Russell Franklin Extract from The Broken Places
G
reg didn’t have to waste time looking for fish. Papa had anchored the boat on a reef more than a mile offshore – a fragile upthrust of coral and clear water in the endless dark push of the gulf stream – and the fish were everywhere, fearless, flaunting their fresh-coatof-paint colours, their picture-book shapes. Greg could easily imagine he was the first hunter that had ever swum here, and it might well have been true. He kicked off, eager to be free of the boat whose hull he could hear sounding like a drum with each lick of the water. Beneath him, barracudas hung like daggers, perfectly still in the current. A shoal of bright blue fish he had no name for rippled past, silken electrics dancing from nook to cranny. A little to his left, a large stately jewfish tempted him, but he was wise enough now not to waste his spears on something he couldn’t bring down. He turned in the water, scanning this way and that. A few streaks of silver flicked across the edge of his vision and he twisted, raised the speargun, and fired – all instinct. A second later he had a fat grunt wiggling on the end of his line, writhing and contorting as it died, leaking a line of thin purple blood that spiralled up towards the surface like cigarette smoke. He hauled it in, pleased with himself. The grunt was a big one. Even his father might be impressed. He looked around for more, but there was only cloud after cloud of tiny bonito and other fast swimmers he had no chance of spearing. He fastened the grunt to his belt and started to swim, trying to let his senses relax into the same state he managed to find when he was batting well, every sense as
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