Fishing the Sloe-Black River

by Colum McCann

  I climb naked out of bed, swinging my feet down into my slippers. The floor is cold and I step carefully. Last night I smashed the blackberry jamjar that used to hold our money. The glass splayed in bright splinters all around the room. I move over to the window, and Enrique murmurs into the pillow. The curtains make the sound of crackling ice. The ghosts of old fishermen can tumble in here in droves now if they want, spit their epithets all around the room. What the hell sort of mess is this? You’re late for work, Paddy-boy. No foghorns going off this morning. Gut the fish along the side, asshole.

  Our window looks out to a steep hill of parked cars. This morning they are bumper to bumper. Drivers have turned their steering wheels sideways so their vehicles won’t roll down the hill and fling themselves toward the sea. Two weeks ago Enrique and I sold our car for $2,700 to a man with lemon-colored hair, and all the money is gone already. Bags of medicine and a little bit of cocaine. I put our last line on his belly last night, but he was sweating so hard that it was almost impossible to snort it.

  I look up the road toward the deli. The white light in the street is slouching on the buildings, spilling over the ironwork railings. What I like most about the street is that people put flower pots in their windows, a colorful daub of Mediterranean greens and reds. Doors are painted in a medley of shades. Curtains get thrown open early in the mornings. There’s a cat on the third floor across the street, jet black with a dappled blue bandanna. It is forever cocking its head sideways and yawning in the window. Sometimes I bring home some sea trout and leave it on the doorstep of the house for the owner.

  I cover myself with my hand and step out through the French doors. A chill wind is coming up from the waterfront, carrying the smell of salt water and fresh sourdough. Already some of the fishermen will have unloaded their catch and Paulie’s fingers will be frantic in his hair. Where’s O’Meara this morning? they’ll say to him. Has he found himself a gerbil? The other fishgutters will be cursing over slabs of fillets. Their plastic gloves will be covered in blood. Strings of fishgut will have fallen on their boots. That bastard’s always late anyway.

  I should pull on my old jeans and whistle for a taxi, or hop on the trolley, or ride the bicycle through the hills, down to the warehouse, but the light this morning is curiously heavy, indolent, slow, and I feel like staying.

  Enrique is coughing in the bedroom behind me, spitting into the pillow. It sounds like the rasp of the seals along the coastline cliffs farther up the California shore. His skin is sallow and tight around his jaw. The way he thrashes around in the bed reminds me of a baby corncrake I once took home after an oil slick in my hometown near Bantry Bay, continually battering its blackened wings against the cage to get out.

  He should wake soon, and perhaps today he’ll feel well enough to sit up, read a novel or a magazine. I bend down and pick up the large pieces of shattered glass from the floor. There’s a long scar on the wall where I threw the jamjar. That was smart, O’Meara, wasn’t it? I find two quarters and a few dimes scattered among the glass. There’s an Irish five-penny piece on the floor too, an anachronism, a memory.

  I flick a tiny shard of glass off my finger, and Enrique tosses again in bed. He is continually thinning, like the eggshell of a falcon, and soon the sheets will hardly ripple. I move to the bathroom and take a quick piss in the sink. Enrique has always said that it’s a much better height and there’s no risk of splashing the seat. Not too hygienic, but curiously pleasurable. My eyes are bloodshot in the mirror, and I notice the jowly look in my face. When I wash I can still smell yesterday’s fish on my hands. We are down to the last bar of soap, and the water that comes through the tap has a red iron color to it. Back in the bedroom I pull on my jeans, a heavy-checked lumber shirt, and my black-peaked hat. I search in the pockets of my jeans and find three more dollars, then check my watch. Another hour late won’t really matter. My coat hangs on the bedpost. I lean over him again and tell him that I will be back in a few moments. He doesn’t stir. Ah, isn’t that just lovely, O’Meara? Out ya go and get breakfast for Enrique.

