This article is from the fall 2025 edition of Mobile Baykeeper’s print quarterly, CURRENTS. The magazine is mailed to active members who have given more than $50 in the past year. To get on the magazine’s mailing list, donate here.
By Jodie Cain Smith
I dig my paddle into the water and coax my kayak around the final turn of the tall grass where the swamp meets the bay. The water is flat. No chop at all. Four of the biggest stingrays I’ve ever seen glide through the water next to me. One brushes its angel wing against the left side of my kayak and breaks the surface. It pauses for a second and looks at me with one bulging eye, as if to say, “You coming?”
I flinch, watching the barb on the end of his tail cut through the water. Then more rays surface and surround my boat. Could it be? Surely it is! The most wonderful phenomenon stirs around me. With a tight grip on my paddle, I slash through the water, furiously pulling at the water as fast as I can. Right stroke, left stroke. Right stroke, left stroke.
“Jules!” my brother yells from his kayak in front of me.
“I know. I see.” I can barely get the words out as I paddle harder, faster.
Then, I hear them. The bells! Bells ring out from every pier and dock we pass along the western shore. This was what we’ve been waiting for. Hoping for but dare not pray the word aloud. All summer we watched the water. Begged in silence. Pleaded. And now, finally, a jubilee!
A jubilee! That explains it: the hot, shallow water, the still air, the gigantic stingrays having left their sandy, safe bottom to linger on top of the water. Jubilee, a word synonymous with celebration and festivity because that’s what one is — a rare and wonderful occurrence as if God tells us, “Stop trying so hard. Allow me to provide. Today, I give you all the bounties my wonderful sea has to offer.” There is a complex scientific explanation for a jubilee — an occurrence that happens only in Mobile Bay and Tokyo Bay — but belief in miracles runs deep here, and on somedays the soul needs a miracle.
The mystique of jubilees goes far beyond a sudden change in the salinity of the water causing the appearance of the fish, crab, and shrimp in mass quantities. Creature behavior changes during these fleeting moments. Their skittish ways dissipate. A fish that normally darts off at the slightest contact with a human being becomes unnaturally depressed, as if they swim here to die and choose to make their death easy and quick. And not just the fish. Crabs line up for suicide. Climbing up tree stumps, rocks, and pylons, they wait for their ultimate demise.
“Jules!” Matt calls to me from the ladder as I near our pier. He ascends the ladder and pulls his kayak to the deck as I paddle the last stretch of open water.
Looking across the water, I see every member of the Martin clan. Kate and Mallie rush down the pier, as fast as Kate can carry the toddler. Garrett scales the rock bulkhead, five-gallon buckets in each hand in lieu of gig and net. Mama and Daddy stand in knee-deep water, a metal tub between them. Lauren, surrounded by children, shouts directions to the little ones to grab crabs by the back of their shells.
“Don’t get yourself pinched, now!” she calls.
I will ruin their day later, after the jubilee. For a few precious moments, we will believe that the world is safe, and life is sustainable.
Matt wastes no time in tying a rope from his waist to one handle of a large metal tub and drops into the water below with his cast net slung over one shoulder. Matt is in full jubilee form, with a gig in one hand and a scoop net in the other, ready to grab and snatch and sweep up everything in his path.
“It’s a jubilee, Jules! A damn jubilee!” Matt’s grin fills his face.
“Take this.” He tosses the gig to me sideways. “I’ll do better with the cast net.”
Matt throws the scoop net back up to the dock and trudges through the water, around the pier, back toward the shore. He winds the cast net’s leash into a loose lasso with one hand. Then, he drapes part of the large circular net over one shoulder while collecting the rest of the net in a neat bunch with his other hand. The iron weights sewn in the hem of the net sound like the hi-hat of a jazz percussionist. Matt becomes one with his net. He holds the center point of the net between his front teeth then leans forward on his left foot and rotates back on his right hip. Twisting forward, he releases the net, casting a shimmering circle of light blue nylon. The shiny, wet strings pause in mid-air before falling into a perfect circle on the water’s surface. With a sharp tug on the leash, Matt closes the net around a school of unsuspecting fish.
Toward a breaching sandbar, a throng of oxygen-deprived flounder skulk to breathable water. The deeper water betrayed them, as it does on occasion in Mobile Bay. The salinity of the water is now too dense, forcing the fish to shore in search of breath. But the flounder find no reprieve today, only the prongs of my gig.
I snag two flounders, both a good eighteen inches long and run over to Matt, ripping my first and second treasures from the long screws. They land in the tub, flopping and gasping.
Near the rock bulkhead, Lauren, using a small net, scoops blue crab from the sandbars, collecting them into another metal tub as more wet sand emerges from the retreating tide. “We’ve got soft shells!” Lauren yells to me, referring to molting female blue crab. A jubilee in late July when the crab is molting is so special, it almost repairs my relationship with God.
My stomach rumbles with anticipation of fried soft-shell crabs, my favorite seafood delicacy. Deviled crab, deep-fried crab balls, stuffed flounder
roasted over an open flame — today would bring all of this. As I pierce my next flounder, my mouth waters.
Kate, on the end of the pier, holds Mallie up to our brass bell. Mallie’s chubby arms, still plump with baby fat, yank up and down on the bell’s rope, banging the clapper against the corroded walls of the bell. The clamor beckons everyone in earshot. Jubilee!
