Halloween and Other Seasons

EELS

By Al Sarrantonio

They were out on a mirror of green ocean. The land, save for a jetty of sharp rock a hundred yards to the east, a single pointing finger of the island, had disappeared into the hazy distance. At the far curves of the horizon mist squatted, but closer in the air and sea-waves were as sharp as knives.

Davy’s father baited two hooks, whistling between his teeth, but Davy sat with his hands folded in his lap. Despite the warmth of the noon sun, and the brine tartness of the salt air, he felt cold: as if this were early morning and the mists had not yet retreated. He wore his jacket buttoned over his sweatshirt, and clenched his hands together as he turtled his ears down into his jacket’s collar.

The boat rolled gently in the swells. His father, still whistling, now looked at him and suddenly scowled.

“What is it, boy? You sick?”

Davy shook his head no.

His father’s scowl remained; he looked impatient to be back to his baiting of hooks, his whistling.

“What, then? You didn’t have to come, you know; I would have been happy out here alone.”

“Mother wanted me to.”

His father’s scowl deepened. “Your mother…”

For a moment a cloud hung over the boat. But then his father went suddenly back to his tackle, and began to whistle again. Davy was left to contemplate his cold clenched hands, his rolling stomach.

“Father, I’d like to go back…” he said weakly.

“What’s that?”

Davy took once hand away from the clenched other, and pointed toward the finger of rock eastward. “If you could take me…”

“I won’t!” his father snapped. “I told ye before we came out to either come or stay. I won’t be rowing back now. ‘Twould be near two by the time I rowed myself back out. That’s not enough time to make a day of it.” His coarse, unshaved face turned away from Davy, his eyes back on his hook. “You’ll stay, and be content with it.” He added, “You know what I think of you anyway, boy.”

Davy’s hands joined again. If he had had anything in his stomach he would have emptied it over the side.

~ * ~

The sun inched upward. A wheeling pair of seagulls appeared, complained loudly over the boat and circled up and away, disappointed. Davy thought of home, the house on the island, and the chair by the large window in the family room. The hearth fire there was warm. It was dry in that corner of the room, there was no sea-smell in that dry corner…

“Here,” his father said abruptly, thrusting a fishing rod into his hand. It was one that barely worked, with a sticking reel. Davy’s hands opened in benediction to take the rod, but already his father had turned away from him, tending his own two good rigs. With a plop his father dropped one sinker into the water, snugging this untended rod into the oarlock before dropping the other rigged line into the ocean. Davy heard the thin scream of the filament and then its sudden stop as the weighted end hit wet sand far below.

His father turned around and said, “Well? You going to fish it or not?”

Davy nodded and then looked away, out at the tip of his fishing pole. An old sinker was tied there like a rutted lead teardrop, the thin green filament of the hook’s line angled sideways and then curled down to the barbed hook imbedded in the struggling red bloodworm thrashing this way and that—

Davy lay the pole down and heaved his empty stomach. He held his straining face over the side of the boat. A thin acidic line of bile dripped from his mouth into the water.

“Christ’s sake!” his father said behind him. Davy felt the hard dry hands on his shoulders as he was pulled back, his teary eyes looking into the angry red face above him, the hard hand now pulled back as if to strike.

“I’m…sorry, father—” he blurted out, between sobs.

His father’s hand stayed, then lowered, and his father turned away, shaking his head.

“Nothing to be done about it now,” he said, ignoring the boy once more, but pausing to grab the old rig and let out the bail, dropping the sinker and thrashing worm over the side of the boat and into the blank cold waters, before thrusting the pole into Davy’s hands once more.

~ * ~

“Ho! A good one I’ll bet!” his father cried, straining against the sudden fight in his pole. He began to turn the reel’s handle furiously, half standing to stare over into the water, watching the tightened line for signs of the caught beast.

“A fighter!” he laughed—but then the line went abruptly slack. He sat down, scowling once more.

“And you, boy?” he called back, not looking around. “Checked your bait?”

Davy stared at the rod tip, saying nothing, and in a moment his father had forgotten about him, whistling once more, as he pulled his own hook from the water and cut a fresh blood worm in half to replenish it.

