A Good Start

Andrew Ervin

I meet Vince at the marina outside Cape May where he docks A Good Start. He’s wearing a Margaritaville University t-shirt, cargo shorts, and has a yellow, cotton sweater tied around his waist. “Hiya, chum,” he says, but it comes out sounding like chump. He has called me that since I started dating his sister, and the name stuck even after we got married. “It’s gassed up and ready to go.” His boat shoes look freshly shined. They match his tan. A pyramid of gear waits to get loaded on.

Vince and Elizabeth and their twin daughters spend all summer at the beach. He commutes to his Philadelphia office, billing clients thirty dollars every fifteen minutes of the drive. He’s supposed to become a senior partner soon. Before the girls came along, Jackie and I used to spend a week with them down the shore every year. 

“What kind of mule piss you drinking today?” he asks. His sunglasses have a band that wraps around his neck; a miniature floatation device for them rests against his upper back. He is extremely hairy. 

“Same as usual,” I say. “You feeling lucky today?”

“I feel lucky every day,” Vince says, and I believe him.

Now Vince has never come right out and called me fat. Instead he makes comments like, “I’ve got some light beer in here if you want.” We always bring along separate coolers. Vince lifts his onto the deck. I can’t drink that dark, imported stuff, especially not when it’s this hot.

Jackie wants me to ask if we can borrow some money. A couple thousand. She’s been acting strange since I lost my job. She says she wants to have kids, but not until we’re financially secure again. Whatever that means.

Vince slides two identical fishing rods into the tubes sticking out from the cockpit roof. He was on a waiting list for a year and a half to buy them from a man in Atlantic City who custom-makes them by hand out of some special, composite material. The President of the United States fishes with one of that guy’s rods. Mine looks like a toy in comparison. My reel’s pretty nice though. It was a Christmas gift two years ago from him and Lezzie.

We get the boat loaded, then I follow Vince along the dock, back to the parking lot. Inside the marina shop, the buzz of all the refrigerators and freezers running at once makes me dizzy. I don’t like to see all those tiny fish — thousands and thousands of minnows trapped in Tupperware containers and Zip-lock baggies. “Grab a couple bags of ice,” he says. “Those forty-pound guys. I told you I feel lucky today.” A sullen, stuck-indoors surfer dude slouches behind the register talking on his cell phone. Vince leans into a fridge and pulls out a bag of live eels. “Do you need anything else — line? Hooks? I got the sun block already. Is it time to finally upgrade that rod of yours?”

“No, not yet. Why don’t you let me get this?” I say, reaching slowly for my wallet. “You picked up the gas.”

“Yeah, 648 dollars and the Mexican that pumps it looks at me like he wants a fucking tip. I got your tip right here. Don’t take wooden nickels, you little prick.” Vince hands the surfer an Amex card. Then he holds the door open and lets me lug the eighty pounds back to the boat. It’s only 9:30, but already hot as balls and will just get worse. It’ll be a hundred degrees out on the water.

Vince dumps the eels into the baitwell and puts most of the ice in the 75-gallon fish box. The rest goes into another cooler, the one built into the deck behind the cockpit, which is already full of tall, square bottles of spring water.

A Good Start is a monster, a Pro-Line 33 Express with a custom woodwork interior. Thirty-three feet long and tricked out to the hilt: color radar, GPS, fishfinder, depthfinder. He got the name from the joke about what to call ten thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean. I’m pretty sure that at least one other boat at the marina has the same name. Normally six or eight people would be able to stand in the back, but Vince had a table put in to make it a picnic area for the twins. He can unbolt it when he needs to take a lot of clients out, but today he leaves it in. The enclosed cockpit has an elevated control station and a couple steps that lead into the cabin. Downstairs is a bedroom with a six-foot ceiling, a full bathroom, and a kitchen area with two fridges, one made especially for storing wine. The stereo can pick up radio stations in Reykjavik and Helsinki and has an 80-CD changer, but it’s set to repeat Bob Marley’s “Legend” and Jimmy Buffett’s “Greatest Hits” all day. 

I sit at the table while Vince takes the helm. The engine sounds like it could power a small aircraft, but as the propeller blades lower into the water it leaves only a silent, purring vibration through the stainless handrails. I hold on tight as he backs out. 

We’re headed to the Delaware Bay, on the western side of the Jersey peninsula. The rips where the ocean currents meet the bay, right at Cape May Point, make a good place to land stripped bass even this time of year. He guides us through the maze of berths and docks. 

Out in the channel of the Cape May-Lewis ferry, Vince doesn’t exactly gun it, but he doesn’t abide the NO WAKE signs either. A few smaller boats head the opposite way, homeward. The serious commercial fishermen have already been out for hours, since before dawn. A few shoobies dot the rocky embankments along the canal, mostly in the shade of the bridges overhead. As we pass the outermost jetties, Vince throws the throttle forward and the engine roars again. He swings a hard left, down toward the point, sending a five-foot wave across the bay. The spray feels good.

