The Art of Grief
The tide was low, exposing a brown crust of mud that sucked his legs down to his knees as he walked and waded to the patch of shade where he now sat watching the great barracuda. The fished hovered in its own patch of shade, the water so shallow that its sleek back was exposed to the air. It waited for the tide to turn. The islanders said it was the biggest fish to ever swim up the narrow tidal stream from the ocean to the saltwater pond that spread in shades of turquoise and blue behind the village’s small hotel. Beyond the hotel, the Caribbean rolled in curling, white waves.
His given name was Walter Meier, but all the local islanders called him No Hurry. Walter was from St. Moritz, Switzerland. He arrived on the small island five months before the Barracuda swam into the pond, carrying his grief and a large backpack. His face was now burnt brown, with cracked lines like a dry riverbed. His black and silver hair, uncut for five months, was tied back in a loose ponytail. He stopped wearing shoes two months ago. When the locals asked him how long he planned to stay, he said he was in no hurry to leave.
Walter studied the great fish, a five-foot silver torpedo with darker vertical stripes, green in the fading light. Gills pumped slowly like bellows. Pectoral fins moved beneath the fish just enough to keep him still. The V-shaped tail pulsed, then idled. The tide was turning now. Soon the tidal stream would fill the pond with a current strong enough push a man down. Walter watched the barracuda slide into the deepening water. He stood and looked down the edge of the pond. Surface water pushed in a slow wake as the barracuda cruised in the freshening tide. Walter moved from the pond’s edge to avoid spooking the big fish. The mud flats were almost covered now, and the water was a darker blue, fading to black. A single, white egret stood motionless at the mouth of the lagoon. The air smelled like fish and freshly turned earth.
***
Walter took his meals at Solana’s café. Solana owned the café, the small hotel, and was the de-facto mayor of the small island. She was stout and strong, with long black hair and eyes that saw everything.
The cafe was a squat, cinderblock building draped in vines and coconut palms. She catered to the fishermen that flew in from the United States to fish for bonefish. Solana served all her the meals family style at a long rectangular table, usually mutton snapper, grouper or some other fish caught out on the reef. Music videos thumped from a TV mounted in the upper corner of the room. A small plywood bar wrapped one corner of the long room. Today was changeover day at the fishing lodge. Walter would meet the new group at Solana’s for dinner.
When he arrived, most of the new group was already seated. They were talking about the harrowing flight from Nassau, drinking beer, and discussing the next day’s fishing. Walter took a seat across from one of the newcomers, a man is his early fifties with close-cropped gray hair. He wore a Rolex watch and a designer fishing shirt. His sunglasses were pushed up over his forehead. Solana came over and put her arms around Walter and kissed him on the cheek.
“How’s my No Hurry? she said. “You catch that big Cuda today?”
“Not today, Solana, I’m still studying him.” He smiled and leaned back into Solana’s arms.
“No Hurry?” said the new arrival.
“I’ve been here for 5 months, so they call me No Hurry, but my given name is Walter.” Walter extended his hand across the table to the newcomer.
“Jim Everett. What was she saying about a big Cuda?”
“There’s a big one in the saltwater pond behind the lodge, I’ve been studying him. I am going to tie a fly just for him and try to get him on a fly rod.”
Jim Everett smirked. “Can’t catch a big Cuda on the fly. You need a spinning rod to get a fast enough retrieve. I always bring a spinning rod for Cuda.”
“Well, for me it’s about understanding the fish, tying the right fly myself, and making the perfect cast.”
“It’s all about execution Walter. Doesn’t matter what kind of fly you tie or cast you make if you can’t catch the fish. Artists should never fish.” He waived his had dismissively.
No Hurry tried to change the subject. “Where are you from, Jim?’
“New York. I have a break from one my deals, so I booked a guide for a week and flew down.”
“You by yourself?”
“Yeah, I just want to fish. I hate wasting time waiting for someone who can’t cast to figure it out.”
“That Cuda is No Hurry’s,” said Solana. She had not moved from the table. She stared hard at Everett. She kissed No Hurry on the cheek again and walked back to the kitchen to serve dinner.
***
Walter woke to the sound of gospel songs drifting through the humid air. Most of the Islanders were Seventh Day Adventists. He sometimes lost track of the days on the island, but the music reminded him that it was Saturday. Sabbath day. Most businesses would be closed. The village would pray and rest. Walter had a room in the village’s one small hotel. The hotel had six rooms, rarely filled. Walter was the only guest this week. The recreational fishermen stayed in beachfront bungalows, also owned by Solana, outside of the village.
