Fishboy Read online

  I had never seen a person on fire before, and if I had seen a person on fire, I think I would have watched it. When I came out from the engine room and burst into flames the crew did not seem to notice. Even the Idiot ignored me as he stomped something in a corner by the winches. I rolled in icy water pooled in a loop of leaking sea hose. I had been a small fire and in this way I was quickly doused. The crew stood around John in the stern beside the stinking corpse, waiting a turn with John’s small telescope. There was something out past our diminishing wake that was following us, something that had the crew leaning over the stern rail, squinting and guessing and cursing, something more interesting than seeing somebody being on fire.

  Bare-eyed, Lonny said he could make out a white hull and a blue light closing in on us fast, and John said their signal lantern read Somebody did something to somebody, he couldn’t quite read it all yet, and the two men in prison blues stepped back to take counsel, eyeing the lifeboat, patting the knives and sharp shanks hidden in their clothing, a Told-you-so from one and a Not-now-I’m-thinking from the other. The weeping man said Fuck and sobbed into his shirtfront, and Ira Dench said I told you I knew that rogue-waving boy was bad luck from the beginning, and I knew that rogue-waving boy he meant was me, this boy, Fishboy, laying out of flame in a cold bath of salt water, thinking, The white hull and the blue light are coming for me, for what this somebody did to somebody. I lay there thinking, The signal lantern flashes IF I JUST ACHE, BEER OR WINE, spelling Fishboy, the somebody who did the something to somebody, Big Miss Magine.

  I lay on the deck in the looped seawater pool, my eyes closed, listening to the men beg John for a turn with his small telescope. Near me the Idiot began grunting for a turn with the telescope too. As he stepped over me to go beg John, the Idiot’s shadow darkened my eyelids. I looked up in time to see his slow-moving foot pass close over my face, his crimson heel thick with crushed beak and small brown feathers.

  I had seen knothole seamen in my days as the Fishboy living in the cartonated encampment, men so long at sea that on first landfall they will break free the stiffness from their trousers and make themselves in knotholes of barrels and planks, in plug openings cut from fresh fruit. I have seen knothole seamen make themselves in slitted canvas bags of fresh shellcut, claiming it the best, the merchants later wagonloaded with it saying Nothing revitalizes vigor better than produce from the sea.

  I was thinking of knothole seamen while I sat in the dark bottom of a barrel John had dropped me in to discover the criminal on board our ship, the somebody who had done something bad to somebody from the flashing lantern’s signal. I was thinking of knothole seamen when I felt a warm thick fluid drip into my scorched tuft of hair, felt the fluid ooze down the back of my neck, thinking John’s fluid would be so large that in it would swim tadpoles of children.

  I sat in the bottom of the barrel not having thought John would be a knothole seaman, but you never can tell.

  The stuff began to crust in my hair even as it dripped down my neck and forehead, and when I wiped it away from where it stung my eyes, I looked at it on the back of my hand and saw that it was red, as if the anointment was Big Miss Magine’s blood back again on my wrist. I was guessing John had found me out, had discovered what I had done, until I heard him tell everyone to reach inside the barrel and touch my head, that I had conjurer in me, that I would call out when the criminal touched me, innocent men had nothing to fear from me.

  I was no conjurer, I was not like the feeble men who drifted through the fishhouse in the spring to summon up the dead all day long for a crust of bread or a nickel or a penny. I was not one of those feeble men who shook conch shells filled with pebbles and talked in twisted tongues, flipped on their backs in the sand, their eyes rolling and their heels kicking, the people standing around watching, waiting for a message from Bubba Samuel or Sister Sister, or from some fever-ridden infant who couldn’t speak a word anyway before it left this place. I knew the ways of conjurers slipping around my cartonated box the first night looking for a tip-off, looking for a snitch about the next day’s people’s names and dead, and then leaving the last evening through my camp again, drinking all my soup when they said they wanted just a sip, drinking from my Hessian bowl, their hands cupped around its rim to calculate its empty weight. Across my fire I could see the veins in their eyes broken from skull-rolling, and in their bloodshot eyes I could see they would murder a thing as small as me for what little I had, and they would murder me without fear that when they conjured up the dead I would be among them. They knew their incantations conjured only the living foolish; the voices they claimed to hear in their heads were just their own stifled laughter.

