Prepping my rod to catch the "big" one. Later I caught an octopus, and since I preferred squid I sold it at a local restaurant for a couple of bucks. I should have by then seen my brother's suicide threat as storm clouds on the horizon, but what did I know?
I just had to catch a real fish, so I set out along the beach and around the postcard-perfect rocky point to what looked like a promising cove.
I fished for hours there without hooking a damned thing besides the bottom. With the light fading it was time to go home, but with me so focused on trying to catch a fish I hadn’t noticed the rising tide submerging the route I’d followed in. I could have chanced fumbling my way back over jagged rocks but decided it would be dark too quickly and I’d not be able to see anything, and since there was no one around…no, the better idea was to go up the cliff behind me and hope there was a path at the top.
With good footing and handholds I climbed the thirty or more feet of bare rock thinking this wasn’t so bad. But I quickly discovered my thinking had been flawed when I hefted myself to the gentler packed dirt slope above. My foot slipped causing my whole body to slide. I clawed and kicked frantically for traction but with only one hand free because of the fishing rod in the other I barely managed to get stopped just short of the edge.
As I clung to the dirt as best I could with my feet pushing against the slippage, I thought how Mom had said to me soon after I’d arrived in Majorca, “Ach son, you can’t wear your mountain boots all the time. We’ll have to get you something more comfortable.”
I looked at my new sneakers, scuffed and soiled now from my trying to find a footing, any footing. I chuckled: comfortable hell! I wished I had my boots right then; they would have made short work of biting into the packed dirt and I’d have been out of there in no time. Instead, every effort caused me to slip on the loose debris, edging me closer to the jagged rocks below.
Making matters worse, heights terrified me. I was one of those people who could be cemented to the roof of a tall building and still feel like I was about to go over the edge, or if inside could feel the glass about to give way. But my slipping now was no imagination playing tricks on me as I clawed to regain lost ground.
I pressed myself into the slope, took a few good deep breaths, and calmed my pounding heart. Years before I’d gotten stuck on an icy slope in West Virginia, and Roger had crept out and saved me. Of course, Roger wasn’t with me now, but I tried to imagine that he was and wondered what would he tell me to do?
Fook the rod and use both hands, he probably would have siad. So I tossed the rod as hard as I could towards the top of the slope. It landed just short and bounced, and as it slid down toward the abyss all I could do was watch and say under my breath, “no no no!” I expected it to go over and I’d just have to hope for the best and retrieve it in the light of the next morning. But no, as luck would have it, the rod teasingly stopped just short of the edge but well out of reach.
Get to the top, I told myself. Worry about the rod later. Somehow I managed to keep calm enough and win the battle against gravity, mere inches at a time, until I was within a few feet of safety of the top. The slope became less severe and there were now plenty of rocks for me to get a footing. I knew I’d made it.
But the rush of relief was short-lived when I looked back and saw my fishing rod still snagged on the slope. I just wanted to go home, but a voice of guilt within me cried, “don’t leave me” while the voice of reason said, “Don’t be such a chicken shit, Paul. Go get it.” As I stared at the slope waiting for courage I spotted a runt of a fir tree not far from the rod. Suddenly I had an idea.
I slid down just right, lodged my foot against the tree’s base, held onto it with one hand and went for the rod with the other, and then used that little tree to help pull myself back up. Only after I reached safety for the second time and saw what was left of that poor thing did I realize how much faith I had put in it. I smiled and dipped my head in salute to that sapling for not letting me down – literally.
