Let me begin this tale by apologizing for the number of seemingly unrelated twists and turns it will take. Tangents are apparently a byproduct of spending months at a time as the only American in the immediate vicinity. There are a handful of people here who are perfectly capable of communicating in English, but as non-Westerners, they have no frame of reference for my usual conversational/written go-to's--Good Will Hunting quotes, sports trivia, literary discourse, and the like.
From 4th grade through 8th grade, I attempted to mold myself into a competent lacrosse player. Fayetteville-Manlius has a proud lacrosse tradition, plus all the cute girls played for the ladies team at my proud alma mater, Wellwood Middle School (suck it, Eagle Hill). I played in the district's summer league for three years until I was old enough to play for the school's modified team in 7th grade. I was what you could optimistically call a "project" on the lacrosse field. I was terrified of getting hit, plus my right arm and hand were even more useless and uncoordinated then than they are now. Puzzlingly, I also opted for a Carolina Blue/Gold helmet at the GB Lax Store before the season began--definitely wouldn't stand out on a team whose colors were green and white, right?
Anyway, I languished on the B-team for my two years on the team. My biggest career highlights were getting the ball stuck in the head of my stick after winning (!) a faceoff, and taking one shot that went about eight feet wide of the net. I proudly told my dad that I had almost scored, and, in what seemed like a dick move at the time (but seems much more sensible in hindsight), he told me that that probably wasn't something to be bragging about. What this is all getting around to is that I pretty much sucked at lacrosse, but I liked being on the team, so I consequently spent a lot of time off the field goofing off on the bench/sidelines. This left me with plenty of time to practice and perfect cool stick tricks. I got pretty good, actually--I figured that if I couldn't be a lacrosse player in the truest sense (as in, you know, actually playing), I could at least pass for one when the pads were off.
I've forgotten just about all of these tricks now, but little did I know that one little scoop-and-cradle move would come in handy nine years down the line, in a remote corner of the Pacific where no one has ever heard of lacrosse. As with all of my Marshallese adventures, this one started unexpectedly, thanks to my friend Manny (readers may remember him from the turtle hunting story). I had gone to his house to bring him a few pairs of socks, which I had no use for but he could really use--the men here wear them under their flippers when they go spearfishing. I handed off the socks and chatted with him for a minute, but he was clearly in a hurry to get going somewhere. It was dark out, and I saw him dig out a hard hat and fasten it to his head. It was a contraption worthy of Richard Tyler from The Pagemaster (obscure pop-culture reference alert!)--the middle of the hard hat had been removed, front to back, and in in the gap rested a massive flashlight held in place by fishing line. He switched it on and headed to the back of his house, where he retrieved his fishing net.
Marshallese fishing nets look like what the Native Americans might have used for lacrosse goalie sticks, had they been more interested in stopping shots and less interested in using their games to practice warfare. Entirely wooden, the nets are about seven feet long, with the net itself rigged from thick fishing line which has been meticulously woven and tied into a grid. Manny informed me that he and his neighbor, Action (3-time captain of the outer island All-Name Team) were going out after flying fish in Action's boat. Did I want to come?
I did. Now, this may come as a surprise to those of you familiar with my noble, badass Eagle Scouting roots, but I had never actually caught a fish before the incident I'm writing about. Of any kind. Ever. This fact had made me feel steadily less and less manly as my year among some of the greatest fishermen alive progressed. As a frame of reference, on the same day as this story, my host father brought home a dogtooth tuna (jilo in Marshallese) that was honest-to-God the same size as my seven-year-old host brother. He caught this beast with only a handline, no reel or gaffe necessary.
My job on this first expedition turned out to be incredibly superfluous. Action steered the boat, Manny perched on the bow edge with his net and helmet-flashlight combo scouring for prey. I...sat. And held another flashlight to help sweep the areas Manny might have missed. I watched him go seventeen-for-eighteen on fish that we saw, deftly maneuvering the huge net and lifting 15-inch flying fish (jojo) from the water. It was a cloudy, moonless night, which meant that there was a dearth of jojo out and about. Allegedly, they're drawn up to the surface by moonlight and starlight, and we had none. Long story short, I had zero part in actual fishing that time around.
