Page 69 of The Hitchhiker in Panama
“Do you want me to take a turn?” Eivind asked.
“Nei,”Jonas grunted, never taking his eyes off the rod.
As it pulled closer, we could see it on the surface: a flash of silver and yellow swimming behind us.
And then the fish darted down. I couldn’t see it anymore. The tip of the rod bent further, and Elayna gasped behind me.
“No!” Eivind howled. “Come back here, you fucker!”
Jonas just gritted his teeth. His persistence paid off: soon the fish was at the surface again, this time close enough to grab.
Eivind retrieved a gaff from one of the lockers. Marcella laid a tarp over the back deck and had a sheathed filet knife nearby.
Leaning out, Eivind grasped the line with a gloved hand and swung the hook. I couldn’t see what happened, but it must have been a hit. Eivind let go of the line, grabbed the gaff with both hands, and heaved hard.
The fish that came up was bigger than I’d expected. At half Eivind’s length, it was thick in the middle and the top was a dark blue while the bottom half was silver. Its eyes rolled around, tail slapping the air in its panic.
Eivind quickly laid it down on the tarp and pinned it with his knee. Marcella came in and slit the fish’s underside crosswise from gill to gill. Blood poured out and the fish twitched, then went still.
I couldn’t help but smile at our fortune from the sea. Everyone grinned too, the excitement palpable. But Eivind didn’t move as he watched the fish bleed out. Then I found out why—the fish went into death throes, the body spasming violently against the deck, Eivind holding on throughout the thrashing.
Finally the fish lay dead and Eivind removed himself. He and Jonas worked together to tie a line around its tail, its firm fins acting as a handle, and hoisted it overboard.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Bleeding the fish,” Eivind said. “It makes the meat taste better.”
Marcella and Elayna worked to rinse the blood off the tarp and the brothers high-fived.
“Wow,” Jonas said. “That was a fight.”
“That is the biggest fish we’ve caught,” Eivind agreed.
“For sure. It’s a yellowfin tuna. It is going to be so good,” Marcella exclaimed.
I leaned over the lifeline to look at our catch. The head was occasionally dunked, the salt water washing off the blood.
It was dragged over the side for a few minutes, then Jonas hoisted it onto the deck again—“Do not want to attract too many sharks and lose our catch”—and Marcella went to work.
Lightly running my fingers down the skin of the fish, I found that it was soft, like stroking the smoothest leather.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Makes me a little sad, actually.” I frowned, thinking about the life we’d taken now that the excitement was over.
“It is a little sad.” Jonas crouched down next to me. “But I think about the other meat we eat: the chickens, pigs, cows who have all had horrible lives. Or the fish in the supermarket, raised in a fish farm with runoff, or caught in a net with turtles, dolphins, and other life.” He patted the body beneath us. “This fish, it had a great, wild life. It was a quick death, and we will not let it be wasted.”
I nodded, blinking away tears. “That’s a beautiful way to look at it, Jonas.”
Marcella hunched over the fish, sawing away. The knife was sharp, but it was backbreaking work. Elayna helped, bringing up a platter for the loins Marcella cut from the carcass.
It took longer to cut the fish up than it did to catch it, but in the end, Marcella had four tuna loins, the meat shiny and strawberry red.
“How much meat do you think that is?” Eivind asked her.
She wiped the sweat off her brow with her forearm before replying. “Maybe ten servings per loin, four loins, eight meals?”
Downstairs, Marcella prepared the meat for freezing and shoved as much of it as she could into the freezer. We didn’t have room for all of it, so the rest went into the fridge.
“Tuna for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” she teased.
