Charles D'Ambrosio - The Dead Fish Museum

Nell said, “You were hearing things.”

“I know what I heard,” Kype said.

“She don’t talk.”

“She talked to me.”

“Well, I’m just a dumb injun,” Nell said. “Maybe it’s me that’s gone deaf.”

Kype remembered how his own grandfather had gone selectively deaf in his last years, dialing down his hearing aid at dinner to cut out the highs, the yammering treble of his drunken daughter and Kype’s own adolescent screech, or blasting the volume on the television when the conversation bored him. In truth, he’d been a nasty old man most of Kype’s life, except in the early days. Then, briefly, out of pity for the fatherless boy, he’d mounted an effort, teaching him the sort of folksy wisdom and woodlore that was supposed to build character — in 1937 or whatever. Out camping, the vast gap in age between his grandfather and himself had left Kype with deep feelings of incompetence. Back home, the ancient objects in the house — the dim dusty lampshades, the brass doorknobs that had blackened with time, the monumental rolltop desk where the old man kept his leather-bound ledgers, even the quiver of sharpened pencils in their hammered pewter cup — filled him with a pervasive sorrow, as if the future itself were a legendary relic. He’d been raised to revere a forgotten, disappearing world, a tomorrow so filled with the glories of yesterday that he was forbidden to touch any of it. Nothing in that old house in the Highlands ever changed; in Kype’s memory, even the shadows seemed to have been nailed to the walls.

“How long until the tide changes?” he asked.

“Quit whining,” Nell said. “But, uh, you only bring that one bottle?”

“Let’s do some shooting,” D’Angelo said.

They left Nell by the fire, walking off thirty paces, arguing ballistics as they searched for an angle where they weren’t likely to get themselves killed by ricocheting bullets.

Kype loaded the gun. “Let’s wager,” he said.

“Oh, a wager, how delightful,” D’Angelo said, in a mocking hifalutin accent. “Well okay, old chap, old sport, let’s see — my harmonica against your Cadillac.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Fuck fair, Kype. You’re about to inherit a fortune. You’re done with fair.” He ran a hand through his greasy hair and said, “I’ll throw in my bolo.”

“I want Nell.”

“Oh,” D’Angelo said. “Okay.”

Kype shot first and missed. He’d never used a gun before, and he had expected something monumental, a big bang and some kick, but the pistol was tiny, nearly a toy, and it only made a faint, insignificant pop against the waves resounding in the cove.

“My turn,” D’Angelo said.

“I only get one shot?”

“If you miss it’s not your turn anymore.” D’Angelo frowned, shaking his head. “Everybody knows that.” He steadied the pistol at his side and then yanked it from an imaginary holster, popping off a shot that managed to plug the carton cleanly. “Oh yeah,” he said, stopping to watch the stream of milk bleed into the sand. “That’s the way you do it.” The next shot exploded in a spray of white. The tattered box fell into the river, spilling milk, and drifted away.

“Never thought I’d be shooting milk when I left Brooklyn,” D’Angelo said.

“Why’d you leave?” Kype asked.

“I always had that dream, to hitchhike out west.”

“I never did.”

“Where the hell would you go?” D’Angelo said, sweeping the barrel of the gun across the horizon. “Swimming, I guess.”

“Let me see the gun.”

“I haven’t missed yet, Kype. It’s still my turn. Why don’t you get us some of that — what did you say your grandfather called it, that hootch? This shooting is giving me a thirst.”

Kype went for the bottle but Nell refused to give it up and he returned empty-handed.

“But this isn’t the West anymore,” D’Angelo said. “It’s like west of the West or something.”

“Let me take a shot.”

“Kype, if I have to tell you one more time, I’m going to shoot you. ”

Kype wondered if the new life awaiting him after probate would be like this, lived among strangers. He would inherit a fortune but never feel entirely at home — it was like a rider in his grandfather’s will.

“I thought there’d be something else,” D’Angelo said. “It’s disappointing. It’s making me lonesome. Nothing but stinking fish and the ocean. It’s no wonder you can’t find your spot, Kype. From out here, you have to go east to get to the West.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We need to reload.” D’Angelo handed him the pistol. “But it’s still my turn.”

“Why do you get the girl?”

“Her pussy smells like fish,” D’Angelo said. “Just like everything else around here.”

Kype fed a shell into each chamber and closed the cylinder and gave it a spin. Then he made a break for it. D’Angelo lunged for him, but Kype juked across the beach, and when he reached the log he shoved the barrel of the gun against the belly of the first carton and shot it. He shot the one next to it; and he shot the one next to that. He tossed one of the milks in the air and tried to shoot it on the wing, missing wildly as the carton zoomed out of the sky, but after it caromed off his head and came to rest in the sand, plopping at his feet, he shot it twice for good measure. He mowed them down, picking off carton after carton, and when he ran out of bullets he grabbed the hot barrel and beat the last few milks with the butt of the gun, hammering away until the seams burst and the waxed cardboard turned to pulp. He caught his breath, looking over the carnage. The milks were slaughtered, and his shirt was soaked. Downstream the dark humped backs of the migrating salmon stirred indifferently in water that had turned cloudy white.

“Happy, Buddha-man?” D’Angelo brushed sand off his pleated pants and shook out the cuffs. “Now give me the gun.”

“We’re out of milk, my friend,” Kype said. “I shot the last milk. They’re all dead.”

“Some sport you are.”

“There’s nothing left,” Kype said, handing over the gun and the crumpled box of ammo.

“There’s you,” D’Angelo said. He cinched up his bolo tie, flexed the fingers of his right hand, and squinted at Kype. “And there’s these fucking fish.”

His first shot pierced the eye of an old buck with a bony face and a long, grim snout that curled like a brass coat hook. It had been holding in some quiet water behind a rock, and when the bullet entered its brain, it merely gave up and let go and was borne gently downstream. D’Angelo knelt near the bank and bumped off two more of the weary, spent fish. They flopped in the shallows, their blood pouring out pink as it mixed with the milk. The stream was small, its narrow channel choked with salmon, and D’Angelo hardly bothered to aim. Every blind shot killed. He blasted the adipose fin off of a hen. He popped another fish in the belly. He shot one that was already dead, and the salmon dissolved, drifting away like a cloud. He stopped to reload, slipping the last shell into the chamber while eying Kype, who turned away and watched the stream flow by. The remaining fish, undisturbed, went about their business. The dying ones swam with a pathetic list, twisting in the current as if blown by the wind. Others were still fighting to make it home to their spawning ground. Upriver a mating pair wove in the current above a redd, braiding the water with their bodies, releasing eggs and milt as if pollinating a flower. The hen eventually dropped back to fan gravel over the nest and cover her fertilized eggs and D’Angelo raised the gun and fired and she died without much agony, just a shiver and then her slowly gaping mouth, faintly protesting, as the current drew her down to the sea.