by Jones, Nath
Sabby, this large white dog, bursts through the underbrush between the houses before I even call her twice. She is always excited to go fishing with me. I doubt I called her loud enough. I’m sure she just heard the screen door scrape the sagging porch roof and came bounding to me because of that. But she sees me, sits, tilts her head, then seems to know before I can tell her anything about what will happen. I stand sweating on the porch with the huge dog still staring at me.
The neighbor lady used to get mad that I take her dog fishing. She didn’t think a purebred show dog should be out on the water in some old man’s boat, especially not some old brown man’s boat. But the dog always wanted to go with me. I suppose because we’re both Argentinian. After a few months the owner eased up, said Sabby’s fishing with me would be fine as long as I never took her out past the sandbar, in case she ever needed to swim back. My neighbor is a nervous woman and seemed to want me to know how precious a thing I carried. So she stood there next to me on the beach one morning—looking at the ocean, not me—and explained all the trouble of getting this special dog. On the papers, her name is Fantasma de la Sabiduría, the dam was Sombra de una Duda, the sire was Triturador de la Nube. My busy self-important neighbor doesn’t know I call her Sabby. It is fitting. But often I call her Mi Fantasma Querida, my beloved ghost. I wrote a poem for her.
My beloved ghost, whose yesterdays are the eyes of God.
My beloved ghost, whose tomorrows will be left over
and nothing more.
Even when the next change will be so lasting
I agree with the wind that says, “Ever change.”
Usually I say it in Spanish. It sounds better.
Sabby does not have her ears clipped but severity remains in the readied shoulders and down deep between her eyes.
The pain comes back.
I can barely stand and think of just sitting for a moment in the chair. I know I’ll never get up, though. So I stand, lean against the wall of my little cottage until the big, white dog stands up and comes toward me. Months ago I trained her to carry my fishing pot in her mouth by its handle. So she grabs it from me. Her profound patience stills my mind. She never once looks away from my eyes.
When the pain eases again we move to the stairs and take them one by one together. She lets me lean on her shoulders as we cross the beach to the boat and thank God for the high tide. I only have to push the boat a few feet to get it into the water. But. I can’t lift the anchor from the sand. I consider for a moment and then decide. I cut the anchor rope with my fishing knife. It is still a lot of exertion but not as much as lifting the deadweight of that anchor in the sand.
I push the boat off and climb in. Sabby jumps from the beach into the boat and sits patiently on the floorboards as I fit the oars into the oarlocks. The sounds are familiar to me but she hears nothing.
I used to be a fisherman. But I’ve been retired long enough that the longing for the smell of diesel fumes over saltwater is gone. I don’t miss the plastic crates of fish submerged in the holding tank. Nothing as recent as those years matters. What I remember is standing on the rocks near my childhood home fishing with my dad and brother.
My brother died in 1973 right before my father forced me to come to the States. My brother had gotten himself involved in all that political tumult. There was a mob of protesters moving down a side street and he ended up crushed between a trash barrel and a wall. I never got all riled up like he used to, never got involved in the insurrection, but my dad still didn’t think it was safe for me there at home. Though why he thought I’d be better off living in his aunt’s basement in New Jersey I have no idea.
But. He was elderly then himself. Wanted me to get out of La Boca.
I miss those black rocks where waves slide back down into the sea like a hundred snakes. That’s where I stood and fished for corvina with my brother and dad. And I remember my mother taking both of us, my brother and me, on the bus thirty kilometers inland along the Rio Negro to Viedma for my first communion. I’d never seen anything so beautiful as the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mercy.
This is pain like I have not known. But I’ll be with my mother, my brother, and my dad soon. In no time.
Heather grows along the bulkhead. Someone—Nuestra Señora de la Merced, maybe, but definitely someone unknown to any of us along this stretch of beach—planted it here during the 1940s and it abounds in the spray of the surf. Like the ruff of a little boy’s hair the heather swirls and tosses in the wind that comes down through two tall rocks at the horizon. That whipping breeze hugs the cliffs and the sandy beach. And we smell the seasons before their time.
