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didn’t see it like we saw the marlin today. No, this one sounded, went straight down. My angler grabbed the reel and tried his best to stop it from going deeper, but that fish just kept on going, because it took a small lure on a light line.”
    “Wow.”
    Baja Bill waved at another boat that was also heading toward the harbor. The skipper waved back.
    “How deep did it go?”
    “Deep. When it finally stopped going down, the pressure on the line alone made it feel like we’d hooked a garbage truck. That light line was as tight as steel. I told the guy,forget it, you’ll never get that fish back up. Cut the line and let’s go home. But the guy said he didn’t come here to hook a fish and then cut the line.”
    Baja Bill chuckled.
    “Well, if you didn’t see the fish, how’d you know it was a tuna?”
    “Just a guess … until we saw it.”
    “He got it back up?”
    Baja Bill nodded. “Sure did. And you know what came up with it? Sharks. White-tips, scariest creatures in the ocean. We figured that tuna died from the pressure of going so deep, and as my angler worked it back up, those sharks discovered an easy dinner. All we pulled aboard was the head.”
    Ho! What a story!
    “It took the guy a couple-three hours to get that fish head up to the boat. We pulled into the harbor afterdark. Believe it or not, my angler took that ahi’s head home and had it mounted!”

    Baja Bill humphed, as if that were the craziest thing ever.
    “Today it sits over his fireplace somewhere in Montana. He sent me a picture of it, and on the back he wrote:
Next time we’re going to catch the rest of this fish!
”
    I laughed.
    Baja Bill reached over and messed up my hair with his hand. “Find your dream and live it, Calvin. What’s your life worth if you don’t do that?”
    Deep-sea fishing might be my dream, I thought.
    “I have a question,” I said. “Why did we let that marlin go?”
    “I was wondering when you’d get around to that. You see, most anglers who come to fish off the Kona coast would want to keep a big fish like that, if only to get their picture taken standing next to it. But to me, that’s not a good enough reason to kill a big fish. They’rebeautiful creatures. To fight it and win? That’s enough. Unless you fish as a business and sell it for food, there’s no need to kill something with so much life in it. Agree?”
    I thought for a moment. “Yeah. It was too big, anyway.”
    “Ha!”
    “Okay, but why did we stick a tag on it?”
    “Research. Each tag is bar-coded. When we get back to the harbor, I’ll fill out a form with the same code. I’ll record the date, the location, and the size of the fish and send it in. When someone catches a fish with a tag he reports it, then you get the information on the tag and you know how much it’s grown and where it’s gone.”
    Research? Mr. Purdy would be interested in that.
    “A while back, a guy here hooked a small marlin and tagged it. He guessed it was about a hundred pounds. He turned it loose, and a year later someone caught that same fish way down in the South China Sea. It weighedaround two hundred fifty pounds. So people who study fish got some good information.”
    “Wow.”
    “All life is amazing, Calvin.”
    I nodded. I’d never thought about that before.
    “You ready to go home and face that bufo problem Ledward said you had? Mow that lawn?”
    “He told you about that?”
    “Some girl problem, too?”
    “What?”
    “Don’t worry. Your secrets are safe with me.”

T he bufos down by the river were croaking loudly when Ledward and I got home that night. I was so tired I could hardly get out of the jeep.
    Streak leaped around us like a flea. I scooped her up with a grunt. The drivewayrocked gently, my mind still thinking I was on the boat.
    “Looks like you missed me, huh, girl?”
    She licked my face. One thing about dogs: they’re always really happy to see you.

    As the light in the garage popped on, Ledward grabbed the ice