We zip past the concrete ship. There was a steel shortage during World War I, so the navy actually built a small fleet out of concrete. Imagine that. The U.S.S. Atlantus made it all the way across the ocean and back again, but finally sank in a storm. All that’s left now are two giant slabs of crumbling concrete that jut up out of the water. 

When we get to the lighthouse, Vince kills the engine, allowing Jimmy Buffett to crudely proposition the four or five other fishing boats in our general vicinity. By the weekend, the headland will be a parking lot. “This could be the place,” Vince announces, and pops a beer on the brass bottle opener screwed into the console. It’s technically illegal to consume alcohol in New Jersey’s territorial waters, but I open one too and drink half of it in one long go. It’s really hot. I put my can in a cup holder, and we sit at the table to bait up our hooks. I try not to let on that the eels gross me out, that I’d prefer to use an artificial lure. 

Some days we’ll set up as many as six lines and drift with the tide, trolling for whatever we can catch, but this morning we go with just one pole each. It will invariably become a contest with Vince over who can catch the most fish or land the biggest of the day. Everything is a competition with Vince. 

“So how’s things at home?” he wants to know. “Jacko good?” 

I need to ask him. Jackie’s going to be livid if I don’t ask him.

“Yeah, she said to send her love.”

“You two still trying?”

“To have kids? I’m trying, I guess. Not sure if she is.”

“That’s so funny,” Vince says, but he doesn’t laugh. 

I drink more of my beer. “She wanted to come down and see you, but she’s real busy.”

“Yeah, what is the story with your job?”

“Same as usual.”

I’m between jobs. Or between careers, you could say. One of the more venerable, Center City insurance companies hired me straight out of college and I loyally stayed on with them for over fourteen years even after a rival firm offered me more money and a 401K. I worked so late some nights that I’d be the only person in the building. I always got more done without all the chitchat and the distractions. The way women behave at work these days, it’s not exactly professional. One night, after everyone had gone home, I went into the ladies’ room and used a bar of lavender soap to write “fucking bitches” on the mirror in big, swooping letters. I failed at the time to take into consideration how surveillance cameras have infiltrated every aspect of our lives.

“I do temp work here and there to get us by until something else comes along. Data entry mostly.”

Vince stands and unties the sweater from around his waist and throws it at the cockpit chair. He takes a drink of beer. “Let’s do this,” he says. The trigger stick grip on Vince’s rod allows for two-handed, overhead casting. The line guides are ceramic for Christ’s sake; they stick out of the top like tiny powdered donuts. His eel lands a good fifty feet from the boat. “Been working out,” he says and slaps at his bicep. “Greatest feeling in the world.”

Mine flies half as far, but soon as I begin to reel it in I feel the extra weight on my line. The tip of my rod bends and I give a strong jerk to let the hook snag deep into whatever fishy mouth has made the mistake of messing with me. “Got one,” I say, trying not to boast.

“Already? Get the fuck out of here.” Vince looks at his expensive rod to determine what could be wrong with it. “Slowly now,” he coaches me. “You don’t want to spook him.”

It feels like a big one and I am not about to let it get away, but as it gets closer to the boat, wiggling wildly, I see that it isn’t a fish at all. Vince gives out a little puff of relief. “The fuck is it?”

“Some kind of ray.” The ugly, bat-like creature looks like it has already digested my eel and crapped the hook back out again. It has completely tangled itself in my line, which I hold out over the water. “Hand me your knife,” I say. 

Instead of cutting the line, Vince takes down the decorative machete that hangs above the cabin stairs. It has KINGSTON JAMAICA painted on the blade in bright letters. He pulls the rod from my hand and holds the ray down on the table with my almost-empty beer can, then tries to chop my hook free from its mouth. He digs long gashes into its skin, but it continues to flop around. “Come on, you cocksucker,” he says. The thing’s mouth gapes open and shut, like it’s trying to talk. The hippie-sailor soundtrack seems strangely appropriate now, but I don’t know why.

“Cut the line!” I tell him.

Vince slashes several big divots out of the creature’s underbelly, but it won’t stop flailing.

“Just cut the line.”

Pulling hard as he can, Vince finally tugs the hook out of the ray. It still has a hunk of eel on it. “There, cocksucker.” He throws the creature back into the water, and I lean over in time to see it swim away, seemingly without difficulty. “I need a beer,” he says.

I open another for myself and sit with Vince as he catches his breath. “I hate those fucking things,” he says. 

“All you had to do was cut the line,” I tell him.

“And waste perfectly good eel? That’s expensive sushi, chump. I’m not going to waste it on some fucking manta ray. Christ I hate those things. But I thought for a sec that you really had something. That would be a first.”

“What do you mean? I always catch as much as you do.” I can ready feel myself playing along with his macho routine.

Vince motions towards my rod, now upright in one of the holders. “With that piece of shit? I doubt it. Hundred says I catch more fish than you today.”

“More fish or more keepers?”

“Keepers. And another hundred for who gets the biggest fish of the day.”

“Tell you what, Vince. Make it a thousand and a thousand.”

