Halloween and Other Seasons Read Online Free PDF Page B

loosened the bale to let out a bit of line.
    “She’s deep, that’s for sure!” his father said. A smile came onto his features as he battled, one eye turned to the approaching fog and late afternoon.
    “It’ll be close!”
    Humming fiercely through clenched teeth, he began to inexorably reel the line in, letting the catch run when it needed to, but gradually drawing it up from the depths and closer to the boat. The sour-yellow sun was edging the horizon; the mists began to caress the rowboat with their tendrils. Davy shivered and drew deeper into his coat, but his father seemed oblivious now to everything save the thing on the end of the fishing line.
    “She’s almost up, boy! Get the net!”
    Roused from his chill, Davy moved to his father’s abandoned spot on the boat and lifted the wide net by its handle.
    “Hurry, damn you!”
    He turned back. His father’s angry face motioned him to hold the net over the side of the boat.
    “Damned beast’s about up!”
    Kneeling, Davy dangled the net over the side. Now, in the late afternoon, the water’s surface was a sickly, deep, impenetrable green. It smelled of salt and overly-wet vegetation.
    Bile rose in Davy’s throat, but he held it down.
    “Here it comes, boy—here it comes!”
    From the soupy depths something became visible, twirling as it reluctantly rose. Davy held the net ready. The shadow became more distinct: a long, slender shape, heavy in the water.
    His father peered over the side, squinting.
    “Can you see what it is, boy?”
    “Yes…”
    The thing broke water. Its black, thin, slick head rose out to stare up at Davy with leaden eyes—
    “Snatch it with the net, boy! Can you see—?”
    His father’s voice suddenly turned full of disgust. The black thing’s head held suspended for a moment, mouth opening to show the embedded hook in its jaw, its head now seeming to expand in the air, to change shape, before there was a snap and it dropped back down into the sea. It’s shadow held for a moment, as if it might rise again on its own. But then it sank toward indistinction, the curl of its long sinuous length essing once before it was gone, back into the deep.
    Davy turned to see a look of abhorrence on his father’s face. In one hand he still held the tip of Davy’s fishing pole; in the other, his long fillet knife.
    “‘Twas nothing,” his father said, before turning away. “Just an eel.”
    The fog closed in on them then, and, without another word, his father weighed anchor, and rowed for the island.
    ~ * ~
    Davy’s mother waited for them at the pier’s end, at the base of the jutting finger of rock, near the small second boat, a dinghy. Wrapped in a shawl, her worried look made her a specter in the early evening.
    “I was worried you—” she said, putting a hand on Davy’s father’s shoulder as the old man brushed by her. “Bah,” the old man said, continuing on, arms laden with fishing tackle as he went up to the house.
    In the unseen distance, the foghorn cried out again. Davy’s mother opened her shawl to enclose Davy within it, within herself. He felt her warmth through his clothes, through the damp, salt wetness.
    “Come to the house and sit by the fire,” she whispered into his ear, stroking his hair.
    He nodded and, soothed by her words and warmth, followed her to the open doorway, a dim rectangle of orange light against the chill and dropping night. In a while he sat in his chair in the warm corner while his mother prepared supper, and his father smoked his pipe and drank his rye in silence, staring out through the open doorway at the storm that grew and battered the island.
    ~ * ~
    Later, Davy lay in bed and listened to them argue. Outside, the night wind had picked up. A spray of cold, salt-scented rain hit periodically against the side of the house, washing the single window in Davy’s dark room.
    A thin line of firelight flickered beneath the closed door. Beneath his pile of quilts Davy felt cold and damp. His