MR. FUR FACE NEEDS A GIRLFRIEND by Melinda Moustakis
Eddie thinks Spook is still alive and so do I. She can’t be dead. People like her never die: they drink Jippers and smoke Big-Z cigars every day and they outlive all the Quiet Marys of the world. She’d say to me, “Listen, Puppygal, you’re good enough for the both of us. I’m going straight up to that Heave-ho in the sky just for knowing you.”
Ma is the one who made Mutts hire Spook. Captain Mutts, that’s my dad, who I call Mutts and Ma calls him Captain Mutts, though she’s the one who drives our boat, the Halibut Hellion, and she’s the one with the fish sense, and she’s the one that keeps everyone from killing each other. This woman showed up at the Seward dock with her homemade knives and waited for a cleaning station and none of the bibs would let her in. I told her she could have my space when I was done, but Ma came to the dock. The bibs were all talking about the woman, said she was so ugly she’d make a boat spook, jump water and travel by land, which is how she got the name Spook, and it stuck and Spook didn’t seem to mind. Ma told them all to stop being dicklicks and to clear a space, she needed another fish cleaner. They all stood looking at her and not moving until she gave Yo-Yo the slap-eye and he hustled to spray off his board. We already had Eddie to clean fish with me, who the bibs call Fast Eddie because he isn’t so fast, if you know what I mean. At first, Spook wasn’t so fast either. I’d watch her with her wiry silver hair in a messy ball on the top of her head and her slow, small old hands – they were more wrinkled than the rest of her. But her knives, I’d never seen ones that made these bitchass black bass slay like butter. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. All the bibs were crowding around, wanting her knives. Spook winked at me, “Puppygal and Eddie are the only ones who will be getting these and then we’ll see,” she said. The next day, she gave me and Eddie three knives each, grooved moose and caribou antler handles, and the blades she said were a secret, but she used old bandsaw blades. When I told Ma, she didn’t believe me. “Shit if I’ve ever heard it,” Ma said. She says this a lot, and most of the time to my Uncle Dude and Uncle Too-Soon, who are both Mutt’s brothers. But when Ma saw the knives in action she said, “Those beat the hell out of those Nox knives everyone uses, now don’t they?” loud enough for the whole dock of bibs to hear.
From then on, Spook, me, and Eddie owned the station. You give us a gnarly-mouthed ling or a chicken flounder or ’but and we were filleting fools. And when some cruiser tourist comes up and asks Spook if the halibut she’s cutting is a salmon, we get to laugh at that shit because we’re not going to lose tips. We’re turning charters away. We’re in hell-high demand up to our gut-splattered elbows. We always cleaned all the fish for the Halibut Hellion and Uncle Dude and Uncle Too-Soon’s Boat called R U UP? which was a joke because you never knew which one of them was sober and which one was blazed, but they take turns, and then it got a whole new meaning on a boat when the waves are cobbing and you’ve got a ticket on board who you told to take Bonnie pills but he said, I don’t get sick, and next thing you know, you’ve got a dumbass Texan who thought he was a tough blood because he’d been tuna fishing a few times in Cabo and of course he’s belly flat, chumming the water and wailing for his mama’s mama.
But now it’s back to me and Eddie, and Spook is gone. I catch Eddie staring at the water, ghost-faced and forgetting that he’s supposed to be hacking fish and I know he’s thinking about her. Not too many people are nice to Eddie, and if you are, you can’t get rid of him. He’s yours, forever. He’d cut off his hand if you needed him to and when the Coast Guard found him and the stolen boat, he was screaming for Spook and he tried to jump back into the water right after they pulled him out. He almost died of hypothermia. Uncle Dude and Uncle Too-Soon and me didn’t leave his side until he promised he’d stop throwing himself in. And then, for two weeks, I had a rope around his leg tied to mine while we were working, just to make sure he wouldn’t bail.
We’re swamped with silvers from the salmon derby and I can’t do it all by myself. “Come on,” I tell him. “Let’s turn these out so we can go get sourdough pancakes,” which are Eddie’s favorite, and Tanna at the bakery keeps a bottle of her special blueberry syrup stowed away just for him.
“And a simmerin’ roll,” he says and picks up a silver by the gills.
