False Alarm
by Joe Dahut illustrated by Frederick Stivers
We were shark fishing on the Gulf Edge when I felt my phone vibrate through the zipper in my backpack. I knew there were only a few phone calls that would reach us out here, and the list of them was short. Three, to be exact, and the occasions on which I would answer the calls would also be short. One, someone was pregnant. Two, someone died. Three, the worms were going off. There was a prayer inside of me for each occasion, all of which would directly impact the night ahead, and my sleep for the foreseeable future. In some ways, the idea of a miserable phone call was more impactful than sleep, and I stared at the name of my phone before answering, some 410 number from Timonium. I’d never met anyone from Timonium, but because I grew up in a Timonium-adjacent place and hadn’t spent much time there as an adult, it was not a good sign. “We are contacting you about your car’s extended warranty, do you have a minute to -” Click. I smacked the phone face down in the empty seat beside me. “Who the fuck has the time for any of this?” I thought. I knew it was far too late for a phone call, and a little too early for the worms to be pumping. The fish under the bridge were likely stuffed after the night of rolling and pushing finally commenced. My head hurt, and I needed a break from the sun. For someone who doesn’t know, a palolo worm is about a pinky finger’s worth of 102
calories and southern blood flow for a tarpon— the perfect hangover cocktail of calories and chutzpah. When they show up, usually in the spring, it means that love is in the air, and tarpon are on the brain. We trailered the skiff back home in the stench of slack tide. At the Cuban coffee stand, a man who resembled Cuban Jesus stood in shrimp boots with one arm leaning against a Cafe Bustelo water jug. He tugged a paper cone cup from the cylinder, filled it up once and slugged it. The paper, now noticeably flimsy, was crumbling under the weight of a second helping of water. He took that water and dumped it on his shoes, cleaning the gray fish slime on them into a Colgate white. Roosters balk around the hens beneath the picnic tables. We pay them no mind, but marvel at what beautiful feathers they have. The hackles are spiked in discomfort from highway traffic, and they look to me like crab claws, or the back end of an old school roach fly that all the guides used to throw back in the day on 4/0 Mustads. The fishing, according to them, hasn’t been good in a while. The skiff goes back in the water, some hours, and a few cafecitos later. I am teetering on the edge of insanity when I see the bundle of tarpon swim towards us in the evening light. When I was young, I asked this girl to a slow dance, and I’ve never been as nervous as I was just then. One tarpon from a pack of two slid over sand with its pectoral fins glued to its side, not breaking stride. Its mouth cracked, ever so slightly, and inhaled. Chaos, alongside an adrenaline rush robust enough to knock someone out, ensued.
S.C.O.F MAGAZINE