Diary of a Witness Read online

  I sank hard today. I ate two plates full. Once I got started, I couldn’t stop eating. I just stopped caring.

  November 6th

  Will was standing in front of his locker when I came down the hall this morning. Standing there with his locker door wide open. It’s like he was just begging someone to come shove him in and slam the door. I couldn’t think what could be so important that he would forget basic safety.

  He said, “What’s the best news you can possibly think of?”

  “Um. Let me see. Amy McPhee wants to go out with me.”

  “In your dreams, buddy, but this is close. I finally talked my dad into taking us fishing on Saturday.”

  “Oh. Cool.” I was actually a little bit afraid of the ocean. But I was willing to give it a go.

  Will and I had a deal, right since we met at the beginning of the school year. He was going to take me out on the ocean and show me fishing his way, and I was going to take him up to my uncle Max’s cabin and show him fishing my way.

  His way you’re out on a twelve-foot metal boat, swaying with the tide, using this tackle where the hooks are like the size of your hand. Where the line is twenty-five-or thirty-pound test, and you’re wrestling these big sea monsters up out of the deep. Having to use a net or a gaffing hook just to get them up into the boat without breaking the line.

  My way you’re perched at the side of this running creek, with four-pound test and a pole that swishes back and forth at the tip when you move it. Waiting for that special little stutter that says trout. Then reeling in, watching the silver of its belly crisscross through the water before it breaks the surface in one final jump for freedom. If you know your stuff you never even need to get your feet wet.

  I think I like my kind best, but he swears once I get used to pulling in the big ones, I’ll never go back. I’ll get spoiled and I’ll never want to fish for twelve-inch trout again.

  That’s actually what I’m worried about. I’m worried he might be right.

  He also likes hunting, but I don’t think I’m up for that.

  About a second later the jocks cruised by, and Will quick closed the locker before he could get shoved into it. So he hadn’t entirely lost his mind.

  Just as they got level with us, all five of them did one of those fish imitations. You know, the kind with your hands up by your face like gills, and your mouth going in a little O. In perfect unison. Almost as though they knew what we’d been talking about. I mean, someone seeing it from the outside might think so. But really, they did this to us almost every day.

  Just a run-of-the-mill school of jockfish going by. Taking the opportunity to rag on us as they passed. They thought fishing was hilarious. And that we were total dorks for liking it. Why Will ever talked about fishing out loud in class, I’ll never know.

  I guess he thinks fishing is cool. Him and just about nobody else.

  I heard their laughter echoing back to us all the way down the hall. Even after they turned the corner, I could still hear them laughing.

  We sat in the cafeteria, daydreaming. Out loud. To each other.

  “My dream,” he said, “is to live in a world where Lisa Muller would give me the time of day.”

  “Dream on,” I said. “Besides, she’s no Amy McPhee.”

  “Amy McPhee is beautiful in an obvious sort of way.”

  I laughed at him, then sucked some milk out of a straw, then laughed at him again. “There is nothing wrong with obvious beauty.”

  “Maybe not, but still.”

  Just then somebody passing behind me bonked me on the back of the head with their tray. Hard. I figured it was an accident until I heard somebody laughing. I looked around. It wasn’t even the usual suspects. Total strangers, probably seniors. Senseless drive-by cruelty.

  The only one who seemed to notice was this girl named Jane, who was sitting with us at the Safety Table. Plain Jane, the cruel ones called her. Sort of in the Kenny and Alex category. She rolled her eyes as a professional courtesy.

  “I don’t even mean give me the time of day, as in date me,” Will said, going on like total strangers hadn’t just needlessly assaulted me. I think he was so deep inside his own head that he didn’t even see. “I know that’s asking too much. I mean literally give me the time of day. Well, no, not literally. I don’t mean I’d ask her what time it is. I mean literally just the kind of time you give a stranger. Like I’d say something funny and she’d laugh. She has the greatest laugh. Or even if she just smiled at me. That would be enough. You see, my young Ernie? My goals are realistic. My goals are modest.”

