Two passing fishermen look on in astonishment as an Old Man in a skiff, whatever that is, has a seizure. Minutes later, they were attacked by a mechanical shark.
Our story so far…
In Part 1, we met the Old Man, a poor fisherman who hadn't caught a fish in 84 days or moved his bowels in 12. In Part 2, we got a little bored watching the Old Man and his protege and only friend, the Boy, talk baseball and fish long into the night (no hanky panky, folks, just talk). You know what? That was all setup. Part 3 is where the action blasts us out of our armchairs as the old man, alone in his leaky little skiff, finds his Moby Ricardo and all hell breaks loose. Violence, special effects and symbolism rule in the conclusion of this epic piscatorial thriller a la Hemingway.
The Old Man rowed the skiff out to the place where the sea was all water and it was good and clean and true. Kind of salty, though. The night came and brought the dark, which Señor Salazar the schoolteacher had claimed was just the absence of light. But that was many years ago and for all the Old Man knew, the curriculum might have changed.
“Hello, Moon,” he said as that pale yellow orb appeared in the sky. The Old Man had an annoying habit of talking out loud to heavenly bodies and animals. So far, they hadn’t answered but he kept hoping.
He had dropped ten lines over the side, each hook baited with a lox taco, a secret the Old Man had learned from the Jew Zabar, whose fish store was so successful, he moved it to the States. Some day the Old Man hoped to go to the States himself and see the great Judge smack the curve ball that hangs out of the Stadium of the Yankee but he knew he never would. The foreshadowing had hinted that he would die at the end of the book and the foreshadowing was never wrong.
Each of the ten lines was looped around one of the Old Man’s toes to inform him of a fish taking the bait. A sharp pain now alerted him to the fact that this had occurred. It must be a very, very big fish, he thought, because one of the toes on his left foot was gone.
“You are a fish of honor and dignity,” he said out loud. “A mighty hero of the deep. We are brothers, but I must kill you, for that is how I roll.”
The Big Fish did not answer. He took off to the north, pulling the little skiff behind him. The Old Man had the right line in his hands now and expertly let it slide through the arthritic fingers. He summoned all his years of experience, ignoring the pain in his disfigured foot and the cramping of his constipated gut and the sciatica in his legs and the dementia that often frazzled his brain. He knew that if he made one wrong move, the Big Fish would break the line and run away, flashing an obscene fin gesture to indicate moderate to strong contempt of the Old Man.
“You are brave and powerful, Big Fish,” the Old Man said. “But you have the brain of an idiot, so the odds favor me.”
“Would you shut up?” yelled a peeved sperm whale. “We’re trying to get some sleep down here.”
The Old Man muttered an apology. He wished he too could sleep, but he must not. Once he had caught a big swordfish while asleep, but that fish had been suicidal and you can’t always depend on good luck.
There was a roar from behind him that startled the Old Man. He turned his head to see a big boat bearing down on him. A bullhorn blasted a voice of many decibels into the ears of the Old Man and a searchlight beam robbed him of his darkness.
“Make way, tiny skiff with Old Man in it!” the bullhorn ordered. “Make way for the amazing Ms. Dinah Narvad, the Mad Mermaid of Miami, attempting to beat her own record of 51 hours set in 1968, the first person, man or woman, to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage or sunscreen.”
Peering at the boat, which had drawn abreast of his tiny skiff, the Old Man was able to make out a burly middle-aged woman in a pink swim cap and bathing suit, her arms windmilling furiously and her legs kicking up a storm. She appeared to have a bad patch of sunburn on her back.
“Hello, my sister,” he called out. “I salute you as another hero of the deep. But do not scare the fish or foul my lines or I will clop you with my oar.”
He thought she yelled, “Fuck you, old man,” but he could not be sure. The big boat and the fast swimmer left him behind, their wake rocking the skiff alarmingly. He checked his line and found it was good. The Big Fish was still pulling the tiny skiff but noticeably slower.
