permanent.”
“Now there’s a word,” Grace said. “Permanent.”
Reba said, “I never knew how permanent the word permanent sounded, until just now.”
7
They pulled the skin off the catfish using sharp pieces of bone, their hands, and their bare teeth, bit into the skin near where the head had been-it got chopped off with bone tools-scuttled backward, stripping the skin off in dark bands, revealing the clean white meat, still pulsing.
They cut into the meat or tore at it with their hands, and pretty soon they were through the meat and into the guts. Blood and fluids ran out of the fish and through the holes in the grating, hit the bubbling mass below, and disappeared.
“I think that’s stomach acid,” Grace said, nodding down at the stuff below the grate.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think you’re right.”
“I think we better get in the chow line,” Steve said. “That catfish, big as it is, is going fast.”
We hustled back to the bus, where we had knives, and, slipping and sliding over the goo on the floor, we found them.
My knife was in my backpack, which I had appropriated from a car where the kid who had owned it had been eaten by her parents, and along with the knife were some other items, most of them ruined. But my journal, which I kept in a plastic bag I had found long back, appeared to be in tip-top shape. That was good, but right then I would have traded it for a ham sandwich.
Back at the fish, we cut off slabs of meat and ate them raw. It was surprisingly good, but then again, most anything to eat had become a gourmet treat as far as I was concerned. I had known folks back at the drive-in to peck undigested berries and such out of piles of dinosaur shit, had sworn that it having passed through the stomach of a critter made it more delectable.
When we finished eating, we looked about to see all the others wiping their oily hands on their clothes or bodies or in their hair. I used my ragged pants to take care of my etiquette.
Finished, the Fish People eyed us for a long while without speaking. Finally, Bjoe, having rescued his dick from lonely abandon, and having picked the leech off his thigh and eaten it, said, “Up there. That’s where we ought to go. That biggest cave. That’s where we have our community meetings.”
“What kind of meeting we talking about?” Steve asked.
“I don’t like heights,” James said. “Fact is, I don’t like being inside a goddamn fish either, but I can take that better than heights.”
“You need not come,” Bjoe said. “None of you need come. But that is where we can drink. We have drink there.”
“You mean like booze?” Cory asked.
Bjoe nodded.
“Where would you get that?” Homer asked.
“Made it.”
“Oh,” Cory said. “And may I ask out of what?”
“Spoiled things.”
“Of course.”
“This fish, our swimming home, he eats what I guess is algae. Some kind of weed anyway. You add water, let it set till it smells, which takes, I don’t know… who knows down here… Too long, anyway. But when it smells worse than the inside of the fish here, then you know it’s ready. You got to hold your nose on that first jolt, but after that, it’s all right. Besides, it beats all the bourbon and beer we don’t have.”
“There’s a point somewhere in all that,” James said.
“Does the fish ever do any acrobatic type swimming?” Grace asked. “I mean, anything that might make all this goop beneath us slosh up through the grates?”
“It does,” Bjoe said. “Now and again. Mostly, just a bit of side-to-side movement. Not bad. The Big Boy is quite steady, actually. Most of the time. I do advise not being in the area of your bus, however. Lots of water comes through his gullet there, washes through. Sometimes, enough of it comes through, the goop as you call it, swells over the grates, and then we all got to stay cavebound. You really should get your own cave. You got to cut it into the meat. But not too deep. You do that, you could injure the fish, or cut through the outer skin, then it would all be over. Which, sometimes we think might not be such a bad thing. A quick rush of water, and down we all go to the bottom, our lungs wet as Noah’s flood.”
“I guess we can come up,” I said. “To talk.”
“And have a drink of that rotten fish swizzle,” Cory said.
“I’d like to try that,” James said, “but once again, heights. Ain’t for it.”
“I might can bring you some back,” Cory said.
“That would be great. Just like the rest of my life. Great, great, great.”
8
With the exception of James, who decided to stay with the bus, we followed Bjoe and his band up one of the rolling ladders. I tried not to look up, as the fella in front of me didn’t have on any pants, and a nastier asshole you could not imagine, and when he stepped high his grapes swung wrinkled and ugly on their vine.
Behind me came the others, Reba, Cory, Homer, Steve, and Grace last in line.
It was a precarious trip, as the rungs of the ladder were damp from wet feet, and I had to hold on tight. I cautioned the others to do the same.
When we reached the summit, we stepped off the ladder and into a very large cut in the meat; a pulsating cave that went some distance back. The walls were wet with thin stains of blood from the fish, and you could see veins throbbing in the wall of the cave. One rib bone had been exposed and was visible. I could see skin over the rib and wondered just how thick that skin was, and how much it would take to pierce it, bringing in all that water; thought too about these folks, and what Bjoe had said, about how they sometimes thought about ending it.
I didn’t like my life, but as I had come to realize, it was the one I had. I wanted to play out its string as long as I could, and I preferred to not have anyone cut it short for me just because they had had enough and wanted to go.
There were skulls in the caves, or rather the tops of skulls. They were split from the eyes up, and had been turned over to be used as utensils.
“How’d you come by your tableware?” I asked.
“Folks that died,” Bjoe said. “We ate them. Waste not, want not. You have a problem with that?”
Actually, I didn’t. I didn’t like it, but in this world, you did what you could. It was okay by me. Cannibalism has its place.
If they had in fact died, and not been helped along.
I had a tense sensation that we might have just climbed a long ladder to unwillingly accept a dinner invitation.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Bjoe said. “And no. We’re not going to murder you.”
“I could have told you that,” Grace said, looking ready to fight.
“We may not look like much,” Bjoe said. “And I may play with my dick more than a rap musician, but we don’t mean you any harm. Long as you abide by the rules and get along and such.”
“That’s good to hear,” Steve said.
“What about that booze?” Cory said.
“We’ll come to that,” Bjoe said. “Please. Make yourself at home. Guys, play with your dicks if you want. We don’t discourage it. Ladies, you can plunk your pudding if you like. We don’t consider it vulgar here.”
