I like it out here. It’s hard work because Uncle won’t take a turn at the oars, and he won’t load the cargo, and he won’t unload the cargo, and he smacks me on the back of the head if I’m slow.
But I like it out here anyways. The night so dark it blends into the sea and the land and it looks like if I wanted to I could row the dinghy everywhere from anywhere. Of course that makes steering a little tricky but that’s what Uncle does since he doesn’t let me touch the spyglass.
“Port,” he whispered and I shifted port.
Hard to see the monaskerry this time of night, but hard to see us too. That’s what made the trade work. Lot of hungry, hungry initiates out there learning wisdom and aestheticism and how one could sup on seafoam for supper and salt air for breakfast in time and such and so on. And there was a lot of real nice folks in town that could make the most wonderful whelk chowder, or berry jams, or candied salmon. And right in between them there was me, my uncle, and his dinghy.
The dinghy isn’t special, mind you – it’s us. Nobody else in town goes out at night. Scared of the nefarious squid, I think. I’m not sure why; it’s not like they can climb onto the boat or anything, and we’re going swimming. Uncle says it’s superstitious bullshit.
“Starboard,” whispered Uncle, and I shifted starboard.
It was nice, in a weird way, to do this. To fall inside my own muscles and my own heart and lungs and just listen to myself and forget about what I was doing. The oars barely existed in my palms except as textures. The soreness in my butt was divorced from the existence of the bench. I couldn’t even smell the warm cooked herbs leaking gently from the casque under my feet.
“Fuck,” hissed Uncle, “too loud,” which was weird because I was sure I hadn’t made a ripple. But he was already swearing and tugging at lines so I got up from the oars and started fumbling at the ties and dumping the cargo overboard one basket and barrel and bag at a time. Each weighted with a little stone for ballast, nature’s anchor, plish plash. “Fuck. FUCK,” he whisper-shouted into my ears. “Not so loud!”
I slowed down.
“Not so slow!”
I sped up.
“Not so loud!”
“Hoy there,” said a patch of the gloom as it lurked above us. “Is there something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” said Uncle. “We’re fishing.”
“Funny time to be fishing,” said another voice from above a murky railway, above a towering old pile of timber and barnacle, above the water. “And for the third night this week.”
“We need the money,” said Uncle and this wasn’t actually a lie for once. Uncle wasn’t as good at cards as he thought he was.
“Catch anything yet?”
“No, because SOMEONE keeps scaring the fucking fish away.”
“Just doing our jobs,” said the first voice again. “Keeping an eye out for nefarious raiders from asea.”
“Or ashore,” added the second.
“No, no, nothing nefarious there. These folks are just fishing, right? With empty nets, at night. Aren’t you worried about the nefarious squid?”
“Superstitious nonsense,” said Uncle shortly.
“Nothing superstitious about nefarious squids. We see them all the time out here. Big. Long arms.”
“And they don’t bother you neither.”
“Well of course not. We’re in a proper ship and you’re in a dinghy.”
“Your ship’s a rotten old hulk and you’ve scared away the damned fish.”
More than the two voices laughed at that.
“Well, we’ll leave you be then,” said the first. “But you watch yourself. Hard to see anything out on nights like this, and if you were a little bit quieter why, we might just run you down.”
Uncle didn’t say anything to that, and he didn’t say anything as the monaskerry guard-ship creaked and groaned away from us, but when they were gone for good he DID smack me on the head so hard it echoed all the way to shore.
“Ow!”
“THAT is for splashing the damned oars so loud,” he hissed. “Three times. In one week!”
“I didn’t!”
“I heard it! I heard you splashing! Now we’ve lost our income AGAIN, and we’ll have to pay restitution at this rate! Do you know how nasty the jam-maker gets if she doesn’t get her cut? DO YOU?”
“No,” I lied. Glisset was always friendly to me, but she had a short touch with creditors and didn’t like my uncle and had exactly the forearms you’d expect from someone who spent all day grinding and pressing tough little salt-hardened berries into sweetness with a big mallet.