Standing knee deep, I watch both neighbors and strangers appear from all directions to our anointed stretch of land. Within minutes, the people charge from the tall grass, woods, and swamp that surround our small haven. As they swarm the shore, rushing to the water before the feast disappears, I scan the tree line. At last, a boy with a glowing mop of hair appears on the beach. Barefoot and bare-chested, he plows into the water. I watch as he grabs a flounder barehanded and tosses it up on the beach.
Jubilees don’t last long. Just as quickly as the phenomenon appears, the wind could shift, sending any missed treasure back to deeper water. I grab a bucket off the pier and splash through the water to the boy. Thrusting my gig back into the water, I spear another flounder. Twenty-four inches of sustenance writhing on the end of my stick, and I marvel at the size.
“Cole!” I push the bucket into his arms. “Take this. And fill it up.” For the first time in a year, I am alive, as if the warm water has washed me clean of hard-fought living. Every strike of my gig, successful or not, pumps adrenaline through my veins, pushes out the fatigue, makes room for vitality. A crab nips at my little toe, but even the slight pain is a blessing. Alive! I am alive!
I hold my latest trophy high in the air, displaying my effortless catch. “Cole, look at the size of this thing!” The free-for-all pauses for a moment as
cheers rise from my fellow revelers. Cole’s grin catches sunlight as he holds out the bucket, ready to accept the fish.
“Matt’s gonna have to teach us how to clean fish,” I say as I drop another flounder, number six, into Cole’s bucket.
“I’m ready to learn! Now switch with me,” Cole says, handing me the bucket. “It’s my turn with the gig!” The boy splashes away through the water and I think that is how every eleven-year-old boy in the world should be — free to splash and yell and spill joy and energy from every pore.
I move closer to the shore, midway between the end of the pier and the rock line. In the clear, shallow water, I see beneath the surface. Sunken logs
litter the sandy bottom, making me step with care. Just before I clamber over one, a school of silver eels escapes their hiding place, forcing me back two steps to avoid their razor-sharp teeth. Not everything a jubilee offers up is worth snagging.
As I move around the log, several boats appear on the horizon. From the spray coming off the hulls, I know the boats are coming straight toward us. Normally, Matt chases away such vessels with a verbal threat or a warning shot, but today we have plenty to share. Today, we have abundance.
“Jessie!” I call to my niece who’s dumping her bucket of goodies into a large tub on the pier, “Grab an empty tub and bring it over here.”
Over the gurgling of suffocating flounder and the snipping of crab claws trudging up the rock line near me, I hear the true sounds of Jubilee. All our neighbors forget to be fearful or guarded and join the festival of fish. Elated voices rise above the water as hands, arms, backs, and legs lift from the water weeks of good, life-sustaining food.
The boats arrive and before anchors hit the water delighted families fling themselves overboard with cast nets, gigs, buckets, and scoops. One man foregoes the use of a bucket entirely. Instead, he scoops fish from the water with his bare hands and tosses them directly into his boat.
Farther down the beach, squatters and cave dwellers flood the pale sand north of our house. Without a single piece of equipment, a man and a teenage boy charge the water to grab the moribund flounder two at a time. They toss the fish to a woman nearby on the beach. Standing guard over her loot, she catches each fish before adding them to the growing pile between her bare feet.
I return to my pillage, gathering softshell blue crab into the hem of my T-shirt, my improvised bucket. Just as my shirt threatens to overflow, Cole appears, and I let each precious crab slide from my shirt into the bucket.
“Thanks. Jessie should be on her way with another bucket, if we have any empties left.” Cole hands me the gig and crosses the sandbar. I swear to you the boy was skipping. Skipping! Jubilees are indeed pure magic. I sink to my knees and let the water lap around my hips. My arms are tired and I’ve no idea what we will do with such a harvest. Feast or famine, right?
I realize the bell has stopped ringing, so I look about, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mallie in her first jubilee. In the water, near the end of the pier, instead of Kate and Mallie, I see him. Blond. Dirty, wife-beater tank top. Troy jumps from a boat, fully clothed, and lands with a large spray of water. He runs. Sprints through the shallow water. To Kate. Kate is right there in his path. Holding Mallie. I can’t breathe. I feel the same panic that these deprived fish must feel. From behind, he snatches Mallie from Kate’s arms, shoves Kate into the water. Mallie’s face contorts. Somewhere near, but to my ears the sound is miles away. The sound of screaming. Kate’s face is pure horror. Garrett’s voice rings out, threatening, but I can’t see where he is either. Mallie writhes in Troy’s grip, struggling to break free, using her little fists to beat on him. Stranger danger.
My legs pound through the water as I fling a flounder off the sharp tips of my gig. I move toward Troy. Toward Mallie. My beautiful and joyful Mallie. Troy trudges through the water toward the boat. Faster and faster and, screaming in a voice I don’t recognize as my own, I reach them. I raise my right arm and bring it down hard. My gig finds Troy’s back, and I push it further into his flesh.
As blood flows into the water, encircling the three of us, he falls. I release my grip on the gig and snatch up Mallie. I run, but both of my feet lift off the ground. An arm wraps around my waist, and I feel my body rise. My toes stretch for the ground but find air instead. My back scrapes against the side of a boat. Garrett is close. I see him. He’s almost here. I throw Mallie to him. Save her. Please save her. Falling to the fiberglass bottom, my cheek crashes into something hard. When I open my eyes, Dave Richardson stands above me.
“Welcome aboard,” he says, gunning the engine and sending me sliding toward the stern.
Jodie Cain Smith is the author of Splintered Reeds and the founder of the Mobile Literary Festival. For more information about Splintered Reeds, visit jodiecainsmith.com.
