Fishing the Sloe-Black River Read Online Free PDF Page B

the front window of the pawnshop, next to a hunting bow. The trust fund is dry, but Enrique is adamant that I don’t call his father. The insurance people are gentle but unyielding. Sometimes I imagine a man at the very tip of Tierra del Fuego reaching his arms out toward the condors that flap their wings against the red air. He wonders where his son has gone.
    Enrique sometimes talks of moving to the Pampas. His mind takes him there, and we are building a wooden fence together behind a ranch house. The grasses sweep along with a northward wind. At night we watch the sun swing downward behind a distant windmill.
    Late at night he often wakes and babbles about his father’s cattle farm. When he was young he would go to the river with his friends. They would have swimming contests, holding against the rapids. Whoever stayed longest in one spot was the winner. In the late afternoons, he’d still be there, swimming stationary in the current, flailing away, without noticing that his friends were already halfway down the river. After the competition, they would stand in the water and catch fish with their hands. Then they’d light a campfire and cook the fish. It was Enrique who taught me how to gut when I first got the job down in the warehouse. With one smooth sweep of the finger you can take out all the innards.
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    When scrambling eggs I always make sure to add a little milk and whisk the fork around the bowl quickly so that none of the small stringy pieces of white will be left when they’re cooked. The only disturbing thing about my mother’s breakfasts were the long thin raw white pieces. The kitchen is small, with only room for one person to move. I lay the baguette on the counter and slice it, then daub butter on the inside. The oven takes a long time to warm up. In the meantime I boil water and put some teabags in the sunflower-patterned mugs.
    I hear Enrique stir out of bed and move slowly toward the window. At first the noise startles me, but I’m glad he’s awake. I hope he doesn’t cut his feet on the stray glass—the doctor told us that the longer this goes on the harder it will be to stop a cut from bleeding.
    Steam has gathered on the glass face of the oven clock. You’re late again, O’Meara, were ya picking petals offa roses? I peel the oranges and arrange them in segments on the plate. Or maybe you were spanking the monkey, is that it, O’Meara? I hear the radio click on and a chair being dragged out onto the balcony. I hope he’s put his scarf on under his dressing gown or else the chill will get to him.
    I wish I could have seen him when I was down on the street, watched him sitting there, looking out over the white city, his hair dark and strewn like seaweed, the tufts on his chest curling toward his neck, his face chiselled, the scar on his chin worn like the wrongly tied knot of a Persian rug.
    The eggs puff up and harden, sticking to the side of the saucepan. I scrape them off with a fork and then arrange the dollops on two plates. I’ve burnt the bread a little and the water is still not boiled. Amazing thing that, water. The molecules bouncing off each other at a huge rate of speed, passing on energy to one another, giving heat, losing heat. In the warehouse I spend my time thinking about these brutally stupid things, whittling the hours away. There’re lots of people in this town’d be happy to gut fish, bum-boy. I put the bread on a third plate and wait. When the water finally boils I pour it on the teabags, making sure the little paper tabs stay outside the mugs. I hold the three plates in the shape of a shamrock in my right hand—I was a waiter before I met Enrique—and I grab the handles of both cups with my left forefinger and thumb.
    The door to the bedroom is slightly ajar and I push it with my left foot. It opens with a creak but Enrique doesn’t turn in his chair on the balcony. Perhaps the