Then a taxi drove up, which made Mr. Kim grab her arm. It never crossed Tom-Su's mind, though, to suspect a trick. Pops let out a snort and moved sideways to the edge of the wharf, where he looked below and side to side. Drop of water crossword clue. 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. Words that meant something and nothing at the same time. They were salty and tough and held fast to the hook.
Even the trailer birds had more success, robbing from the overflow. He was bending close to the water. Sandro Meallet is a graduate of The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. In our neighborhood it was unheard-of. Like that fish-head business. We'd stopped at the doughnut shack at Sixth Street and Harbor Boulevard and continued on with a dozen plus doughnut holes.
He also had trouble looking at us -- as if he were ashamed of the shiner. When he'd finally faded from sight, we called below for Tom-Su to come up top, but we heard no movement. Bait, for example, not Tom-Su's state of mind, was something we had to give serious thought to. Drop into water crossword. Nobody was in a rush to see another fish at the end of Tom-Su's line. Instead maybe we'd just beat him and drag him along the ground for a good stretch. They were quickly separated by the taxi driver, who kept Mr. Kim from his wife as she scooted into the back of the taxi and locked the door.
By our third day at 300, though, the fish had thinned out terribly, and because we had to row back across in the late afternoon, when the port was at its busiest, we needed more time to get to the fish market with our measly catches. Take him to the junior high -- Dana Junior High, okay? While the father stood still and hard, he checked our buckets and drop lines like a dock detective. Drop fish bait lightly crossword clue. Suddenly, though, Tom-Su broke into his broadest, toothiest grin ever. In the morning we walked along the tracks, a couple of us throwing rocks as far down the railway yard as we could.
Tom-Su walked with his eyes fastened to every crosstie at his feet. ONE morning we came to the boxcar and found that Tom-Su was gone. "Tom-Su, " one of us once said, "pull your pants down a little so you don't hurt yourself! The fridge smelled of musty freon. Once or twice, though, one of us climbed under the wharf to make sure he wasn't hanging with the twin.
He had a little drool at the corner of his mouth, and he turned to me and grinned from ear to ear. My teeth might've bucked on me, too, with nothing but seaweed for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When he saw a few of us balancing eagle-armed on a thin rail, he tried it and fell right on his backside. Around him were the headless bodies of a perch and two mackerel that had briefly disturbed their relationship. Principal Dickerson sent Louie home on his reputation alone. But compared with what was to come, the bruises had been nothing. Tom-Su had been silent and calm as always. A few times a tightly wadded piece of paper worked to catch a flounder.
When we moved around him, we froze at what we saw Tom-Su looking at on the water. Under it, in it, on it. We stood on the edge of the wharf and looked down at the faces staring up at us. SOMETIME in the middle of August we sat on the tarp-covered netting as usual.
We yelled for him to start to pull the line up -- and he did! Tom-Su spoke very little English and understood even less. Needless to say, our minds were blown away. The drool and cannibal eyes made some of us think of his food intake. Tom-Su popped a doughnut hole into his mouth and took in the world around him. "I'm sure they'll have room for him there.
The face and the water and Tom-Su were in a dream of their own that we came upon by accident. During the walks Tom-Su joined up with us without fail somewhere between the projects and the harbor. THE next day Tom-Su caught up with us on the railroad tracks. When he looked up at us again, all the wonder had reappeared and poured into his eyes. Tom-Su's hand traced over a flat reflection, careful not to touch the surface. We peeked in and saw Tom-Su, lying on his side in the corner, his face pressed against the wall. Green ocean plants in jars, in plastic bags, in boxes, and open on the shelves, as if they were growing on vines. Once or twice we'd seen Pops stepping along the waterfront, talking to people he bumped into. Fish slime shined on his lips. To top it off, Tom-Su sported a rope instead of a belt, definitely nailing down the super sorry look.
The mother got in a few high-pitched words of her own, but mostly she seemed to take the bullet-shot sentences left, right, left, right. From its green high ground you could see clear to Long Beach. Tom-Su removed the fish from his mouth and spit the head onto the ground. When he was done grabbing at the water, he turned to see us crouched beside him. His eyes focused and refocused several times on the figure at the end of the wharf. At Sixth and Harbor the tracks branched into four, and on the two middle tracks were the boxcars.
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. As a matter of fact, it looked like Tom-Su's handsome twin brother. Tom-Su's mother gave a confused look as Dickerson wrote on a piece of paper. We went back to the Ranch. As if he were scared of the sunlight. IN the beginning it had bugged us that Tom-Su went straight to his lonely area, sat down, and rocked, rocked, rocked. And sometimes we'd put small pear or apple wedges onto our hooks and catch smelt and mackerel and an occasional halibut.
The cries came from Tom-Su. After we filled our buckets, we rolled up the drop lines, shook Tom-Su from his stupor, and headed for the San Pedro fish market. How Tom-Su got out of his apartment we never learned. Anyway, Harlem Shoemaker had a huge indoor swimming pool that we thought should've evened things up some. His bad features seemed ten times more noticeable. We tossed the chewed-into mackerel into the empty bucket and headed back to our drop lines, but not before we set Tom-Su up in his private spot.