Bodies Out to Sea
by Rae Ackroyd
Rae Ackroyd is from Olympia, WA. She’s currently an English and Creative Writing student at Western Washington University, where she received the Lois King Thore scholarship for showing promise in writing short stories. She is set to graduate in Spring 2024. Rae enjoys growing flowers, viewing art about families, and creating the occasional craft project.
Last night I dreamed I was lying at the bottom of Hirshman’s Harbor. There were barnacled rocks underneath my back, and I was looking up through shafts of light to the dancing surface. The water around me was cold, but I didn’t mind. It was peaceful to feel my hair moving gently around me in the liquid breeze. To feel the little crabs rushing to find shelter in the protected drifts beside my legs. I thought I saw a man’s hand break the skin of the water and I wanted to call out to him. But all I could do was gaze up – my words were lost in silent bubbles of air that floated to the surface. I thought it had been my father.
I woke up thinking of the time my father took me fishing when I was nine years old. He had moved thirty miles up the coast and was living in a little cabin not far from the bay that always smelled of pine and mildew. It never felt like a real house to me. It had no shower, hot water, or TV, and my father’s bed was in a little alcove that was only separated from the rest of the room by a curtain. When I stayed over, I slept on the tilted futon loveseat by the Potbelly stove. It didn’t even have a driveway; my father had to park his faded yellow Chevy next to Carl’s sedan with the dented hood. Carl was the one who owned the land the cabin was on. He had a house closer to the road, where he would let my father come in for a shower. He had a graying beard and a little huffing laugh that would follow every sentence he spoke. He was one of the few friends that I remember my father having.
This was all a far cry from my life at home; a real house, even though it shared one wall with Ms. Nelson and her son, Ronnie the fifth grader. It’s called a duplex, Elizabeth, my mother would say, her fingers pulling my hair tight into a high French braid down the back of my head. And I would struggle to chew my eggs without nodding, not daring to upset her work.
It was only a year after my parents’ divorce and the space between them had only sharpened the relief of their differences. My mother thrived on the predictability of routines. She worked hard, but she wouldn’t sit down before asking me to pick up the books that I had left strewn about on the couch. They met working at a movie theater, and they only moved in together after my mother got pregnant. It’s not a complicated story, but I still like to believe that they loved each other. They both had a witty sense of humor and an unobtrusive way of moving through the world. Maybe my mother felt she had to finally let go when my father started coming home late and hiding the shadows of his thoughts even from her. But as a child, all I knew was that I felt both their absences whenever they were away. I missed my father and on nights when I couldn’t sleep, I would imagine him running into my room with his black Converse to save me from the looming monsters of my imagination.
******
Carl owned the boat we were going to be fishing from, and we met him at the marina. The air was cool against my skin and there was a flag that said Hirshman’s Harbor twitching in the wind. There were tall sailboats with empty masts that jingled in the breeze and slick-covered motorboats. By comparison, Carl’s boat was low to the water with wooden benches that had been painted dark blue like the rest of its interior. He was sitting at the back by the tiller, but he stood up and offered me one of his calloused hands as I stepped onto the boat. My father followed with his fishing rod and tackle box. Carl had brought peanuts, chips, beer, and a cooler for whatever we caught, which he had shoved underneath one of the benches. He even produced an orange life jacket, which he said was for the little lady. The lifejacket went behind my head and hugged up against my ears before meeting in the front. My father spent a minute struggling to adjust its buckle, before realizing that Carl was waiting for an introduction.
“This is my daughter, Lizzy,” he said when he was finally satisfied with the strap. Using the nickname he had called me as a baby.
Out on the harbor, the boat slapped against the surface of the waves. I held onto its side for stability and watched the path of white foam that was left in its wake. Sometimes, when the boat hit an especially tall crest, ocean spray would jump up onto us. When I licked my lips, I tasted salt. Beside me, my father only smiled and rubbed his stubbled cheek. At last, we had reached a stretch of coastline that Carl and my father deemed appropriate, and Carl cut the engine. The boat slowed to drift in the gentle lapping water of the cove. Carl explained to me that this was a good place because there was a creek running into the bay and we were looking for a little fish called Surf Smelts, who liked some freshwater.
“Snickers bars of the sea,” my father said, opening his tackle box and attaching extra hooks to his line. I watched the movement of his hands. He had defined knuckles that made his fingers look crooked when he extended them to point at something like he was to indicate the jar of bait grubs.
