Fishboy Read Free Page B

so long for, and Lonny seemed to sense that the last bright blast of sun was his for himself to see by, and taking a deep breath while the cook rolled over on his haunch from a badly thrown blow to the rail, Lonny reached back with his ax, his nose wedged in the crook of his arm which his eyes clearly glared over, he reached back like he would indeed have to pull down over his shoulder the curtain of the world around him, and yet he would do it, and he did do it, the quickest blow of the day while the cook rose to meet it and was back down again under the weight of the ax while the blade of the thing bit on.
    Lonny let go of the handle. It shuddered from somewhere deep inside the cook. The men swung down from the rigging, a joke about no more greasy eggs was answered with a cuff on the ear, the men a single file of filth trudging back inside the small ship’s aft cabin door. I was perched on the nest’s edge out of reach of the calendar tide which had flooded the roads and kept the purple bus away that day. I was just perched, a small cannonball of boy, my chin in my knees, my ankles squeezed, watching the fighting and keeping an eye on the man asleep in my garden, the sun closing behind us a sad eye of sleep.
    Lonny cradled the cook in the stern quarter where he had fallen, the cook’s neck gone to rubber, his face bent up to Lonny’s own.
I’m cold, Lonny
, the cook said, his arms aquiver. Lonny pulled off his shirt, looking around for more cover amidst the splintered deck and the smashed hatches.
    The tattooed man stirred in the falling dark and sudden quiet, and I started slipping down the drainpipe. I meant to be on him, to be in his fading shadow when he stood.
    You
, said Lonny, pointing a bloody finger at me.
Get me a wrap or towel, a blanket if you have one
. Inside the fishhouse were some oyster sacks, and I meant to pitch one on deck as I passed but Lonny said to fetch it to him.
    I’m so cold, Lonny
, the cook said. Lonny told thecook that it would be all right, the cook’s violent shuddering arms throwing off the comforting cover of Lonny’s shirt so that Lonny had to hold it down.
    Bring that wrap up to me
, Lonny said, and I walked a spring line aboard and swung the rail. The oyster sack seemed small when I pressed it on the cook, fitting it like a bib napkin, as if the cook, who smelled of wet herbs and old seasonings, was preparing to eat.
    The cook said he was sorry to Lonny, sorry to cook his eggs so greasy, sorry to salt the coffee, sorry to make stew from boiling his apron, sorry to blow snot into the beans, sorry that he was the cook at all, saying he had always wanted to be a blacksmith but that he was frightened of horses, and Lonny said that it was all right.
    The cook shuddered and I pressed the oyster sack against him to keep his inside things from sliding out.
    The cook felt my pressure and looked down at me.
    Never learn to cook
, the cook said to me and I shook my head that I never would.
    The cook said that he was cold straight down the middle, could Lonny get him a nice piece of felt blanket, and Lonny said
Sure
and held the cook tighter. Lonny did not fight the quaking arms as they rose and fell against us, Lonny letting one arm finally reach around his neck as I felt the other pull me deeper into the divide of the big split body.
    I am so sorry
, said the cook, and Lonny said it was all right, it was all all right, and Lonny closed us tighter inside the cook’s succoring, still embrace.

 
    B y
the light of the lantern I held, the tattooed giant whom the men called John said
God, take from us the soul of this, your nearly split-in-two servant here, the Cook, and let him taste the Gruel and Slop of Everlasting Afterlife, that is, if he has indeed risen to serve in Your Galley, instead of broiling in Your Eternal Oven where his shipmate Lonny here who suffered his cooking thinks he deserves to go
.
    Amen
, said Lonny.
    And God
, John said, John dressed in a nightshirt of white