Lyla, page 9
Mullet spit overboard. “Quinn's trying to concentrate, let's give him a minute, baby.”
The fish came near the surface. Its glowing body zipped beneath the thin green layers of water. I yanked the line and lifted it out of the water and into the air. The fish was as big as a Buick.
“Holy Pharaoh and Moses.” Mullet pushed the brim of his cap up. “Look at the size of that thing.”
It was the biggest redfish I'd ever caught. As long as my ever-loving leg. Its head was as big around as a football. It jerked from side to side, dripping in the sunlight like a giant column of muscle.
“Am I still a better fisherman than Quinn?” Emma Claire asked.
“Always, baby,” said Mullet.
She took comfort in knowing that.
͠
We rowed toward the shore. My happy disposition could've set the woods on fire. I looked at the humongous fish by my feet; it was too big to fit in any basket. It shimmered pink in the sunlight like a monster, with a round, fat body that filled up the entire hull of the boat. Emma Claire could not keep her fingers off of the great fish. She stroked it like one of her cats.
“We got company.” Mullet glanced toward the shore.
He was right. Parked on the shore was a shiny black car, with sparkly hubs, and a chrome front. The car looked like it belonged in a magazine ad. Its doors splayed open, and its radio blared music into the atmosphere. Young girls and boys romped around in the shallow water. They splashed each other, laughing in loud voices.
“Look,” Emma Claire said. “Look at the kids playing.”
“They ain't kids, baby,” Mullet said. “They're teenagers.”
“Teenagers.”
Mullet patted her head. “That's older than a kid, younger than a grown-up.”
“I'm a teenager, Mullet?”
“No baby, you're a cricket.”
The young men in the group tossed a ball back and forth on the shore. The boys displayed their bare torsos in the sun, strutting like seventeen-year old roosters. Their female companions were in multicolored bathing suits, laid on the shore, watching the boys. There wasn't a cracker in the whole bunch.
When we neared the shore, I leapt out of the skiff. Mullet and I slid the dinghy onto the sandy grit, using our shoulders. The boat hissed as it ground against the shore.
“Any of those jokers friends of yours?” Mullet asked.
“Lord, no.”
“Well, they sure are loud. They're scaring all the fish away from my new favorite fishing hole.”
I looked at the teenagers, I knew one of them. My cousin, Phyllis. She lay on a beach blanket, letting the sun burn her white skin like girls often do.
“Is that Phyllis Ronsman?” Mullet asked.
“Yeah. She's wealthy as the day is long.”
“Good God, I beat her daddy, Slip Ronsman, out of two-grand, ten years ago. One of the biggest wins of my entire life. I thought I was a hundred-feet tall.”
I believed it, too. The only thing Mullet liked more than gambling, was gambling.
I lifted Emma Claire out of the boat and set her feet on the sand. She was much heavier than she used to be. Emma Claire was a bonafide girl now. She had her own opinions, her own way of fishing, and her own set of little, muddy cracker-boots.
The moment her boots touched the ground, Emma Claire darted over to the teenagers. She kicked up wet clumps of sand behind her. I reached after her, but it was no use. Emma was like a bloodhound who'd spotted a crippled squirrel.
She watched the colorful group of teenagers with wide eyes, shaking her hips to the music and moving her feet. Then, she bent forward and yelled at the top of her lungs, “My brother catched a big fish y'all! It's so, so big!”
Emma Claire held out her hands, showing the teenagers the relative size of the fish. “Even bigger than this!”
The group of teenagers stopped what they were doing. They watched the three-foot-tall girl holler like an Apalachee. My face either turned white or red, there's no way I'll ever know for certain which color.
“It's a huge fish!” she yelled again. “Come look!”
I ducked my head down and considered leaving for the mountains to start a new life for myself.
Emma Claire turned around and then ran back to me. I bent down and picked her up, looking into her big cow brown eyes.
She was lit up like a bolt of electricity.