“Thanks, Lizzy,” he mumbled as he pierced the wriggling grubs like I did with the candies that I made necklaces out of at summer camp.
Carl and my father cast out their lines and cracked open cans of beer. We passed around the chips and the peanuts and at first, the wait was okay. I climbed into the pointed front of the boat and let my fingers dip into the cold water. The chip grease on them left an oil slick like the ones that formed underneath my mother’s car after it rained. Maybe the fish like chips too and I can lure them to the surface, I thought, before I remembered that the entire bay must taste salty to them. A jellyfish passed below me, and I instinctively pulled my hand out of the water. It had a yellow yolk-like center and a pulsing translucent body. I wondered if it ever got tired; one big muscle fighting against the waves, but it looked so soft. If I hadn’t known better, I would have wanted to dive in with it.
The sun was warm, and I leaned my head back against the wooden planks of the boat. Above me, the sky was clear and blue. I could almost have fallen asleep, lulled by the gentle swaying of the boat, except I was hungry for real food like the cheese sandwiches my mother would make for my school lunches and the back of my throat burned from all the salty snacks. There was nothing to drink but beer and ocean water. If I was older, I might have understood my hunger as the cause for my bad mood, but I was nine, so instead, I felt a flash of irritation at my father for not bringing anything important and for the fish being so darn shy. It was boring and I missed my mother.
“Hey Lizzy, the fish are biting.” I looked up to see Carl and my father bent over their rods, the lines twisting in the water. I climbed down to sit beside my father, grateful for any interruption of the monotony. His hands steadied the rod, and I cranked in the line that felt alive with some hidden movement. Suddenly, the surface broke and a small fish was hanging from the hook on my father’s line. He placed its smooth, shivering body in my hands. It was slender and small. His hook had torn a hole in its mouth, but I forced my gaze to focus on its silver scales. They looked like crinkled tinfoil or a shiny nickel that I could see through. My father smiled at me as I placed the fish into Carl’s ice chest. Together, Carl and my father caught three more fish, but I stayed back and watched the cooler, the fish’s mouth gaping open to breathe the absent sea.
We rode back to the marina in silence, except for the hum of the engine and the surf left in the boat’s wake. The wind pulled my hair loose from my mother’s braid and whipped it around my face. I was weary and my forgotten hunger had returned.
After tying up at the dock, we unloaded the boat and followed Carl up into the little marina market. Inside were racks of packaged snacks. I dragged my feet and pleaded with my father to buy me a bag of cookies.
He looked surprised. “You’re really hungry?” he asked. But he bought me the cookies and led me over to the fish counter where one of Carl’s friends was letting him clean our haul. Their silver bodies were lying on a plastic cutting board and Carl braced one of them between his fingers and swiftly cut off its head, leaving the pale pink flesh of its neck exposed. I watched as he dragged the tip of his knife across the length of its belly and pulled out the darker guts from inside. The fish had spent the last hour dead in a box full of ice, but there was something final about seeing their bullet-like bodies deflated and severed apart. We were really killing them. My father took the knife and cleaned the second one before gesturing toward me.
“You want to try?” I remembered his shining face when I pulled the fish out of the bay. He would guide the knife in my hand and expose their insides, but I couldn’t look past the smear of blood on the white cutting board and their brains already cast aside. I shook my head.
Back at the house, Carl set up a grill on a smooth patch of his gravel driveway and my father lined up the four headless fish to cook. I sat nearby on the ground and absently pulled up handfuls of grass. There was a popping sound of my father opening a beer and I watched the can connect with his lips. He looked at me, his eyes suddenly sharp and focused.
“I’m sorry I didn’t help you clean them,” I blurted out.
There was a pause, but my father smiled and replied, “Don’t worry. You’re still becoming a little fishing champion.” I waited for him to say something else. That he missed me out at his cabin. That he was going to take me fishing again. That he would make sure to bring cheese sandwiches next time. I would even let his hand help me guide the knife across their bodies. But he was quiet. I had never heard him sound so proud.
Carl boiled potatoes, and we ate on his mossy back porch. The fish was white and flakey with a soft sweetness. I smeared ketchup on my potatoes that looked like the fish’s blood and listened to the sound of Carl’s breathy laugh mixed with my father’s low voice. From the woods behind the cabin, a chorus of frogs were calling out. The spring evening chill was approaching, but I felt warm and satisfied. The food was good, and the presence of my father and Carl felt steady.