~ * ~

Off in the distance, at the hazy edge of the world, Davy heard the long, sad call of a foghorn. In the sky, the sun had turned a sour lemon color as it now sank toward the growing fog. At the limits of vision, gulls wheeled out on the water, diving one after another to hit the waves and then rise again. One of them clutched something long, black and struggling in its beak. Davy turned to stare again at the tip of his own fishing rod.

His father spat over the side of the boat. “Damned fog’ll be here in a half hour or so. Thought I’d get the whole day in but it was not to be.”

Without another word, he went back to his own equipment, checking the extra rod that laid in the oarlock before turning his full attention to his other pole.

A sudden tremble shot through Davy’s hands. The edge of his fishing pole flicked, and then the pole end bent down, straining toward the water.

The pole nearly leapt out of Davy’s hands before he tightened his grip on it. His fingers fumbled for the bail as line unraveled with a thin high screech. “By God, boy, you’ve got something!” his father shouted. “Keep the tip up, dammit! And don’t let so much line out!”

Abandoning his own pole, the old man made his way back to Davy, his face flushed with excitement.

“The way you’re holding that pole, he’ll get away, damn you!”

His father reached out angrily to take the rod from Davy’s hands.

At that moment the bale caught and the tip of the pole bent down into the water, lost in the waves. His father’s face flushed in surprise as he tore the rod from Davy’s hands and fought with the line.

“By God! What have you got on here, boy?”

Standing in a crouch, his father managed to get the pole out of the water and then loosened the bale to let out a bit of line.

“She’s deep, that’s for sure!” his father said. A smile came onto his features as he battled, one eye turned to the approaching fog and late afternoon.

“It’ll be close!”

Humming fiercely through clenched teeth, he began to inexorably reel the line in, letting the catch run when it needed to, but gradually drawing it up from the depths and closer to the boat. The sour-yellow sun was edging the horizon; the mists began to caress the rowboat with their tendrils. Davy shivered and drew deeper into his coat, but his father seemed oblivious now to everything save the thing on the end of the fishing line.

“She’s almost up, boy! Get the net!”

Roused from his chill, Davy moved to his father’s abandoned spot on the boat and lifted the wide net by its handle.

“Hurry, damn you!”

He turned back. His father’s angry face motioned him to hold the net over the side of the boat.

“Damned beast’s about up!”

Kneeling, Davy dangled the net over the side. Now, in the late afternoon, the water’s surface was a sickly, deep, impenetrable green. It smelled of salt and overly-wet vegetation.

Bile rose in Davy’s throat, but he held it down.

“Here it comes, boy—here it comes!”

From the soupy depths something became visible, twirling as it reluctantly rose. Davy held the net ready. The shadow became more distinct: a long, slender shape, heavy in the water.

His father peered over the side, squinting.

“Can you see what it is, boy?”

“Yes…”

The thing broke water. Its black, thin, slick head rose out to stare up at Davy with leaden eyes—

“Snatch it with the net, boy! Can you see—?”

His father’s voice suddenly turned full of disgust. The black thing’s head held suspended for a moment, mouth opening to show the embedded hook in its jaw, its head now seeming to expand in the air, to change shape, before there was a snap and it dropped back down into the sea. It’s shadow held for a moment, as if it might rise again on its own. But then it sank toward indistinction, the curl of its long sinuous length essing once before it was gone, back into the deep.

Davy turned to see a look of abhorrence on his father’s face. In one hand he still held the tip of Davy’s fishing pole; in the other, his long fillet knife.

“‘Twas nothing,” his father said, before turning away. “Just an eel.”

The fog closed in on them then, and, without another word, his father weighed anchor, and rowed for the island.

~ * ~

Davy’s mother waited for them at the pier’s end, at the base of the jutting finger of rock, near the small second boat, a dinghy. Wrapped in a shawl, her worried look made her a specter in the early evening.

“I was worried you—” she said, putting a hand on Davy’s father’s shoulder as the old man brushed by her. “Bah,” the old man said, continuing on, arms laden with fishing tackle as he went up to the house.

In the unseen distance, the foghorn cried out again. Davy’s mother opened her shawl to enclose Davy within it, within herself. He felt her warmth through his clothes, through the damp, salt wetness.

