Hold On Loosely

The following is a work of fiction based loosely on actual events.

He told her to hang on and opened the throttle all the way up. The skiff shot out of the water like a bat out of hell. Seventy horses in his left palm accessible with a twist of a tiller handle. Her tan leg flexed as she braced it against the side of the boat, hand cupped under the gunnel, rolling with the rhythm like it wasn’t her first rodeo. He surfed across a quartering Coon Key Pass to Sugar Bay, twisting, skipping, and hitting straightaways all the way to the Blackwater River.

There was a nice oyster bar tucked in a flat off a river main point that he needed to try. He stopped up-current, cut the motor, snatched a live shrimp the size of a prawn from the live well, and pushed a circle hook under the horn in front of the black spot. It dangled two feet under a popping cork with every bit of one once.

She made a ninety-degree turn with her body, loaded the tip, and made a swooping cast. The line rolled off the spool, bumping her fingertip until about two o’clock when she caught it in the first crease and flipped the bail on the spinning reel. Not only did she not sling the bait off, but she dropped in the strike zone. This was nothing to sneeze at.

They drifted. Big Boy got nervous, jumping out of the water like a scalded dog. The cork disappeared. “You gonna get that?” He snickered, watching the line move away.

Distracted by a flock of curlews loitering in the mangroves, the rod was nearly snatched from her hands. “Zzzzz, Zzzzz, Zzzzz …,”the drag zinged, and she felt the weight and strength of the fish as it swam against the incoming water, the rod bending in surges.

“Uh Oh …,” he said with quick breaths, “You got a big ole good un.” He got out of her way and took the Boga Grip out of the rear console. She fought the over-slot-sized redfish alongside the boat, closed the Boga around its lip and lifted it out of the water. After a quick photo, he laid the fish back in the water, moved it around a little bit, and released it to watch it swim away.

Negotiating the snap bends of Gill Rattle Creek with quick bursts of acceleration, losing control then gaining it back, and trimming it out on the straightaways, he chose all the right turns to Buttonwood Bay. They caught trout, snapper, ladyfish, and one too many hardhead catfish moving from point to point. With their poisonous fins, sliming the line …one flip away from a life of pain, you are (for the next however long).

As he walked down the narrow gunnel to leave, a manatee surfaced and gave the boat a playful bump, nearly sending him overboard. She laughed hard and made a futile attempt to video an act of nature in its purist form that few rarely see. She didn’t need to record it. How can the memory be made viewed through a lens? With a flip of its massive fantail, it waved goodbye, the white flesh around three propeller scars on its back waned into Buttonwood Bay’s muddy water. 

He navigated hazards by memory east across the bay to a narrow cut that led to the mouth of another tight and serpentine creek. After a quick stop at a mangrove snapper hole, he ran across Dismal Key Pass, behind White Horse Key, and past what used to be the grass flats of Hog Key onto Panther Key.

They walked along the beach at Panther, stepping that way you do barefoot over shells, like on hot coals that aren’t hot. Whitebait darted in and out of sandy depressions, silver flashes fading to deeper water. Her legs were “all day” long, and he admired her physique in the bikini as she walked ahead, seemingly not as tender footed as he.

Eyes the color of the water beneath the Seven-Mile Bridge in the Keys, she was the kind that relegated him to brunettes and the occasional redhead. Allergic to blondes, he was, breaking out in broken hearts. What hell it must be to be allergic to your addiction.

An East wind knocked down the seas for the ride from Panther to Cape Romano. Gullivan Bay was turquoise clear, and he easily stayed in the troughs around the sand bars. Their view of the Cape Romano dome houses looked far offshore when they rounded the Cape, like something out of a science fiction novel.

He knew of a tiny river tucked behind a wide sand bar that only boats like his could access. From within, the view of the Gulf was unobstructed, but from the Gulf looking in, it was secluded. Several yards off the beach, he shoved a long pole into the sand and tied the boat to it so they wouldn’t be aground when the tide fell.

They got out in knee-deep water and wadded the shoreline where the beach ended and swam to the center of the river. The current whisked them back towards the boat while jacks busted, snapper popped, and, in the distance, the violent sound of a snook destroying something rang out ... BLEEOOW!

As the end of the day drew near, they sat on the poling platform drinking Shiner Bock. The western sky was pink streaked against towering thunderheads, and rain fell in grey sheets to the north. The setting sun was the only measure of time. It was as if they were the only people on the planet.