Charles D'Ambrosio - The Dead Fish Museum

“No problem,” Kype said.

He spread a fan of bills across the counter, paying for the phantom spots, paying for their tackle and bait, their lunches and their fishing licenses, too.

“Slip five,” Porter said. “She’s called Kingdom Come. ”

Cabin lights had come on in some of the pleasure craft. A few men huddled on the docks, sipping coffee.

Kype loosened the bowline from a wooden cleat. D’Angelo and Nell kissed under the blue light of an arc lamp.

“That girl your friend’s with,” Porter said, “she’s not right in the head. She’s the res punch, you know what I mean? You can charter her easy as you can charter me. She’s got a kid, and herself only a kid. They live with the great-grandmother. I hate to see it.”

Porter ran the bilge and checked the radio.

“This old can seaworthy, Captain?” D’Angelo said.

“Was yesterday,” Porter said. He looked at Nell. “You go on home.”

She got in the boat.

Porter ran the throttle full-open, watching from the wheelhouse as Kype and D’Angelo and Nell stood in the bow. When they were three miles out, he idled back and headed south along the coast.

He shouted over the droning engine, “It’s now or never.”

Kype assembled his salmon rod, sliding the ferrules together, and then Porter baited his hook. The herring had been kept on ice and were cold and firm. Porter double-hooked the bait, running one snelled hook through the head and the other through the tail, snugging them together so the herring curled and would then spin and twist beneath the water, turning with a wounded motion. When he was finished, scales flecked his fingertips, each like a sunrise at sea, a pearlescent swirl of pink and blue rolling across a pale silver sky. It was the last day of the season, an okay season, he’d winter over without much side work, and Porter decided to set up a rod for himself in the downrigger. Normally he wouldn’t do that, but this was the end. He’d always moved around a lot, working seasonally, and the end of anything saddened him.

Nell had fallen asleep on the hatch, her long skirt bunched up around her thighs, her brown face turning soft and shapeless as putty in the warm sun. D’Angelo sat in the bow, nervously tightening the straps on a bright orange life preserver. He’d never learned to swim, and each swell terrified him. His queasy stomach felt lined with fur. Kype held his grandfather’s rod as if it were a golden staff and he a sentry assigned guardianship of the sea.

“Reading the will’s going to be something,” Kype said. “You know what my program is, from now on? Exhaustion. That’s it, exhaustion. That’s my ambition. I’m just going to go everywhere and do everything and then get totally sick and tired of it all.”

“Thataboy, Kypester,” D’Angelo said. “You’ll be like Ecclesiastes Jr., all fucking worn out and shit.” D’Angelo slid closer to Nell. “Hey Nell, Miss Ides, you want to hear about his inheritance?”

“You’re blocking my sun,” she said.

Kype had never fished much — his grandfather liked to go alone — and each tug of the bait and spin of the spoon lure felt like a strike to him. Twice he reeled in, and twice found nothing. He stripped out line in two-foot lengths, measuring as Porter had showed him, until he reached seventy feet. He traced the white thread of monofilament from his rod tip into the sea and then followed it below the surface until the line disappeared in the green water, beyond the reach of light. He felt a strange resignation, his floating on the surface separating him from the dark sea, not knowing a thing about salmon. Given over to the rise and fall of the boat, he was lulled into a forgetfulness, the heave of the ocean now working beneath his bones, softening them. He eased the cork butt of the rod against his navel and shut his eyes and allowed the rhythm of the sea to sway his body. He felt the ocean in his stomach, calmly rolling on. He imagined the bait beneath the surface, gently turning over, swimming back and forth in slow undulations like a kite in the sky.

The strike called Kype back to himself. In panic he jerked the rod and started reeling in, watching the line cut wildly across the surface. The pole curled over like a scythe. He reeled as fast as he could, instinctively afraid the life on the other end of the line would escape him. And it was life, life struggling so mightily that the rod seemed to Kype like a sensitive instrument measuring the fight not only of the salmon but also of the entire ocean. He was so beside himself with excitement he made a promise — to God, it seemed — that if he was lucky enough to land this fish he would commemorate the event by spreading his grandfather’s ashes over the water. Life! Kype kept thinking. Life! And then for a moment the priority of things reversed, and he felt that he’d been caught and could not let go, that whatever was fighting on the other end of the line had suddenly engaged a tug-of-war and was trying to haul him overboard into the sea.

Then the rod snapped straight, and the life in the line was gone.

Kype reeled in quickly, hoping that perhaps the salmon had simply given up the ghost.

But it wasn’t so: whatever it was had spit the hook. The herring was stripped to the bone, just a head with eyes trailed by a white comb of cartilage and vertebrae.

He set his rod aside.

Porter had also gotten a strike. He played it leisurely, allowing the fish to exhaust itself in several long streaking runs, and then brought it up against the boat and scooped it with the landing net. He lifted the net high, the salmon thrashing the air, throwing off a spray of water with each spasm. Porter grabbed a gaff hook and raised the butt end over his shoulder and then hesitated — he looked at Kype and said, “You want it?”

“Yeah, sure,” Kype said. “I lost mine.”

Porter clubbed the silver in back of the head. He did it once, hard, mercifully. Blood trickled from its eyes, its caudal fin twitched and a shiver uncoiled along the length of its body, and it was done.

Nell’s house was entirely embosked in blackberry. A thorny tangled patch of brambles, a grotesque confusion of growth, twenty feet high, rolled like a rogue wave over the unseen roof. A hole in the vines was worn and maintained by use like a rabbit warren, and that gave way to a set of gray weathered planks, each board slanted and wobbling, which led to a gated entry. Beyond the gate was a teak door with layers of dry varnish peeling away, a small door, cockeyed in its frame, the upper hinge broken and replaced by a strap of leather. Dusty beams of sunlight filtered down through the dome of stickers and a few bees, humming in the last warmth of the day, moved lazily among the delicate white flowers. Berries hung everywhere, black and ripe, redolent and sweet, weighing the branches down. The house listed to one side, and Kype realized why when he looked up a narrow set of steps and saw the flying bridge. The house was not a house; it was a boat.

An old woman sat in the dark cool galley with a blanket on her lap. Nell touched the woman’s shoulder and continued on toward the bow of the boat, into the forecastle. D’Angelo followed and soon Kype heard them giggling and wrestling on the bunk. Kype stared at the old woman, whose face flowed smoothly, like rock eroded by waves. Her eyes were a silverish silt-green and sat in their sockets like marquetry. Kype stood with his fish in one hand and the urn of ashes in the other and didn’t know what to say. A lattice of light and shadow entwined her face and around her forehead she wore an odd red crown of wicker, woven from cedar. She seemed possessed of a patience so vast this moment’s discomfort didn’t register, or perhaps she was only indifferent. She didn’t move or acknowledge Kype in any manner. The ancient smell of fish rose from a hold that hadn’t seen a salmon in decades. Kype listened to the stupefying murmur of the bees, a drowsy dusty buzz that now resided as an itch in his ear. He stuck his finger in, deep as it would go, digging and scratching at the irritation, then pulled at the lobe. He looked out the larboard porthole at the enmeshed vines and saw an old snub-fingered baseball mitt snared in the stickers.