A short story from The Adventures of Young Charlie Hagglund
By Alan E. (Al) Strunk
Charlie Hagglund waves the dip net as though rustling butterflies. Rescued from a pier side garbage can, the implement spent its lifetime catching fishes too large to board or too small to hook. Handle bent, hoop sagging, netting rent, Charlie sees the jetsam for what it is; a business opportunity. For a boy of thirteen, Charlie’s lifestyle, while expansive, is pretty much self-supported, though subsidized with the small allowance from his Auntie Lillian as payment for the chores of maintaining yard and the migration of trash.
Entrepreneurial service as water-born grocery courier and boat washer cover the cost of fuel for his small boat with Evinrude outboard motor, Saturday movies at the Bay Theater, and books. Recently, the cost of movies doubles, and an occasional purchase of Coca-Cola at the Morro Rock Yacht Club adds to his cost of living. Much to his chagrin, he befriends a girl. Not a girlfriend. Exactly. More like a girl-sailor-friend. Charlie meets Peggy Phillips. She knows her ropes.
He straightens the dip net’s handle in a bench vise. He reinforces it with split bamboo secured by a three-seam braided wrapping of fishnet cord. He laces an eyelet from a discarded fishing rod a third of the way up the handle from the head of the net. Cordage from hoop’s end to the eyelet provides standing rigging to prevent a further sagging. Torn netting gets repaired by the experienced fingers of a boy raised among commercial fishermen. He considers varnishing the fancy worked handle but decides function should rule over form.
Charlie Hagglund joins the bait fish business after cleaning a half-dozen discarded five-gallon paint buckets from the dumpster of the former Starr’s Boatyard. Negotiation settles per-bucket price in a hand shaken contract with Victor’s Landing, home port of Morro Bay’s sport fishing fleet. Known as “party boats” to working fishermen, whether honorific or slur, remains a topic of heated discussion on stormy days inside waterfront taverns.
Now all Charlie needs is fish and the time to catch them. He’s pretty sure he can net sardines at the north end of the harbor, inboard of buoy number seven. He’s not allowed to go beyond the buoy towards the open mouth of the harbor. Kelp and eel grass might be a problem that he can solve in the field. He could start early, before sunrise; if Bob’s Comet had running lights. Charlie is not a sailor who scoffs at Coast Guard regulations.
To avoid waking his live-aboard neighbors, Charlie rows Bob’s Comet canoe style until she clears the boat basin. Oarlocks are unavailable as they provide a base for two Fulton Industries ninety-degree flashlights fitted with colored filters; red for port, green for starboard. A fishing rod mounted to the fore peak bears a penlight to give reference to those ahead. The Evinrude provides a stern light.
Darkness provides a minor challenge. Familiarity with channel and landmark eases Charlie’s way towards the harbor’s north end. The five mile-per-hour speed limit gets defeated by a stronger than normal ebb tide. Charlie throttles the engine back to idle, using it more for steerage than propulsion.
Checking Bob’s Comet to insure everything is shipshape, he finds buckets and dip net secured but ready-to-hand. He sees the colored seat cushion he purchased at an extravagant price. It seems the gentlemanly thing to provide if one hosts a young lady on a casual harbor cruise.
Drifting more than motoring gives time for dawn-dreaming. Peggy Phillips comes down from Alameda with her father, a retired Coastguard Chief, to visit her uncle. That she is a temporary fixture in Charlie’s life, for she will return to her home waters, is a fact which the unrealistic side of his mind refuses to make way for. Maybe he should do something special for her. Buy her flowers? Maybe a plant. An Azalea? Would an Azalea grow in Alameda? He could swing it if he got at least three buckets of bait fish. He could surprise her when they meet at the yacht club later this afternoon.
Like water through a chink, reality has a way of flooding fantasy. With the uuua-haaaa of the breakwater buoy, the gentle lap of harbor wave, and the drone of the idling Evinrude, Charlie falls asleep. With a cough, spurt, cough, spurt, silence, Charlie awakens. The Evinrude is asleep! Bob’s Comet now breaks the harbor’s speed limit by dawn’s early light, without mechanical aid. She’s mid-channel headed stern first towards the harbor entrance, or, in this case, exit!
Charlie blanches as he sees the rusty green number seven can buoy pass by to port. Or was it starboard? He is going backward.
“Holy crapola! Time to row!”
If nothing else, Charlie is a good ship’s rigger. Looking at the oarlocks befouled with jury-rigged running lights, he gauges the time left before the current sweeps him out to the sea buoy. Could he lasso it and tie off until help comes? Tying off to an aid to navigation is against regulations. But so is drowning! Besides, it isn’t the sea that frightens him. It’s the fury of his Auntie Lillian that he dreads.
Without deep thought or analysis, Charlie grabs the dip net and seat cushion. He puts the cushion inside the net with a woven web using a length of fish cord cut from a skein kept close at hand for just such emergencies. He fashions a yoke of cordage to the traitor engine’s throttle arm. He slips the dip net’s handle through the yoke. Once the net gets submerged, Charlie sculls the boat shoreward. Ebb tide drags Bob’s Comet with a leaches’ suck. Charlie prays that cordage and repaired dip net will hold up under the strain.
He doesn’t choose which side of the harbor, mainland or spit he aims for. Tide and current make that decision. Reaching the onshore edge of the outgoing stream, the tide relinquishes its hold and current takes over. Safe from being taken to sea, Charlie now faces the prospect of being washed up against the jagged rocks of the south jetty. Just before contact, he abandons ship. Standing waist-deep on a sandy bottom he feels a wriggle beneath one foot. A fish escapes his trod. Flatty halibut or leopard shark? Not waiting to find out, Charlie pulls the boat ashore. A breaking wave completes his soaking.
“Shipwrecked, castaway, and on the wrong side of the harbor. Things have just got to get better,” Charlie thinks but does not say.
Wet, cold, but otherwise unharmed, he assesses his situation. It will take four, maybe five hours until slack tide will allow him to row up-harbor. Charlie is a busy boy. He doesn’t have time to sit on the beach and wait for the tide. The boat will have to be pulled along shore to above the yacht club. Then he will free the oarlocks, launch the boat, and row across the harbor. He will be late, and he carries the appearance of a drowned otter, but he will keep his appointment with Peggy.
She is waiting on the pier.
“Where ‘ya been, stink pot boy?” she asks.
“Shanghaied by time and tide, madam,” he answers. “Life of the sailor.”
“You watch too many movies. Bad news.”
“It’s the day for it.”
“Something’s going on in Egypt. Dad’s been called back to active duty. We’re going home.”
“Egypt got a navy? When?”
“Now! What d’ya think I’m doing standing down here watching ‘fer ‘yer sorry ass like some sort of fisherman’s wife?”
“I love it when you talk all salty like that.”
“Ugggh!”
The longest walk of Charlie’s life follows Peggy up the ramp and out the gate to the yacht club parking lot, where a massive Buick sits idling. There are no words. Peggy’s gentle kiss on Charlie’s lips will haunt him in every memory and dream.
As the Buick flees the Embarcadero, Charlie feels himself growing smaller.
