He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.
The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.
Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.
So, you're all probably wondering, on this Friday the 13th evening, how my son fared on his first day back at school. On a day notoriously and superstitiously unlucky, I dropped him off at 8 a.m. and watched him, looking very small, hobble into the building. (He took a spill on his scooter last night and hurt his knee.) It was difficult to let him go. In a weird way, it felt like I was sending him into battle.
I waited all day for my phone to ring. Each time it did, my stomach knotted. At 2 p.m., I started relaxing. At 3 p.m., I let out the breath that I didn't realize I'd been holding all day. When I finally got home, I felt like hugging him for a very long time. I didn't. Because he's a 13-year-old boy, and he would have thought I was having a stroke.
I celebrated last night with my son. Got him Taco Bell. Watched a terrible Bigfoot movie with him. (We have gotten into the habit of looking for films with less than two-stars ratings, and then pulling a Mystery Science Theater 3000 on them.) We laughed really hard. Ate some popcorn. Let go of a lot of stress that's built up over the last seven days.
Friday the 13th. No Jason bloodbath. No Santiago bad luck. Just some chicken quesadillas and really awful acting (including guys running around in a terrible, store-bought gorilla costume). And a son full of joy.
Saint Marty couldn't have asked for a better unlucky day.
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