by David Bergen
His father pulled the barracuda over the gunnel into the bottom of the boat. He took his knife and his whetstone and he sharpened the knife and he replaced the whetstone and then he removed the dorsal and pectoral fins with a clean stroke, and then cut the fish open, from the tail fin up to the head, along the belly. He found the liver and cut off a small piece and placed it under his tongue and waited ten seconds and then he spit the piece of liver into the water and he said, “She’s safe.”
The boy watched his father clean the fish, and rub the scales off with the sharp end of the knife, and he watched his father clean his hands and knife in the water of the ocean. His father cleaned his hands and knife often, as if this were the most important thing, and the boy watched his father throw the insides of the fish overboard and he watched the pink offal turn to grey and to black as it sank. He watched as his father cut off the head and stored it at his feet. His father said, “For the soup.” The boy didn’t ask questions, for his father did a lot of talking as he worked, naming and explaining, and so it was that the boy began to learn the skills that would take him into his teens and to the age of twenty-two when, just married, he would buy his own boat and fit it with a used two-stroke sixty horse Evinrude, and so equipped, he would leave his wife in bed at 5 a.m. and head out to the edge of the reef to catch snapper and tuna and return at dusk to sell the fish by the pound to the local restaurants where tourists came to eat.
His name was Quinn, and when he fished, he fished alone, save for the days when tourists hired him and then he asked his father to come along, simply because tourists were a lot of work, and there were too many lines to keep track of. The pay was good. Better than fishing for oneself. And usually the tourists didn’t want the fish, just a photo of themselves holding up the biggest fish, something to talk about. And so, on those days when he worked for the tourists, he could depend on cash and he could count on fish to sell, and on those days he was pleased and his wife, Faustina, was pleased and they fell asleep late at night, their boy between them, talking about their plans for maybe a second boat and hiring Quinn’s brother, who worked as a captain on the diving boat at Chillies, and eventually, a fleet of boats, with Quinn as owner and manager and Faustina as accountant. They would find a bigger house, and furnish it with beds and tables and chairs built by Isak, the carpenter two doors down, a man whose skill as a woodworker was renowned on the island. And so it was that they dreamed.
He sold his catch, mostly snappers and tuna, by the pound to Greens, and with these earnings he bought fuel, lines, and bait and he gave the remaining cash to Faustina, who put it in a tin box and slid it under the bed. Faustina was a woman who believed that most folks thought and acted the way she did, that everyone had her values, the same big heart, the trenchant faith, the easygoing love for humanity. Even when she was proved wrong, she would shake her head and say that this person or that person, those that had committed some errant evil, only needed to be rehabilitated and all would be fine. Rehabilitation was always on Faustina’s mind. She went to church three times a week, and she attended prayer meeting with the women on Wednesdays and she made cakes for the children with AIDS at the local hospice. She loved Quinn. She loved their son. He was one, but he already resembled his father. Burly, broad across the shoulders, easy to grin, gentle. Every morning at four, Faustina rose with Quinn and boiled him coffee and fixed him a sandwich and sent him off with a palm against his back, a slight pressure, the imprint of which he felt throughout the day.
Quinn wore a long-sleeved black T-shirt, and he covered his face, up to his eyes, with a second T-shirt, his son’s, that he pulled up from his neck to cover his nose, and so, plying the waters off the coast of the islands, he resembled a man who did not want to be identified.
It was during the high season, in early January, that K. appeared. He had on his arm a dark-haired white-skinned woman, very thin with large breasts and he introduced her as Yvonne and he said that they wanted to go fishing and so he hired Quinn for two days. K. was voluble and within the first hour of the first day Quinn knew much about his life. He was an owner of five car dealerships in Dallas, one of them Audi, and he had a girlfriend back home, and he had an ex-wife and twins, and Yvonne was from Detroit and they’d met the night before and she’d insisted that she wanted to go deep sea fishing. “Here we are,” he said, and he laughed in a manner that was forced, a laugh that Quinn would come to recognize over the next two days, and the year following when K. would return for another round, as a command to join in.
On this day Quinn had asked his father for help, and so it was that his father sat in the bow with Yvonne and flirted with her and told her stories about working the cruise ships as a younger man and the women that fell over him, and about fishing as a young boy and about his children, of which he had six, though one, a daughter, had died of AIDS and another, a son, had died in prison in Tegucigalpa. All stories that Quinn had suffered the telling of again and again. Yvonne seemed taken with the older man, with the calluses on his hands and his sincere tone and the attention he paid her. Late afternoon, after dropping the couple off on shore, Quinn’s father announced that Yvonne’s beauty had been hard earned. “Her breasts weren’t real,” he said.
The following morning Quinn and K. went out alone. K. wore a purple bandana and silver sunglasses and he went shirtless. He had tufts of hair around his nipples, otherwise his chest was like a child’s. He said that he wanted to do some serious fishing. He wanted to catch a big fucking fish. A marlin.
Quinn said that open water was where the big marlin were and that the wind was too high and the waves unpredictable.
