Fishboy Read online

  Stir the soup, he said to me.

  I climbed up on the stove and stirred the soup with the spoon the size of a boat paddle. I was hoping that stirring soup didn’t count as learning how to cook.

  Stir it up, don’t let it burn, said the cook, and he snapped the pages of his book as he read them.

  I am blind, said Mr. Watt.

  I know, I said.

  Too much sun, he said.

  I put a sharkfish sandwich into his hands.

  What is happening? Mr. Watt asked me, and I told him Lonny was holding a lantern along John’s spine as John lay asleep.

  He’s trying to read the charts, Mr. Watt said. Mr. Watt asked me if Lonny had been drinking and I said yes. He’ll probably end up burning John with the lantern and there will be all kinds of trouble then. Lead me out on deck, said Mr. Watt and I put my head under his outstretched hand.

  On deck Lonny was carefully blowing crusted sea mud away from John’s tattooed skin revealing patterned islands beneath. When Lonny saw us, he said Good, Watt, you read this chart I’m lost already.

  I’m blind, said Mr. Watt. Isn’t that rich?

  No, it ain’t rich, said Lonny. How can you get blind when only you can read John’s charts?

  I know them by heart anyway, said Mr. Watt. Where did we leave off looking the last time? and Lonny said halfway up the right side of John’s shoulder blade.

  That’s a good chart he had tattooed professionally, Mr. Watt said.

  These on his back are the best, Lonny said. Some of the ones he did himself on his front are awful.

  John rolled his nakedness on his back and snored a snore that tornadoed the ragged twists of his beard around his mouth. Lonny was quick to move from the sweep of John’s arm, John swimming away from something in his sleep. The island chain Lonny had been studying broke leagues apart in a continental drift of skin and armpit.

  Damn it, said Lonny. Do you think we ought to roll him over? and Mr. Watt said to let him be, that he could recite from memory the whole chart if he sat down and started at the beginning.

  Lonny went inside to get his wine and left me holding the lantern by John’s living cartography, the snoring of which fluttered the wind around my face and smelled of low tide. Mr. Watt sat on the hatch in the dark. He said not to get too close to John with the hot lantern, and to stay out of Lonny’s reach when he has been drinking. I’m finding blindness to be very pleasant, so far, said Mr. Watt.

  Mr. Watt said the story of John’s charts began in the crook of his left thumb and forefinger, and I leaned in with the lantern and found the place. That was the harbor John shipped out from, then there is a tempest around the wrist. In the tempest his ship’s cargo of whiskey and malt shifted, the liquor spilling from broken plugs.

  And he drank some of it! said Lonny, Lonny taking another swig from the methyl hackberry wine. Lonny did not offer me any wine and I was sure it was because Mr. Watt was watching out for me even though Mr. Watt was blind. I would not have wanted any more wine anyway. My head hurt from drinking it before and the pain from falling had made me dizzy and sick. I was so dizzy and sick that I thought I saw things once or twice in the edges of the lantern light. I had turned the lantern low so as not to wake John, and once I thought I saw an angel flapping down to snatch Mr. Watt off the deck but then I saw it was just the flapping edge of the sharkskin canopy.

  The spilt malt fouled the fresh water, said Mr. Watt, and that brought on a fever.

  Like whiskey flu! said Lonny. Lonny held the wine jug out to me and put a finger to his lips. I shook my head no.

  Up in the elbow crook was the rogue wave they were boarded by, said Mr. Watt.

  Rogue wave! weakly echoed from the mast.

  Is Ira lashed to the mast again? asked Mr. Watt, and Lonny said no rogue wave had ever boarded the ship in all his years. Lonny said John just had a bad case of whiskey is all.

  Mr. Watt said rogue waves steal up on you, worse in the day than in the night, for some reason, Mr. Watt guessing that at night you are always sensing something out there, coming for you, but in day, in the broad light of day, bright sunny day with no storm not even a distant thunderhead setting down a gray squall like a pachyderm paw, a bright bright sunny day with the earth as ocean, you hear a distant approaching crackle, a thin sound, the only warning of an errant mountain of water moving from continental coast to continental coast, a mountain of water that could have started as a small wave from an iceberg calving at the pole, the dense, still blueness of the arctic water corrupted by an overburdening, a breaking in a glacial mass, and the wave begins, stretches, pulled into its stride by the moon, warmed by the sun, saddled with a cousin monsoon swell, also errant, the two sweeping over atolls that had tamed lesser waves into broken surf and foam, the two waves together building into one wave they say can travel the length of the earth and always its width, said Mr. Watt.

