| r.kv.r.y quarterly literary journal summer 06 fiction |
| MULTICOLORED TUNNELED LIFE - 2 - |
“What? What is it?” Hank says from behind her. “You okay?”
“Fine,” Sylvie says past the thumb in her mouth. “I’m fine. I thought you were downstream?”
“I was. Damn fish took my lucky fly.”
“Oh.” She points at the remaining fish. “This one’s dying, Hank. Look.”
“Dying?” he says. “Poor thing.” Sylvie isn’t sure if he’s mocking her. She decides to think the
best of Hank and smiles. She’s learned, in thirteen years of marriage, that you get into trouble
assuming the worst. “He looks to be about six inches, though, legal enough, guess we’ll just
have to share him tonight.”
She’s still smiling as Hank bends down, picks the fish up by the stringer, lays it across the rock
and with a knee on the fish to steady it, cuts off the head.
“Oh,” she says, and sits. Sylvie has never seen this part of the fresh caught river dinners,
savored before the fire on camp chairs, steaming in tin foil, shiny with buttered scallions and
salt.
Hank quickly slits the fish from tail to missing head. With a deft scoop he eviscerates it and out
plops a mass of multicolored, tunneled life topped by a still beating heart. With the knifepoint
he motions toward a small pink heap. “Look, honey. See the eggs? It’s a female.” His knife
chinks against the rock as he flicks the heaving mass of eggs closer for Sylvie to inspect. Two
long rosy sacks swell and bulge with tiny pearls then taper to small threads. Not just a female,
a mother-to-be.
Sylvie and Hank planned this long weekend on the Little River as their getaway, a second
honeymoon, of sorts, at which they intended to relax, reconnect, and reconceive. Which isn’t a
word, of course, but they use it just the same. Not to friends, though, who can’t bear to ask
anymore, since their fourth and most recent loss occurred in the final trimester, no longer even
a miscarriage, but a stillbirth. And it was still a birth: their perfectly formed, miniature son,
lashes knitted together, arrived with all the attendant labor pains and follow-up bleeding. But
what Sylvie remembers most is the eerie quiet of the labor room, and holding her tiny pewter
baby in that deafening vacuum of sound.
And she remembers the milk. How it overflowed, two days after her empty-armed return from
the hospital. Her ill-informed breasts, one step behind in the message chain—thank you but we
won’t be needing your services after all.
Sylvie shakes her head and looks back to the fish. She stares at the severed luminous green
head, lips gaping around their shackle, mouth gasping soundless at impossible air. Bloody and
bodiless, it lies on the rock as sun sparkles along the mottled jawline lush as a forest floor,
dapples of silver sunlight and moss agate green.
The shimmery colors remind Sylvie of her little brother Luke and the magic mud they used to
make as kids. Out behind the house at the shed where nothing grew they found the most
amazing patch of ground. It first appeared in spring, after the blizzard of ’77 when snow
reached up to the roof at the little white house where they were born, near Niagara Falls,
honeymoon capital of the world. Each time it rained that spring, their magic spot would sparkle
with drips of color and glowing rainbows that ran through their hands like gloppy strands of
pizza cheese.
That summer Sylvie turned twelve, still half-child herself, teetering on the cusp of outgrowing
six-year-old Luke’s games. In their childhood lore it became known as the hot rock summer.
Mysterious bright blue rocks that exploded like pistol caps when you threw them onto concrete
appeared in their backyard. They were cryptic moon rocks—weapons sent back from secret
agent astronauts to fight an alien invasion. Luke loved those “hot rocks” and emptied a blue
pocketful onto his bedside table every night.
And here, in the glistening mound of fish guts sit two remarkable blue shapes that wink up at
her. What, inside a fish, could be blue?
“Here, honey, look,” Hank says eagerly. “You can tell what he just ate. A crayfish.” He holds up
each blue pincher in turn to show her. “Cutting open the stomach and checking? That’s my
favorite part.”
“She,” Sylvie says and leans forward to pick up the tiny crayfish tail, perfectly preserved and
neatly severed from the rest of its body, a Barbie lobster dinner. The fish must have captured
and eaten the crayfish only moments before attacking Hank’s lucky fly. There had been no time
for digestion. And what had the crayfish eaten that morning which in turn might have been
spared?