“Two simmerin’ rolls,” I say.
We slog through two carts of silvers and then Uncle Too-Soon tells me there’s another load that needs to be picked up.
“No,” says Eddie. “No. No. No.”
“It’s the last one,” says Uncle Too-Soon. “You and Puppygal can handle them.”
I still wince at the nickname that Spook gave me. I’ve always been Pups and she added the “gal.” There’s no way to change it now.
“Aye, aye, Mr. Fur Face,” I say, throwing out what Spook called him.
“Don’t give me those ugly looks,” he says. “Or I’ll start calling you Puppy Chow.”
“At least you can see my face,” I say. His is mostly covered in a bushbeard – he and Uncle Dude have a contest every year of who can grow the longest and scariest hair and they get drunk and shave it after the first moosekill of hunting season.
“It’s a good thing you can see my face,” says Yo-Yo from his station. All the bibs laugh.
“I feel sorry for Fast Eddie here,” says Uncle Too-Soon. “Having to deal with you two love-bums.”
“Vomit and more vomit,” I say.
“Yo-Yo, he smells,” says Eddie. He plugs his nose.
“Shit, man, you got me there,” says Yo-Yo.
When Spook met Uncle Dude and Uncle Too-Soon, she said, “Mr. and Mr. Fur Face need a girlfriend. Hell, the whole state of Alaska needs a girlfriend.”
“They can’t keep them for more than a month,” I said. I told her they even once shared a girlfriend. Her name was Karla, and she couldn’t tell them apart, being born in the same year so they say they’re Irish twins even though they aren’t Irish and then with their matching beards. And it’s not like anyone could blame her, though, after that, Ma said Uncle Dude and Uncle Too-Soon should just marry each other, roll all the trashy family goings-on into one big blast. Uncle Dude was born in January and Uncle Too-Soon was born in December, two and a half months early. Mutts said he wasn’t supposed to live. But he did and Mutts said that ever since, they’ve both been worthless knuckleheads.
“They could be worse,” said Spook. “Believe me, I know.”
One day, Eddie took another break to go to the bakery for a second round of sourdough pancakes. “Where?” he said, when he returned, and pointed at his station. His knives were missing.
I patted his coat pocket. “Did you take them with you?”
“Give ’em back,” he screamed.
The bibs stared at him.
“You fuckers,” I said. “Who took Eddie’s knives?”
“How much they worth to you?” said Yo-Yo.
“I still have a knife,” I said. “And I will kill you.”
“Kill. You.” said Eddie. He paced around the stations with his sleeve between his teeth.
“Tell us where they are,” said Spook. “And I’ll sell you your own knives.”
“Where’d you put them, Tin?” said Yo-Yo.
“Someplace cold,” said Tin.
“Tell us where they are now,” said Spook.
“IPCO’s freezer,” said Tin.
I ran off the dock toward the main. Yo-Yo followed me.
“Go away,” I said.
“You wouldn’t kill me,” he said. “You like me too much.”
“Go screw yourself,” I said.
“I will.” He smiled. “And I’ll think of you.”
“You piece of shit. You don’t understand anything.” Now every time Eddie went on break he’d have to take his knives with him, and he’d check and double-check and triple-check. Eddie didn’t bounce back the way most others do, the smallest things were mountains to him.
“We didn’t know he’d go bonkers crazy,” said Yo-Yo.
“Yes, you did,” I said. “And you did it anyways.”
Eddie didn’t fillet any more fish that day. He sat on a gill bucket with his knives splayed on a towel in his lap, cleaning and rubbing and inspecting them.
“See that,” he’d say to anyone who passed by. “That’s me. Mine.” Spook had engraved our knives – mine with “Pups” and his with “Ed.”
Spook sold knives to the bibs. She charged them double. “Asshole tax,” she said. They looked exactly like mine and Eddie’s, but the bibs noticed something was wrong after a few days.
“These aren’t sharp,” said Yo-Yo. He’d made a shit pile out of a perfectly good yellow eye.
“These knives, they be rigged,” said Tin.
“You just don’t how to use them,” said Spook. To prove her point she demonstrated with their knives, sliced and filleted in long, clean, gliding strokes. I’d seen her use the same movement every morning when she stretched and faced the ocean before a shift, rocked back and forth, and then carved the air with her tai chi routine. “Your knife is only as dull as you are,” she said.