K. said that he wasn’t afraid of waves or wind.
Quinn said that they’d have to plan in advance. “We’d need more drinking water, and we’d need lunch, and we’d need a jerry can of gas, and we’d have to tell someone that we were going out. Another time.” He said that the cost would be double.
“Triple’d be fine,” K. said. “Long as we catch a big one.” He was quiet as Quinn set the lines.
At noon K. pulled in a small tuna and Quinn cut it up for bait. At the western tip of the island he reset the lines and turned back into the wind. And that’s when K., who had been sullen and silent up till then, began to enliven. He said that the night before he’d met the most beautiful woman in the world. “God, she was gorgeous,” he said. He made no mention of Yvonne, and Quinn didn’t ask. “Beautiful girl,” K. said. He said that finding a woman was as easy as selling a car. He snapped his fingers and said that ever since he was a teenager he’d known the language of selling. “Folks are easily convinced. Confidence is all. Tell them a story, flatter them, keep talking, talk some more, that’s the trick. Diversion’s necessary. Don’t allow them time to think. Thinking gets everyone in trouble. This girl for example, she was alone at the bar and I’d noticed her and when she went to the washroom I caught her eye and on her way back to her seat I halted her, touched her arm, and said that she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I didn’t let her answer, I just kept talking. Said my name, what I did, that I was a businessman who sold Audis and that I’d love to buy her a drink and when she said that she’d rather I buy her an Audi I knew I had her. We sat at the bar. She was a local girl. Twenty-two. When I heard this, I dropped my age some. She asked if I was married and I said not anymore. She asked if I had children and I said none. Which is true, but that’s another story. I asked her if she was single, and she said she could be if it was necessary. And that’s the moment when you know that the fish is on the line and she’ll be easy to pull in. You married?” he asked.
Quinn nodded.
“Children?”
“One.”
“Boy or girl?”
“Boy.”
“Sweet. How old?”
“One.”
“Your wife’s name?”
“Faustina.”
He repeated it. Then asked, “She from here?”
/>
“She is.”
“You don’t have much, do you Mr. Quinn?”
“What do you mean?”
“This boat, for example, is it yours?”
“It is.”
“You have a house?”
“I rent.”
“A car? Motorcycle?”
“No. None of those.”
“But you’re happy.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re satisfied. When you go home to your boy and your wife in the evening you think to yourself, This is a good life.”
“I have a good life.”
“You see? Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have only a boat and a wife and a son and some fish to put on your table and this is enough.”
“Is there more?”
“Fuck yeah.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a money clip with folded bills, denominations of one hundred. About twenty of them. “This,” he said. “And getting laid by a beautiful woman. And driving an Audi R8. But the money in my pocket, that gives me a hard-on. You know what I mean to say?”
“Money is your pill.”
“Ha. Yes. Exactly. What’s yours?”
Quinn said that he was satisfied.
“You’d have loved this girl last night.” He studied Quinn. Asked, “You lift weights?”
“I do.”
“I can see that. Built like a fullback. You play football?”
“American football? Or soccer?”
“American.”
“No.”
“You could.”
K. stopped talking, and for this Quinn was grateful. He thought that there was no purity like the purity of a fish that has taken a hook and will fight and fight. And then die. But even in death it was pure. He loved fish. Admired their pride and their simplicity. He would take a fish for company any time over a man like this car dealer. Except that the car dealer paid more money. And money was a necessity.
He dropped K. off at dusk at West Bay. They shook hands and K. handed him five hundred dollars. Quinn thanked him.
“I’ll return,” K. said. “And when I do we’ll go out into the deep sea and we’ll catch a big one.”
“That would be good,” Quinn said, and he pocketed the money.
Two months later, when Quinn’s sister Clarita came to visit Quinn and Faustina, she told them that she was pregnant. She was distraught, for she had a job to keep at the Coffee Bean, steady work that paid well, and she had no prospects for taking care of the child and she didn’t know if she should keep it.
“You’ll keep it,” Faustina said. “Something will work out. What about the father?”
Clarita didn’t answer at first. Then she said that the father didn’t know about it. “He’s from away,” she said.
“Oh, Clarita,” Faustina said. “Shouldn’t you tell him?”
“It wasn’t even sex. Not really. It was late, and I’d been drinking, and he cornered me, and something happened, though I didn’t know what happened till later. I thought we were just fooling around.”
Faustina was holding her little boy. She handed him to her husband, who was listening and was aware of a blossoming in his chest and his head.
“He raped you?” Faustina asked.
“No. At least I don’t think so.”
“Well, girl, either you chose him or you didn’t. Did you?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was his name?” Quinn asked, his voice low and quiet.
Clarita shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Did he sell cars?” Quinn asked.
Clarita looked up quickly at her brother and then looked away. She wore her hair very short and she liked very short skirts and short tops and everything else about her was tall and thin, almost stretched out. She tugged at her short skirt now, as if attempting to hide her legs. She said that he sold cars, yes.
“Audis?”
“Yes.” She looked at her brother and this time she didn’t look away. “Do you know him?”
