Chapter 25: Hauled Out

He hit the net with a slap, and the chain-weighted mesh folded over him.

For a second his face was there under the water, white, eyes wide behind his glasses.

Then the weight took him down.

The donors screamed.

Nobody went in.

I stood at the rail with my laptop against my chest and watched the bubbles come up out of the mesh.

I thought about a yellow line.

I thought about green going gray.

It was a long second.

Then I turned and screamed for Margie.

The Second Wind was already coming.

Margie had her alongside the float line before I finished her name, with the store owner's boat right behind her and the brothers' wives behind that.

"Gaff!" Margie yelled.

One of the wives threw her one.

Margie leaned out over her rail, hooked the float line, and threw it over the hauler block on her side.

The hydraulics whined.

The line came up over the block, dripping.

Then the net came up behind it.

Then Lewis Barrows came up in it.

He hung in the mesh, upside down, one arm through a hole and one foot through another, coughing water out of his nose.

His glasses were gone.

His new navy jacket was over his head.

One orange earplug swung on its cord against his ear.

The news camera had followed every inch of it.

Margie stopped the hauler with him dangling over her deck.

"Well," she said, loud enough for every boat in the cove. "That's undersized. I'll have to throw it back."

Somebody on the brothers' boat laughed.

Then all seventeen boats.

"Cut me down," Barrows said hoarsely.

"In a minute, Lewis. I want them to get your good side."

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