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The salt always got under Baba’s fingernails first. By noon, it would dry into a white, crusty line across his knuckles, making his skin split whenever he clenched his fists around the nylon fishing nets. He never complained about the pain. He only complained about the wind.
“The wind is a thief today, Jonah,” Baba muttered, spitting a dark stream of tobacco juice over the wooden edge of the canoe. “It’s blowing the surface warm. The fish are sitting deep in the mud where it’s cold. We won't catch enough to buy kerosene for the lamps tonight.”
Jonah didn’t answer, He was nineteen, and his arms were already thick from pulling wet ropes out of the Atlantic, but his heart wasn’t in the water. He hated the smell of decaying seaweed. He hated the way the wet wood of the boat stained his trousers a permanent, muddy gray. Most of all, he hated that his father looked sixty when the calendar said he was barely forty-five.
Two miles off the coast of the village, the water changed color, turning from a shallow, sandy green to a terrible, bottomless blue. This was where the current grew heavy.
“Drop the lead weight,” Baba ordered, his voice dropping to a low whisper as he stabilized the small outboard engine.
Jonah lifted the heavy stone attached to the center line. His hands were slippery with fish slime from the morning's tiny catch. As he swing the stone over the side, the canoe rocked violently on a big wave. Jonah lost his footing. The rough nylon rope caught around his right ankle, and before he could scream, the weight of the stone dragged him straight into the cold, green dark water.
The water swallowed his shout. The sea wasn’t beautiful down here; it was a heavy, suffocating wall that pressed against his ears He kicked powerfully, but the rope was tangled tight around his foot, anchoring him to the sinking stone. His lungs burned, begging for air. He looked up through the bubbles and saw the dark, jagged shape of the canoe fading away.
Then, a shadow broke the surface.
It was Baba. He didn't have a diving mask or an oxygen tank. He just had his old, rusty bait knife between his teeth. Baba swam down like a fish, his eyes wide and bloodshot under the salty pressure. He grabbed Jonah’s leg with one hand, anchoring himself, and used the other to saw furiously at the thick nylon rope.
The blade was blunt. Jonah’s vision began to turn black at the edges. He felt his body growing light, ready to give up. But with a final, desperate jerk, Baba snapped the last thread of the rope. He grabbed Jonah by the collar of his shirt and kicked hard toward the light.
When Jonah broke the surface, he collapsed across the wooden planks of the canoe, coughing up bitter sea water and gasping for air. Baba climbed back in behind him, his chest heaving, his face pale from exhaustion. He sat on the bench, his hands shaking so violently he couldn't hold his knife.
For a long time, neither of them spoke. The wind blew around them, spraying cold water over their faces.
Jonah looked at his father’s hands. The skin on Baba's knuckles had split completely open during the struggle, and bright red blood was mixing with the white salt on his fingers. He had nearly died for a son who spent every day wishing he was somewhere else.
“We lost the big net,” Baba said quietly, his voice cracking as he looked at the empty space in the boat. “The stone took it to the bottom.”
Jonah sat up, wiping the salt from his eyes, He reached out and took the cold handle of the wooden oars. For the first time in his life, he didn't care about the mud or the smell of the fish.
“It’s okay, Baba,” Jonah said, his voice steady as he pulled the starter cord of the small engine. The wood is still dry. We can build another one tomorrow.
