The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway - Ernest Hemingway [199]
I yelled to Johnson to let him have line but before I could say a word I saw Johnson rise up in the air off the chair as though he was being derricked, and him holding just for a second onto that rod and the rod bending like a bow, and then the butt caught him in the belly and the whole works went overboard.
He’d screwed the drag tight, and when the fish struck, it lifted Johnson right out of the chair and he couldn’t hold it. He’d had the butt under one leg and the rod across his lap. If he’d had the harness on it would have taken him along, too.
I cut out the engine and went back to the stern. He was sitting there holding onto his belly where the rod butt had hit him.
“I guess that’s enough for today,” I said.
“What was it?” he said to me.
“Black marlin,” I said.
“How did it happen?”
“You figure it out,” I said. “The reel cost two hundred and fifty dollars. It costs more now. The rod cost me forty-five. There was a little under six hundred yards of thirty-six thread.”
Just then Eddy slaps him on the back. “Mr. Johnson,” he says, “you’re just unlucky. You know I never saw that happen before in my life.”
“Shut up, you rummy,” I said to him.
“I tell you, Mr. Johnson,” Eddy said, “that’s the rarest occurrence I ever saw in my life.”
“What would I do if I was hooked to a fish like that?” Johnson said.
“That’s what you wanted to fight all by yourself,” I told him. I was plenty sore.
“They’re too big,” Johnson said. “Why, it would just be punishment.”
“Listen,” I said. “A fish like that would kill you.”
“They catch them.”
“People who know how to fish catch them. But don’t think they don’t take punishment.”
“I saw a picture of a girl who caught one.”
“Sure,” I said. “Still fishing. He swallowed the bait and they pulled his stomach out and he came to the top and died. I’m talking about trolling them when they’re hooked in the mouth.”
“Well,” said Johnson, “they’re too big. If it isn’t enjoyable, why do it?”
“That’s right, Mr. Johnson,” Eddy said. “If it isn’t enjoyable, why do it? Listen, Mr. Johnson. You hit the nail on the head there. If it isn’t enjoyable—why do it?”
I was still shaky from seeing that fish and feeling plenty sick about the tackle and I couldn’t listen to them. I told the nigger to head her for the Morro. I didn’t say anything to them and there they sat, Eddy in one of the chairs with a bottle of beer and Johnson with another.
“Captain,” he said to me after a while, “could you make me a highball?”
I made him one without saying anything, and then I made myself a real one. I was thinking to myself that this Johnson had fished fifteen days, finally he hooks into a fish a fisherman would give a year to tie into, he loses him, he loses my heavy tackle, he makes a fool of himself and he sits there perfectly content drinking with a rummy.
When we got in to the dock and the nigger was standing there waiting, I said, “What about tomorrow?”
“I don’t think so,” Johnson said. “I’m about fed up with this kind of fishing.”
“You want to pay off the nigger?”
“How much do I owe him?”
“A dollar. You can give him a tip if you want.”
So Johnson gave the nigger a dollar and two Cuban twenty-cent pieces.
“What’s this for?” the nigger asks me, showing the coins.
“A tip,” I told him in Spanish. “You’re through. He gives you that.”
“Don’t come tomorrow?”
“No.”
The nigger gets his ball of twine he used for tying baits and his dark glasses, puts on his straw hat and goes without saying good-bye. He was a nigger that never thought much of any of us.
“When do you want to settle up, Mr. Johnson?” I asked him.
“I’ll go to the bank in the morning,” Johnson said. “We can settle