Free The Forty Fathom Bank and Other Stories by Les Galloway Page B

hold was full. Sharks spilled out and covered the deck. Once I grabbed May’s gaff and, leaning far out, sunk the steel hook deep into live flesh. The thrashing weight unbalanced me and I was half over when May’s hand, like a vise on my arm, pulled me back. I fell against the wheelhouse biting air, then was up again and away. In the open hold heaped up sharks writhed, their tails slapping softly, blood sheathed bellies revolving, abrasive, sand-gray and violet backs arching and twisting, crescent, serrated mouths agape in their strange and silent dying. Across the deck dozens more rolled about. Blood-black, phlegmy slime clung to the gunn’ls and sideboards. In the scuppers the bodies of young sharks, disgorged from pregnant females, squirmed weakly like soft, blind tadpoles. Forward beyond the heavysideboards, a big one twisted and snapped itself into the water. I snatched up the axe and in a frenzy danced about, battering in the heads of every shark that moved. And all the while my skinny body, incited by some demonic fire, darted this way and that, scraggy bearded, uncut hair flying, two days’ accreted filth on pants and shirt, leaping, squatting, smashing, killing and shouting out numbers in a shrill voice, all the while May’s apocalyptic figure, unperturbed, deliberate and infallible, stood bigger than life, by the grooved iron wheel of the power gurdy, all certitude, all rhythm, a procession of dependabilities like the diurnal tides or the equinoxes.
    The set was in and May was clearing away a space for the tubs when I finally began to look around and take notice of things. No less than a thousand soupfin sharks filled the hold, the forepeak and the entire deck from forward of the wheelhouse to the area May had cleared just aft of the hatch. I stumbled inside and threw the engine out of gear, then leaned against the wheelhouse and, with my arm dangling limply, gazed over the monstrous cargo that shortly would be hoisted, slingload by slingload, onto the pier at Princeton, weighed in and evaluated at some forty-five thousand dollars. Yet at the moment, I would have given up everything, my share of the catch and the remote possibility of any of May’s share too just to sleep, to sink down right where I stood and drift off into utter forgetfulness.
    â€œWe still have time for one short set if you feel up to it,” May said, studying the water and the sky to the southwest. He had just finished sloshing his arms and face with seawater from the bucket. Now he shook the water off his hands and came over to the wheelhouse looking as clean and fresh as if he had just bathed. “It probably won’t blow much until around dark.” His voice was as quiet as ever. There was nosign of weariness either in his movements or expression, or, any sign of special satisfaction about the forty thousand or so he had made in less than two days. The fact that there were still some working hours left seemed, at the moment, to be his only concern.
    The thought of going through the ordeal of another set, even a short one, seemed more than I could take. Besides, I thought bitterly, I would still not get a cent more than my original amount. And then, and for the first time that day, a quick and terrifying image of the big white-breasted gull with its gray-white body twisting in the water passed like something cold across my brain. I flicked my cigarette over the side.
    â€œWell,” I said in a thin voice, “I guess we’d better get them while we can.”
    I did not look at May, but out over the ocean. Except for a few swiftly moving clouds, the sky had cleared. The water, for some reason, had changed to an inky black.
    May immediately began getting the set ready. First he separated five of the tubs and, after cutting the line, made the free end fast to the kedge anchor. Then he got out the last of the sardines and started to bait. There was nothing now for me to do, so I went below and put on a