Tin and Yo-Yo both looked at Eddie who was swording through a ling cod with ease.
Yo-Yo puffed up, about to say something. “And Fast Eddie – ”
“You better shut your mouths right now,” I said.
“I’ve got a sharp knife here,” said Yo-Yo and he grabbed his crotch. The bibs choked on their laughter.
Spook pointed at Yo-Yo with her blade. “You ever do that again and I’m cutting what little you have right off, you hear me. I’m too old for your shit.”
Yo-Yo and Tin backed away with their hands in the air.
“We surrender,” said Tin.
“Lady, I was just playing,” said Yo-Yo.
“Shake,” said Eddie. “Handshake.”
“Not today,” said Spook. “Look where his hand has been.”
Uncle Dude walked up with a cart. “What’s with the standoff?” he said to Tin and Yo-Yo. “Spook got a gun?”
Spook tapped her temple. “Oh, I’m packing heat,” she said.
“I need to get me some of that,” he said and slabbed a few chicken halibut on my station. “We got skunked today. Even used Pups’ ma’s famous mac-and-cheese bait bomb and got no dough. Got shit dog sharks and shit skates and chicken shit halibut.”
“Shit fish for a shit captain,” I said.
“Ohhh,” howled Yo-Yo and Tin in unison.
“You better figure out why Ma’s mad at you again,” I said. “Or you’re never going to catch a decent fish.”
“I think someone ate bananas on our boat,” he said.
When someone books a trip, we tell them no bananas. Don’t eat them for at least a day before you fish. Not even banana bread. Don’t touch them; don’t smell them. Mutts had someone make big “no bananas” stickers for the Halibut Hellion and the R U UP? They look like no smoking signs, except there’s a bunch of bananas circled in red. Bananas are bad luck – they keep the fish away.
Ma’s the one who can track the tides and find the pockets, and if she’s not talking to Uncle Dude and Uncle Too-Soon on the water, they’re not going to catch fish. Everyone knows Ma’s record. Everyone knows she’s the best. Ma’s been trying to beat her own barn-door halibut record for as long as I can remember. Her name and the date and the measurements and weight are etched into a post at the weigh station on the dock. She caught a five-hundred pounder near Montague Island and then decided that if she could do that, she might as well marry Mutts. That’s what she says. When she’s sore at Mutts, for, say, loaning money again to Uncle Dude and Uncle Too-Soon, she’ll let him know by saying, “I didn’t reckon my five-hundred pounder would get me a flounder.” And he’ll say, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” and she’ll say, “You know what that means.” And he’ll say, “Am I the flounder? Is that right? I’m the flounder?” and he starts flailing and stomping around in a crazy swimming dance, circling the coffee table until she gives in and casts an imaginary fishing line and reels him in. He moves closer and closer to her and tilts her back and kisses her neck until she laughs. He’ll say, “I bank my life on that laugh. You see, Pups.”
But this summer, the summer after Spook, Mutts’ dancing hasn’t fixed anything and Ma hasn’t spoken to him or Uncle Dude or Uncle Too-Soon for three days. If it weren’t for the salmon derby, Uncle Dude and Uncle Too-Soon wouldn’t have any fish at all aboard the R U UP? – anyone can catch silvers. I finally get the story from Uncle Dude and Uncle Too-Soon after they’ve had four too many Jippers at their trailer. They’d been playing poker at a shady bar called Salt Lickers up near Primrose Lake.
“Some bad shit went down,” says Uncle Dude.
“One guy got stabbed,” says Uncle Too-Soon.
“She doesn’t need to know that,” says Uncle Dude. “This one jackass thought we were hustling and then it went down the shit-hill.” He tells me that Mutts had lent them money so no one would be after them, which was nothing new, except that he had to dip into my college fund which I didn’t even know about. “Your Ma started it when you were born or something,” Uncle Dude says. “It’s all her own money. She said ‘Pups is getting out of here. Pups is going to college. Pups is Pups, and Pups this and Pups that.’”
“Shit, we didn’t know it was from your college fund,” says Uncle Too-Soon. “Or we wouldn’t have taken it.”
