Once upon a time (exactly once, this never happened again, and you will learn why) there was a fishing village. This was not unique, but one of its inhabitants was so, and his name was Tuckett. Old Man Tuckett. He was called that so as not to confuse him with Big Douglas Tuckett the miller’s son, or Little Tommy Tuckett who cried the Sunday papers up at Noonan Hill.
Old Man Tuckett was distinct in at least two other major ways besides his name.
First, he was tremendously fat. Spherical be damned, he was ellipsoid. He was the fattest person in the village – even fatter than Granny Maggs. It was impossible to grow used to it; at close range your eyes would be tugged across his gut, dragged by gravity. This was very embarrassing, and so was never commented on.
Second, he had five wives, all nearly as fat as he himself. People found this very unusual in those parts, but none of them did, so they largely ignored it.
Oh, and there was one more little thing, just a tiny little thing, a little thing that didn’t matter at all: it was how he never joined the Big Haul every year.
In fact, he never fished at all.
And that was the most important thing about Old Man Tuckett.
He’d stand at the brink of the surf, he’d watch the boats go by. He’d wave his pipe at his wives as they pushed the boat out. He’d cheer and applaud and ballyhoo until the sun came dim and the tide came back – with a lot of nets with a lot of fish – but he’d never
ever
ever take toe off the beach.
This would annoy people less (‘man’s probably too fat to fish,’ was a common theory) if Old Man Tuckett did anything at home, either. Many folk had asked Granny Magg about him, and after heroically calling upon the casual gossip of a lifetime, she had told them everything that Old Man Tuckett did.
“Well, he sells that paper up by Noonan Hill.”
“Granny, that’s Little Tommy Tuckett.”
“Oh. That’s my ear again. Try my other ear.”
“OLD MAN Tuckett.”
She shrugged. “Oh, him. He eats and farts and sits on his beach and shouts.”
It would’ve been less annoying if he shouted helpful things. Sixteen years before there had been Gerry Wickerham, who sat his last decade-and-change on the shore in a rocking chair yelling people to stay off the shoals. That was good, it saved time and effort putting buoys up. But Old Man Tuckett yelled other things, and none of them were very helpful.
They were things like.
“CLEAR OFF!”
And
“DON’T YOU COME ANY CLOSER!”
or
“I SAW YOU LOOKING, NOW YOU KEEP MOVING!”
and frequently
“MINE. MINE. MINE. MINE. MINE.”
It was a constant rumour for thirty years or more among the town’s children that he’d once bitten off the foot of a careless youth that put a toe onto his beach. Every six years the imagined toll mounted, and before long it would’ve been removed at the hip.
But if Old Man Tuckett’s endless obsession over ‘his’ beach had been infuriating most times, it grew to full vexation in the Big Haul, when the sea was running silver and everyone brought in the biggest nets to be judged the heaviest of all.
As the boats went out, and just as they’d come back, they’d find Old Man Tuckett there before them, and furious. He ran up and down the beach – actual running, his feet not touching the sands for whole yards at a time – and bellowed like a speared whale, waving his floppy little arms and puffing himself up even fatter than usual. Not even words could escape him at those times – not swears, not slurs, not threats, not even snarls. Just a long four-hour roar, and one more for the evening. It made things wearisome, and took a fearful toll on the fishermen’s nerves.
One of those fisherman in particular (his name doesn’t matter at all, but it was Julian) had nerves to spare, which you’d think would help but didn’t. His face grew thin and haunted every morning, and he started wearing earmuffs that were bigger than any cold warranted, particularly in midsummer. He also took to spending most of his launches with his back to the shore and whistling a lot, while twitching. This was not wise behaviour, and one day when the waves were particularly surly he bent over, stumbled, straightened up, put his skull directly in the path of a swinging boom, and was thoroughly clobbered.
Six months he sat ashore, insensible, tended to carefully if clumsily by his small and bored children. Six months his wife took his seat on the boat. And after six months he woke up and said “garellifump. Twiddle. Chalk,” and then died.
It was a most trying thing for a young family. And it made his wife (whose name didn’t matter much, but it was Stacy) exceptionally cross every morning, to look out and see and hear Old Man Tuckett howl on his beach.
So she went and talked to Granny Maggs, and she asked her about Old Man Tuckett and got pretty much the same gist of him everyone already knew. And she went and talked to Old Man Tuckett’s five wives, and she got nothing at all because they didn’t talk much beyond shrugs and burps. And finally she got fed up with all of that and went and rapped and banged on Old Man Tuckett’s door herself, and when he opened it up she gave him a little gift – some pickled perch – and told him how sad it must be, to never get to be the one to go out on the water.
“Whur?” said Old Man Tuckett, who was halfway through the jar of perch.
“Well, that’s where we get the good catch.”
“Hah!” said Old Man Tuckett, spraying fishbones and moustache sauce from underneath his extraordinarily honking great nose. “We? You mean my wives!” And this was true, because they were the best damned hands with a line and net in town.
“Oh, yes. All of us, and especially them. But the real good stuff usually gets downed before we come back, y’see. It’s so hungry out there, and we’ve got to keep up our strength. I tell you, you’ve never had a fish ‘till you’ve had a fresh one from the far reaches. Like swimming sunshine.”
