He stood motionless ankle deep in salt water, one foot planted firmly, the other frozen half up, half down. A cast net dangled in his callused liver-spotted hands. Midway between his hands, a loop of net dangled from sunburned lips. The scuffed and tattered net was old like the man, still functioning, not quite ready to give up. When he stopped moving, the yellow-legged wading birds who’d been following him for the last hundred feet, froze too.

Poppa was stalking bait and the birds, patient adoring disciples, followed.

He unfroze, took a single step, and stopped. They followed suit. An observer couldn’t help but smile, for it seemed as if the long-legged birds were seriously trying to mimic his movements. His skinny sun leathered legs with knobby knees were little different from a bird’s legs. And too, there was the hat.

He wore an ugly ball cap, one with a bill that was too long. It suited him though. That extra-long bill gave him just the right amount of shade allowing him to peer through his polarized sunglasses into the shallow water at edge of the sand bar.

His shorts were tattered and had suspicious fishy stains where he’d wiped his hands once too often. His loose cotton tee shirt had the name of a grand yacht on it, but he didn’t own the yacht. His friend Al owned the yacht or had owned it. Al was gone now.

Poppa didn’t need a yacht. He had the Poppa K, his square bowed Boston Whaler. He’d driven it lightly onto the sand, fifty yards back. It’d be there to take him out to catch serious eatin’- fish when he had bait.

He fished alone this Wednesday. He never fished on weekends – too many people out then.

He would have gone yesterday. The tides were better then, but Bill’s funeral was yesterday. It was a good funeral.

He fished alone most of the time. Why not? As of yesterday, he was the last of the Lostman’s River group. What a group! For nearly forty years, they’d pushed their luck collectively, until finally they died or got too old and too wise to gather for another fishing trek.

All except Poppa knew it was time to give Mother Ocean respect from the vantage of a rocking chair. Less than a handful of years short of ninety, he still fished with the vigor and enthusiasm he’d had all his life.

Alone or with a companion, he called the first catch, “One to nuthin’” regardless of the fish type, or size – bait included.

For Poppa, life was an ongoing contest. First, to score called the score, even if there was no one to compete against.

He would have reflected on these things, but this wasn’t the right moment. Maybe when he was on the wreck later in the day and fishing was slow he’d reflect on life some, but not now. Now it was time to catch bait.

“Uh Oh,” he muttered as he clenched tighter on the cotton lead of the cast net between his teeth. He’d spotted the squiggles of a school of young fingerling mullet that were moving his way in a slow spastic swirl. He and his disciples became statues again – and waited.

He waited until the school was in range. Then the dance began.

He pivoted left in a half twist, swung the weighted line at the bottom of the net back behind him until the leads rebounded against his hip. Then he swung right, facing the bait. His left hand, then his teeth released their hold on the net. His right hand guided, and with all the concentration he could muster, he willed the net into a high arch until it took a life of its own hurling away from him. The net floated momentarily like a seven-foot mushroom, then made a syncopated splash as it covered the bait. A perfect throw. The retrieval line looped around his wrist let him haul his catch in.

“One to nuthin’,” he said in a scratchy voice – to the birds.

As he retrieved the mass of panicked splashing captives to shore, the birds scurried up behind him to see what treats he’d share with them. They knew he’d cull the contents of the net when he opened it onto the white sand bar. They knew he’d be generous, so long as they didn’t crowd their luck.

Poppa and the birds shared a loose understanding. The birds could eat, but not his prize baits. He talked to them sometimes, scolding them if they grew too bold or brazen. But at that moment he was busy pulling the cast net full of fingerling mullet up onto the sand bar. He had all he wanted in one throw.

Nine decades of living, sore joints, and a back that constantly tried to stoop notwithstanding, he moved quickly. As he lifted the net free of the flopping wriggling mass, he pounced onto the best prizes, pitching each in turn into his bait bucket.

“…eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-two,” he counted.

He stopped at twenty-three. That was enough for today. In a sharing gesture he pitched a stray sardine from the sand towards an aging ugly white egret. “Here old man, eat that,” sang Poppa in his crackly voice.

It was a courtesy extended from one salty old fisherman to another. The smaller quicker birds were already foraging to see what remained of the cast net’s bounty. They pecked at a few tiny crabs from between pieces of seaweed. The fish Poppa culled, were gobbled up and swallowed in seconds.

