Night Fishing

Steve and Rod and Mark were playing in the murky surf, throwing rocks at one another. Steve and Rod had carted "throwing" rocks out into the water in the lower front portions of their t-shirts, stretched out to form sacks that were ideal storage for rocks and anything else they cared to carry into the water. Mark had taken an oar with him into the water, rather than rocks, and he used it both as a means of defense against the rocks lobbed his way by the other two boys and as a bat, attempting to swat the rocks back at either Steve or Rod...whoever had thrown them at him. One of Rod's larger rocks, thrown with significant force, was met by the swing of Mark's oar; the oar, too, was swung with force. The collision of rock and wood created a fiercely loud "crack!" that caught everyone's attention. Even John, who had stayed on the beach to collect driftwood for the fire, heard it and looked up from his drudgery to see whether something bad had happened in the surf.

The oar snapped in two pieces, the wood split from top to bottom, right through the center. Mark yelped, as he was genuinely startled, then screamed out in mock outrage, "You broke my fuckin' oar, you asshole! This is WAR!" Mark's declaration, followed by his lunge toward his attackers, was met with a frenzy of rock-throwing and screeches and verbal assaults. The water in the cove became a boiling, bubbling froth as the three of them executed the war. Occasionally, a rock would strike Mark's arm or shoulder and he would yelp in pain and then dive under water to retrieve the offending weapon to use it against his attackers.

A sharp rock struck Mark just above his right eye, causing a much-louder-than-usual scream and an eruption of blood running down his right cheek. While it looked worse than it actually was, the appearance of a large volume of blood, Mark's pain, and the fear that the blood dripping into the water could attract sharks brought the war to an end. The three of them went to the shore and dragged themselves out of the water and onto the mixture of broken seashells and sand and gravel and lumps of buckskin-colored clay blobs that served as a beach.

John had seen the blood on Mark's face almost immediately after the rock struck him, but he knew it was nothing serious because the other boys did not react the way they would have had it been serious. They would have panicked and screamed for John to go for help; since they didn't, he knew the damage was slight. Anyway, he was busy. He had to finish gathering enough wood to start and maintain a good fire that would last all night.

It would be sundown within a hour or so and there was much to do. Aside from collecting the wood and building a fire, they had to fashion a framework for the tarps that would serve as a tent, sneak back to Steve's house to recover the cooler full of beer that he had hidden in his backyard, and prepare a dinner of bacon, eggs, salt & pepper. John would prepare the meal in a cast-iron skillet that sat atop a rusty metal grate that had been left on the beach long ago, probably by another clan who fancied themselves adventurers.

Their little beach was only four or five blocks from John's house and just below a major bayside boulevard, but it was very private. The street was a good thirty feet above them, at the top of the 'cliffs' of clay and sand and palm trees and clumps of oleanders shielded the beach from view and provided a sound barrier. The cove was further protected, on the water side, by a series of three straight rows of broken concrete jetties that jutted out into the bay about fifty yards each. Typically, the water between the rows of concrete jetties was as calm and serene as a pond. The larger bay was relatively calm for the most part, as well, since its connection to the Gulf of Mexico was miles away.

To be continued...