Boat hook at the ready, Jimmy stood with one foot on the bow fishing deck of the old Boston Whaler Outrage and his other foot on one of the twenty gallon, steel gas or water cans cramming the main deck while Grand Uncle Ward eased them into the shadows of what remained of the Miami Beach Fontainebleau. The battering gales of countless Category 6 hurricanes had knocked down thirty of the hotel’s thirty-six stories, and storm surge after storm surge had spread the hotel’s stuccoed concrete and shattered glass across what used to be Miami Bay and Pinetree Park on the mainland. At least that’s what Uncle Ward had told Jimmy earlier that morning when they had first sighted the broken, rusting structures of old Miami rising above the ocean. Uncle Ward knew all about Miami, and Jimmy loved to listen to his tales of long ago, before the ocean swallowed Florida.

In one more day, December 15, 2135, Uncle Ward would turn one hundred years old. This trip was his birthday present. Dangerous, yes, but Momma had said the family owed him, and now, Jimmy was on the grandest adventure of his life to help pay that debt to Uncle Ward.

“Keep a sharp eye for metal girders just below the surface.” Jimmy’s father Clayton hunched on the double seat in front of the boat’s center console under the shade of the T-top. “We hit one, it’ll punch a hole through our hull, and then we’re goners.” His dad had not been happy when Uncle Ward proposed taking Jimmy along on this “one last fishing trip to the old neighborhood.” But Jimmy had begged and begged, and with his mother’s blessing, eventually wore his father down.

“What about the Coalition Coast Guard?” Jimmy said.

“They won’t come this far south,” his father said. “Even if they pick up our distress signal, which ain’t likely. Nobody comes this far south anymore. Nobody.”

In his patched homespun shorts and unbuttoned, long sleeve shirt, his father was a scrawny man of middling height. Top of his father’s head hardly reached Uncle Ward’s broad shoulder line. Jimmy’s mother said most people of Uncle Ward’s time were bigger than people nowadays—a lot better food then, and plenty of it. Jimmy could not remember a time when there was plenty to eat.

Wringing sweat off his right hand, Uncle Ward pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose and throttle-backed the twin Mercury engines to idle. Sun had long since faded their chipped black paint to flat charcoal gray. Like Uncle Ward, they were old, relics of a different time, but Uncle Ward had run the repair and maintenance shop at Coco Plum Marina in old Miami and knew how to scrounge parts from other old engines or fabricate serviceable replacements. And he was teaching Jimmy how to rebuild outboard motors and how to weld. His voice was scratchy, hoarse even, but clear, like his mind. And he didn’t tell Jimmy “no” all the time. Jimmy often thought Uncle Ward was a lot sharper than his father.

The surface of the water was glass smooth. Jimmy saw strings of dead, yellow-brown Sargasso weed drifting beneath the hull, and much deeper, a wide, dark ribbon heading south. He pointed at the water and looked over his shoulder at Uncle Ward.

“What’s that, way down there, on the bottom?”

“Collins Avenue.” Uncle Ward tugged at the brim of his battered straw hat. “Runs the length of the island.”

“What used to be an island, long, long ago,” Jimmy’s father said. “That world died before me and my boy were even born. That road don’t go anywhere now.”

“It looks like a giant anaconda or a python,” Jimmy said. Big constrictors roamed the swamps and palmetto flats around his home in coastal South Georgia. A year ago, one had eaten the family’s old yellow Labrador. Jimmy’s father had killed the snake, and the family stretched its meat at suppertime for two months.

“Jimmy, when I was your age,” Uncle Ward said, “I used to skateboard up and down Collins Avenue. Your Grandpa Thorn and I and all our friends. Showing off for the pretty girls in bikinis.”

 Jimmy’s father stood up, took a step, and leaned over the starboard gunwale. He jammed his right hand in the sea and then shook water off his hand. Face set in a frown, he straightened up and looked at Uncle Ward.

