Dad and I left lunch early while Mom and the girls stayed at the table and had tea with lemon in it. We went out to the beach where Dad showed me how to keep the spear pointed away from myself at all times. He reminded me not to shoot myself in the foot by accident and showed me where I could spearfish with my new gun.

“No closer to the beach than the big pine tree on the castle side of the bay and no closer than the end of the pier on this side. Got it?” Yes.

I knew that these were those absolute kinds of rules that you couldn’t even think about breaking.

“And another thing,” said Dad. “You are never to lend this weapon to anyone else or use it when anyone else is swimming with you. Never!”

“Yes, Dad.”

Unlike most rules, these were enjoyable rules because they showed me that, as Dad said, “This is no toy, it’s a real and dangerous object like a car or a rifle.”

I realized I was getting to manhood now and I told myself that even though it would be fun to point my spear gun at Rachael and make her scream, I wouldn’t because when I had this thing in my hand I was a man, and Dad said men didn’t put people at risk.

It took a little getting used to, swimming with the flippers while keeping your arms still so you could hold your spear gun, but by the time I had swum opposite the big pine tree on the hill above the far side of the bay, I was used to it enough that I decided I could look for something to kill.

I saw a tiny wrasse floating motionless on the face of one of the huge rocks that littered the cliff wall of the bay. It was quietly sucking in tiny particles of plankton I could not see but knew were there because Mom had read to me about them from our book The Wonderful Secrets of the Deep. I held my breath as I swam closer, then I slowly moved my arm forward so that the spear points of my gun were about six inches from the unsuspecting wrasse.