Curtis had been drinking. Not excessively, just enough to provoke thought and memories. He'd begun in a friendly bar and finished by taking a bottle for a walk outside. Down by a local park he ran into a crew member and smiled. 

" Beetle!" 

He liked his young friend and sat down beside her. She asked what he'd been doing and after pointing at his new friend, the bottle, he decided to share a memory that had come back to him. It had given him pause to ponder the impact of experiences that a child doesn't have the capacity to define or understand. 

"Let me tell you a story..."

Beetle looked like shed possibly made a mistake in saying hello but being polite, she settled in for whatever was to come. Curtis looked off into the distance as if scratching around for clarity. He stopped short of doing wobbly hands but tried to set the scene. 

***

"Wake up. It's time to go."

My father's word's would stir me. The fight from sleep wouldn't be hard as I was excited by the dark adventure ahead. I'd sit up from the bed and look around the small wooden hut. A single bulb dimly illuminated the wood panel walls of the twenty foot square beach hut. A pot in the corner, a sink and a stove in the other. A door, a window, a few leaks and that was it. I swung my legs around and bare feet hit sandy floor. I brushed the sleep from my eyes and the sand from my feet. Thick woolen socks and and thinker wool sweater, deep rubber boots and waterproof pants. Nothing fit and it all itched to distraction. A giant thick-fingered hand mussed my hair.

"Alright boy?"

My grandfather's hands were like trees. Gnarled and tough from years of war, work and the sea. I drank the half cup of milk on the side and went to stand by the open door. The night air was full of salt and the breeze was thick with moisture. A hand on my back ushered me out onto the small stretch of grass before the small hill down to the sand. And then it began.

Soft sand sapped the already sleepy energy from my reluctant legs. The glow of the light outside the hut gave a feint indication of where our path should start. I'd watch the three shadows of my grandfather father and me, stretch out before us as we moved. There was no conversation, not by decision, there just never was. It an unspoken period of acclimatization to the wide world that consumed us. The gentle sounds of the sea in the distance and steps on gradually hardening sand, was all there was. 

The light from the hut became just a spot in the distance behind us, then the darkness swallowed us whole. Like a blanket being pulled over us as we walked into a dream. There was no horizon, no forwards or back, just a faint shine of moonlight on the now wet sand beneath our feet. Feet that sank with every step. The walking went on and on for what my young mind thought was hours. Endless darkness surrounded us, my eyes strained for signs of the metal posts standing up from the retreating sea. But I could not, there was a way to go yet. 

This fishing like this is nothing like pole and line. This is tidal fishing. A series of metal poles are driven into the sand at the brink of low tide, then a long line of net is strung between them. The net stands about six feet high and will end up reaching a few hundred yards. The tide comes in and with it, the riches of the sea. When it goes out again, you see what the sea has given you.

After what seemed like a happy forever, we finally arrived at the lap of low tide. There the poles stood glistening in the moonlight, the string of the nets sparkled like spider's web in morning dew. The catch, spotted around suspended in the webbing. Some wriggling, some defeated, all shapes and sizes. There was a moment I just enjoyed the sight of it, all laid out in a long line. Like a magical reward at the end of the long and unnavigable dark. After an hour of blindness, the moonlight seemed to return and give a secret illumination to our discovery. A pocket of light invisible from the shore far behind. 

The poles were so far out, they were at the very turning of the tide. This was no time for romantic reflection, the sea would recover the nets inside and hour. It was time to work. My father would go one way, my grandfather the other. They'd begin untangling the fish from the net and throwing the catch into old potato sacks. There would be a mix of everything in there. From sole to baby shark. I was always very excited by the small sharks, though I was not allowed to touch the live ones as they'd still put up quite a fight when handled. There would be huge jellyfish that were no use to anyone and salmon that we had to keep hidden out of season. Sometimes there was almost too much to carry.

I would walk along the line of the net lifting the base to free any stones that would weigh it down and hinder its movement when the tide swept it back up like a sail. As I went, I'd grab the net and tug it hard upwards and the rocks and seaweed would flip out onto the rocks and sand. I went along happily enough until one section was particularly heavy. I tugged again with more strength and something moved. I should have paused for thought but the idea anything could ever go wrong never entered my head. I pulled once more with all my might and an almighty sweeping motion whipped around my feet. The entire section of the net pulled so much the poles bent inward. The whipping motion shot back the other way and this time came clear of the water. I couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. What must have been a six feet long and a foot thick. A massive, black, sleek muscle. Like an eel but incredible in size. It swished back so hard it knocked me clean off my feet and on to my backside in to cold sea.

I must have yelped as my Grandfather and father both made exclamations of urgency and ran over toward me. I still hadn't considered quite what this was or that it had any more sinister potential than to knock me over as it had. I only saw its head when my father dove across me and gripped it with look on his face I'd never seen before. 

"The knife, Bill!"

My grandfather pulled out a long blade and plunged it into the flesh behind the base of the eel's skull. The whole creature flipped and twisted with incredible strength. So much so that my father lost control of it and it thrashed wildly, throwing salt water everywhere. I must have been aghast as I caught a full mouthful of the salt bitterness and spat it out while the two men regained control of it. It was a Conger eel and it was now fighting for its life. And it had a fight in it like nothing I'd ever seen at that age. Still sat on my backside in the water with this terrifying theater playing out just two feet from me. My father regained a hold of it and my grandfather began hacking with powerful strikes into the thick muscle. Again and again the knife stabbed full depth into the flesh. The violence of the attack was mirrored with the violence of the thrashing. 

"Get back boy!"

My grandfather was even more terrifying than the eel. I scurried backwards about three or four feet but remained say down. I don't remember why but I imagine my legs would have failed had I tried to stand. The fight carried on for what seemed like forever. The eel was more than a match for these two titans of men. Even when I could see its head clean hanging off, it still thrashed as if it didn't know it was dead. Eventually the thrashing stopped. The eel dropped and so the two men both sat down in the lap of the turning tide. No thought for the wet or having to walk all the way back in it. They caught their breath, then my father came over to check me over. He saw I was fine and asked to confirm it. I did and that was it. The eel was abandoned where it died and the two men went back to retrieving the fish from the net before the tide caught us.  

I remember walking back. There would normally be some brief exchanges about the various fish caught, but not tonight. Tonight we all walked silently back through the great dark, beneath the endless sky, toward that tiny dot of light in the distance.

What happened before we left and what happened when we got back, mattered little to me. Life was the adventure of the walk. The lack of conversation. Being engulfed by the great dark. The trust of direction, the sound of the sea, the smell of the water and all the poetry in silence. There was something of god in the silence and the darkness traversed. I never understood or was able to define it. The lack of discussion or parental explanation, only enhanced the magic of it all. The man I would become was born in that darkness, and the walks I made then, are now the ones I make inside. 

Too much of life is explained and measured. Some things have the greatest worth when left free from the clumsy fumbling of words. 

***

He sat up straight and stretched his back, then looked at his young crew-mate. 

"I don't know really. There's a point in there, somewhere."

With that, he sank the last of the bottle and stood up. He smiled at Beetle, put the empty bottle in a nearby trash can and wandered on with his evening.