The Dead Fish Museum

by Charles D'Ambrosio

  “The receipt?”

  “For the fishing stuff. Just in case I have to return it.”

  “We can return it now,” I said. “I’ll give you the cash.”

  “Maybe Dad will give me a birthday check,” Jimmy said. “I don’t think he likes Naga.”

  “He’ll come around.”

  “I doubt it,” Jimmy said. “But who knows? It’s like with Joey. He cries all the time, and it’s a real pain in the ass. At first I thought to myself, Shit, man, I don’t want that! But now I look at him and think, That’s mine. All mine. I’m just as proud as any father. I’ll play ball with him. We’ll fish. We’ll do those things.”

  We finished our beers. Jimmy stood slowly and made a show of fumbling for his wallet but I paid our tab and left a generous tip. The old bartender shuffled over as we left, saw the tip, and said, “Stay dry, fellas.”

  Jimmy grabbed his tackle and went inside, and I ran up to the road on the levee for a quick look at the river. Normally an easy emerald green, the Skagit churned muddy brown, sweeping small uprooted trees and bone-gray logs away from its collapsing clay shores. The water was certainly rising. Mr. George’s dog, an old grizzled retriever, stood on the roof of the cabin, soaked and barking, and Mr. George himself, stumbling around under an oppressive olive-drab raincoat, loaded a spare dinghy with supplies and furniture from inside. The dinghy was tethered by a long slack rope to the roof of his house; in it he’d crammed a chair, a stool, a box of books, a lamp, an axe, a fruit crate stuffed with papers, a stack of wooden bowls, a chandelier and silverware and what looked like a toaster, several knotted plastic sacks, a golden trophy of some sort. I watched him lash a blue tarp over the boat. Anything that could be secured was tied down, covered in canvas or caught in fishnet, hung from the eaves of his tiny shack; things that wouldn’t fit in the net or float were left to fend for themselves. I yelled to Mr. George but my voice instantly vanished, lost in the pounding rain, and when he finally saw me on the levee he could only pantomime his helplessness, pointing to the river, and then raising both hands to the sky. I waved farewell and went back across the road to my house.

  Meagan and Mr. Boyd were in the midst of making dinner and Jimmy stood under the apple tree, whipping his new fly rod back and forth. He hadn’t loaded it up, so I took his reel out to him, fastened it, ran the line, and snipped the barb along the shank of a fly so he wouldn’t impale himself while he practiced. I watched him work a few tentative and mechanical casts, thrashing his arms in the air, and went inside. Meagan and Mr. Boyd had stopped to watch him through the window. His motions were spastic, but he was smiling.

  “How long do you think it’ll be before he quits?” Mr. Boyd asked.

  Meagan took up an onion and moved to the cutting board.

  “Let’s bet.” Mr. Boyd winked at me, as if he’d found a crony, a sporting collaborator. “Just a friendly wager, huh, Tony?”

  “He quits everything,” Meagan said. “That’s not a fun bet.”

  “You guys are tough.”

  “I say he’ll never catch a fish,” Joe said. “In fact, I’ll lay odds he won’t even get the thing wet.”

  “Give him a chance,” I said.

  Meagan sliced the onion cleanly in half, peeling the brittle outer skin away. From the living room, we could hear Naga calling to her husband. “Jimmy honey. Honey?” The baby was crying again. “Look, Joey. Look.” She rapped on the window and Jimmy stopped casting and waved to his wife and child. He jerked another feeble cast out onto the wet lawn. Behind him were the field and the far-off lights of a house, the lights low to the horizon and dim against the darkening gray sky. Right then, it looked like Jimmy might stay out there forever. It was raining like hell, and I felt the urge to bet on him.

  “Daddy’s got an old friend in LA, a casting agent I should meet with,” Meagan said. She kept chopping, staring down at the cutting board, although her eyes were blurred and glassy.

  “You want me to chop for a minute?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I’m alright.” She wiped her eyes. “I think I’ll go next month, during Spring Break.”

  I looked at Mr. Boyd.

  “I’m contributing airfare,” he said. “I bought a couple round-trips to help out.”

  “It can’t hurt, I suppose.”

  Mr. Boyd turned to Meagan and said, “See?” He reached for his shirt pocket, then patted the place above his heart; he’d given up cigarettes, yet still searched for them now and then—an old reflex—always surprised to find nothing there.