He lay in bed watching the morning light filter into his room through the slats in the wooden shutters that he closed at night. The slant of light falling across his bed reminded him of the great barracuda. Dust motes drifted in the beams. A single mosquito whined in his ear.
Walter thought about his dead family. Maybe the Adventists were right, and they were sleeping in some strange state of limbo waiting for the imminent arrival of Jesus. Maybe souls lived on. Walter had already suffered god’s judgment, without the attendant resurrection. This morning, he felt nothing; just the emptiness he felt every Saturday when the songs came.
***
It was a slab avalanche. Walter, his wife, and twin daughters had skinned up to their favorite bowl behind the resort where Walter worked as a ski instructor and back country guide. The sky was achingly blue. The air was cold enough to almost hurt when you breathed. From here, they could see France, Italy and Germany.
Walter took a small shovel from his backpack and dug a square hole in the snow at the top of the mountain. It had been snowing heavily for several days, and he wanted to be sure the slope was safe for his family. He looked carefully at the sides of the hole, searching for striations which would indicate unstable layers of snow which could release suddenly in a dangerous avalanche. Satisfied, he gave a thumbs up to his wife and daughters and watched as they descended into the bowl in a series of sweeping turns.
In one moment, Walter watched as his family skied below him. In the next, his world exploded. A crack appeared above his wife’s downhill ski, and she was thrown to the snow, one ski skittered ahead on the slope as the binding released. He watched his wife tumble twice and then disappeared. The entire side of the mountain had become a moving, white river of snow. It quickly caught his daughters, and they also vanished. In less than a minute, the mountain was quiet again. Clean, white crystals reflected bright against the blue sky.
Walter skied in a panic to the spot where he last saw his wife. He called his friends at search and rescue, then began digging frantically. He dug until he could no longer lift his arms. He knew it was impossible to know where the snow had taken them. The bodies could be ten feet away or a quarter mile away. He dug until hope died.
It took almost an hour for rescue crews to arrive. Cadaver dogs located the bodies, one by one. The avalanche had carried them 100yds down the face of the mountain. Each had died alone, buried under four feet of snow, suffocating in darkness.
Walter watched as his family emerged from the snow. The cadaver dogs milled about, wagging their tails at a job well done. The rescue crews, all friends of Walter, could barely function as one of his daughter’s mittened hands emerged, then her small body. She looked like she was only sleeping.
Walter watched as the procession of three red toboggans slid down the bowl towards the resort at the base of the mountain, then sat with his legs in the hole from which his daughter emerged. He could see a sharp line on the wall where the heavy layer of new snow has released and slid across the harder snow below. He sat until the night consumed him.
***
Walter rose and made himself some coffee. The expresso machine in the corner was the one luxury in his room. Soft songs began to mingle with the rhythm of the surf as the morning light drifted against the wall above his bed. Solana’s restaurant would be closed today, and the fishing boats would rock empty in the small marina behind the stone jetty.
Walter grabbed his cast net and walked the brushy path behind the hotel toward the saltwater lagoon. He planned to catch and examine some baitfish to use as a model for tying a fly to catch the big Cuda.
Slack tide. The lagoon was once again a flat mirror. He scanned the surface of the lagoon. The same white Egret stood motionless near a mangrove tree 30 yds from him. Fifty yards north of him the surface of the water began to dance, small ripples ripped the still surface like a pot almost beginning to boil. Nervous water. He could see flashes of light below the surface as the gentle boil moved down the lagoon to where he stood waiting.
As the nervous water drew close, he gathered up the folds of the net, twisted backwards and then spun forward, releasing the net. It spun over the boil in a perfect circle, sounding like ripping paper as it hit the water. The edges of the cast net were weighted with lead and quickly sank. Walter pulled hard on the drawstring of the net, pulling the bottom circle closed and trapping a writhing mass of baitfish inside.
He pulled the net onto the shore. The net was full. Pilchards, mangrove snappers, baby snook, mullet and grunts. Colors flashed, and red gills flared in the folds of the net. Mouths pumped rhythmically as bodies bounced in the sand, suffocating in an avalanche of air.
