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Farthest South & Other Stories

Page 2

by Ethan Rutherford


  I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. My head had begun to ache, and as my stomach turned, I suddenly became aware of how hungry I was. I knew it wasn’t right to steal, but I was lost; and since no one was home, I thought maybe I’d just see if there were some chips or something—a piece of food that wouldn’t be easily missed, or a handful of nuts—and then I’d be on my way.

  The house smelled like a mothy old sweater; the curtains were drawn. The filthy carpet was unusually soft and springy. I did not aim to linger. But as I snuck across the sparsely furnished living room, my attention caught on a glass case set against the back wall. It was clean and well-lit, and as I got closer, I saw that it held a number of porcelain figurines. They were small—none larger than the size, say, of an index finger—but they were arranged in an arresting way: all the figures stood in a circle, as if staring at one another. In the middle of the circle was an odd-looking golden fish: it had a salmon’s hook-nosed head and the long body of an eel.

  I should’ve shrugged and gone on to the kitchen, but I was drawn to the case; and as I examined the figurines more closely, I was surprised to discover that their faces were the same, and that each, to an alarming degree, looked exactly like my father’s girlfriend. Without thinking, I opened the thin glass doors and picked one up. I hadn’t been mistaken: up close, the features were hers. The figurine was heavier than I expected and seemed well made; but as I turned it in my hand, her head fell off and landed on the carpet between my feet without a sound. That’s not good, I remember thinking, but I didn’t reach down to pick it up. Instead, I squeezed what remained of the figurine in my hand, and her arms broke off like small, dry twigs. Something moved inside me, some dark feeling, and I grabbed and angrily crushed each of the little figurines—one wore a blue robe, one was dressed as a fisher-woman, one was a nurse, one wore an old-fashioned bathing suit. It was satisfying to destroy these brittle, small dolls. I was thorough and methodical. I felt powerful, even though I knew it wouldn’t change anything.

  I heard a sound behind me then—and when I turned, I saw that the Seal Lady had appeared and was standing in the foyer of her strange and decrepit home. I know now that she is somewhat famous in those parts—you say “Seal Lady” and everyone knows whom you mean and has stories about her—but at the time I’d never heard of her. As for why she’s called Seal Lady, it’s pretty simple—for some reason that is hard to put into words, she reminds everyone who sees her of a big and dangerous leopard seal. She’s a half seal, half woman. But you never catch her looking like a seal. That’s just the impression she gives. You know, when you are talking to her, that you are talking to something not completely human, but something older, and when you think back on your conversation you think: Those are the darkest eyes I’ve ever seen. I’ve just spoken to a seal.

  “DID SHE HAVE TEETH?” one of the boys asked Soren.

  “Yes, she did,” he answered. “Long and yellow and razor sharp. You couldn’t miss them.”

  “Did she say she was going to eat you up?” the other boy asked.

  “She did,” Soren said. He paused, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to go on. “But then she said there was a way that she wouldn’t eat me up.”

  “How?” the boy said.

  “Be patient,” Soren said. “I’m getting to that part.”

  I WAS SCARED out of my mind. She was unbelievably imposing. Though she was hunched over like a regular old person, her head still brushed the ceiling, and it felt as though the house had shrunk around her. She said she recognized me as my father’s son, and that she knew I wasn’t from the area, so perhaps I hadn’t heard of her. She said she had great power and would demonstrate that to me now so that I would pay attention to what she said next. At this her eyes flashed a little, but there wasn’t anything earthshaking going on. I was beginning to think maybe I could make a run for it. The only thing was that when I tried to run, I found that I could not, since the carpet held my boots.

  Think of a secret you haven’t told anyone, and I will guess it, she said. And when I speak it back to you, you’ll know that I’m powerful and can read your thoughts.

  I didn’t want to think of any secret, so I thought of a long series of numbers instead. I repeated these numbers in my head until they were all I could hear, and I could see the integers scrolling away from me into the distance like little flapping birds.

  Of course, she told me the exact numbers, even with decimal points. And then she laughed, because she’d been expecting a secret.