  I just shook my head at him. I finished my milk, and the straw made a rude sucking sound.

  I looked at Lisa. Needless to say, she was not looking at us. She was talking to her friends and to one of the jocks. Either Mike or Dave. Or maybe his name was Rusty. They all kind of mush together in my head. She had long dark hair and dark eyes and a nose that was a little too big. But she was pretty. Will was right about that. Not in the most obvious way. Not like a Hollywood starlet. Not like the curvy blonde you throw at a guy when you want him to say “Oooh” without even thinking. This was something a little more real. She might actually have been real.

  “That’s it,” he said. “I’ve made up my mind.”

  “What mind?” I said. But just kidding, not really being mean. You can talk like that when friends know they’re friends.

  He ignored me. “I’ve just made a resolution. Someday I will go up to Lisa Muller and say something to make her laugh.” He stared off in her direction and sighed. “It’s resolved.”

  Just as he said that, she stood up from her table and picked up her tray.

  “Go, tiger,” I said.

  He just sat. “I have to think of something funny first.”

  “Right. I get it.”

  “Besides, I said someday. I definitely did not say today.”

  November 9th

  3:00 a.m.

  A day like yesterday is why Uncle Max gave me this journal. I know it is. I think he figures the little stuff is important, too, but this is the kind of thing you’d put in a journal even if you never had one before. I couldn’t even bring myself to write about this yesterday. It was just too long a day and I was too tired and confused. Too upset.

  But now it’s early Sunday morning and I’m waiting for Uncle Max to drive down from Lemoore to help me with this fish. And I know he’s going to ask if I wrote it all out in my journal. I want to be able to say yes. I want to say, I did it just like you told me. Remembering everything everybody said, and putting it down. Also how I felt and what I saw. Like I was writing out a story. So a total stranger could read it and really get what happened.

  “But I’ll never show it to a total stranger.” That’s what I said at the time.

  He said that’s not why. He said it was because later, when I’m a grown-up, I’ll look back on it, and I’ll be so far removed I’ll need all those details to help bring it back. I’ll be the stranger.

  Uncle Max is a writer, and I think he has it in his head that I’ll grow up to be one, too. I’m not sure I’m good enough for that. But I’m willing to try what he says.

  Anyway, here goes:

  We got all the way to the coast, and I found out that Will’s father wasn’t actually going out on the boat with us. Just me and Will and Sam, Will’s little brother. It seemed scarier without a grown-up. I don’t know why, really. Grown-ups do stuff wrong all the time. Still. I didn’t figure it would just be us.

  “I’ve been out on this boat without my father, like, twenty times.”

  “Yeah, and he still hasn’t caught a legal ling,” his father said.

  We were standing on the boat ramp, right where it met the sand. This steep concrete ramp with deep ridges, so the trucks can always get traction.

  “This’ll be the time,” Will said. “Besides, I’ve caught plenty of lings.”

  “Yeah, plenty of shorts.”

  “I caught a legal one.”

  �
��Hooked a legal one. It’s not caught till you get it on the boat.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t know what a ling is.

  All four of us picked up the boat by the stern end. Lifted it off the trailer and set it on the sand. Then Will and his father took the bow end and put that down on the sand, too. Then we all turned it around and pushed it down to the waterline, across this stuff that was more like pebbles than white sand.

  “Six hours,” his father said. “Keep an eye on your watch. I want this thing landed when I back down the ramp again in six hours.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Will said.

  I got in the front, the seat right behind the bow. Like a metal bench across the narrowest part. Not too comfortable. The waves looked big to me. But I guess I’m not used to judging waves. Sam got in the middle, and Will sat on the stern end, where he could work the outboard motor.

  “Ready?” his father asked. He was standing right behind the boat, waiting for a big wave to come along and lift it up a little. He was wearing big rubber boots that came up to his knees. “This one,” he said. When it came in, I felt the boat slide sideways. He gave us a big push, and Will grabbed up the oars and rowed like crazy. “Six hours. Don’t let me down.”