“Come to the house and sit by the fire,” she whispered into his ear, stroking his hair.

He nodded and, soothed by her words and warmth, followed her to the open doorway, a dim rectangle of orange light against the chill and dropping night. In a while he sat in his chair in the warm corner while his mother prepared supper, and his father smoked his pipe and drank his rye in silence, staring out through the open doorway at the storm that grew and battered the island.

~ * ~

Later, Davy lay in bed and listened to them argue. Outside, the night wind had picked up. A spray of cold, salt-scented rain hit periodically against the side of the house, washing the single window in Davy’s dark room.

A thin line of firelight flickered beneath the closed door. Beneath his pile of quilts Davy felt cold and damp. His body felt leaden, empty, numb. A dull chill went through him remembering the cold supper that had been eaten in silence, his mother’s barely-disguised, frantic fear as she hovered around him shielding him from his father’s arctic mounting rage.

“It’s not like I ever wanted ‘im,” his father said now, out in the main room beyond the door. His voice was gruff, tentative. He sounded like he was treading careful waters, knew it, but had decided to proceed anyhow. “And it’s not like he’ll ever be a help to me.”

“But he’s mine!” his mother answered, her voice a choked cry.

His father grunted, and a few moments, in which Davy could almost feel his mother’s fear through the door, passed.

“He’s no help to me at all. And no comfort,” he father continued.

“I wanted him! You agreed!”

Again his father grunted.

“‘Twas a mistake, then.”

“No!”

Now anger was creeping up into his father’s voice, mingled with frustration.

“You should have seen him out there today, Ellie! Useless! Sat unhelpful the entire time. Like a pile of wet stones. Couldn’t bait his own hook, or carry his weight. He’s little better around the house, here. Nothing more than a burden to me.”

His mother was weeping now, and suddenly his father’s tone softened.

“Now, Ellie, don’t be like that. You know our bargain was a fair one. For your sake I met it. And now it’s time…”

“I won’t let you! I won’t! He’s all I have!”

“What of me?” his father shot back. “Do you forget that it was I who took you to myself? The boy should never have come in the bargain.” Again his voice softened. “It’s my own fault for not doing better by you from the beginning. In the future, I promise I will. I know now how lonely you must have been. Nearly as lonely as I was here before I had you. I promise that when things are like they were in the beginning—”

“I won’t hear of it!”

“My mind is set, woman.”

“No!”

There was a sharp, quick sound, hand against face, and then Davy’s mother began to weep.

His father said, his voice strained: “You’ll see it clearer when it’s over.” He tried to soften his voice again, but it only sounded harder. “When it’s over.”

~ * ~

After an hour of silence from the outer room, the door to Davy’s bedroom opened. He tried to hide within the quilts and covers.

“Get up, boy,” his father said sharply. “We have business to attend to.”

Through an opening in the folds of material, Davy watched his father, outlined by orange light, approach the bed.

“I said rise, boy.”

The quilts were pulled back. Davy looked up into the pained but hard face of his father. He smelled sweet alcohol, a warmth of the breath.

His father’s rough hand poked at him. “Rise up and get your slicker on.”

Without another word, his father turned and walked out.

As Davy dressed, he watched his father, stoney-eyed, shrug on his own oilcloth coat, and take a final drink, emptying the bottle which sat on the dinner table.

~ * ~

Salt and rain lashed the island, the night.

The storm had risen high, driving sheets of water across the rock path to the pier. Overhead, angry banks of low, spitting clouds drove one another on. Out on the water, walls of water seemed to have risen out of the chopping waves, forming a bridge between cloud and ocean.

The rowboat rocked furiously against its mooring, roughly tapping at the dinghy beside it. His father battled with the rope, undid its knot, then fought to keep the boat steady while Davy climbed in. Davy thought he felt his father shudder when they were thrown together for a moment in passing.

His father climbed in after Davy, and cast off. He rowed furiously from the outset. Davy sat in the bow seat, ahead of the oarlocks, staring unspeaking back at his father, who concentrated on fighting the waves. Behind them, the dock pulled away into the finger of rocks and then, abruptly, the ocean surrounded them.