Poppa pitched a final offering to his white-feathered friend. The old bird had marks from fishing lines that had entangled him earlier in his life. He had a yellowish stain on his throat and an ugly brown coloration under his wing that was unnatural. His feathers were not arranged in perfect order, and he looked – well in many ways he looked like Poppa – a weathered sun-beaten survivor.

Poppa walked as briskly as his legs would allow to his boat and poured the bait into the recirculating bait well. He stowed the cast net tidily into a bucket, checked all his gear one last time, and with the big outboard motor easily started and chuckling happily, he began to back away from the sandbar.

In deeper water, he deftly spun the boat to point it towards the jetties that led from the Intercoastal waterway into the cold Atlantic.

He approached the jetties carefully, never taking his hand from the throttle.

Just two weeks before, he really and truly thought he’d pushed his luck too far. It was an easy mistake to make, really. He’d been fishing on a reef in the Atlantic when the wind and current changed just enough to warn him it was time to go home.

As often happens, the surf pounded itself into a misty haze making inbound visibility poor. The GPS told him he was south of the bell buoy, and he’d calculated a course to come in just inside it. But he’d forgotten how far out the breakers extended on the south side of the channel and he’d gotten caught in dangerously shallow water in tall breakers.

Fifteen minutes of miserable boat pounding, back and stomach wrenching seamanship wore him out. Heavy waves broke over the bow until he stood ankle deep in brine. And at the very last second, Poppa knew he might not make it.

But he had, and he was back again today – a more careful man than before. A man of his years could still learn there are some things you don’t want to do twice.

So he was careful as he approached the jetties. He took stock one last time to see if it was an acceptable day. He’d promised himself to abort the trip if the weather was too risky. The weather was fine. No hassle from other boaters today either. The wind was slight. The day was warm and there were few clouds. Fifteen-miles into the Atlantic wouldn’t take too long and he would possibly have the wreck to himself. It was a nice wreck to fish.

The wreck was in ninety feet of water, and it was big and well defined. He’d gotten the coordinates from a friend, and when he found it the first time, he knew – he just knew – there would be lots of nice grouper and snapper to catch there.

Others fished there too, so the grouper were sparse. But there were some really nice snappers to be had. Snappers were hard to catch. Few men could do it better.

He motored offshore carefully, riding the waves, picking changes in course with practiced eyes. One eye on the GPS and the other on the compass, he soon found a rhythm that let him slide between the waves quickly and carefully.

He thought about the Lostman’s River bunch again, particularly Bill Hawkins and felt a little sad.

He recalled how Bill finally admitted that the cancer was going to win the battle. He was a good fishing buddy and venerated playboy who pursued many loves. He loved fishing, boats, fine whiskey, women, and airplanes. His last life’s energies had gone into hand-building a seaplane from a kit. It seemed to be the single thing that kept him alive during those last awful weeks when the cancer ran unchecked through his emaciated body. Bill knew that the race to finish the airplane was a race he might not win.

But he got it done with some help and was able to watch from a wheelchair as a pilot friend flew the plane from his lakefront home to make a single pass over the house before landing to taxi within twenty feet of where Bill sat with a satisfied smile.

Bill died a few days later, and when his son Mark called Poppa and asked him to attend the memorial service, Poppa went to say goodbye to the last of his Lost Man’s River fishing friends.

It was a good funeral, though. Poppa liked that kind of funeral. No jackets, no ties, no formalities. Just fine whiskey and good stories to tell. They met at Bill’s house overlooking the lake. The seaplane sat conspicuously in a place of honor at the top of the launching ramp. Mark invited those that hadn’t seen it fly to come look at the photos that lay on the passenger seat of the shiny brand-new airplane.

Each of the friends gathered there, recalled a story, and tried to throw off the sense of melancholy. Then, when the last had spoken, Mark said, “Dad’s ashes are in his hand-made wooden tackle box he’s had since he was a kid. It’s in the pilot’s seat.”

A sense of quiet came over the small gathering. Mark lit a newspaper and threw it into the back of the plane, and it began to burn. In seconds the plane was a funeral pyre of frightening proportions forcing everyone to back away from the intense heat.

