by Tower, Wells
Not far from the water’s edge, Bob nearly put his foot into a deep tide pool in the rock. It was big as a bathtub and deeper than he could see. A pair of crimson starfish clung to the edge. He fished them out. They were hard and spiny in his hands, but they were nice to look at, and he thought he might nail them up somewhere for an ornament, so he dropped them into the stretched-out belly of his T-shirt. He was about to move on, when he saw something moving in the blue deeps of the hole—a fish, four pounds at least, and gorgeous, nearly the same dark blue as the water, just sitting there, gently working its bright yellow fins. It was a fish for looking at, not eating, a kind of fish that would cost you good money at a pet store. Bob dropped the starfish on the rock. He crouched beside the hole and put his hands in the water. The fish didn’t move, even when he reached his fingers down beside it, but when he snatched for it, the fish darted to the far side of the hole but then just sat there, idly finning.
He crept after the fish, taking an easterly circuit around the hole so he wouldn’t cast a shadow on the pool. Again he put a hand in the water, but he didn’t do a big grab right off. With his left arm, he braced himself against the edge of the hole and, leaning over, let a string of spit unwind off his lip. The white bead hit the water; the pretty fish perked up. After a moment’s contemplation, it floated over and ate the spit. Bob supposed the fish was starving in that hole, which explained its listlessness and the expectant way it now hovered just below the surface, waiting for another bit of lunch to fall out of the sky. Bob spat again, and the greedy fish lipped it up. Then he hocked up a lush wad from the back of his throat and lowered it toward the water on a slow strand. The fish sat rapt and waiting. As the gob neared the surface, Bob slipped a hand beneath the placid fish, lunged, and, to his own astonishment, flipped it out of the hole. It jerked and bounced across the rock, and Bob felt a panic shoot through him. He tore his T-shirt off, dipped it in the water, and draped it on the flopping fish in a shroud. Then he sprinted up the dune with the swaddled fish buckling and writhing against his chest. It was a violent and vital sensation, and Bob wondered for a moment if it was anything like this when a woman had a baby inside her.
Bob ran across Derrick’s yard. Claire was in a bikini on the concrete porch. She waved to him and he yelled hey but didn’t stop. He ran with his flip-flops in his fingers and cursed the oyster shells under his feet.
He made it back to the house, busted open the screen door, and dumped the fish into the aquarium. It sank and then slowly floated to the surface, fixing Bob with a vacant eye.
“Uh-uh. No way, buddy,” Bob told the fish with stern pity.
He placed his palm beneath it and swept the foul water through its gills, and soon it stirred again. He pulled out the bottle of hair tonic and the bat and dropped them on the floor. The fish, which had lost part of its delicate tailfin on the rocks, drifted indifferently to one end of the tank and nibbled at a pencil that was standing in the corner.
Using a tin saucepan as a ladle, Bob bailed out most of the old green water, leaving just enough to keep the fish covered. He cleaned out the rest of the junk: bottle caps, a doll’s head, and almost three dollars in change. Then he got a soup pot from the kitchen and ferried up clean water from the sea. It took him forty-five minutes, toting the sloshing pot uphill and going back for more, but when the aquarium was full Bob stood back and beheld it, gratified.
The fish swam in contented circles and did not seem to mind the tiny white crabs that had come in with the seawater. The seams were sweating a little, and Bob patched them as best he could with caulk he found under the sink. Then he hiked over to the grocery store and bought two kinds of fish food. He carried it back, and sprinkled a little pinch of each into the tank to see which one the fish preferred.
That night he borrowed a folding cot from Derrick and Claire and set it up in the living room. He put a lamp behind the aquarium and turned it on. He did not like it in this house, its odors of old meals, how the place hummed with the shrill tunes of insects that breezed in through the unscreened windows. Lying there waiting for sleep to come, Bob found some calm in the sight of his fish, so large and placid, hanging there in the glowing water. For a while, it slowly patrolled the glass and peered out at Bob with a large, gold-rimmed eye. Then all of a sudden it stopped in the middle of the tank, shivered, and began blowing from its mouth a translucent, milky sac. Bob sat up in the cot and watched the fish with awe. The sac trembled in the water but held its form. When it had grown to the size of a basketball, the fish glided inside and seemed to fall asleep.