I only have a rowboat now. The Reprieve, I call it. There was once a fishing boat and then a charter fishing boat, but they are both gone. One was stripped down and rebuilt for a radio station to broadcast advertisements to the throngs along the bayside beaches. The other I burned here near the heather. But this little dory does just fine.
The rowing will be difficult for me. Sabby notices how slowly we drift through the water. Her satiny white body is muscle-bound, alert, but she is in no rush. She is as old as I am. And there is no hurry left in either of us.
She lies down, leans against the side of the boat, and shuts her eyes.
For a moment we rest on a glassy impossibility. The air is still. The water is flat except at the very edge where imperceptible waves give in, repeating a hushed lullaby for the slumbering sea. The birds on the cliff are done with their dawn songs. The gulls preen themselves on the jetty and stand looking to the north. There are no other boats this morning. Once there were many fishermen but now the beach is for weekends, not work. The water drips from my oar in three places. The sea receives the drops in a dignified series of ripples. I see the sand and rocks of the beach beneath us steeped a yellow-green at high tide.
We move out in rhythmic thrusts. My companion is awakened after her short drowse on the cross thwart. She climbs over my seat. Rising up, she places her front paws on the transom and looks back at the shore as I row out onto the water.
I like to get out past the sandbar, even if my beloved ghost’s owner doesn’t like it. Fish in the shallows don’t bite for me, it seems. The fish are in colder water beyond the sandbar so we’re three-quarters of a mile offshore and, if I had it, it’d be time to put the anchor down.
It takes me so long to lift the oars out of the oarlocks and stow those smooth pieces of wood. But I manage it the way I like. I slide them back behind me, get the handles crossed down under the back seat and the blades vertical along the gunnels.
A cormorant eases by and sits on a boulder which rises out of the water to the east. Our eyes follow its journey, but the bird is nothing uncommon. We always see cormorants when we’re fishing in the morning.
If I am fishing, sometimes my past comes to me. It comes and strokes my hair like a mother. And I rest wearily against it as events occur again. I remember others laughing and my jokes that would last for days. I remember the ocean water in all her costumes and moods. I remember the oceangoing charters and an Atlantic full of fish. Now that is all so close to nothing. The fishing line is wrapped a hundred times around a piece of driftwood. I can barely tie a hook to the line and have nothing for bait but I am fishing still. I drop the hook easily over the side of the boat. It is held plumb with a tiny lead weight.
The sky is colored an early-morning steel. And the blue-gray waters meet it in every direction. “Mi fantasma querida. My beloved ghost.” She comes closer and I stroke her strong back, reciting my poem for her:
Mi fantasma querida, que ayer es los
ojos del Dios. Mi fantasma
querida, que mañanas se entienden para ser
dejadas excesivas y a nada más.
Mi fantasma querida, convengo
con el viento cuando dice, “Cambio.”
Y el cambio siguiente, el viento me
dice que, se duren.
She lies down with her paws outstretched. Her head rests next to me on th
e wooden seat. And she says nothing. The line is heavy with a catch. But it is likely a sand shark, so heavy in these small waters. I release the driftwood spool into the water and forget fishing. I hold the edge of the seat and lean back under the morning sky, to see its everything once more so fully, and feel the waves rocking the small boat, pushing us. We are tethered to the water by no anchor rope. And the waves push us east well beyond what would have been its limit.
This pain comes and goes. But it is too much. I want to lie down now.
The dog helps me get onto the floor of the boat. I am soaked by the water in the hull, but it is a familiar thing, and I cannot doubt its pleasure.
“Mi fantasma querida, usted debe saber, yo está muriendo.”
Her eyes see into me and say, “Shhhhh. It will be okay.”
I wonder. “Le creo. ¿Pero mi fantasma querida, dónde voy a ir? ¿Cómo yo deje para ir?”
