Dead Bait 4

by Weston Ochse

  DEAD BAIT 4

  Edited By Cameron Pierce

  Copyright 2017 by Severed Press

  www.severedpress.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The Thief Who Married the Sea by CS Nelson

  The Most Painful Companion by Meghan Arcuri

  Fish Launcher by MP Johnson

  The Blackest Eyes by Adam Cesare

  The Appetite of Old Simba - Dyer Wilk

  The Black Waters of Babylon - Brendan Vidito

  Wet Texas by Max Booth III

  For the Seafood Lover in You by Joshua Chaplinsky

  The Dunpeal Trawler by S.T. Cartledge

  The Wheel House by Bram Riddlebarger

  You’ll Like It Here by Sam Reeve

  Yacht Rock by Matt Serafini

  Lamprey Luau by Amber Fallon

  They Wait by Christine Morgan

  Out There Having Fun by Andrew Wayne Adams

  A Prayer for the Surfer Boys by David James Keaton

  Catfish Gods by Weston Ochse

  Cold Grave - Gabino Iglesias

  John Dory by D.G. Sutter

  It Came From the Sea by C.V. Hunt

  Room of Water by Kathryn E. McGee

  Where the River Bends - Nate Southard

  The Thief Who Married the Sea

  CS Nelson

  “Rules are there for a reason. Even if they don’t make sense, even if you don’t agree with none of them and they don’t seem fair, they’re there for a reason. So you just mind the rules and no one gets hurt.”

  Those words destroyed your world when you were twelve, when the man who raised you said them after taking away your four-pronged gig and telling you, “No fishing in November,” without any further explanation. “Never more than five; never, ever no females,” he said. Then, “Throw ’em back, boy.” You wept and released your catch beneath the dark water. Those were the rules.

  We don’t flounder with four-pronged gigs.

  We don’t flounder in November.

  We never take more than five and never, ever, under any circumstances, do we take females.

  The blanched face, the white knuckles and busy hands; the rheumy eyes long yellowed from too much Wild Turkey and Lone Star beer. Fingers stained equally sallow from a never ending chain of Bugler cigarettes. This was the man who raised you, and this was the only time you saw him afraid. Of the water. Of what lurked beneath the murk of waves slapping the beach that night. The night you struck off on your own a week into November. When the sand beneath the waves is more flounder than ray, great beds of fish gazing up at the moon in clusters so close you can’t help but stab at least twice your limit in a night.

  Matagorda Island offers the best flounder fishing in the world, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department handbook. The Texas Gulf, it says, supports a wide variety of flat fish, easily caught by three-pronged gigging trident or in angler fashion, making the southern flounder and less common gulf flounder a well sought after prize for avid fishermen. However, the TPWD handbook goes on to caution, “…there are in place stringent rules for the sports fisherman to adhere by.” It then spells out those three rules that broke your heart when you were a child and later, would come to haunt you as an adult.

  “It’s not the flounder you need watch for, boy,” he said, on a more relaxed evening, before the night you tried to steal from the Sea.

  It was your first time out and the man who raised you, he was hell-bent and maybe a little beer-drunk, but vibrated with this energy you’d never felt before. You followed along in the dark, the cool gulf air blowing across your bare chest, salt and silt and sour hops on the breeze, peach fuzz singed from the Coleman lantern despite your homemade heat shield of foil and driftwood. He waded ten feet apart from you. Water, only up to his knees, licked at your waist and maybe it was just a little scary, but by night’s end and moondown you’d have your first string of fish.

  “It’s not the flounder at all,” he said again in that rumbly whisper, his fishing voice. “It’s the stingarees you gotta mind, boy. They get you, and you wanna see a grown man cry?” He eyed you over his shoulder with a sly grin.

  “Nosir.”

  “Hn. That’s good. Me neither.”

  Then he laughed. So you laughed too, same as him, in that low and rumbly whisper.

  “Sst!” He stopped dead still and motioned you with two fingers above his head, barely visible in the lantern’s umbra, then waving the same hand in downward flutters to beckon you carefully through the dark water. “You wanna shuffle your feet slow, so as to not step on no rays, but you also wanna mind stirring up sand. It spooks the fish.”

  “Yessir.”

  You pulled up beside him and the look in his eyes scared you some. A predatory sharpness that had never been there in all of the years he’d raised you. But it was there in that moment.

  He nodded ahead, just inside the gaslight nimbus. A sandy oval with two beads shining up at you rested right there in the swath of light, distorting in waves from the rolling tide. The water heaved and dipped, like a dark, breathing giant.

  That brown oval of eyes and scale was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen until the man who raised you thrust his gig upon it, piercing. Stabbing. Impaling. A violent cloud obscured all. He bent low and slipped his hand beneath the catch, trapping it onto his three prongs as he lifted the jerking fish topside.

  “Go ahead, boy. String her up.”