“You are tired, brother, said the Old Man. “But you cannot rest, nor can I.”
Suddenly the line went slack. The Old Man was so stunned that for a moment, he froze. Then he came to life and began hauling in the line hand over hand as fast as he could. But he could find no tension in the line.
“He is rising and very fast.” No sooner had the Old Man uttered these words than the Big Fish smashed through the calm surface of the sea and leaped high into the sky.
He was the biggest big fish the Old Man had ever seen, the size of a Norte Americano tourist bus. He was purple and iridescent royal blue and a touch of aquamarine with a little green around the gills and the line of the Old Man protruded from his mouth with the hook producing for the Big Fish the same sensation as a root-canal job done by an amateur dentist would produce for a man.
“Sweet saints in the morning,” exclaimed the Old Man. “He is the legendary Giant Flounder, the first ever glimpsed in these waters.”
From the peak of his arc, the airborne enormity seemed to hover motionless in the sky and glare down at the Old Man with disdain.
“I don’t need no rest,” the Legendary Giant Flounder said. “No way am I gettin’ caught by some illiterate peasant in a toy boat.”
Then he returned to motility and plunged heavily back into the sea, the prodigious splash drenching the Old Man and creating a sloshing pool of seawater in the bottom of his tiny skiff.
The Old Man was sad that the epic flounder had disrespected him.
“I was wrong,” he said to the spot where the Big Fish had disappeared. “Wrong to think you were an honorable brother of the sea. You are rude and crass, in fact a major asshole, and I unsalute you.”
The Old Man fell asleep, dreaming of the iconic flounder nibbling Ms. Narvad’s toes and then being shot by her assistants. Then he was nibbling Ms. Norvad’s toes. Then she was nibbling his. This made him think of his late wife, Maria, a great nibbler, and he was sadder.
He did not dream of the lions on the beach, which made him sadder still. The lions on the beach were deeply symbolic but of what only the great Hemingway knew and he was as dead as the great DiMaggio, the one who had always worn the number five. Then a baboon with a purple ass showed up and bared his fangs. But something was wrong with the vicious ape. His face froze into a grotesque expression and his body spasmed into rigidity. He was having a seizure. Helpless, he was eaten by a passing leopard.
The Old Man awoke in a crumpled heap and realized his boat was adrift and his hands were cut and bloody from fighting the line and his jaw was sore as if it had been distended. A dark hulk was lashed to the skiff and the Old Man exclaimed some colorful Spanish phrase signifying great surprise, such as Holy Madre de Hay Zoos a Mar a Lago!
The massive hulk was the carcass of the Giant Flounder, lashed to the skiff.
“Hey, old man,” shouted a voice with a French accent. “We see you tryin’ to bring een that beeg flounder while you asleep, so we shoot the bastard and tie him up to your skeeff, whatever that ees. I think you had a feet or somethin.’”
The Old Man looked around and spotted the shouter, a short, bearded Frenchman in a pea jacket and officer cap with a red scarf billowing jauntily in the wind, standing on the bridge of a fantastic nineteenth-century steam-punk submersible with the name “Nautilus” painted on the hull.
“Au revoir,” the Frenchman said. “Got a date weeth a mermaid,” and he scooted down an open hatch. His ship began to slide beneath the water and soon was gone.
“Now I am hallucinating,” said the Old Man. “I wish I had remembered to bring my anti-seizure and anti-hallucinatory meds. If the boy was here, he would have reminded me.”
He picked up the oars and began to row, his hands bleeding on the wood. “I will sell tons of this good meat to the greedy operators of the flounder-canning industry,” he said. “And for once, the exploitive villains must pay me in actual money. I wonder how much are costing the box seats in the Stadium of the Yankee.” It was then that the first shark hit the legendary flounder. The impact almost threw the Old Man off his seat.
“I hope that also was hallucination,” he said. “Otherwise I am in some deep shit.”