“Hey, Quinn, I told those kids about your big fish.”
“Those aren't kids, Emma Claire,” I said. “They're teenagers.”
͠
The freckled girl was about my age. She had freckles, all over, too. Not just on her face, but on her shoulders, arms, and chest. I don't think I'd ever seen that many on a person before. There must've been billions of them–no, trillions. Maybe gazillions. I can't be sure. They all ran together, like copper-colored buckshot.
The girl's white bathing suit covered her, but it felt indecent to stare at her for long. Quite indecent. Furthermore, I was nervous to be standing so close to a young lady wearing so little.
Nervous in a good way.
“Did you just catch that?” Freckles asked.
I couldn't hear the girl's voice in my bunk left ear. I didn't want to tell her that I couldn't hear her. She might start to think I was missing other important pieces of my body, too.
“Ma'am?” I said to her.
“Darling,” Mullet interjected. “You're going to have to stand on Quinn's good side, he can't hear a thing out of that left ear.”
My odds at impressing her were slowly dwindling. I fought against the impulse to duck my head down and melt into a puddle of fish pee.
“Oh, I had no idea.” The girl walked to my other side. “Is this better?”
“Much better, yes.” I gave her a smile.
The girl before was a friend of Phyllis'. Phyllis happened to be a distant cousin of mine, but the truth is, I didn't know Phyllis that well. I saw her at Uncle Sky's house for reunions once each year, but we never said much to each other. She was from a richer part of the family than we were. They were not crackers. In fact, they weren't even made of flour.
“That fish is enormous,” Phyllis yelled to me, cupping her hands over her mouth. “Huge.”
“I can hear you fine, Phyllis,” I said. “You ain't got to yell.”
“Sorry, Quinn,” Phyllis said.
“It's okay, just talk slow and loud.”
I looked down into the boat at the fish. She was right. The big thing sprawled out like Goliath himself, only with fins. Now and then, it would let out a big flop that made the girls jump back and shriek.
Their screams made Emma Claire giggle.
“I've never seen a redfish that big,” the freckled girl said. “He's a real lunker.”
Mullet and I looked at each other.
Most girls didn't know the difference between a redfish and a coffee mug, let alone use the word lunker–it was a technical term.
“A lunker?” Mullet said.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It's just, not everyone uses that word.”
“A lunker,” Emma Claire repeated. “What's that?”
“Freckles is right,” Mullet said. “It's a lunker alright, the biggest red I've ever seen. Thing weighs more than you two young ladies put together.”
“What about me?” Emma Claire said.
“You?” He looked at Emma. “Shoot, you're a sack of feathers, baby doll. You don't weigh nothing.”
“Yes I do, too,” Emma said. “I'm so heavy.”
The freckled girl reached out her hand to touch the slimy fish. She touched her index finger on the slick wet skin. The gills of the creature opened and closed, gasping.
“What're you going to do with it?” Phyllis asked.
I shrugged. “Eat it, what else?”
“All of it?” the freckled girl asked. “How will you eat it? It's so big. There's enough here to feed a whole army.”
Mullet looked at me and winked his eye.
“She makes a good point Quinn, reckon we'll need some volunteers to help us out. It's too much fish for the few of us.”
I decided to move to the mountains and change my name.
“Oh, let me help,” the freckled girl said. “I can help eat it.”
“Me too,” Phyllis said. “I can help, too.”
“Well now.” Mullet put his hands on his belt. “You ladies sure about that? You'll have to do your fair share of eating. Won't be easy. It'll be hard work.”
“I love fish,” the freckled girl said. “I can eat as much as any boy.”
I doubted that very seriously.
“You hear what she just said, Quinn?” he said. “That sounds like a challenge to me. Old Quinn here can eat more than any boy in town.”
She turned to me and held out her hand. “My name's Sonneta Ann, but everyone calls me Sonnet.”
And that's exactly what she was.
