Even to a Jellyfish, page 1
Table of Contents
Even to a Jellyfish
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Quote
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
A word about the author…
Thank you for purchasing
Even to a Jellyfish
by
James Sleckman
Copyright Notice
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Even to a Jellyfish
COPYRIGHT © 2024 by James Sleckman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com
Cover Art by The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
PO Box 708
Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708
Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com
Publishing History
First Edition, 2024
Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-5092-5601-3
Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-5602-0
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
To Cathy, my wife, my rock.
Acknowledgements
I am so grateful to my special friend, Anna. I couldn’t have done this without you.
Thanks also to Randy, Mike and Tom, my fishing buddies.
Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish….
The trouble is you won’t fight. You’ve given up.
But there’s something just as inevitable as death. And that’s life.
Think of the power of the universe – turning the Earth, growing the trees.
That’s the same power in you,
If you’ll only have the courage and will to use it.
Charlie Chaplin
Chapter One
When we finally motored the boat to Steve’s dock, it was well after midnight. A song by Green Day was in my head, something about the unpredictability of life. It had been a long day, and every one of my old bones kept reminding me that I was past my prime. Cops, guns and pot were not what I had expected for my first year of retirement.
All I really wanted to do was fish.
Chapter Two
“Bam! Fish on!”
“You got something already, Timbo?” asked Rob.
“You betcha,” I said. “Tell Steve to put the engine in neutral so I can pull this sucker up.
“I hear you,” came a voice from behind the wheel. “But it’s probably a small striper. They’re all over the place. I’ve been watching guys fly-fishing for them off the beach.”
“I don’t think so, Steve-O,” I shouted. “This feels like a fluke. It’s heavy and it hit me on the bottom.”
“Holy shit!” yelled Rob. “Look at your rod; it’s almost bent in half.”
“Yeah, and I only have four-pound test on this reel; this rig’s not meant to pull in a big fish. Get me the net.”
Rob looked around. “Timbo, I gave you the net when we were in the garage. Where’d you put it?”
“Oh shit!” I said. “I think I left it there. When you came by, lugging that behemoth ice-chest from the 50s, I thought you were gonna have a heart attack, so I dropped the net to help you and forgot to go back for it. Shit! Shit! Shit!”
“Wow, look at the size of this monster. It’s a regular doormat,” I said, gloating. “Must be close to thirty inches. This one’s definitely a keeper.”
“Holy crap,” screamed Steve. “How are you gonna get this flatty on board? I just spent a hundred bucks for us to enter the Great Peconic Bay Tournament. We got a money-fish on the line, and because this idiot brings that stupid cooler from Beach Blanket Bingo, Timbo forgets the net.”
Robert Riley’s Irish skin turned red. About five years my senior, Rob was a gangly, retired New York City fireman who spent many hours on the water either fishing or clamming. “Hey. I was in charge of getting the bait.”
“Shut up, you guys. This is serious. Where are my gloves? I’m gonna try to pull it in by hand.”
“Never happen, Timbo,” cracked Steve.
“You got a better idea?”
Steve stared at me with ugly eyes.
I turned to Rob. “Here, hold my pole. Keep the fish on top of the water. I’m gonna reach in and grab it by the gills.”
“Yeah, right!” jeered Steve.
“You just shut up and steer,” I yelled back.
“I’m trying, but the wind is pushing us straight to those boats over there,” he said.
I stood on the swim platform and lowered myself into a crouch position. “Keep it steady. I almost got it. Just a little closer.”
The boat lurched forward. I fell into the water and landed with a loud splash.
Rob hollered, “Shut off that engine.”
Silence followed.
“Oh shit. Is that blood?”
For a moment, I had him in my hands, but suddenly my hooked fish and I were headed for the bowels of the sea. Instinct took over. I dove deep to get as far away as I could from the motor and prop. Boat propellers have bitten off more people’s legs than sharks. The engine stopped; I surfaced about ten yards away and began swimming towards the stern. “Drop the ladder, Rob.”
“You bleeding?”
I looked down at my leg. “Just my knee. Must’ve scraped it on the way in. Any sign of my fish?”
“Gone. The line snapped.”
“Damn, that was a nice fluke. We gotta go back to the house and get the net. We don’t stand a chance of winning the contest without it.”
“Good, I think I left my sandwich in the car,” Rob said.
“You forgot your sandwich? What the hell’s in that cooler, anyway?” snickered Steve.
“Stuff. Important stuff!”
We headed back for the net and the sandwich. Melting on the dock was the bag of ice I had left behind.