  Through the gills and out the mouth. The next one was yours. By morning you would be beat tired and salt sticky, but your soul would be full from your first night out. Five big ones, each way over the regulation 14-inch maximum, the length of your middle fingertip to the crook of your elbow. Gutted and cleaned right there at the bank as the sun, too shy to yet rise, spread his day blood through the clouds in pinks and bruised purples.

  Every night taking what the Sea granted. Every morning packing fish to sell before bedding down. You lived a life of happiness only the Sea could give.

  ***

  “Boy, you got to watch the clouds some.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Fish cain’t see you when the clouds are right, but by full moon,” the man who raised you said, “they see us. Oh you betcha, they see us alright. And we see them.”

  “And then we lose ’em?” You asked this, then a spry fifteen years and doing well with just the two of you and the Sea. Never a day wasted in school; no time spent working anything other than the shore for the catch. Sleep till sundown and fish till rise.

  The man who raised you, he got a look when you said that, though. Much opposite the look he gave when you first saw him gig a fish. No, this was a look you had never encountered, lest imagined in such a powerful and confident figure as the man. He was worried at your thinking.

  “No, boy,” he said softly. “You don’t want them to see you because it ain’t right.”

  Silence passed between you, heavy like a weighted net.

  Then, “Boy, you must understand. What it is we do, with all this,” he waved a hand across the dark water, “with the catch She gives us, it’s a blessing to us but a sacrifice from Her.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Never take Her for granted. Never take more from Her than what She offers.” The next part he said with a distant stare, a sad, lonesome look: “She’s a harsh mistress.”

  You never asked what that meant.

  ***

  “Sir, we understand this child has not yet registered with the Matagorda Independent School District?” The lady who asked w
as a busybody in a fancy pants suit. Coffee colored jacket and khaki slacks. She dressed like the kind of candy only adults eat on account it tastes like shit and is full of liquor. “I will be back tomorrow with the proper admin—and constable if need be—so we can get this young man in school. I’m afraid it’s the law, sir.”

  “Law of the land, ma’am. Not the Sea.”

  “It’s still the law.” She turned a shade of cherry to top her nasty candy suit, then spun in a huff, mouthing off about how she would be back, and rest assured, and people like us need to realize where we live.

  The man who raised you also taught you to be on the lookout for her ilk.

  “They’re everywhere, boy. Mind who you talk to and what you say.”

  “Yessir.”

  This said not long after that visit from the busybody woman, her still making her way across the long bridge to the shore. At night of course, in the month of October when the fish clustered in ripe beds. A few weeks before the man who raised you would fall upon a nest of stingarees.

  “Mind who you talk to and what about, but also mind what folks see. Do you know what they see when they look at you?”

  “Nosir.”

  “They see a young man who ain’t never had traditional schooling.”

  “Yessir.”

  “But they also see a young man who holds hisself well. And one who can read and write and haggle with the rest.”

  “Yessir.” Because he taught you these things in order to keep you out of their system and in the water where you belong.

  “You’re a good boy, boy.”

  “Yessir.”

  Your growing chest blossomed with pride at that. Rarely was a compliment forthcoming. This would be one of those rare—and last—occasions.

  “Now mind that one there, boy. It’s a good size to keep, but look at the underbelly. Feel it?”

  You slumped some but ran your hand across the smooth slime of the underbelly, palpating until you hit the knobbies. A girl fish.

  You looked up at him with pleading eyes, but despite the sympathy you found there, his own eyes testified to what you already knew.

  “We gotta follow the rules. She’s female. And your Mother takes care of her own.”

  “Yessir.” You released and the great fluke swam away free, her three puncture wounds trailing momentary ribbons of blood barely visible by lantern.

  “A good boy.”

  In that moment, a dark wave the likes you’d never seen before reared back to the west where the bridge touched the island to Matagorda County mainland. You stopped together to lean on your gigs and admire the beauty, the rolling dark of Her great wall eclipsing the far city lights, faint luminescence of Her building foam; the rage of her final crash before settling to sleep. A car horn pierced the night briefly then sputtered to silence.

  “Truly. A harsh mistress.”

  The man who raised you said nothing else about the rare incident and no more such waves were forthcoming, but you would always be reminded, with love, of his final act that night, cupping a handful of seawater to his mouth and kissing it before murmuring a warm “thank you,” and letting it spill back to the murk.

  The busybody woman who aimed to have you in public school never made it to the mainland.

  ***

  The Atlantic stingray, according to the TPWD handbook, is the most common ray found along the shallows in and around Matagorda Island. However, it goes on to say, in recent years there have been rare occurrences of the alien, round-bodied Indo-Pacific stingaree which prefers the same hunting grounds as Atlantic breeds. The TPWD handbook cautions the angler and spear fisherman alike to shuffle their feet whilst wading in order to avoid stepping on the normally docile creatures, lest they incur a most painful sting from the razor sharp barb, a cartilaginous protrusion capable of delivering a highly toxic venom. In some circumstances, the barb may break off from the ray and continue to envenom the hapless fisherman even after the initial sting. According to the TPWD handbook, little is known of the uncommon stingaree, except despite being a smaller specimen when compared to the Atlantic stingray, much larger rays have been reported during the forbidden spawning period lasting between November and early December.

