A Man of Affairs by John D. MacDonald

second. Two hours never passed more quickly. My drag was set too tight, and the first stunning, breathtaking rush of a barracuda broke the line. At one point, after an hour of it, I was going after another minnow when I heard Louise yelp and I turned and looked at her. Her barracuda jumped and it was a big one, bigger than any I had hooked thus far. I watched her. She stood in that pink suit on a flat-topped rock with the blue water beyond her. She stood braced on her slim and perfect legs, her hair glossy in the sun. She fought the big fish and the smooth muscles bunched under the velvetiness of her back. The reel whined when he’d make a run, and when he’d try to rest for another run and another jump, she would work him and talk to him. She was brightly and intensely alive. “Oh, come along now, you monstrous darling. Come to Louise. Oh, be a good boy, be a honey pie. Whoa! No more of that, pretty baby. Come on, pretty baby. I won’t give you an inch, not an inch.”
    And as she tired the fish, I looked at her and I knew that this was the way I wanted her to be. This was the way she had to be. To have her alive again made my eyes sting. That was the precise moment when I knew I loved her. I had known I wanted her. But I thought it was just wanting. But it was more. I could hide the wanting and never do anything about it. But this I knew that I would not be able to hide. This I knew I would do something about.
    The weary fish came in with docile reluctance. Ten feet from the rocks he made his last effort. He surged half out of the water and shook his frightful snaggled jaws, and made a short run of perhaps twenty feet. She walked carefully along the rocks to a flat place where a rock slanted down into the water at a shallow angle, rod bent sharply, tugging the fish along. I went down onto the rock and took hold of the brass swivel and, pulling on the leader, horsed the four and a half feet and about sixty pounds of him all the way out of the water. He had the true grin of the barracuda. He kept opening and closing his mouth. The snaggly teeth were monstrous. Louise came down beside me and put her hand on my arm and we looked at him. He was breathing heavily, like a tired and dying man.
    The barracuda is not a foulness. He is as clean and functional as a rapier. He is no scavenger. He eats nothing that is not trying to get away from those jaws in haste and terror. He can lie like a spent torpedo in the water and, with one movement, he can be gone as though he had never been.
    “Do you want him, Skylark?” I asked the boy.
    “No. I will smash his head with a stone and get the hook.”
    “No,” Louise said. “Don’t do that.”
    I looked at the savage eye and knew what she meant. I bent and clipped the leader a cautious distance from those jaws. Using the rod butt I nudged him back into the water. He had been out of the water a long time. He rolled onto his back and completely over and onto his back again several times. He found equilibrium, hung poised a few inches under the surface, gill plates spreading widely each time he sucked water. And then he swam very slowly along the shore and through the minnow school. A lane opened for him as they fled in panic. And he turned out toward deep water and we could not see him any more. The hook in his jaw would corrode and separate.
    We went back from the water and sat on a rock and smoked and talked about the fish. I kept trying to keep that quality of excitement alive in her. Her hands were shaky from the long exertion and she massaged her right wrist. But the glow was fading too quickly, and she was becoming muted and remote again.
    She looked at me and pressed her fingertip against my upper arm. It left a white impression against the burn that lasted a full second.
    “You’ve had enough.”
    “I can take a little more.”
    “I’ll just watch, I think. I don’t want to catch a littler fish than him. Not today anyway.”
    She came down and watched. I lost a wildly