Davy felt his lately eaten supper began to churn in his stomach.

Far distant, the foghorn bleated, hidden and muffled by the roar of rain and wind. Water pelted them in sheets. Off, in the direction of the foghorn, a single bolt of silver-yellow lightning struck at the wet horizon.

“Bail, boy!” his father shouted, pausing in his rowing to indicate the bottom of the boat filling with water. His father pointed a sharp finger at the bailing bucket next to Davy, who made no move toward it. “Bah!” his father cried, suddenly stopping his rowing and moving in a crab’s crouch to lean over Davy and pick up the anchor.

Their eyes met for a moment, and Davy saw the fear in his father’s face. Then his father looked away and dropped the anchor over the side.

It made a splash, dropped, and the line played out nearly to its length before it found purchase.

“It’s done, then!” his father said, seemingly to himself.

Behind them, off through the sheeted rain, the slapping waves and roar of the storm, came a sound from the finger of rocks: the wailing cry of his mother calling to them.

Davy’s father stood, squinting back into the storm.

Now Davy could see the tiny yet growing image of the dinghy, his mother’s tiny form huddled within, rowing.

“Damn her,” his father spat, then turned to look down at Davy.

“I said ‘twas done.” His father loomed over him, lashed by rain. He seemed diminished as a man. He seemed to have shrunk into his oil cloth, hands dropped limply at his side. Davy looked into his face. There was anger and fury and determination in his eyes, but defeat, shame, and, that bolt of fear, too.

“Go ahead, father,” Davy said. “I’m not afraid anymore.”

“This should never have happened to begin with,” the old man said, his words leaden, and then he grasped Davy in his two hands, tightening his grip, and lifted him up unresisting and threw him into the water.

At that moment, off through the rain, Davy heard his mother call out to him.

The ice-cold hands of the sea enclosed Davy for a moment before he rose. As his head broke the surface, he saw his father straining at the oarlocks, turning the boat around toward shore. His father’s eyes stared down into the boat, then up quickly at the dinghy, which approached through the lashing rain and rising waves.

“What have you done!” Davy’s mother demanded.

Davy cried out once before the sea took him down again.

The world became as seen through green glass. His body, head to toe, was cold and wet.

He looked down; below him, long slow shapes moved deep in the water, blacker against cold darkness, moving one over another, making and unmaking shapes. Davy’s numb hands felt suddenly oiled. And now, beneath his clothes, he felt his body bump and squirm, as if alive in its parts. His bones moved painfully against their sockets; it was as if his arms would yank free from his shoulders, legs from his thighs. His neck felt slick and alive.

The squirming shapes pulled up closer.

With a sudden kick and spasm of unmouthed protest, Davy fought against his sinking, and began to claw and drive his way back up to the surface.

“No!”

He broke free into the roiling waves. The rain felt oddly warm against his face.

He gulped, spit water, focused his moist eyes on the twin boats twenty yards away, bobbing together as if wedded. His struggling father was trying to climb from the rowboat into the dinghy.

His mother’s defiant form stood straight in the smaller boat, her eyes blazing with hatred.

“Then you’ll lose me, too!”

“Ellie! No!” his father beseeched, his hand seeking to reach Davy’s mother.

Davy tried to call out. He raised his hand but it went unseen as the sea began to weight him down. His limbs became cold lead, his mouth filled with water, his grasping hands now found only water.

He sank. He went inexorably down. Off through the darkening cold, he saw the roped straight line of the anchor on his father’s boat. It made a line linking heaven and earth, disappearing into the depths below.

Davy looked down. The roiling black shapes were growing closer.

Beneath his clothes, he slowly began to break free.

His arms became black oily things, squirming like wet thick ropes. Up under his armpits the pulp of their live flesh thumped against his arm sockets in little pulses, even as his torso lengthened, pulling his head and face into a thick, snakelike shape.

His legs and arms broke away, swimming from his clothing, which floated off.

The boiling, excited, living, vast plateau of eels was just below him.

He dropped into their midst.

Flat welcoming eyes turned to look at him.

And, somewhere far above, he heard a splash, then heard his mother’s voice assuring him that she would soon be there.