What About The Fisherman?

                        In my family, we have our own holiday. As much cheer, frenzy, and zest put in to it as, say, Christmas. October 30^th is the day my grandmother almost drowned. She should of drowned, according to logic. She was lost inside the ocean for four hours. To commemorate the miracle of her survival, we eat from the sea. Sometimes crab, sometimes tuna, and I find it all in poor taste. Because of the fisherman.

The fisherman lived alone on the coast near a cliffs edge and a wood-line of conifers. His closest neighbor was fifty acres away. A big family. He would salute them as they passed by on the way to the beach. Sometimes he would pick up little pieces of trash that they would leave in their wake. But he enjoyed watching them walk by, and hearing them laugh or yell at each other. They had a formation, the grandmother and the mother linked together at the arm, brothers and sisters to the right and left, and the father leading the front, plowing the way, swiping the air when the path inclined. The fisherman would sit from his top deck and watch them while he smoked a pipe and fantasized about retirement.

Of course had respect for the sea, but he wasn’t in love with it. His feet fit fine on the shore. Lately he was having recurring dreams  about the ocean having forests of pine and fur, towering out of the waves.

Everyday on the water he would see some piece of garbage floating along, lifeless. And there was nothing left to fish! Only things to throw out. The fisherman’s last catch was an orange road cone. The cone had inside of it, a purple dildo. It was a blatant message—you’re fucked. It was a gift, a last gift from the sea, for a fisherman turning his back on his purpose. 

            After this he drove the boat slowly back home with the sun behind him, watching the waves and trying to identify waste— Tuna cans! Shoes and ragged tarps, tires, bottles, and clusters of pieces of that horrible immortal: plastic. “I wont even go for a swim again,” and he swore the ocean off forever.

 I hate October 30^th now. It almost makes me sick. Nobody else on the planet can share this with us, my grandmothers survival and the perennial reliving of her fall and rescue by the lord.  It’s embarrassing for me now to see my father sitting at home on a Wednesday, using vacation time from work, for his mother-in-law.

We dress up, fill ourselves with sea food, and hand out presents to grandma. This year, I had a Halloween party to attend, and I was going to wear my costume. My mother called me that afternoon.

            “What are you going to wear tonight?” She said.

            “The sweater,” I said.

“What did you get her?”

“A life jacket,”

“You better not have!” 

After we hung up I put on my costume. The beanie, the woolen sweater, and the rubber bib. I really filled the pipe with tobacco, and smoked it. Before the accident I would see him from a distance, loading his boat or walking the hill to his house, and I could see small smoke clouds hop out from his face, I imagined he was a machine, releasing exhaust, performing a task he’d been ignited for. He would wave to us sometimes, as we took our family walks. One time we met him on the trail, my grandmother was speaking bible versus to him for good fortune. He had been in a slump.

“I think I’ve pulled all the yummy stuff out of that ocean. Me and all the other assholes on the sea. What should I destroy next? Maybe I’ll set my sights on the wood line,” said the fisherman. All upon deaf ears apparently. This was a man with something to vent, with an existential hang up, and all he could get in return were non-applicable versus from my grandmothers favorite book.

From her mouth, “ ‘Fishermen will stand along the shore; from En Gedi to En Eglaim there will be places for spreading nets. The fish will be of many kinds—like the fish of the Mediterranean Sea.’

That’s a little wisdom from the book of Ezekiel.”

            The fisherman said “Yes many kinds of fish, even the plastic ones. I appreciate the support and encouragement.” The poor guy.

                        The next day, the accident happened. I was watching the fisherman smoke his pipe on his front porch when my grandmother fell off the cliff. My dad claims he saw her hit the water, that she was caught by a waive that slammed her to the rocky bottom immediately. The jump alone was suicide. Surely she was dead. We had to run down a dirt path to make it to the beach. . When I got to the beach the fisherman was just pulling in with the raft, and he tossed me his pipe. I watched him fight the tide and make a rough way over to the cliff. Then he jumped into the water. We waited and cried for four hours. But just before we gave up all hope,  my purple grandmother washed up, practically right at our feet. She was as purple as cartoon grapes. Her eyes were bloodshot and bulging from her skull, and her body mass had doubled. She was unrecognizable, monstrous.

My father hoisted her upside down with a rope that he’d thrown through an exposed wood beam at the entrance to the public toilet. Then my father and mother started pushing against her bloated stomach, then punching it, and finally my father squeezed her. Wherever what’re could exit, it did. It came pouring out of her ears, I’m sure if it.

           The fiasco of draining her of water worked! she came back to life coughing and vomiting. Weall hugged and kissed her, while she clutched a cross on her breast. But we didn’t wait around for the fisherman, I don’t remember ever hearing about anyone from my family informing anyone about the missing man either.

            When he’d brought his boat to dock, he stepped off empty handed, and walked to his house for a shower. After his dinner he sat on the deck and sipped coffee.

“I’m a free man,” he said to himself as his eye caught the family walking down the trail. The grandmother was behind the pack by a few steps, and he saw her  looking over the cliff’s edge. “She’s gonna fall,” he said, and before his sentence was finished, she had.

            He stumbled down his stairs, but transitioned to a somersault and opened the garage door. He got the raft, pushed the oars into the locks, and leaned it against his back while he ran with it as fast as he could toward the sea. When he made it to the beach, he took his pipe out his mouth and tossed it to the eldest boy of the family.

            The fisherman paddled against and through violent waves and found the spot where the sunken grandma was drowning. Her red jacket, his guide. He jumped and sank. Her leg was stuck in the rocks. He pulled her free, but to get the leverage he’d gotten his own leg stuck in the same trap. The fisherman pushed the grandma up as far as his body would let him. Next he tried to free his own leg, he pulled and squirmed until his mouth was finally forced open and filled with the sea. The last thing he saw was a trash bag floating to the surface, in trail of the grandma. 

So on this October 30^th I was dressed just like him, with his own pipe. When I got to my grandmas house the rest of the family was already inside, at the table, with plates of crab and tuna, and bottles of wine. Everyone all dolled up, and then me, the fisherman.

            I knew my mother was furious with my costume because she took a bite of tuna before we had prayed.

            “Get that pipe out of your mouth!” My father said, then snatched it.

            “Let us pray,” Said my grandmother.

            “Allow me,” I said, and commenced. “Lord, we thank you for your great love, your overflowing cup. We praise you this day for the miracle you bestowed on our family. You pulled my beloved grandmother from the depths of the sea, from death. I just would like to know—”

            “Louie!” Yelled my mother.

            “Dear lord, What about the fisherman?”