After I’d let it out, I crawled back onto the sand, abdomen still twitching, and sat down with the idea of drying off before I went back to Alana’s bed. I didn’t have a towel, but most of my tension was gone, so I just sat there doing nothing, not caring so much. There was no one out. The sun was warming up but it was still cool. And then, like another gift, the black & white, painted hippie truck pulled into my flaccid silence. I saw it coming down the road in my direction and I scrambled barefoot and shirtless across the sand and out into the jagged, hurting road, almost jumping in front of the guy.

It wasn’t the French-Canadian; it was the same guy who’d promised he’d bring the pole back to me weeks ago. Some scruffy, brown-haired gringo. There was clear annoyance in my voice when we met faces in the driver’s window and I asked, dripping salt water down onto the brim of his baseball hat, "Hey man, where’s my fishing pole? It isn’t at the gringo place like you said…"

"It’s in the back." He pointed to the bed with his thumb.

"Oh, fuck yeah!" I said, tossing aside gas cans, and spare tires and beer coolers, until I found my fishing pole underneath it all. Having it finally in my hand, the scruffy gringo was my best friend. "Thanks, man." I told him.

"No problem." He smiled. He was stoned. I could tell.

I slipped in, "You should let me use your cast net." Pointing to it tangled up in the back of his truck.

"You know how to use one?"

"I spent 20 years of my life with one of those in my mouth." I lied. The first year after I moved to Florida, when I was 19, my friends and I (some New York guys I’d met at Freshman orientation) paid for a guy to take us out fishing. We all shared that first time feeling; out on Florida waters, in the 80 degree winter. We didn’t catch anything, but being out there was perfect enough to make me wish I’d been born there, in the same way going to these Tico dances and seeing the sexy girls dance local moves makes me wish I’d been born here. And on that fishing trip, our guide showed me how to use a cast net to catch bait fish. I did pretty well.

The guy in the hippie truck yelled out, "Just set it on this porch right up here." And pointed to a broken, leaning house a block away. He added, "And don’t let anyone see you!" over the sound of the dusty rocks under his tires as he pulled away. I didn’t understand what he meant. But fuck; now I had a pole and a cast net and a joint in my pocket and I’m in Costa fucking Rica and I was sure that Alana would eventually calm down, so I walked to the far edge of the water on the low-tide flats, facing the mountains while smoking the joint and untangling the cast net, then looping the leader around my wrist, biting into the net, and spinning a perfect spiderweb circle that crashed, elegantly, the shallow water.

When I pulled in the leader, I’d caught seven large finger mullet on my first cast, but I didn’t have a bait bucket. So six were set free, and the unfortunate seventh was pitched out into the water with a hook through its tail.

That cast was good as well. Far out, off the flats emerging parallel with the pier. Though there wasn’t a bobber to watch, I stared at the spot in the water where my hooked mullet had landed, believing that paying attention to the area would be in my best interest. I watched the line drift out toward the pier, until it stopped at the spot where I’d seen that hammerhead quietly take the pelican under. To the right was a human head.

I wanted to yell out to the bobbing head, but he was still in the water, facing away, and my first thought was that he was out there, up to his neck, letting it out as I just had. So, I thought I ought not disturb him. I fished quietly for while, until realizing that my bait was probably drawing fanged fish to his vicinity, and also, that the entire world isn’t up to worst that I am.

I reeled my line in, yelling, "Hey! They just killed a huge shark out there!"

The head faced me and yelled back, thick and Southern, "I was with you, man! You need to lay off the dope!"

It was Milton. His red hair was muted from wetness and distance, but it was his voice.

It felt awkward yelling into the morning. Intrusive. Especially since the day was still cool and unantagonizing. But I pointed a few yards to Milton’s right and warned, "Right there is where I saw that shark eat that pelican!"

The head moved in the direction I pointed, and as I watched it swim to the spot, I realized I had known it would.

The head stopped and yelled, "Here?"