“I don’t know why I put up with my niece,” he said aloud into the general darkness, even though we both knew it was because my mother was dead and he was a goddamned greedy scumbag. “It must be because my sister is dead, and I’m a goddamned merciful saint.”
I rowed, and tried to fall back into myself again. Didn’t quite make it.
***
Two beautiful clear days in a row after that. No clouds, moon still fat enough to show itself low on the horizon in the afternoon and keep the water glittering happily at night.
Uncle hated it. He was so put out that he didn’t even go to his card games, which didn’t make our money problems any worse but did put me in the way of more whacks to the head. I spent the time we weren’t fishing out on the street and up the hill and once – when I got very bold and had taken a shot from Uncle’s bottle-under-the-floorboard – trying to persuade Glisset to bring me berry-picking, which turned very awkward when she took me literally and spent an earnest half-hour telling me about why you should never hike out to the berry patches at night (it was bears).
The third day was a bit wispy in the morning. Then it was a bit cloudy in the afternoon, leaving the water lead-dull. Then as the sun came down the fog came up and the whole town turned the kind of deep-down damp you can only escape by setting yourself on fire.
Uncle was ecstatic, eyes glittering in the wet air. He whistled – actually whistled! Badly, mind you – the whole time we collected the cargo; he helped pack it up for once; he even kept humming after we left dock, soundless as mice.
“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” he said conversationally as I rowed. “Red sky in the morning, sailor’s take warning. Fog bank at night? Heart takes flight, I say.”
I nodded to keep him happy, but man I didn’t agree inside. I was cold and felt half-soaked.
“You know the best part? Keeps the sound down.”
I nodded again.
“No splashes, no guard-ships, no fuss. Nothing out of you.”
I made a terrible mistake then and looked at Uncle to see what had him in a good mood, which was the fastest way I knew of getting him out of a good mood. Luckily, I did this just as he was coming at me with his knife and so for once that sort of worked out. Unluckily, I blocked the knife with the haft of my port oar so he got pretty mad anyways.
“Snitch! Sneak!” he hissed. I grabbed his arm, he grabbed my arm, the knife wiggled in between us like an eel on a hook. “I take you in, I feed you, and you tip off the guards every night! How much’d they pay you? How much did you take to splash and splash and call ‘em in every night? Three nights in ONE WEEK?”
“Huh?” I said, and he actually screamed at that- just a little, involuntary, like someone had kicked him in the right spot and it leaked out. He tugged and yanked and heaved and I let go of the knife so he fell half-ass-down and I kicked my boot loose into his belt region.
Now THAT didn’t make him scream. It made him wheeze and sit down, which was troublesome because he was standing at the gunwales and there was nothing to sit on but thin foggy air and thick smooth water.
It was quite a splash – big and solid and juicy, droplets in my damned eyes – and it kept going as he foundered and floundered and came up over the side leg-up, knife waving. I pulled up the oar and held it overhead and was just about to bring it down when he squeaked like a mouse and vanished immediately, straight down.
I waited.
Then I put the oar down and waited some more.
Then I waited a little longer, just to be safe, and I rowed up to the monaskerry’s little half-hidden shingle beach and gave sixteen delicious meals to a furtive and wealthy acolyte and went home and slept well for the first time in six years.
***
I still fished after that. It was hard by myself, but Uncle hadn’t helped too much to begin with, and it was more for appearances than anything. The real profit came in on the dark nights, when I took up the cargo and put out the dinghy and rowed into the dark and then – halfway out, just a ways to go – I cut loose about one-quarter of my load into the water and watched as it sank a little and then was sucked down by something too quick and hungry to be gravity.
It’s easiest to deal with the nefarious squids this way, I think. It’s certainly a lot cheaper than waiting for them to get impatient and start splashing for the guard-ship; they don’t need me to give them EVERYTHING, just enough to take the edge off. Eyes bigger than their stomachs.
Of course, I had to put the prices up a little to make up for it. But I told them all that the work was harder since Uncle passed, and they believed that enough.
It isn’t even entirely wrong. The nefarious squids take the jams and chowder and jerky well enough on every trip, it’s true. But Uncle? After they took him, they didn’t ask for food for six whole days.