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drunk, so debate and logic were lost on him. If he was ignoring the approaching storm, then he wasn’t going to listen to me. Next came the white caps, and I began to worry.
    “ Alright, you moron. Here.” I passed him my lighter. “Light that thing and start paddling.”
    Too late- our dingy veered perilously to the right, and without Earl countering my own paddling, a wave hit us hard on the side and tossed the boat over in seconds. Our beer, his cigarettes, and my joint vanished beneath the choppy surface. We swam the remainder of the way to the island, towing the boat behind us, and made it to the rocky shore just as the rain really started to fall. Finding shelter under a tree, I quickly assessed our position.
    “ What the hell are we doing under a tree in a storm? Let’s get in the open and pull the dingy over us.” Now I was yelling: the thunder crashes were right on top of us. With the rubber boat firmly held over our heads we sat out the weather.
    “ If that damn smoke didn’t mean so much to you, we’d have been set.”
    “ Sorry, man.” A sudden shiver overtook him. “Sorry. We could have drowned.”
    “ You’re fuckin’ right we could’ve.” I wasn’t going to let him off too easily. We’d both lost any trace of our former buzz, and a whole morning and good portion of the afternoon was lost thanks to our nautical disaster.
    It was a good gale though. Of course, this was not how I liked to approach a storm of this magnitude, but I did enjoy it. Thunder crashed overhead again and I yelled, “Is that all you got?”
    Mother Nature answered immediately. The sky opened up and sent down great balls of water the size of marbles. The downpour lasted all of fifteen minutes. When the big black cloud trailed off into the distance, we crawled out from under the dingy, peeled off our soaked shirts, and began exploring. As fate would have it, Gil and Seth were on the other side of the island. They’d tied the canoe to a pair of trees to keep them dry as they rode out the storm.
    “ You guys were over there?” Seth asked, popping open his cooler and handing us a couple of beers. The island wasn’t large, but the trees and brush in the middle were dense enough to have hidden us from each other.
    “ Yes, freezing our bags off,” added Earl. We took the drinks and sat down. “Gil, you got a cigarette for me?”
    Gil handed him a butt from his plastic bag- what a Boy Scout. We sat for a while, watching them fish as the sun reemerged, warming our skin and soothing my temper. Seth had caught two fish already, one perch and one large mouth bass. An impressive pair too, fatties.
    “ If we catch a few more we’ll feed the whole crew tonight,” declared Seth.
    We fished for another hour, as Gil had two extra rods to lend. I never caught a damn thing but Earl rivaled Seth’s talent for the hunt. The day was back on track: we were well into our fourth beer and the sun had burned away what precipitation remained on our rocky shores.
    “ Joel, grab the net!” Gil cried.
    I leaped into action when Seth dropped Earl’s catch into the bucket and handed me the net. I ventured into the water up to my knees to get some leverage on the approaching fish.
    “ Can you see it, Joel? As soon as you do, scoop him up. It’s a big bitch, man.” Gil was leaning his full weight into the struggle, the rod mimicking the arch in his back.
    “ I see him now, Gil, reel him in a little more...”
    The fin was showing and the tail began to whip back and forth violently just above the surface. Suddenly the fish hurled itself out of the water and headed right for Gil’s face. Flinching, he dropped the rod and raised his hands to protect himself from the sharp fins. The fish sailed past him, landed in the water just beyond a large boulder, and continued swimming with the hook still firmly in its mouth. The rod was hung up on some foliage. Gil reached over to cut the line with his Swiss army knife.
    “ It was the right thing to