At first, they were all horrified. Then they realized that it was what Bill wanted – a Viking’s funeral.

Poppa left Bill that day with a sense of sadness, but at the same time he knew that it was as it should have been, and he hoped that his own passing would be just as fitting – when it was time. He reflected without pride that he’d outlived two wives, dozens of friends, a few sons of bitches who he’d worked with, a brother and a sister. His children worried about him but knew better than to interfere with the way he lived, especially his fishing.

All the while Poppa thought about the funeral, the shoreline and buildings on the horizon got smaller and smaller until they disappeared. Poppa was alone in the Atlantic. Just he and his boat – as it should be.

Five hundred feet from the wreck he slowed to a dead crawl and watched the depth recorder intently. He studied the surface current, the wind, and the bottom current. He knew he had to compensate for each to get the anchor placed perfectly on the first try. Anchoring, pulling the anchor, and resetting it repeatedly, were not part of his plan, for it was only marginally bearable and always hard work to do by hand. Yet anchor-set was everything.

The perfect anchor set would put the anchor into the sand fifty feet away from the wreck. If he figured his drift right, the wind and tidal forces would push Poppa’s fishing boat directly over the wreck and he could fish.

As the dark up-and-down marks on the screen showed hard bottom of high relief, he smiled. He didn’t actually see a picture of a sunken ship, but the telltale spikes on the screen showed him that he’d found it.

He carefully stopped the boat stop and watched the direction of drift.

“Ahhh, not going to be easy,” he muttered to the ghost of Bill as he repositioned the boat. Again he tried to estimate the way she would drift. He did this three more times until he was sure of the direction the boat would lay when he set the anchor into the sand well away from the wreck. An anchor fouled on the wreck was intolerable.

Satisfied he had the wind and tide correctly fixed in his mind’s eye, he moved the boat until the echo from the depth finder showed sandy bottom again. Quickly moving the throttle to neutral, he scampered to the bow of the whaler and slid his anchor overboard.

He paid the line out by hand so that it would lay just so, until he felt the anchor hit bottom. The boat was drifting backwards exactly as he had planned and when he was sure he would be over the wreck, he tied the line neatly as he always did.

One last look at the anchor line, then Poppa carefully walked to the console so that he could kill the engine and bait up his bottom fishing rod. It was going to be a good day.

Yesterday was for Bill; today was for him. Bill’s ghost could watch – or not. Poppa didn’t care. Ghosts of wives, lovers, antagonists, tax collectors, brothers and sisters were unwelcome company when he fished. Bill could watch – but quietly.

A boat always takes a while to settle on an anchor rode. Even when settled, waves punch a boat lightly back and forth to challenge the footing of the occupants.

And so it was on that morning. The tide was running a bit quicker than he’d first noticed, because it seemed as if the boat was moving. It seemed as if the anchor line was pulling the boat and although that sensation was not uncommon when the tide was running strongly, he was puzzled. Indeed, when he looked at the image on the depth finder, he didn’t see the wreck below. It wasn’t there.

The wreck was supposed to be directly underneath him, he was sure of it. But it was not.

And more curious yet, the boat really was moving. It had to be moving; it was pulling a small wake behind it. This was not a wake made by a boat sitting on an anchor in a strong running tide – this was a wake made by a boat being pulled by a line tied to something. But that couldn’t be.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, the movement stopped, and the boat again seemed to be gently streaming behind a firmly set anchor. What a curious tide!

Poppa reflected and waited for the boat to float back over the wreck when the moving sensation began again. Only this time there was no doubt about what was happening. The boat was definitely moving! Even his GPS indicated a direct forward speed of three knots. The wreck was two hundred feet from the wreck below – not fifty feet – as it should have been.

Then the boat jerked under his feet and the bow dipped downward as if the anchor line was being hauled in by a giant arm of a – of a what?

There was no doubt now. Poppa had dropped the anchor onto something that was moving away from the wreck, and his own anchor line was pulling him maliciously towards the bottom. He was puzzled – could not comprehend just what could be doing it – but clearly he had to retrieve his anchor and start over. He just hoped that the anchor would come free.

The only thing to do was to untie the anchor line and jerk it free of whatever was messing with him.