  Rogue waves always the worst in the broadest light of day when you hear them crackle behind you just as you reach for a crimping tool to fasten the end of a cotton sack full of shellcut and fillet, the sun on your naked back hot and your face cooled by the frosty smoke of ice in the open hold where your partner is handing down the other last cotton sack you have already crimped closed; a crisp, crackling sound you think for a moment is just a day at the beach, just the sound of surf beginning to tumble and break, that crackling sound, until you realize you are hundreds of miles from a shore and the horizon is heaping up on you, a sky of beautiful transparent green, and you look up and see a bright shimmering rainbow arcing in the crest of breaking spray taller than twice your mast, and you think I will soon lose this crimping tool overboard, and you think My most merciful God, the hatches are open, and you think Soon I must embrace the ship, and you think It is not coming for me, it is coming for everyone, the way the wave came for John and the ship he sailed on with bad whiskey fouling the drinking water, a rogue wave, John said, that he saw throw its leg over the rail like a thief stealing aboard before it collapsed on him and on his shipmates, splintering the decks and crushing the ship, rolling over, John saying his last image he could remember before he was blinded by the brine, the last image he saw so perfectly clearly, was the ship’s hull so split in two like an oyster pried apart, the silvery pearl inside was the propeller still spinning three decks down just before the wave swallowed them and everything into a watery darkness.

  Assa bunch of crap, said Lonny. John got drunked up and fell overboard, everybody know that.

  Watch your mouth, Lonny, said Mr. Watt.

  Rogue wave, said Ira Dench from the mast.

  Yeah, rogue wave! said Lonny laughing. Yeah, once I had a rogue wave come up out of the toilet I was taking a dump the size of a palomino pony and a big rogue wave came up and splashed all over my balls! Come here and have a sit with me, Fishboy, Lonny said, and I stood a little closer to John with the lantern.

  On the top of his arm, Mr. Watt said, you could see where John was foam-borne ashore a basaltic island, a red and black rock formation masoned with a pedestal and a chimney, the whole thing a small hillock in the ocean, the rogue wave depositing him there and continuing on for several days, and it was documented: seventeen ships and three thousand people lost in its wake, and it was documented: the rogue wave struck a direct hit into a trading town, the wave’s foot surging along Nasty Place, a gamble-and-whore shantytown built on stilts and pilings, the rogue wave surge sucking at the rotten shore and pulling on the pilings until all the place folded over like a collapsing row of houses of cards, houses crowded with shouting and whoring embraces, bottles tilted, spilling, and men holding winning hands of cards over their heads as they were pitched into the torrent, and it was documented: the rogue wave sped up Main Street punching out plate glass windows and looting stores, the rogue wave climbing staircases and upending bedsteads, throwing respectable citizens in their pajamas and nightgowns out balcony windows and then leaping after them; the rogue wave turning left at the plaza, body-blocking and roll-tripping a st
ring of horses tied in front of the jail, drowning inside the jail the entire El Fangado Gang in town to spring their retarded cousin Estebell caught shoplifting a bracelet, and it was documented: the mayor strangled at his breakfast table by an octopus, a shark seen eating grapefruit from a tree, sand dollars in the bank vault, and documented: the rogue wave, worn out by its global romp, staggers up Cathedral Street and falls in diminished supplication at the feet of a little girl sitting on the church steps sucking a carrot and holding a kitten, the rogue wave finally spent, licking briny kisses on the orphan’s toes.

  I just can’t, I don’t believe, said Lonny.

  And Mr. Watt said the congregation, hearing the roaring through their town, threw open the church’s doors and saw the ruin, the sea-swept town, the masts of ships tangled in the telephone wires, the little girl on the steps who had held back the waters and spared those of them in the house of their god, making the little girl a saint on the spot for it.