  I did have a sweet spot on my skull that when you scratched it hard enough it would be like the place on a dog’s spine, the place where if you scratch hard enough the dog’s leg will quiver and itch. I did have the sweet spot that when I scratched it hard enough my eyes rolled back a little and I clucked, but it was not to conjure up the dead, it was not to swindle the foolish. I was not a conjurer.

  Reach in the barrel and touch the conjurer’s head, John was telling the crew, saying an innocent man had nothing to fear. I saw the trick in getting the truth, I saw that John would hand over whoever the white ship with the blue light was coming for. I saw that John would let nothing hinder his net-pulling, would let no ship follow us for long to foul his precious snare, and I saw the trick in it as I had seen the trick before, when someone at home had stolen a piglet, and a wise woman put the found pig in a dark shed and said for all the suspects to reach in and stroke it, saying the pig would recognize the thief’s touch and squeal, and all the suspects except one came out of the dark shed with hands black with soot the woman had secretly rolled the pig in, the sootless one having more faith in an old woman’s sayings and a pig’s intuition than the trustworthiness of his own guilt.

  The first hand down inside the barrel was Lonny’s. I could tell it was Lonny’s by the way his fingers gently located my face and began to stroke my chin in a way that a man should not stroke a boy’s face. He was careful not to touch my hair. His fingers moved along my jaw, caressing, and then I felt his thumb rudely plumb between my lips and I bit him, tasting tar and salt, his hand snatching out of the barrel.

  The weeping man’s hand came quivering toward my face next, the wet and snotted fingers of a blubberer that contracted into a fist as his one word crossed his mind. And as his word crossed his mind he squeezed his fist so tight that it dripped a tear before it withdrew, careful not to touch my hair.

  There was bunched-up string in Ira Dench’s fist when he lowered it into the barrel, and for a moment I wondered if it was a one-handed cat’s cradle of fortune he would spread open between his fingers to let me read, to show me with moving twine and knots the rogue wave he was sure I was bringing to the ship, and when he opened his fist and let the bunched-up string fall into my lap I saw that it was patterned with knots, and I thought maybe Ira Dench was giving me a gift like the hemp bracelet he wore, a round Turk’s head with long-eye braids, good-luck diamond tassels, and tiny monkey fists, but when I picked up the bracelet I saw that it was not a bracelet for my wrist, it was a hangman’s noose for my neck, a fancy gallows knot small enough for a child, nine tiny wraps marking the lives of a cat, a looped lanyard end from which a quick lynching could be accomplished anywhere aboard the ship. He, too, was careful not to touch my hair.

  The next hands came in tandem, tinkling of shackle. One hand opened and closed and flitted around my face, a fleshy butterfly that teased my eyes and tickled my nose, and I laughed as a child would laugh because I was just a boy, and when I laughed the other hand seized my throat and shut it, the butterfly now a cupped hand across my mouth stifling my choking sounds. I pulled at the hands, kicking around, and then clawed the rough sides of the barrel until I ripped out a jagged splinter that I drove into the flesh of the strangling hand. My crusting hair still remained untouched.

  My crusting hair remained untouched
until a large strong hand plowed into its roots seizing a firm purchase, and I was lifted out of the darkness holding my hangman’s noose. I was lifted up into the dull silver halo of sun while the Idiot whistled and honked, showing he could reach in the barrel and find what the others could not find; braying and baring his teeth, he lifted me up to show me to the men all around, showing my red gooped hair, John’s trick to the truth betrayed by a trumpeting ass.

  John chewed his beard and looked at the paintless hands around him. Around him, the men looked at their paintless hands. Only the men in prison blues began to speak, and they both spoke at once, they both spoke of blame and tried to confess ahead of the other, to confess and then to beg John to save them, and John told them to be quiet, that he would save them the best he could, that he would hear their confessions later because the white-hulled ship was bearing down on us. John said he would save us all, and I think he said that because he saw that to turn over all the guilty men on his ship would be to turn over his crew, his net menders, his net handlers, the men he needed to pull his precious net aboard.

  We’ll try the pox ploy, said John. We’ll run up the pox flag and paint our faces with the stuff from Fishboy’s head.

  The crew stood around me and laid their hands upon my head. They dabbed themselves with the crimson paint, each man applying it as he thought pox might corrupt his skin. The prison men, who had seen a bit of plague, sprinkled the paint around, the Idiot bathed his face, and Lonny seemed to prefer a single dot on his forehead.

