THE MOTLEYTOWN BONEFISH EXTRAVAGANZA
A couple on a hastily arranged
bone fishing trip find themselves
in an odd place with eccentric people
“What would you like to do with your time
off?” Laura asked. I had one unused week from my prior year's
vacation allotment that would be lost if I didn’t use it by the end of April. Time was running out.
“Honestly? What about bone
fishing in the Bahamas. The weather is
warm and sunny this time of year, and you'd love seeing the flats around Andros
Island. Where Jack Verdon and I went.”
“Is it nice there? Where
would we stay?”
“Jack and I were at the Bonefish Club on the North
Island. It's Spartan but clean and
comfortable. Last time he went by
himself, though, he tried a different place.
Where the accommodations were more basic, but there's less fishing
pressure and the action is better.”
“But it's next week. Is
it even possible?”
“Won't hurt to give it a try.”
“If you say so,” Laura said.
I Googled it and came up with a phone number. The basic website confirmed it was the one
Jack had mentioned, on Littlesalt Cay by the south bite.
“Motleytown Deluxe Resort an' Bonefish Lodge. Lindsey Motley.” A man's voice answered with the classic
Bahamian dialect I had come to know during my visits there.
After identifying myself and exchanging a few pleasantries, I
said, “Yeah. My wife and I are looking
to come down there for a little bone fishing.
Is that something we could set up with you?”
“Oh…ya, mon. Bonefish,
dey be our specialty.”
“I was thinking of a few days next week.”
There was a long silence.
Finally, “No, Suh. We
all full. Duh guess, dey mus book tree,
usually six muns ahead. Sometime a
year. No way nex week.” His voice sounded both incredulous and
irritated at my stupidity.
“Look,” I said. “I'm
only talking a night or two. And we're
flexible. We could pop down anytime next
week. Is there anything...?”
“Jus one minute, Suh…”
I could hear him flipping pages in what I imagined was a reservation
register.
After a few seconds he came back on the line. “We may put you in duh annex, Suh. Dey iz one vacancy dere. But yas mus come Tuesday and be gone by
Tursday in duh mornin. Dot be okay?”
I was able to book a charter in a beat-up old four-passenger twin out
of Fort Lauderdale, direct to Motleytown, Andros Island. I sat in front to the pilot's right, while Laura
rode in one of the backseats. The
upholstery was worn through with a few wads of remaining stuffing poking
out. Black crankcase oil flowed in a
little rivulet from a crack in the right engine cowling back and into the
airstream. The paint, what was left of
it, was faded, scratched, and worn through.
Little bare-aluminum riveted repair patches dotted the metal skin. The radio the pilot used—apparently the only
one working among the aging relics—was held in place beneath the instrument
panel by nylon tie-wraps. Bundles of
wires wound everywhere. We were out of
sight of land.
“Is this safe,” Laura said in a weak voice, more a concerned
statement than a question.
Our final approach to the short and narrow crushed-shell
airstrip was over a wet marsh. A wrecked
Seneca II twin, much like one I had trained in back in the day, sat half-submerged
a few hundred yards short of the runway, its engines gone and doors sprung
unnaturally forward.
“Been there more'n twenty years,” our pilot commented. “Longer'n I've been comin' here.”
We hopped out and walked to the little open-sided wooden
pavilion where a heavyset, squat and bald black Bahamian stood waiting. His red cap, peaked in front like those that elevator
operators wore when there still were any, had the word CUSTOMS across the front. A
wooden, crudely hand-lettered sign nailed crooked to a post announced, WELCOME TO THE BAHHAMMAS, the name of
the country clearly misspelled.
We signed a form and showed our passports while the pilot
offloaded our luggage. That pretty well
completed our official reception.
“A cab was supposed to meet us,” I said to the agent.
“Over dere, Suh,” he said, pointing to a rusty, unmarked
vintage car a few yards behind the pavilion.
There was no one in it.
We carried our gear to the vehicle and looked around. The customs agent had followed. He opened the driver's side, slid behind the
wheel, removed the customs hat, and
donned a similar but yellow one that read CAB
across the front. Laura and I looked
at each other, loaded our luggage, and hopped in the back.
“I Lindsey Motley,” the driver said as we pulled away. “Welcome ta Motleytown.”
