The Fisherman’s Secret
Robert Reeder sat in his captain’s chair, waiting.
He watched the rolling waves of the Atlantic through the windows of The Cupid’s cabin. The night sky was gray and starless. Raindrops hit the surface of the water, creating their tiny impact craters that were quickly erased by the waves. He listened to the droplets fall on the roof of his cabin. Soft jazz flowed from a radio in the corner, filling the cabin with twinkling guitar strings and brassy notes. It put him at ease. The glass of scotch in his hand helped too.
The Cupid had belonged to Robert’s father, David Reeder. David had died a few years earlier and left the ship to Robert. It was a modest fishing vessel, only about 15-feet-long. Just over half of it was taken up by the square-shaped cabin that housed the ship’s engine and the captain’s chair.
Not as big as some of the other crab fishing vessels on the island where he was born and nowhere near big enough to hold a fishing cage or net, but it didn’t need those things. Robert’s father David had been a fisherman for 30 years, and never used a net or a cage in his life. He’d had his own method, one which had made a legend in the little island community where he’d lived, one which had now become Robert’s method.
David’s secret, yet frighteningly effective, method, involved a simple routine. He’d shove off in The Cupid on…
