Fishboy Read Free Page A

men’s steel axes, some of their blows bouncing back to their sweat-soaked and salt-worn shirt breasts, these men having such a hard time putting to rest quickly the thing they so much wanted to kill. As the slow opening sun’s eye stared light into the scupper corners and waste bins, I looked for the thing from my perch in the osprey nest, thinking the thing the men wanted to kill had slipped unseen into the creek, where I wouldn’t go swimming for a couple of days, or maybe had wound itself upthrough the rigging to the crow’s nest on the mast. I could not think where the thing had gone, could not think how the thing could have escaped the ringing of the blows to smash its back or cleave its head. I was not thinking any thoughts of someone who had ever seen men fight with axes before.
    The sun came close to watch. In its gray yolk of light I could see the men more clearly, beards, weary faces, clothes of rotted knots, heaving the big, block-headed axes, axes so heavy that one brawny blow could slice through a shark so cleanly and quickly that its head would snap at you as you stepped past to dress out its carcass for steaks. Axes: one easy stroke to split a man from crown to groin.
    An aft cabin door blew out char-fringed faces, more miserable men in less than knotted rags, men spitting and blowing their faces into their hands, beginning to seine their lousy hair with steel brushes, crushing, the bugs they combed between black cracked nails; filthy men drawing buckets of gasoline to bathe in, taunting each other with lit matches, men moving between the swings of the block-headed axes to do their business and to watch, to climb the winches and the aft rigging, making noises like they had lost at sea their tongues to talk, low grunts of the blood-seeking sort.
Lay one in him, Lonny
, they would say,
Split him once down the middle, lay his
busted guts out!
they said.
Do it, Lonny
, they said.
Do it!
they demanded.
    And Lonny swung harder, his own weight thrown by the throw of his block-headed axe, a hard heave of the blade that just missed the other man and pulled Lonny forward from off his heels.
    That’s it, Lonny!
said the men in the rigging, black spiders in the tarred woven threads,
That’s it!
they said.
We’ll have no more of it now!
And Lonny swung again, and missed again, his blade sunk half a head into a hatch cover.
Look it, Lonny!
they said, and the other man brought a terrific blow to the deck by Lonny’s foot.
Oh, Lonny!
they said.
    By the time the sun sought overhead to spread more light to see by, the two men still stalked each other on the littered afterdeck. The deck and hatches suffered scores of deep grooves and splintered gashes, the thrown blows, the near misses. Staggering, Lonny and the other man were dragging their axes now, not favoring the single-handed stroke of before but bringing the axes to bear with both fists, the blows fewer but firmer, the men’s wrists strained and swollen from the glancing throws of the now dulled blades, dulled from striking steel plate and stanchion instead of flesh, dulled to bludgeon instead of to sever, dulled to bounce instead of to bite, as dangerous now to the wielder as to the mark of the man. Lonnybled from a rout earlier, when the other man, the ship’s cook, had managed him in through the aft cabin door.
Don’t, Lonny!
the men had warned,
He’s in home!
but Lonny had followed the fight into the cramped galley and had lost a slice of cheek through a thrown meat cleaver before hacking his way back out the bolted port hatch.
See, Lonny?
the men said.
    The sun seemed wanting to stay but started slipping out beyond to extinguish itself in the round cratered lake, the sun giving its last stare so hard on the scene below, staring so hotly that it seemed to hiss as it struck the surface of the distant lake, and in that last glare of brilliance came the moment that comes in all fights men have, when they finally call up the thing that everyone has been waiting