The Dead Fish Museum (25 page)

Mr. George was knocking on our door as I came down from the attic. When I answered I could see behind him a flatbed, parked on the levee and loaded with sandbags. It was obvious he wanted help. He wore a green sou’wester smashed down on his little fissured appleface, and his blue eyes, nested in folds of wrinkled flesh, seemed like a kind of natural extravagance, like the brilliant spawning colors of a salmon. I like to think that I know what’s right, that I’ve got a fairly resonant sense of my obligations, but when Mr. George showed up on our porch I was hesitant and confused. We had the party, and everything already seemed so calamitous to me, so tense and tentative, that I could only think like a child whose good manners are memorized, going through the motions without feeling the spirit. In fact, I felt oppressed by his need, and didn’t know what to say. But Jimmy, who’d come to the door, said he’d go help, and then Mr. Boyd, never one to be left out, or to be upstaged by his son, put on a pair of my hip boots and clomped off across the street, the very spectacle of authority, immediately taking charge. I went upstairs to tell Meagan what was going on and she hurried downstairs, switched off the oven so the ham wouldn’t burn, and ran across the road to Mr. George’s. When I arrived, Mr. George was rubbing grease into the shoulders of an oilcloth jacket.

“That’ll hold you,” he said, offering the coat to Meagan. He looked doubtfully at the sky. “I hope you weren’t in the middle of something. I know it’s almost supper time.”

“Not at all,” Jimmy said.

The river had risen to a foot below its natural bank and carried odd things in its current. A chair floated by, and then a realtor’s sign. Mr. Boyd marked with a stick the line the wall of sandbags should follow, and then Jimmy retraced it, adding slightly more curve where the downstream force of the river would likely hit the wall. We formed a small chain from the truck to the line gouged into the grass. Mr. George offloaded the sandbags and passed them to Mr. Boyd, who handed them to Meagan, who handed them to me, and I passed them on to Jimmy, who, slipping and sliding, stacked them. Jimmy, with something to do, was a muddy ball of joy. His historical spot at the end of the line now seemed a place of privilege. In no time his face was flecked with wet clay, his jeans were soaked, and the new cap we’d bought that afternoon looked like a seasoned hat he’d been wearing for years.

The bags were dead weight, and after the first course my arms were leaden and numb. As I looked at the water, lapping at the bank, our job seemed impossible. I’d never seen the river so blown out. I was exhausted, wet and cold, and certain every bag I cradled during the second course was the last I could manage; still they kept coming, and I kept passing them to Jimmy, feeling weirdly condemned—not entirely myself, but a little bit of what was behind me, and a little bit of what was ahead of me. When I asked Meagan how she was doing, she said fine. “Really?” I asked. Meagan just frowned, picked a daub of mud from her eye, and passed me another wet bag of sand.

We were on the sixth or seventh course, the wall of staggered bags about hip level, and I was still feeling the same way, like I couldn’t move another bag, and still I was taking them, pivoting, and passing them, when suddenly Jimmy, who’d gone to the other side of the wall to inspect the rising river, launched into a berserk dance, flailing his arms and kicking his feet. “Goddamn! Goddamn!” he shouted. The chain of sandbags stopped and we all watched. Jimmy kicked and splashed, waving his arms crazily, and then dove out of sight. When he stood again he seemed to be holding up a section of the river, hoisting a piece of the flowing silver water victoriously over his head. In fact, he was clutching a bright salmon by the gills. It thrashed mightily, slapping its tail back and forth, but Jimmy, grinning, kept a tight grip on his trophy.

“Son, you got yourself a king,” Mr. George said.

“I thought it was a log at first,” Jimmy said.

Mr. George grabbed a sawed-off section of stout dowel from his porch and gave the king a firm rap on the head and the life shivered out of it.

“I can’t count the fish I’ve taken out of this river,” Mr. George said. “But I’ve never seen any man land one with his feet.”

“Let’s finish here,” Mr. Boyd said.

We added two more courses, then admired our work.

Mr. George said, “I’ll cook this for you all, if you want.”

“Oh man,” Jimmy said, “I’m dead. I’m gonna run and go get Naga and Joey.”

Meagan went with her brother, and the rest of us went inside. Mr. George’s cabin was small but shipshape. One long room, a kitchen in back, sleeping loft above it, a wood-burning stove out front, a table and two chairs, and, curiously, a small upright piano. The west wall of the house had a big window and a view of the river. Opposite was a rack filled with fishing rods, and above that, taxidermied fish—pink, king, silver, and dog salmon, sea-run cutthroat, steelhead.

“You aren’t prohibitionists, are you?” Mr. George asked.

Mr. Boyd smiled. “I’ve been known to take a drink now and then.”

“This is a jug of blackberry wine,” our host said, pouring out three glasses. “It’s not as bad as you’d imagine.”

The wine was actually perfect for the day—thick as brandy, with a haphazard, homemade taste, a hint of soil in it.

“Hey, hear that?” Mr. George asked.

I listened and didn’t hear anything. Mr. Boyd, sipping his wine, looked out the window. “Rain’s slowing,” he said.

“Music to my ears,” Mr. George said. We went outside and saw the others approaching. “Now if I can only get that pooch off the roof. Hey Pepper!”

Far to the west the sun lowered beneath the solid black slab of the squall. The river washed over the bank, but was turned back by the wall of sandbags.

“Are we out of trouble yet?” I asked.

“We’re probably just between storms.” Mr. George shook his head and led us back inside. “But I think there’s call for a blessing. You don’t mind a blessing before we eat, do you?”

“I’ll do it,” Jimmy said.

“Be my guest,” Mr. George said.

