Fishboy (18 page)

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 string 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.

O
ur 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.

Lonny’s rift with the cook began to widen the day after our first supper, when the cook served us seven-times-seven soup made from the sour leftovers, the starter stock being a wad of snot and a rotten toe. The things he added included the ruined shark steaks, a package of freeze-dried custard, a quart of vinegar, the last of my garden gourds, a barrel of gruel, and a turnip he found in a bedpan. I stirred the pot and scraped the muck off the bottom so it would not burn. The cook wrote his poetry. I saw that I was learning how to cook.

Horse latitudes
, said the cook again, and he tinked his cheap pen against his chin.

At noon we hit an honest slick of horses. A herd of gnarled-hooved and spotted ponies floated around us, their bloated bellies torn open by sea vultures, eels spinning
in their entrails. John said a becalmed horse ship would run out of hay and fresh water and throw the ponies over. The sea vultures scrawed around us and John made me stay in the galley so I would not be carried off. We shut all the portholes and stuffed gas-soaked rags around the vents against the stench.

The cook wrote down to his wife
There is no bird what not calls your name to me, There is no breeze that you are not fresh upon
. We gagged and listened to the featherings and flappings of the giant vultures on our deck, the vultures splattering the deck with equine droppings and regurgitated horseflesh.

Lonny had been right about the two men shackled together in the prison aquarium not making it through the night. The next morning one was floating in the lifeboat Lonny had filled with seawater, the man still shackled to his ruby-eating partner who sat shatter-eyed on the bottom, his skin turning to soft moon, his lips clung with bubbles. John drew one of Lonny’s axes and severed the dead man’s arm, then pulled it through the shackle. For a moment I thought of putting the dead arm in the cook’s locker as a joke but that thought passed. We wrapped the dead one-armed convict in a canvas shroud and put one of Mr. Watt’s ballast stones at his feet. Just before we were going to say a little prayer over him and drop him over the side, his moon-skinned partner
climbed out of the lifeboat. His skin was so thin in places that he looked like a cousin of Mr. Watt’s. His most amazing aspect was not the purple and blue of his organs but the red ruby still stuck in his gut, a gem so fine that it seemed to pulse when the sun struck its facets, and it made it seem that the man’s heart had fallen from his chest and beat in his bowels.