March 2012

Jale sets a line on our fishing boat, the Mahi. Photo by David Lansing.

Just so we’re clear on this, I told Marguarite before we even got on the boat to go game fishing this morning that I wouldn’t catch anything.

“Why is that?” she asked.

“Because whenever I fish with women, I don’t catch anything. They do.”

And so it has worked out. I mean, yes, technically I “caught” a fish. A tremendous dorado that, quite possibly, would have been a world record, but I didn’t get it into the boat. So I guess that doesn’t count. Technically.

I reminded Marguarite of my remark as we were circling the coral reef for the millionth time. It was getting hot out on the water and we were out of beer. So I suggested maybe it was time to go back to the resort. Marguarite had her mackerel, I hadn’t even had a strike since I’d lost the dorado, and Katie had more or less given up on the whole idea of fishing; she’d stuck her pole in a holder on the stern and was dangling over the side of the boat with her feet in the water, playing with the waves.

When I suggested we head back, Marguarite had said, “No. You haven’t caught a fish yet.”

That’s when I reminded her that I’d told her I wasn’t going to catch a fish.

Just then Katie said, “Uhmmm….I think something is going on with my pole.”

She didn’t jump up and grab it, mind you. That would have interrupted her noodling around in the water.

“Katie, you’ve got a fish!” screamed Marguarite.

Katie still didn’t move. “What do I do with it?”

“Reel it in!” Marguarite said.

Katie pulled herself back over the side of the boat and got her pole. She held it in her lap and said, “Which way do I reel?”

“Clockwise,” I told her.

She needed a second to think about that, but then she began to reel the line in. Slowly. Very, very slowly.

“Faster!” said Jale. “Reel faster!”

Katie began to reel more quickly. You could see a long silver streak just beneath the surface.

“Oh, god,” I said. “I think you’ve got a barracuda. Whatever you do, don’t jerk it into the boat. It will take our heads off.”

“This one not barracuda,” said Jale. “This one ballyhoo.”

“Ballyhoo?” I said. “I’ve never heard of a ballyhoo.”

“Fiji word,” said Jale. “Ballyhoo is garfish. Like needlefish only bigger.”

Whatever it was, it was ugly. Long as a baseball bat and just about as thick with enormous dark eyes and a million little needle teeth that looked like they could rip your arm off in a heartbeat. Even Jale didn’t want to get too close to it. He stabbed at it a couple of times with the gaff and then gave it a good stick in the head with his knife. The ballyhoo stopped struggling.

So now it was official. Marguarite had caught a fish, Katie had caught a fish, and I had nada. The expedition was officially over; we could head back to the resort now.

Marguarite with her mackerel. Photo by David Lansing.

We have circled the coral reef over and over. “Time to move to new place,” says Jale. “Reel in.”

Marguarite has about half her line in when she gets a strike. “Oh!” she says, looking at me.

“Keep reeling,” I tell her.

“You take it,” she says, thrusting the pole towards me.

“No, it’s your fish. Just keep reeling.”

Jale slows the boat. Katie gets her line in this time. Marguarite stops reeling. “I think I lost it,” she says.

“Keep reeling!” says Jale. “Keep reeling!”

Marguarite reels a bit, stops. Looks at me. “Is it gone?”

It’s there, I tell her. Keep reeling.

She starts reeling again. The fish starts taking the line out. Jale jumps down and tightens the drag on her reel. “Reel in!” he says. “Faster!”

Marguarite looks at me. “It’s heavy,” she says. “My arms are getting tired.” She stops to take a breath. Jale instructs her to keep reeling.

Marguarite reels and reels. Katie gets her camera. Finally the fish is at the boat’s side. Jale gaffs it and brings it on board. It’s bleeding like crazy.

“What is it?” asks Marguarite.

“Mackerel,” says Jale.

“Can you eat it?”

“Yes, of course,” says Jale. “Very good to eat.”

But the fish won’t die. Jale takes his knife and stabs the mackerel behind the eye. Marguarite makes a face of disgust. Katie bends over and takes a picture. I grab my camera and tell Marguarite to hold the fish up in front of her. She keeps it at a distance. Not wanting to get blood on her white top and blue sari. I take the photo. Jale removes the hook.

“Well, we have our fish,” says Katie. “Should we go back?”

After all, we’ve been out here for at least an hour.

Jale looks to see if my dorado is still on. Photo by Marguarite Clark.

“Here’s the deal,” I tell Marguarite and Katie, neither of whom has done any game fishing, “if one of us hooks up, the other two need to reel their lines in so they don’t foul the line of whoever has a fish.”

We are out on the Mahi with Jale (pronounced CHAR-lay). Obviously Grahame does not think that I and the two girls are serious fishermen (women). Jack, who has been out almost every day fishing on the Mahi, always has two crew members: the captain and a crew member to handle the bait and fishing tackle. And there’s just Andrew. Fishing alone.

Here we have three very serious fishermen (women) and they’ve just given us only Jale. Who must get us out to the fishing grounds (a coral reef not far from the sand quay we visited earlier), rig our three poles, bait them, steer the boat, adjust the tension on our lines, change jigs, and gaff the massive tuna and dorado we’re about to catch.

Obviously Grahame, the tuna god of Suva, thinks we’re just amateurs out for a bit of sun so an extra crew member isn’t needed. We’ll show him.

“Why does my line keep going out?” Katie says to me.

“Adjust your drag,” I tell her.

“What’s that?”

Jale let’s go the wheel, looking nervously around as the Mahi guides itself over the shallow corral reef, grabs Katie’s rod out of her hands and quickly adjusts the drag.