“Hope you ain’t planning on throwing a fishing line anywhere round here.” His father spat over the side. “Water’s hot as pea soup. Like I told you, nothing to catch down here.”

Uncle Ward shrugged. Jimmy had never known Uncle Ward to let anything get the best of him. Every month hotter than last year’s, so what? Gasoline harder and harder to come by, we’ll make do. Rain never enough, we’ll get by. Each harvest worse than the year before, suck it up, boy. Each year less word from the Coalition governor up in Blue Ridge, never needed his help anyway. And now, Uncle Ward winked at Jimmy.

“What say we drift a couple lines off the stern?” One hand on the wheel, Uncle Ward used his other to lift his favorite fishing rod out of its holder on the port side, flicked open the bail on the worn Mitchell reel, and lobbed a shiny silver spoon into the water. Then he nudged the throttle lever forward a bit, and once clear of the ruins of the Fontainbleau, cut southeast. “You, Jimmy, set the boat hook down and drop a line off the starboard side. Who knows? We might hit a deep hole where the fish are schooled up in cooler water. My grandpa taught me that trick when I was about ten, same as you. ‘Keep going,’ he always said. ‘Got a big ocean all around. No use sitting still.’”

As they trolled on and on, Uncle Ward called out landmark after landmark off to their west, Blue and Green Diamond Towers, Radison Resort Hotel, Cadillac Hotel Beach Club, 1 Hotel South Beach, Ritz Carlton South Beach, Savoy Hotel Beach Club, or at least, he called out where they used to be. The frown on the face of Jimmy’s father never lessened. He kept glancing east, at the horizon, as he had their whole way from Georgia, even when they had spent last night ashore on Iron Mountain Island in the New Florida Keys. They had camped on the cooler windward side of a long mound of bricks marking where Bok Tower had fallen. Its rusty bricks had stretched across windswept, withered grass and yellow sand like a dead, shriveled caterpillar. Mosquitoes had driven them back into the Whaler long before sunrise.

Now, Jimmy said, “Dad, what’re you looking for?”

“Clouds, dark clouds, lots of them building up.”

Jimmy stared at the eastern sky.

“I don’t see any.”

“You best pray we don’t.”

“Clayton,” Uncle Ward said and steered the boat east-southeast. “There isn’t a cloud in the sky. Let the boy enjoy the day.”

Jimmy’s father stood up and held onto the edge of the T-top with one hand. “We need to be thinking about heading back.” Uncle Ward steered the bow even further east. “Why are you headed out to sea?”

“Deeper water. Might pick up a school of Mahi Mahi. Jimmy’s never seen Mahi Mahi. Bet he’d sure get a kick out of fighting one.”

Jimmy felt his pulse surge. Uncle Ward had told him tales of hooking into bull Mahi Mahi that glowed with all the colors of the rainbow, and big torpedo Wahoo that lurked above old wrecks, and eight foot swordfish that stood on their tails and spat their hooks at you.

“He ain’t going to see any out there,” Jimmy’s father said. “All that’s gone, old man. Only thing we’re likely to see is a hurricane. And don’t tell me ain’t the right time of year. Water stays hot all year long now. Cat 2’s and 3’s show up every month down here. This little old boat ain’t made to stand up to a hurricane.”

“This is not just some old boat,” Uncle Ward said. “This is a Whaler.”

“And it’s damn near as old as you are. It’s got more patches in its hull than you can shake a stick at.” Jimmy’s father yanked on the metal frame of the T-top. “We need to head back north. We’ve only got so much gas. Barely enough to make the round trip. You know that well as I do.”

Oh, Jimmy remembered the row about gasoline. They needed the Whaler and the gasoline, his father had insisted, to work their crab traps among inshore flats and lagoons of the Georgia coast. In ever warmer ocean water, wave after wave of red tide had killed off fish stocks long ago. Crabs, huddling in potholes and tangles of dead mangrove roots, were about the only thing left in any number. They could not waste precious gasoline on an old man’s cruise down Memory Lane.