͠
The fish laid flat on the big wooden table. It was a table that Daddy had built out of scrub pine for cleaning fish, squirrel, and coon. It was stained crimson and brown from years of use. Gutting a fish had been our victory ritual when he was alive. It was the most fun part of the whole ordeal.
It made me sad to clean the fish without Daddy standing nearby. Like something was missing. I liked to imagine him standing there while I worked, watching me. His thumbs hitched in his belt, puffing on his pipe. Sipping on a jar of shine.
The sad fact was, Daddy had been dead for several years, and I was starting to forget his face in my mind. I forgot his nose first, then his ears and eyes, and then I forgot what shade of brown his hair was. That's how it happens. One piece at a time. Then, one day the person has disappeared from your memory altogether. Like they never even graced the earth.
The fish was hard to clean. It's difficult to cut up a fish that's the size of a tree trunk. This is especially true when using the wrong kind of knife. My little blade wasn't up to the task. It was dull and rusted over.
I was a lazy sharpener.
The fish guts spilled out of the great beast like soft purple jelly. Carefully, I slid the knife along the fish's white belly. The rubber skin parted behind my dull blade.
“That's a big one,” Mother said leaning against the post.
I turned to see her watching me. Mother's hair looked like she'd just woken up. Her eyes drooping. She'd lost the thin layer of baby fat that had once covered her face.
“Yeah,” I said. “He's a lunker.”
I loved that word more than ever before.
She walked closer to the fish, admiring my carving-work. She'd never cut an ounce of meat in her life, such things impressed her.
They reminded her of Daddy.
“I'll bet he tastes good,” she said. “I can't wait to eat him tonight.”
She touched a pool of dark fish blood.
“Well, actually,” I said. “I was planning on taking the fish to Mullet's tonight since he helped me catch it. He's having some friends over for a fry.”
Mother looked at me with a flat face.
“That's odd,” she said. “Mullet doesn't have any friends.”
I was quiet. “Well, it's just a little dinner,” I finally said. “Nothing much.”
She looked me up and down, studying the tender stubble on my jaw. I think it reminded her of Daddy too.
“I see,” she said. “And what about my supper tonight? Am I to go without while you party with your friends?”
“No, I'm about to start some for you, soon as I'm done here.”
“You are?” Mother leaned against the post and folded her arms across her chest. “What are you going to cook for me?”
I nodded toward the fish. “A little of this.”
She eyed the big thing.
“Well, I don't want to eat here tonight, all by myself, I want to go to your party.”
I stopped cutting. “You wouldn't know anybody there.”
“So what?”
“I just don't think you'd have any fun.”
“Fun?”
“You won't know a soul.”
“Well, I know Mullet. And I've known him longer than you have.”
I let out a breath, and picked up the severed head, it dripped dark purple blood onto my shirt. Mother watched me fling the head into the garbage can.
“So, I'm not invited, is that it?” Mother asked.
“No, it's not that, I just don't think that you'd enjoy yourself.”
She tightened her eyes. “I suppose I'm the one who feeds Emma Claire tonight then? I'm supposed to put her down to bed since you're leaving us?”
God forbid.
“No, ma'am,” I said. “I was going to bring Emma Claire along with me.”
Mother's nostrils opened up, and her face tensed.
She walked closer to me, eyeing the big slabs of pink meat on the table. “Okay then. So this is all about a girl? That's what this is all about?”
Mother was an expert in this field; I didn't stand a chance against her.
“No it's not about a girl.”
“It's not?”
“No, it's not.”
“Is she pretty?”
“There's no girl, I told you, it's a fish fry, with some of Mullet's friends.”
“Who is she?”
“There's no girl.”
Mother scoffed. “What's her name?”
“I said there's nobody.”
Mother butted her hands against my shoulders and pushed me.
I stumbled backward and dropped my knife on the ground. She picked up the giant tail of the fish and threw it at my chest. It thumped against my sternum. Then, she hurled the whole fish carcass into the dirt.
