LEAVING MAINE

Jimmy Pullen looked across the stern of the muscular boat, past the wild white plumes of sea spray created by the twin engines below, and discovered his brother’s face. Although only two years separated them, they looked quite different, apart from clan features. Mace’s had become a Maine face, seasoned and ruddy. Jimmy considered his own budding tan, his careful clothes and dark body hair. By comparison Mace, with his balding head, deep facial lines and chest full of white hair looked easily the older of the two.
The water was indigo, like an old glass bottle shimmering in the late August sun as the boat now lurched, and slowed to a trolling speed. Mechanically the two brothers began casting lines out in hopes of finding a school of horse mackerel, or possibly an errant striped bass. It had been an exceptionally wet summer and the water was still too cold. Nothing much had grown in people’s gardens all summer long. Nobody doing outdoor work like Mace had been busy much, and the cloudless day out on the water felt somehow like a wasted opportunity. Jimmy cast his line out into the craggy rusted iron colored rocks of Dyce’s Head and began the slow jerking motions with his rod tip. He looked at his brother again, happy, whistling an old do-wop tune, inscrutable.
Big Chief, the owner of the boat re-lit a joint he had been saving for just such a convergence as this: a stolen sunny day on cerulean seas, fishing lazily along the coast with his childhood friends, the reassuring sound of the Oakum Bay bell buoy gently bonging in the background. A huge man, he was as nimble as a barn cat, and despite his size displayed the easy motions of lifelong athleticism. He took a puff of the skunky smelling weed and pointed it at Mace as he tried to hold in the contents of his lungs. ‘Here ya go Macie boy’ he gasped. Mace shook him off with a quick look, and Jimmy noticed a little cloud of sadness cross his brother’s brow, supplanted in succession by, pride, shame, and finally relief. It was all so complex thought Jimmy. Why? The joints were never passed his way anymore, not for a long time. He wanted to say to Mace ‘Go ahead if you want to, I’m not my brother’s keeper’. This would have been said half in jest, but the weight of it would have been aimed right at Mace’s heart, and it would have been a cheap shot, so he let it go. There had been enough cheap shots already.
Finding himself smoking alone, the Chief looked initially sullen, and then considering the boon to himself, laughed and said ‘Ahhh, I remember the time when I wouldn’t have gotten this thing back if Jimmy got a hold of it’ and he erupted in deep laughter that shattered the mood, and then it was gone, with all three laughing and taking the easy way out. Jimmy looked out towards the looming shards of rock and the glittering waves crashing against them endlessly and eternally, thinking; nostalgia gets us into these situations and just as often it gets us out.
Suddenly, as the Chief was navigating the boat through a minefield of lobster pots, Jimmy felt a tug at his line. Assuming he had snagged one of the pots he released the drag and reeled backwards. But then the line jerked crazily and his pole bent down almost into the water and he knew he had a fish on. ‘Got one!’ he yelled, and quickly pulled back on the rod cautiously to set the hook. By the gravity he felt at the other end of his line he knew it was a striper, and he also knew it was big, at least a keeper. The excitement spread quickly; Chief slammed the boat into neutral, sending up a gurgling spew of smoke and fumes, while Mace quickly reeled in his own line. The three men had been doing this their whole lives, and reactions were ritual, automatic and unquestioned – everyone knew their part, and all other matters became irrelevant.
With the molten sun smiting his neck, Jimmy steadily let line out to the big fish until he saw the salty black of his spool through the last of his mono filament line. The fish was too big for his tackle, this they all understood by now. Chief began reversing the boat to buy time for Jimmy, who cautiously tried to pull back and gain some ground, but it was impossible and he was just holding even. If the fish decided to dive down he would lose it.
