Poor Ones

A story about a fisherman during the Paschal Triduum.

“Come and hear, and I will describe to you, all who fear God, what things He did for my soul.” - Psalm 66:16

1.

Friday Good Friday. No spade in the ground. His hand lay open to the sky. His other hand cups his glabella. The good day getting by without him. Tired skipper. Shaved head tar black. Lines of sweat dry up and stain rivers from his receding hairline to his eyelashes—there’s a teary border around the whites of his eyes.

His trials, Lord, soon carry forth. Vanguard etched into a 21-inch scaffold tube bracket laying on its side in the shade. A steadfast idle burn of purpose. Stretched out arms crack his back bones as if lit up by bullet hail. He pats the tailgate and goes into the shed. Large scatter of rods and unspun line, he finds one rubber knee boot. He pulls out of the hollow boot a white button shirt blind to the Saturn ring stains under the pits and round the collar.

He attends The Stations of the Cross. He flees…

Dead animal on the side looking up at the sky. His eyes roll back from the lumpy brown coat to the Chevrolet in front of him.

Now in his room he looks at the bed in curling light. Cur prints on the pillow linen. It’s almost supper. Ella you smell like a rot body. She must have been rolling in something. He takes her outside to the hose and unthreads where two ends meet. She sits and nods off. She closes her eyes and opens them to a bath of more light coming down from above. He gets her good around her neck and belly. Her head turns at bees in the clover as he leads her inside.

Watching People’s Court in his hands. An oriole outside sings as he watches the judge scold the babymama. Her long lashes cover the whites in her eyes. He smiles. Picking at a cigarette hole in the loveseat he puts his feet over the arm rest.

2

He dies and is brought back. Waking atop the florid sheet, night bugs land on his wet head. He crosses himself and moans. The trial begins. Cellophane and empty Parliament cartons litter the trailer. He lights something and traces his palm along his shaved scalp. He pulls two fishing poles aside. The rods bend on the narrow hall and small kitchen. Ella looks up but doesn’t move from her bed on the floor. He’s shoulder first into the broken door and the dew.

He backs up to the aluminum skiff, gets out and puts it on his back. His rubber knee boots thud as he aims the transom over his shoulder, fitting the 10ft boat between the wheel wells in the truckbed. The sun is still under as he drives down the hill through the marsh coming to the pond as the clouds turn red.

He unties the half hitch and gives the gunwale a few hard pulls and lifts it once more on his back. He spits out a mosquito and drops the boat on the bank, dragging the battery from the backseat and placing it in the stern. Then he winds the clamps from the Shakespeare trolling motor to the outboard. The wires run to the battery. It’s old and doesn’t work right. Swinging the oar like a sword into the hull, he starts it up. He goes, and he goes out, and he wants to die out there. Heartbent on a biggin he trolls a line and drowsily casts another.

3

A Carolina skiff lies lifeless in the slough. Red electrical tape peels a single stripe on the starboard side marking the waterline. A Willet in greywacke plumage flies from the beach plum.

Wading naked pinching a pebble on the brackish bed between his toes. He’s all in besides his nose and up. Eying the glass surface like the earth’s horizon itself. He gets out and drinks from the gallon. He picks up his button shirt and turns and treads back in with it draped like an orarion across his open forearms, like a baby being led to baptism. He washes it thoroughly so the smell of him might disappear.

A Herring soars. There’s a crack in the bulrush. He teases the minnows as he steps from his bath. Detonating Godsent water at each step, scaring the school off from left to right, and back to left, and back to right.

A single berry droops above his head. He pinches it. The crimson dye bleeds into the seam around his fingernails. The river is still and sediment-laden as he watches a man further down on the bank clad in white waders clean his striper and bluefish. He slices peeling scales into a tin can while a nearby work crew dredges into sand, and a butterfly lands on the excavator. He wonders if the operator knows he has been visited by something like that.

Khaki pants and white button shirt lacking a jacket. He’s uppin the hill, brushing aside buckhorn fans fit for a throned person. The gallon tilts. There’s nothing left. He’ll refill it at the church. In a spirit of resurrection, he lifts up his heart and turns the key.

He’s met by a flock of hearted smiles and he prays God will heal the poor ones who’ve met him. The line for Holy Communion begins and he starts to smell marrow and fat. He eyes her thin legs stepping with him. Ahead of him. He hasn’t been so frightened in his life. His eyes land on her hair. With three heads between the priest and him, he steps out of the line. The marsh rat runs from the chalice, back to the fenny grass.