  * * *

  The wind at my back hurries me along, down the street, past a row of saplings, over a child’s hopscotch chalkmarks, to the deli, where Betty is working the counter. It’s an old neighborhood store, the black-and-white floor tiles curled up around the edges. Betty is a large, dark-haired woman—capable, Enrique jokes, of owning her own zip code. She often wears tank tops, and the large flaps of flab that hang down from her underarms would be obscene on anybody else, but they seem to suit her. There’s a barker on the other side of town, near City Lights Bookstore, who shouts about “Sweaty Betty” ’s shows, but I’ve never had the guts to go in and see if it’s her up there, jiggling onstage in the neon lights. Betty negotiates the aisles of the deli crabways, her rear end sometimes knocking over the display stands of potato chips. When she slices the ham the slabs are as thick as her fingers. There is a bell on the inside of the door, and when I come in she looks up from the cash register, closing the newspaper at the same time.

  “The Wild Colonial Boy,” she says. “What’s the rush?”

  “Late for work. Just gonna grab a few things.”

  “Still working down at the abattoir?”

  “The warehouse. Gutting fish.”

  “Same difference.” Her laugh resounds around the shop. The tassels on the bosom of her white blouse bounce. Her teeth are tremendously white, but I notice her fingernails chewed down to the quick. The bell clangs and a couple of elderly Asians come in, followed by a man whom I recognize as a bartender down on Geary Street. Betty greets each of them with a fluttering wave.

  I move up and down the aisles, looking at prices, fingering the $3.80 in my pocket. Coffee is out of the question, as are the croissants in the bakery case, which are a dollar apiece. An apple tart might do the trick however. Walking down the rows of food, other breakfasts come back to me—sausages and rashers fried in a suburban Irish kitchen with an exhaust fan sucking up the smoke, plastic glasses full of orange juice, cornflakes floating on milk, pieces of pudding in circles on chipped white plates, fried tomatoes and toast slobbered with butter. In the background Gay Byrne would talk on on the radio, while my late mother draped herself over the stove, watching the steam rise from the kettle. Mornings spinning off on my Raleigh to lectures at University, a bar of Weetabix in my jacket pocket. Once, champagne and strawberries in Sausalito with a lover who clawed his brown moustache between his teeth.

  I reach for a small plastic jar of orange juice and a half dozen eggs in the deli fridge, two oranges and a banana from the fruit stand, then tuck a loaf of French bread under my arm. There is butter and jam at home, perhaps some leftover teabags. Betty sells loose cigarettes at twenty-five cents each. Two each for Enrique and me will do nicely. Tomorrow night, when I get my wages from the warehouse—Paulie will be there with his head bent over the checks morosely and some stray old fishermen will be coughing in from their boats—I will buy steak and vegetables. Not too much, though. Enrique has been having a hard time keeping his food down, and the blue bucket sits at the side of our bed, an ugly ornament.

  I cart the groceries up to the cash register, and Betty cocks an eye at me.

  “How’s the patient?” she asks. “Haven’t seen hide nor hair of him in the last three weeks.”

  “Still holed up in bed.”

  “Any news?”

  “None, I’m afraid.”

  She shakes her head and purses her lips. I reach into my pocket for the change. “Can I get four of your smokes please?”

  Betty reaches up above her for a box of Marlboro Lights and slides them on the counter, toward me. “My treat,” she says. “Don’t smoke ’em all at once, hon.” I thank her and tuck them quickly in my shirt pocket. Betty leans over the counter and touches my left hand: “And tell that man of yours I want to see his cute little Argentinian ass in here.”

  “He’ll be up and at it in a few days,” I say, putting the groceries in a white plastic ba
g and hooking it over my wrist. “Thanks again for the smokes.”

  The door clangs behind me, and the street seems to open up in a wide sweep. Twenty cigarettes can make a man’s day. I skip through the chalk marks—it’s been years since I’ve hop-scotched—and sit down on the curb, between a green Saab and an orange pickup truck, to light up. Looking down the street I can make out our balcony, above the tops of the cars, but there’s no sign of Enrique.

  * * *

  Last night he almost cried when the cocaine coagulated in his sweat, but I scooped some off his belly and onto the mirror. He pushed it away and turned his face to the wall, looked up at a photograph of himself rafting the Parana River. The photo is fading now, yellowing around the edges. The way he leans forward in the boat, going down through a rapid, with his paddle about to strike the water, looks ineffably sad to me these days. He hasn’t been near a river in years and hasn’t gone outside for almost a month.

