John D. MacDonald

The White Lie

From the time the reservation came in, old Adam Rogers had been trying to puzzle out why the name was familiar. Mr. and Mrs. Dow Milligan from St. Louis. The fact they had asked for him meant that he should remember. He wished Millie was still around to ask. She would recall. But she was dead four years, and there was hardly a day he didn’t miss her for one reason or another.

Well, if they wanted to come all the way down to the Ten Thousand Islands from St. Louis to fish tarpon with Adam Rogers, they would get an honest return on the guide fee. At least this Milligan knew enough to pick May, a good tarpon month.

Now it was a rare thing for anybody to ask for him by name. Not like it used to be, long ago. Men with names the whole world knew had asked for Adam Rogers weeks ahead, and some of them saying one year the exact day they’d be back the next year to go out aboard the Millie B.

But now he was sixty-three years old, and the Millie B. was half his age. Though he was tough and hardy as mangrove roots, and the Millie B. was sound and seaworthy, the younger men in the newer boats got first call. The square lines on the old cabin cruiser were not fashionable. Most of his clients of years gone by were either dead or sick or too old for fishing. So the work was seldom, but he didn’t mind that too much. He had the old house over on the mainland shore across from the Rod and Gun Club dock at Everglades, and the kids were grown and gone and doing well, and his wants were few and simple.

This Mr. and Mrs. Milligan wanted him for three days, starting on a Thursday morning, and he guessed that when he saw them memory would return. They were staying at the Rod and Gun Club, and at the desk they told him the Milligans were coming in Wednesday evening.

Wednesday afternoon he checked the boat over and got the fishing gear in order. Early Thursday morning he took the Millie B. directly across the Barron River to the gas dock, then tied up in front of the hotel, with his ice aboard and the mullet cut for bait. Freddy brought the box lunches from the kitchen, and then delivered the soft drinks and beer.

Adam waited and thought again about where he would take the Milligans. The spring tides were over, and there had been enough heavy rains to bring the tarpon in. He lived by the patterns of tide and the observed movements of the fish over the fifty years he had taken a living from these waters. He decided that a good bet would be to try the mouth of the big bay off Russell Key, opposite Indian Key pass. They wanted tarpon, and he would hook them into tarpon.

A young couple came down the dock toward the Millie B, The man was big. He was grinning. In his sudden recognition, Adam Rogers had the feeling the whole world was askew. Dizzied, he fell back through time, back to all the mornings when big Sam Milligan came striding toward the boat, the big cylindrical rod case in his hand, eager to cast off and get out where the fish were.

But one year, long ago, on the way down in a company plane with some of his executives, Sam Milligan had crashed into a Louisiana swamp. Perhaps that was why memory had balked at the name. This had to be Sonny, and who could have guessed he would grow into such a close copy of his daddy?

The boy’s handshake was as big as the father’s had been. But not a boy now. Thirty-two or three, perhaps. “Adam, you haven’t changed a hair in twenty years. Ruthie, this is Adam Rogers. Dad swore by him. Adam, this is my wife Ruth. We were married last week. She’s never been fishing in her life, and it’s been too all damn long since I’ve had a chance. Let’s get rolling.”

Adam gave her a hand and helped her aboard. She was a slender pretty girl not too far past twenty, dark hair, short pants, white shirt and a friendly smile.

“Didn’t you used to have a bigger boat?” Sonny Milligan asked.

“Same one,” Adam said. He freed the line and, in neutral, let wind and tide current take him clear of the dock, then headed down the river to the channel across Chokoloskee Bay. Sonny pointed things out to his bride. He had a big voice like his dad. He got some things wrong. Adam didn’t correct him.

“We’re going to get some tarpon, aren’t we?” Sonny asked.

“Might be,” Adam said. He was remembering how sorry he used to feel for Sonny when he was a kid, nine and ten and eleven years old, when Sam used to bring him down at least once each year, usually during the Easter vacation. Sonny had been a nice boy, a scrawny, quiet, polite kid. And he had been so anxious to please his daddy, it kept him all tensed up. From the way they were with each other, you could tell the man didn’t have time to see much of his son except on these trips. And they didn’t seem to be much pleasure for the boy.