  Jimmy came in. “D’you see me out there?”

  Mr. Boyd smiled. “Catch anything?”

  “I lost my leader,” Jimmy said. “Got it tangled up in the tree.”

  He went to find Naga.

  Moving, we had made our lives smaller, and I didn’t want to talk about careers. I went outside and untangled Jimmy’s fly line from the tree. He’d just left the new rod on the ground. It pissed me off. I went back in and groused to Meagan but she only shrugged and then we worked in silence. Slicing a neat circle from the other half of the onion, Meagan nipped the tip of her finger, one of those clean, shallow cuts that bleed and bleed. I went to find a Band-Aid and when I came back Meagan was crying and sucking her finger.

  “God damn it, I shouldn’t have done this.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said, “next time we won’t.”

  She pushed me away, wiped her eyes, and left. A deep purple stain seeped through the ringed layers in the remaining half of the onion. I cut that part out and finished the dicing. Naga came into the kitchen, asking me to hold the baby while she fixed a bottle of formula. He was the tiniest little thing, with hardly any weight to him, and his red puffy eyes and thatch of thin black hair gave him the look of an old man. His entire body clenched like a fist with each cry; his small, astonishing baby hands flailed around blindly until he found my finger and latched on, sticking the tip in his mouth and suckling. Naga took the bottle from the pan and then filled it to the top with water from the tap.

  “You can’t dilute the formula,” I said. “No water.”

  “Lasts longer,” Naga said.

  “That’s why he’s crying,” I said. “He’s hungry.”

  “Very expensive, Anthony.”

  “But you can’t do that. Do you understand? He’s starving.”

  Late in the afternoon, needing a little quiet, I found a way into the attic through a hatch in the upstairs hall closet. I stayed up there to investigate and linger over the odd bits and pieces the previous owner had left behind. He’d jettisoned half a lifetime, throwing out what I, at least, considered collectables: old clothes Meagan could tailor and wear or donate to the costume shop at the community college, blue and yellow medicine bottles for curing ailments I’d never heard of, and enough dusty old cookbooks to stock an entire shelf in the kitchen. Among them was The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, by Fannie Merritt Farmer. I knew Miss Farmer’s work from my mother’s kitchen and felt, to a certain extent—like a loving aunt or resident muse—that she’d helped raise me. She was listed on the title page as the author of A New Book of Cookery, Chafing Dish Possibilities, and Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent. The book was dedicated to Mrs. William B. Sewall, “in appreciation of her helpful encouragement and untiring efforts in promoting the work of scientific cookery, which means the elevation of the human race.” Hardly scientific, it was more like a work of witchcraft or alchemy, and it actually began with an arcane discussion of the elements, air, water, and fire—progress had antiquated Miss Farmer, as it had my mother and, for that matter, my childhood. No one I knew ate like this anymore.

  In addition to the cookbooks, I found a learned work on playing cards, a dour gray volume explaining the evolution of the pack from its outlaw Gypsy days in the fourteenth century to its increasing acceptance in modern times. Apparently the Jack, or Knave, was based on a rogue who at one time rode beside Joan of Arc—not too far, wisely enough. That was interesting, but leafing th
rough its molding pages made me a bit melancholy. It seemed like such an eccentric effort, an orphaned, unloved book, authored by a man who doggedly persisted in penning it, I supposed, by shoving aside the disturbing questions of doom and oblivion at every turn. He was authoritative, insistent, and priggish, perhaps overly conscious and somewhat resentful of the world’s silence and the loneliness of his pursuit. The writer’s name was W. Gurney Benham, F.S.A., F.R.Hist.S. I had no idea what those initials stood for or what weight they carried as credentials, but I imagined an elderly bachelor before a dying fire, a damp stone cottage, slugs crawling toward the door on the flagstone walkway outside. I could almost hear Mr. Benham’s pen scratch across the sheaf of paper, could almost see the ink fade and run dry in midsentence; I thought of him pausing to moisten the nib with his tongue, and pressing on, and I decided right then to give the book a final home on the coffee table.

