s u m m e r
red dog 209
He fished with the cable that controlled the helicopter's tail rotor. The index finger thick wrapped steel was his leader line. He usually had about thirty baited hooks on the lead which he'd drop into the warm waters of the Gulf or the chilly Mediterranean. He was always fishing for the same thing, red snapper, and he always noted no matter where he flew all the damn rigs were the same. The most uneducated sons-a-bitches in the world worked the oil rigs, and he supplied them. They all smelled the same; had the same putrid petroleum coming up from the drill. He might as well have smeared Vaseline up his nose, along with some of the aviation quality 20-50W he carried in the chopper.
But down by the water line it was a little different. It was usually calm and he'd cut away at barnacles on the orange supports while he waited for something to take his leader. He didn't have to watch it, he always fixed it to the rigs wench. There was always a wench on the lower deck. It was used to get supplies off crew boats. The heavy shit his helicopter couldn't fly in.
He'd caught some interesting things on the lower decks of the world's rigs. While they sucked the oil out of the belly of the earth he pulled up jewfish and sea snakes and hammer head sharks. The jewfish was so large he only saw it's head. As round and primitive as the front of a VW, it began to bend the wench and he cut the line...
One night late he pulled in a hammer head and after he and the crewman on the wench had smoked a couple cigarettes they went to lift in up. It wasn't quite as dead as they thought and the crewman lost a good portion of the muscle on his forearm. The nasty, nappy haired Italian seemed more pissed than anything and he strung the shark up by it's tail, wrapped his ripped shirt sleeve around his arm and held it in his mouth like a junkie about to insert a needle. With his free hand he cut the belly open and watched about fifty small replicas of the larger shark spill out onto and off of the deck.
The sea snake brought back memories of tales from ancient mariners and stories of sea serpents. He was sure it was true. How could anyone catch a 300 foot sea snake and think any different. He was glad he hadn't seen all these things when he was just a dot in the ocean on the way to Africa. He leaned back on the stairs and the words came to his head like the clarity of sure and sudden sleep...
"Red Dog 209 eject."
He'd punched out on instinct and watched the F8E Crusader disintegrate in front of him. In a couple moments he was in the water and his flight leader circled his position twice before heading off toward the sunset and the carrier somewhere over the horizon. He was alone. A yellow raft in thousands of square miles of ocean. He had a fitful sleep that first night and realized just before dawn that he must have hit a current because the stars and his compass told him he was almost 500 miles away from where he went down. They'd never find him and he was about right.
On the second day a flying fish landed in his raft and it croaked at him just before he cut it open with his knife.
On the fourth day he saw a vapor trail moving across the cursed and cloudless blue sky. He sighted it through the crosshairs on his mirror and ran up and down the tip.
A helicopter picked him up later that day.
He sent a case of scotch to the pilot of the TWA commercial fight that spotted him that evening. Then he slept.
He woke with a start on the steel steps of the lower platform. His right side ached and he rolled his neck before shaking loose a smoke and checking his line. Nothing tonight.
No, tonight the crewman of the rig were drinking the bourbon and gin he flew in along with the medical supplies and the steel piping they'd be adding on to the growing rig tomorrow. Tonight he'd sleep on the rear bench seat of the helicopter with one hand on his .45. Yeah, he'd smoke a little longer and then dream of peach tobacco and the Arizona boneyard. Rows and rows of planes, nose to nose, perfect lines in the dry desert. Far away from any sort of moisture. Far away from even a scant drop of rain.
Tonight he'd drag nothing from the ocean, his thirty hooks an open hand at the end of the wench.
goodnight 5.05.99