the boat in reverse as he watched the line come more and more vertical. But the fish was staying very deep and there was a huge belly of line out by now, so Roland wasn’t able to get any more line back. John Kern was watching the angle of the line intently and realized what the fish was doing.

  “It’s okay,” John said. “He’s going under the boat. Go ahead, just keep following him. Don’t try to reel yet. Put the tip of the rod right down into the water if you need to. That’s it, lean over the side a bit, I’ve got you. Cass will get him squared away. Try to keep the line off the boat hull if you can.”

  “This fish! This fish is …” The thrill was still there but Cassidy knew that Roland was beginning to really understand the strength and stamina of the animal on the other end of the line. There was both admiration and frustration in his voice.

  Cassidy backed off and away from the line and now Roland was standing back up and playing the fish straight off the side of the boat, though now they were facing back toward the buoy and the island.

  “Okay, Roland, you’re doing great. But we’ve got a big loop of line out there in the water, and we can get a lot of that back. He’s going to try to make it back to the buoy chain and we’ve got to stop him, so go to work on him.”

  Roland was pumping and reeling as fast as he could, panting and red, and Cassidy thought for the first time that this might not be the safest activity in the world for his overweight friend. But John Kern had done this many times with friends of his dad’s who were not exactly endurance athletes, and Cassidy trusted his judgment. Besides, Cassidy had watched Roland’s behavior and knew very well the fish wasn’t the only one hooked. He wouldn’t want to be the one to try to take the rod out of his hands.

  Roland was facing the buoy getting line back steadily now and so he was surprised when there was a noisy thrashing right behind the boat.

  “Another one!” he said.

  “No,” said John, tracing out a pattern over the water with his finger. “That’s your fish. See, here’s the way the line’s looping through the water. It’s all excess. We call it a belly of line. The friction of the water makes it hard to reel in, but you can do it. He’s getting pretty tired now. Here he comes again!”

  The fish flashed on the surface again and gave a halfhearted jump that brought his muscular dark green back out of the water. He was over a yard long and as thick as a rolled-up Sunday Times.

  “Wow!” said Roland.

  “They don’t really jump much,” said John Kern. “That’s about all you’re probably going to get out of him. He’s a pretty big boy, maybe thirty-five, maybe forty pounds.”

  “He’s a champion! I am going to have my picture taken with him before I let him go!” He was reeling joyously now, rhythmically pulling the big rod into a bow then lowering and reeling, over and over.