  I came across many other things, too many to list, but I’d like to mention one more. In a plain white envelope, folded neatly, once, I found a Christmas card. In one corner was written “Christmas, 1947,” and then in the middle of the page, scribbled in terse black strokes, was the forlorn message “I hope these help. Love, Milt.” There was no indication on the card about what “these” were, or who or what, exactly, was in need of “help,” or how all of this was to connect up and suceed, but something about the message, along with the signature, and the lack of specific reference, gave the note a timelessness by accident that neither Farmer nor Benham had achieved by effort. But I couldn’t quite finger what really distinguished Milt from Farmer and Benham, and it puzzled me. They shared a similar degree of anonymity, although I supposed Milt’s was deeper, and I felt equally responsible for each of them, as if entrusted and obligated by an almost filial bond. This was my house, I thought, ghosts and all. At last I decided the difference had to do with the hint of uncertainty in Milt’s note. Whereas Farmer and Benham presumed absolute knowledge and final clarity in their respective works, Milt was tentative and doubtful, perhaps rootedly skeptical about the efficacy and outcome of his gift. Yet in the note “love” stood firm, like a constant in an equation full of variables and unknowns. I tucked the mute, prayerful note away in my shirt pocket. I liked Milt, who, by the way, was not the previous owner of our house. I had no idea who he was.

  ____

  Mr. George was knocking on our door as I came down from the attic. When I answered I could see behind him a flatbed, parked on the levee and loaded with sandbags. It was obvious he wanted help. He wore a green sou’wester smashed down on his little fissured appleface, and his blue eyes, nested in folds of wrinkled flesh, seemed like a kind of natural extravagance, like the brilliant spawning colors of a salmon. I like to think that I know what’s right, that I’ve got a fairly resonant sense of my obligations, but when Mr. George showed up on our porch I was hesitant and confused. We had the party, and everything already seemed so calamitous to me, so tense and tentative, that I could only think like a child whose good manners are memorized, going through the motions without feeling the spirit. In fact, I felt oppressed by his need, and didn’t know what to say. But Jimmy, who’d come to the door, said he’d go help, and then Mr. Boyd, never one to be left out, or to be upstaged by his son, put on a pair of my hip boots and clomped off across the street, the very spectacle of authority, immediately taking charge. I went upstairs to tell Meagan what was going on and she hurried downstairs, switched off the oven so the ham wouldn’t burn, and ran across the road to Mr. George’s. When I arrived, Mr. George was rubbing grease into the shoulders of an oilcloth jacket.

  “That’ll hold you,” he said, offering the coat to Meagan. He looked doubtfully at the sky. “I hope you weren’t in the middle of something. I know it’s almost supper time.”

  “Not at all,” Jimmy said.

  The river had risen to a foot below its natural bank and carried odd things in its current. A chair floated by, and then a realtor’s sign. Mr. Boyd marked with a stick the line the wall of sandbags should follow, and then Jimmy retraced it, adding slightly more curve where the downstream force of the river would likely hit the wall. We formed a small chain from the truck to the line gouged into the grass. Mr. George offloaded the sandbags and passed them to Mr. Boyd, who handed them to Meagan, who handed them to me, and I passed them on to Jimmy, who, slipping and sliding, stacked them. Jimmy, with something to do, was a muddy ball of joy. His historical spot at the end of the line now seemed a place of privilege. In no time his face was flecked with wet clay, his jeans were soaked, and the new cap we’d bought that afternoon looked like a seasoned hat he’d been wearing for years.

  The bags were dead weight, and after the first course my arms were leaden and numb. As I looked at the water, lapping at the bank, our job seemed impossible. I’d never seen the river so blown out. I was exhausted, wet and cold, and certain every bag I cradled during the second course was the last I could manage; still they kept coming, and I kept passing them to Jimmy, feeling weirdly condemned—not entirely myself, but a little bit of what was behind me, and a little bit of what was ahead of me. When I asked Meagan how she was doing, she said fine. “Really?” I asked. Meagan just frowned, picked a daub of mud from her eye, and passed me another wet bag of sand.

  We were on the sixth or seventh course, the wall of staggered bags about hip level, and I was still feeling the same way, like I couldn’t move another bag, and still I was taking them, pivoting, and passing them, when suddenly Jimmy, who’d gone to the other side of the wall to inspect the rising river, launched into a berserk dance, flailing his arms and kicking his feet. “Goddamn! Goddamn!” he shouted. The chain of sandbags stopped and we all watched. Jimmy kicked and splashed, waving his arms crazily, and then dove out of sight. When he stood again he seemed to be holding up a section of the river, hoisting a piece of the flowing silver water victoriously over his head. In fact, he was clutching a bright salmon by the gills. It thrashed mightily, slapping its tail back and forth, but Jimmy, grinning, kept a tight grip on his trophy.

