Breakfast is nearly done when our lanky, graying neighbor peers over the little wall dividing our patios and says, “There is…a problème.” He holds his nose and points at the water. There, between the big inflatable boats, the little dingies, and the antique wooden sailboat, floats a dead fish. Headless, tailless, with bloated intestines splitting its ventral surface, it must be 2 feet long. It smells longer.
A debate ensues: “We have called the capitain to remove it, but he does not come,” says our neighbor.
“He will want quite a tip when he does,” says Grandpa David. “They tried to fire him last year over something or another, but he got a lawyer, and he’s still here. Let me see what I can do.”
Grandpa David ducks into the house and returns with a trowel and a length of nylon string. He follows the fish as it rides the current under a wooden dock, managing to pin it just in time with his trowel. He lifts the tail end and we lasso it with a slip knot. Grandpa David hails from Colorado, but this may be his sole experience with rodeo.
He walks the fish back up the quay like the French men walk their dogs through town, casually. Then he invites Julian to join him in his little blue dingy, pulls the cord on the motor, and continues this casual stroll with his leashed, bloated fish all the way to the mouth of the gulf. What our French neighbor thinks, I cannot say. The capitain, he does not come.
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