  The men touched and rubbed my skull to apply their diseases, and their rough fingers and sharp nails scratched at my sweet spot. I fought it at first but my eyes began to roll back a bit when my sweet spot was sweetened, and my vision rose. Beyond their arms, over their shoulders, and above their heads my eyes considered the whirligig sky. I could see the black ash clouds racing toward the sun, and as the men rubbed my skull harder I saw higher, the sun itself. In the conjured moment, the sun, like a drowning man, reached out one last time from the swirling pool of clouds and pointed to us all.

  We were boarded by the white-hulled ship at noon. It slid alongside us, its crew bearing plastic rifles, its big blue light clicking on its mast. The white-hulled ship had not been put off by the pox flag we flew, crossed yellow bones on a field of red. John had hoisted the flag from a sea rover’s hope chest for safe passage, colorful tokens of contagious diseases and slippery allegiances.

  The white-hulled ship was not put off by the sheriff’s corpse Lonny and Ira heaved over the stern into its path, the sheriff’s bloated face painted the pox-mark red. The sheriff’s boots filled with water so that he stood in our slow wake, rolling and bouncing behind us like a toy you cannot tip over.

  The white-hulled ship was not put off by John waving it away with his muleskin cloak from where the ship was about to slice across the top of his net. John’s hands trembled when he saw it happen.

  Just before we were boarded John slung the two men in prison blues into a bosun’s chair and hung them over the far end of our ship to make them harder to find. They sat side by side on a rope-held plank used to fix and paint the hulls of ships. Their feet dipped in the water, they gripped the ship’s skin with homemade devil’s claws they had constructed from ragged gloves and sharp spikes. They were frightened of John, the white-hulled ship, and the water all at once.

  Lonny had wanted to hide in the tool shack and come out swinging his axes, severing heads and arms, Like at that lady’s birthday party? John had said, and Lonny said that time it had been machetes. John talked Lonny out of that plan, and then John talked Lonny out of his next plan, to wrap his ax heads in rags and pretend they were crutches before he attacked the white ship’s crew. But I do a good cripple, Lonny said to John.

  John told Lonny, Ira Dench, and the weeping man who said Fuck to lie around listless and sick-looking. John said he was not worried about the Idiot. With all the talk of hiding, the Idiot had found for itself the perfect ostrich arrangement, him sitting in full view on the main hatch with an empty nail keg stuck on his head.

  What about me, John? I said to John, and John knelt beside me in a way I thought at first to comfort me. What he wanted was to reach in my hair and fix his pox makeup.

  You stay close to me for the sympathy vote, said John. He said with my missing ear, my burned-up head, my weird eyes, and my puniness, I didn’t even look human at all. John dabbed paint on the backs of his hands and blotched his cheeks. How do I look? said John standing and cinching his rough muleskin cloak and I said he looked fine.

  The white-hulled ship slid alongside us, its crew dropping bumpers between the ships and grappling our rail with gaffs.

  Request permission to come aboard, said their deck officer.

  Oh no! said John. Pox! We all have the pox, and you’ll catch it. We’re dropping like flies.

  Yes, said the deck officer, we recovered a body you put over.

  Yeah, that was poor Bob, said Lonny, trying to make his voice weak. That was Bob, the bobbing body. Bobby, we called him, and Ira Dench’s fraudulent moaning was broken by a laughing snort.

  Our Medicine Man said he died of slashed throat and disembowelment, said the white ship’s deck officer, and Lonny said it had started as a tickle in his throat and a stomach ache.

  Do you have your documents? said the deck officer to John.

  We are just humble fishermen dying of the pox, said John. The crew is just these men, my father the captain, and my two sons you see here, an idiot and a freak.

  The deck officer looked at us all. I want to speak with your captain, he said, and he motioned a boarding party of men with dark glasses and plastic rifles past us.

  Our captain is sick also and is probably asleep in the wheelhouse, said John.

  The deck officer told his men to find our captain and when John lifted his fillet-sharpened hand to stop them plastic clicked around us and gun muzzles were put in our faces.

  I’m sure you’ll find the captain resting, said John, and I began to worry that they would drag Mr. Watt out of the wheelhouse into the burning sun.

  The white-hulled ship’s boarding party went forward; I could hear them banging on the wheelhouse hatches.

