B: The Shark

Chapter: Hammerhead shark

We are on another trip to my father's mother, the grandmother who
kisses on the lips and drinks red juice that makes her slur her words.
My own mother stayed at home in our house in Houston, complaining of a
headache. Pam and I know better. My mother just didn't want to come.
Before we left the house, we stood at the end of the couch, staring
down at her with envy while she kept an arm over her eyes. "I hate it
when she does that," Pam whispered to me when my father told us to get
in the car, "She's just a big faker."

We drive in silence to Freeport, except for the wind and my father's
coughing. This time, I'm alone in the back seat. My father's shoulders
shift as we pass the signs and trees.

After standing still and bearing the grandmother's kiss, we eat
breakfast while sitting at her kitchen table and answering her
questions about school. She is hard to talk to, mostly because her
questions jump all over the place. She wonders how our grades are, and
then talks about those people who make the poor children ride buses to
schools so far away. My father sits through her chatter smoking
cigarettes. He says things like, "Oh, Mother, let it go," but this
quiets her only for a while, as if she's waiting for whatever mood has
settled on my father's head to move on. Then she starts up again.

"Lord, those poor kids. So far from home?"

Later my father and the grandmother argue. We find ourselves in the
grandmother's garage, looking for fishing poles. We find two, but not
until we've searched through the boxed and loose junk stacked all over
the garage. I find a shoe with macaroni glued to it and spray-painted
gold. It's mounted on a piece of wood and covered in glitter. Pam finds
a hat covered in feathers, laid side by side and in the same direction,
a strange dark chicken that she puts on top of her head. She takes it
off quickly and drops it on the ground when the grandmother shows up,
telling her to watch out for spiders.

"Up and at 'em," my father says. Clearly this is something he says
only when we visit the grandmother. It makes him sound different, like
a father on a television show. He loads us, the fishing poles, and a
six-pack of beer into the car, and we leave the grandmother's house. It
is still so early that it's like we've never stopped driving. As we
leave, I watch the grandmother on her porch, hunched over and smoking a
cigarette. She wears a robe that goes down to her ankles and gold
slippers that remind me of a pop-up book I have at home. Her hair is
still the color of tomatoes.

The grandmother's argument with my father, as far as I could tell, was
over the man living in her house, a man we are to understand is not our
grandfather. We have seen him only once, on our last visit, when he
came into the kitchen and, with his fingers, played a thumping version
of the Lone Ranger theme on the kitchen wall. He watched us intently
during this performance, his fingers a blur while we held our toast and
acted polite. When he finished, the grandmother clapped too loudly
while Pam and I sat watching our plates. The space where his fingers
had hit the wall was dirty, I noticed, when I looked up. He left when
my father came back into the kitchen, to wherever it was he stayed.
Since we'd never had the chance to explore the grandmother's house, I
wasn't sure where he stayed. If the grandmother would ever leave, Pam
and I would go over the house quickly and efficiently, learning the
rooms and the contents of drawers.

We drive to an empty parking lot by the dock, and immediately my
father opens a can of beer. The hissing sound of the can opening would
normally send Pam and me outside, but we're already outside. My father
drinks from the can, and burps, and then unloads us and the fishing
poles. He produces a jar of little red balls, wet and slimy looking.
The cap is crusted over with a hard gel, which he peels off and flips
onto the pavement with his finger before holding the jar under my nose.
It smells like rotten fish, or maybe cat food. He shows us how to bait
our hooks, ruining two or three of the smelly red balls in the process.
He curses quite a bit, but finally manages a baited hook and pole for
each of us. I have trouble believing the tiny balls will get any fish
to bite, but head towards the water anyway.

I know from school that the Gulf of Mexico is an ocean, but it's not
like the oceans on television or in the encyclopedia. It's definitely
not the ocean of the drawings I've seen at my school, with the bright
blue water and waves and fish jumping towards the sky. Instead, the
water in the Gulf is a shifting mass of brown and gray. It's lighter on
top, like detergent in a dirty pan. Bits of trash bump up against the
dock, and I feel dizzy. The ocean is too huge, too dark. Anything could
be under the surface.

I spot a crab. "I could teach you how to catch those," my father says,
"All you need is a string and a chicken neck." I picture a chicken with
a leash around its neck, thrown into the water and squawking. Perhaps
the ruckus would scare the crabs onto the dock. Or maybe the crabs just
latch onto whatever feathers and parts of the chicken they can grab. I
don't pursue my father's offer, mostly because I'm afraid he would do
such a thing. Also the crabs look dangerous, and quick, ready to do
anything.

My father starts with Pam first, pulling the fishing pole back and
casting the line into the water. He tells both of us to be careful with
the hooks, which have little barbs on them and can get stuck anywhere,
apparently: clothes, the dock, an eye lid.

I copy my father's movements and wait. Pam's line has a floater, but
mine doesn't. My line sinks in the water and then moves towards me, as
if something has grabbed it under the water and started to pull it back
towards the dock. I look behind me, planning the quickest way back to
the parking lot.

My father leaves Pam and me staring out into the water, which has no
waves. Except for a slight wind, there's very little sound. When I turn
around, I can see Jerry's face through the car window. He lifts a can
of beer to his mouth. I can't tell if he's watching us.

"Do you thin there's any fish under there?" I ask. Pam has her fishing
pole held in one hand, the other hand shoved in a pocket. She is almost
a head taller than me, with the same brown hair, only hers is longer.
Her mouth is slightly open.