  Will’s father walked up the pebble-sand to his truck and drove up the ramp and down the road. Meanwhile, Will kept rowing, until we were out beyond the waves. I looked out to the horizon, and a big wave crashed into the bow and caught me in the face. It got my sneakers wet, too. Sam laughed at me. Will told him to shut up.

  Will put down the oars and started the motor. Pulling a string, like on a lawn mower engine. He had to do it three or four times. But then it started up, and we went roaring off in the direction of the kelp beds.

  “What does he do for six hours while we fish?” I asked Will. I had to yell to be heard over the motor.

  “He either goes to the West End bar and plays darts or he goes over to Camozzi’s and plays pool.”

  I could see one other little fishing boat sitting out by the kelp beds, and two or three kayaks. I already felt a little seasick bobbing up over the swells.

  After a while Will cut the engine and the boat drifted to a stop in front of the kelp.

  Will said, “We’ll try here because it’s good fishing by the kelp beds. But there might be a drift, so be careful. Really watch your line and the kelp. If you get hung up, half the time you have to cut the line to get it back. Then you lose your leader and your jig. Gets expensive. And look behind you to see if the boat is drifting into the kelp, too.”

  Sam was tying up his rig. Tying on a swivel and then hooking up a leader that had two big hooks on it, tied up with bright red artificial feathers. I watched him to get the idea of the rig. He looked up and saw me looking. “Thought your dopey friend here already knew how to fish.”

  Will reached out and knocked Sam in the head. “He’s a trout fisherman. Show some respect.”

  “Ow.” Sam went back to tying up, almost like nothing had ever happened. He put a big spoon-shaped jig with a giant treble hook at the end of the leader.

  I’d met Will’s brother, Sam, once before. I didn’t like him. I guess Will didn’t, either. He was about twelve. Or maybe eleven, I don’t know. And he wasn’t an outcast like us. And he wasn’t afraid to show off about that.

  I tied up the way they did, pulling gear out of Will’s tackle box. I could hear the wind whistle, and I watched it flip over bits of kelp sitting on the very top of the water. I looked out to the horizon and saw great blue herons perched on top of the kelp on their long legs, which seemed so weird. Who would’ve thought it would hold them?

  Will handed me a wooden board with frozen squid on it, and a knife. “Put a squid head on your treble hook. Just on one hook. Go in right between the eyes. It stays on better that way. And then cut some small pieces of the tubes to go on your shrimp jig hooks. Higher up.”

  “But it’s frozen solid,” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter. Just break off a head. It’ll thaw fast enough in the water. And keep your thumb on the spool when you’re unreeling,” Will said. “Or the reel will get spinning too fast and you’ll have a rat’s nest of line to deal with.”

  I looked down at my pole and at the line. The whole thing looked like something from the land of the giants.

  We just sat there for a while, watching our reels as they spooled out. Then I felt my jig hit the bottom.

  “Come up three or four cranks off the bottom,” Will said, and I did. “Otherwise you’ll get snared up.”

  “Gets expensive,” I said.

  “Righto,” he said. Will actually said things like righto. It’s just who he was.

  We sat for a while, and I noticed that they popped the tips of their poles up and down now and then, so I did, too.

  Will said, “This is my lingcod day. I can feel it.”

  Sam blew a raspberry. “You’ll never get a legal ling. Never. You’ve got the lingcod curse. He’ll either be short, or he’ll break the line, or he’ll twist off the hook. You’ve always been cursed for lingcod. What makes you think today will be different?”

  “You watch,” Will said. “You watch how it’ll be different.”

  We sat without talking awhile longer, and I tried not to think about the motion of the boat on the swells. The swells were so big. We could actually feel the boat roll into the valley after each one. I was scared a big one might break right over the side of the boat. But none did. I was even more afraid to throw up in front of Sam.

  Then I saw the tip of Sam’s rod stutter, and he yelled out, “First fish!”

  “Damn,” Will said. “Sam always gets first fish.”