The Motleytown Deluxe Resort &
Bonefish Lodge was an aging, two-story mortar structure like those of the
bygone fifties-era motels one sees in the dying beach towns of mid-Florida's
Atlantic coast. The once-whitewashed
exterior was stained with gray streaks and blotches. Inside, the wooden floor was darkened and
uneven. What served as a registration
desk sat along one wall in the small combination lobby-bar.
After Lindsey checked us in, he said, “Ya care for a drink
from duh bar before goin to yas room?”
He motioned to the dark, old wooden bar along the opposite wall, its
veneer warped and separating in places.
“Sure. I'll have a
vodka and tonic.”
“White wine, please,” Laura said.
He walked behind the bar and placed a conch-colored baseball
cap on his head that read Motleytown
Deluxe Resort, and under it, BARTENDER,
all in brown letters.
We sat on unsteady barstools and sipped the drinks that were
particularly refreshing after our daylong travels.
“What ya like fer ya suppuh, and at what time ya eat?” Lindsey
asked.
“Whenever and whatever your other guests are doing is fine
with us,” I said. “We'll go with the
program.”
“Ah…Suh…,” he said. “Ya
an duh Missus be duh only guess. Iz fer
ya ta say.”
Our quarters on the second
floor were accessed by an
exterior wooden stairway. There was a
bedroom, sitting room, and bath, all surprisingly spacious. The floors were peeling linoleum tile
squares, the walls stained plaster with a few holes punched here or there. The door jambs were all out of square. The toilet stool had gaps between its base
and the tile, the plumbing visible in the floor below.
“Nice,” Laura said, her sarcasm obvious enough.
“Lindsey said the fishing skiff will be across the street by
the pier off the beach in the morning.”
I was trying to change the subject.
“We'll meet our guide there, I guess, around eight sharp. After breakfast. I checked, and the weather should be fine.”
She nodded glumly. It
was a bad sign.
We arrived in the dining room for supper just off the lobby at
the appointed time, seven in the evening.
It was still bright outside.
Lindsey walked into the room wearing a French-style, high and
puffed white chef's hat. Red lettering
around the band said Kiss the Cook.
“What I fix ya fer tonight?” he said with a happy smile.
“So you're the cook, too!” I said. “Hope you're getting paid for all this.”
“Da regla cook be from Arizona,” he said. “Was in duh prison dere. He gun leff hare sudden lass night. Dey find him, I tink, he hadda go ver
fass. I take care'ah yas, doe.”
I hadn't seen a server, either. “You the waiter, too?”
“Waitress be duh girlfrien.
Har goin wit dot mon, duh cook. I
bring ya duh food, okay?”
“A lot for one fellow to do.”
“My brudder, Umfry. He
be over ta Nassau today, but gun come hare tonight. He duh big boss, duh owner. He help me out when he get hare.”
“So Humphrey's the owner of the Motleytown Deluxe Resort?” I
said more than asked, clearly pronouncing the “H”.
“Umfry,” Lindsey said.
No “H”.
“Humphrey?”
“It be Umfry.”
“How do you spell it?”
“Umfry,” he repeated, not spelling out each letter.
“Okay, then,” I said.
Dinner was a surprisingly
nice, fresh yellowtail
snapper with rice and beans. We enjoyed
a good tossed salad with a cookie and coffee for desert.
The bed was lumpy but passable. Laura and I both read for a while, she dozing
off and me getting up to use the bathroom.
I opened the door from our bedroom to the main room and switched on the
light. The biggest cockroach I'd ever
seen scuttled away under the glare of the single bare bulb.
I swear I could have thrown a saddle over him and broke him
right there. But I took the book I was
carrying and hurled it down on him. It
was a perfect hit, the book landing flat and hard directly on the
squirrel-sized insect with a loud bang.
“Bingo!” I thought. “One
roach down.”
The thick hardcover novel bounced off the bug. It continued on unfazed, as if nothing had
happened. I grabbed the book from the
floor and gave chase, intending to administer another crushing blow. The cockroach scurried beneath the wide gap
under the bathroom door. In fast
pursuit, I threw it open in time to see him dive beneath the toilet base
through the gap in the floor.
“Damn!” I said out loud.
