Blue Skin of the Sea by Graham Salisbury

shape of the shark wobbled below the skiff. I felt it, too, the moment of truth, as Uncle Raz would say, the moment you know you’ve won or lost. A hollow slapping sound slipped out from under the hull when Keo leaned over the side to cut him loose.
    He clipped the cable quickly and threw it overboard. “Go on, get out of here,” he shouted at the shark.
    We waited ten minutes for it to leave the area before diving for the anchor.
    “There goes a hundred bucks,” Keo said.
    “What would we do with it anyway.”
    “Yeah. What.”
    We both sat there staring into the water. As much as I wanted to be miles from any shark, I hated to see this one go.
    When the old man came in from the barge later that day, he was standing on the stern deck of the
Optimystic
with his hands on his hips, balancing on the moving boat like a deckhand. Keo and I sat on the hood of Uncle Raz’s truck watching everyone on the pier rush over in a clump to catch a glimpse of him.
    Two men cleared a space for him to get off the boat. The crowd stepped aside and clapped as he came ashore. He took off his hat and half-waved, then got into the long, black car that waited for him every afternoon. As the car passed, we could see him looking at us through the dark backseat window.
    Then the car stopped, and backed up. The old man lowered the window. “You the two who sent me the note? The one in all those lunch boxes?”
    We both slid off the truck like ice chips off the side of a cold bottle of beer. “Yeah,” said Keo. “We sent the note. Did you see it?”
    “How could I miss it?” The old man shook his head, then laughed, as if remembering something funny.
    “We were at the fish scale,” Keo said.
    “I know,” he said, throwing a hand
up.
“I saw you there. Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to get a moment to myself?”
    Some of the people in the crowd noticed that his car had stopped and started walking toward us.
    “Listen,” he said. “I want to see your shark. Meet me right here at six in the morning, then take me to it. Can you do that?”
    “We can be here at six, mister, but we can’t show you the shark. We had to let him go or he’d die.”
    The old man scratched at his beard, under his chin, and thought for a minute. “Not much we can do now, then, is there? What was it about the shark you wanted me to see?”
    Keo’s face brightened. I couldn’t believe his luck. He waved his hands around as he talked, first pointing to the fake sharks in the fenced-in area, then generally out to sea. He went on and on about how everything was too fake, and how sharks turn over on their sides when they bite into something that far out of the water.
    The old man studied me, then Keo. He looked tired, more like he should have been sitting on the seawall with a fishing pole than in a big car with bodyguards.
    I thought Keo had said too much. But the old man smiled and shook his head. “You any relation to Sturges?” he asked Keo.
    “Who?”
    “My director.”
    Keo shrugged no.
    “How about a guy named Hemingway?”
    Keo looked confused, but you could tell he was giving it serious consideration.
    The old man’s shoulders moved as he put his head down and laughed silently, to himself.
    The small crowd of people closed in on us, stopping at the end of the car. The old man looked back at them. He puffed his cheeks up and let the air out slowly. Then he smiled at us. “You boys are okay,” he said, giving us a short salute. “Thanks for the tips, I’ll give what you told me some thought.”
    He winked and sat back in the seat. The window went up,smoothly. The car passed through the gate and turned right. Its black roof, just visible above the top of the seawall, slid back through town toward the hotel.
    Two days later Dad, Uncle Raz, and Uncle Harley sat on the end of the pier with Keo and me. Again, the old man was out in the skiff sitting with his elbows on his knees waiting for the sharks. This time the marlin was