fisher boy

the boy with a cyan cane, known to the greater world as a fishing pole went by the ocean to find his favorite killing ground.

he has a bucket full of water and a bucket full of fresh, soon to be dead clams and a football. the hilt of his cane is buried in the ground after it was cast with one of the soon to be dead clam, floating between the top and bottom of waves. he throws the ball to an imaginary receiver and imagines the throws that are never caught. he's that kind of boy. he doesn't think he'll catch anything today, it's too sunny and his imaginary receivers, well, he doesn't think that they're that good. his daddy was a college receiver. his daddy taught him how to fish. his dad had grey hair and his mom left him for bobby last week. at least that's what his daddy kept yelling into the phone last friday. he'd also knows that bobby is the family's boat mechanic. his dad's been gone for a week.

'anyway', he thinks, 'how strange it is that i have a blue cane. they're usually black.' his reel is regular enough. he picked it himself. he wanted it to be regular, but considering the pole being a shade of blue and being odd and all... he also wonders what it would be like to eat snow. would it hurt his teeth? his mother always told him he had very sensitive teeth. she would always get him coca cola with no ice when ordering in the drive thru. he would like to eat snow, at least one time, he thinks. he thinks that he wouldn't want to ever throw a snow ball at someone, just lick it, but not lick a flagpole, cause he's seen a christmas story. as he throws his football to his imaginary receiver he notices out of the corner of his eye that his cane is bent and begging for the sand to release it's hold. 'this 'un's the big 'un, bigger than at camp last summer,' he thinks. he ran headlong to his cyan pole and plays like his favorite hero, arthur the king and pulls the cane out of the sand and immediately finds out that the pull wasn't as hard as the bend suggested. yet, he does not release his pull. if anything, he doubles his efforts for his quarry. he knows that this bugger would only run out further if he showed a weakness. 'lucky,' he thinks. he put on the hundred pound test in his garage before he left his house. childish luck, surf fishing.
'sea bass? sturgeon? flounder. I'm at an inlet to the sea, so maybe...'
his heart is racing. today iss his day. the boy with the cyan cane rolled out of bed this morning, still alone and scared in his parent's house, devoid of food in the pantry, and knew that he had to catch something to eat today. with every pull of the mystery fish he thinks of how his father taught him how to scale and debone a fish before he went to summer camp last year. the lesson stuck with him, just like daddy's lessons on daddy's guitar that he could never touch unless daddy was there. he played it every time his daddy left for work in the morning and put it back before his daddy got home. he'd been playing it every day for the last week and for the first few days replaced it under his daddy's bed but recently grew brave and slept with it in bed as he would a puppy. and that made him wonder, 'why does daddy leave his guitar under his bed?' cause his daddy never played it unless he wanted to show the boy with the cyan cane a new chord or an old Beatles song.

he kept at the mystery fish for the better part of an hour and believed that this had to be the best, most adventurous battle to have ever have unfolded on this beach or any between boy and sea. he always wanted to be part of an adventure story. and he never knew of an adventure where a boy was victorious in the night. the red sun had already begun it's descent into the west, over what his daddy called the million dollar asshole's club houses and still was sinking when he, the boy with the cyan cane finally felt that the resistance died.

once he felt the draw towards him, he double timed his reeling. watching his cyan can rapidly bob, back and forth, left to right, and towards his back, he felt the reel eating it's way back home.

it was dark when finally he heard a slap on the beach.