Fortunately for me, a rainy day later that week broke into a cloudless, starlit night, and Manny summoned me to join the expedition again. This time, I brought my host father's net (of the same make as Manny's), so as not to be denied the chance to scoop a few myself. Getting into the boat, I thought back to that modified lacrosse sideline and hoped I still had a trick or two to fall back on, since the instruments were so similar. Manny, as I had already seen, was fluid and graceful with his net, clearly a natural who had nevertheless spent countless hours perfecting his craft.
(By the way, I think a pretty compelling social experiment would be to take a bunch of outer island kids from the RMI to the U.S. and enroll them in contact sports. The students out here are freakishly nimble, and strong for their small statures. They are also incredibly fearless-in any field not involving demons- and they have an incredible tolerance for pain. They tackle each other on gravel and broken glass, jump on each other out of coconut trees, and generally just beat each other senseless whenever they have a chance. Absolutely no fear of bleeding or bruising. The girls are as impressive as the boys in this regard. They are solidly built, and many of them can hit a baseball farther than their male peers. Some wealthy, opportunistic coach of football, soccer, lacrosse, or baseball/softball needs to come snatch up a bunch of these kids and watch them start to dominate American youth leagues.)
I mentioned in my turtle post the surreal feeling I get every time I cross the reef's edge into open water on this atoll. It was even stranger this time around, in the pitch black, not being able to see the depths falling away beneath me. Manny was again perched on the bow, one leg over the edge. I stood some five feet behind him, knees bent, riding out the small swells in the same manner that my brothers and I used to ride the CENTRO bus on the way home from working at the state fair--unsupported, surfing the turns with no hands. Manny got to work right away, scooping and cradling as Action brought the boat up on our unsuspecting targets. Flying fish really are incredible looking things--silvery-blue, biplane-shaped bodies, 'wings' of pale pink, hovering at the surface waiting to take flight. The goal when fishing for these is to snag them while they're at rest, because it becomes an infinitely trickier task once they launch. If they keep their tails dragging in the water, they can change direction even while they 'fly', and it becomes this interesting sort of dance across the surface. If they leave the water completely, they can propel themselves a pretty ridiculous distance in a very short time.
I ended up catching nine of them over the course of our expedition. I wasn't counting my misses, but there had to have been at least fifteen of those also. I also missed one that subsequently turned and flew smack into the side of the boat, killing himself on impact. It was an easy snag after that, but it's probably unsporting to count that one towards my total. Anyway, my lacrosse-cradle strategy seemed to get a passing grade, as Manny and Action both claimed to be impressed by my haul. I'm going to assume they were just being nice, because Manny caught over a hundred of them. He was like Nomar Garciaparra up there, just hoovering fish into the boat.
The other highlight of that trip was seeing a shark out in the open water for the first time in my life. I've seen them in aquariums, and many times this year on my dinner plate, but never one in its element, cutting silently through the water. As we passed it, Manny shone his flashlight quickly across it, and then got back to looking for jojo. He and Action didn't react in the slightest to the sight, leading to the following exchange once my brain registered the shape of what we had just seen.
"Hey, Manny...uh, what was that?"
"Shark."
"Oh."
I experienced a moment of internal turmoil at that moment that froze me in place and hinged my jaw shut. It was the confusion created by the combatting desires of my curiosity, which wanted to yell, "Get your light back on that goddamn thing STAT", and my newly-triggered caveman fear-brain, which wanted to scream, "Back to land! The ocean gods are demanding a snackrifice!". Strange what a 2-second glimpse of that unmistakable torpedo shape can do to the mind of someone who has spent his whole life comfortably landlocked.
All in all, it was a fascinating experience, and one I'm eager to repeat as often as possible in my last few weeks here. It was a good feeling to catch those nine fish and bring my lifetime total to...nine. And seeing the fish we were pursuing (plus that big one that we weren't) move through and above the inky nighttime ocean was breathtaking. As (who else) Hemingway once said, "If you ever get so that you don't feel anything when you see flying fish go out of water...you better turn in your suit." Ernest can rest easily knowing that if I actually owned a suit, I would be in no danger of having to give it up.