"Don’t be stupid!" I yelled, while realizing it was a very unimportant thing to say, and deciding not to yell anymore. I stood with my pole in my hand, my bait mullet drowning in air, it’s bug little eyes watching me watch the head out there in the water.

It seemed to take him a half-hour to croon, "You need to come out here and face your fear, young man!" He sounded how I think Mark Twain probably sounded.

But I didn’t yell back.

"Serious!" The head yelled. "Come out here swimming! In this exact spot! You’ll feel much better!"

I almost yelled back but said in a loud speaking voice, "Who says I feel bad?"

He must not have heard me. He was quiet for a while and then yelled, "Swim with the sharks, Patrick!"

I found myself yelling again, "I’m not on the self-destruction tip, like you!"

"Don’t talk like a nigger!" He yelled back, and with that I just turned around and walked off. The same thing had happened to me so many times during the years I lived in Florida; anyone you met could turn out to be a racist. I once helped a sweet, shriveled old women carry heavy bags to her car at Publix and when we reached her hatchback she told me she was glad I offered to help before they, "Assigned me some nigger bag boy." This happened so often at jobs and even at school, that I wondered how long before some black person sprung the same garbage on me. One of the reasons I liked working at Pizza Dive, is because there was limited talk, among the Spanish and Greek speaking staff, of niggers. I wrote Milton Chapman off, walking down the beach thinking of the letters I would write to Universities and bookstores around the United States.

I heard him behind me. "Hey! I’m just kidding, man!" I looked over my shoulder, the head was coming inshore, I kept walking. When I looked back again, He was on the beach, walking behind me. His skin was very red. I faced forward again and walked, and walked, and walked, and it occurred to me that he very well might be joking. Him the playful antagonist. But with the swan thing and all the Alana pressure, and the heat which was now hard; I didn’t need any antagonism. When I’d reached a nice fat point in the flats, I stopped and walked into the water. When I was up to my hip, I was scared of sharks, but I knew he was behind me and some part of me wanted to show him and when I turned around he was splashing behind me.

"Hand me the cast net, man." He drawled. "I’ll toss it up on shore."

He had me there; running away from him, I’d carried it out into the water with me. I tossed it back to him, then dipped my finger mullet in the water to check his life expectancy. He was as dead as a popcycle stick.

"Hey, man, serious; I was only joking." Milton said, after he’d tied the net in a ball and shot putt tossed it onto the beach behind us.

That he had followed me made out there made me believe him. The little that I knew of him, he didn’t care much about real things. Only senseless things. The only thing belying his true identity was that he at least acted famous, like he believed that people wanted to talk to him, and he wasn’t interested. But he followed me down the beach and out into the water, so I believed that he was joking.

But I didn’t let go. I still fed him silence. For Christ’s sake; he was still telling me his name was Jon. I let it bother me because I just needed to vent, so I abused the guy I really admire.

"Whatever." I said, not turning around at him. "You’re a cracker boy redneck."

"Easy."

I had nothing to say to that.

"What was that you said back there? I just heard, ‘I’m not on the something-something tip, yo’."

I’d never heard ‘yo’ in a cracker accent. It broke me into laughter. "I didn’t say ‘yo’." I said. "I just said that I’m not on some self destruction kick like you."

"Swimming is not self-destructive." He said

That made me feel stupid, which then made angry. Milton does have a lot of power. To limit his control over my moods, I’ve had to remind myself, ‘He’s a writer – with the power to frame things.’

I turned around and studied him. His sunburn looked better, but still painful. I replied, "The fucking sunburn you’re cultivating is self-destructive."

He laughed and said, "Hey, this is how I wanna die." Pointing at small blisters hiding in his red chest hairs.

"That’s how Alana’s dad died you know?" I snapped. "Skin cancer."

"That’s what gave me the idea." He said.

At first I didn’t understand what he said because, until then, I thought we’d been talking around the subject. But that sounded like an admission of suicide. In case he was fucking with me, I ignored the remark.

