Up Through the Water (5 page)

Lila followed Birdflower behind the dumpster. The sky was ultravox blue. Cats weaved around their feet and dived to the weeds from the top edge of the dumpster. He pulled a joint out of his T-shirt pocket, lit it, and breathed in. “First puff of the day,” he said, eyes closing from the morning glare.

“Just one drag,” Lila said. She reached and picked up a scrawny cat; its back legs hung loose under her arm.

“You'll burn yourself,” Birdflower said.

Lila dropped the cat. “Blow smoke in my mouth then.”

He breathed in, his hand held backward and his lips tight together. Birdflower motioned with his head for her to come closer. Lila made her mouth a slack, choirboy oval.

Birdflower put his lips inches away and blew blue-gray smoke into her mouth. She held it, forced it down, and pictured it spreading in her lungs like smoke in a white room. “Again,” she said. He took a drag, leaned closer this time so their lips just barely did not touch. Lila closed her eyes. “All I want to know is how far you have to go before you can come back.” Birdflower pulled back and listened for the sound of water moving out on the point. When he passed her the joint, their fingers touched.

The owner yelled, “Electricity's on.”

FIVE

FISH MARKET

B
efore noon
on Sunday, Emily left the house and the outer arc of dappling leaf light and headed toward town to meet Eddie. She had on khaki shorts, washed soft as skin, and a blouse that gathered around the neck with a green ribbon. Her sunglasses hid the bluish bruise around her left eye and reached over half of one of the larger scabs on her forehead.

Emily's street was the only complete sand one; all the rest that crisscrossed over the island were either gravel or cement. And the sloppy roads on the soundside were often marked with boards. In the winter the population dwindled to less than six hundred, but now there were two thousand or more, counting tourists and summer residents. The island itself was shaped like a thermometer. The Texaco, Trolley, and Paolo's were along the fourteen miles of highway that led to Silver Lake. The town horseshoed around that inlet. On the northwest tip was the coast guard station, then the tourist docks, post office, community store, and the old Victorian houses. These were inhabited by captains’ widows who, some people said, still smoked opium as they had earlier while waiting for their husbands to return from the sea. A dozen long docks radiated into Silver Lake, and the commercial fishing boats and shrimpers docked there alongside locals’ rowboats and tourist sailboats. On the northernmost point stood the lighthouse, and near it a storybook Pentecostal church. Emily had been there once, and she remembered the snapdragons in milk glass vases on the altar.

Her sandals flipped sand against the back of her bare legs, and she rested for a moment on the gate of one of the small family cemeteries. The stones were granite, most with simple crosses, names, and dates. Above her, a sparrow landed on a low cedar branch. She remembered her father and how in sermons he would use her and her sister Sarah as examples of naturally sinful children, telling things to the whole congregation—never smiling or looking down to where his family sat in the front pew.

It was Easter sunrise she liked to think about in detail. There was always a huge cross twisted with forsythia and braced with gold cord. The altar guild ladies brought lilies in their cars. The big trumpet blossoms pressed against the glass. Around five-thirty the light diffused. A piano arrived in the back of a pickup truck. Her father's cape arched out from his shoulders. Fifty or so members sat in folding chairs and there were another twenty like Emily and her mother in cars. The organist banged out the Alleluia and it was then that she always felt herself dissolving. Only the sight of her father, his blond hair backlit by the sun, anchored her.

Emily came out of the tunneled trees and crossed the main street to the post office. She was a few minutes early, so she sat down on the sidewalk curb and squinted across the parking lot.

Eddie had gone at low tide to clam. She'd offered to help but he'd refused, saying they would meet later near the market to pick out a fish for dinner. He had insisted on coming, she knew, because he loved the mackerel and bluefish lined on ice, the delicate filleting knives and the loose scales that stuck to everything.

Though he'd asked several times, she still hadn't told him why John Berry had thrown the bottle. She figured he understood, but he seemed to want her to say something about her lovers and Emily was unsure if she could.

She felt a damp hand grab the back of her neck, and Eddie sat down, slung the net bag of clams between his legs, and laid the rake next to him.

“You got all those by yourself?” Emily said.

“Yeah. Let's go get the fish.” He seemed oddly anxious.

Emily heard a rustle behind her and turned to see the branches of a bush near the P.O. shake. Under the white blossoms and leaves were a girl's bare legs in a pair of wet tennis shoes.

“Who's that?” Emily asked.

“Lila,” he said. “She wanted to see you up close.”

Lila walked a step behind Emily and Eddie across the gravel parking lot, up the wooden stairs, and into the small room. There was hardly enough space for the three of them to stand in front of the rows of fish on ice. The place was deserted and Lila felt a little creepy under the silent surveillance of so many dead eyes.