“You guys forgot that, too?” Steve yelped, clearly exasperated.
“Screw you,” Rob retorted with a laugh. “At least we didn’t forget the beer.”
We headed out again, this time for some serious fishing. Fluke, also known as summer flounder, is one of the tastiest fish in the waters off Long Island. When I started actively hooking them, some thirty years ago, they were so plentiful in our bays that every trip usually yielded a bucketful and a succulent dinner. No more. Rising water temperatures, climate change, and overfishing have made keeper fluke a rare commodity. Current regulations allow everyone three fish per day, each measuring nineteen inches head to tail. Last year we were lucky to hook one fish per trip.
We were expecting a crowd of boats at the Greenlawns, our favorite fishing grounds. It seemed many of the locals always caught a twenty-four-hour bug on opening day. Although fluke season lasted till mid-September, everyone knew that the first days were the best for grabbing a big one. We anchored off the west side of Shelter Island, where two huge houses with large lawns of green grass hugged the shoreline. Yeah, fishermen are not very creative when naming their spots.
We were three old salts enjoying a lazy day of retirement, me on the bow, Rob manning the stern, and Steve Lombardi at the wheel of his brand-new boat, Kiss My Bass. Mine was christened Catey with a Sea, after my better half, who enjoyed driving the boat more than I did. When we three amigos weren’t pulling up fish, which was often, we were usually busting each other’s chops. We talked sports, women, music, politics. Occasionally—no, rarely— one of us might reveal a secret, a fear, a regret. Once or twice I came close but stayed silent. Bottom line, the real glue was our mutual love of the water.
“Is this the maiden voya
“No, the wife and I went for a spin Saturday. We cruised around the bay for about twenty minutes before Ginny felt cold.”
“Wasn’t it eighty degrees that day?”
“Yeah, and she had two sweatshirts on,” he complained. “I didn’t even get a chance to put my pole in the water.”
“When was the last time you broke in a virgin boat?” I shouted to Rob.
He just smiled and nodded. He was either oblivious to our conversation or he wasn’t wearing his hearing aids.
Surprisingly, the Greenlawns wasn’t very crowded. Steve maneuvered his way between other boats until he found the right water depth and a sandy bottom before shutting down the engine. I took my position in the front, grabbing my rod and the net.
“Hey, where you going with that?” barked Steve.
“To show you losers how to catch some fish.”
Steve is a few years older than me. He moved here about five years ago from Philadelphia, where he was a big wig in the snack industry, pretzels, especially chocolate covered ones, being his specialty. He retired out east to enjoy the peace and solitude of the North Fork. One Saturday morning, a few years back, my wife Catey came home from spin class and informed me that we were going out to dinner with a couple named Ginny and Steve.
“Who?” I replied.
“Don’t worry; you’ll like them.”
Conversation over.
So on a blustery November evening, with the Jets clinging to a three-point lead over the Bills, I grudgingly left my armchair and drove to Greenport. At Claudio’s, the girls made the introductions, and we sat at a window table. I could tell that Steve was also grumpy, but a pint of red ale and some football talk soon erased the scowl on his face. Steve is a big time Giants fan so his mission that night was to get home before their eight o’clock game. It turned out to be a pleasant evening, and, on the way home, Catey flashed me the same smile I fell in love with forty years ago. The Jets lost that night, but what else is new? I was hoping to score!
“Bang! I just got a hit,” I yelled. “Fish on!”
My right hand started to work the reel.
“You need the net?” asked Rob, looking around. “Where the hell did I put it?”
“Why don’t you look in your cooler?” mumbled Steve, and we all lost it.
For the next few minutes, Steve and I kept pulling up shorts.
“I can’t believe I haven’t had a single bite,” moaned Rob, reeling up his rig and empty hook. Grabbing a strip of squid, he turned to us and confessed, “You know, I was so frigging excited about opening day that I think I forgot to bait my hook before.”
“Yeah, I can’t remember shit anymore,” sighed Steve, his tone suddenly sympathetic. “I went to the hardware store the other day and forgot why I was there. I walked around the aisles for fifteen minutes, feeling totally frustrated. I finally picked up some garbage bags and left. When I got home, I couldn’t open the garage door. The remote needed batteries.”
“Well, I still can’t believe I forgot the fishing net!” I said. “I never forgot stuff like that.”
“Welcome to my world,” said Steve. “I used to pride myself on remembering the names of all my customers and all the sales reps. Now, I can hardly remember the names of my grandkids.”