  He reeled it up and plopped it into the boat at my feet, where it flopped around on my sneakers. It was golden brown, with thick, jagged stripes that were almost flesh-colored, and it had bugged-out eyes.

  “It’s just a little gopher rockfish,” Will said. Like he felt better now.

  “It’s still first fish.”

  Not five minutes later Sam reeled in his twin.

  “We’re moving,” Will said.

  “But I’m doing good here!” Sam whined back.

  “We’re moving.” And he fired up the engine and veered us over closer to the big rock, sitting out in the middle of nowhere. “This is a better spot,” he said when he’d cut the engine and turned the boat to slow it down. “This is where I caught that big ling, right off this rock.”

  “Hooked it, you mean,” Sam said. “If you don’t get it up on the boat, you didn’t catch it.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  I’ve always hated being an only child. I always thought a brother would be the best thing. But, listening to them, I started thinking I might be wrong.

  We dropped our jigs in and spooled down. Just sat like that awhile, popping our poles up and down. Then I saw Will pull up on his, but it didn’t come up. It just stopped. It just got stuck and wouldn’t come up.

  “Ha-ha,” Sam said. “Will’s stuck on the bottom. Great spot to fish all right, Will.”

  Then the next thing we knew, the tip of Will’s rod came down so hard it was curved almost into the water. Like it was trying to get under the boat.

  “That ain’t the bottom,” Will said. His voice was all full of panic, but thrilled, too. “That’s a ling.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  Sam said, “Loosen the drag, or he’ll break the line.”

  Will said, “I know it! I know how to fish, idiot.”

  I said, “How do you know it’s a ling?”

  Sam said, “A ling always feels like you caught the bottom. At first.”

  Will’s face was set hard, and I could tell he was really working to get that fish up. I could see. Now and then the fish would pull back suddenly, and I could hear the zipping sound of four or five feet of line being pulled back off the reel.

  Sam said, “You loosened the drag too much.”

  Will said, “Shut
up, idiot. He’s coming up.”

  I looked over the starboard side of the boat, and he was coming up. I saw him. He was huge. Maybe almost as long as the boat was wide, at least my part of the boat. When he got higher up and I really saw what he looked like, I was shocked. No, more than shocked. Scared. “What the hell is that?” I yelled.

  Will said, “It’s a lingcod, what does it look like?”

  I didn’t say so, but I was thinking it looked like the devil. It was dark, dark green, with mottled sides and a fin all down its long back that made it look like a dragon. And eyes that slanted in toward each other and looked so fierce it was more like a monster than a fish. And it came up with its mouth open, and it had teeth. Actual sharp, pointy teeth. It was like pure evil, only with fins.

  “Sam!” Will yelled. “The net. Get the net.”

  Sam jumped for the net, but the long handle was caught under the big loops of the boat’s towrope. He dove down to the boat’s floor and tried to get it untangled.

  Will yelled, “If you make me lose this fish, Sam—”

  “Swim it back and forth! Don’t let the line slack!”

  “I know how to fish, idiot!”

  I heard that sound again, of line being pulled out from the spool. “Damn,” Will said. “He’s pulling the boat closer to the kelp. Damn. Damn! Get that damn net, Sam. He’s going to get tied up in the kelp. Oh, damn! Damn it. He’s in the kelp. He’s all wrapped up in the kelp.” I saw Will adjust the drag again. Tighten it this time. He reeled in slowly, and the boat moved over a little closer to the fish.

  Sam said, “You’ll break the line!”

  Will said, “Shut up, idiot!” He reached into his tackle box and pulled out a yellow nylon stringer. Then he reeled in a little more and got even closer to the fish. He leaned over the starboard side of the boat, reaching for it. The boat tilted dangerously close to the water. But he couldn’t reach. He reeled in a little bit more.

  The fish was holding still, the line wrapped around the kelp just barely under the surface of the water. Only his tail swished back and forth. His mouth still gaped wide open, showing those horrifying teeth.