“Liar,” says Uncle Dude. “We would have still taken it.” He tips his can toward me. “No offense, Puppygal. You know we’re sonsofbitches.”
“Sonsofbitches from the get-go,” says Uncle Too-Soon.
“No, what did she call us?” says Uncle Dude. “Sacks of shit-for-brains, that’s what it was.”
“And something else,” says Uncle Too-Soon. “What was it?”
“It must have been lucky scum,” says Uncle Dude.
“Leeches,” I say. But they don’t hear me.
“Here’s to the best uncles in the world,” says Uncle Too-Soon. He raises his beer and then chugs it down.
“Chin up, Pups,” says Uncle Dude. “She’ll come around. She always does.”
But Ma starts to sleep overnight on the Halibut Hellion and I wish Spook was here so I could ask her what to do.
Spook knew how to handle everything. Last summer, Eddie and I were learning how to run. I wanted to join Ma in the Mount Marathon – she runs every year wearing a Viking helmet with her friend Trish from Anchorage, who wears an American flag as a cape. One and a half miles up the mountain, and one and a half miles down, and most runners cross the finish line covered in dust and mud. Then there are the bleeders who fall on the rocks and the sliders who go butt first down the steep trail at the very top. Every year I say I am going to run with Ma, who will flex her calf muscle and say, “That’s where all my cleavage went,” and last year I actually tried to train for the race. Eddie would walk behind me until he’d had enough and sit and wait. We started with flatter trails in the woods near the salmon spawn because it wasn’t too far from the docks. I’d wear shorts under my pants and take the pants off when no one could see. Sometimes Spook would come with us to look for wild mushrooms. She had spent some time in Fairbanks hunting for morels for local chefs the summer after a big wildfire.
“Fire and rain and what you get are gourmet ’shrooms,” she said.
She’d smoke a Big-Z cigar and talk about all the jobs she ever had, the oyster farm in Homer, tagging Dall sheep, running sled dogs for Iditarod trials.
“I’m old and I’m tired,” she said. “As soon as I sell enough knives, I’m retiring. I’m going to buy me a little cabin and do whatever the hell I want.”
She promised Eddie she would teach us how to make the knives.
“But not today,” she said. “Some other time.”
Once, Eddie walked up to us with dirt around his mouth and dirt in his hand. He was smiling. “I found,” he said and he opened his palm and showed us the brown mushrooms.
“Those are poisonous,” said Spook. “I told you.”
“Oh my God,” I said looking at the dirt on his mouth. “He ate them. Eddie, did you eat these?”
He nodded. “They were good.”
“I told him,” said Spook. “Didn’t you see me tell him they were poisonous and not to touch them?”
“We’re dead,” I said. “Holy shit. We’re dead.”
“We are not,” said Spook. “Go call an ambulance.”
I ran to the nearest place with a phone, Safeway, where Eddie’s dad, Mr. Dean, was the manager. I was supposed to take care of him and now he could die. Ma had said that we were all given things to take care of, to be responsible for. She had the Halibut Hellion and the R U UP? and I had Eddie.
Mr. Dean called 911. “They said the fire station’s the closest to us,” he said.
Spook, dragging Eddie, had followed me, but at a much slower pace. They arrived right before the firefighter emergency van came, sirens busting up the calm, foggy afternoon and all the shoppers in the parking lot stopped and stared. The firemen rushed out with a gurney and Spook gave them the mushrooms.
“Get me the charcoal,” said the biggest firefighter. “Hey, buddy, did you eat these?” he said.
“No,” said Eddie, flapping his arms. “No. Those are bad.”
The firefighter looked at Spook and I. “Did you see him eat them? How long since he ate them?”
We hadn’t seen him eat them. We guessed fifteen minutes.
The other firefighter had Eddie sit on the gurney.
Eddie let out a high-pitched gaggle of laughter. “I joke,” he said. “I got you. All you. I got you. Me. Mud here,” and he paint-brushed his fingers down his face.
The bigger firefighter turned to Mr. Dean. “Even if he is joking, we have to assume he ate them, just in case. Protocol.” He strapped Eddie down to the gurney and then sat him upright. He held up a red plastic bottle with a straw. “Buddy, you need to drink this so you can get better.”
