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kaouhwd

I went to Sydney because I had only one thought in my mind now: to go to sea
(From “Alone on a wide wide sea” by Michael Morpugo)

I must’ve gotten really lucky, because a man came up and asked me if I could sail a boat. I laughed: I was the best sailor in all of England. Australian waves couldn’t be that different. He grabbed my arm and brought me to the docks. He told me that if I gathered enough fish, I would have a steady job.
I thought about the sea, the crashing waves, and the albatross flying through the salty spray. I didn’t care about anything else, just dancing with the sea. I never thought about what was going to happen next.
Fish. Most people have never really seen fish that didn’t come in a can. I sure didn’t. If I knew what that fishing boat would bring me besides money and a job, I would have never talked to that man. But sadly, I did. And now the fish will haunt me forever.
Tuna was what we caught. That fateful day, I found out that tuna wasn’t always from the supermarket. When it’s alive, it’s such a beautiful creature. The scales shimmer in the incandescent sunlight, and the size is truly astonishing. But horror filled my face as I watched the men. I watched them kill fish.
They taught me how to use the net, how to reel in the heap of fish, how to thwack it so that it goes brain-dead and doesn’t flip its way out. That was the worst part. The thwacking. You have to get your stick, hold it down, and thwack it on the head. Some words of wisdom, never go fishing actually expecting to eat the fish.
Once you see them squirming for life, you will vomit at the sight of tuna in the seafood section of your grocery store. They bleed and gasp on deck, and all the men just leave them like nothing is going on. Murderers. That’s what they were. That’s what I was. A murderer.
I seemed like the only one that was disgusted by it. On the contrary, they were actually quite happy. The more fish we caught, the more money we earned, the better living we got. I knew that. But I couldn’t stay. I packed my suitcase and was off job-hunting again.
It took me quite a few days, but eventually I met a scout that was recruiting people for the navy. The Navy? All I knew about the navy was they stayed at sea for a long time. I grabbed a pamphlet and signed up. Money to spend and I’d be at sea. The cash was better that my fishing job. Why not?
I never really paid much attention to the news, and I regret that dreadfully. If only I had. I should have seen the signs. I should have seen it coming. A few years later I was fighting the war. The Vietnam War. It was another type of murder, but this time, I wasn’t killing fish.

sth