______
In the morning Bob went out to the patio. It was beyond hope. Even to weed it wasn’t half worth the little money Randall had vaguely promised, and he’d be damned if he’d rip up those bricks and fix the grade as the note instructed. Still, he guessed he could pull a weed or two, if only to justify a long afternoon down on the shore watching the waves come in.
The work made him angry, first at Randall, who it was obvious hadn’t so much as dragged a broom across this patio in the six years he’d owned it, and then at himself, for letting his life drift back to a place where he’d had to take the kind of ape work he had not done in years. Bob had helped build five whole homes, from the mudsills to the shingles. He’d put up a house for himself and Vicky, and when she first saw it finished, she couldn’t stop laughing because it looked so good. What a gentle, decent kind of life he’d had with her. What a perfect pageant of disgrace he’d cast himself in now: down on all fours, clawing like an animal at thorns and marsh cherries whose yellow fruit left his hands smelling like bad breath, the red weight of the sun on him, and nobody around to pity his cracked hands or bring him something cool to drink.
With all the weeds gone, the patio did not look good. It was tidy, but now the big swells where the tree roots lay were easier and more unpleasant to see. The sight seemed an insult to the work he’d already done. Despite himself, he started on the bricks. When he’d pulled and stacked them, he set upon the roots below, snatching at the young pale ones with his bare hands and chopping at the stout pine roots with Randall’s rusty ax. It took the rest of the day, and by the time Bob knocked off in the afternoon he was aching and had a raw sunburn on his face and arms. He went inside and mixed up some old Kool-Aid, which hardly masked the sulfurous bite of the water that ran from the tap. Then he walked down toward the shore, and he brought the soup pot with him.
Derrick was out in his yard, and Bob wished he’d cut through the bushes on the other side of Derrick’s house. But Derrick got out of his chair and waved Bob over. He had on a green plastic visor and a pair of the tiniest jean shorts that Bob had ever seen on a man. “Hey, man,” Derrick said. “What’re you doing?”
“I thought I’d go get my feet wet,” Bob said. “I’ve been working like a slave all day.”
“Doing what?”
“Picking shit up and putting shit down.”
“Sounds nice,” said Derrick. “I was up at five this morning throwing a purse-string suture on a hog with a prolapsed butt hole. What’s that boil pot for?”
“I dunno,” Bob said. “I was maybe going to put some sea life in it.”
“Huh. Hold up a second.” Derrick went into the house and came back out carrying a faded green dip net with an aluminum handle. “Here you go. I’ll come down with you, if you don’t mind.”
Bob shrugged.
They skitched down the dune and got out on the spit. The sun looked orange and slick, like a canned peach. Bob dipped a foot in the mild water.
“I’m getting in,” Bob said, unbuckling his belt.
Derrick was brushing off a spot on the rock and was slowly getting down on it. “In the water? To swim?” Derrick asked.
“Yes,” Bob said. He shucked his shorts and waded in.
“What, nude?”
Bob didn’t answer. He pushed out into the water, which was thick and warm as baby oil. Even when he stopped moving, the water buoyed him up and wouldn’t let him sink.
He took his pants down. Bob glimpsed the melancholy little change purse he had between his legs, and looked away. Derrick’s problem. Bob didn’t want to know about it. He stroked into the tide.
The sea floor dropped away fast, and just a few feet out, his feet couldn’t reach the bottom. He dived down through the green water and floated for a moment in the mantle of coolness where the sun’s heat didn’t reach. That would be an all right place to stay, if you could only find a way to linger there. But his lungs were full of air, and he soon felt the surface break across his back.
Claire was picking her way down through the grass. She wore a terry-cloth skirt and a leopard print bikini top. She waved to Bob.
“Back up, Claire,” Derrick called out. “Bob is a nudist, and he’s got me involved in it.”