“Yeah, but I forgot the frigging net!” I yelped. “We could have won the whole shebang. Got our pictures on the cover of The Long Island Fisherman and become heroes to all the old guys out there. Now some millennial with perfect teeth and an eight-hundred-dollar rod and reel will be explaining how he used his fish-finding app to land his trophy using a wad of gulp.”
“Don’t worry about it, Timbo,” said Rob. “I have the same problem and it seems to be getting worse each day. Sometimes, I hear a song on the radio and I can’t remember a thing. When it came to music, I used to know every band, every vocalist and every song. Not anymore. This getting old stuff really sucks.”
I started reeling up another fish.
“You need the net?” he asked. We all burst out laughing again.
“Nah. It feels light,” I said, bringing it in anyway.
“It’s just a jellyfish,” said Rob.
“Just a jellyfish? Hey, this could be the answer to our problems,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” asked Rob.
I continued, “Haven’t you seen that TV commercial about a drug that’s supposed to curb memory loss? I see it all the time when I watch the news. They say that it’s made from jellyfish.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen it too,” said Steve, “but I can’t remember the name of the drug. I think it begins with a P.”
“Now that’s funny,” chuckled Rob. “A drug that improves your memory that we can’t remember the name of? You can’t make this shit up.”
****
We spent the next few hours floating around the bay picking up an assortment of fish, most of them throwbacks. Rob latched on to a keeper about twenty inches in size, big enough for dinner but too small to enter the contest. When it started to drizzle, we called it a day, motored up to the dock and began cleaning the boat and filleting the fish.
Steve blurted out, “Pearlagen!”
“Yeah. Sue and I saw them at the Garden back in ‘98.”
“No you jackass, that’s the name of that drug. Next time wear you hearing aids.”
****
That night I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and thought about the day. I still couldn’t believe that I had forgotten that damn net. That was a nice fish. Things like that seem to be happening to me more often these days. Stupid stuff, like forgetting my socks when I go to play golf or leaving the basement lights on all night. Rob is right. This getting old stuff really sucks. I propped myself up on my pillow and looked at the moonlight reflected on the water. I smiled to myself and thought of so many midnight swims with Catey and our son Kev; of full moon kayak rides with friends; of glorious sunrises over Bug Light; of predawn fishing trips to Plum Gut. Yeah, aging sucks, but it beats the alternative. I glanced at my Catey sleeping soundly and thought, “Who’s got it better than me?”
****
The next morning, I took my kayak and paddled out to the channel. The water glistened. Occasionally, a stray fish, probably a small striper or a blue, broke the surface. I made my way towards Mud Island, inhabited solely by a pair of ospreys who have lived and fished here for many years. As I drifted closer, the female screeched trying to ward off my approach, while her mate hovered in the air hunting for breakfast. I kept my distance. I turned left into a narrow canal where the water was very still. This was a feasting spot for mosquitos during July and August, but today it was perfect. Farther down the channel, I noticed the surface was becoming cloudy. Had summer algae arrived early? Were crabs disturbing the sandy bottom? I stopped and dipped my paddle a few feet under. At first, I noticed nothing unusual, but then I spotted a school of moon jellyfish. Interesting.
They were small, milky white, almost translucent, ranging in size from a silver dollar to a soup can lid. I scooped one out of the water and put it in the palm of my hand. Surprisingly, there were no stingers; so I filled my container to the brim and headed home.
When I got back, I sat on the dock, started humming an old Otis Redding tune and took a jelly out for a closer look. It was neither slimy nor slippery. When I patted its sides with my tee shirt, it dried out quickly. There were tiny pores on top, and the bottom was rough with crevices. Around the rim were a bunch of openings, probably necessary for survival. I tossed the creature from one hand to the other and thought, “What the heck?” I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and opened my mouth. With one big gulp, I swallowed the whole thing.
Chapter Three
It tasted salty. As it navigated past my tonsils, the jellyfish squiggled down my gullet and plopped into my stomach. It was different from a raw clam or an oyster, not mushy but soft and firm like a slice of banana. I felt the coarse backside of the fish hug the edge of my windpipe. Next time, I thought, I should cut it in half.
Next time? What the hell am I thinking? I just ate a raw jellyfish. Is this thing poisonous? Should I chug some water? Stick my finger down my throat?
As the minutes passed, I calmed down and started smiling. I pounded my chest and yelled out to no one, “Fear Factor, here I come.” I flashed back to my keg party days in college when I swallowed a live goldfish. That next morning, I was sick as a dog, but, then again, it could have been the shots of tequila.