He repeated, "Swimming, however, is not self-destructive."

I still didn’t answer.

He continued, "You will follow a crazy, 17-year-old girl all the way here from Florida, but you won’t swim where they even might be a shark?"

On the inside I was talking back to him, vehemently, telling him the big FUCKING difference, but I let none of it out. I realized that all this time I’d just been standing there like a dummy, my brain shut off in order to publicly mull over every word from Milton’s mouth. So I started to mess with my fishing pole, re-hooking the dead finger mullet, adjusting the drag, getting ready to fish again.

"I admire that about you, that you followed her here." He said, sitting down in the water. "That’s about as senseless as you can get."

It said it as a compliment and I took it as one, but before I could enjoy it, I cast out into the water. The clear, white line released in a high, buzzing arc that should have lasted days, but the reel something shook loose and spool bird-nested in my hands, jerking the bait down from the sky before it’d reached its potential.

"Fuck!" I yelled out into the hot, but still quiet morning, then turned to walk back to shore with my bum rod. Milton rose as I approached and followed me back, both of us splashing through the water. I set the rod on the sand and sat down next to it. Milton stayed standing up.

"I admire it so much," Milton continued, with a tone in his voice like he wanted to sell me something, "that I’ll even ask, ‘What else is bothering you, Patrick?’ Which I never ask no one: What’s up, man, why you being such a little bitch? I know it ain’t cause I said nigger…"

Somehow, all of this softened me. I knew that his concern was indeed rare, and aside from his surface bullshit, I knew he was a deep smart person, so I admitted what was going on inside me. I told him about being attacked by the swans, and my suspicion that Ilka killed Romeo on my behalf, and this morning’s struggle with poor, broken Alana.

When I was done, his hair was almost dry and the curls were fluffing back into life and his first words were, "See man, now that’s what you should write about!"

I’d heard him fine, but I still said, "What?"

"You should write that…if you want to get published." He repeated.

"That’s fucked up, Milton." I said, squarely. "That’s heartless. You think I should write about how Alana’s crying too hard to have sex?"

"Jesus," Milton said, rubbing his forehead in frustration. "Never mind. Just giving you advice. You’re the one who always wants to talk about fucking writing."

I stood up and brushed off my ass, facing him. I needed to get out of the sun. I thought I heard his skin sizzling, but I tried not to care, since he doesn’t. Instead I asked, "So, do you think Ilka’s evil enough to kill the swan just to get back at me?"

"Well, everyone in the village thinks she killed her husband."

"No, shit! Why, how?"

"Oh, I dunno how, but supposedly she used to be really paranoid that he was fuckin around behind her back. He did it the one time and when she found out was when she started getting fat; I’ve still never seen her, so I don’t know how fat she is but…"

I interrupted, "She’s huge."

I could have gone on with colorful descriptions of her for hours but he continued, "Well, supposedly, she did that to punish him for cheating on her. I heard she started eating cornstarch or something…

I almost wet myself, like a dog who’s owner has promised him a walk. I squealed, "Yes! YES! She does eat that stuff all the time! She sucks it through a little straw and then chews on ice! Holy shit! THAT’s why she does that?!? That is SO fucked up!"

Milton was laughing very hard saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." While I just shook my head repeating over and over, "That is so fucked up!"

"I’ll see you tonight at El Rancho?" He asked.

I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted to talk more. But I just nodded affirmative.I’d ask him more questions tonight.

"Well, cheer up before then." He said. As he walked over the cast net, a piece wrapped around his toe and as he bent down to unhook it he said, "And watch out who sees you using this thing."

I looked up at him. "The cast net?"

"Yeah, they’re illegal." He warned.

"No way. Even just for bait?"

"Yeah man." He was so sure that his curls, which eclipsed the sun from my view, shook as he nodded, letting light in around the edges. He continued, "You can hire a 15-year-old hooker outside the police station but you can’t use a cast net." We shared another hard laugh as he walked away.