I used the toilet quickly, one eye on the opening, then returned to bed,
careful to close the doors behind. I
never said a word to Laura.
After breakfast Lindsey confirmed we were to take our things
to the pier directly across the dirt main street, the harbor road of
Motleytown.
“Umfry, he gun be hare dis night,” Lindsey told us as we rose
to go to our room and collect our gear.
“Fine,” I said. I
thought I remembered him saying last evening Umfry would be here this morning,
but I really couldn't see what difference it made to us either way.
The beach was a heaping mound of broken, pink and white conch shells
that stretched along the shore as far as one could see. A collection of aging wooden boats rode at anchor
a few yards off the beach. Near the end
of a sagging, twisted wooden pier sat a classic sixteen-foot or so bone fishing
skiff with a forty-horse Johnson outboard, a level casting deck across the bow,
and a poling platform extending on legs above the stern. There were three plastic bucket-type
seats. No one was around.
We waited for ten minutes.
With no guide in sight, we began loading our tackle and day-bags. “Maybe Umfry was supposed to be the guide,” I
said absently to Laura. Then I saw
Lindsey ambling, big and awkward, down the pier. As he drew close, I could see the dark blue
lettering on his white baseball cap. GUIDE, it read.
We took off across the harbor on a splendid, sunny Caribbean
day, the water gin-clear but reflecting from the sky—from the varying depths
and bottom-cover—lovely hues of blue, green, tan, or a mixture of different
shades and intensities. The deeper
trenches, channels, or holes in the bottom were well defined in very dark,
sometimes midnight blue. The breeze was
light and our mood fine.
About fifteen minutes out, a few miles from shore, a large,
gray shadow floated across the shallow bottom fifty or so yards off our
beam. “What's that fish?” I asked
Lindsey.
“Dot be ver big hammerhead,” he said. “Dey dangerous.”
Perhaps a half mile beyond the hammerhead shark, I noticed a
man standing in a small boat and waving his arms frantically. I pointed.
“Dot fella, he boat be broke.
He want duh ride back home,” Lindsey said. It was obvious he had seen the boat well
before I had. He motored on, clearly
intending to ignore the man and his plight.
“Go on over there,” I said.
We pulled alongside the stranded skiff. Its outboard engine cover had been removed
and was in the water, tied to a fraying length of old rope as some kind of
makeshift sea anchor. The bay was
shallow enough to see the sand bottom a dozen or so feet down. The interior of the old wooden boat held
standing water. There was no spare gas
can or oars to be seen.
The two Bahamians exchanged a few rapid, unintelligible words
in their local, oddly cadenced dialect.
“He say he be stranded duh night,” Lindsey explained. “Motor be broke. He come from duh fishin trawler out by duh
deep ta go ta Motleytown, see duh girlfrein little while. Dot hammerhead, go roun dot boat all duh
night. Want duh ride in. I say ta dot boi, no, I got duh clients, a
meestuh an madam.” He started the engine
and began to pull away.
“Hold on,” I said. “It's
only fifteen minutes back. Tell him to
hop in. We'll take him to the pier.”
The stranded fellow beamed from ear to ear as he climbed into
our boat.
“Tank you, tank you,” he smiled, taking my hand in his and
pumping it. “What kine-ah fish ya
like. I bring ya some fer yas
suppuh. Ta duh resort were ya be.”
“Gotta love fresh grouper,” I said.
“Sure…sure, duh grouper be good. Be dere fer ya dinner dis night. Tank you.
Tank you.”
Across the bay, our stranded sailor safely back at the
pier, Lindsey cut the engine and poled the skiff slowly among the
mangroves. We searched the shallow,
clear water for any moving shadows that might signal bonefish.
“Dere, dere Meestuh Rob.”
Lindsey strained to bend at the waist to keep his profile low and set
the pole. The boat twisted about the
pivot point of the pole held into the bottom.
“Where?” The boat was
turning. Finally I saw the three gray
moving forms gliding beneath the surface forty yards to our right.
“Look there!” I said to Laura.
“About one thirty, moving parallel to shore, toward us. Cast well in front of them so they won't
spook and scatter.”
Laura had one of my spinning rods with a pink lead-head jig,
the hook baited with just of bit of crab Lindsey had brought, just enough to
give the lure some scent and flavor. She
tossed it only twenty yards out to the side.