But Jimmy’s mother had said we owe him, the whole family owes him, so Uncle Ward had traded his last gold bar of all the ones he had brought out of South Florida and hidden where only he knew, for gasoline. And off Jimmy, his father and Uncle Ward had sailed. Jimmy often wondered what the family owed Uncle Ward that was so special. Sure, he knew that Uncle Ward and Jimmy’s grandfather had brought the family north when the ocean rose over the Miami seawalls and flooded the streets, never to recede. The family had driven north in a three vehicle convoy of two Jeeps and an old pickup with just two wheel drive, and the family in Georgia still depended on the four wheel drive Jeeps. Uncle Ward kept them running, but what had happened to the old truck, no one ever said.

Rod in hand, Jimmy watched his gold spoon with a chartreuse streamer slide through the water twenty yards aft of the boat’s stern. Uncle Ward had slipped the butt of his rod in the chrome holder mounted on the rear of the T-top. Both liver-spotted hands on the wheel, he grinned at Jimmy.

“Keep an eye on my line, boy. I need to watch out front for diving sea birds or floating chunks of debris. They always show where the fish are.”

“Ain’t no seagulls out there,” Jimmy’s father said. He sat crossways on the front double seat with his legs pulled under the T-top’s shade. “Ain’t nothing for them eat in this piss hot water. They’re long gone north.” He turned his head and glared at Jimmy and Uncle Ward. “And we should be, too.”

In Jimmy’s left hand, the rod tip jerked downward. He reared back, but held the rod steady. On the way south from Georgia, Uncle Ward had warned him fishing in the ocean was not like fishing for catfish with a cane pole in a muddy creek. When trolling, Jimmy had to let the speed of the boat set the hook, or he’d jerk the hook right out of a fish’s mouth. Jimmy listened to the line sing against the reel’s drag.

“You hooked a good one, boy!” Uncle Ward kept the keel steady as she goes. “Work her in slow. Pull up. Reel down. Pull up. Reel down.”

Jimmy felt his father’s hands on his shoulders, squeezing. Grinning ear to ear, Jimmy worked rod and reel.

“I’ll be damned, Jimmy. You done hooked one. Do like your uncle says. Bring it in.”

Pulling up and reeling down, pulling up and reeling down, soon, Jimmy saw, just below the water surface, a bright white and yellow streak ten yards off the stern.

“I do believe,” Uncle Ward said, “you’ve hooked a yellowtail. Clayton, grab the net there wedged against the hull. Other side of that gas can. Yeah, that one. Jimmy, move toward the centerline. Give your dad some room.”

Jimmy slid behind the starboard engine and leaned his rod over side of the boat. The yellowtail was just a yard behind the boat but with its head down. His father crowded into the stern corner and jabbed his net in the water, and the fish took off, drag screaming.

“Let her run, Jimmy,” Uncle Ward said. “Don’t reel anymore until she tires out, but keep your line tight.”

Soon, the drag went quiet, and Jimmy pulled up and reeled down, pulled up and reeled down. Foot by foot, he worked the fish closer to the boat.

“Okay, Clayton.” Uncle Ward held his straw hat down by his thigh. “Dip the net slowly in the water and hold it still. Let the fish see it and get used to it. That’s it. Steady. Steady. Jimmy, lift your rod tip. Higher. Get her head up. That’s right. Now Clayton, slide the net under her head and lift.”

With the fish’s head stuck at the bottom of the net, Jimmy’s father lifted the fish into the boat and dumped it at their feet on the stern deck. It flopped and bounced, tangling itself and the line around Jimmy’s left foot, and lay gasping. Jimmy had never seen such bright, vivid white and yellow. He knew, somehow, they were the most beautiful colors he would ever see.

