Trap Line - Carl Hiaasen [3]
From then on it was the Cobia Hole. A gamble, too. Albury needed extra fuel to make the trip, longer lines for the deep-water traps. There had damn well better be crawfish, he had warned Jimmy. And there had been. The first two seasons had been bountiful, and somehow the hole had remained Albury’s secret. God bless Jimmy for keeping his mouth shut.
This year it was too early to tell if the gamble would pay off. The first catches had been good, but in twenty-five years, man and boy, of crawfishing, Albury had seen more than one bonanza dry up overnight. And it was only a matter of time before other boats moved in at this hole, too, and then Albury would move on.
On the docks at Stock Island, everybody knew Breeze Albury liked to fish alone. Or not to fish at all: a few knew that, too, the ones who had gone to school with him and watched over the decades as he had dulled from a rakehell all-state fullback into a thickening, middle-aged fisherman who rolled with life’s punches. It was easy to surrender to the potbellied, parboiled ennui of the island.
If you were a Conch, you were a Conch. Simple as that. You could run a bulldozer in Georgia, fell trees in Oregon, drive an eighteen-wheeler cross-country, fix fancy foreign cars in Atlanta … even work for a year in a New York brokerage house, management trainee, for Christ’s sake, suit-and-tie, sorry-you-are-leaving, Mr. Albury … do it all until the Conch called you home in excitement and dismay to the broiling rock where your granddaddy hauled crawfish and ran rum; where your daddy died drunk in his hardware store, slumped across the counter clutching a ball of brown twine at forty-three; and where those goddamned motherfucking orange-and-white lobster buoys danced with false promise in the morning sun.
Eighteen years Albury had been back. Eighteen years: three boats, all owned by the bank; one wife, a slut pickled in alcohol long since; two kids, one nightmare and one dream; and Laurie, sometimes.
At least the boats had served him well. He had had this one—what?—nearly nine years now. She rolled a bit and skittered in a bad following sea, but Diamond Cutter was a hell of a crawfish boat. Albury had commissioned her the Peggy, and she had fished with that name until one night he had walked into the trailer to find the old lady in bed beside an empty bottle and a bald stringbean who drove tourists around on the Conch Train.
Probably it was just as well Albury had been half-lit himself. At first he had resolved to burn down the trailer with the two of them inside, but all he had had was a disposable lighter, and, lying there green on his belly in the musty living room, he couldn’t get the carpet to catch. So he had stormed out, fallen asleep on the boat. In the morning, he got a can of red paint and changed the name of the boat. For two years Albury had fished as captain of the Peggy Sucks, mocking her every time he had motored out of the harbor. Everybody had understood.
The boat had stayed that way, its crooked name in red and black, until Albury had repainted her in a fit of off-season energy. Diamond Cutter was a perfect name. Even then, Ricky was just getting out of Little League, but you could tell he was going somewhere.
Boog Powell made it off the Rock. So would Ricky. Good size, a blazing fastball, and good stuff to wrap around it. He pitched smart, picking at batters the way a heron speared glass minnows.
A good kid, too. Last summer he’d hung around the boat constantly, wanting to help. Albury had refused, although he had been more tempted than he’d ever let on.
“Look, champ, let’s make a deal. I fish, you pitch. Fishing is for bums, and you’re going to the majors. If you don’t make it, then I’ll teach you how to catch crawfish. In the meantime, if I catch you pullin’ traps, I’ll break