Floundering
Walking through the shallows in the dark, we borrow our pace from the grey heron, the spoonbill. We creep long-legged and stilted through tidal mud and mangroves. We flounder, staggering through mud and water in search of the elusive flat fish. We carry lights at the end of long poles—submerged as we are to ankle, shin, and knee—and spears—one two-pronged, one five.
Dozens of small flounder glide over sand and smooth, grey sandstone, or hunker down in a soft bloom of silt like rays. I see them up close and far off in my narrow, reaching beam, designed for diving depths, now duct-taped to a seven iron.
L leads, ahead and out wide. I prefer five or six inches of water, where the smallest flounder seem to flourish, a veritable nursery, if such a thing exists in flounder terms. I anthropomorphize happy families onto the lives of the tiny, flat fish. ‘Wait here kids,’ the larger flounder say. ‘We’ll nip out to the drop-off and bring back dinner.’ I like the way their one eye flares under the beam, aching towards the surface. What giant bird is this? What giant birds we are, playing at stealth and grace, the ballet of it broken by my squealing at every eel.
The eels are small, twelve inches long, slippery, and sleek. Then an eel twice the length surprises me, squirming near an anchor rope. I have a five-prong wielded and ready. What am I afraid of? All the same, something furious hits the back of my foot and the swinging light catches a sliver of eel undulating away.
The seven iron’s weight condenses as the hours pass and I think of my good caddy friend B, in Mangawhai. Three weeks ago, B, L and I snorkelled at Goat Island, happily losing our minds in the swarms of snapper and floating kelp forests. B would like this, I think, carrying a club around the shallows in the dark. I’d like to take a light down to Goat, surprise the swarming snapper in the glossy, velvet shallows, our legs setting off shimmers of phosphorescence.
When no more large flounder are forthcoming, I crane my neck up to the stars, richer and more studded with light as the night deepens. I’d like to be in bed, but I don’t want to miss this: dark water lapping at my ankles, L up to his knees further out, the schools of baitfish throwing their slim, soft bodies against my skin.
