"Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again.  He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him.  The old man was dreaming about the lions."  THE END

– The Old Man and the Sea



Just before the old man had awoke to the sloshing of the waves tilled up by the wake of the first outgoing Sausalito ferry, he had been dreaming of a ghost of shark bones.  He did not know precisely where this image came from – it was true that he had seen that Great White years ago, and had hoped for it again just last night, but the bones, he did not know.  He stood up slowly now, the bright and beautiful radiation from the sun already tending to his cheek.  There had not been fog in quite a time, this August quite clean as he liked to think of it.  It was true that much more than many people understood depended on the eery fog of the bay, such as the great Redwoods up along the north coast – they would be nothing without the fog – yet he felt selfish every morning that he awoke to that affirming blaze in the sky.  Passing clouds were but ecstatic metal, the surface of the bay a watercolor by Matisse if nothing else.  He did not move slow for any indulgence of Merlot the night before. His mere pinches of wine amounted to nothing more than a softening of the night air.  It was his hips that took the better portion of the morning to loosen to the rocking of the boat.  He quickly put together these two objects in his old but appreciative mind: yes, to appreciate this soft blaze across the sky, to know that I can still stand up, even against the wake on the water of all those grand motors!  He smiled, rolled up his bed gear, and walked over to the side of the Angelina to check his night bait.  To the other side, his crab cage (why not try he thought), but on this side, his fish bait which he had settled in tight around a hook.  There was a small flag attached – if he were awake he might see it tuck some – but it was an easy way to fish at night for who knows what.  The hook was no larger than half of his fist.  As a slight breeze slipped up over the hull of the boat and touched at the sides of his head and hair, he could see, off in the distance, Bay Bridge, a silver sword curved to fit onto Treasure Island, and beyond that onto Oakland.  Oh, he thought, the history of the coast!  To be young when it was all but water, wind, and the fish!  This was San Francisco.  This was a grand city of dreams and gold.  He cranked up the cold dripping line.  There was something there, yes, that much he could tell...not so much a weight, but a tension of the water rising up and up.  A mystery, I see, he said to himself.  Good enough, yes, good enough.  He could see the face of his father now, the fisherman, par excellence.  He was not forced to it, never, but it was he who understood it and taught all the others.  At the corners of the father's mouth a grin and then a nod of the head.  "The skeleton", he once said.  "The bait eaten.  That fish caught by the hook.  That fish eaten by a shark."  He lifted the end of the rope out of the water.  The fish head was still attached to the hook.  The body of the fish a long glowing white train of bone.