  “Son, you got yourself a king,” Mr. George said.

  “I thought it was a log at first,” Jimmy said.

  Mr. George grabbed a sawed-off section of stout dowel from his porch and gave the king a firm rap on the head and the life shivered out of it.

  “I can’t count the fish I’ve taken out of this river,” Mr. George said. “But I’ve never seen any man land one with his feet.”

  “Let’s finish here,” Mr. Boyd said.

  We added two more courses, then admired our work.

  Mr. George said, “I’ll cook this for you all, if you want.”

  “Oh man,” Jimmy said, “I’m dead. I’m gonna run and go get Naga and Joey.”

  Meagan went with her brother, and the rest of us went inside. Mr. George’s cabin was small but shipshape. One long room, a kitchen in back, sleeping loft above it, a wood-burning stove out front, a table and two chairs, and, curiously, a small upright piano. The west wall of the house had a big window and a view of the river. Opposite was a rack filled with fishing rods, and above that, taxidermied fish—pink, king, silver, and dog salmon, sea-run cutthroat, steelhead.

  “You aren’t prohibitionists, are you?” Mr. George asked.

  Mr. Boyd smiled. “I’ve been known to take a drink now and then.”

  “This is a jug of blackberry wine,” our host said, pouring out three glasses. “It’s not as bad as you’d imagine.”

  The wine was actually perfect for the day—thick as brandy, with a haphazard, homemade taste, a hint of soil in it.

  “Hey, hear that?” Mr. George asked.

  I listened and didn’t hear anything. Mr. Boyd, sipping his wine, looked out the window. “Rain’s slowing,” he said.

  “Music to my ears,” Mr. George said. We went outside and saw the others approaching. “Now if I can only get that pooch off the roof. Hey Pepper!”

  Far to the west the sun lowered beneath the solid black slab of the squall. The river was
hed over the bank, but was turned back by the wall of sandbags.

  “Are we out of trouble yet?” I asked.

  “We’re probably just between storms.” Mr. George shook his head and led us back inside. “But I think there’s call for a blessing. You don’t mind a blessing before we eat, do you?”

  “I’ll do it,” Jimmy said.

  “Be my guest,” Mr. George said.

  “Bless us our Lord, and these your gifts,” Jimmy said, the shy mumble barely taking shape as words, “which we’re about to receive, from your bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  “Dear God, Holy Ghost,” Mr. Boyd said, “whoever eats the fastest, gets the most!”

  We ate salmon steaks with corn and coleslaw. I noticed a water stain zigzagging along the walls and Mr. George told us about the sixty years of floods in his personal memory. He insisted, proudly, that he never lost anything. “I chased a few sticks of furniture way down river and had to fish a lawn mower out of a pool, but that’s about the worst of it.” In fact, he said, he’d found far more than he’d ever lost. “Half the stuff here come to me from the river,” he said. He’d seen everything in the skajit, at one time or another. Drowned cows, dogs floating like Snoopy atop their doghouses, a half-sunk johnboat with chickens and a cat riding the current.

  “And a whale,” he said. “A cruddy little gray, all covered in barnacles and mud, that no one’s ever been able to explain to my complete satisfaction.”

  “And now this,” Jimmy said, hoisting a forkful of salmon.

  “That was truly something,” Mr. George agreed.

  “Do you play the piano?” I asked.

  “I do, by God,” he said. “Just some old songs I learned in Sunday school.”

  When dinner was finished Meagan invited Mr. George to join us later for cake and coffee. Then we headed home. I sat out on our screened porch. It began to rain again, and across the field, along a rutted mud road, I could see a flatbed rumbling away toward town. It was late February, one of those cool wet nights when I could imagine the glacier that once covered this valley, imagine the ice and all the things that once moved across it, and then the sea that slowly formed and eventually receded, leaving dry land and the rich deposits of silt and low floodplain so perfect for raising tulips. A month from now, for three brilliant weeks, the tulips would bloom and a sea of red and yellow would sweep toward our house, rolling our way like a wave; the huge field was planted in staggered intervals to assist with the delicate, precious, timely business of harvesting tulips. I tried to imagine Meagan moving across the field in sunlight, a clutch of red tulips in her hand, but I couldn’t really sustain it: somewhere along the way my mood had slipped into a minor key.