The Man

Fishing has been slow for the past couple weeks; El Norte pushed the huge schools of baitfish offshore and the roosters and jacks followed, shutting down the action in the surf.As he was walking back to town he tought of the man.He was a regular looking fellow, by Southern Baja standards, that is.

Hundreds, thousands of Gringos wintered there and the man would have blended just fine if it wasn’t for that patina that stuck on him like verderame on seagoing brass.He saw him first, just a glimpse, sitting at the bar of Sanchez Cantina, in the twirling crowd of salsa dancers - nationals sporting their good clothes and tourists dressed in shorts and sandals freshly bought for this vacation. He would have passed for one of the long time Baja expats for the weathered look that comes from living under the desert sun and its reflection off the waves.

The salty Tommy shirt, the fryied hem of his Pelagic shorts and the scuffed deck shoes , just another baby boomer that flew South looking for marlin and fresh pussy.

They say you can’t run away from your past but that’s true only to a certain degree.What you cannot run away from is yourself.One can change appearance, habits and manners but that scent is still there same as it was in himself, and in the man.

He could pick it up, the same way a dog can sniff it in another dogs’ ass.

Lost in his thoughts he suddenly realized he was walking barefoot on the edge of a fairway; it’s been five years since he felt the grass under his feet, the smell of rotting wood in the rain forest and that of decaying salmon in the river.
He could still feel the weight of the flyline loading the long rod for the next cast, the current playing with it during the swing of the fly, or the pull of the bowstring against his right fingers and the inexplicable sensation that those lethal thirty inches of Port Oxford cedar are going to fly true and on target even before they clear the longbow.
That thought grabbed him deep inside, hurting and burning and digging right to his core.