Across our island from the dock, Father lugged a snotty mess of wire and rasped about Winston. “Caught the damn turtle at the cage again. Fish are gone. Fucker better learn its place.” Globs of flesh dangled in the web. “Don’t worry,” he said, “we’ll catch more. Can’t eat stuff floatin’ in the water. Not clean.”
Winston’s a sneaky thing. A shell that drifts from silt in the night, tearing through Father’s cages to get food. Two or three walleyes—whatever we’ve kept—always gone by morning. His nose often pokes up through waves, but he’ll push onto land, too. Through the kitchen window, I’ll watch the little speck skitter around, dragging his belly through damp grass. But his sprints will tire him, and he’ll finally lie on the ground to snap at Father’s legs.
In July, Father would stalk around the beach while I watched the mergansers. He’d search for Winston’s eggs, for his secret spot. Then, a sound, a sloppy crunch—over and over— would stab at my belly.
One night in a rainstorm, Winston tumbled into our boat. It took Father longer than usual to bail it out that morning. His shins pressed hard against the dock wood. More sloppy crunches. Tossed away, the paddle splashed into the reeds where dragonfly nymphs chewed shiners. The paddle bobbing, split, bent. He stuck the milk jug into the boat and ladled out the pinky-yellow water like soup. I don’t know where Winston was put, but I saw him two days later, smaller, like a baby.
When Father could stay awake to clean his fish before bed, he’d take them behind the shed before returning with flaps of meat. He’d kneel on the dock’s edge, holding his knife like a sceptre from a painting, rinse scales and jelly blood from his fillets and yellow fingernails. The meat carved clean from the murk, dripping in his fist. We’d stare at its lines slicing against the sunset. The walleyes will stay in our lake if we only catch a few at a time, he’d promise. And, with a swatted hand, I knew not to touch his knife.
Your Dad’s knees… he once whimpered, they can’t be going already. He tried lying on his gut to rinse our fillets. The lake swollen past his elbows. His nose dipping in and out of the waves. And in the reflection, Father’s mud-dark eyes. On the surface, water popped, and Father snapped “shit” and “fuck.” Winston had launched his skull, his jaws, from the lake and clipped off a bit of nostril. Father never fully healed—a spur of cartilage still pokes out.
With his face creased like firewood, Father sometimes stares at pictures of Mom. The last time I saw her, the grouse drummed. And Father screeched at me to stay in the kitchen while she lay in the grass, puffed up, egg-round. Her face blurred—red as a sunburn, but clouds blocked the sun. Father fell over her and didn’t stop his weeping for half an hour.
Then she left. A trail etched in the grass and pine needles. The swarming hum of the boat motor. At dusk, Father returned with black cans. Skulls and bees on them. The shed, the roof— even the ground got sprayed with the cans. Mist speckled on the wood like dew. Father sobbed and vomited from the bitterness in his mouth. Mom will hate to hear that he used chemicals outside.
It’s late now, and my stomach growls. Father seethes on the couch, his hands placed neatly on his lap. His stomach silent. He gazes through the redecorated family room, glances at the empty mousetraps and fly tapes. The oil landscapes he painted were burned to boil any roots I could dig up. Same with the pine panels behind the canvases—bits hacked away, leaving craggy bars that rise over us.
Last month, the garden and the road to town drowned. On tiptoe, my fingers just graze the shotgun stock. But my arms are too thin to aim it. I couldn’t find Father’s shells anyway. And drifting off, he mumbles about Winston while I lie on the floor—my stomach twisting.