So much unnecessary loss of life.
“Fine,” Sylvie says past the thumb in her mouth. “I’m fine. I thought you were downstream?”
“I was. Damn fish took my lucky fly.”
“Oh.” She points at the remaining fish. “This one’s dying, Hank. Look.”
“Dying?” he says. “Poor thing.” Sylvie isn’t sure if he’s mocking her. She decides to think the
best of Hank and smiles. She’s learned, in thirteen years of marriage, that you get into trouble
assuming the worst. “He looks to be about six inches, though, legal enough, guess we’ll just
have to share him tonight.”
She’s still smiling as Hank bends down, picks the fish up by the stringer, lays it across the rock
and with a knee on the fish to steady it, cuts off the head.
“Oh,” she says, and sits. Sylvie has never seen this part of the fresh caught river dinners,
savored before the fire on camp chairs, steaming in tin foil, shiny with buttered scallions and
salt.
Hank quickly slits the fish from tail to missing head. With a deft scoop he eviscerates it and out
plops a mass of multicolored, tunneled life topped by a still beating heart. With the knifepoint
he motions toward a small pink heap. “Look, honey. See the eggs? It’s a female.” His knife
chinks against the rock as he flicks the heaving mass of eggs closer for Sylvie to inspect. Two
long rosy sacks swell and bulge with tiny pearls then taper to small threads. Not just a female,
a mother-to-be.
Sylvie and Hank planned this long weekend on the Little River as their getaway, a second
honeymoon, of sorts, at which they intended to relax, reconnect, and reconceive. Which isn’t a
word, of course, but they use it just the same. Not to friends, though, who can’t bear to ask
anymore, since their fourth and most recent loss occurred in the final trimester, no longer even
a miscarriage, but a stillbirth. And it was still a birth: their perfectly formed, miniature son,
lashes knitted together, arrived with all the attendant labor pains and follow-up bleeding. But
what Sylvie remembers most is the eerie quiet of the labor room, and holding her tiny pewter
baby in that deafening vacuum of sound.
And she remembers the milk. How it overflowed, two days after her empty-armed return from
the hospital. Her ill-informed breasts, one step behind in the message chain—thank you but we
won’t be needing your services after all.
Sylvie shakes her head and looks back to the fish. She stares at the severed luminous green
head, lips gaping around their shackle, mouth gasping soundless at impossible air. Bloody and
bodiless, it lies on the rock as sun sparkles along the mottled jawline lush as a forest floor,
dapples of silver sunlight and moss agate green.
The shimmery colors remind Sylvie of her little brother Luke and the magic mud they used to
make as kids. Out behind the house at the shed where nothing grew they found the most
amazing patch of ground. It first appeared in spring, after the blizzard of ’77 when snow
reached up to the roof at the little white house where they were born, near Niagara Falls,
honeymoon capital of the world. Each time it rained that spring, their magic spot would sparkle
with drips of color and glowing rainbows that ran through their hands like gloppy strands of
pizza cheese.
That summer Sylvie turned twelve, still half-child herself, teetering on the cusp of outgrowing
six-year-old Luke’s games. In their childhood lore it became known as the hot rock summer.
Mysterious bright blue rocks that exploded like pistol caps when you threw them onto concrete
appeared in their backyard. They were cryptic moon rocks—weapons sent back from secret
agent astronauts to fight an alien invasion. Luke loved those “hot rocks” and emptied a blue
pocketful onto his bedside table every night.
And here, in the glistening mound of fish guts sit two remarkable blue shapes that wink up at
her. What, inside a fish, could be blue?
“Here, honey, look,” Hank says eagerly. “You can tell what he just ate. A crayfish.” He holds up
each blue pincher in turn to show her. “Cutting open the stomach and checking? That’s my
favorite part.”
“She,” Sylvie says and leans forward to pick up the tiny crayfish tail, perfectly preserved and
neatly severed from the rest of its body, a Barbie lobster dinner. The fish must have captured
and eaten the crayfish only moments before attacking Hank’s lucky fly. There had been no time
for digestion. And what had the crayfish eaten that morning which in turn might have been
spared?
So much unnecessary loss of life.