  Now, let me show you something, she said, and her jaw unhinged like a snake’s. Her head split almost in half, and I saw rows and rows of jagged brown teeth. Impressive, right? she said. She walked closer and stood so near that I could smell her salty musk. Those figurines, she said, were the only thing I loved on this earth. They were invaluable to me, and you have broken them as if they meant nothing at all.

  I apologized profusely, but she didn’t seem to care. I could feel her hot breath on my neck. She stank of rotting kelp. I thought for sure I was dead. I closed my eyes and braced myself, but when nothing happened, I opened them and saw that the Seal Lady was sitting in one of her ratty chairs near the fireplace.

  This is a situation, she said, that needs to be made right. You are in debt to me. And by rights, I am now allowed to destroy something that you hold dear. She closed her eyes as if in deep thought and stayed that way for a long time. I thought perhaps she’d fallen asleep, but I knew I wouldn’t be so lucky. Here’s the arrangement, she finally said. Her eyes were still closed. Either I can tie you up here and eat your fingers and toes one by one until they are gone—at which point I will slowly season and eat the rest of you, call my cubs, and scatter your bones into the sea—and then I will find something you hold dear and destroy it, or else you can work to repay your debt.

  I was so frightened that for a minute or two I couldn’t speak. Eventually, I managed a nod to signal I would do my best.

  This pleased her, I think. Here is what will happen, she said. When you are fishing with your father, every now and then you will pull a golden fish from the ocean. This fish will come only to your boat, and only you will be able to discern its true color. When you find this fish, you must eat every part of it. Only by eating the entire fish will you stay true to our agreement. You will receive between five and seven fish, and each one carries in its stomach something I am looking for. When you have completed your fishing expedition, bring me the contents of each fish’s stomach, and you will be released from your debt.

  I nodded again. When I looked down, I noticed I had wet myself. There, there, she said. She handed me some napkins. Just stick to our agreement, and keep it to yourself, and everything will be fine. I know your father’s boat—I know all the boats around here—and I will be watching and waiting for you. And with a craggy hand, she motioned for me to leave.

  Somehow, I found my way back to my father’s house. He was cleaning up in the kitchen. I wanted to tell him what had happened, but every time I thought about doing so, I imagined the Seal Lady, and couldn’t say a thing.

  I stepped on some glass he’d missed on the kitchen floor. I’m sorry, he said. That wasn’t about you. She just gets like this before I go on any sort of trip.

  “AND THE WEIRD PART,” Soren told the boys, “was that even though it felt as if I’d been gone for hours, by the clock I had been gone only fifteen minutes.”

  “That’s not the weird part, Dad,” one of them said.

  “You’re right,” Soren said. “This Young Soro story is getting away from me.”

  “I’m going to get some water,” the older boy said.

  “That’s fine,” said Soren, and moved a little so that his son could get out from under the covers.

  While his son was gone, Soren tried to remember if he had left out any important details. He couldn’t think of any, though he had changed two small things. The first was that of course the fight, to some degree, had been about him. His father had either forgotten or neglecte
d to tell his girlfriend that Soren was coming until they were on the way to pick him up, and she was understandably upset about that. And the second was that instead of a complicated series of numbers, he had, in fact, thought of a secret, and it was one that the Seal Lady had guessed right away. The secret was this: his older sister was no longer a virgin, and everyone at school knew about it. That was why she’d had a hard time that summer. That wasn’t a detail he felt bad about changing, though. It might’ve derailed the story.

  The boy came back with a full glass of water.

  “If she was a seal,” the boy said, “how did she walk?”

  Soren thought for a minute. “It was more like just her head was a seal’s,” he finally said. “She had big arms and legs. It’s hard to remember. She was horrible to look at.”

  “Oh,” the boy said.

  “Okay,” Soren said. “Let’s get back to it.”

  THE JOSEPHINE WAS a medium-sized fishing boat, but her cabin was small. On board it was me, my dad, and a crew of three other guys. My job was to help the crew with the haul, and sometimes I served as a messenger between the deck and the wheelhouse, where my dad spent most of his time. I tried to be as useful as possible, and in my mind, I was essential to the successful operation of the Josephine, but I know now that for the most part everyone was barely tolerating me.

