Like I Told Nancy

one morning’s the same as the next. You show up in the dark, mop and spray down the worst of the fish-gut stench. And you have to do that right away, otherwise it gets to where you can’t smell it because you’re used to it, and when all the tourists come in they make those squeezed-up faces like they need to use the bathroom. I’m told that’s how come folks are able to work in sanitation: a body can get used to anything.

But this would turn out to be, well, not one of those mornings. I had just come up—half past four, like usual—to get the pier ready for the day. Spraying down and mopping the quarter-mile of concrete usually takes a couple hours. I’ll sometimes even forget I’m forty feet above the Gulf of Mexico until a porpoise fin breaks the surface of the water out of the corner of my eye. Of course, sometimes there’s the early-morning tourist-dressed-as-fisherman that occasionally springs on me, mucking up the whole routine. The earlier in the morning it is, the chattier that type of person seems to be. It’s like they think I’m there solely for their entertainment, asking all kinds of questions about who caught what the day before. If I told them what I really think, I’d have to say: Seems your yammering is an excuse to stall the actual fishing project a while longer. Seems vacation with the family may not be going so hot if you’re down here long before dawn instead of snuggled up in your condo you saved all year to pretend to afford. But they’re not interested in what I really think, and that’s a fact.

Not to get too far off the subject here, but I think of the Asians as a counter-example. They don’t mess around with small talk. They give me a nod, maybe say “morning” as they pay their fee for the day (which I lowered for locals a few years back), then they get out there and get right down to business. None of this “What’s the biggest fish ever caught on this pier?” or “What’s the secret to landing a big one?” I want to answer: Number one, dolphin, couple times a year. And, number two, it’s no big secret. See them there?, I want to say, and wave toward the Asians in their little round pointy hats. They know. It’s a lot of damn work.

Now, I admit, I wasn’t always so keen on seeing those hats, day in and day out, on the pier. Nancy told me to get over it, that they have as much right to fish the Okahatchee Island pier as anybody, but like a lot of the other guys at the American Legion, I got kind of a funny feeling when a whole passel of them moved to the town of South Okahatchee in the late nineteen eighties. Tommy Ray was just starting his radio show then, and he liked to suggest oh-so-innocently that we locals would all have to look for new jobs soon, what with these all-work-and-no-play immigrants showing up to town. He wasn’t so loud and angry-seeming back then, which is part of why I, for one, fell for him hook, line, and sinker (which, for someone in my line of work, is saying something). Nowadays it’s “They’re taking over the town!” and all that nonsense. Like I must’ve told Nancy about a thousand times: they’re the hardest-working fishermen on my pier, and I haven’t lost my job yet as a result. Unfortunately for all of us around here, neither has that Tommy Ray.

This particular morning, however, none of the early-morning Asians were down on the pier. My daughter Mary is always on me about saying that—Asians—and tells me how there...