I doubt she saw the barely visible fish, but the jig landed right in
their path.
“Let it sink and lie on the bottom. Don't move it, and stay low,” I said. I could feel the excitement building.
The three bonefish moved to within a few feet of her
motionless lure.
“Barely twitch it,” I said.
She moved the tip of her rod slightly as one of the shadows
approached the very spot where her bait had splashed into the water less than a
minute earlier. Her rod bent sharply as
the drag began to sing.
“Fish on!” I half shouted and laughed.
The fish made a hard fifty-yard run before stopping but still
keeping Laura's rod tip bent well down.
“Work him back in,” I said.
“Lift the rod and reel as you lower it again. And keep the line tight.”
About ten yards from the boat, the bone made another run, not
as long this time. She repeated the
process of pumping him in. The whole
thing was repeated one more time. As she
brought the fish alongside the final time, I reached in and scooped him up with
a hand. He was about a three-pounder.
“I had no idea they were so strong.” She was grinning and looking at her fish.
“He had a lot of fight in him for his size.”
“Is he a big one?”
“Fairly good,” I fibbed.
“He took so much line, I thought I'd run out.”
“You did great.”
“Let's take him back for dinner.”
“I'm afraid catching them is just for fun. They're not good eating. Like the name suggests, too many bones.”
I removed the jig hook and carefully slipped him into the
water. He took just seconds to recover
before swimming quickly away. Lindsey
went back to poling the skiff, but after a few minutes, there was noisy
splashing in the water near the shoreline where we had released the fish.
“Shark get him,” Lindsey said.
“Dey smell da blood an follow afta dem like duh houn-dog.”
Lindsey's poling was lackadaisical. He stopped to rest and look around
frequently. We moved between the mangroves
and up a little tidal creek.
“What's this creek called?” I asked him.
“Dot be Freshwater Creek.”
“It's the same name as the one on North Andros up near the
Bonefish Club where I fished before.”
“Ya, Meestuh Rob. Dey
all be called dot cause duh water be fresh, not duh seawater.”
Even with our slow pace and periods of inactivity, Laura and I
each caught several more bonefish. She
continued with her spinning rod and jig, while I used a sturdy saltwater fly
rod I'd brought with a bulging-eyed pink shrimp imitation. At one point I spotted a very long shadow lying
just below the surface over slightly deeper blue water.
“Is that a bone?”
“Barracuda,” Lindsey said.
“Dey like duh needlefish dot be on dis flat. Take dot rod dere and cass at him.”
A sturdy spinning rod lay beside the seats along one
freeboard. It was baited with a long,
lime-green tube-lure made of colored rubber surgical tubing slipped over a wire
leader. A lead weight capped one end of
the tube, and three treble-hook gangs, attached to the wire leader beneath, protruded
at intervals through the tubing along its length.
My cast was about a dozen yards beyond the cuda and a few
yards in front of what I took to be the shape of his head.
“Reel fass, Meestuh Rob.
Fass as ya can!”
I cranked with all the speed I could muster. As the lure approached the spot where I had
last seen the fish, the water seemed to explode. The rod pulled parallel to the surface before
I could haul it back and create the proper bend. I worked the fish to the boat, overcoming
long runs, hard pulls, and lots of thrashing.
Finally Lindsey used a gaff to bring him aboard in the stern beneath the
poling platform.
“Our guess doan eat dese,” he said. “But we boil dem ta get duh poison out. Den dey vere fine.”
We had seen many rays and small sharks gliding over the
bonefish flats. Big starfish lay along
the bottom.
“What kind of sharks are these?” Laura asked at one point.
“Dey san sharks, Madam,” Lindsey said.
“Do they bite?”
“Oh, no, Madam. Dey
mosely eat duh crab or udder fish.”
“Can we try to catch one?”
Lindsey lazily poled the skiff up a brackish creek with the
tide flooding in. He anchored in the
channel and baited the big spinning rod with a plain treble-hook and chunk of
meat from the head of our barracuda. He
handed the rig to Laura.
“Hole duh hook about tree feet above duh bottom, Madam.”
