"The Plan"
The new system, Individual Fish Quotas, it was labeled, had come into existence in 1995. It eliminated the possibility of acquiring a black cod license by simply purchasing one from "Fish and Game" and a halibut permit from the "International Halibut Commision" people. Traditionally, if a man could put a boat and the requisite gear together, usually as the result of years of hard work, a little horse trading with the local bank, and some luck, he could hire a crew and they'd take their chances. Anyone could get in on it, it was a lot of very hard work, a gamble, and a chance to consolidate a grubstake to improve your lot in Life.
That was all over now. The quotas for black cod and halibut had been divided up by shares into the hands of a few based on their track records during the middle 80's. Some recipients weren't even fishing anymore; they had retired, sold their boats, and were completely out of the business. But they could still either sell their shares, or lease them out, sitting on the beach while some disposessed longliner did the dirty work and took all the risks with his own gear and boat for half-share.
The last free for all halibut derby had been in September of '94. Jeb had been in on it; but it wasn't a good trip. Oh, they caught their load all right, that wasn't it. Jeb had felt angry almost all the way through it. He had wanted and intended to enjoy this last roundup, but his mood had been out of his control, and he couldn't shake it. Another door had closed, locked shut; another route to independence and personal freedom, paved over by the fat cats who were charging toll.
This had precipitated a break, a break in continuity, the last straw of a series of straws. In spite of this, he was going to the well once again, for one more drink, even though his heart and soul just weren't into it. He had been living the life of a fisherman for the experience of it, for the freedom and sense of aliveness it gave him, focusing on the immediate present, and relying on his skills and guts to make a living. He knew of nothing that could compare. Now, this time however, he was doing it solely for the money; it was just a job, another gig. He had jumped into the middle of his present scene three quarters of the way through the salmon season, after the skipper's wife had fractured a few fingers; the boat had rolled, sliding the heavy steel hatch cover against her hand as she held onto the combing to steady herself. "A stupid thing to do, not the first time she's screwed up," the skipper had told Jeb matter of factly upon his arrival by float plane. He had slowly nodded yes, blankly staring at his new skipper, unsure as to where to file away this unsolicited confidence. At that moment in time, Jeb had backed up, perceptually, as it were, and increased scope to gather in the larger picture, detail-wise. This was an automatic whenever he encountered unanticipated developments. The background was a familiar constant with which to identify; against this he had placed the object of his scrutiny, the skipper.
They had been tied to a ninety-foot power scow delivering fish. It was getting dark; the lights from the tender were casting shadows through the riggings of both boats, masking the profile of the skipper so that Jeb was unable to get a clear picture of him.
In the fishhold directly in front of him, the crewmen had been moving back and forth, crouched over in the low ceiling, spitting words at one another. He had found the sounds of the hydraulics and generators something on which to focus; from this vantage point he identified the parameters of existence, nullifying all incoming low-level noise.
Deliveries of fish were supposed to be fun times, high times, times to celebrate the score, the kill, the completion of a cycle. Barriers and pretensions would dissolve in the salty, gritty air; a solid feeling of accomplishment and self-worth would revitalize any flagging egos; the envelope of discipline and restraint would disappear. On the deck of this boat, however, the atmosphere had been tense; barely suppresed anger and irritation occasionally bubbling to the surface. Fuck it, he had thought, maybe it's only stress and tiredness from being short-handed for a week. In any event, it's just a job.
On awakening the following morning, he made coffee while the others still slept. He needed to get a jump on the day, surmise the terrain, come to grips with his present situation; plus, he had long since learned that to go from warm bunk to cold wet deck in a single leap was the beginning of hell. Nothing could be expected to go right on a day that started without coffee and mental preparation, especially coffee. Jeb needed his quiet time alone.
It was a chill rainy day in June, somewhere off the west coast of Kodiak island, Alaska. Twenty or so years before, he had been earnest and eager to learn and know everything he could about what he was into. He had always seen himself as an equal partner on any venture and wanted to be a valuable member thereof, holding up his end. He would've made a point, for instance, of knowing precisely where he was on the chart, for no better reason than to simply declare as fact that he was there in full and intended to assert his enthusiasm and willingness. He wanted to be treated with respect, and this was how he did it.