  My dad had bought me a whole set of foul-weather gear—boots, overalls, outer jacket, fleece, hat, and insulated gloves. I knew it was expensive. It made me happy that he had taken the time to pick all my gear out, and that he’d chosen the same colors for me as he wore. The other guys on the ship all had yellow gear, head to foot. But we had orange stuff.

  It took us about a day to get to the fishing grounds. The farther we got from the marina, the less I thought about the Seal Lady. Fishing is a hard job, and I had a lot to learn. The sea was calm and looked solid and flat near the horizon, but still I got seasick the first day and spent most of the afternoon staring out over the bow, trying to keep my attention on the shore some five miles away.

  The way fishing on the Josephine worked was pretty standard: you set the net out in the water with a skiff and waited a few hours; then a motorized winch reeled the net back in and hoisted the catch over the deck. After the net disgorged its fish—and each haul could be hundreds of stunned and flopping salmon—you packed them into the refrigerated hold, where they stayed until you took them to a weigh station. I was too young to pilot the skiff by myself and wasn’t allowed to operate the winch. Most days I sat with my dad in the wheelhouse and then scampered down to help with the packing once the fish were dropped on deck.

  What I hadn’t really counted on, though, was how slow it could be out on the water. You’d set the net and wait, wait, wait. Then you’d reel it in, putter to a different part of the bay, and do it again. My dad didn’t let us listen to the radio unless the net was down, and even then I could never find a station I liked. It was always just classic rock from the seventies up and down the dial. And then, after a while, my dad would signal that it was enough and he’d flip over to AM to listen to the tide and weather report, which was read by a guy who sounded exactly like a bored robot. I imagined him in a lighthouse somewhere, mumbling into a small microphone with the patience of an old machine.

  My father chain-smoked as he watched the swell, trying to guess where the fish would be next. We didn’t talk very much—he didn’t ask me about school, and he was hesitant to start a conversation, as if he was worried he might say or ask the wrong thing—but that was okay with me. He didn’t say anything to me about his girlfriend, and he didn’t ask about my mother. But I was happy. I loved being on that boat. I felt as if I was being treated like a man for the first time in my life. It had everything to do with silence.

  For the first two weeks or so, we had pretty bad luck. The hauls were small, and everyone was in a lousy mood. But soon there was a storm that came up from the west. It was the first time I was frightened aboard the Josephine—the waves were large and broke in the wind, tossed us around. My dad made me go below, and I stayed there, listening to the engine sort of sputter and puff as we went up the side of one wave and down the other. Finally, it was over. Everyone was a little green, and very much relieved. And then, as we set the net and pulled our first haul of the day, we saw that the storm’s churn had filled the bay with confused and angry salmon.

  “AND IT WAS THEN,” Soren said dramatically, “that I saw the first golden fish.”

  “Did you eat it?” the older boy said.

  “Of course!” Soren said. “I was terrified!”

  “What did it taste like?” the boy said.

  Soren thought for a minute. “It was the most repulsive thing I’ve ever eaten,” he finally said. “I could barely choke it down.” He coughed. “Anyway, in its stomach was a figurine much like the ones I had broken. The difference, though, was that it was naked but had no private parts.”

  “Weird,” said one of the boys.

  Soren thought for a minute more. “That’s not even the weird part,” he said.

  THE WEIRD PART WAS that this figurine could move on its own, albeit in a limited way. It was, I think, some sort of tiny automaton. It also looked very much like my father’s girlfriend. And if you left her lying down in one place too long, she would slowly rise and walk mechanically around as if she were searching for something. I had eaten this fish down below in the cabin where I slept so no one would see me, and now I was stuck with this walking doll. I found a little box and I put her in it, and then I tied a piece of twine around the box and stowed it under my bunk. I had begun to think that my encounter with the Seal Lady was something I had just invented for some obscure reason, but now I knew how wrong I was.

