Fishboy Read online

  Who is this? he asked and I tried to shout Fishboy Fishboy, my arm’s asleep, but he said Make a fist with that rubber arm or by god Brune I’ll hack you here and now. I still had the pins and needles so I was slow to raise it. The blood flowed back into my arm and I managed to make a fist I shook in his face.

  Just be glad, said the cook, and he sat back down in the corner.

  I made sure he saw that even though my arms were puny they were more real than rubber. He saw it all right, but I felt his eyes on me until the morning star rose and tangled in our rigging.

  A loose timber from the sun’s sunken wreckage floated up and was dawn on the water. In its cool red light you could see how the waters around us were disturbed from beneath. Globes of old air rose to the surface and shattered, spritzing blooms of kicked-up mud. Mobs of waves rushed crowded swells, slapping faces and knocking caps off to the wind. Lonny watched the confusion as he stood at the stern pissing patterns across our wake.

  I think John’s got him one, Lonny said as he tucked himself into his pants.

  About twenty lengths behind us the ocean parted and a giant shark danced on its tail with John hunkered on its back. John’s backside bounced just forward of the dorsal and he rode the shark with one hand high in the air and the other sunk deep in a gill.

  He’s a fucking bucking bronco, Lonny said.

  John drove his charger alongside the starboard rail, close enough so we could admire the denticled topskin of the beast, close enough so we could hear John’s ribs creak to keep his lungs from bursting, close enough so we were doused in spray as the shark thrashed to dismount its rider. The two disappeared deeply again.

  Lonny gathered his axes and put a pelican hook on a large lifting line. Somebody told John that a shark ate his girlfriend, Lonny said to me. Get you a hammer or a lead pipe to bash its head in when we bring it aboard. It’s a big one, Lonny said. John hates sharks, said Lonny.

  There was nobody else out on deck to help us except the Idiot. The weeping man who said Fuck was still somewhere covered in the garbage pile along the rail and Ira Dench was lashed tight to the mast above us. The cook was in the galley where I had left him earlier. I had slipped away when I thought he was trying to teach me how to cook.

  You don’t want to scald a soup to death, the cook had said to me and I said no. He said You don’t want to gut big fish without bleeding their tail, and I said no. You don’t want to wring off the head of a crustacean until just before he’s dead, said the cook and I said no, and I kept saying no until I could slip away out on deck where Lonny was pissing over the rail.

  John surfaced sidestroking, dragging the shark backwards by the tail to drown it.

  Hey! he shouted.

  Lonny tossed the hook end of the lifting line overboard to John and we had the shark by the tail. Lonny wrapped the line around the winch head and set the gears to work. The weight of the shark pitched our deck as the creature inched up over the side, half drowned, still twisting and snapping. Lonny took in more line as John climbed aboard and I stood back from the beast which was half the length of our ship.

  He’ll try to fight us on the deck, Lonny said and just as soon as the shark touched down and there were a few pounds of slack in the line the shark came alive ripping and smashing the top hatches into splinters, snatching and snapping into pieces the planks and tools Lonny and John had used to ease the beast aboard. The deck was slick with water and slime and we all, even John, slipped and fell trying to run away forward.

  John said Here’s a bullfighting trick and he came down from on high with a long spike through the shark’s snout. Coughing up blood-speckled foam, John put another line through the shark’s gills and pulled the lines tight around the winches. The shark lifted suspended off the deck.

  The cook appeared in the aft cabin door, a pot of coffee in one hand, a clutch of mugs in the other.

  John pushed his sharpened fingernails into the shark’s throat until the white skin tore. Handful by handful he tore at the shark’s underskin. The shark chewed the air it swam in, seeking the source of the blood it smelled. John tore farther the white underbelly and things began to fall to the deck: a sheep and a wagon wheel, boulder-sized boluses of squid and fish, a pumpkin. John tried a backhand fillet with his fingernails, raking long rips in the skin, and there was a bloody rain of flying fish and an oil drum boomed down. There was the stench of digestion. Working his knifelike fingers over a large knot near the anus of the shark, John gave the carcass a good tearing pull.