"I don't know," she says finally, and shakes her fishing pole. I do
the same.

"I don't like fish," I say, but Pam doesn't answer. At school they
sometimes serve us breaded fish sticks, which are crunchy on top and
soggy on the bottom. I hate them. They remind me of the water in the
bayou by our house: salty, and like pennies. I almost never eat them,
instead pushing them around my lunch tray until we're told to return to
class.

The floater on Pam's line dips under the water's surface, comes back
up, and then starts to travel away from the dock. At first Pam doesn't
notice, but then she starts to jump up and down. The dock rattles under
her weight.

"Daddy! Daddy!" she screams, her eyes on the water, "I've got
something! Something's pulling! Something's pulling!" She yells like
this until the line on her pole starts to unravel on its own and the
floater moves farther away from the dock.

She drops the pole, but before it falls in the water, I step on it to
hold it in place. I turn my head and see that my father is still
sitting in the car. I wave my arms until he looks up and gets
out.

My father's footsteps come pounding up the dock. Pam has picked up her
pole but holds it away from her body. The spool turns fast.

"Catch it! Catch it!" my father yells. Pam swats at the spool, then
manages to grip it. The tip of the fishing pole points down towards the
water.

"Pull back on it easy," he tells Pam. Pam does what he says, pulling
the pole up slowly. The line is so tight that I think it might break.
My father reaches up and pushes it down a little, then lets it snap
back up.

"Whatever it is, it's pretty strong," he says, "You'd better let me
pull it in."

Pam looks up at my father and then hands him the pole, crossing her
arms over her chest. I can tell she's not happy about giving up the
pole, but my father seems like he knows what he's doing. Also I'd like
to see what comes out of that brown water.

"The trick is to play with it," my father tells us, "If you pull too
hard, the line will break. Or the fish can pull your pole right out of
your hands. Watch me."

We watch, moving forward, while my father lets the pole bob up and
down. Every once in a while he turns the reel, pulling in more of the
line. The top of the pole jerks crazily, and I worry about the hook
hurting the fish.

When the line gets closer to the dock, my father tells us to stand
back. He winds the reel round and round, pulling the fish in. When the
line is right next to the dock, Pam and I can't wait any longer, and
creep up to watch the fish come out of the water. I bend at the waist,
ready to run, because I know from the bayou by our house that anything
can be in the water, things that bite and sting and pinch with claws
until someone takes a rock and bashes them loose.

What comes out of the water doesn't look like any fish I've ever seen,
but before I can ask what it is, my father is yelling, "It's a shark!
You caught a shark!" The shark twists back and forth at the end of the
line. It's only as long as my foot, but still, it is a shark.

My father backs up and turns around, then walks back up the dock
holding the fishing pole away from him. When he gets to the concrete
where the parking lot ends, he lays the pole and the shark on the
ground. Its skin is gray like the sky. Pam and I keep our distance from
the shark, but we're both laughing and hopping in place while its tail
make a drum beat on the ground.

"That's a bona fide hammerhead shark," my father says, and in fact it
does look like a hammer with a fat handle.

My father finds a flat paper cup in the trash on the dock. The cup has
a picture of a clown on it, and I recognize it from one of the place we
go to eat sometimes, pulling up to a window where my father or mother
takes the bag of food while I hope whatever I wanted is in the
bag.

My father places the cup over the shark and holds it down with his
fingers. "You have to be careful about their skin. It's scratchy. It
can cut you." He fiddles with the hook in the shark's mouth, cursing
while he tugs and pulls. The shark squirms under his hand. "Goddamn
thing," he says, then stands up.

"Stay here," he tells us, wiping his hands down the front of his
pants, "And don't go near it." As soon as he turns his back to us and
starts walking towards the car, Pam and I kneel down to get a closer
look at the shark. It's still flopping, but its tail isn't beating
against the ground as much. The thin slits along its side open and
close, and I can't find its eyes. I wonder if it has sharp teeth, or
how big it gets. As small as it is, it's still scary. I wouldn't want
to run into a big one.

"What did I tell you?" my father asks loudly, scaring us back up onto
our feet. He is carrying something shiny in his hand, and I see it's
the knife he keeps in the car, the blade already out and dangerous
looking. We are not allowed to play with this knife, but neither Pam
nor me is strong enough to pull the blade out, anyway. My father kneels
down by the shark.

"Sometimes you have to do this," my father says, "When you can't get
the hook out." I'm not sure what he means, but Pam turns her head and
looks at the water. I move closer, just in time to see my father put
the knife on the back of the shark's head, where the hammer part is,
and dig the knife into the gray skin. The sound is like Pam's teeth
grinding when she falls asleep on the couch.

My knees feel rubbery, and I want to sit down. The shark's tail sticks
straight out, thumps against the ground one more time, the falls down.
When the head falls away from the shark's body, I think the body looks
like a racing car, only without the wheels. There's very little
blood.

It starts raining. My father picks up the shark head and turns it
around in his fingers. I look away, but there's a wet sucking sound
that makes me turn back around. My father holds up the fishing line
with the hook dangling at the end, tiny bits of red meat stuck on its
prongs. He grins.

Pam runs to the car as the rain gets heavier, but I wait. My father
kicks the shark's body and then its head into the water.

Despite this, I'm hungry, and think the crabs must be, too.