It was a big fish, huge, longer than her boat but it was been a fish - no shark, no dolphin, no whale. It was a giant catfish entangled in the net and Nora couldn't do anything with it. It resisted and trembled trailing Nora's boat from side to side. It tried to dive and the boat dangerously swayed. The engine had no enough power to float away with the huge fish that pulled all the boat aside. Nora didn't want her boat turn over into stormy ocean and to sink, and she released her het. It was despair. She just wanted to get some fish for the market and dinner table but it turned up for many troubles.
Rain begun. It was small but had become harder and harder. The big wave threw her with her boat away from the fish that still trembling in the net. "No fish, - she thought. - And no net". Water into her boat had come. Its level had lifted higher and higher. Nora turned on her engine to bilge pump for drawing water away. But water still coming. She took a bucket and began to throw the water out her boat.
Lightings blinked everywhere that every time accompanied with loud thunder. "God! - She thought. - I don't want to die..." She thought about God first time after a long time. Once her children lost their father that didn't back from the ocean. They would be completely orphans if she couldn't back home. She saw the huge fish in her net not so far away. It had jump on the water surface trying to get free but the net didn't let it go. Here and there, lightings continued to flash. One of them hatted near Nora when the fish was on the top of next wave that emerged to her. It was incredibly bright and loud. She blinded and got deaf and she thought that’s the end of all that she’ll not back home. But her vision came back and she saw that the fish stopped to wave. It turned its belly up and didn't move. "Maybe I'll try to free my net?" and she started the engine again. But it was impossible to free net because high waves swayed her boat and the fish and threw them to each other. She couldn't come closer. But she found one of ropes of her net. She tied it to aft' hook and pushed an accelerator.
They moved very slowly. Rain weaken but she still threw the water out her boat with the bucket. She didn't know how much fuel in the boat's tank. The coast was far and she was ready to take paddles. The huge body floated behind and broke all their motion. Any way she begun to work with her paddles. It was long infinity when she saw the beach far away.
Her engine stopped when just two hundred feet that separated her from the coast. She felt tiredness that never knew before but she knew let's to get the shore and to drag the fish and the boat to the beach. When she got the strip of sand she fall down and layed some time without any motion. She found will to lift herself on her legs and to walk home. She couldn't do anything alone. Her children must comeback from school.
"Liam, Kerry," she called them.
"What happened, Ma?" Liam asked.
"I need your help, children," she said. "Let's to take all baskets that we have. The huge fish is on the beach. We must to treat it. Maybe we can to sale it on the fish market." She herself took two big kitchen knives for meat.
They came to the shore. The huge body was bigger than the boat laying near it. It still unmovably cover into the net. Waves got closer and closer to them.
"My God..." Liam amazed.
"How it was?" Kerry said.
"Don't ask, please, dear", Nora said. "Just help me to free it from the net. After that we'll cut it for flat pieces of meat"
Nora had cut the fish flash and Kerry had put pieces of meat into baskets and strewed them with salt that Liam brought from home in two big paper packs.
It was hard job. They finished when the sun touched the far edge of the ocean. Just the big skeleton still laying on the sand. And some seagulls turned around it. Their three refrigerators were full. Nora prepared dinner with catfish liver in vegetables.
She laid her children into bed and begun to read aloud a tell story about Old man and The Golden Fish that could realize all his wishes, but Kerry got asleep and Liam too. Nora thought that next morning she'll awake early because let's to milk the cow and to fix up the net.
She herself had enough wishes to ask the fish but she didn't. And she didn’t free it. The catfish’s eyes still stay in her view. It was beg for mercy in them.
She felt sorry about the huge fish.
For tears.