It couldn't have been ten minutes before the rod bent double
and the drag began to run out. Laura
fought the fish for another twenty minutes or so, using our techniques for the
cuda and bonefish. Finally she pulled
the head of a nice sand shark just clear of the surface beside the boat. We could see through the clear water it was
something over four feet in length.
“My gosh, look at that shark!” Laura said. She was squirming in her seat from
excitement.
Lindsey had grabbed the gaff.
At that point the fish opened its mouth wide, lunged from the
water, and bit hard. The braided steel
line separated beneath its teeth like string.
The shark fell back into the creek and disappeared, leaving the frayed,
kinked end of the wire leader dangling in the breeze. I think Laura was more thrilled by the
dramatic and violent escape than hooking her shark and bringing it
boatside.
Lindsey brought in the anchor and poled the skiff a few yards
to a sandbar on the edge of the creek.
He beached the boat.
“I be goin get more crab back in duh mangroves,” he said. “Yas rest here one minute an haf ya lunch.” He disappeared.
“I guess he's a good guide,” Laura said after he was safely
out of earshot. “We've each got
bonefish, there was your barracuda, and then my shark.”
“He poles in slow motion.”
I measured my words, not wanting to throw cold water on the trip I had
put together for us. “Rupert up at the
Bonefish Club on North Andros works three times as hard. We cover way more ground and he spots lots of
fish. I'm sure we missed a ton. And there are no rest stops with Rupert.”
We enjoyed the sack lunches Lindsey had provided and took in
the beautiful scenery. It was a half hour
before he finally returned with no crabs.
We poled and waded flats for the balance of the afternoon,
landing another bonefish each before returning sunburned and wind-drained to
Motleytown. Dinner was more yellowtail
snapper like the previous evening. It
came as no surprise our rescued seaman hadn't shown with the promised
grouper. Still, the evening was good.
“Umfry, he be hare in duh mornin,” Lindsey said as we left the
table and headed up to our room.
Laura and I just looked at each other. She rolled her eyes.
“Sure,” I said to Lindsey.
In our room, we packed most of our things for our
charter back in the morning. We read
until well after dark. The only bar in
town, a ramshackle place just next door with warped plywood over some of the
broken-out windows, rang with talk and shouting and laughter. Soon the raucous group of locals spilled into
the dirt street beneath our window.
“It may be a long night,” I said.
“I'm so tired I'm sure I'll drift right off and sleep like a
log,” Laura said.
“Do you think there really is an Umfry?”
“Maybe he's Loa, the invisible voodoo spirit,” she laughed.
“Or Lindsey's imaginary friend.”
“Maybe Lindsey is Loa,” she kidded.
“Or the real Umfry using an assumed identity. Maybe he's the fugitive cook from Arizona who
has murdered the real Motleys.”
“Honestly, though, even with everything it was spectacular
out there. I never could have imagined.”
“We actually did fairly well on the fish.”
“It's one thing to see a place, like on a tour. But to actually be in it, participating in
what it's all about, that's something altogether different.”
“We'll remember this better than if we had been at a first
class place like the Bonefish Club.”
Both of us broke out in laughter.
We had undressed and were sitting on the edge of the bed. I reached over and laid my hand on hers.
“I had such a wonderful time,” she said. “With you.
I'm so glad you arranged this, with the short notice and all.”
“Speaking of which…” I said.
“I'll have more vacation in a month.”
“And just what would you like to do?” She arched her eyebrows.
“Actually, I've always dreamed of a hunt in Africa. And it's getting nice now. In May.
The rainy season has ended.”
“Are there decent accommodations? Where in the world would you have us stay?” She sounded skeptical, and I knew she was
toying with me.
“If we're talking about next month, the good places are
already booked. They're tied up a year,
two years in advance. All right,
sometimes three. But I heard about a new
place. Pretty basic, but less well known
and off the beaten path. A little
rougher, really, but the hunting is supposed to be better.”
“Is that even possible?
To arrange something like that with so little time…” She lay down on her side and pulled the sheet
up.
“Wouldn't hurt to give it a try. I'll call tomorrow night when we're home.”
She raised up on an elbow, smiling, and kissed me lightly on
the lips. “Nice try, but not a chance, Mister.” Then she switched off the light.
______________________________
The Motleytown Bonefish Extravaganza is a short story from the collection Beneath a Hunter's Sky by John Bascom, available on Amazon.com