  Out of the carcass fell the forms of the two men in prison blues, their uniforms dissolved and their skins burned white from the acid in the shark’s stomach. Their eyes were closed and we thought them dead at first, goopy blood of hemorrhage from their noses, their eardrums split with pressure, their hair gelled to their heads like newborns’. The slithering stench of sea death that they lay in inched them toward us and we all held our breath, and one of them turned his head toward us, and I was sure that it must have been the ruby eater because when his eyes opened there was nothing but shattered red within to see by.

  The cook stepped forward and put two mugs into shackled hands. You boys look like you could use some coffee, he said, and he poured them some.

  John rummaged through the shark’s offal and I wondered just what clues he was looking for, a girl’s hairclip or a girl’s bonnet, or a girl’s thighbone or skull. Lonny stretched the skin of the shark carcass and roped it open above us. The way Lonny made a shelter of the shark reminded me of the way the long summer boats rigged canopies of canvas against the sun. The men in the boats used to give me odd twists of driftwood that had snagged their nets, driftwood they would carve a bit into two-headed snakes and crocodiles. I was daydreaming about ever playing with those wood scraps again when Lonny came along and pressed a shovel into my hands.

  We followed John and shoveled over the side the things from the shark he had already looked through, the rotted eyes and livers, the lungs and guts of creatures the shark had eaten. We shoveled the debris the shark had snuffled up from the bottom, mostly things thrown from ships, oil cans and bottles and plastic, and then we hit another stretch of the shark’s mealtimes, some skinless organs, some float sacs, bladders, clutches of arteries, all undigested. Lonny found a bright red swizzle stick, he said, from a fancy ocean liner. He stuck the swizzle stick mast in a coconut hull and gave it to me as a boat. We’re best of friends now, aren’t we, my little evil Fishboy, he said, and I put the coconut boat aside until my work had been done.

  John finished looking through the shark’s innards and sat in the stern with his legs over the side. He spit out the seawater as it drained from his nose. He spit out the bloody speckled foam as he coughed it up from his chest.

  He’ll never find her, Lonny whispered to me. Never in a million years, he said.

  The cook came out with a long knife and a platter to cut shark steaks. Lonny and I had just about finished shoveling the shark offal overboard. Between helping the cook, which carried the risk of learning to cook and being split in two, and helping Lonny, which carried the risk of just not being caught alone with, I chose helping Lonny. Lonny and I had just about put the mess over when the cook said to wait a minute. The cook lifted a bloody strap of leather from Lonny’s shovel.

  This looks like my old bridle, he said.

  The cook sorted around in the pocket of what was one of the shark’s mealtimes.

  This looks like the face of a clock I used to have.

  This looks like the handle of my wagon’s wheel brake, and Lonny said There sits a wagon wheel.

  The cook was desperate on the deck, wanting to know where the rest of the stuff was, and Lonny and I pointed to the large hole in the rail we had been shoveling everything through.

  It could be anybody’s stuff, said Lonny and he began to finish shoveling, and I wondered if what the white-hulled ship’s Medicine Man had said was true about the landslides ashore, was this anything that could have been the cook’s?

&
nbsp; The cook said You are probably right, and he said it in a way like if the stuff was his and shark-eaten, it would be too much for him to know.

  But as the cook reached down to gather his platter and rusty butcher knife, he picked up what had looked like a bloody purse. Inside the purse was an old worn book.

  This is my poetry, said the cook.

  The cook opened the book. I could make out big white pages of small black words wasting space.

  Poetry, said Lonny. I thought you was a cook, and Lonny might as well have added goddamnit in the way he spoke to the cook.

  The cook opened the last page of the book and showed us a photograph. In the photograph was a tall black woman and five light brown children.

  This is my family, said the cook, and I had to look away from the picture of the Negress and the children. I looked down on the deck to see if any of his family might be with us. I saw that Lonny and the cook had the same idea but nobody said anything, just Lonny let the cook look through the remnants of the shark as John had done before, and then we shoveled the whole matter over the side.

  At sunset the cook came out on deck and rattled a spoon in a pot. Dinner is served, he said.