  In the apartment we have unrolled our sleeping bags and use them as blankets over the bedsheets. Our television set is in the front window of the pawnshop, next to a hunting bow. The trust fund is dry, but Enrique is adamant that I don’t call his father. The insurance people are gentle but unyielding. Sometimes I imagine a man at the very tip of Tierra del Fuego reaching his arms out toward the condors that flap their wings against the red air. He wonders where his son has gone.

  Enrique sometimes talks of moving to the Pampas. His mind takes him there, and we are building a wooden fence together behind a ranch house. The grasses sweep along with a northward wind. At night we watch the sun swing downward behind a distant windmill.

  Late at night he often wakes and babbles about his father’s cattle farm. When he was young he would go to the river with his friends. They would have swimming contests, holding against the rapids. Whoever stayed longest in one spot was the winner. In the late afternoons, he’d still be there, swimming stationary in the current, flailing away, without noticing that his friends were already halfway down the river. After the competition, they would stand in the water and catch fish with their hands. Then they’d light a campfire and cook the fish. It was Enrique who taught me how to gut when I first got the job down in the warehouse. With one smooth sweep of the finger you can take out all the innards.

  * * *

  When scrambling eggs I always make sure to add a little milk and whisk the fork around the bowl quickly so that none of the small stringy pieces of white will be left when they’re cooked. The only disturbing thing about my mother’s breakfasts were the long thin raw white pieces. The kitchen is small, with only room for one person to move. I lay the baguette on the counter and slice it, then daub butter on the inside. The oven takes a long time to warm up. In the meantime I boil water and put some teabags in the sunflower-patterned mugs.

  I hear Enrique stir out of bed and move slowly toward the window. At first the noise startles me, but I’m glad he’s awake. I hope he doesn’t cut his feet on the stray glass—the doctor told us that the longer this goes on the harder it will be to stop a cut from bleeding.

  Steam has gathered on the glass face of the oven clock. You’re late again, O’Meara, were ya picking petals offa roses? I peel the oranges and arrange them in segments on the plate. Or maybe you were spanking the monkey, is that it, O’Meara? I hear the radio click on and a chair being dragged out onto the balcony. I hope he’s put his scarf on under his dressing gown or else the chill will get to him.

  I wish I could have seen him when I was down on the street, watched him sitting there, looking out over the white city, his hair dark and strewn like seaweed, the tufts on his chest curling toward his neck, his face chiselled, the scar on his chin worn like the wrongly tied knot of a Persian rug.

  The eggs puff up and harden, sticking to the side of the saucepan. I scrape them off with a fork and then arrange the dollops on two plates. I’ve burnt the bread a little and the water is still not boiled. Amazing thing that, water. The molecules bouncing off each other at a huge rate of speed, passing on energy to one another, giving heat, losing heat. In the warehouse I spend my time thinking about these brutally stupid things, whittling the hours away. There’re lots of people in this town’d be happy to gut fish, bum-boy. I put the bread on a third plate and wait. When the water finally boils I pour it on the teabags, making sure the little paper tabs stay outside the mugs. I hold the three plates in the shape of a shamrock in my right hand—I was a waiter before I met Enrique—and I grab the handles of both cups with my left forefinger and thumb.

  The door to the bedroom is slightly ajar and I push it with my left foot. It opens with a creak but Enrique doesn’t turn in his chair on the balcony. Perhaps the traffic is too loud. I see him cough and then spit into one of our flowerpots. He leans back in the chair again. It’s a little more gray outside now, the sun blocked by clouds. I see that he has picked up the last pieces of the jamjar and put them on the bedside table. The pillow has been turned over and there are no visible blood spots, but there is a cluster of stray black hairs on the bedsheets. Twenty-seven is too young to be going bald.

  I move soundlessly across the room. His head is laid back in the chair now. The curtains on the French windows swish against my leg and the rings tinkle against the rod. I sidle up behind the chair, lean over him, hand him the tea, and he smiles. His face seems weathered, the eyes run into crowfeet, the brow heavy. We kiss and then he blows on the tea, the steam rising up. Why the hell d’you wear those goddamn bracelets anyway, O’Meara?

  “I thought you were gone already,” he says.