My trophy plopped in the dust like a stone.
“You goddamn liar!” she yelled and her voice broke. “I know you're lying to me. I'm not stupid.”
I stood there, without a word.
She stomped toward me and jammed her finger into my throat. “You're not going to any goddamn party. You're staying home tonight.”
͠
Emma Claire sat cross-legged on the floor. She played with the wooden blocks I'd made her last Christmas. They were wood scraps from the mill I'd dyed with food coloring. To her, they were the finest play things money could buy.
I got the idea for the blocks from a friend of mine. My friend had built an entire maze out of old wood from the mill. He'd put lizards in the maze, and we'd place bets on which one would make it to the end fastest.
I made a lot of money off those lizards.
I sat on my bed, lost in a swirl of anger. I wasn't sure if my thoughts were good or bad, righteous or unjust. The only thing that I was absolutely sure of was that I ached inside. I didn't want to miss a chance to see the freckled girl again. She was the loveliest thing I'd ever seen, and she had such a stunning vocabulary.
Lunker.
My self-pity mingled with hazy images of the girl's buckshot shoulders. I closed my eyes and thought about her auburn hair, it was the color of a rusted piece of metal. If God would've wanted to make anything more perfect, he couldn't have.
I leaned back onto my pillow looking at the ceiling, my deaf ear ringing like a bell. It always rang. Always. My bum ear hummed like a million crickets in unison. I was used to the sound, I never even payed attention to it to tell you the truth. The only time I noticed the ringing was when I was in my own whirlpool of thoughts.
When I was a child, with ear infections, Mother said I'd stay up half the night moaning in my room from the ringing. I'd bled all over my pillow like a stuck pig. But I didn't even remember that.
I closed my eyes again and thought of the freckled girl's peppered shoulders. I remembered her swimsuit. The straps were almost as white as her pale skin.
What a suit it was.
The ringing in my in my temples spread through my skull. It crawled through my face, down my jawbone and into my neck. Then, it spread to the rest of my body, until it enveloped me in its deafening sound.
“Hey, Quinn!” Emma shouted.
Her voice startled me out of my daze.
“What is it Emma Claire?”
“Are we eating fish with those kids tonight?”
“I don't know.”
“I thought we were going to a fry?”
I shook my head. “Probably not.”
“Well I want to go.”
“I don't think it's going to work out tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Because, Emma, Mother doesn't want us to go.”
“I don't care what she wants,” she laughed. “I want to go.”
Emma Claire was defiant as a slug.
“Come on,” she said. “What are you waiting for, dummy? Let's go.”
I looked out the window beside the bed. The sky was turning pink outside as the sun started to lower. I could feel my resentment toward Mother rising as the sky became redder.
“You're right, Emma Claire.” I stood up from my bed and took her by the hand. “Let's go.”
͠
Emma Claire sat next to me in the passenger seat. She touched the big hunks of fish wrapped in black and white newspaper. The fish steaks sat between us on the seat. Emma moved her finger along the printed words on the newspaper wrapping. She pretended that she could read, mumbling.
“What's this word say?” asked Emma Claire.
I looked at her finger. “I have no idea.”
It was too small, and too long for me to read.
“Quinn, how do you spell my name?”
“Your name?”
“Yes.”
I thought for a moment. “Well, I don't know exactly, but I know that your name starts with an E.”
“What else?”
“I can't remember for certain. I know that Claire starts with a C.”
“E. C.,” she said in a staccato voice was.
“That's right. Those are your initials.”
“What are those?”
“Initials are how you sign your name, if you sign a contract. Well, it's how you sign your name if you're a cracker.”
“What's a cracker?”
“Never mind.”
She turned around and looked out the back of the truck window at the sun going down. The brilliant orange sunset was Emma Claire's favorite thing in the world. It was one of the few pleasantries that we could afford to have almost every night. She propped herself on her elbows and gazed out the rear window. She watched it like it was the first time that she'd ever seen it.