He looked to the sky and saw that it was almost dawn. Either that or the sun was coming up. He had no idea where he was. He tried to clop the sharks with an oar but a feeding frenzy was under way with the chomping beasts coming from as far away as Amity Island in New York. They swirled and dove and snapped their knife-blade teeth furiously, almost as if they were in a…well…frenzy.
Soon the once-mighty flounder was nothing but bare bones knocking against the side of the skiff, his few shreds of remaining meat not even sufficient for a sliced flounder sandwich on whole wheat with mayo.
The Old Man now heard the words of his old amigo Quinto. “Y’know, the thing about a shark,” Quinto said rather dramatically, “he’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’…until he bites ya.”
“Why you are telling me this now when they are almost gone?” said the Old Man but Quinto was long dead, swallowed whole by a great white in a freak fishing accident, just another hallucination.
It was then that the first helicopter came. It was painted a garish red and yellow with the words “NewsChopper 5” splashed on its side in purple Comic Sans font. A daring videographer leaned so far out of the door with his camera the Old Man feared he would fall but he did not. As that helicopter circled, three more appeared and zoomed down recklessly, barely missing each other.
A shiny black and orange-striped copter labeled “Wham Bam News 11” hovered directly over the skiff, only fifteen feet above the Old Man’s head. Its roar made his head hurt and he wished he had brought the Advil. The boy would have brought some Advil, maybe even an Excedrin or two. A hatch opened and a thin man in a black and orange sport jacket and black jeans descended on a cable spooled out by a winch inside the aircraft. He was very confident.
“How are you, Old Man?” the dangling newsman shouted. “I’m Lex Lenox of Wham Bam News 11. Folks, we’re here live in the sky with the heroic Old Man who escaped from Communist Cuba all alone in a tiny skiff, whatever that is, and made it all the way to Miami without anything to eat or drink in record time by rowing with just his arms.”
He thrust a microphone toward the Old Man, who was peering with disbelief to the north, where indeed a row of capitalistic-looking high-rise condos towered over a beach.
“How’s it feel to be in free waters?” said Lex Lenox. “And why do you have a rotting pile of flounder bones lashed to your tiny skiff?”
“Is this really Miami?”said the Old Man.
“It sure is,” said Lex Lenox, his voice inexplicably upbeat. “How do you like it here your first day in the free world?”
“It seems nice,” said the Old Man. “Tell me, Señor Lenox, are not the Yankees here today to vie against the red-hot Marlins of Miami?”
“Jeez, I dunno,” said Lex Lenox. “Let me put that question to our sports guy, Randy Groutman, back in the studio. Did you hear that, folks? This heroic fisherman who bravely fled Communist tyranny is a certified sports nut! You gotta love it, am I right?”
The Old Man looked up at Lex Lenox and wondered if he were some heavenly messenger sent to deliver an unforeseen miracle.
“Nope,” yelled Lex Lenox. “Randy says the Marlins are on the road for two weeks and tonight they face off against the Washington Nationals in D.C. But hey, Wham Bam News 11 would like you to be our guest tonight at the Miami Aquarium, where you can watch some real marlins, then grab some broiled marlin steaks at Jerry’s House of Fish. C’mon, Old Man, give me your hand so I can haul you up and do the exclusive in-depth interview you deserve.”
The Old Man looked at the outstretched hand of Wham Bam News 11. Then he looked at the bones of the flounder and then at the unforgiving sea.
“Thanks,” he said. “But I must be getting home.” He picked up his oars and turned the skiff around, rowing it southward.
“But sir,” said Lex Lenox, still hanging from his cable.
“Maybe if I am lucky, I can make it home in time for supper,” the Old Man said. “Assuming I catch something on the way.”
I'll read it later. You get a heart just for the title!
You sure covered a bunch in this comedic blog:
Comedy
Sports
Literature
Medicine
Survival
Media
Etc, etc, etc.
Nice!!