“No,” said Eddie. He fought the straps. “I joke. No.”
“Last chance,” said the firefighter, to Mr. Dean. “Or I have to put a tube down his throat.”
“Come on, Eddie,” said Mr. Dean.
“It’s like a mud milkshake,” said the firefighter. “Who do you know that’s ever gotten to drink a mud milkshake?”
“Not me,” said Spook. “Not Puppygal.”
“OK,” said Eddie. He sipped on the straw and then smiled, black grit covering his teeth.
“There you go,” said Mr. Dean. “You drink that whole thing and you can have all the real milkshakes you want when this is over.”
The firefighters wheeled the gurney into the van and Mr. Dean went and sat in the passenger seat. The siren lights whirled.
And then Tin and Yo-Yo walked up to the curb. Yo-Yo whistled at me. “You’ve got legs,” he said. “Who would’ve thought?”
I was still wearing my shorts. I’d forgotten my pants in the woods in all the excitement over the poisonous mushrooms. “Eddie’s in an ambulance and you’re whistling at me?” I said. “I should punch your face in.”
“Fast Eddie’s a trooper,” Yo-Yo said. He tilted his head toward me. “She’s kind of cute when she’s mad.”
I lunged and Spook caught me. “That’s enough,” she said.
They were laughing.
“You boys better go back to the docks,” she said.
I turned away so they wouldn’t see I was crying. Spook and I walked back to the woods. “Eddie’s going to be all right,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
“I’m not going to say they like you and that’s why they’re mean,” she said. “But they might. Too many people go and get confused and mistake real meanness for like, and even love. They aren’t that kind of mean, not yet anyways.”
“Well, I hate them.”
“You might change your mind someday. But remember this one thing.” She stopped walking and stood in front of me. “You’re nobody’s girlfriend. You’re better than that.”
I didn’t know what Spook meant exactly, but I figured it was similar to Ma saying some people were deckhands, and some were captains, and she sure as hell wasn’t raising me to be a deckhand. She also said that I wasn’t better than anyone else or special because I was Eddie’s friend. He wasn’t a medal I could wear around my neck.
Turned out, Eddie hadn’t eaten the mushrooms after all. Mr. Dean brought him to the docks after two days. “The funny man’s back,” he announced. “A real jokester.”
The bibs gathered around Eddie and high-fived him.
“I’ll do better,” I whispered to Mr. Dean.
“You do fine,” he whispered back. “But whatever you do, don’t mention milkshakes to him.”
Ma’s been sleeping on the Halibut Hellion instead of coming home. Mutts is sitting at the kitchen table, smoking, even though he’s not supposed to smoke in the house. But I don’t remind him. I sit down.
“Uncle Dude and Uncle Too-Soon told me,” I say.
“They weren’t supposed to,” he says. “No one was.”
“I don’t even know if I want to go to college.”
He winces. “This one’s on me, Puppygal. I’m supposed to be the one to give up things. I have to fix it, not you.”
I lay my head on his shoulder. “You will,” I say.
He kisses the top of my head. “Go check on your Ma,” he says. He hands me a twenty. “Take her a smoked pastrami and a jalapeño brownie from The Smokestack. Get yourself one, too.”
The Smokestack is Ma’s favorite place to eat. The owners took four old Alaska Railroad cars and made them into a diner. They smoke all the meat and Ma says there’s nothing better. She’d make them smoke Mutts if she could, just so she could have that hickory smell around all the time.
When I yell for Ma at the harbor, and she climbs down the Halibut Hellion and sees the food, she says, “He’s feeling guilty. He should.”
We sit in lawn chairs on the deck of the Hellion. She sips a mug of red wine. “Me and God have been having some good talks about assholes,” she says. She laughs. “About assholes in the world.”
“I know what happened,” I say.
“Of course,” she says. “Those shitfaces couldn’t even do that – keep their fat mouths shut.” She takes a big bite of pastrami. “It’s going to take a lot more than this to make things right.”
“How come you never told me?” I ask.
“It’s a lot of pressure,” she says. “I was waiting for when you were older, when you knew what you might do with your life. And maybe you don’t use it for college. But what if you wanted to go to flight school, or take a trip and get the hell out of here, or things I never – ” She raises her mug. “I’ll be damned if they take that away from you.”