She sits up and looks straight into the splitting place between the ocean and the sky. It seems, with the colors of the dawn, that no such place exists. But she looks straight into it and does not balk. She is saying, “That is where you are going. And do not be afraid.”
I hold her satin body next to mine and wonder who will find us. An early-morning beach walker, maybe. A man drinking coffee up on the cliffs. They will say, Why is that old man’s boat drifting away past the sandbar? Why is the dog there? Where is the man? What a strange picture postcard for our memories. And I will be lying here on the floor of the boat where no one will be able to see me. And it will be a somber picture from the beach—boat, three-quarters of a mile offshore, with a huge white dog wearing its loyalty and pride. And so it will be against a steely ocean that they will find me. And so it will be with a neighbor’s dog that they will find me in the bottom of The Reprieve.
Mi Fantasma Querida looks into the impossibility. She looks straight into the invisible morning horizon and escorts me. The boat drifts further, my last grip around her loosens, but she does not quiver.
HOLSTERS IN THE GUESTROOM
Roni’d been cleaning, breastfeeding her son, and wiping dog slobber off the floor for the better part of the day. When her son vomited breast milk all over both himself and her, she was already running late to pick up her husband’s college friend from the South Shore. Roni changed the baby’s clothes, put him in his swing, jumped in and out of the shower for thirty seconds, threw on her husband’s old FBI SWAT training t-shirt, put her five-month-old son into his carrier, and grabbed her keys. “Jesus Christ,” she said under her breath but didn’t stumble on the guitar that her dog must have knocked down again with his big wagging tail.
She pulled her wet hair up, picked up her son in his bulky, crash-test-rated car seat, dragged it through three rooms, shoved her feet into some old wedge flip-flops, and rushed through the laundry room toward the garage.
She tried to think about what she’d say to Brandon’s friend. She couldn’t remember if this was the guy that ended up going to the police academy at the same time as Brandon or if this guy worked with her husband at the stromboli place for five years. She should know. So she couldn’t ask. Maybe she could ask him whether he had any good stories on Brandon from when they first met. She definitely wanted to clarify which guy this was before she got back to the house to make their dinner.
Either way she was about to miss his train if she didn’t hurry. Hopefully she could catch mostly green lights on the way there and be at the front of the line of cars picking up commuters. She hurried to the garage steps as best she could while lugging the awkward baby carrier because she hated being in the back of that Kiss & Ride line more than she hated being in a rush to leave the house. But at the foot of the garage stairs she just stopped.
Her navy sedan was backlit with blinding light off the cement. The garage door gaped.
She gripped the handle of the baby carrier but didn’t look down at her son. All the motion and momentum that had gathered in the past ten minutes dissipated to nothing. It wasn’t even worth hesitating. She took the first step and stood on the second step of the garage stairs overwhelmed by both knowledge and disbelief. It took brute force to move up one more step and stand immobilized on the third shocked but not surprised. She stared into the backseat of her car.
She didn’t hope. She didn’t pray. She just said to herself, “I really don’t need this right now.” She climbed the last step and stood on the garage floor. Her son kicked his feet in the carrier. She shifted the thing from one side of her body to the other.
Brandon’s friend’s train was due to arrive in ten minutes. But it didn’t matter. What choice did she have? She had to deal with this bullshit again. She set her son’s carrier down on top of a fifty-pound bucket of dog food and sent a text to her mom: What happened?
Then she walked around to the other side of the car to be sure.
Her husband’s motorcycle lay tipped over on the pile of recycling.
Yep.
God damn it.
The driver’s side passenger door was standing wide open and her father lay passed out in the backseat.
Roni felt nothing. She just wanted her dad out of her car. She wanted him not there at all. Inert like the mountain bikes, the garden hose, the lawn seed spreader, the broken fire pit, the black shelving, the bag of bulb fertilizer, the snow shovel, the weed whacker, the new wagon, and the crib box, she just blinked. She didn’t cry. She didn’t scream. She didn’t throw anything. She didn’t abandon her son. She didn’t kick the aging, tyrannic bastard.
