MY FATHER AND I ARE OPPOSITE. HE SITS AT THE STERN of the skiff with the drone of the generator and the darkness. I stand on the bow and scan the oyster rakes by painter’s lights. We’re searching for flounder, a fish that lying flat is all but invisible against the bottom. Sometimes the eyes are the giveaway, other times the bright spots that speckle the fish’s mottled brown body like constellations. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.
To be honest, I know nothing about salt water aside from summer vacations surf-fishing as a kid. I’ve driven down from the mountains of North Carolina and scooped my father up on the way for a chance to gig flounder. The two boys who’ve taken us out grew up here in Savannah. Cameron, a lean twenty-something law student I met in an online turkey-hunting forum and took into the woods to chase longbeards, is returning a favor, so to speak. He loafs in the middle of the boat using one of the gigs to help pole us through the shallows as he sips Natty Light. Stephen, a lifelong friend of Cameron’s whom I’d never met before supper, has run this skiff since he was a kid. He stands beside me on the deck and tries to teach me to read the pluff mud and oyster shell, though the learning curve is steep and I am a slow study.
As we push-pole along the creek bank, our setup is simple enough: a
