Copyright 1968 by Carl L. Biemiller
Published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 68-25597

CHAPTER TWO

The strike was heavy and sodden. Kent could feel the shock vibrate up the line and into the reel as he automatically lifted his rod tip to set the hook.

This was no slash-and-run hit like a striper's, no fluke's fluttery grab-and-dive, no late mackerel's tap-and flee. This was a surface attack, heavy, bullying and vicious. It was a pirate's strike, muscled, mean and cruel.

Only one fish along the summer coast of Jersey hit like that, and Kent had caught many, fishing both from a boat in a chum slick at sea and in the surf.

It had to be a bluefish.

It had to be a sizable one. His line squeaked through the reel brake, and he checked the drag. He let the fish run, keeping his rod high to let the blue fight the Fiberglas rod and not the line.

There was a boil behind an incoming breaker, a white flashing, but he couldn't see the fish. He reeled steadily, but slowly, trying to keep the blue on the cresting swells to let the breakers help bring it to the beach. He backed slowly out the wash toward dry sand. He still couldn't see the fish, but the pressure was heavy on the rod tip.

Something was funny. The surf wasn't all that sudsy. It was white and creamy to be sure. It was mixed up and confused, but against all that light he ought to be able to see a smoky-blue back by now. He stepped back, higher on the strand. His line ended in less than six inches of water and something still fought his rod brutally.

Suddenly he saw a silhouette, a definite shape.

Two bright-red eyes flamed at him from an inch of water.

Kent's wild, shortstop yelp lifted his father from the restful rock and blew John Palmer to his son's side in a furrow of outraged sand, almost before the echo of the yell whisked away in the breeze.

"Look, look!" piped Kent.

"Great Morning of the very First Day," whispered his father.

There, struggling, tail whipping in the shallow was a snow-white fish with malevolent crimson eyes.

Kent walked up the still tight line toward it, his father beside him.

"Careful," he said to his dad, "careful, careful, careful. Here take the rod, but keep him in the water."

"Easy, easy, easy," nodded his father as Kent wet his hands.

"Turn his head and I'll try to lift him some," said Kent breathlessly. "We want him on the hook so we can see him better."

The boy eased both hands under the fish and raised its body gently.

They both peered.

John Palmer dropped the rod and ran his right hand down the line to within some ten inches of the lure holding the fish against its relentless struggle.

The shape was right. The forked tail was right. The nearly equal-sized dorsal and ventral fins were right. The toothed and underslung jaw was right. The notched indentation on the gill cover was right. The meticulous march of scales was right.

Nothing else was. Those wide, round eyes were two stoplights. The lips were pale pink, and the lateral line, which ran down the length of the bulky torpedo shaped body was pink tinted. Fins and tail, normally dark, were a vague rose.

The rest of the body was white, a velvety, heavy, chalky satin on the back, and a smooth, glistening, wedding-white silk on the underbelly. It was truly beautiful, a magnificent fish.

"Dad, it's a blue," breathed Kent. No matter what, it's a blue."

"It's an albino blue, a real one, a glorious freak," agreed his father, making certain that the fish stayed in barely swimmable water. His voice stiffened. "Get the little weight scale," he ordered. "The one with the pull-out inch rule."

Kent eased his hands away from the fish; also making certain that the wash covered it. He sprinted for his tackle box. He dug out the scale with its foot rule. He picked up the fish tag and the skewer.

Together, and with sure-handed haste, they weighed the blue and measured it. The fish was slightly over four pounds and a shade over fifteen inches in length.

It burned in the sun like a white torch as they eased it back into the sea, the line still taut against the hook in its mouth.

Kent eased the skewer into the tag tube.

"Decision," said his father with quiet firmness. "This is unique, rare, and quite possibly the only one of its kind in the world. Is it a museum specimen? Should it go to the Marine Lab for dissection and study? Do we kill it as proof of your catch? Decide."

Kent stared at his father for a long second. He felt a violent, formless anger, a sense of insult so bitter that it made his mouth taste coppery. Did adults really mean what they said when they talked about conservation, about the protection of natural-life forms, about the preservation of nature's wonders? Did Dad? It would be many years before Kent knew that in that one, jeweled and thrilling moment, he faced a collision of ethics, and each valid and true.

He did not speak.

He wet his hands again. He slipped his left one down the fish's back, flattening the dorsal fin. He gripped the body hard. With a deft, surgical motion made more effective by the anger he felt he drove the skewer firmly through the wiry, muscular meat behind the fin and above the backbone. He drew the tube tag through, looped it about the fish and knotted it with a hard, tight, square knot, as the blue lay motionless with shock.

He reached for the lure and removed the hook as gently as possible, making sure that he did not rip that lipsticked mouth. He headed the fish to sea, stood up and drew a deep shuddering breath.

"Go, boy, go," he whispered.

There was a flash of rose, a tint in the surf, and then nothing.

His father was staring wide-eyed across the open ocean with an expression that Christopher Columbus or Albert Einstein or any of the astronauts might have recognized. He put out a hand and dropped it upon Kent's shoulder. His voice came rich and warm.

"That was no decision, son. It was a prayer."

"Let's go home," said Kent.

Dad looked at his watch and fixed the time in his head. "For now," he agreed, " and to clean up some. But as soon as that Marine Lab opens, we'll be back to report a miracle while the halo still surrounds us. Okay?"

Kent nodded.

They bundled their gear into the 1950 Studebaker station wagon, which Dad considered to be one grade better than a Rolls Royce, and took off for Rumson.

"Feel like a big breakfast?" asked Dad as they left the State Park.

"It was beautiful, beautiful," whispered Kent. He spoke again as Dad turned into the driveway at their house.

"Dad, do you think we'll ever see it again?"

"Son," said his father gravely, "one miracle in a lifetime is more than any man can hope for, and you're asking for two." He smiled. "But we'll turn the search over to the greatest fish detectives in the world, about six eggs and a half pound of bacon from now. Those fellows at the Marine Lab, and the people who work with them around the whole world, know as much as there is now known about the world underwater." He chuckled. "And they can start their search right in their own back yard!"

Kent laughed. He couldn't help it.

"I wonder what they'll say when they find out that a white bluefish with red eyes was living almost under their own dock."

He choked off his laugh and was suddenly serious. He turned an anxious face to his father.

"If they believe us, that is," he said.

"I think they will. You may not realize it, but we are fairly reliable characters in our own small way. And besides, they know about albinos. Don't you remember that fellow from the Lab who spoke at a Littoral Society meeting and told us about their albino flounder named Moby Irving?"

"Let's clean up and eat, and then go," said Kent. He was excited again.

"I'm going to call them out there first," said his father. "Make sure somebody's home when we come calling. And I'd suggest that you relax." He was thoughtful, and just a bit grim. "This may be the start of something bigger than we think."