Free Portion of the Sea by Christine Lemmon

before.”
    “Tell us more,” insisted a little boy sitting at my foot.
    I sighed. “My daddy with his glowing eyes bossed the Floridian around in his own boat and made me wish I had stayed onshore like a typical lady. ‘No, the other way,’ my father had shouted at the boat captain. ‘Cut off that school of mullet and drag the bait before them,’ he had ordered. ‘Go the other way again, then cast it among the mullet.’ It had to have been two, maybe three or four yards long! ‘Who’s ready to hook it?’ he had asked and it was then that he gazed at me for a moment with that tarpon-possessed look and said, ‘Baby, how about we hook ourselves a Silver King today?”’
    “Did he hook it?” asked a puny boy covered in freckles and dirt, knocking on my shoe.
    I cast my eyes sadly upon him and patted his head. “No, he didn’t. Not that day, nor the next, nor the next after that.”
    “It’s not to say he didn’t come close,” added Dahlia. “He did fifty or sixty times, and we kept telling him that ‘nearly’ catching one was going to have to be good enough.”
    “But back at the hotel he nearly cried at the bulletin board that posted all of the names of men who caught Silver Kings,” I added. “‘Daddy,”’ I told him. “Us ladies are getting sick of staying at this fishermens’ hotel. It’s smelly, and Grandmalia claims the men are making lip-smacking sounds at her. You caught a 300-pound jewfish. Isn’t that enough?’”
    I turned to see my mother napping in the periwinkles. “The day he hooked the shark was the day my mama and Grandmalia decided to leave him behind and head to Sanibel on our own.”
    “Your daddy caught a shark?” asked a boy with no front teeth.
    “Not really. The shark cut himself free the moment it closed its jaws on the bait,” I said.
    I lightly kicked the little boy off my toes, then tilted my head upward toward the afternoon clouds, and closed one eye. “Lord God Almighty,” I said, and then paused. That is the way I prayed out loud, and that was my favorite prayer of all, for praying out loud and in front of anyone made me feel bashful.
    “Lord God Almighty,” repeated a male voice.
    I gasped thinking it might be the Lord himself responding to my prayer, but when I opened my second eye I saw it was a boy around my age.
    “Our Heavenly Father,” his lips muttered, his head bowed and his eyes sealed. “Thank you for the fish in the sea and all that you have created. Forgive her daddy for abandoning his family and bring him back safely. And, please, help him secure a Silver King. In Your name, Amen.”
    I opened my other eye and cracked a smile at the boy. It was the first time in all my nearly fifteen years of living that I had ever smiled at any boy. He grinned back, and I saw he wasn’t as ugly as all the other boys in the world. He was bony, puny, and smaller than me, but his eyes were a crystal green color and clear as a Florida freshwater spring. They were easy to look into and when I did, I think I measured depth.
    Abigail lifted her head off the pillow of flowers, and I walked over and gave her my hand, pulling her up.
    “That boy was a gentleman, finishing your prayer like that,” she said to me. “A gentleman is tender towards the bashful. Remember that, Ava.”
    I felt my face turning red. “It’s time we get going,” I said. “Do you men think this land here is good for claiming?”
    “Ava,” whined my mother. “It’s full of periwinkles. Of course it is.”
    “I’d probably give it a day or two,” said the father of the boy who had prayed for my daddy, the boy with the deep eyes. “Wait for your daddy to show. He’d probably like to take a look at it himself.”
    “Thanks for your input,” I said. “What land are you claiming?”
    “We didn’t come here to claim any land. We were cruising aboard a sloop when it went aground in San Carlos Bay. We’re just passing time until the tide floats it off. We figured we’d explore