“Are you serious? Do you even have two thousand dollars?”

I don’t. 

“Well?” I ask.

“I’d take you on, chump, if I thought you could afford it. Frankly, and I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this, I’m worried about you and Jacko. Temp work? The fuck is that about?”

“It’s only been a couple months. You have to expect that in this kind of economy. The job market’s terrible right now, but I’ll get something soon, I promise you. Now are we on or what?”

“Shit, yeah. Cheers.” He knocks his beer against mine to solidify our wager. 

Jackie wants me to hit him up for some money, but instead I might go home two grand deeper in the hole. It’s worth the gamble. We have credit card bills out the ass. Car payments, student loans. The mortgage on a house I never wanted to buy. I don’t know what was so bad about our old neighborhood.

“I fucking love this song,” Vince says, but it sounds just like every other one we’ve already heard. He finishes his beer. The empty bottle sinks slowly into the bay and releases a few, final bubbles. “Alright, seriously. Do you need some money? Jacko doesn’t have to know.” He looks out across the bay. “Just until things look up, I mean. It’ll be our secret. You can get it back to me whenever.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. Holding on with both hands, Vince lifts the fishing rod over his shoulder and lets it fly even further this time. As he starts to reel it back in, I take the gooey machete from the table and swing it at his wrists as hard as I can. The motion registers in his eyes and he flinches just as the blade sinks into the flesh of his hairy forearm. “The fuck?” he says. He appears confused. The pole falls from his hands and teeters on the metal railing before dropping into the bay. Despite the blood, his bone appears white and clean. 

I hack at him again like I’m chopping wood, splintering the bone this time. His hand and half of his mottled arm fall to the deck. Still attached to the wrist, his Rolex catches the sun and produces a small, golden glow from amid the pooling blood. Vince looks down at it without comprehension, then looks back at me, and down at the watch again. That’s when I catch him in the lean muscles of his chest. His Docksiders can no longer adhere to the slick surface of the deck and he loses his footing. He lands on his back and tries to push himself up, but most of his right arm is gone. I stand above him and whack at his shoulder again, now smashing into the bones next to his neck. Vince’s mouth opens and closes like the ray’s did, like he’s mocking me almost. Fucking bitches. Then he begins to shit himself, and the blood pouring out turns from red to something darker.

When I get his clothes and limbs off, I drag his torso up to the table and carve it like a thanksgiving turkey. It’s difficult to cut through all the muscle with such a dull blade, and it takes me forever. I drop the hunks of meat and tissue and organ in with the eels until the baitwell is full. I’m afraid his head might float, so I stow that in the cabinet under the bench cushions, with the orange life preservers. Then I cut his arms and legs into bits, shovel them in piles onto the surface of the blade, and drop them overboard. His watch sinks and sinks, then finally blinks out of sight.

I step down into the air-conditioned cabin and switch off the music.

Back on deck, I’ve made a serious mess. Vince’s good rod and reel have already floated away. Instead of using his spare, I go back to my old, trusty pole. I bait a hook with what looks like a hunk of kidney or maybe heart, and cast it out. I get a bite right away and reel in an 18-inch striper. Totally legal, a keeper, so I drop it in the fish box. First of the day. Then I load up the hook again, this time with some flesh from Vince’s chest or stomach. It has a tuft of black, bristly hair sticking out. Sure enough, I feel a nibble almost immediately. A flounder. Big one too. Another keeper. And then another after that. It goes on like this for the rest of the afternoon, one after the other: flounder, blues, weakfish, fluke. Fish I don’t even think are in season. With no more room in fish box, I dump his beer cooler over the side and then begin to fill that up too. 

I’m casting, reeling one in, casting, reeling, casting, reeling. It’s exhausting, but I stick with it and keep landing them again and again. Now this is a great feeling. You’ve never seen so many fish. Enough to last Jackie and me for months. We love seafood. She’s going to be so proud of me. 

Some of the fish are too small, so I remove the hook as gently as I can and release them back into the water. I’ll catch them again next year when they’re big and fat.

The sun’s really beating down and I’m sweating like crazy. My baseball cap can’t provide enough protection, and I forgot to put on sun block. The back of my neck and my ears have already burned. I put away my rod, then open up the fish box to inspect my haul. It’s completely full, and so is the cooler. Time to call it a day.

It’s my first time driving the boat. While the Pro-Line isn’t what I would buy, even if I had the money, I have to admit that A Good Start can really fly. It handles a whole lot better than his last boat, the In-Vince-Able. Two teenagers are jet skiing around the remains of the Atlantus. They skip noisily across the water and take turns speeding between the two remaining sections. They shout to each other and laugh. It looks like fun. A concrete ship. I never would have guessed that was possible.

I’m getting hungry and begin to think about different recipes, about how to prepare all these fish. Grill the flounder with some lemon and butter. Batter and fry the weakfish. Maybe I can get Jackie to made a chowder or soup, something we can freeze until winter. I’ll have to remember to bring a quart over to Elizabeth and the girls.

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