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The father's lonely figure moved along the wharf, arms stiff at his sides and hands pushed into jacket pockets. We decided before he reached us that if he got even a little bit crazy, we'd beat him until he cried and then toss him into the harbor

by Sandro Meallet

OMETIMES, that summer in Los Angeles, we fished and crabbed behind the Maritime Museum or from the concrete pier next to the Catalina Terminal, underneath the San Pedro side of the Vincent Thomas Bridge. Sometimes we silently borrowed a rowboat from the tugboat docks and paddled to Terminal Island, across the harbor just in front of us, and hid the rowboat under an unbusy wharf. Then we strolled over to Berth 300 with drop lines, bait knives, and gotta-have doughnuts, all in one or two buckets. Sometimes, as an extra, we got to watch the big gray pelicans just off the edge of Berth 300 headfirst themselves into the wavy seawater, with the small trailer birds hot on their tails, hoping to snatch and scoop away any overflow from the huge bills. Sometimes, as we fished and watched the pelicans, we liked to recall that Berth 300 was next to the federal penitentiary, where rich businessmen spent their caught days. It was also where Al Capone was imprisoned many years ago.

But mostly we headed to the Pink Building, over by Deadman's Slip and back on the San Pedro side, because the fish there bit hungry and came in spread-out schools. Often the fish schools jumped greedy from the water for the baited ends of our lowering drop lines, as if they couldn't wait for the frying pan. And always, at each spot, Tom-Su sat himself down alone with his drop line and stared into the water as he rocked back and forth.

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Tom-Su spoke very little English and understood even less. He was new from Korea, and had a special way of treating fish that wiggled at the end of his drop line. We'd never seen anything like it.

"Tom-Su," one of us once said, "tell us the truth. Why do you bite the heads off the fish when they're still alive?"

"Dead already." And that's all he said, with a grin.

Tom-Su had buckteeth and often drooled as if his mouth and jaw had been forever dentist-numbed. He always wore suspenders with his jeans, which were too high and tight around his waist. But we didn't know how to explain to him that it was goofy not only to have his pants flooding so hard but also to be putting the vise grip on his nuts. Me and the fellas wondered on and off just how we could make Tom-Su understand that down the line he wasn't gonna be a daddy, disrespecting his jewels the way he did. To top it off, Tom-Su sported a rope instead of a belt, definitely nailing down the super sorry look. [an error occurred while processing this directive] "Tom-Su," one of us once said, "pull your pants down a little so you don't hurt yourself!"

"You welcome." And that's all he said, with a grin.

He was goofy in other ways, too. His baseball hat didn't fit his misshapen head; he moved as if he had rubber for bones; his skin was like a vanilla lampshade; and he would unexpectedly look at you with cannibal-hungry eyes, complete with underbags and socket-sinkage.

"Tom-Su," one of us once said to him, "what are you looking at?"

"That's good." And that's all he said, with a grin.

The drool and cannibal eyes made some of us think of his food intake. And if Tom-Su was hungry, we couldn't blame him. His diet was out there like Pluto. In his house once, with his father not home, we opened the fridge and saw it packed wall to wall with seaweed. Green ocean plants in jars, in plastic bags, in boxes, and open on the shelves, as if they were growing on vines. The fridge smelled of musty freon. My teeth might've bucked on me, too, with nothing but seaweed for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

"Tom-Su," one of us said to him in the kitchen, "is this all you eat?"

"Pretty good." And that's all he said, with a grin, as he opened the cupboard to show us a year's supply of the green stuff.

A seaweed breakfast? Know what I'm saying? Out there. So when Tom-Su got around the live-and-kicking-for-life fish, and I mean meat and not ocean plants, well, he got very involved with the catch in a way none of us would, or could, or maybe even should. Early on I guess you could've called his fish-head-biting a hobby, or maybe a creepy-gross natural ability -- one you wouldn't want to be born with yourself.

But Tom-Su was cool with us, because he carried our buckets wherever we headed along the waterfront, and because he eventually depended on us -- though at the time none of us knew how much. Wherever we went, he went, tagging along in his own speechless way, nodding his head, drifting off elsewhere, but always ready to bust out his bucktoothed grin.