  I just won’t believe any of it, said Lonny, and Mr. Watt told him Then just don’t believe it.

  That girl became the biggest whore after that, said Lonny.

  Mr. Watt went on. In John’s skin is the mark of the basaltic altar where John was thrown up by the rogue wave.

  It was a volcano, said Lonny, his voice deep in the wine jug he was holding to his mouth. Drunk overboard and pitched up on a volcanic island.

  John woke up, said Mr. Watt, his head caught in a rock crevice, too weak to free himself.

  I know how a hangover like that feels, said Lonny. Lonny said for me to come sit beside him.

  John on the downside of the altar rocks sometimes thinking he could hear a woman’s voice, or it could be him delirious and just the wind moving through the crevice that held his head.

  Or the rocks in his head, said Lonny.

  And Mr. Watt said one day a face appeared peering down at him, a woman’s face, all that he could see of her, and he called out but she disappeared. Later she came back and fed him raw strips of fish with her mouth in a funny kissing blowing way, and she poured fresh rainwater from a conch shell, poured it into his mouth and bathed his face for him and dried him with her hair. John said she was beautiful. John said she spent hours staring down at him and John made motions and spoke to her to help him pull himself out, and she did not seem to understand, and she never spoke to John and John could not touch her, and saw only her face as it appeared every day between all the igneous rock. Had she a boat? he wondered, and that would be wonderful, he thought, to escape, the two of them in a boat, but she did not seem to appear from a boat, he never heard her approach until she was leaning over him, feeding him from her mouth to his mouth strips of raw fish, pouring rainwater from a conch shell, bathing his face, drying his eyes with her hair, staring at him for hours. And not a word, never a word, leaning into the crevice where he lay, feeding him, gently puffing on his lips, puffing and spreading his lips with her breath, until it was a kiss, a blowing kiss, and John’s lungs filled with her breath, his lungs about to burst, his head lightening, his lungs growing daily so that by the time of a spawning moon, she smiled. The spawning moon pulled the tide around them like a bedsheet, and she lay with him, with the part of him that was free from the rocks, and John was frightened because the moon had pulled the water around them so that the sea spilled over his face and lapped along the edges of the rock. She lay with him and he was frightened that he would drown when the waves broke over his head, but he did not drown, his lungs were large with the way he had learned to draw air, large from her blowing kisses, and in this way, John began to learn rapture.

  What a crock! said Lonny. He got drunk, bumped his head, fell overboard, and had to dry out on an island. That’s no real story, said Lonny. Come here, Fishboy, and let Uncle Lonny tell you a real story. Old Uncle Lonny here is the thirteenth son of a thirteenth son. I’m the rootin-tootinest, most ass-kicking, bull-whipping, hell-dwelling, cat-skinning, dog-kicking, grandma-down-the-stairs-pushing fellow you’d ever want to meet, so come be nice and give your old Uncle Lonny a little kiss.

  Mr. Watt said that in the morning after the spawning moon John felt revitalized. His head and hair were slick from the waves soaking them all night. It hurt, but he was able to squeeze his head free of the place where it had been crush-cradled in the rock. John lay back down and waited to surprise the woman who had saved him. He waited until he saw her shadow on the rock wall and he sat up to kiss her, and sitting up to kiss her, he saw that she was not a woman.

  She saw him see her and she fled, flipping and crawling back into the water at the rock’s edge. She stopped and looked back once and John saw her pain, her pain at how he had first looked seeing her, her not all woman, not all fish.

  You don’t believe that story, do you Fishboy? Lonny said to me and Lonny tried to pull me to him.

  Don’t, I said.

  All John will say, said Mr. Watt, is that she was hairy where she needed to be hairy and scaly where she needed to be scaly.

