Fish

This flash fiction piece was written as a story companion to the day 1 drawing prompt Fish from the 2020 Inktober prompt list. Click here to see the drawing.

I always loved this boat.

Ever since my grandfather took me out on the water as a kid. I watched the shoreline get smaller and smaller behind us until it finally disappeared into the horizon and we were surrounded by nothing but water on every side.

Infinite possibilities, and infinite nothingness at the same time. Something about the paradox of everything/nothing filled me with a wistful hope I couldn’t describe.

I rock my feet back and forth on the wooden deck. It’s not a big boat, just a humble fishing vessel with a deck and a wheelhouse. No cabin, no bed. I sleep in my chair at the wheel most nights. When I can sleep. The constant rushing of the ocean against the hull makes it difficult to drift off. I hate so many things about the ocean, but this boat … I’d be happy to die in this boat.

Suddenly, a bell rings. The line on the left is yanked taut, so I jump up to grab the fishing pole from its stand. Probably a tuna, or maybe a marlin. Marlin would be good, I could sell a marlin for a good amount back on shore. My hands and arms burn as I yank on the line, frantically grinding the reel back towards myself.

This one’s gonna be a fight.

I love fighting the fish. It keeps my arms strong, my back sore. Reminds me I spent the day doing something rather than staring out the horizon like I do on the days they don’t bite.

When I get back to shore, I miss the feeling of instability under my feet. I miss swaying back and forth, losing my balance, so I wander into the tavern at the edge of the dock and knock back a few whiskeys.

Sarah always says, “Why didn’t you just come home first?” with that broken hearted look on her face. What can I tell her? How do I say I don’t like the house because it stands still? How can I explain that being trapped inside those four walls feels more like a coffin than a home? I can’t. So I just grunt, put my arm around her, tell her dinner looks good, and silently start planning the next time I can take the boat out.

The fish is still fighting, but I can tell it’s getting tired. I pull on the line and back up toward the wheelhouse, and suddenly get yanked forward, trip on my own feet, and end up flat on my face on the deck. At the same time I hear my cheek smack the cherry wood, I hear the Snap! of the fishing line and realize the fish I’d been fighting was more clever than me. Biding its time, waiting for me to get complacent, distracted, or tired, before it surged forward with all its strength to make its escape.

The conversation between you and your ocean-bound prey takes place entirely over the fishing line, like two kids holding a tin can string taut between two dark houses. Nothing is said, but even still, you come to know each other in those moments, no matter how brief. Both of you, fighting for your lives in two completely different ways. Him, a hook in his mouth, me, a hook around my waist, drawing me back to shore, back to a cage, and both of us, pulling at each other.

Fish won, this time.

I stand up, head swimming, and spit a tooth into my hand. Damn marlin, never even made into the boat and still managed to sock me in the face. Then I notice it wasn’t just the line that snapped, but the end of my pole. Another one, gone. I scream obscenities, break the low half over my knee and throw it out into the ocean.

Stopping back into the wheelhouse I slump into my chair and yank out the bottle of whiskey I hide under the control panel. Grandpa always said not to keep whiskey on the boat.

“Why, grandpa?”

“Cause you’ll drink it, Jeremy. A drunken captain is worse than no captain at all.”

Damn right, I’ll drink it. I swig at it, big gulps, and my stomach burns.

Sarah told me last night if I don’t start bringing home more fish, it’s time to talk about selling the boat. I wanted to throw my dinner plate against the wall. All she sees when she looks at this boat is debt. Sometimes I think that’s all she sees when she looks at me, too. I choked down the rubbery green beans she’d prepared.

“That’s all we had in the pantry,” she’d said.

“Sarah,” I said, voice gruff with tears I don’t shed. “That boat is … honey, that boat is …”

I wanted to tell her the boat is freedom, the boat is the only place I feel like myself, the only place I understand who I am and what I’m meant to do. Losing this boat is a death sentence, I wouldn’t make it a week. But I looked into the sweet, strawberries and cream face, with her soft blond hair falling in whisps at her chin, and her big, grey eyes filled with nights she spends alone while I’m on the water and I couldn’t tell her the truth.

“That boat was my grandpa’s,” was all I could manage.

“Yes, and it killed him. I don’t want the same thing to happen to you.” She took my plate before I’d even finished the beans.

These waters started to dry up when I was a teenager, and grandpa couldn’t bring in enough to keep food on his table. We found him in his one-room shack, belly full of whiskey, surrounded by empty bottles, skin gone cold, staring straight ahead. I knew he’d died with the sea in his eyes.

I wouldn’t go the same way. No way in hell would I die anywhere but out here on the open water.

I chug the rest of the whiskey, little less than half the bottle, and slam the empty glass down into the control panel. Things spark and buzz as I repeatedly bash at them, until the radio microphone cord is severed and the glass busts in my hand.

Blood in my fist, I stumble out onto the deck and climb up onto the bow, looking at the darkening horizons all around me.

Would I be up here if that marlin hadn’t snapped my fishing pole? is the last thought I have as I tip forward and let the sea eat me alive.