“Or my own boat,” I say. Me and Eddie already have a name picked out, the Atta Girl.
She hesitates. “Or that too,” she says. “As long as that’s what you really want.” She unwraps the brownies. “Chocolate and jalapeños – who would have thought they’d be so good.”
“You’re coming back, right?”
“I’ve figured out what to do,” she says. “Going to sleep on it and make sure. Tell those boys and Mutts to meet us here at five in the morning. Then you and I are going fishing.”
I stand and start to leave. “But you’re coming back?”
“Five sharp,” she says.
We’ll never know what really happened the day that Spook disappeared. We were all at the weigh station dock, waiting for July 3rd to become July 4th and for the midnight sun to darken so we could watch the fireworks. That’s when she probably scoped out which boat to take. I didn’t even know she knew how to captain a boat. When Ma would offer to take her fishing, she’d say, “I don’t do water. Not after working on an oyster farm.”
Later, after waking up early and having breakfast, Ma and I, in matching red, white and blue face paint, were heading to the line-up for the Mount Marathon. She had on her Viking helmet and people we knew would slap the top of it as they passed her and wish her good luck. That’s when Mutts caught us and told us that Eddie was missing and that the Coast Guard was investigating a stolen boat in the bay. “There’s someone in the water,” he said. We ran to the docks and huddled around Mr. Dean. He and Eddie had been having sourdough pancakes at the bakery and it was crowded with tourists, line out the door, and he went to use the restroom out back – he had to wait a while, a woman with four kids was holding everyone up. Then when he returned, Eddie was gone. Someone had seen him go out the door, but that’s all the information he had. Too many strangers and visitors, too much busyness. What we think happened is that Eddie spotted Spook and followed her to the sailboat, and he snuck aboard, or she let him come along. But that doesn’t sound like her, letting him on the boat only to jump ship and leave him alone in the middle of Resurrection Bay. Or maybe she planned to go farther out and land on Fox Island and, again, Eddie made her change her mind. We know she was in the water because Eddie jumped in after her. He kept calling for her, the Coast Guard said. But he won’t talk about that day. He won’t say anything.
A week after her disappearance, some man came asking about her at the docks. He walked like a kicked dog and he wanted to know about antler knives that had been stolen from him – drove in from Homer.
“Those ones you’re using look like ones I’ve made,” he said.
“Mister,” I said. “I think you’re mistaken.” I didn’t know why I wanted to give this sad man a hard time.
“The thing is, those are my knives,” Mister said.
“These shitty things?” I said. Spook was gone, Eddie was still recovering, and I didn’t really care if he looked like he’d had his guts punched out. I was not going to give him my knives. Stolen or not. But I should have had Mutts or Uncle Dude or Uncle Too-Soon there to back me up before I said anything like that. Strangers mistake them for scary bikers.
“What she means is,” said Yo-Yo. “How much for you to get the hell out of here?”
We paid Mister seventy-five for each antler knife at the station. I was thinking about dropping my money in a slick of fish slime and blood before I gave it to him, but I saw him tearing up. No one told him about Eddie’s knives, which were safe with him at home where he was resting after being in the hospital. Mister leaned over the wooden rail of the dock and looked out at the ocean. He turned and said, “Two years and I thought I knew her. She took my knives. She took everything.” He put his hand over his mouth and shook his head, back and forth. He left after an hour or so. They never found Spook’s body, or a campsite, or any trace that she might have somehow swum to shore in the cold water and lived. I think she made it, however impossible it is. An emergency wet suit was missing from the boat. And there are so many coves and old army outposts and places where she could be hiding. She could be sitting next to Godwin Glacier up in the peaks right now, sucking on glacier ice. But if there’s one thing that Eddie hates the most, it’s being left behind. Not being allowed to go with you. I don’t understand how Spook could leave us all without a warning. Easier for her to leave, I guess. But not easy for me or Eddie, or even for the stranger from Homer.