I wonder what I would see if I could be there now. Would the porch railing be rotting off? Would the ends of my hair be swaying wildly into the ketchup on my plate? Would there be beer cans stacked beside the men's chairs? Would I be able to see if my father was unhappy? Or was it all still under the surface at this point?
That night, in his cabin, I lay on the futon under an open sleeping bag. It was dark; shaded under trees without the midnight burn of streetlights, but I felt more trapped by the silence. No refrigerator. No TV music in the living room. No Ronnie the fifth grader crashing around on the other side of the wall. Through the curtain, I could make out the sound of my father’s breath rising and falling. I felt like the only girl alive.
I woke up to the sound of a strange cascading yipping. I slipped off the futon and dashed across the cold wood floor to my father’s bed. He was snoring and I had to shake him awake. He looked confused as I tried to convey my fear. It’s only coyotes, he told me, but he still carried me back to the futon and tucked me under the sleeping bag blanket. His arms were like the embrace of a towel warm from the dryer. My father was there to rescue me. If I could go back; I would thank him and reach up to touch the soft bristle of his cheek.
******
I didn’t get many chances to go fishing with my father again. He spent most of the next summer in Alaska working for the canneries, and Carl sold his property the year after, forcing my father to move and cutting off easy access to his boat. Sometimes months would pass, and I wouldn’t hear anything from him, except the wordless checks he sent to my mother. Your father has gone off-grid again, she would tell me with the annoyed satisfaction of someone whose frustrated predictions are coming true. Other times, he would come to town and take me out to quiet greasy meals at Angelo’s Pizza. He would kiss me goodbye on the forehead, his breath heavy on my face, and I would struggle to form the easy goodbyes I gave my mother. There was something about being around my father that made words disappear. He didn’t talk much and when he did it didn’t always make sense. Once, he pulled a fish out of the water, and said look, Lizzy, it’s God. His eyes reflected the strange green-blue of the bay. I giggled.
When I was fourteen, I spent another night with my father, but everything was different. He was living in a dingy basement apartment in one of the port towns further up north. It had all the amenities I would have craved as a younger child, but it was cloaked in damp disrepair. There was mold between the seams of the vinyl bathroom walls and stains where water had leaked in from the little egress windows. My father was working the night shift at the port, so he spent most of the day sleeping while I listlessly watched TV on the lumpy sofa. When he woke up, he made me mac and cheese with water instead of milk. I asked him if he wanted to go somewhere, but he seemed hesitant to leave until it was dark. We walked to the nearby park that smelled of weed and he tried to point out the stars to me. The sky was only partially clear, and my father’s voice trailed off as Orion’s belt disappeared behind a veil of clouds. Moisture from the log I was sitting on was seeping through the butt of my jeans. I had wanted to see him, but now everything felt strange and distant.
On our way back to his apartment he told me, I can’t stay here, Lizzy. His face looked distorted in the buzzing orange light of the streetlamp. Maybe that was him trying to tell me whatever it was he couldn’t say. Maybe I should have asked him to explain. But I was fourteen and I was frustrated by the way the visit was playing out. It seemed like the most obvious statement in the world to me. His life seemed so small. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to stay where he was.
After that visit, contact with my father became spotty, and then nothing at all. He stopped sending my mother checks, and when she finally called his employer, they said that he had moved. I figured maybe it was for the best. The apartment had clearly been sad, and he seemed to have no idea how to host a visitor anymore. He would probably reach out once he was settled into the next place. I didn’t hear from him again.
******
This morning, I was late to work. My dream had left me distracted, but I would have been okay if I hadn’t foolishly decided to take the ferry into the city, even though I knew it took longer. The main cabin was full of seasoned commuters with their coffee and newspapers. It should have been cozy, but all I could imagine was each of their steamy breaths coming together to hit my face full of their bodily ills. Out on the deck, the wind sent a cold breeze through my damp hair, and I looked over the railing at the deep water that churned icy and pale in the boat’s wake. The movement was dizzying, and I felt something inside me bubble up to the surface. Who was my father anyway? And what kind of daughter could just let him go? I should have called everyone who knew his name and begged to know where he had gone. I should have found him and told him – that I missed him, that I loved him, that he was my father, and that I wanted him to be okay. The boat started turning as it prepared to back into its docks and I suddenly wondered if here, miles from Hirshman’s Harbor, my father was the one at the bottom of the bay reaching up to me.
