The Last Karankawas(33)
He hasn’t seen her in seven months, though she calls almost every day. He figures she still has the ring he gave her. He regards her faithful calling and wearing his ring as curiosities, small twinges, as if he observes the habits of an oyster or sea sponge. How interesting, how neat. He wishes it bothered him more. Wishes that when he loaded up his truck to meet Cab and some other ex-military friends in Marfa and told her he needed time to find himself, but he still loved her, wanted a family, would come back someday, he had been telling the truth.
* * *
Shrimping has a rhythm to it, and he just needs to learn its beat. They are a crew of four: Schafer, Jess, a sturdy Mexican named Rey, and the boat’s owner, Vinh, a Vietnamese guy who wears a cap that reads BOI in proud green letters (Jess assures Schafer that Vinh was not, in fact, “born on the island”).
On his first day, they head out to the bay before dawn. Rey and Jess lower the outriggers on both sides; the tall, spindly structures drop slowly until they lie parallel to the water. The Cig cruises from the shallows out to the bay, bobbing over choppy water with the outriggers extended on either side. They help with balance, Jess explains, keeping the boat riding the waves instead of tipping into and over them. Schafer watches the shadows of other trawlers move out along the bay and imagines them as track stars: arms outstretched, reaching endlessly for a finish line. They know where they are going. He envies them.
When they reach the area where Vinh figures they’ll find shrimp, Rey puts out the small try net, then the main—the big—nets. Schafer steps between ropes and cables so his feet won’t get caught up “because then you’d be fucked so hard, man,” in Jess’s words. He hears names like transom, cathead, pin rail, words that drift into his ears and are just as swiftly gone. The one that sticks is otter trawl, the main net. Otters are Laurie’s favorite. He can’t help but think of her, even now, when it hurts—or should hurt—to do so.
They hoist the doors into position. The boards work as spreaders, easing the sides of the net apart underwater so it can properly skim the bay floor. The nets themselves sprawl limply across the deck, and Schafer digs a toe under one to lift it slightly. “Not so pretty now,” Vinh says. “They’re ugly out of water but very pretty in it. Like jellyfish.”
Jess’s fingers fly skillfully across the thick rope looping the bags where the shrimp will collect, forming half-hitch knots that Rey says can hold up to a thousand pounds of weight and still come undone at a simple tug from a human hand. Schafer doesn’t quite believe it until he sees it, nearly an hour later, Jess yanking on the loose line to release the bulging bag of shrimp.
That becomes Schafer’s favorite part: popping the bag. It bursts like an abscess, and shrimp foam out in a squirming, hopping mass across the deck of the Cig. They release a smell like brine and grit that he figures must be the sea floor where they’ve spent their lives, one place, never changing, never moving. Even the thought of it makes his chest constrict, his legs itch. He lifts a shrimp between two fingers and stares at the way it wrenches, curling and uncurling in a futile effort to be free.
They teach him to sort the mass, tossing good-size shrimp into the drop tank and tossing bycatch—mostly crabs, mullet, or tiny jellyfish (“sea wasps,” Jess calls them)—back overboard. Gulls and pelicans hover above the nets, the gulls shrieking and dive-bombing, the patient pelicans navigating the wind on widespread wings. Vinh flings a small crab high in the air and laughs when a pelican scoops it up into its deep bill. Jess rolls his eyes, but Schafer laughs, too. Again and again the sleek, finned backs of dolphins arc behind them; he learns to recognize the distinctive sound of air spurting from their blowholes as they crest.
It continues that way the rest of the morning, in another section of the bay. Drop nets. Drag. Haul up. Sort. Toss back. Repeat. Again. Again. Again. Again. The rhythm of it bullies everything from his mind. The sun rises higher. It beats down. Schafer is taking orders. He is no longer adrift; he is half-hitched to a purpose once more. Proud horn blares from the Tejano music on Rey’s radio. His muscles shift independently of his thoughts. No Laurie, no Army, just movement, just order and purpose to his actions. A gull screams far above him. He closes his eyes in blessed relief.
* * *
Weeks go by, and the work with it. Schafer’s palms harden from the water, the sandpaper grit of the lines. His sunburn darkens to what could pass for a tan on his pale skin. The press of his sunglasses leaves a groove across the bridge of his nose that lingers for hours.
After finding out he was holed up in the Motel 6, Jess insisted Schafer sublet his place on Mackeral Street instead. He just moved into his girlfriend’s home, so it is empty, but he has another four months on it. The Fish Village studio apartment isn’t fancy, Jess warns as he passes over the keys, but it is cheap.
He wasn’t lying. The place is little more than a hole in the wall, in what Schafer guesses to be one of the rougher complexes of the island’s poorer corners. He has moved around often enough that he recognizes the breed. Oversize dumpsters that always seem full no matter the day of the week crowding the edges of a cramped parking lot; someone constantly laughing loudly or playing throbbing bass in the middle of the night. Jess keeps mismatched lawn chairs for living room seating and a simple frame-box-spring-mattress combination. There are clean towels in the relatively clean bathroom and a decorative artificial plant with pink rosebuds atop the toilet. The girlfriend’s touch, no doubt. Schafer knows it is fake, but every night he traces his fingers over the cloth petals anyway.