  “In a few minutes. I thought it’d be nice to have breakfast.”

  “Wonderful.” He reaches out for the plate. “I’m not sure if I can.”

  “It’s all right. Eat as much as you like.” I put my own plate down on the balcony floor and close the top button on my shirt to keep out the wind. Cars trundle along the street below. Some kids have taken over the hopscotch court. There is a tremendous freshness to the breeze coming up from the sea and it rifles through the trees. Enrique purses his lips, as if to speak, then lets them fall apart, and he looks along the street again, a small smile crackling the edges of his mouth. The bags under his eyes darken.

  “I have some smokes too,” I say. “Betty gave them to me. And some orange juice if you want it.”

  “Great.” Enrique stabs gingerly at the eggs with his fork and moves the pieces of orange around. Then he reaches for a piece of bread and slowly tears the crust off. “Lovely day, isn’t it?” he says, all of a sudden sweeping his arm out to the street.

  “Gorgeous.”

  “Radio said that the high would be in the sixties.”

  “Grand weather for sitting around,” I say.

  “Lows tonight in the high forties.”

  “We’ll sleep well.”

  He nods his head and shifts his body gently in the chair. A small piece of crust falls down into the lap of his dressing gown. He reaches for it and lays it on the side of the plate. “Nice eggs,” he says.

  “Wish I didn’t have to go to the warehouse.”

  “We could just sit here and talk.”

  “We could,” I say.

  I watch him as he eddies the fork around the plate, but his eyes are drooping already. The cup of tea sits on the floor, by the edge of his chair. He leans his head back against the chair and sighs. His chest thumps like that of a small bird. The beginnings of sweat gather on his brow. I watch as the fork slides across the plate and nestles itself against the clump of food. I look down at the traffic passing beneath us, and all of a sudden I understand that we are in the stream, Enrique and I, that the traffic below us is flowing quite steadily, trying to carry us along, while all the time he is beating his arms against the current, holding still, staying in one place.

  He sleeps and the breakfast grows cold.

  In a few moments I will go to work and gut everything they bring me, but for now I watch this body of Enrique’s, this house of sweat, this weedlot of proteins, slow
ly being assaulted.

  * * *

  Enrique once told me a story about starfish.

  There was an oyster fisherman down the coast from Buenos Aires who farmed his own little area of the bay. He hadn’t listened to the generations of fishermen who had gone before him, their advice, their tricks, their superstitions. All he knew was that starfish preyed on oysters. When they were dragged up in his nets he would take them and rip their symmetrical bodies in two neat pieces. He would fling them over the side of the boat and continue fishing. I imagine he was probably a bearded man with a rawboned laugh. But what he didn’t know is that the starfish don’t die when ripped, they regenerate themselves. For every one he tore, a second one came about. He wondered why there were so many starfish and so few oysters left, until he was told by an older fisherman. From then on, the fisherman left the starfish alone, although he could perhaps have taken them to shore and dumped them behind some big gray rock or in a large silver dustbin on the pier where the children, on the way home from school, would fling them like stones.

  There are times these days, strange times spent among these idle thoughts of mine, when I wonder why my fishermen don’t come to me in the warehouse, amazed, cigarettes dangling from their lips, two fully grown starfish in their hands, saying, Look at this O’Meara, look, for Christ’s sake, can you imagine this?

  A BASKET FULL OF WALLPAPER

  Some people said that he’d been a chicken-sexer during the forties, a pale and narrow man who had spent his days interned in a camp for the Japanese near the mountains of Idaho. Endless months spent determining whether chickens were male or female. He had come to Ireland to forget it all. At other times, the older men, elbows on the bar counter, invented heinous crimes for him. In Japan, they said, he had attached electrical cords to the testicles of airmen, ritually sliced prisoners with swords, operated slow drip torture on young Marines. They said he had that sort of face. Dark eyes falling down into sunken cheeks, a full mouth without any color, a tiny scar over his right eye. Even the women created a fantastic history for him. He was the fourth son of an emperor, or a poet, or a general, carrying the baggage of unrequited love. To us boys at school he was a kamikaze pilot who had gotten cold feet, barrelling out in a parachute and somehow drifting to our town, carried by some ferocious, magical wave.