“I know him. But not like you know him.”
When the baby was born, Quinn said that the child’s name would be Moses, because he was like an infant that had been put in a pitch basket and sent down the river to be found by slaves washing clothes on the bank of that river. He was not a religious man, but his wife Faustina was, and Clarita was as well, and he knew they would like the name, and the reason for the name. Quinn and Faustina took the child in and raised it. Clarita came by for visits once a week, but she had little attachment to the child. Faustina, on the other hand, loved the child as much as she loved her own, who took a proprietary approach to the infant that had landed in bed beside him. They slept with their hands interlocked, or feet touching. The two were as one.
Quinn had been reticent to take in a child that was not his, but he was quickly smitten by the baby’s nature, his lack of crying, his delight in shiny objects and his attention to the sound of the wind blowing through the house. Quinn began to carry Moses around in the evening, jostling him in one arm, while his own child demanded the other arm.
“Like two footballs,” Quinn said, and he grinned at his wife.
Eventually, within six months, the baby was seen as Quinn and Faustina’s child. Some in the community were even convinced that they had seen Faustina walking around in the months previous, heavy with the child that would come to be known as Moses. The family did nothing to dissuade others from this belief.
A year passed. Moses learned to walk. He grew strong. His legs filled out. He didn’t have Quinn’s son’s heft or height, but he had a certain swagger, and there were times, when Quinn came upon him by surprise, that Quinn was struck by the child’s eyes, and his mouth, and he saw, ever so briefly, a man with a money clip and barbarous privilege. But it was too simple to equate the child with the father, and so he taught the boy to move softly through the world and he modelled the art of waiting, which was something he had learned long before as a young boy while fishing with his father, and then honed to a fine skill as a young man in his own boat. Patience presided over and usurped the sins of the world, though Quinn did not hold to any notion of sin or wrongdoing. Consequence was all.
And then, with the inevitability of the seasons, during the rains this time, K. reappeared. Quinn had heard from his brother that he was being sought by a brash man with skinny legs, and he knew from the description who the man seeking him was, and he avoided being found until one evening, at dusk, washing out his boat after a day of fishing, he heard his name being called and when he rose from the bottom of the boat he saw K. standing in the gloom, grinning, and he thought, Here we go.
He flaunted a paunch, and his legs were white sticks, and he wore a T-shirt that said Filthy, Stinking, Rich: Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad. Quinn thought everything cruel that could be thought. He regretted ever knowing this man.
He waited. Did not speak.
“I’m back,” K. cried.
Quinn nodded.
“Ready for the big one?”
Quinn bent to wipe the last of the bow. He rose. Shouldered his gear and moved on.
K. followed. “Hey, how about tomorrow. We go out into the deep.”
“The water’s rough,” Quinn said. He had stopped walking for he had no desire to lead this man back to his house. He looked down upon that distended paunch. Here was an ugly man.
“I’ve got three days. And then I go home. I’ve been scouring the island for you.”
“Why me? There are lots of other outfits.”
“They won’t go out where I want to go.”
“They’re smart.”
“And you?”
“I’m smart too. I won’t do it. Storm season.”
“A thousand dollars.”
“Not enough.”
“Two.”
“Thousand.”
“Yes.”
“No guarantees we’ll get something. Oh, we’ll get something, but not necessarily what you wish for. Two days. A thousand a day. And you’ll pay up front.”
“Absolutely.” He was full of glee. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the money clip and counted out the bills. He handed them to Quinn, who slipped them into his pocket, and motioned at the shore. “Tomorrow at five a.m. then. Bring a slicker. It’ll be raining.”
K. wanted to shake hands. Quinn acquiesced. They said goodbye and Quinn climbed the quiet street to his home.
When he told Faustina, she said that the man was dangerous. And evil. And they didn’t need the money. “He’ll take Moses if he knows,” she said.
“He doesn’t know, and he won’t know, and even if he did know he wouldn’t know what to do with that knowledge,” Quinn said. They were lying in bed. The boys slept in the bed abutting theirs. The boys were naked. Their legs were entwined. Faustina stroked Moses’s head.
“Sometimes I feel guilt,” she said. “Like I’m hiding and it’s just a matter of time.”
He took her hand and kissed it. Pushed his face against her thick hair and breathed in. He rolled her body onto his. Wrapped his arms around her. He was big, she was small. His heart opened. He loved her with great madness.
They were to meet in the morning by the beach where the abandoned sailboat was moored in open water, the boat off of which the kids swung out over and tumbled into the clear water at the edge of the coral. At five he was waiting. At five thirty K. arrived. K. wore shorts and a T-shirt, no hat, no slicker. They climbed in and Quinn pushed off and clambered aboard and started the motor. The water beyond the bay was rough and the wind came from the southwest and it was strong and the swells were deep. In the trough there was only water to be seen and at the crest there was the shape of the tip of the island and a brume that floated over the trees. There were no other boats on the water. They ploughed out to sea and within an hour K. was throwing up, his head hanging over the gunnel. “You want me to turn around?” Quinn asked.