Eddie stood a few yards away and kicked at a muddy box near the far wall. Lila fingered the fish, grabbed the tails, and twisted them, checking for firmness with her index finger. She could tell from the way Emily stayed near the door and folded her arms heavily in front of her that she didn't like the headless fish, or even the shimmering whole ones.

Lila stared at her and Emily seemed to sense it; she straightened her shoulders, tipped up her chin, and let her eyes become distant. A few months ago Lila had seen Emily shopping at the community store, barefoot and in tattered jeans; she bought only four things—a gallon of red wine, a tall white candle, bath bubbles, and some condoms.

Emily read the cardboard price list and commented on how shrimp were particularly cheap this week. “I've heard you were the fastest header on the island,” she said to Lila.

“I didn't know that,” Eddie said.

Lila could tell by the eager tone in his voice that this impressed him.

She blushed; it was a fact she'd always been proud of, but picturing herself among the other island women, hair up, sitting on her milking stool, and twisting handfuls of shrimp heads off until her fingers were raw, seemed embarrassing to her now.

“Pruitt's usually in the back,” Lila said, and she walked past Emily out the screen door and around to where he was slicing a shark into steaks. The sun was hot. Emily had probably meant to be flattering, but Lila felt uncomfortable because she couldn't be sure. Pruitt's white apron was bloody, and there were even specks of blood in his hair. She watched him cut through the spine, then into the softer muscle of the fish. “You got customers,” Lila told him.

“First ones,” Pruitt said. “Thought I might get to sit around all day till my dad started me on this.”

He motioned to the sprawl of silver skin and wet bones. She watched the white shrimper
Last Chance
sway in the water near the market. While he hosed off his hands, she counted the shark heads in a brown bag, then pressed a finger into a puddle of blood on the filleting board. Lila smelled the blood and then wiped it off on the wood boards. She remembered how her grandmother had told her that drinking the blood of animals passed their powers on to you. She watched Pruitt dry his hands on some newspaper. He was her age, but because he was so silent and lanky, Lila thought of him as younger.

She followed him through the maze of packing coolers in the back way. “Pruitt was gutting a shark in the back,” Lila said. She paused to see if they would grimace or cringe. Emily concentrated on the fish, pretending not to hear, but Eddie scowled at her and averted his eyes, and Lila felt guilty for trying to shock them.

Emily pointed, “How about that one?”

Pruitt picked the trout up, weighed it, and threw it on the butcher block. He asked if she wanted it cleaned. Emily shook her head. He slid the trout into a clear bag, so its face pressed against the plastic.

Emily paid, and there was something in the gentle way she took the bag with both hands that gave Lila the feeling she wasn't going to cook the trout at all.

JULY

In early July the ferry at dusk is never crowded. Most crossers stay in the sleepy comfort of their cars listening to the last hints of Norfolk radio and letting the lurch of the boat lull them. Really it's only lovers on long weekends that go out into the windy confusion to lean against the bow's rail. They listen to the rigging clang and the crack and pull of the flags and watch water heave up in the wake of the ferry. Their sweatshirts puff up like blowfish. Against the darkening foreground they see the tipped wingspans and shiny beaks of the hundreds of gulls that swoop and circle, following the boat in hopes of handfuls of white bread or crackers. Lovers in July look ahead to the lights of the island. Somehow only they know that the power of air is all and they must come wordless into the sing of wind and water.

SIX

DEEP SEA FISHING

E
mily Pulled
her T-shirt off in one smooth movement, her hair fell back to her shoulders, her bikini-top triangles of rose macramé shook slightly, and the shells tied to the back strings tinkled like wind chimes. The white shirt she held blew out like a flag as the cruiser bumped over the water. Birdflower's clean brown hair was gathered in a ponytail and tucked into a pale lavender T-shirt with maroon mermaids singing on the front. She watched his lips move, but because of the boat's engine, she couldn't make out the words.

They were sitting on cushions along the far wall of the boat, watching the island melt to water. Before them were the fishing chairs, bolted swivel seats. In the front, Michael steered behind the splattered Plexiglas window of the cabin. Near him, David tipped a beer to his lips; the can touched the rim of his baseball cap. She saw how Birdflower looked at the brass bead held by a leather string around her neck and the smooth sheen of her hair. His eyes lingered on the swell of her breasts. Water spray dotted their faces. He leaned over and cupped a hand to her ear. “I'll catch you something,” he said.