“Bless us our Lord, and these your gifts,” Jimmy said, the shy mumble barely taking shape as words, “which we’re about to receive, from your bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

“Dear God, Holy Ghost,” Mr. Boyd said, “whoever eats the fastest, gets the most!”

We ate salmon steaks with corn and coleslaw. I noticed a water stain zigzagging along the walls and Mr. George told us about the sixty years of floods in his personal memory. He insisted, proudly, that he never lost anything. “I chased a few sticks of furniture way down river and had to fish a lawn mower out of a pool, but that’s about the worst of it.” In fact, he said, he’d found far more than he’d ever lost. “Half the stuff here come to me from the river,” he said. He’d seen everything in the skajit, at one time or another. Drowned cows, dogs floating like Snoopy atop their doghouses, a half-sunk johnboat with chickens and a cat riding the current.

“And a whale,” he said. “A cruddy little gray, all covered in barnacles and mud, that no one’s ever been able to explain to my complete satisfaction.”

“And now this,” Jimmy said, hoisting a forkful of salmon.

“That was truly something,” Mr. George agreed.

“Do you play the piano?” I asked.

“I do, by God,” he said. “Just some old songs I learned in Sunday school.”

When dinner was finished Meagan invited Mr. George to join us later for cake and coffee. Then we headed home. I sat out on our screened porch. It began to rain again, and across the field, along a rutted mud road, I could see a flatbed rumbling away toward town. It was late February, one of those cool wet nights when I could imagine the glacier that once covered this valley, imagine the ice and all the things that once moved across it, and then the sea that slowly formed and eventually receded, leaving dry land and the rich deposits of silt and low floodplain so perfect for raising tulips. A month from now, for three brilliant weeks, the tulips would bloom and a sea of red and yellow would sweep toward our house, rolling our way like a wave; the huge field was planted in staggered intervals to assist with the delicate, precious, timely business of harvesting tulips. I tried to imagine Meagan moving across the field in sunlight, a clutch of red tulips in her hand, but I couldn’t really sustain it: somewhere along the way my mood had slipped into a minor key.

A light came on inside the house, and then all I could see was the dull mesh of screen. I drank my coffee, listening to the falling rain and feeling the mist on my face as it edged in from the dark fields. It was the first time I’d felt anything but a rising elation since we’d moved. In this damp old house, surrounded by these soggy fields, a vivid sense of the people who’d sat on the porch before me came unbidden, without invitation, and as palpable to me as Meagan or Mr. Boyd or Jimmy. My own presence felt vaguely intrusive, and it occurred to me, as I listened to the water run over the roof and puddle in the yard, that the rains in this part of the country seemed to fall from clouds that were a thousand years old. You always felt just slightly out of joint, or a little bit canceled. I gave my shirt pocket a pat. My legs were stiff and there was a cold in my bones no coat would fix, a raw chill radiating from within; I could feel my wet toes bloat in my boots. I tried to chase my mood down, rummaging through thoughts and memories of New York, of the life we’d lived there, of the work we’d done and what we’d abandoned, of the people we’d left behind. I found nothing, nothing worth saving, and finally told myself it was atmospheric negative ions from the squall.

Behind me, somewhere in the house, I heard Naga calling for her husband: “Jimmy? Honey? Honey?” And then I heard Meagan, from upstairs, perhaps in Mr. Boyd’s room, calling for her father: “Daddy?”

Both men were outside, under the apple tree. I was aware of their voices but couldn’t quite see them, and something about the disembodied conversation gave it a strange sound, as if father and son were reading from a script.

“What can I say?”

“I don’t know, Jimmy.”

“I’m sorry. I’m desperate, or I wouldn’t ask.”

“You’re what now, twenty-seven?

“Twenty-six. It’s my birthday today.”

“You got a wife and a kid to support.”

“I know. Don’t you think I know?”

“Take this. That’s the best I can do right now.”

“Just till I get back home.”

“Yeah.”

“Just a loan. Okay? I’ll pay you back.”

“It’s a gift. Just take it. Happy birthday.”

“You don’t understand. I want to pay you back.”

“Okay, you want to. We’ll see.”

Meagan came out onto the porch. “Have you seen Daddy?”

“He’s out there,” I said. “With Jimmy.”

Meagan walked quickly into the yard. I heard the familiar timbre of their voices weaving faintly through the rain, Meagan mollifying, Mr. Boyd staunch and bullying, Jimmy eager for whatever scraps of attention fell his way.

When all the Boyds came in sometime later, they were drenched; Meagan seemed especially small, her hair darkened and lying flat around the oval frame of her face. I ran out to the car and grabbed my Polaroid from a box in the trunk. Mr. George came down the road, cradling a second bottle of blackberry wine. “They’re all inside,” I said, and he went on to the house ahead of me, while I fished through my supplies for extra film and flashbulbs. By the time I came back inside and loaded the camera the candles were already lit and Meagan was carrying the cake onto the porch. Mr. George shut off the light. Jimmy sat there, staring at the swirls of blue frosting that looped across the cake:
Happy Birthday Jimmy!
He looked around, then at the cake again. Shadows from the candle flames danced on the rotting roof above us. We sang “Happy Birthday”; and then Mr. Boyd continued to sing, his voice deep and bold and bad, forcefully off-key. Meagan joined in, and when she put a reassuring hand on Jimmy’s shoulder, he sang, too. The baby gave a cry, and Naga moved in closer to her husband. When Mr. George joined them, humming along, I stepped back, expanding the frame by just enough to include everyone. Jimmy gazed up at his father, his sister, his wife and his baby, and then, with his eyes shut, made a wish, and blew the candles out—while I, futzing with the Polaroid, caught the moment just before the wish, which we watched develop, all of them huddled together, faces pressed cheek to cheek, singing the words to a song I’d never learned.