His father pounded Jimmy on the back. “You did it, boy! You caught it. Man, oh man, can’t wait to tell your momma.”

Jimmy stood there transfixed. He could not look away from the bright colors. Then, even as he stared, yellow and white dimmed. Gills went slack. Uncle Ward cut the engines to idle, bent, unhooked the fish, and curling his index finger through the fish’s gills, held it up.

“Your first saltwater fish. A nice one. Sixteen inches. Isn’t she pretty?” But there was a catch in Uncle Ward’s voice. Behind his sunglasses, his eyes blinked. “She caught a yellowtail first time I took her out, same as you.”

Jimmy’s father dropped the net and edged between Jimmy and Uncle Ward. He held out his hands. “Give me the fish. I’ll put it in the cooler. We’ve still got some ice left.”

Uncle Ward stared at Jimmy’s father.

“Ward.”

“Yeah.” Uncle Ward shook his head. Then he handed the fish to Jimmy’s father, turned, and set his right hand on the throttle.

“Dad?”

“Jimmy, go open the cooler.”

“Dad?”

“I said open me the cooler.”

Jimmy set the rod down and scrambled past the console. He unsnapped the cushions on the double seat, raised them and found the cooler. It held mostly water, but some ice. His father came up next to him and laid the fish in the cooler.

“What are we going to do?” Jimmy asked. His hands shook. Pride coursed through him for catching the yellowtail. Wonder for its beauty. Sadness for its death. Fear, confusion. He had never before seen a tear in Uncle Ward’s eyes, never heard a tremor in his voice. Uncle Ward was the rock.

“Well, boy. We’re sure as hell eating good tonight.” Jimmy’s father put a hand on his son’s shoulder, turned his head a little toward Uncle Ward, but kept his eyes on Jimmy. “Ain’t that right, Uncle Ward?”

“Yeah.” Uncle’s Ward’s voice was stronger, louder. “You bet. Let me turn this old boat around. Head back to Miami. Bound to be some sort of place to tie up and cook that fish. We’ll find some piece of hotel floor still standing. We’ll scrounge up something that’ll burn and build a little fire. Won’t take much.” Uncle Ward shoved the throttle down, and the Whaler, its old engines roaring, shot up on plane.

* * * 

Jimmy awoke to the splashes of his father throwing empty gasoline and water cans over the side of the Whaler. The cans drifted southeast. Jimmy’s father had removed the caps, and the cans bobbed and rolled in the outgoing tide. Even now, as seawater sloshed into them, some were riding lower and lower, doomed to rust away on the bottom. Jimmy turned his head and looked where they had tied onto a rusty steel girder still supporting a crumbling shelf of concrete subfloor. Wind had already blown away the ashes of the tiny cook fire they had built on the saltwater-pocked concrete. Jimmy sat up and looked around, but Uncle Ward was nowhere to be seen.

With his feet, Jimmy’s father shoved the remaining cans full of gasoline and water into the bow of the boat. Then he sat back on the double cushions of the bow seat.

“Hey there, sleepyhead.” His father’s tone was light, cheerful, but the flesh of his cheeks and forehead was stiff as cardboard. “I was just lightening the load. What say we chow down on the last of those oatmeal cakes your momma baked for us, and then head home?”

“Where . . . where’s Uncle Ward?”

“Home.” Jimmy’s father stared southeast. Then he looked back at Jimmy.

“What?” Jimmy grabbed hold of the gunwale and stood up. “What you mean, ‘home?’”

“He took off swimming an hour or so ‘fore sunup. Said he was going somewhere a little east of someplace called Elliot Key. I think that’s where she caught her first yellowtail.”

Jimmy swiped at tears welling in his eyes. Uncle Ward never liked it when Jimmy cried. Always told Jimmy there was no time for tears, suck it up. Jimmy made himself look his father in the eyes.

“Who’re you talking about?”

“Cindy, I think her name was. Ask your momma. She knows the all of it.”