  Mr. Watt said the top of John’s shoulder would show the course of the white-hulled ship that rescued him, John out of his mind, calling his lover to come back, watching her circle the chimney rock but not coming out of the water, her face not angry or sad but set, and John felt like she was beckoning him to follow her, and he remembered stories of sailors being lured by sirens to their drowning deaths, and on the second day there were sharks around, always sharks around, and she seemed to barely keep ahead of the sharks, and for three days she circled the island and beckoned to John, and twice John started down to the sea, and twice John lost his footing and twice John lost his faith, the currents strong and the sharks large, and John would fall back and climb the chimney rock to wave his shirt for her to come back, and that is how a passing white ship saw him, waving his shirt, and they sent a launch ashore, shooting rifles into the sea around them, John screaming No, no, and they shot in the water where John’s lover had been swimming because they said the currents were dangerous and the sharks were large, and when they reached John he fought them, and they beat him and put him in a straitjacket in the brig thinking he had drunk seawater and had gone insane.

  I’m the nail-bangingest, bush-wacking, horse-stealing, baby-buggering, wife-beatingest whoremongerer you’ll ever meet, Fishboy, Lonny said.

  In the brig John wanted pen and paper, said Mr. Watt, but they wouldn’t give it to him, so he begged a needle from the ship’s Medicine Man and a tin of shoe polish from the boy who brought him his meals, and John made a record in his skin of where he had been, where he might find again the chimney rock island, every morning and evening asking the cabin boy their heading, where the sun was that moment, foreward, aft, off the port quarter, and in that way he made crude charts in his skin from his thumb and finger departure to his collarbone rescue.

  The wine was on Lonny like it gets on some men, and Lonny began to rack himself with a mean sob. Really, said Lonny, I’m just an eye-gouging, back-stabbing, low-down, mud-laying, pud-pulling cockbiter.

  Go easy on yourself, said Mr. Watt to Lonny. Mr. Watt said the design over John’s left breast was the rough plotting of where the white-hulled ship was the day they aired John on deck and he jumped ship, he just leapt the rail and swam down under as hard as he could swim. He said the men aboard the white ship were angry and a couple of rifle shots spun plume in the water past him, but he swam deeper and deeper into the dark depths, realizing his lungs had no lack of breath, realizing this was what his lover had done for him with her kisses, he could have followed her had he not lacked the faith, and John swam down and sat on the bottom of the sea for a long time with his head in his hands, the white ship gone, sharks circling in the dark.

  I’m just a simple-minded, turd-licking, sun-dried piece of shit, said Lonny. No goddamn good at all, I tell you, I’m a story of no goddamn good at all, fucking jerk-off me me me! he said. Lonny sobbed harder and tore at his shirt. He flung his empty gallon bottle of engine room wine against the rail so that it shattered, and the noise
brought John wide-eyed awake.

  O dear heavenly father, I confess, said John looking into the bright coronal bottom of the lantern I held over his head.

  John, said Mr. Watt.

  Poor Watt, dead too, said John.

  John, said Mr. Watt.

  Have mercy on his hideous hide, said John.

  John, you’re not dead, said Mr. Watt.

  I’m not dead? said John.

  You must have been dreaming, said Mr. Watt.

  I was, said John. It was the same dream.

  We were just checking the charts, said Mr. Watt.

  I feel like we’re on a good course, I feel hopeful, don’t you, Watt? John said.

  Yes, I saw all sorts of places to look, said Mr. Watt.

  That’s good, I’m hopeful, said John.

  Me, too, said Mr. Watt. I’m going back to the wheelhouse.

  Goodnight, said John.

  Goodnight, said Mr. Watt, and I felt Mr. Watt’s moist finger rake through my hair and turn my head forward to lead him back to the wheelhouse. Once he stumbled on the way and caught himself on my shoulder.

  Blind as a bat, said Mr. Watt.

  That’s a rich one, Mr. Watt, I said.

  Our days drifted away like smoke. There was ample sun in a hot tin sky and no wind. John’s net, impossible to haul in, thick with seaweed and barnacle crust, was an underwater sail that pulled us along as it was billowed by capricious currents. The ocean here was viscous and black, blended gray behind us by our propeller. John said we were in the horse latitudes, figuring our position by pinching a roll of his tattooed skin.

  Horse latitudes, said the cook, and the cook wrote that down in his book of poetry in the galley. Every day the cook wrote a poem to his Negress wife and set it adrift in an empty bottle. Stuck as we were in the ocean, the cook’s poetry bobbed around the ship. Often in the afternoons Lonny would plunk at the bottles with idle rifle shots from the crow’s nest, shattering them to the bottom.