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surface, rising up just below me. I could have reached out and touched it.
    “Now!” Baja Bill commanded.
    I jabbed the stick into the fish and pulled itback. The tag, like a small flag, lay wet against the flesh. I dropped the stick to the deck.

    “Now,” Baja Bill said. “Grab the lure, slide it up the leader, then take that knife and cut the leader as close to the hook as you can.”
    “Me?”
    I stared at the eye of the fish, holding my breath.
    “You can do it, just reach out and grab the lure. I’ve got her under control. Don’t think about it. Just do it.”
    I looked at the marlin.
    “You want to touch her first?”
    “The fish?”
    “Go ahead.”
    I reached over and placed my hand on her side. “Ho,” I whispered. “She’s warm.”
    “Blood gets hot in all that fighting.” Baja Bill smiled. “All right, cut her loose.”
    I pulled the lure up and held it, then slipped the blade under the thick leader and cut the line. The hook stayed in the marlin’s bony jaw as the fish drifted away from the boat. The hook looked small, like an earring. The marlin probably didn’t even know it was there.
    Ledward climbed out of the fighting chair and stood next to us holding the rod.
    The three of us watched as the monster fish sank. It woke, realizing it was free, and surged down, diving into the deep blue sea.
    Down, down, down.
    Gone.
    “That hook will fall out within a week,” Baja Bill said.
    Ledward grunted. “And I’ll be asleep in five minutes.”
    I looked at the knife in my hand. I did it. I actually
did
it.
    Ledward and Baja Bill both grinned at me. “You one of us now,” Ledward said. “A fisherman. A real one.”

“H ey,” Ledward said, waking me an hour later. “You enjoying yourself out here on the ocean?”
    I’d just scarfed lunch down like a starving dog, then dozed in the chair. “Yeah, I love it. In fact, I’ve got an idea. How about we stay here a week?”
    “I wish … but we have that six o’clock flight.”
    I looked out over the sea. “I could do this all day and all night, and then do it again the next day, and the next one after that.”
    Baja Bill called down from the bridge. “Any time you want, you just give me a call. All I need is a day to prepare.”
    “We’ll do this again,” Ledward said. “But your mama needs to get used to having you gone first. I bet she hasn’t stopped worrying since we left.”
    “Why?”
    “How moms are.”
    It seemed like we’d left home days ago.
    Baja Bill put the boat on autopilot and climbed down. He dug bottles of water out of the cooler and handed them around. “This was not what I’d call a normal day out fishing, Calvin. Usually it’s a long quiet boat ride. But today, you brought us luck.”
    “And,” Ledward added, tapping my chest with a finger, “you caught our dinner.”
    I’d almost forgotten about the ono.
    Baja Bill took out his watch, glanced at it, and put it back on. “Better head back. You got a plane to catch.”
    We reeled in all the lures and coiled them up with their leaders. When we were finished, Ledward leaned back on a seat and closed his eyes. “Wake me if I fall asleep.”
    “What you mean, if?” Baja Bill said.
    Ledward grunted.
    Baja Bill nudged me. “Come sit with me.”
    I followed him up the ladder.
    He kicked the boat off autopilot and brought the engines up. We swung around and sped toward the harbor. It felt great to go fast after a day of slow trolling.
    “You did a fine job, Calvin. You can be my deckhand anytime.”
    “Really?”
    “You bet.”
    We rode in silence a few minutes before he spoke again.
    “Once I was out with a guy from Montana.Nice guy. We were about a quarter mile south of here and a lot farther out, and we hooked an ahi, and not a small one, either.”

    “That’s a tuna, right?”
    “Right, but not just any tuna. This one was a
big
tuna. It was late in the day. We were headed back to the harbor, like now, and
boom!
That fish hit like a hammer. But we