  The next golden fish came a week later on the morning haul. I had to grab it off the deck and shove it into my boot before anyone saw me take it. It squirmed and squirmed as I quickly excused myself and went to the bathroom, where I took it out of my boot and put it on the small counter next to the toilet. It looked just like a regular salmon, no doubt about that, but its scales were streaked with gold and red, and when the light hit the fish’s flank it was almost difficult to look at. It was really a beautiful fish. I had hit the first one on the head with a winch handle until it stopped moving, but this one was pretty still, and clapped his gills open and shut on the counter in a sad way until finally he gave a last spasm and died. When I took my first bite, I thought I might pass out. This fish tasted much worse than the previous one. I felt as though I was putting something long dead into my mouth. My stomach got upset, and cold strands of saliva shot from the back of my tongue. I swallowed and had to sit on the toilet for a few minutes before I could take another bite. It took forever, but eventually I choked it down. In its stomach was another small figurine, dripping with digestive juice. I washed it off in the sink and put it in the box with the first one. I didn’t watch long enough to see if it moved or not—I was too disgusted—but when I went to sleep that night, I heard a scratching sound coming from the box, and so I assumed it did. The scratching wasn’t relentless, and quieted down after a few minutes. I was worried my dad would hear it, but he was dead on his feet—and when he came below to lie on the bunk next to mine, he slept through everything until his alarm went off.

  Meanwhile, we were catching a lot of fish. More than we could even keep up with. Our hold kept filling earlier than we expected, and we’d have to go to a processing ship to empty everything out. Each haul was met with laughter and high fives and eager whoops. The crew gave thanks to the sea and started drinking earlier and earlier at night. My dad was as happy as I’d ever seen him. He’d put his hand on my shoulder as each net came in. He introduced me to the guys on the processing ship as his good luck charm. Now and then he’d let me steer the boat and show me how to make tight turns by working the engine’s throttle against the wheel.

  Sometimes he would let me stay up and we’d talk as we waited for the net to fill. I don’t really remember what we ta
lked about—not everything is coming back to me—but I remember he would tell me about his favorite movies, and his favorite books, and I would nod and say, I’ve read that, or I’ll check that out. One night he told me the story about how he and my mother met, which was different from the story she’d told me. He said he was sad that he didn’t live closer to us, but he needed to be up in Alaska. I said it was fine with me, even though it wasn’t. It just seemed like the right thing to say on that dark and drifting boat.

  About a week later, when we were unloading the hold at the processing ship, I saw the third golden fish. I must’ve missed it when it had come aboard. I reached for it, and almost lost my balance, but finally I plucked it from the mass of other fish as they were being transferred. The guy on the processing ship looked at me as though he couldn’t believe someone would let a twelve-year-old run around on a boat like this. I didn’t know if he had seen me take the fish or not. I didn’t stick around.

  This one was inedible. I’d found it late, and it was pretty much jelly at this point, held together by bones. The stench was unmanageable and reminded me of something in the midst of a dark decay. My eyes burned just trying to get close enough to place it in my mouth. I tried cutting it up into smaller pieces, but that only made things more disgusting; I must’ve punctured an intestine, or something, because this strange green pus oozed out and ran all over the counter. I couldn’t eat this fish. Not this one. I knew I couldn’t.

  I did some rationalizing. I figured that the Seal Lady couldn’t know everything, and that if it had been this easy to miss this particular fish when it first came aboard, why couldn’t I say I’d just never seen it at all? I told myself I’d keep a better eye on the catch from now on, and would eat the fish as they came in, when they were fresher. I scooped this fish up and dumped it into a plastic grocery bag. I wiped the counter down with a sponge and put the sponge in the bag too. I could feel sweat forming on my face. Then I took the bag topsides, and when no one was looking, I tipped it over the port rail. I saw now that the fish was mostly liquid, and it leaked into the sea with the thickness of oil. As I poured it out, I thought I might faint; the stench was so unpleasant. One of its flat eyeballs stuck on the bag’s handle, and I panicked and waved the bag to shake it loose. Just then, I remembered the figurine—I’d been so disgusted that I’d forgotten to check—but it was too late. It fell out of the bag and hit the water with a loud plop and sank immediately into the calm sea like a hammer.

 

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