Colum McCann: Fishing the Sloe-Black River

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 bag 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.