Sam expected a ten-year-old kid to be able to handle a tarpon like an expert. When the boy hooked into one, Sam would bellow so many instructions at him, the kid would get confused. And Sam expected his boy to have his same attitude about fishing. Sam was an expert. And all day he had his total attention riveted on finding and killing fish. When he brought groups of men down, Sam bullied them into bets on the first fish, the most fish, the biggest fish, and usually won. Sam hated to quit when it was time to turn back, even though it might be the first day of a full week. When he’d bring the boy down, he’d be at him the whole day long, trying to shape him into a real fish killer.

Adam remembered a couple of incidents. One time, when the boy was hooked into one that was still green and jumping good, looking about a hundred pounds, Sam had yelled to him to put a little more drag on the reel and in his confusion the boy had turned the star drag the wrong way, loosening the tension on the line. The fish put a belly in the line that somehow got snagged over onto the reel handle. The boy, trying to free it, didn’t have a firm grip on the rod. On the next jump the tarpon yanked the rod over the transom. Forty dollar rig gone. The fish jumped twice more, each time further down the bay. “Nice work!” Sam said heavily. “You looked great on that. Sonny.” A little while later Adam saw the boy at the port rail, staring out blindly at the mangrove islands, his sunburned cheek shiny with tears, making not a sound.

One other time, when it was almost time to head back, a big V of giant white pelicans went over, outlined against a red western sky.

“Look!” the boy cried. “Hey, Dad! Look!”

“Sonny, you can’t expect to fish and stare up in the air the same time,” Sam said impatiently. Adam had wanted to say it was worth looking at, but it didn’t pay to take sides with a boy against his father. They had to work their own lives out.

It was the last thing he would have guessed, to have Sonny turn out to be Sam all over again. He’d heard somewhere, from some other customer maybe five years back that young Milligan, about sixteen when his daddy died, had got his education and come back and taken hold of the dying companies and put them back on their feet and was making them bigger than they had ever been. Too bad Sam couldn’t know how it had worked out.

Sonny came and stood beside Adam and said, “I’ve gotten some fishing in once in a while. On business trips mostly, Adam. Marlin and sail out of Acapulco. Stripers in New England. Trout as big as horses in South America. But tarpon is something else, Adam. One tarpon will turn Ruthie into a fisherman for life. Her education has been neglected. I brought a big spinner, but we better rig her up with one, of your boat rods so she’ll have a better chance of boating one. Now that I finally found time to get married, I want my wife to understand fish fever.”

When he throttled down and turned into the bay, Sonny saw them almost as soon as Adam did, saw near the south shore in the morning light the random fins and boils of a school feeding, working its way west through the shallows.

“Good size, eh?” Sonny asked in the hoarse whisper of the hunter.

“Pretty good,” Adam said, and put the loop over the wheel spoke, cut it to dead slow, and moved swiftly to rig a boat rod for the girl, using a big unweighted spoon to run shallow, a small strip of mullet on the hook. It was a tricky place for big fish, but you couldn’t ask them to move to where they’d be more convenient to catch.

He made a wide half circle to intercept them, watching the fish and watching for stubs in the shallows. At maximum range Sonny Milligan made a long beautiful cast and worked the jig across the front of the feeding school and when it was not taken, began to reel in quickly to cast again. They had moved closer. Adam cast the spoon back over the stem, tested the drag, handed the girl the rod and told her to keep the tip up, and hurried back to the wheel to ease the boat shoreward in a way which would bring the trolled spoon among them.

“Work the spoon, honey!” Sonny said in that impatient way which made Adam think of Sam.

“What, dear?” the girl asked.

Sonny had finished reeling in. He put his rod aside, took the boat rod away from her and said, “You do this!” He worked the rod tip, giving the spoon additional action, and as he started to hand it back to her he got a very solid strike. He hit back, twice, and a tarpon came straight up out of the water. Huge silver fish in morning sunlight, hanging against black water, black mangrove, shaking its head furiously, smashing back into the water as Sonny put pressure on it.