Emily looked ahead of the boat and imagined the Gulf Stream. “Like the ocean has a light blue racing stripe,” Birdflower had said. She thought it was like a sunbeam, coming up from Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, illuminating fish in the sea's dark room.

The last time she'd been fishing was with Eddie, when he was ten, at sunset; she remembered how excited he'd been, casting, wading out barefoot in his rolled-up jeans. She had sat in a lawn chair on the sand and watched his tanned back moving in the surf. Now he wouldn't want to fish. He was busy with Lila.

Birdflower got a beer from the cooler near the bait bundles and the longer cooler for fish. The beer popped, fizzed; he took a sip and handed it to Emily. Michael steered with one hand and pointed. “There's the Gulf,” he said. He wore the thick fisherman sunglasses that wrapped around his face, protecting even his peripheral vision from the sun. The engine kicked and sputtered and the boat made a lazy arc in the water.

Birdflower moved to help with the anchor. Michael winked at Emily. “You just sit there and look pretty,” he said.

She smiled. She liked being the only woman among men. It set the curves of her body off like the stems of flowers against a hard wall. The fishing rods bent like willows.

Birdflower stood near her and slipped a hand to her waist. He had on bright surfing pants that Emily thought were too young for him. The stiff, starched cotton brushed against her thigh.

Birdflower undid the squid pieces packed in butcher paper. They were purple with white spots and shaped like broccoli stems. He baited her hook, his hands moving as if each finger had a small brain at the tip. Once last season she crept behind the sand dunes. It was strange: water up to Birdflower's thighs, an old onion sack filled with clams over his shoulder. He was mindless, looking up often into the sun, blinking when it flashed in his eyes. The warm water must have aroused him because she saw the way he fiddled with his bathing suit, how he eventually dropped the rake and held himself in both hands. She remembered the angles: flat water to the horizon, thick strip of sky, and his body heaving back in diagonal to them.

Birdflower leaned against the side of the boat. “I saw you yesterday on the beach road,” he said.

“Yeah, I've been around.”

Birdflower kicked one sneaker against the toe of the other. “That's what I've heard.”

Emily was surprised that he would say that. “Why can't I do what I want?” she said.

Birdflower looked out over the water. “Women like you will always have trouble in this world,” he said.

David suddenly gave a banshee cry and did a cannonball off the side of the boat. Michael dove straight and Emily saw him glide for a moment underwater. When he rose, he asked if they were coming in.

Birdflower looked at Emily. “Go ahead,” she said. “I'll watch.”

He dropped himself over backwards like a scuba diver. Emily stood and put a knee over the edge as if she was riding sidesaddle.

David swam around the hull, checking for chipped paint or soft spots in the wood. Birdflower kept his feet up and paddled his hands. The men in the water looked similar as otters and their wet hair and shoulders gleamed. She imagined huge schools of fish extending beneath them. She imagined the prickle of scales as the fish undulated. Sometimes she would find herself thinking of fish and feel a muscle, a
swim
come over her. Emily loved whales because of the way they moved, quietly as clouds. She still remembered how she and Eddie had played in the inlet. Underneath they swam together and apart as whales do, circling, somersaulting; they seemed much bigger than themselves in the dark water. She was also fascinated with the goosefish. She'd talked one morning to a shaken-looking man from Manteo. He had been fishing on the point and claimed to have seen a goosefish, tiny teeth like ivory nails, damp down and pull a low-flying piper under the surface. Lately she'd been watching the scrawled filefish that lolled in Pamlico Sound. They were gluey white, with the small eyes of a scholar, and each had a different pattern of shapes, like some exotic language, etched over its skin.

Emily left the boat's edge, leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She always felt as if she were swimming in a maze of fish, patterns over her body of light and water.

Later in the afternoon, Emily watched Birdflower on deck. A few hairs blew out of his braid and floated free from his head. Neither of them had even had a nibble all day, but earlier, at noon, David had caught a small dolphin that had flapped on deck—its blue skin stretched thin like a balloon. The small eyes and tender pale belly reminded Emily of a baby and she'd convinced them to throw him back.

The beer made her head light. She saw Birdflower watching the bones in her neck and shoulders. She felt tugs from her line now and then, but no real tension.

“Look,” David said.

Emily flipped her head to the dolphin threading in and out of water.

Birdflower jerked back. “I got something.” He pushed his feet into the floor, clamping down on the pole, and pulled his weight back.

The fish, a thin muscle, flipped out of the sea. “It's a sword,” Michael said.