Just then, Poppa K began moving intently. The movement was not gentle and friendly, not at all. Whatever fouled his anchor line was big, frantic, and unhappy. The anchor line pulled the bow of Poppa’s Whaler down, down, down until it was inches below the green surface of the Atlantic. Water flowed into the front of his boat like water breaching a dam.

“Not good, not good,” Poppa muttered as he bent over, half standing, his hands on the knots of the anchor cleat. His feet were under water, yet he concentrated – forcing his leathery fingers to try to untie the anchor line. Two seconds, three, then four, and the water kept flowing into the boat. There was nearly a foot of water in the front of his boat. The stern and motor were out of the water. Something was pulling the boat down – bow first.

He was sure that his Whaler wouldn’t sink even if it filled with water. He’d plowed, bow first, through waves before and he’d filled the boat with water.

Every time, each and every time it happened, the freeing ports had let the water out immediately afterward. Even on that day two weeks ago when he’d gotten caught in the surf and had been pounded around like a puppet on a string there was nearly a hundred gallons of water in his boat. And that had drained out. Sure, he’d been frightened, for the boat has precious little maneuverability with all that extra weight in it, but he’d come through.

But it was a different circumstance now. Now his boat was being pulled down, almost straight down into the Atlantic and he couldn’t get the GOD DAMNED anchor line free. The Poppa K wouldn’t sink, no matter what, he was sure. He surely hoped it wouldn’t sink. What in the hell could pull an eighteen-foot boat under like that?

Then, finally, his fingers found the combination, the knot came undone, and the anchor line sang out and his boat popped back up like a cork freed of a terrible burden.

Poppa K resumed the correct position in an instant. The water slooshed to the back of the boat to begin freeing itself back into the Atlantic, and Poppa sighed a sigh of relief. Then, to his horror, he realized that the bitter end of his anchor line was firmly tied to a ring set into the deck of his boat.

He watched the anchor line sing out until it reached the end, all three hundred feet of it. And the nightmare began all over again.

Poppa began to take what whalers from New England in the eighteen-hundreds called a Nantucket sleigh ride. Only when they did it, they’d harpooned a whale, and he was sure he’d done no such thing.

But whatever it was, Poppa was sure he didn’t want to mess with it anymore. Once again, the bow was being pulled down and underneath green water again and Poppa knew that he only had a few precious seconds to find the fillet knife tucked behind his windshield and to cut the anchor line free.

Scrambling back to the console of his boat, Poppa barely got his hand on the knife when his boat popped back to the surface and began to drift lazily on the surface as if nothing had happened at all.

Taking no chances, he tucked the knife in his waistband and moved to the front of the boat where the anchor line lay limply. He lifted it. Nothing pulled back. He pulled a few more feet of line expecting all the while to have it rudely pulled by a sea monster, for he was sure that he’d found the lost monster of the deep.

Ten feet more, then twenty feet, and still no resistance. Then, as he retrieved more line, evidence of what had happened began to show. A thick snot-like coating of slime and abrasions adorned the half-inch nylon line. Still puzzled, Poppa pulled the entire anchor line in until all his line and ground tackle rested at his feet.

The anchor had bent a fluke, but it seemed to him that whatever it was that had pulled him around so violently had merely gotten fouled in the anchor line itself and not in the anchor. Perhaps the anchor had held fast to the bottom and a strong – a very strong fish of some kind had run headlong into the anchor line and had tried to escape by swimming away.

That could account for the downward pull and the violent actions. But what fish is that big and what could have accounted for the slime on the line?

Then it came to him. He’d seen a huge manta ray rudely breach the surface of the Atlantic about a month ago. The ray had been almost twenty feet across, and its wing-like cross section could easily hold tension on an anchor line, especially if the fish panicked. If the anchor had been firmly set into the bottom and the ray had crossed at the perfect time….

Yeah, that was it.

Poppa grunted and said to Bill Hawkins’ ghost, “Your sea-plane departure was dramatic, Bill, but this would have been better. Only there’s nobody but me here today, except maybe you, and I don’t believe in ghosts anyway. Besides I’m alive and you’re not.”

“Who’d believe that a manta ray almost dragged me to the bottom? I guess that makes it one to nuthin’. Just like always.”

The only thing left to do was set the anchor again and fish. After all, that’s what a fisherman does. Besides, he had plenty of good bait.

* * * end * * *