Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

We were out there up on top of it for flounder and fluke, you know — but what we forever kept getting up out of it were more like the likes of skates and eels. They wouldn't chew the skates, Jackson and Mickey, Mickey and Jackson. They only chewed and then vomited right back up the eels. Actually, they didn't — so far as I could see from where I was told for me to better keep myself, no matter what, sitting — chew the whole eel, its whole horrible evil body, but just its tiny evil head (pretty horrible enough, if you ask me), which they could get at (which Jackson and Mickey could) with no great obstacle to themselves, given the fact that Uncle Henry always snatched out his hatchet to hack the head off with this hatchet he always had with him in under his jacket back there in the back of the boat.

It was a rowboat.

Dom and Dell (okay, I just remembered there were also them), or Dom or Dell, always got it out for us (the rowboat) from the mess of them (of rowboats) they rented out to people that were tied (the rowboats) nose to tail down at the dock. You'd go down there and pick one out (a rowboat) and then Dom or Dell would jump right on down from the dock into the nearest one — this being the nearest rowboat, I mean — jump down into that one and then jump from that one on over to the next one until, and so on, he'd jumped his way (Dom's or Dell's) all the way over to your one, and then, once in your one with an oar to do it with, pole it back on over to the dock to you, first cutting it loose first and so on.

You know, rope, rope.

Lots of tough-guy work with rope.

Uncle Henry had a Johnson.

Or it could have been an Evinrude.

It wasn't a Mercury, anyway.

People never had a Mercury.

THE NEXT PART OF THE STORY is Mickey always — between vomiting back up the chewed-up head (or semihead) of an eel — coming up to me and squatting down in front of me and scratching at me with his toenails to get me to scratch back behind his ears for him.

It made me bleed.

It always finally made the same knee bleed because this was back when boys always wore short pants and because Mickey would always scratch this same one knee and not the other knee and because Mickey always kept scratching this same one knee again to get you to start back up scratching him back behind his ears for him again the instant your arm could not stand it for it to be out there in the air anymore scratching anything anymore and you had to scream or quit.

But nobody could do anything like scream with Uncle Henry on board. Neither was Uncle Henry the kind of person somebody could do anything like scream with even if it was anywhere else you were with Uncle Henry, either.

(One thing was, Uncle Henry only had anybody in the rowboat with him because of the fact that his own sons weren't around instead for them to be in it with him because they were fighting for our army overseas.)

The only thing was, Uncle Henry probably wouldn't have heard anybody doing it, anyway — screaming, shrieking, yelling your head off about anything.

I think Uncle Henry was thinking of something.

I don't think it was of fish.

Uncle Henry would come get me at my house, come take me down to the dock with him, come help me step down into the rowboat with him, then tell me not to ever budge from off the seat in the middle of it if I had any idea of what was good for me, and then just run the Johnson (or run the Evinrude), and get the rowboat somewhere, get the anchor over, get his rig all rigged up, reach around to check to see if his hatchet was ready, and then start to sit there and start to look like he was fishing but really instead, I think, be thinking, be just a man in a rowboat thinking.

Jackson sat back there in the back with him.

You know where Mickey did.

Unless there was a nice fresh headless eel aboard.

Then the both of them would go lumbering after it. God.

It was really pretty (I guess) disgusting.

THERE'S PLENTY MORE I could fit to go in here — shit about bait and about the little bottles he swallowed down everything out of and then set adrift overboard and about how Uncle Henry would stamp down his boot into the combination of throw-up and ocean water every once in a while while he was saying to himself something which sounded to me like he was saying "The mud, the mud!"

There's plenty more like that which I could fit in — but, you know, fuck it.

LET'S GET TO THE THIRD PART (which will be the last part) which is the part about me thinking, "Jesus, I got the ocean, I caught the ocean — I, Gordon Lish!" Which part will be — if you're ready for it — the fishing part. Well, it wasn't even fishing from in the rowboat but was fishing from off the dock.

The picture is this — it's this once when we had come back in and when Dom came or when Dell came and got the boat from us and when Uncle Henry got off the Johnson (or it could have been an Evinrude he got off, but it definitely wasn't any, I can tell you, Mercury) and got up with it out of the row-boat and went to get it washed out and I got up out onto the dock with my rod and my reel and went to work to keep fishing from it for a little bit because even though I did not have any sinker on anything anymore, I still had threaded on my hook this little bitty bit of bloodless bloodworm.

It wasn't two seconds before I had a bite.

Bite?

It was more like — when I started pulling on the line trying to get it taken up back in a little — a horse had gulped it all in down to his shoes.

Christ, I couldn't believe it.

"It's the whole ocean!" I stood there heaving back on it thinking — and then screamed, "Uncle Henry, Uncle Henry, come quick!"

But didn't I tell you he was off getting the salt water out of it by running it (the Johnson, the Evinrude) in a cut-off oil drum with plain unsalted water in it?

Heard me, didn't hear me — it wasn't anything I was thinking about anymore — because I was instead just thinking about not getting myself whipped the fuck off the dock and bitten in half and eaten by whatever water dragon which had my line.

Of course, I guess I could have let go. I guess I could have just let the hell go of the whole treacherous rig and let it get itself slammed right the devil down the drain down into the stables down there in the cellar of the deep down world.

I guess I could have done it and then tried to make a run for it on over to where Uncle Henry was running the junked-up outboard in the cut-off oil drum, or run to get myself in under the tin shelter where Dom and Dell sat looking in charge and hustling bait.

But I just screamed instead.

I screamed, "Uncle Henry! Uncle Henry! It's the ocean, Uncle Henry! I caught the ocean, Uncle Henry! Help, I'm calling you, Unky, please!"

THE STORY IS HE CAME WHEN HE CAME. I mean, he came when he got good and ready to come.

Shut her off, the motor.

(Johnson, Evinrude, not Mercury.)

Came stamping his way on over, squatted himself down, reached out and took the line in with his hand, drew it in on over close to him with his hand, and then gave it a little yank to jerk the hook down out from off from where it was stuck up into the boards up under on the underneath side of the dock.

Muttering what sounded to me like—

"Blood in mud."

THERE WAS NOTHING I COULD THINK OF to say to the woman. It occurs to me to wonder, however, if there had been a reason for me to. It is entirely plausible she expected no attention from me at all — and that she meant to affirm, in her absent gazing at the close of her tale, to want no further of my presence, let alone some exhibit of utterance in anxious display of my having reckoned with, and run to the ground, the significance of what she had just conveyed to me, which anecdote — on the surface of it, at any rate — was not much to speak of, was it? Merely — namely! — that the boy had succeeded, with no particular talent required of him for him to do so, at calling her aside from her distractions — the clearing of the chargers from the great table, the gathering therefrom of the slops for the hounds — this to ask of her if it would induce in her any pleasure for her to see him in his costume now that it was won.