The girl made a long wordless sound of awe.

Line whined off the reel. The big muscles in Sonny’s arms bulged. “My God, he’s huge!” Sonny yelled. “What kind of line have you got on this thing?”

“Sixty pound mono.”

Adam turned parallel to the run. The tarpon went again, twice as far away. “He’s beautiful!” the girl cried. “He’s so beautiful!”

“Honey, I better stay with this one. He’d be too much for you.”

The moment he had a chance, Sonny tightened the drag. It was his only way to keep the fish out of the stubs and shallows. He would have had no chance in that terrain with his spinning gear, as he wouldn’t have been able to turn him. The old tarpon seemed intent on running ashore and rubbing the hook off on a bush. Sonny counted the leaps aloud, as his father used to. Adam soon realized this tarpon was not only about 150 pounds, but exceptionally active. He worked the boat in perfect coordination with Milligan’s efforts. After twenty minutes of showy violence, the fish settled down to a dogged struggle. Sonny could not risk adding any more drag.

“It’s so brave!” the girl said in soft exclamation.

They worked their way back and forth across the shallows of the bay. The girl toweled the sweat out of her husband’s eyes. It took almost two hours before the fish, in exhaustion, began to roll, to show the white of belly, and then Sonny brought him in. Adam put the boat in neutral and went back with the short hand-gaff, leaned over the rail and gaffed it by the lower jaw.

“Whew!” Sonny said. “Twelve jumps. Two hours and seven minutes. Where’s the other gaff? Let’s haul him in before a shark comes along.”

“But you said nobody eats tarpon,” the girl said.

“You want to get him mounted?” Adam asked.

“No!” Sonny said. “I’ve got that hundred and sixty-one pounder of Dad’s in the board room. What’s the matter with you, Adam? That’s a hell of a fish! I want to take him in. We don’t even know what he weighs!”

Adam said, “You got the right. Your daddy always took them in, no matter how big or small. Weigh them out. Put them on the rack and get his picture took. Collect his bets and write down the date and sizes and weights in his little notebook. They’d lay dead in the dust all night and in the morning somebody’d shove them in the river. You got the right to find out what he weighs, exact, and the right to his eyeballs to have ear bobs for Miz Milligan here, there’s a way they do them pretty.”

“No!” the girl said, in horror.

Staring up at Sonny, Adam saw that no matter how hard he might try to be Sam, he was still the boy who had seen the beauty of the pelicans. But the man was trying to deny the boy, mouth hardening, eyes angry.

“Darling?” the girl said. Adam thought it might be the most important question she would ever ask.

Sonny Milligan took the fish pliers and leaned over the rail. Adam pulled the head higher and Sonny wrenched the spoon out. Adam slid the gaff out. The tarpon lay on his side, huge gill plates barely moving. Sonny righted the fish with the handle end of the boat hook. The fish sagged over again, righted itself slowly, and with vague movements of his tail swam slowly away.

“Go rest up!” Sonny yelled at the fish. “Grow bigger, you old bandit. I’ll be back.”

The girl hugged her arm around Sonny’s waist and smiled up at him. “Adam,” Sonny said, “let’s give this little girl a chance to jump one of those things.”

“Might do that.”

“And maybe at the end of the day we could end up by that big rookery you showed us one time, when the pelicans are coming back to the roost at sunset.”

“How nice!” the wife said.

They headed out of the bay. Sonny stood at the wheel beside him, silent, watching the water. Finally he said, “That one might have been almost as big as Dad’s.”

Adam stared at him. “Boy, you lost your mind and your eyesight both? That was a bigger fish. It surely was. That one would go one sixty-five anyway.”

Later on, in the heat of the day, Adam found himself wishing he could tell Millie how this boy had worked out pretty good after all, thinking how she would tease him about the lie, and understand why he did it.

Content

John D. MacDonald
The White Lie