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Show Go Love/225 shelled mussel shoal, not at all an easy task though do-able, something I could learn and pass on Two nights running, we eat fresh Ocean Perch for supper, the fillets fried golden the way I learned from Grandpa Stepwell, and I wish my pawnshop surfrod could only recall those fine bends Sheep-ha. blessed Sheep-ha. Our kind who art with Sheep-ha. Blessed be thy Sheep-ha, for thine is the kingdom and the glory forever and ever. Amen. We spend a night on the water in Newport-where the mouth of the Elk River passes beneath a bridge of such splendor that I hesitate to speak it, lest the metaphor of bridges overtake me for all time. Concrete wonders-these Oregon Coast bridges, unbelievable. Lara and I walk the piers and docks and find a boat named Hydrotherapy, have the mate pull out a tuna fish and watch him dress it, the silver knife flashing as he papers the fillet, rolling the stone-eyed head into a trough where many others look up. "Sell these to a hog farm," he says, and I rock back on my shoes. The fisherman pulls out makings and hand rolls a cigarette. He's talking to Lara, telling her about the whales out there in open water, how they sing a thousand miles underwater and breath spouts tall as skyscrapers, how they look you in the eye and remember. "Do sharks bite the whales?" Lara asks "No girl." No shark dare bite a whale They're the queens and kings out there-from here to China." He tosses me a can of beer from the fish cooler. Blood shines on the label and when I taste, I smell the fresh sweet scent offish, and he can't know what this means to me, how it takes me to the Stepwells and Lake Ouachita, where voices carry over water in the dark before sun comes up, my mother's father tying the blood knot in ten-pound test, a devils toothpick dangling from a Pfleuger rod. Always about water, all waters lead home. |