  I had been sailing my coconut boat back and forth across the lifeboat Lonny had filled with seawater, Lonny figuring that that was the best way to keep the two men who used to wear prison blues preserved for a while, even though he did not give them through the night to live. You could look down into the lifeboat like it was a fishtank and see the two men bubbling at the bottom, a flounder resting on one’s chest and an occasional lobster kicking around the other one’s head. I tapped my coconut boat around in the water until I thought I could see one of the men let his arm float up in annoyance to snatch at it from below. I would lift my boat and the image of the men in the water would ripple apart. Once the Idiot tried to take my toy away from me and Lonny clubbed him and gave the boat back. We’re best pals, aren’t we, Lonny said to me.

  Lonny had been trying to comfort John when the cook said dinner was served. There’s some hope, Lonny kept saying to John until the cook rattled the spoon in the pot. Lonny realized he had scrambled to his feet too quickly and had to stand beside John a little longer than he would have liked to make up for it. We’ll find her, there’s hope, Lonny was still saying, walking backwards.

  No one had seen the weeping man who said Fuck since he had buried himself beneath the mud of rotting garbage. All right, my friend, Lonny said to the garbage. Lonny said he was as sentimental as the next person about whoring wives but enough was enough. Lonny turned the sea hose on the mound, breaking the stinking debris and mud apart. Muddy garbage ran in a river out the drain. Lonny laid the torrent of water top to bottom, removing first the rotten fish, then the black vegetables, and then the sour fruit. Soon all that was left was the sandy mound of bottom mud which Lonny flooded with the hose.

  Lonny took the hose off the spot. Where the man who said Fuck had laid in the garbage and muddy sand for three days was just a scoured-bright place on the deck. There was no one there. We went to the rail and watched as the last of the washing water dripped through the drain. There was a curtain of sand crystals floating downward through the water. The tiny bits caught the setting sun in a drapery of sparkling remorse.

  And to think he owed me five dollars, Lonny said. Let’s eat, I’m hungry, he said.

  For dinner that night we had grilled shark steaks, oysters on the half-shell with a chopped bean leaf and pepper garnish. Barracuda soup, tuber fruit sliced and fried, seaweed salad, boiled lobster, gourd casserole, thick biscuits, and mule-brain sweetbread cracked from the skull of our ship’s figurehead. To drink the cook had wine, a gallon of methyl alcohol mixed with crushed hackberries.

  Have some, Fishboy, Lonny said and he poured a little wine into a saucer for me. Maybe if someone else had been there Lonny would not have offered me wine. Maybe if John had not been sulking on deck, maybe if the weeping man had not disappeared or if Mr. Watt ever came out of the wheelhouse or if Ira Dench had not lashed himself to the mast, Lonny would not have offered me the wine and I would not have drunk it, but I did drink a little of it. It was worse than sucking a lemon but I liked the way it made me feel. When once while we were eating we heard Ira Dench holler Rogue wave! weakly from the mast, Lonny yelled out the porthole Shut up! and I stood on the galley table and stuck my head out the porthole and yelled Shut up! too. Have some more wine, Fishboy, Lonny said and I did.

  We three ate, me and Lonny and the Idiot, and the cook took up the plates as we finished them. The cook gave me bad looks. Take some soup around to the others, the cook said to me. He gave me a bucket of soup and a ladle, and a stack of bowls I put on my head like a helmet.

  Go away, Fishboy, John told me when I went to him with the soup.

  The water in the lifeboat where the shackled men lay preserving was dark and star-sprinkled. I poured some soup in the water and stirred it with the ladle.

  Climbing the mast I spilled most of Ira Dench’s soup.

  Could you just pour a bit into my mouth? he said. His voice was hoarse from crying out Rogue wave. I held a little to his lips. There was barely a mouthful and it spilled out. He said he must have tightened himself too tightly to the mast. Behind him his stomach saddle-bagged his spine. I said I would loosen the ropes and he said NO! Don’t! He said that would be just when the rogue wave would strike, when he was least prepared. He said just to tighten him up a little and be on my way. I ran my hands around him and found a place where there was some slack and pulled it out, and he thanked me in a stifled voice you could barely hear.