The initial excitement of hooking a big fish turned into workman-like reality for all three; Chief with the boat controls, Mace ready with the gaff, and Jimmy, who felt like he had a Volkswagen bus on the end of his line. After an initial series of runs the large fish was playing possum now, sitting thirty feet below the boat annoyed and disoriented. Any small movement at all sent electric currents up through the line and into Jimmy’s hands. Fifteen minutes had gone by and it was a stalemate.
Jimmy looked up at Mace, who smiled nervously but genuinely and kept up a constant stream of chatter, ‘Try to get some line back” he said, ‘See what he’s doing’. But they both knew that the fish was in control. Jimmy was using a medium action rod with eight pound test line. Then, just as Jimmy was starting to get annoyed with all the free advice, he thought he felt a little give and looked up to see if Chief was still reversing the boat. He wasn’t. Jimmy gave a cautionary pull on the rod and it gave back just enough to let him feel the fish’s weight on the other end. ‘Jesus’ he said, ‘this thing must weight fifty pounds at least’.
But the line was giving way, and he started to take it back slowly, pulling the rod up and then reeling in the reclaimed line. By now a half hour had gone by and Jimmy was getting tired, but the excitement overrode his fatigue. Mace came in closer and poised the gaff over the stern. Jimmy had reeled in at least twenty feet of line now. The big fish wasn’t fighting any more, but just being slowly pulled up through the varying hues of blue green. It was also tired of this game.
Worrying about all the things that could go wrong – was the line old, had he tied the knot well, would the small reel stand the pressure, would the hooks bend from the strain – Jimmy momentarily forgot how much line he had taken back, and just at that moment he and Mace looked down intuitively, and saw a great silvergreen flash in the water as the fish rolled over on its side. It was no more than ten feet below, and it was huge.
Once they saw the psychedelic reflection of it shimmering below, they both knew it was the biggest striped bass they’d ever seen in these waters. ‘Oh my god!’ whispered Mace, ‘Jesus, be careful Jim!’ The Chief came over to look, and the picture below them still wasn’t entirely clear - it could have been fifty pounds or a hundred. ‘That’s the biggest striper I’ve ever seen’ proclaimed the Chief in awe.
‘Maybe it’s not a striper’ offered Mace.
‘It’s a striper all right’ said the Chief. As the only true Mainer in the boat he would have the ultimate authority, and the two brothers deferred automatically.
Gaining line by increments of a few inches every few minutes, the fish was now almost within gaffing range, and Mace was hanging halfway off the stern with the Chief holding him by the waist. All three knew that their only chance of landing it was to get it through the gill and hang on. The fish was now only a few feet beneath the surface, breathing deeply and on its side. It was massive. It looked to be at least four feet long, and Mace was almost within reach of it with the gaff. In a moment of total clarity that Jimmy would remember the rest of his life, he looked down and saw his tiny Phoebe silver minnow gently, precariously hooked at the hinge of the great bass’ jaw. It was hardly even hooked.
Looking down into the glassy water Jimmy saw the aluminum shiver of the gaff as it moved down. He saw Mace lower it close to the bass’s black bullet head, its gills opening and closing with great laboring and movement of water. The gaff was below the fish now and it was a matter of catching the open gills just right and then pulling. The line was taught, and Jimmy kept wondering about how the lure looked on the fish’s mouth – he could see the whole lure perfectly…
Then a flash, a splash of boiling water, and the fish was gone. The gaff, already through the gills, jerked cleanly out of Mace’s hands, was flashing down, a flickering lazer sinking behind the phantom shadow into the depths: A fantastic rocket with one last power booster. Jimmy looked at his pole hoping for another answer and there was the snapped line flapping in the beautiful breeze.

II

The story still gets told every summer, as the greens of June and July morph into August’s deep blues, browns and tans. I hope I’ve stayed true to it - being the one with the pole in my hands, it might be easiest for me. Yes, it’s a fish story; the one that got away, and the one that three friends witnessed and lived and never will forget, the one that belittled all petty ideas for an hour one sunny, breezy afternoon in Maine.