Walter scanned the net and quickly began tossing fish back into the lagoon. They darted away in crystal flashes. He picked up a Blue-striped Grunt. It was larger than the other baitfish. The grunt had electric blue horizontal stripes with yellow bands. It was shaped like a small football. Walter took out his cell phone and took several pictures of the fish.
He tossed the fish back into the lagoon, slung the net over his shoulder, and began walking back to his room. The villagers were all leaving the church service. They smiled and waved at him. Several local dogs began to follow him down the dirt road, scuffling and playing. One had a bloody wound on its front leg. He saw Solana and waved.
“You come by for the Sabbath meal now, you hear?” she said. She never cooked on the Sabbath but instead made a simple meal of fish and rice on Friday and reheated it for the Sabbath dinner.
“I will be, around five!”
Solana smiled and walked on, her brown skin glistening in the morning sun.
***
Walter opened the door to his small room. It smelled damp and musty. The window air conditioner groaned in the low light. It sounded like a snowcat crawling up a mountainside. He walked over to the window and shut it off. He opened the wooden shutters covering the other windows and slid the windows open. A freshening breeze gave some life to the dead air inside.
Tying flies was a form of meditation for Walter. He took a small vise and set it on the table in the room. He put a small box of feathers, fur, synthetics and hooks next to the vise. He clamped a hook into the vise. A silver spine, waiting. Here, there was no time. No past, no future. No bodies pulled from the snow.
He began by wrapping white thread around the hook, then added a small bit of lead wire, slightly offset from center so that the fly would swim with a small list, like an injured fish. An easy meal. He pulled out a small tuft, of Polar bear fur, a gift from a ski client, and tied on the tail. He followed with caribou fur, layered forward to build a compact, deep-bodied silhouette, then added a hint of yellow near the eye of the hook. A throat patch and an illusion of gills. With the body nearly formed, he added blue synthetic fibers horizontally along the body and added a few bits of green crystal flash to catch the light. He finished by adding a soft, blue back which subtlety veiled the brighter blue stripes. He glued on some gold eyes, shaped the head and sealed everything with resin. He lifted the fly from the vise and held it up to the light.
Walter tied many more flies, each a variation of the first. Some were weighted, some not. Some flashier, some almost dull. When he checked his phone, four hours had passed. He picked up a fly rod and walked down the stone jetty to see how the flies looked in the water.
Walter felt the familiar flex of the rod as he began the slow rhythm of his cast. The salt wind kissed his face like tears. There is an art to flyfishing in the wind. Backcast, load, shoot. The art of Walter’s grief was the same. Look back (had he misread the snow?), doubt, stumble on.
When his fly hit the water, a small Jack immediately tried to inhale it. He pulled the fly off the water and cast again. The fly swam perfectly, two feet under the surface and moved like an injured baitfish. Satisfied, he pulled the fly out of the water and walked towards Solana’s for dinner. The waves curled behind him. A dog barked. Seagulls swopped around the boats anchored in the protected water of the jetty.
***
In the morning there was still no wind, but the tide was pushing hard into the lagoon. The water in the mangrove-choked channel was faintly green. The deeper waters of the wider sea rolled dark blue behind him. He wore a hat and a buff to protect his scalp and face, but he could feel the morning sun burning through his clothes. When he stepped into the lagoon, the saltwater felt sweet and cool against his shins. The current made twin v-wakes around his legs as he slowly waded in the narrow channel, trying to minimize sound vibrations in the water. He watched an eagle ray drift against white sand. The tips of its black wings flapped and revealed a white belly as it hunted with the incoming tide. Patches of sea grass undulated in the moving water like hair in the wind. The air smelled like rotting leaves.
Then, he saw the great fish finning in the shaded roots of a mangrove, a hovering shadow. He froze where he stood. A hunting egret. He was certain that this was the Barracuda they had been talking about at the bar last night. This was the fish that the gone-native Swiss had been trying to catch for weeks by tying the perfect fly. This was a trophy for his New York office wall. He carried an offshore spinning rod with a 40lb leader. His Cuda lure was a florescent green plastic tube bristling with three treble hooks.
He opened the bail of the reel, hooked the loose line with his index finger and swung the rod back. He pushed the rod forward in an arc and released the line at the top of the arc. The reel whined like a small engine as line flew off the reel. His cast landed 20 feet past the fish. Perfect. He cranked hard on the reel, pulling the lure forward with the incoming tide. The trick was to get the lure moving faster than the current and swing it right past the barracuda’s nose, hoping for a reaction strike. He watched the wobbling lure flashing green just under the surface of the water as it approached the great fish. He reeled faster. The shadow came to life with an electric flash and his rod bent hard as line screamed from the reel.