She said, “Dad. Wake up. Get out of my car. I need to go. I need to be somewhere.”
He didn’t move.
She pushed her dad’s knee gently but firmly by shutting the car door against his shins. He didn’t notice. She picked up each of his legs and let them drop. They were deadweight. She poked him in the chest. He was nearly lifeless—didn’t respond to any stimulus. She tried to drag him out of the car but he was too big. She had trouble enough lugging her son around. There was no way she could move her father. It was an exercise in futility to even push isometrically against the accumulated weight, resistance, and friction of their intolerant years. She tried to shove her dad into the car but his clothes against the upholstery of her car seat created too much drag for her to overcome.
Her son started to cry.
She looked over at him, balanced there in a plastic safety device on the dog food. What was she even trying to protect him from? She hadn’t noticed any of the dog food scattered across the concrete floor, or that raccoons had likely been in her garage. Her recycling was chewed up and torn. There were scat pellets. So then she did feel something. Not disappointment, rage, or aggression having anything to do with her father’s being so exhaustingly who he was. No. She was infuriated that the garage door had been open all night and that wild animals got into her dog’s food.
She walked around the car to the big bucket of dog food and started rocking her son. He fell asleep fairly easily. She moved him off the dog food container and put him in the middle of the hood of her car. She got a blue-handled broom and dustpan to clean up what she could. She sprayed urine remover in all the places she found scat.
Her mother texted her back about what had happened with her father last night.
Roni read her mother’s explanation but did not respond. Instead, she texted her husband to say that she was going to miss his friend’s train. She gave no explanation to her husband, just told him to text his friend and let him know.
Her husband was livid and responded right away. He said, no, he wasn’t going to text his friend, that she just needed to go and pick him up, that there was no reason for her to be late, she was just sitting around all day, and that it’s not like his friend can just call a taxi—it’d cost a fortune if any ghetto cab even did show up. Her husband’s follow-up text said that he never should have given her any responsibility and that he knew she didn’t like his even having friends but that she had no right to leave the poor guy hanging.
She did not cry. She did not call her husband at work to scream at him about her father’s lying passed out drunk in the backseat of her car. What would be the point? He’d already worked a double. So she did not throw her phone down and stamp on it. She did not call her friend to get the name of that divorce lawyer.
She absorbed what she could and did nothing.
After twenty-nine years of listening to all her mother’s excuses she was not about to explain anything about this to her husband. She was too sick of all the reasons why. She did not respond to her husband at all. She just looked at her son on the hood of the car to be sure he’d be okay there for another minute and disappeared into the house. She returned with a plastic cup of water, walked around to the rear passenger door, and threw the water in her father’s face.
He blinked. He spit. She was patient and maybe a little afraid when she told her dad to just pull his feet into the car because they had to go to the train station. He reluctantly did it.
Roni took her son off the hood of the car and put his car seat into the carrier base in the backseat next to her father. She didn’t want her son so close to her father right at that moment but she had no other choice. She was just glad that her child was encased in plastic, that her father was not quite conscious, and that she’d be picking up her husband’s friend in a minute. She might not remember exactly how he and Brandon met but she knew he was a big guy trained for mortal combat.
Knowing that helped her breathe.
She got into the driver’s seat and adjusted her mirrors. Her father only momentarily met her gaze in the rearview mirror before he tilted his head back and put his hands on his forehead.
Roni said nothing.
She put the key in the ignition and turned it.
Nothing happened.
The car wouldn’t start: the battery had run down with the dome light shining all night.
She texted her mom to ask if she could go get her husband’s friend at the train station. Her mom immediately responded to say she couldn’t because she was almost at work already and plus she didn’t understand why her daughter was always so unfeeling about everything that happened and never cared what her mother was going through. Roni should really not give her any more stress right when she was so emotional after the events of the previous evening, and even if she might have maybe considered doing a favor for Roni, even if she were perhaps available for another twenty minutes, she wouldn’t do anything right then because she was so mad at Roni for not even responding to her explanation in the other text.