Scales
The fisherman hoisted the fish onto the boat and quickly set to chopping. No cleaning or gutting, just chopping, and more chopping. As the sun set, he continued to chop, until soon all that was left of the fish was a brownish powder. The fisherman leaned over and snorted it. It was the eighth fish he had snorted that day, and he was beginning to wonder if he might have a problem.
At his home he opened the door and handed his wife his tackle box.
“No fish?” she asked. “It was a long day. I had hoped —”
“They weren’t biting.” He pecked her cheek.
“I’ll start some Ramen.”
That night in their bed his wife put down her book on French impressionist painting and turned to him.
“It seems to me,” she started, “that much of our lives we’re flopping about, in a place that we’re not supposed to be, not quite able to breathe the way we should. We flop, hoping to return to where we belong, and when we get there, if even momentarily, life fills us, holds us up, and we can move along as we should, fast and strong with purpose. But then we’re suddenly yanked by circumstances back to a place we shouldn’t be, again.”
He wiped his nose.
“Does that make sense to you?” she asked.
He tried to say yes, but a large bubble of saliva formed over his mouth instead.
“Does it?” she touched his hand.
“Yes,” he said, and turned off the light.
The next morning she paused before handing him his tackle box and tuna sandwich wrapped in tin foil.
“Are you all right? Your eyes, they look a little… sideways.”
He tried to say something but the bubble bubbled again, and instead he turned and hopped down the steps to the car and drove away, towards the lake.
