In The Nets

Gina was a goddess. She’d told me that herself more than once, and I had a thing about her sort — not that this thing did me much good.
Deep was a hop-topple town shucked up between the hills and the sea, like dust blown in a corner to harden and crack. I didn’t know a soul there that wasn’t born and bred. One school, one church, one graveyard.
My poppa bought a sloop some place down the coast and decided he was a fisherman. I believed him. I believed him his whole life, so when he went up the hill in a box it was my turn to take the sloop out each day and see I believed my own story.
When the tide let me I’d be on the dock mid-afternoon in time to see the salon close. Gina left on high red heels that danced her down main street to Cissy’s coffee place. She’d sit in the window smoking cigarettes and listening to the radio.
She was a goddess.
Tom Grunner was the one to do what I could only dream of, and they moved in to a sturdy place Gina’s pop had built, out near the canyon road where it looped under the high elms. I’d been out there once or twice — social calls. Tom fixed the engine in the sloop.
Last April the cod were running thick and I didn’t get to tie-in at the dock a whole much, seeing how my poppa fished cod off the banks his whole life and I saw no reason to change.
Rain looked to threaten. The sky out east was purple with it and the air smelled of cloud.
Time to haul in.
Codfish danced on the surface as the net tightened in. Eyes sky-pointing, mouths agape. Silver backed treasure — all mine.
Then amongst the catch a flash of rose pink caught me. I blinked and looked twice. “Gina?”
The net rope bit my hand and whipped away from me, fish scattered, sensing their chance.
I grabbed the line again and hauled in, straining to catch a second glimpse of what I’d seen. Just a trick of the light, of course, like pictures in the firelight or shapes in the clouds. I cursed the net, not nearly as full as it had been, then cursed some more at the raw gash on my palm.
The first drops colored the boards of the sloop as I sifted the catch, tossing screg over the side.
The engine coughed and we turned for shore, standing at the rail looking back where we’d been, tracing imagined shapes between the waves with my mind’s eye.
The storm was settled in by the time the catch was iced and tackle stowed. I hunched against it and made through town, ducking into Cissy’s for shelter.
“Rough night in store,” Cissy called from behind the counter, pouring coffee and fetching a slice of pie.
“Fair rough,” I replied, shaking rainwater from my hair and hanging my coat. “A day or two I’d say?”
“That’s what I heard.” Cissy lay plate and mug aside each other where I’d sat. “Everyone home safe?” she asked me, standing next to the table as broad as sunset.
“Aye,” the pie was warm, “all boats home.”
Sheriff Carter was at the counter reading the news. He never looked up.
“Well there’s a blessing anyway,” Cissy said, straightening the magazines on the side shelf.
Me, Cissy and the Sheriff looked up when the door jingled.
Gina.
“You get caught out there, honey?” Cissy said, heading for the counter. “Rough night ahead.”
Gina moved to the table by the window, her hair was soaked. “I guess,” she said, unbuttoning her coat. She took cigarettes and a Zippo from her pocket and placed them on the table as Cissy came up with a plate and a mug.
The old woman stopped and looked down. “Gina, honey,” she said in a voice full of motherly, “your shoes! You’ll catch your death walking out there with nothing on your feet.”
Gina sat down and lit a cigarette. She blew a jet of smoke straight into the air. “I don’t get colds,” she said. “Immune, I guess.” She turned and looked at me like she knew I’d been staring all along.
Cissy was on her way back to the counter again. “Young people,” she said, laughing, “think they’re immune to everything.”
“Some of us are,” Gina said, her face set so it was hard to see if she was fooling. She stared at me like I was the thing out of place.
I took the last of my coffee in one, pushing my chair and pulling my coat.
The silver flanks of the cod were in my head — writhing — all slick and perfect. They were gulping air — fish out of water.
Gina’s eyes were on me as I stepped through tables and mumbled to Cissy.
I could see her face there again in the nets — there in that impossible place.
The door was behind me and the rain came on harder. The rope burn on my hand stung.
Gina was a goddess.
I had to get the hell out of Deep.