Marguarite sticks her pole under her arm and roots around in a cooler for something to drink. Jale tells her to watch her line. She looks up, looks at her line, looks at Jale. “Do what?”

Jale runs back down to the stern and takes Marguarite’s pole and moves her over to the side so her line isn’t right on top of mine. Then, looking like he’s about to have a heart attack, he dashes back to the wheel. With no one steering, the Mahi circles in on itself and closer to the reef on our right.

“Hook up!” I yell. My pole is bent in half.

“Wow, you’ve got something!” says Katie.

“Dorado,” says Ben. “Big one. Put on the belt.”

“What belt?”

Jale lets go of the wheel again and rummages around the wheelhouse until he finds a wide belt with a hole in the middle where I’m supposed to stick the end of my pole. He tells me to put it on. But the dorado is pulling so hard that it’s impossible for me to hold the pole with one hand and wrap the belt around me at the same time. Marguarite tries to help. She slips the belt around me and tightens it around my chest.

“It’s got to go around my waist,” I tell her. Katie tries to help her. Both are still holding on to their poles. Katie uses one hand to try and cinch the belt. Marguarite uses one hand to try and hold the buckle in position. I’m trying to reel in but the drag is too loose and the dorado spools the line at will.

Jale abandons the wheel again and tries to help. He is shouting directions at all of us. “Reel in! Adjust the drag! Don’t foul his line! Put on the belt! Reel in, reel in, reel in!”

Two things are readily apparent to all of us: This is a very large fish. And it is fouled on Katie’s line.

The dorado, with Katie’s line wrapped around it, is four or five feet away from the side of the boat. Jale is looking around for the gaff. The boat, pilotless, is moving in a slow circle. Marguarite is scrambling around looking for my camera. Katie is belatedly trying to reel her line in.

The dorado, a rainbow of colors, turns his head sideways, looks me right in the eye, and then throws the hook. He is gone in a flash.

“That was a big fish,” says Jale. Silence, silence, silence. “Next time.”

Katie looks at me and grimaces, mouthing the word “Sorry.” Marguarite stands there holding the camera. I put down my pole and grab a Fiji beer out of the cooler.

Maybe Grahame was right.

Our own private Idaho, Katie, driving our boat to nowhere. Photo by Christopher Southwick.

I’ve told you about Katie, the young girl from Idaho who was homeschooled and not allowed to listen to music or watch TV when she was growing up. We kid her endlessly but she’s really one of my favorite people on this trip. She’s such a dichotomy: so naïve yet so bold. She hasn’t done anything in her life, really, yet I don’t think there’s anything she’s not willing to try.

So yesterday we’re out on one of the resort boats, me and Marguarite and Katie, just tooling around, enjoying the amazing water and the warm day and the tropical beauty of the place. Like a little kid, every time Katie gets near water, she just has to stick a hand or a foot in it. So here she is, leaning over the side of the boat as we zip along, stretching her body out as far as she can so that her feet skim the water.

“God, she’s cute,” says Marguarite, watching her. We’re sitting in the bow of the boat, keeping an eye on her like parents over a young child playing in the resort pool. Just then, Katie looks up at us with concern in her face and says, “Uhmmm…I think there are sharks.”

“What?” says Marguarite, jumping up.

Both of us hurry over, concerned that some sort of great white is about to pull our little Katie into the deep blue sea.

There are indeed gray fins cutting through the water just inches away from where Katie’s pale feet still dangle. Dolphins. A pod of them. Darting in and out of our white water wake.

“Haven’t you ever seen dolphins before?” I ask Katie. She shakes her long dark hair. “Never?”

“Well, not in the wild,” she says.

Marguarite looks at me and I look at Marguarite. Of course Katie has seen dolphins before. In books and maybe in a movie. But never in the wild. Like here in Fiji. So of course she thought they were sharks. Who wouldn’t?

Idaho Katie getting a bobo massage. Photo by David Lansing.

This morning Siteri sadly informed me that she would not be coming to California with me. It seems Ben, who she married a little over a year ago, preferred living on Beqa with their baby.

“You have a baby?”

“Yes, Mr. David.”

Not to worry. I have a backup plan. I’m bringing May back with me to California.

May is a masseuse at the Royal Davui spa. Yesterday she gave me a bobo (pronounced “mbombo”) massage that was as close to finding Jesus as I’ve ever come. We were in one of the vales that has been converted into the spa, in a room with all the folding glass doors open, and I was lying face down, the breeze from the ocean lightly touching my bare back as May used her forearms to sweep across my shoulders, pressing hard against my muscles as if she were trying to roll me out like pizza dough.

I don’t know what was going on there (some sort of nut oil was also involved) but I was definitely losing my religion. In my experience there are three types of massages: the “when-is-this-going-to-be-over?” massage; the masochistic massage (hurts like hell but you kind of like it); and the Jesus massage (just tell me what you want me to do, Lord, and I’ll do it, but promise me it will never end). The bobo massage May gave me was definitely a Jesus massage. Every muscle in my body was singing with the choir.

When May was done with me, a brief two hours later, I asked her where she’d learned to do that. “Everybody in Fijian village gives bobo massage,” she said. “That’s how we cure the ills of the body. But in Fijian village, bobo much stronger. Too strong for you, I think.”

I told her that was nonsense. I’m coming back tomorrow, I told her, and I want the real Fijian bobo massage. Tomorrow wouldn’t be possible, she told me. It was her day off. But maybe the next day.

Fine, I told her. I’ll see you in two days.

In the meantime, I need to talk to Christopher about May coming back to California with me. I’m thinking the two of us could go into business together: David and May’s Bobo Jesus Massages. Who wouldn’t pay for one of those?