4

His enemies come nigh and from the lowlands bedded with bluestem. He talks to God and God takes them by their heels. They fall down the highest hill and into the pit. From the brushwood, he hears a mule cry on Bob Johnson’s land. Arms up in the air, he sings to the Lord to pull him out of his bed in apt time. He sneers at a shape there in the room's corner. The dark shadow cast by a far light looks like wings. He prays to be a snail dissolving into slime. It’s night now.

5

He’s shaven and by the crossbuck sign slows down. Bumping over the crossties; thinks about Pennsylvania. He’s back to his passions, wishing up a good girl in a nice lot. Holly branches above her head, and red-wort behind her, draping there like a dossal. What can flesh do to him? Altogether, he has $22 and halfjar of milk. He goes back to the river and sets his rig. A while parked. Out of light and off the track.

Passing through stocks of Japanese Knotweed, pole in hand, something sharp whisks across his face. Thin line sliced under his left eye. Thorned by cat brier. Some blood runs on his cheekbone. He wipes the laceration like a teardrop. Licking his fingertip, he continues.

Got one on in no time. He lets it run tired for a half minute before fighting the fish and winning. As the trout flips about the rock, he grabs it by the tail and slaps the trout head against the bank. He cleans it right there on the bank and tosses the guts back into the water.

The meat is in a plastic zip-lock. He sings alleluia as he weighs it, extending his arm and jigging it up and down. O yea, alleluia. By the trestle off’ring sum up.

6

He goes under the moon as it sits pretty just before dusk. He picks up a weevil. Snout circling in fright, that it may all end here. He flicks the beetle into the dark and eve fully arrives. Above the fire, a grated piece of metal to cook on, chalked with black. He lays the trout meat and the scales glitter and spark and he wishes for some butter. There, an egret looks lost. But it knows how to hunt, how to kill. He watches the egret go about for a minute. A bony leg, a cricc in the sand. He weeps.

Some hours after dinner, he fights, he thinks, one of the seven princes of hell. And the demon laughs and shows him photos of girls in white lace. He tries not to look but he looks, and looks again. He doesn’t speak. He leaps and takes the ugly one to the floor, screaming in the name of Christ. And after a few blows it’s gone. Back to hell, or God forbid, a neighbor's home. And he lay there aching til morning.

He gets up and moves around. Feeds Ella breakfast. Atop his sodding sheets, he imagines St. Joseph and St. Joseph’s prayers and revelations on even ordinary matters. He can't imagine the burden of being a first-time father to the Savior. He wants to be a father but he’s brideless and tired. He drags and it fills his lungs. With Ella against his shin, he reads St John Chrysostom’s homily on Christ and the passing of the cup. The Father’s Will. What is the Lord’s will for this tired one? Tired shrew, running in and out of the marshland. He only knows how to fish. He can’t even skin a rabbit. He tried once…

And when he did it twisted like a rabid thing. And it kicked its hindlegs in a craze. He bit off a piece of the rabbit and tried to get his knife under the fur but he cut his thumb open. There, their blood spilled together and he made a mess. He took the tail off in one pull. He pulled it off angry and frustrated. He left the mess, the body, a portion for foxes.

7

Back in his truck he grips the steering wheel and rests his head on his knuckles. His soul faints inside him. He takes an exit and, after coming down the ramp, pulls aside the shining sumac. He shuts off the engine and finds some dirt. With his nails, he digs, and digs away. He digs up a little space for his head to rest in. Back against the earth, he covers his face with handfuls. His nostrils clog with God’s sweet dirt. He rolls in it. He flips like Ella would. He thinks of St. John the Evangelist. He thinks of staying there. He gets up.

8

Unclean again. He can’t look away. The passion comes and goes. His heart is fickle. His heart is like weather. God’s Light blinds him like St. Paul on the road to Damascus. And thin legs blind him like they blinded King David.

In the morning he goes out to the water and even the water blinds him as he casts another line and lurks there bowed down with hard labor, waiting for a sign of life.

9

At church, in the lot after, the boys circle his truckbed. It looks like an Italian fountain with the boys, clad in formal trousers, circling it. A fountain, yea. By the arches, a girl and her baby. He cups his chest and begs for Mary. He sighs on his truck, looking at the boys all hopeless…

Some went out onto the sea in ships, 
          doing business on the great waters;
they saw the deeds of the Lord, 
          his wondrous works in the deep.

He prays that he may be ready as can be, and strong. He prays, and then he ceases. And there’s a stirring in the fir.