  The man who raised you would live long enough to caution you about the rules before missing his own good guidance and snagging twice his limit, one a female, then falling to the bone sting of a lying ray whilst gigging solitary one October night. He would forget to tell you the why of the rules before crying as a grown man, before faltering in his step and falling into a much bigger stingaree, one who would pierce him just beneath the xyphoid process and dump squirt after deadly squirt of venom into his abdominal cavity, arresting his heart.

  He suffered a moment of blindness in the face of bounty: He chose to steal from the Sea. Of course, the Wild Turkey and Lone Star and Buglers had some to do with it, but what good Texas doctor would ever admit to such unpatriotic heresy out loud?

  “Harsh mistress, indeed,” the man who raised you would have said.

  So there you were, at sixteen with hair grown in funny places and hormones starting to swell with the moon cycle, on your own. Alone. Is it right to blame a man for not having a proper indoctrination into the world? Doesn’t seem so. But you were a good boy. A careful boy. You heeded the man who raised you and all of his good wisdom, and you made your own way in the fish trade.

  It wasn’t until your twenty-fifth spawning season that the loneliness took its hold on you. You cried out to the Sea one evening, to the ocean who had blessed you with such rich harvest for so many years, the Mother who kept you company through all of those long nights.

  “I need more.” Your tears slipped into Her depths and the water receded until fields of sand and fish lay before you. In the distance, a great wall of water climbed high as it rushed toward the bridge, overtaking it and a single figure dangling from the railing. It receded back to you with a delicate package.

  Lifeless, with dark hair spread around her like tendrils of creatures from deeper fathoms, a young woman floated upon the backfill of the second great wave of your lifetime. She crested and coursed directly toward you until she lay in your arms, black hair the color of deep night, skin fair as the moon. Her chest did not move and no air slipped past her full lips. You knew from the man who raised you about drowning, had witnessed him rescue a fallen child once. Back on shore, you locked your lips onto hers and breathed life into her flooded lungs.

  She coughed and gagged a spout of swill, drawing ragged breath before crying out, then just crying, sobbing against your chest.

  Her name was Naomi and she had come to die. Mother took her first.

  For you.

  You shared everything you knew of the ocean with Naomi. She accepted you as her lover and took your knowledge of the world beyond anything the man who raised you had ever hinted at. You became one. In her alluring green eyes rolled waves of a different ocean. A place of warmth and beautiful mystery.

  Months passed with a new magic for each. Winter was the best, with a day set aside for giving love, and a day set aside for giving thanks, and a day set aside for giving unconditionally. Summer became a season of laughter and frolic and play. Nights, you fished while Naomi sang from the shore. Early mornings were for love and entwined slumber.

  Naomi accepted life with you, but time soon grew heavy upon her and she longed for more. Naomi wanted a child.

  She asked of your mother and you had no answers.

  “I come from the Sea.”

  It was not enough. She laughed and taunted you playfully. Inviting you into her.

  You agreed, but only under the right conditions. It must be during the month of November.

  “Okay,” she said, large eyes betraying her excitement, her grin an open-mouthed and anxious one.

  And it must be within the embrace of the water, at the warmest spot near the shoals.

  “The fish? I love it.” She snuggled close against your chest and stared up into your face, eye
s capturing your soul. “We’re gonna have a baby.”

  You agreed and took her to the warm spot, the only other night you had gone out during the forbidden month of November; the only time you had ever gone out without a gig or stringer. You both waded, hand in hand, naked into the Sea.

  Naomi pulled you close in the moonlight. She climbed you, your manhood stiff and swollen, her naked breasts soft against you, and took you inside of her. The waters rose and a gale picked up, but there amidst the spawning flounder, you and Naomi created life within the womb of the Sea.

  ***

  “When the flounder spawns, boy,” the man who raised you said, “she lays her eggs.”

  “Yessir.”

  “But the ray? No, she don’t lay no eggs. She gives live birth. Sometimes a dozen, but stingarees bring their young into the world same as us. From life to life. No egg to break.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Always remember that, boy. It’s the difference between us and them.”

  You gave him a quizzical look, because you weren’t exactly certain what he meant by that last.

  “We’re of the nature which comes from the womb. That’s why She gives us the fish. We are over them as they are beneath us. One born of a womb, the other a shell. And the rays? Like us, they are the guardians of the Sea. Just as we are all Her children.”

  “Yessir.”

  This sat well with you. You never had reason to ask about a mother figure, for you knew all along who your Mother was.

  ***

  The baby came during summer’s end, just as the beaches emptied of the mainlanders and dirty trollers chased the currents to richer waters. Naomi followed you to the shoals once more, her big round belly glowing white and full in the night. Fish trailed her, as if she leaked cut bait, but you knew it was but your brothers and sisters of the Sea paying homage.

  Naomi smiled, a smile holding back agony, and you squeezed her fingers to give reassurance.