  Climbing down the mast I put a step down on a rung before I was ready. I did it just as I was passing the empty bowl from one hand to the other. And maybe it was because the ship rolled, and maybe it was because I had been drinking a saucer of wine and had forgotten the rule of being aloft: one hand for the ship and one hand for yourself. And maybe the rungs were slick with Ira Dench’s spilled soup and maybe even Ira managed a rope trick, tied up as he was. All I know for sure is that the bowl went backward skyward and I fell forward downward. I tripped on an antenna and spun off a high-wire brace. My fingers for an instant gripped a rain gutter until the rest of my body fell by and snatched me off. I pretty much struck the deck outside the galley face first and it felt like a bowl of salty soup had broken in my mouth.

  I remember the cook holding me over the sink as things fell out of my mouth, some teeth, a bit of tongue, a torrent of food soaked in homemade hackberry wine. Between bouts of mouth-washing the cook went over to serve the galley table. Black Master Chief Harold and his boiler devil and fire lackey had smelled food in the vents, and later I wished I had been able to see how the cook acted when the engine room door had blown open, the cook expecting rubber-armed men and getting the charcoaled trio instead. They sat me down beside the black master chief when I seemed better, and I remember he smelled like chimney draft in a rainstorm.

  Dazed and maybe even a little drunk as I was, I remember feeling the cook’s popularity spread among the full-stomached men seated at the galley table. They watched the cook clean up the stove, they watched him put the platters and plates into soapy buckets for me to scrub later. His popularity soared when they watched him open his locker atop the oven overhang. They craned their necks to see what the cook had brought in his little leather satchel to hoard for himself, to save himself through the unexpected hungers and scurvy, and everyone saw that the locker was empty except for the little poetry book. There was no potted meat, no sweets, no medicine or mouthwash bottles filled with scotch, not even tobacco, the cook having to pick off the deck the men’s butts to roll his own in tissue. The cook took down the poetry book and when he turned, the men were digging around in their pockets.

  Black Master Chief Harold gave the cook a pouch of tobacco, his lackeys gave him matches dipped in wax and rolling papers. The Idiot gave him the rotting toe fetish on the string, and Lonny, teary-eyed with wine and love, stood up unsteadily and d
rew a fine bladder dagger out of his shirt.

  Hey, cook, you want this? said Lonny, and I think we all wondered if Lonny meant Where do you want this? But Lonny handed the blade to the cook handle first and claimed he had personally stolen it from a church where it had been used to fillet the hearts from virgins.

  Thank you, said the cook. And then the cook in a swirl of Big Miss Magine dress hem spun around and flicked beyond belief in speed the bladder dagger into a tiny target of pine knot in the door of the plate cabinet.

  It throws well, said the cook. Thanks, thanks a lot, he said, and then he hawked.

  He hawked again, something caught rumbling in his chest.

  What! said Lonny.

  Hawk! hawked the cook.

  Oh god, said Lonny, Lonny retreating from the sound of rattling phlegm, embarrassed by the gift-giving that had tainted the after-eating.

  The cook hawked again, leaning shouldered over the sink, shaking his head, smacking his lips.

  I can’t stand that noise! said Lonny.

  Hawk! said the cook.

  Spit, then, damn it! said Lonny. Lonny unhooked an unlit lantern and said he was going out to look at John’s charts before he split something.

  The black master chief and his lackeys went below after picking leftovers out of the pot of the next day’s soup. Out on deck went the Idiot to break apart my coconut boat.

  I lay back drunk and dazed in the corner of the galley. I lay back with no gift to give. The cook rolled a cigarette and lit it. He started coughing again, his face red with the effort to bring up what was hung in his chest. He coughed and hawked until he seized the thing up in his throat and sucked it into his mouth. When he spit it out, the thing spun through the air and landed squarely in the pot of the next day’s soup. The cook balled up the rotten toe fetish and threw that in the soup, too. He sat down at the galley table with his poetry book and smoked his cigarette.