The pole jerked toward the water. Birdflower leaned back. Emily watched his knuckles whiten. She stood and moved her hand to his shoulder. As she was trying to follow the fin, she saw the image of John Berry over the water. She knew he was there to let her know he thought Birdflower was an insubstantial kind of man and that it was weak for her to start up with him. His face was stern like the pirates from whom he'd descended. Emily would forget the islanders were kin to Blackbeard, but then on Friday nights they'd come out to Paolo's, and when a fast song clicked and fell in the jukebox, they'd do a crazy shuffle step—jeans rolled to their knees, smelling like fish and sun—they swung their long-haired girlfriends.

The fish buckled above water. Her hair blew back hard, and she had to bring her head forward to steady herself. If he'd been able to, she knew John Berry would have accused her of letting him think nothing was wrong, of making him look like a lovesick fool. She wanted to tell him that in her own way she had felt for him. There were things, triggers, his boyish hand movements, curls like the fine fur of pheasants on the back of his neck, and sometimes with him there had been an abandon.

The sword's top fin skimmed the water. “Talk to me,” Birdflower said.

Emily felt hungry and a little dizzy, and again when she looked out over the water, she saw John Berry and her hands tightened on Birdflower's shoulders. It seemed to her it was him, snagged and straining on the end of the line. “Think of it like a man,” she said into his ear.

Michael gave her a puzzled look. “What are you doing?”

“Let her go,” Birdflower said.

The swordfish was twenty yards away, the line tight as a guitar string. Emily watched it buck at the surface. “He's calling you names,” Emily whispered.

Birdflower grimaced and held on. She tightened her grip on his arm and felt tension through his skin. There was a sudden tug. Birdflower lost his grip and the line reeled out.

“A breakaway,” David said. “Pull back.”

Birdflower did, but the line slackened and blew.

Everyone was quiet and the water too seemed calm. The sudden stillness felt eerie to Emily and she walked over to the edge to look for a flicker or a slash of fin. If he caught the fish, she knew they'd string it up and take pictures, like those at the restaurant behind the cash register, photos of grinning men with beers held high to the camera. There were hundreds of these, some overlapping so only the fish showed, the pictures forming a school of minnows swimming off the restaurant wall.

The line went taut again and Birdflower pulled his body back, then caught the slack and wound in. This went on till Emily heard the fish bump the side of the boat. The net clapped water, and as they raised it, Emily saw the fish wrapped in rope. On deck, it hissed and flipped. Birdflower beamed over the sword. She reached to the back fin, chrome-green and familiar, ridges fanning out like a wet feather.

The swordfish steaks cooked in the black skillet, turning from a transparent pink marble to firm white. They swam in butter, mushrooms, and scallion bits. “Cajun style,” Birdflower said, standing over the stove. He took a sip from his wine, then set it down. “It's exciting. Life on the end of your line.”

“My heart went thump, thump, thump,” Emily said.

She watched from her chair at a yellow table in his one-room cottage, an unmade bed in the far corner. On the wall, photos of suns over water. And leaning against the far wall, his guitar, a ukulele, and a big Western twelve-string.

“How old's your boy?” Birdflower asked, the fish crackling behind him.

“Sixteen.”

Birdflower shook his head. “You with a kid that old?”

“I don't see what's so strange about it. Some women have babies at twelve,” Emily said.

“White trash women.” Birdflower grinned.

“It's more than some have to show for themselves,” Emily said.

“I just don't think of you as a mother.”

She pointed to the photos. “Which ones are which?”

“The blood-orange suns, the ones like coals, are the sunsets. The other ones are mornings.”

Emily stared at the dawn suns, which were grayer and seemed to have a kind of music in them; flute, guitar.

He set down seashore-pattern plates bordered with tiny umbrellas and beach balls. “Former tenants,” he said.

Emily gazed to the bongs, rolling papers, and pipes scattered among his things. “You smoke a lot, don't you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But not like you might think.”

She watched him lever up the fish and peek underneath.

For months bodies had blurred in her mind. Lips, puffs of underarm hair, the swell and curve of a fleshy calf. John Berry had become familiar, like a brother it seemed; he held her in the nights. But the thought of him fell away each time she strayed. He became a blind spot with the whoosh of her clothes landing on the floor. With strangers there were ten minutes of unornamented reality. A kind of mainline black rush of being alive in the most obvious, necessary way. Her whole life was lived for these: cheek to the hollow space between back and shoulder, arm resting in arm, legs wrinkled together.

With the spatula, Birdflower put a sword steak onto her plate and then poured butter and squares of onions over it. It smelled intoxicating. The gallon of wine swayed slightly as he raised it between them. Emily felt her hand cupped around a wineglass, the other resting on her thigh, and her back against the metal of the chair. She settled into herself and lifted her glass for more.