The fog is thin, and even at five in the morning, I can tell the roll will burn off into a clear and sunny day. Uncle Dude and Uncle Too-Soon and Mutts and I are waiting for Ma. She walks up behind us carrying a box of bait. Mutts tries to help her and she waves him off and sets the bait down on the dock. “Now,” she says, “what to do with a bunch of good-for-nothings.”
“We’re sorry,” says Uncle Dude.
“You know what’s really sorry?” she says. She points at each one of them. “You, you.” She stops at Mutts. “And especially you.”
Mutts raises his hands to speak.
“You all shut up and listen,” she says. “This is how it’s going to be. Each of you is going to replace the full amount that was taken. Each of you. Which means you’re tripling it. I’m going to give you three years. You get a good tip – it goes into Pups’ fund. You recycle your beer cans – it goes into the fund. You find a quarter on the ground – it goes into the fund. You’ll do without. You’ll roll your own damn cigarettes. You’ll take extra side jobs hauling shit. Whatever you have to do. And if, after three years, you don’t have enough, I’m selling the R U UP? so there is enough. And you’ll go back on the slime line, you understand?”
“Yes,” say Uncle Dude and Uncle Too-Soon.
Mutts says, “But what about – ”
“I don’t know about you and me yet,” she says. “But Pups and I are going fishing.”
Ma has me drive once she thinks the Coast Guard won’t be watching. Three hours later, we’re heading east out of Resurrection Bay towards Montague Island. Then she drives and I jig for ling cod out the back, hook one after the third bounce off the bottom. Lings are the ugliest fish I have ever seen, bloated lizard bodies with spiky fins and huge mouths, but they put up a good fight. Halibut are a pain to catch – even a chicken feels like a thousand pounds you have to peel off the bottom – and then, after all that shoulder-breaking reeling, you throw it back. I limit out with two keepers and Ma has me catch two more for her. In the holding box, the lings flop and slam against the sides.
“Time for mac-and-cheese,” Ma says. I fill a brown bag with chopped mackerel and squeeze bait sauce over them. I tie off the bait-bomb bag with the end of the fishing line on a salmon rod and cast out the stern. “Now for my salmon head,” Ma says. Whenever she fishes, she throws a whole salmon head out the bow for a monster halibut. The bait-bomb line slackens and I reel in the busted bag. I grab a weight and put half a mackerel on my hook, and drop a line for halibut, then set the rod in the holder. Usually Ma and I would be talking more, but today is serious business. Usually, you don’t even need to catch a fish when there’s a calm day with sun streaming through the breaking fog – it’s enough just to be out on the water. A banner day, as Ma says. And Mutts and Uncle Dude and Uncle Too-Soon missed it.
Ma is lying on top of the cabin, stripped down to a T-shirt, covering her face with one of Mutts’ old baseball caps. I’m on the deck, back propped against the cabin, half asleep with the slow, easy rocking of the boat.
“Pups,” she yells.
I scramble and stand up to see something is nibbling her line.
“Come on,” she says to the fish she’s imagining on the end. “Take it.”
There’s another jerk on the line.
“Come on,” she says with a raised fist. “One more.” She leans in toward the holder and readies her hands to take the rod out. “Just one more.”
But nothing happens. The line isn’t dead, but it isn’t taken either.
She shakes her head. “I still have bait,” she says. “Don’t you fuck with me.”
And then there’s a slam on the line. Ma grabs the rod out of the holder. “Did you see that hit, Pups? Look at this. You better get ready.”
I grab the big gaff and put the .410 shotgun within reach in case I need to shoot this fish in the head.
“I got you,” Ma’s shouting. “Yes, I do.”
She could have a skate or shark or a record-breaking halibut as wide as an ice floe that could carry me and her and Mutts and Uncle Dude and Uncle Too-Soon and Eddie and Mr. Dean off into the gulf, or it could be an old barn door someone threw in the ocean. Or she could lose this fish before we see what is on the end of the hook. It could be nothing. Junk. A snag. It could be everything. But I know that no matter what Ma reels in, it will mean what she needs it to mean, for her and for me.
Melinda Moustakis is the author of a forthcoming short story collection, Bear Down, Bear North (University of Georgia Press, 2011). Her recent stories appear in Conjunctions, Kenyon Review Online, American Short Fiction, and The Massachusetts Review. This is her second appearance in Alaska Quarterly Review.