Old Man Tuckett harrumphed over this and closed the door without thankyous.
But his bellows got a little hoarser, and (especially in the evening) a little sparser. His eyes darted and hunted for something he wasn’t sure was there, and he spoke to his wives – whenever he did bother to – with shorter and meaner grunts.
This got worse for a month, and then it came to the Big Haul, where it ended.
The Big Haul came in on a good day. It did de facto; it was the first good clear morn of the season. The fish seemed to wait for it as much as the fisherfolk.
Down by the docks they coiled ropes and adjusted rigging and checked motors and kissed and hugged, but Old Man Tuckett’s boat, down by the shore, sat aside. His five wives were scrubbing it out, busy as anything. It was all very normal, until you looked at Old Man Tuckett himself. He hadn’t said a word.
The bell rang, one by one the boats took leave of shore. And Old Man Tuckett watched, but for once he watched with longing. The most miserable expression was on his face: slack-cheeked and damp-eyed, pipe clutched in a hand too slack to light it, let alone smoke.
Stacy was last off the dock, and as she kicked off the pier, she spun around and to the whole watching town and to the beach and to him in particular, she said this:
“Hey! Old Man! I bet you a broken old hook from Julian’s grandpa that you won’t ever see the biggest catch from today, and that’s even if you get off your ass and come looking!”
It was a hell of a thing to say. Well, it was something everyone in town had thought for years, but there’s a world of difference between thinking and saying, particularly the way the former’s less likely to get your teeth knocked out. It made everyone in earshot – and it was a pretty wide earshot at that volume – flinch and wait for a scream.
Old Man Tuckett stood there, poleaxed. And then he did something much worse than snarling.
He grinned.
He grinned ear to ear and back to the other ear again, and if there was ever a more fearsome thing to see than that, not one of them knew it.
Old Man Tuckett’s teeth were four in number, and all fishhooks. Sharp, shiny, curved and barbed fishhooks the size of bananas. It was a wonder his pipe had a stem left.
“Bet’s on,” he said. And he spat out his pipe, stamped on it once, and slid into his boat like he was greased, shoving all five of his wives out willy-nilly without even a by-your-leave.
“I’ll be back!” he shouted. “And you’ll eat those words and more besides!”
Then Old Man Tuckett unstepped his mast, broke it over his knee, jammed it in the water, and began to row, heaving his fat arms with a fury that made them look large.
The wind was against him.
He cut directly into the current.
At one point he rocketed directly over the Poker, a quiet and murderous shoal that had eaten a dozen or more hulls in recent memory.
But somehow, when the other boats came to the shoals, Old Man Tuckett was already there.
Fishing.
With his teeth.
It was a hell of a sight, everyone agreed afterwards. Whatever else, it was a hell of a sight.
The nets went overboard clumsy, as if he’d never used them.
The knots were tied sloppy, as if he’d barely got fingers (he barely did, truth be told).
But then just as the whole mess touched water Old Man Tuckett went in after it, snorting and roaring like a foghorn, and then there’d be bubbles and splashes and up he’d come again, weighed down by a wriggling net filled with desperate flesh, dragging it up not with his hands but with his shining, murderous mouth.
Over and over, in and again, into the water that was cold enough to snip your fingers. Hour in, hour out, Old Man Tuckett fished the way he lived: teeth-first.
It was a good day for the Big Haul. Everyone took their time. But Stacy was first back in to town, and she tied up there after unloading and just waited. Chuckling.
Then came in the rest. One by one by two three four five six up until all, all of them home but one.
There it was, floundering, churning, flummoxing through the waves. The oars moved like the limbs on an upturned turtle, the thing wallowed like a depressed hippo.
It was Old Man Tuckett. But when he stepped out of that boat onto his beach, everyone had to check three or nine times. He was as thin as a rake, and shaking like a leaf.
“Not bad!” he croaked. “Not bad! Not…so bad. Still better than you! Still better than you all, and it’s my beach now, y’hear, and”
“No,” said Old Man Tuckett’s first wife, right in his face with uncommon clarity and force.
“Skinny,” said Old Man Tuckett’s second wife, shoving him in the chest and sending him staggering.
“Blaggard,” said Old Man Tuckett’s third wife, running a hand over their semidemolished boat.
“Wimp,” said Old Man Tuckett’s fourth wife, with a roll of her eyes at his catch.
“Divorce,” concluded Old Man Tuckett’s fifth wife. And she grabbed his moustache and pulled and pulled and threw it in the water with the skin attached.
And they all walked off on him, leaving the most shrunken, impotent, and downright bewildered elephant seal in all the world alone on his beach.
Old Man Tuckett tried vanishing forever after that, but couldn’t take the solitude. He showed up again four years later – still smaller, but a lot meeker, more respectful, and willing to spend more time helping people with nets.
He also walked pretty fast whenever Stacy’s eye landed on him.
Old Man Tuckett’s five ex-wives didn’t even go as far as that. They waddled up the road, knocked on Granny Magg’s door, and informed her that as the newly fattest person in town they were now marrying her. Granny said that’s fine as long as she got the good stuff for her pickles, so everyone seemed happy.
The beach is still empty. And a lot quieter.