Charles D'Ambrosio - The Dead Fish Museum

A light came on inside the house, and then all I could see was the dull mesh of screen. I drank my coffee, listening to the falling rain and feeling the mist on my face as it edged in from the dark fields. It was the first time I’d felt anything but a rising elation since we’d moved. In this damp old house, surrounded by these soggy fields, a vivid sense of the people who’d sat on the porch before me came unbidden, without invitation, and as palpable to me as Meagan or Mr. Boyd or Jimmy. My own presence felt vaguely intrusive, and it occurred to me, as I listened to the water run over the roof and puddle in the yard, that the rains in this part of the country seemed to fall from clouds that were a thousand years old. You always felt just slightly out of joint, or a little bit canceled. I gave my shirt pocket a pat. My legs were stiff and there was a cold in my bones no coat would fix, a raw chill radiating from within; I could feel my wet toes bloat in my boots. I tried to chase my mood down, rummaging through thoughts and memories of New York, of the life we’d lived there, of the work we’d done and what we’d abandoned, of the people we’d left behind. I found nothing, nothing worth saving, and finally told myself it was atmospheric negative ions from the squall.

Behind me, somewhere in the house, I heard Naga calling for her husband: “Jimmy? Honey? Honey?” And then I heard Meagan, from upstairs, perhaps in Mr. Boyd’s room, calling for her father: “Daddy?”

Both men were outside, under the apple tree. I was aware of their voices but couldn’t quite see them, and something about the disembodied conversation gave it a strange sound, as if father and son were reading from a script.

“What can I say?”

“I don’t know, Jimmy.”

“I’m sorry. I’m desperate, or I wouldn’t ask.”

“You’re what now, twenty-seven?

“Twenty-six. It’s my birthday today.”

“You got a wife and a kid to support.”

“I know. Don’t you think I know?”

“Take this. That’s the best I can do right now.”

“Just till I get back home.”

“Yeah.”

“Just a loan. Okay? I’ll pay you back.”

“It’s a gift. Just take it. Happy birthday.”

“You don’t understand. I want to pay you back.”

“Okay, you want to. We’ll see.”

Meagan came out onto the porch. “Have you seen Daddy?”

“He’s out there,” I said. “With Jimmy.”

Meagan walked quickly into the yard. I heard the familiar timbre of their voices weaving faintly through the rain, Meagan mollifying, Mr. Boyd staunch and bullying, Jimmy eager for whatever scraps of attention fell his way.

When all the Boyds came in sometime later, they were drenched; Meagan seemed especially small, her hair darkened and lying flat around the oval frame of her face. I ran out to the car and grabbed my Polaroid from a box in the trunk. Mr. George came down the road, cradling a second bottle of blackberry wine. “They’re all inside,” I said, and he went on to the house ahead of me, while I fished through my supplies for extra film and flashbulbs. By the time I came back inside and loaded the camera the candles were already lit and Meagan was carrying the cake onto the porch. Mr. George shut off the light. Jimmy sat there, staring at the swirls of blue frosting that looped across the cake: Happy Birthday Jimmy! He looked around, then at the cake again. Shadows from the candle flames danced on the rotting roof above us. We sang “Happy Birthday”; and then Mr. Boyd continued to sing, his voice deep and bold and bad, forcefully off-key. Meagan joined in, and when she put a reassuring hand on Jimmy’s shoulder, he sang, too. The baby gave a cry, and Naga moved in closer to her husband. When Mr. George joined them, humming along, I stepped back, expanding the frame by just enough to include everyone. Jimmy gazed up at his father, his sister, his wife and his baby, and then, with his eyes shut, made a wish, and blew the candles out — while I, futzing with the Polaroid, caught the moment just before the wish, which we watched develop, all of them huddled together, faces pressed cheek to cheek, singing the words to a song I’d never learned.

They’d only taken a simple wrong turn somewhere — taken a wrong exit off the freeway, then got caught downtown in a maze of one-way streets — but to D’Angelo it was as if they’d traveled back in time to the nineteenth century. He looked out the Caddy’s tinted window and saw, through a haze of watery green, a few Chinese men in loose slacks struggling up the steep hillclimb, old coolie stock, it seemed to him, stooped over as if still shouldering the weight of a maul. “Look at those chinks,” he said. “I bet they laid some track in their day.” Kype found the street he wanted and steered the car north through Pioneer Square. An Indian sat on the curb with his head in his hands, tying back two slick wings of crow-black hair with a faded blue bandana. A pair of broken-heeled cowboy boots lay in the gutter while he aired his bare feet. D’Angelo rolled down his window, waved a gun in the air, took a bead, and dry-fired. The hammer struck three times against empty chambers, but in his mind D’Angelo had dropped the Indian, right there on the sidewalk. He raised the barrel to his lips and blew away an imaginary wisp of smoke.

“What if that had been loaded?” Kype said.

D’Angelo grinned, and fired the gun at Kype’s face. “It isn’t, is it?”

“Jesus.” Kype said, grabbing the gun. He tossed it in the back seat. “Cut the cowboy crap.”

D’Angelo just smiled and watched a couple of Filipino hookers shuffle under the awning of an expedition outfitter and guide service. Behind them, in the display window, a stuffed grizzly bear reared up on its hind legs. Kype palmed the steering wheel into another sharp turn, the Cadillac’s tires squealing rubber on the warm asphalt. A container of ashes rocked in the seat. D’Angelo picked up the decorative urn and unscrewed the lid. Caught in a gust of wind, a cloud of gray ash eddied through the car. Kype coughed and fanned the air as some of the powdery remains of his grandfather drifted under his nose and blew into the street. He ran his tongue over his lips, tast-ing ash.

“Damn, man,” Kype said, spitting.

“Ashes to ashes,” D’Angelo said. He screwed down the lid and gave the urn a shake. Something inside rattled. “Bones,” he said. “Teeth.”

Kype snatched the urn from D’Angelo and set it in the back seat with the gun. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was hot, and he hadn’t bathed in more than a week.

“How old was he?” D’Angelo asked.

“Ninety-nine,” Kype said.

“I hope I don’t live that long.”

“Grandpa lived a good life.”

“Some of those old boys just spend the golden years fouling their drawers.”

“Grandpa maintained his dignity,” Kype said.

“I can’t get into old people,” D’Angelo said. “I never seen my grandparents.”

“They still alive?”

“Somewhere. Maybe. I don’t know.”

D’Angelo took a quick pull off the bourbon and eased back in his seat. He was wearing a red Western shirt with pearlish plastic snaps and a turquoise bolo tie, an outfit he’d bought in a tack shop in Tonasket, near the Canadian border. He’d hoped the shirt and tie would give him a Western look, but he was chubby and short and he still wore the baggy pin-striped slacks and red hi-top sneakers he’d left Brooklyn in six months ago. To Kype he looked like one of those midget clowns that rode Shetland ponies at rodeo intermissions.

“A century,” Kype said, thinking of his grandfather. “He almost lived a century. Washington wasn’t even a state when he was born. It was just a territory.”