“I see,” said Claire. Bold as an athlete, she shrugged off her top and pushed her skirt down. Across her breasts and oval hips, her skin looked soft and new and pale as paraffin. Bob floated off the tip of the spit, looking at her and smoothing the water with his sore hands. He watched her ease into the green curl.
He considered for a moment the many miles that lay between him and his own wife, and what it would take to cinch that distance up again. A lot of talking, a lot of work was what it would take, more than a hundred patios. It was a discouraging thought, and Bob slipped beneath the water with the weight of it.
With the sun beginning to sag, Bob crawled out and got his shorts back on. Derrick and Claire were still far out in the waves, their heads blinking in and out of sight as the swells fell and rose.
He went to the hole in the rock and saw that the last tide had filled it with amazing things. A quivering halo of vermilion minnows hung near the surface. Hugging the side of the rock was a little blue octopus no bigger than a child’s hand, advancing on a yellow snail. Bob got the net. The minnows slipped through the mesh easily, but when Bob went for the octopus, it panicked and pushed off straight into the netting. He dropped it into the pot, and then plucked the snail with his fingers.
Derrick climbed out of the water and came and had a look. “Caribbean reef octopus,” he said. “They mostly live south of here, but when the water starts going through its cooling, like it is right now, the current goes a little haywire and draws these funny drifts up here.”
A smoky curtain of squalls was moving in from the west. Claire crawled out of the water, catching her balance in a long-legged sprinter’s crouch so as not to scrape a knee. Then she stooped and braceleted a dark thigh with her fingers, easing her hand down the length of her leg, stripping the water off in silver peels. Bob watched her dry the second leg this way, and the beauty of it made his throat itch. While Derrick went on about wildlife and currents, Bob coughed into his fist.
“Also, there’s Harlan’s Ridge, a little underwater mountain range about a mile out that way. It splits some of the Gulf Stream off and shoots a little splinter of it at our cove, and a lot of wild things come in with that, year round. Eagle rays, turtles, scorpion fish, just strays and accidentals, stuff that don’t belong here.”
Claire put a hand on Derrick’s shoulder. She licked away the beads of seawater caught in the bleached down on her upper lip.
“Remember last year, that dorado?” Claire said.
“Dolphin,” said Derrick. “Now, that’s a deep-sea fish, but there it was, about yay long. We boiled it in coconut milk. Buddy, I’ve probably ate a thousand dollars’ worth of shit out of this hole over the years, no joke. What you got down there is a deep cave. A while back I dropped a forty-foot—Now look—”
He broke off and took the net from Bob. A khaki eel about eighteen inches long had appeared on the far side of the pool. On tiptoes, Derrick crept to where the eel lay and hauled it out with a quick jab of the net.
“Anguilla rostrata,” said Derrick. “American eel. It’s a little puny, but we could put him on the grill.”
“No, uh-uh,” Bob said. “Give it here. I want to keep it.”
“You know the thing about these?” Derrick said, still holding up the netted eel. “These and European eels, they both start out as babies in the Sargasso Sea. Some ride the Gulf Stream up this way and some cruise all the way to Europe. Same eel, it’s just where you catch it.”
While Derrick was talking, the eel struggled over the hoop and started wriggling fast for the water. Derrick scrambled after it. He ushered the creature back into the net with his hand, and in the process, the eel bit him hard on the thumb. Cursing, Derrick slung it into the pot.
“You just lost the rights on that motherfucker, Bob,” Derrick said, sucking his nail. “He’s got an appointment with some hot coals.”
But Bob picked up the pot and carried it up the slope.
The week wore on and Bob fell into a good rhythm, working in the days, jawing with the neighbors on evenings when he felt like it, spending time down by the water when he did not. He brought back many things for the aquarium: a hermit crab, sea horses, a small dogfish. One day he and Derrick rode the Pontiac to a pier down the coast and caught hardhead catfish on pork rind bottom rigs. They took the fish back to Randall’s house, and Claire came over. When she saw Bob’s aquarium she put her hand to her mouth and said she couldn’t believe he’d hauled all of that stuff out of the sea. Then she gathered the catfish to clean them. As a child, she said, her father always made her dress the catch. She’d hated the chore back then, but she found satisfaction in it now.
