We are canoeing down the Cape Fear. At the falls of it, really. The water’s getting low and the bottom rocky.
That’s when we spot a huge guitar-fish in the shoals. We think he’s dead. But he has a rather contented look as he rests, belly on the cobbles, water rushing over his gills and long snout.
I’ve heard that certain sharks. Nurse sharks, in particular, I think, could venture up the freshwater reaches in the Tidewater.
But this doesn’t absolve my 200-lb. friend, here, right now, lounging in the rapids.
We stick right to a small pocket flume. Without a thought, it snaps out. Takes a healthy chunk out of my helmsman’s paddle.
No matter.
I back-paddle and take a left, allowing the creature this time to take off my man’s boot, his foot having been dangling carelessly off the bow.
Harry (his name) says something about wishing he had his fishing dynamite but instead reaches under his seat and pulls out a hatchet he’d grabbed in the yard earlier.
As we near the fish a third time, this time dragged by current alone, he stands, reaches back to swing the blade.
I tap him from behind with my paddle. Unexpectedly. Not hard. He topples over, into the fish’s maw.
It doesn’t seem right to kill it. After all, who didn’t have a guitar-fish as a kid?
Not me.
But I once had a guitar.
And a fish.
Besides. I’m never going back to Wilmington Correctional Institute. And it’s that sort of hatchet business that raises eyebrows. A bloody mess to explain.
Anyway.
It’s over in a second. Harry goes head first, slides right in and doesn’t put up too much struggle. No fuss at all.
And I duck under the gunwale and drift past while the guitar-fish chomps.
That’s when we spot a huge guitar-fish in the shoals. We think he’s dead. But he has a rather contented look as he rests, belly on the cobbles, water rushing over his gills and long snout.
I’ve heard that certain sharks. Nurse sharks, in particular, I think, could venture up the freshwater reaches in the Tidewater.
But this doesn’t absolve my 200-lb. friend, here, right now, lounging in the rapids.
We stick right to a small pocket flume. Without a thought, it snaps out. Takes a healthy chunk out of my helmsman’s paddle.
No matter.
I back-paddle and take a left, allowing the creature this time to take off my man’s boot, his foot having been dangling carelessly off the bow.
Harry (his name) says something about wishing he had his fishing dynamite but instead reaches under his seat and pulls out a hatchet he’d grabbed in the yard earlier.
As we near the fish a third time, this time dragged by current alone, he stands, reaches back to swing the blade.
I tap him from behind with my paddle. Unexpectedly. Not hard. He topples over, into the fish’s maw.
It doesn’t seem right to kill it. After all, who didn’t have a guitar-fish as a kid?
Not me.
But I once had a guitar.
And a fish.
Besides. I’m never going back to Wilmington Correctional Institute. And it’s that sort of hatchet business that raises eyebrows. A bloody mess to explain.
Anyway.
It’s over in a second. Harry goes head first, slides right in and doesn’t put up too much struggle. No fuss at all.
And I duck under the gunwale and drift past while the guitar-fish chomps.
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