  John asked if all this was really necessary. His painted pox was thinning with his sweat, the red places melting and dripping down his cheeks and neck.

  The deck officer said he had been pulled off search and rescue to find the person or persons responsible for knifing a Negro and then fleeing aboard a ship that matched our description. Do you know anything about a recent murder ashore? said the white ship’s deck officer.

  Before John could answer, the boarding party said that the wheelhouse hatches were locked, that they were going to go in through the galley.

  I was worried about Mr. Watt. I wondered if his muscles would come undone if someone tried to grab them.

  I wondered if someone’s confession might save him.

  I wondered if my confession might save him.

  It was me, I said.

  Which one is this, the Idiot or the freak? said the deck officer, and John said I was mostly the freak.

  The boarding party made their entrance into the wheelhouse by crawling through the dog hatch from the galley, and now they made their exit from the wheelhouse by shooting out the smoked glass and climbing through its frames. The boarding party came running, dropping their rifles and losing their hats in their haste to reboard their own ship.

  Let’s get out of here, said one of them, Whatever they’ve got, we don’t want to catch it.

  You should see the captain, one said, throwing his leg up onto the white-hulled ship. It’ll make you sick to see it. I’ve never seen a pox like it.

  I’m going to give you a break this time, said the deck officer, backing away. I could hold you all in the brig until we see some documents. You and your faking crew and your idiot freak children. You’d round out the circus in the brig with the crazy cook.

  Cook? said Lonny, lifting his head f
rom the deck.

  He says he’s a cook, between fits, said the deck officer. We have him in a straitjacket now. Before we had to lock him up he baked some delicious breakfast pastries. Then he had these fits and beat his head bloody against the cabinets.

  What kind? said Lonny, getting to his feet.

  Buzzing fits, said the deck officer, like there is a buzzing in his head.

  No no, I mean what kind of pastries, said Lonny, and the officer said they were kind of a croissant with cheese-butter fillings.

  The white-hulled ship’s Medicine Man appeared and began spraying powder along their rail, spreading a white film over everything, dousing the boarding party from head to foot.

  This so-called cook, where did you find him? said John.

  We picked him up on search and rescue, said the white deck officer. We picked him up just floating on his big belly out to sea. There’s been eruptions and landslides ashore, and the water has been full of stuff miles out.

  A cook! said Lonny.

  It sounds like my long-lost brother, said John. The one who’s fat, cooks, and is crazy.

  The deck officer asked John if he would identify him and take custody and Lonny said Absolutely. A cook!

  They would only let John and me aboard, and only with the Medicine Man spraying us with white powder as we stepped down narrow ladders into the brig. On the way down the Medicine Man told us how they had found the cook in the litter of a landslide and a flood, how a tongue of muddy water had been pulled over the horizon, swirling eddies rippling and tinkling. A waterborne pastorale is what the Medicine Man called it, and I tried to imagine the picture he painted for us, the white ship sailing along a muddy lane, the trees of the forest laid over and mainsailed by their crowns, ruddered by their roots, crewed by bark-hugging squirrels and shivering field mice, birds’ nests emptied into the sea, the eggs plucked by fish jaws beneath (Lots and lots of sharks around, o god yes, we haven’t found hardly any bodies so far except this live one, and this one is a live one, believe me), insects settling in swarms in the branches, bees like marbles rolling in beehive trays broken loose like sacked desk drawers. The white ship sailed along the muddy sea lane and saw a water-logged flock of sheep just starting to bloat, their pens and stiles now latticed, now broken singularly into driftwood fencing, blades of grazing grass and rips of turf rolling in the water, dirtying the sea, and in it all, this man, a big belly ballooning like a man-o’-war jellyfish (that’s what we thought it was, the biggest maybe we had ever seen), hands like flippers, an angry face, the white ship coming down off the country lane and across the undulating ocean meadow to the rescue, and the man flipping his hands and feet like flippers and fins saying Go away! Leave me alone, the sun-rouged face, his big belly crowned red, some sort of rash or welts like fallout from a volcanic navel. Go away! backstroking, fending off the gaffs and boat hooks, even slinging a turd or two, half drowning, having a fit, finally grappled by the shoulders, the Medicine Man giving him a needle in the buttock, putting him asleep in the brig clasped in the straitjacket embrace.