Out in the yard, Bob watched her nail the fishes’ heads to a piece of plywood and then douse them in boiling water from the kettle. She made a couple of slits with a box knife, and with a special pair of pliers, she peeled the skin down, neat as a whistle, revealing the snowy flesh beneath. She cut the fish into bite-size cubes, dipped them in store-bought breader, and dropped them into a pan of boiling oil.
They sat on the patio and ate off paper plates.
“Look at you, Bob, this is pretty work you did out here,” Claire said, surveying how he’d done the bricks. She was on her fourth beer and there wasn’t much warmth in her voice. “I’d like to get you over and handyman up a few things for me. I’d like to get a front door with a window in it, and maybe a couple of cheap skylights. Though if we were smart people, we’d probably just light that piece of shit on fire and start from scratch.”
“Why say that, Claire?” said Derrick. “We’re having a good time, and then you have to say something like that.”
“Well, it’s the truth,” said Claire.
Bob didn’t care to hear any of this. He pulled a tiny bone from his lips and flicked it into the dark yard. “I’ll probably split in a couple of days,” he said. “Maybe you’ll look after those fish in there when I’m gone.”
______
The next night he walked to the store in the island’s little village and called home on the pay phone. A big halide bulb buzzed at the top of the telephone pole, and a confetti of moths bumped and tumbled in the yellow glare. He plunked a handful of quarters into the slot. For a moment he waited. A man picked up.
“Hey, Randall,” Bob said.
“Buddy,” Randall said. “What’s the word?”
“I don’t know,” Bob said. “I fixed your patio. Slapped some paint on those cabinets, too.”
“Thank you, my man. That’s a lifesaver. Would’ve done it myself, but you know . . . Anyhow, that’s great.” There was a pause, and then Randall sneezed into the phone. “How’s that paneling looking?”
“It’s looking pretty fucked-up, which is how it’s gonna stay,” Bob said. “I don’t intend to hump a bunch of Sheetrock back from the store in a wheelbarrow.”
“You can’t get hold of a truck or something? Rent one?” Randall said. “Or maybe they deliver. Hell, I don’t know, Bob, figure it out.”
“What are you up to in my house?” Bob said.
Bob heard Randall saying something that he couldn’t make out. Vicky got on and
said hello.
“Hey, Vick,” he said.
“Well, how is it?”
“Oh, real great,” Bob said. “I struck oil in the yard. It’s all champagne and gold toilets down here. I got people on call to put grapes in my mouth. But, anyway, I’ve enjoyed it about all I can. I’m getting ready to get ready to come on back.”
“Huh,” she said. “We have to talk about some things.”
Bob asked what things, and Vicky didn’t say at first. She told him that she loved him and that she spent a lot of time worrying over him. She said she pitied him for the unwise things he’d done. She said she did not like being without him, but that, though she tried hard to, she could not think of a reason to take him back right now. In a calm, lawyerly style, she detailed a long catalog of Bob’s shortcomings. From the sound of it, she had everything written down with dates and witnesses and the worst parts underlined. Bob listened to all of this and he felt himself get cold.
He watched a mouse walk out from behind the soda machine. It was eating a coupon.
“Why don’t you tell me about what Randall’s doing on my property,” he said. “Why don’t we talk about something like that?”
“How about let’s talk about nothing,” she said. “I’m a happier person when I forget who you are.”
Bob sighed and went into a fumbling half-hearted apology, but Vicky wouldn’t answer, and he suspected she was holding the phone away from her face, as he’d seen her do when her mother called. Then he retreated to the subject of his uncle, which felt like solid ground, and began to deliver some big claims about what he planned to do to him if he didn’t mind his business.
“Why don’t you put it in a postcard, Bob?” she said. “Hey, look, I’m about to burn some noodles here. Enjoy yourself, all right? Keep in touch.”