Amos dropped a cinderblock anchor at a place where the river turned in a broad oxbow. A salmon-pink sun rose over the treetops along the near embankment as he cast a line out, and the boat rocked soft and cradlelike.
He yawned and stretched his legs, leaned back, let the susurrant whisper of the current lull him to sleep, despite how foolish he knew that to be. Bites were few and far between these days.
There were many fish in the sea, he knew— vast, teeming multitudes. Huge boats ran along the coastlines with their nets hung low, pulled up whole shoals of iridescent, flopping scales, let them suffocate on the decks heedless of how many would rot before landfall. There were many fish in the sea, he knew— but he also knew he fished in a river. He had no nets. Just one thin line that might break at any time.
Amos got a bite at noon. He had dozed a while, woke with the familiar tightness of sunburn on his face, an unfamiliar (but not unpleasant) tension riding on the air. He saw the line move as his eyes opened. When he did, he jumped up, grabbed hold, and began to reel. And reel. And reel… and then he reeled some more, and some more. Soon it became abundantly clear that he had not caught a fish at all. Golden light flashed— and the woman emerged much like pillar of stone does at the beach when the tides wane. All the water fell away from her in reverence, the line snapped as if burned away, the sun shied away and cast its beams elsewhere. She stood now at the bow end of the boat.
Amos could not describe her appearance— he did not want to. Some things should remain vague. Words can formulate their own beauty, sculp something new and cast that image out much like a fishing-line, but they cannot successfully recapture that which already exists. Such is like trying to sample the breadth of the ocean by cupping one’s hands to a wave.
“…awful big fish you are,” Amos muttered, having fallen backward in something like astonishment. Beautiful women didn’t leap from the water at him every day, believe it or not.
She laughed at this, then she began to speak a little. And he spoke back. And they spoke together for a while. They spoke about fishing and the like; about the boat, about the river, about the largest catches they’d had and the smallest; about people met, places been, dreams unachieved, shoals uncaught.
Sometimes Amos felt himself shy away from her eyes without any conscious input. He would look at something far, far away as if to distract himself, as was the habit of fishermen (a most socially inept group, even he could admit). Each time, though, he hooked himself and reeled his gaze back to her. Still drunk on the sublimity of the whole situation, he realized this well enough: he did not want to look away.
“Fish fish fish, fish. Fish fish fishes, boat, water, river, fishes,” she said. Or something like that. “Fish, boat seaweed fish boat, net fish line fish. Fish!”
He sighed. She had such a way with words.
It was at this point— perhaps after an hour of conversation, perhaps after only a few minutes —that Amos noticed the fish. All the fish. Seas of fish. Oceans of fish. Worlds of fish. Fish he had never seen before. Fish he had never imagined. Fish that looked ripped from a child’s waterlogged coloring book. All hues, all sizes, all shapes, all around the boat.
“Fish!” she said. The boat shook and began to move back against the current. Or— where the current had been. It was different now. He took the bait, ate it up, hook and all.
Amos turned around to the rear of the boat and met a wall of blue, leathery flesh, scored by parallel rows of mandolin-string baleen. The blue whale pushed them gently, each crash of its tail silent against the immensity of the newborn sea. Flying fish skimmed the water around and sent splashes across Amos’ face, refracted short-lived rainbows into the air. A procession of sea turtles stretched out before him, their shells gleaming in the sun like the strobing lights of a runway. The black-tipped razorblade fins of reef sharks circled, the shrill calls of dolphins rang melodic in the air, a living rainbow of tropical bettas passed under and around the boat without cease. The cinderblock anchor hung on the surface of the water, buoyant as driftwood. All the while, the woman sat at the bow like a masthead, her arms stretched out as if to catch the breeze.
She turned her head and said: “Ocean!”
Even this did not account for everything, but Amos could not describe the scene in any more detail. He did not want to. Waves crashed, islands glowed, gulls squawked on high, the horizon stretched illimitable in all directions. There were words, there were thoughts, there were awkward moments, to be sure. But he never wrote these down. Some things were best left vague. Some moments were better lived than chronicled. He cupped his hands to the wave, and drank. Wide awake.