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Charter Hundred miles out, after a night of soaking squid for swords— no swords—everyone’s packed in the berth like wasps in a comb except me on the stern and the mate in the wheelhouse. The sun swells on the horizon’s back. The sea coughs up bonito; flying fish launch and crash like cheap balsa gliders. Skiing over wakes, doll-eyed speed trollers skeet fantails, stippling contrails of bubbles. Below—black contracting in a sweep of blue—something’s balling up ballyhoo. The mate’s “starboard,” the throttle pulled back hard, and the 130’s drag plate mewls its aubade, and the marlin responds by tail-walking, shadow-jousting, then sounds, and with every crank she comes to me too easy—a surge, a pluck of her, then she’s gone, till I reel in what she gave up, hold her hooked eye in my palm: a bocce ball, a boiled swan egg, if anyone could be so cruel, the dark gulf between us as wide as her pupil refusing to shrink in the light. 41 ...

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