N the beginning it had bugged us that Tom-Su went straight to his lonely area, sat down, and rocked, rocked, rocked. But eventually we got used to it, or forgot about him altogether. We had our fishing to do. Bait, for example, not Tom-Su's state of mind, was something we had to give serious thought to. If the fish weren't biting, we had to get experimental on them. Sometimes we'd bring anchovies for bait. They were salty and tough and held fast to the hook. The fish loved to nibble and then chomp at them. Sometimes we'd bring squid, mostly when we were interested in bigger mackerel or bonito, which brought us more than chump change at the fish market. Sometimes we'd bring lures (mostly when no bait could be found), and with these we'd be lucky to catch a couple of perch or buttermouth -- probably the dumbest and hungriest fish in the harbor. And sometimes we'd put small pear or apple wedges onto our hooks and catch smelt and mackerel and an occasional halibut. Bananas, grapes, peaches, plums, mangoes, oranges -- none of them worked, although we once snagged a moray eel with a medium-sized strawberry, and fought him for more than an hour. After the moray snapped the drop line, we talked about how good that strawberry must've been for him to want it so bad. A few times a tightly wadded piece of paper worked to catch a flounder. We caught other things with a button, a cube of stinky cheese, a corner of plywood, and an eyeball from a dead harbor cat. The last several baits were good only when the fish schools jumped like mad and our regular bait had run out and the buckets were near full. Oh, and once we caught a seagull using a chunk of plain bagel that the bird snatched out of midair. We pulled the seagull in like a kite with wild and desperate wings. Removing the hook from its beak shook loose enough feathers for a baby's pillow.

NE afternoon, as we fought a record-sized bonito and yelled at one another to pull it up, Tom-Su sat to the side and didn't notice or care about the happenings at all; he didn't even budge -- just stared straight down at the water. At the time, we thought maybe he was trying to spot the fish moving around beneath the surface, or that maybe his brain shut down on him whenever he took a seat. But not until Tom-Su had fished with us for a good month did we realize that the rocking and the numbed gaze were about something altogether different. Like that fish-head business. Only every so often, when he got a nibble, did he come out of his trance, spring to his feet, and haul his drop line high over his head, fist by fist, until he yanked a fish from the water. Tom-Su then grabbed the fish from its jerking rise, brought it to his mouth in one fast motion, and clamped his teeth right over the fish's head.

HE previous May, Tom-Su and his mother had come to the Barton Hill Elementary principal's office. I'd been caught fighting Lowrider Louie again, this time because I looked at him a second too long, and was sent to the office. Principal Dickerson sent Louie home on his reputation alone. Tom-Su sat in the chair next to mine while his mother spoke to Dickerson at a nearby desk.

"He twelve year old," she said.

"Yes, I know, Mrs. Kim," Dickerson said. "He can't start here this summer or next fall. He's too old. Take him to the junior high -- Dana Junior High, okay?"

"Tom-Su have small problem, Mr. Dick'son," she said, and pointed to her temple with a finger. "No big problem; only small problem -- very, very small. And no speak English too good."

"Then take him to Harlem Shoemaker, Mrs. Kim," Dickerson said. Harlem Shoemaker was the school for retarded children. "I'm sure they'll have room for him there."

Tom-Su's mother gave a confused look as Dickerson wrote on a piece of paper. I looked at Tom-Su next to me. He had a little drool at the corner of his mouth, and he turned to me and grinned from ear to ear. I smiled back. That was before he ever came fishing with us.

When Tom-Su first moved in, we'd seen him around the projects with his mother. They'd moved into the old Sanchez apartment. It was average and gray-coated, with rough, grimy surfaces and grass yard enough for a three-foot run. There were hundreds of apartments like it in the Rancho San Pedro housing projects. (The Sanchezes had moved back to Mexico, because their youngest son, Julio, had been hit in the head by a stray bullet. It had traveled five or six blocks before getting to Julio.) Each time we'd seen Tom-Su, he'd been stuck glue-tight to his mother, moving beside her like a shrunken shadow of a person. As if he were scared of the sunlight. Sometimes they'd even been seen holding hands, at which point we knew something wasn't right. A mother and son holding hands? In our neighborhood it was unheard-of.

"... it's for special cases like Tom-Su," Dickerson said, handing her the note.

"No, no," his mother said, "not right school. Please. Tom-Su father no like; he get so so mad."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Kim," Dickerson said.

Copyright © 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; July 2000; Fish Heads - 00.07; Volume 287, No. 1; page 66-74.