***
Walter was not happy about the wind. The past five mornings were still as death. He decided that he would wait. Wait for an awakening wind. Wait for another day. Wait for redemption.
He walked to the lagoon to look for the fish. Despite his misgivings, he also tied a fly onto a leader, the first one he had tied yesterday, and carried his rod with him.
He heard a splash as he neared a bend where the big Cuda usually waited. Walter slowed his pace, thinking the big fish might be feeding. Another splash.
As he rounded the bend, he saw Jim Everett. His rod was bent like a scythe, and he was smiling. He saw Walter.
“I got the big bastard Walter!”
Walter stopped and stared. The big fish jumped again. It sounded like a
gunshot when it fell. Walter could not move as he watched Everett fight the fish. When the fish began to tire, Everett shouted again.
“Hey, I need a hand here, I’ve never landed one of these.” Walter stood silently.
“At least call my guide, will you?” Everett was getting angry. Exhausted, the barracuda rolled on its side and Everett dragged it towards shore.
“The hell with you then Walter.”
Everett raised the rod over his head, bent over, pushed his bare hand behind, and into, the Barracuda’s gill flaps as he tried to lift the huge fish from the water. He screamed in pain and dropped the fish. Blood gushed from three deep cuts on his fingers and hand.
“A Cuda’s gill rakers are sharp as razor blades,” Walter said.
“God damn you, Walter!”
Everett took off his buff and wrapped it around his hand. Blood dripped into the lagoon. Baby sharks began to swim in a frenzy around Evertt’s feet. The Barracuda flopped in the shallows.
“Now there are sharks!” Everett looked down at the blood-soaked cloth wrapped around his hand, then backed out of the water. He dragged the barracuda onto the sand, where it flopped wildly. Everett picked up a piece of scrap wood and hit the fish on the head repeatedly. Blood sprayed from Everett’s cut hand, a refracted red mist in the morning light. Walter turned and walked back to the village.
***
By the time Jim Everett walked into town with the huge fish draped over his shoulders, word had spread. A small crowd gathered near the stone Jetty at the edge of the village. Everett slapped the fish down triumphantly onto a small table near the edge of the jetty that the villagers used to clean their daily catch.
“This will feed you for a week!” Everett looked at the crowd like a returning warrior. Solana stepped forward.
“That was No Hurry’s Cuda.”
“Fish belongs to the guy who catches it, Walter’s dreams were only dreams.”
“That Cuda is poison anyway, nobody gonna eat that thing,” said Solana. Everett looked at the silent, staring crowd, then turned to Walter.
“What is she talking about?” he said.
“Ciguatoxin,” Walter Said, “It builds up in large apex predators like this Cuda and makes them poisonous. There is no antidote if you eat contaminated meat.”
“I have never heard of that,” Everett scoffed.
“It’s odorless and tasteless. Moreover, a fish this big is over 10 years old. It is so full of mercury and PCBs that no one would eat it anyway.” Everett turned and stared at the fish, then stared at the rolling blue sea.
“I still want the head,” he said. Blood began dripping from his hand.
“You are going to need stiches,” Walter Said, “and those cuts will likely get infected.”
Solana stepped forward. “No doctors on the island,” she said.
Above them, gulls began reeling and calling. Waiting.
Everett turned and saw a rusty machete leaning against the fish-cleaning table. He picked it up, swung it high, and cleaved off the barracuda’s head. He picked up the body, walked to the edge of the jetty, and tossed it into the dark water. The villagers walked to the edge and stared.
***
The first to come were the horse-eyed jacks. They rose, white and ghostly from the deeper water, their oval, black, eyes staring upward. They began tearing at the body, ripping off large chunks of flesh. Smaller fish darted among them, seeking the small bits floating from the torn flesh.
A gray shadow began to form below the jacks. An eight-foot bull shark rose and bit the body in half. it swallowed, three strong convulsions, then returned, and inhaled the other half of the barracuda.
As if it were all an illusion, the feeding fish disappeared. The black water roiled from the frenzy, then stilled. Solana took Walter’s hand as they turned to walk home. The barracuda’s head sat on the worn wood, its black eyes shining in the midday sun.
