Unmoored
by Pete Prokesch
After Max died, the aluminum boat sprung a leak. Not big enough to pose any real danger. But water sloshed around our feet as Fred and I floated down the river and cast lines between overhanging trees. I thought it’d be a good idea for Fred and me to fish together once a week in Max’s honor. Fred hooked a bass that rocked the boat and the water seeped into my shoes and soaked my socks.
“I fucking hate him,” Fred said, as he worked the hook out of the bass’s mouth. Red blood and mucus dribbled down the shiny green scales as he tossed it back into the river.
“He didn’t do it on purpose,” I said. I swatted a mosquito and missed. “He was sick.” I wasn’t sure I believed it.
I studied Fred’s fish in the water. It floated towards the surface—shocked, limp, and sideways. Then it swished its tail and disappeared into the mirk below. Fred lay his rod down and crushed an Adderall onto the boat bench with the bottom of his beer bottle. I tapped my cigarette and the ash fell into the steel blue water.
*
It had been five years since the three of us stole the boat. Old man Johnson found it tied to his dock by the river and dragged it into his backyard. He fixed it to a team of kayaks with galvanized chains.
“That will teach you kids to respect property,” he said to us behind the tinted glass of his black Mercedes.
That night Max brought his dad’s angle grinder with a diamond blade and the three of us followed the river road to Old Man Johnson’s. Fred stayed in the truck—he was baseball captain and had a game the next day. Max and I crept into the backyard—soft footsteps over crinkled leaves. In the dark we felt for the cold metal hull amongst the plastic kayaks. Then Max’s grinder screamed through the galvy chains—orange sparks danced in the night.
By the time we heard Old Man Johnson’s yells we had dragged the boat down the road towards Fred’s truck. But a skunk scurried away under the lamplight where Fred was parked moments before. The old man’s swears grew louder so we dragged the boat through the tall grass towards the river while thorns made a mess of our ankles.
After we reached the water Max and I hopped into the boat and paddled softly with our hands while Old Man Johnson’s swears turned to mumbles and distant snorts. Every log looked like a gator and the bull frogs’ croaks sent shivers up our spines.
“Forget Fred,” Max said. The ember of his cigarette was a torch in the night. “Three’s a crowd on this boat anyway.”
*
Fred rolled up a dollar bill and held it to his nose and descended upon the blue powder. I yanked my treble hook off a log and it sling-shotted over my head and into an adjacent tree. I grabbed the motor to regain balance but the boat seesawed back and forth. A wave swept over Fred’s blue lines and rinsed the bench clean.
“You idiot,” Fred said. “That was my last one.”
He swore and sulked over a cigarette before he picked up his rod and laid a beautiful cast into the setting sun. Then his line plummeted under the weight of a running fish. His reel clicked shut as the rod bent into a rainbow over the water.
“The net! The net!” he yelled. I felt for it behind the cooler in the back of the boat. I bit my lip as a loose hook pierced my skin.
Fred gripped the rod as the reel whined and groaned under the weight. I squinted my eyes at the approaching fish. The pickerel didn’t dance as much as thrust and thrash through the water. The hook impaled its beak-like nose leaving a trail of blood behind it.
“Now!” Fred yelled and I positioned the net behind the thrashing tail. The fish swam back into its prison and I lifted it out of the water. It squirmed in the mesh net and the mucus on its scales gleamed in the setting sun.
“A picture! A picture!” Fred yelled. He held the fish up by the line as it writhed and shook. The hook was set deep behind its eyes. I reached for my phone and snapped a pic.
“Do you want the pliers?” I asked as I tucked my phone back into my pocket.
“What for?” Fred said. With a swift tug he ripped the hook out of the fish’s face—leaving a mess of blood and flesh and quivering fins. Then he tossed it back in the river. It floated dead on the surface and a cloud of minnows converged upon it.
“What the fuck was that for?” I said.
I killed the motor’s soft hum and dropped the anchor with a violent splash that rocked the boat.
“It’s a fucking fish,” Fred said. He chugged the last of the beer and threw the bottle into the water. It floated past the feasting minnows.
I stared at the dead fish then glared at Fred. But he collapsed at the bow with his face into his hands. He let out a moan and sobbed.
“I don’t understand,” he said. The water was up around his ankles now. The leak was worse. He looked up at me with red desperate eyes. “How could he do this to me?”
In the parking lot I waited until the roar from Fred’s F-150 faded down the road. Then I eased the empty boat back it into the river. I heard a bullfrog croak as the sun set and the boat drifted away. That night after Old Man Johnson’s Max and I fell asleep on that boat. We awoke at dawn—just the two of us—chewed by mosquitos and warmed by the rising sun.
Pete Prokesch is a writer and lives in Watertown, Massachusetts. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Four Way Review, BlazeVOX Journal, The Bookends Review, and Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, among others. He also reads for Epiphany. You can reach him about his writing at PDProkesch@gmail.com.