But this morning, he remained indifferent, finding a strange comfort in the vagueness, a cog in a wheel, deciding that any information extraneous to his job description simply didn't matter. 'Somewhere' was just another place where there might be fish, fish that if caught would mean a couple of bucks.
Seven A.M. came around, all too quickly. Suiting-up on deck in the early morning mist was a painful reminder to Jeb of injuries and abuse his body had known. He had a single-minded technique for getting around this as well as that peculiar awkwardness that comes with being the new guy on the block; he just ignored it. The same way he had learned to ignore the over- friendlinesss and exhuberance at the beginning of a season. It never lasted; when blood first hits the deck and things start popping, the wheat is cut from the chaff, reality sets in, and the world's smallest isolated ad-hoc community takes shape, the shake-down cruise.
These two characters, his fellow crewmen, with whom he now found himself associated, had apparently come to terms with this realization, in their own curious ways. Jeb did a quick read, he was staring at a couple of disheartened prisoners fortifying themselves against the onslaught of the coming day, weighing the worth of it, planning escape, no doubt. They were standing several feet from one another on deck, looking in different directions out at the water, ostensibly for jumpers, saying nothing. Jeb stood over by the cabin wall, next to the door, under the ease, holding a cup of cold coffee. The boat was running full-bore, the skipper looking for a place to set; the sound of the diesel was loudest out on the open deck where the two statues stood resolute. The spell dissolved in a blink when the tin-edged Voice came over the godspeaker, "GET READY." The skiff-man, clutching his insulated coffee mug, ran over the web, jumped into the skiff and cranked it. The kid, the other member of the deckcrew, grabbed a small sledge from a bucket tucked in the corner behind Jeb, never saying a word, and sat on the lumpy pile of net by the release, which held the skiff fast against the stern of the boat by a steel cable, ready to hammer down the keeper. Jeb was told to stack corks, one of those jobs that demands your full attention, up to the point when you can do it and space out at the same time.
After forty or so minutes of running in circles, slowing way down, chit-chatting on the radio, then racing off urgently, the Voice proclaimed flatly, "let him go." They were fishing; the kid banged down hard on the keeper, the skiff backed off pulling the lead net, the seiner continued forward to horseshoe around in a wide arc.
Vacantly, Jeb watched the stack of corks uncoil; all cork setups are not the same, there are idiosyncrasies in the hanging of the net and field repairs that affect its action. The kid was dutifully standing by the outoing pile of corks, watching for tangles, occasionally reaching to grab and toss a coil to keep the cork line from going over the lead line. Jeb sipped at his coffee while staring at the space on deck left behind by the seine net making its getaway. At last, the net cleared the transom; the tow line stretched and tightened.
Jeb hosed the deck clean of kelp and jellyfish like he was watering a lawn; afterward, he neatly coiled the deck hose, as per his instructions, 'the skipper gets pissed-off if it's not perfect,' he had been warned by the kid, and then proceeded to wait. They call this fishing, he thought, more like ranching; hooks, now that's the way to fish.
The kid, who had been on board all season, told Jeb to look for jumpers, and watch the corks. Jeb nodded, perfunctorily glanced towards the bobbing corks and at the movement of the glistening water, then peeered off into the distance towards the other side of Shelikoff Strait. They would be sitting and waiting for close to half an hour now, waiting for salmon to wander into the wall of web. He left the show behind.
This fishing village of a thousand souls, squeezed between jagged mountains and a bay, the outlet to the sea, had shifted gears after the first snow fell in October. Bustling and frenzied during the all too brief summer, activity ebbed reflecting the more intimate and sedentary considerations of the community. The population waited, watched, meandered, ruminated, conversed, shoveled, drank, conserved energy, and basically settled in for the duration.
Down in the harbor several people were living on boats that winter. The long walk from uptown late at night was usually brutal, heading into the teeth of the weather with no trees or abutments to tame the wind. The harbor office, the only building, sat facing the road halfway to the breakwater, a black gloomy long smudge obscuring the horizon, marking the boundary of the quay at the far end; further on were the bay and low lying islands; and beyond, the mountains of Prince William Sound, knifelike and harsh, freshly formed by receding glaciers a mere geologic blink ago.
On this stormy night, making his meticulous, some might say 'dainty,'way across the icy harbor road, a worn and crusty fisherman garbed in a long hooded down-coat, rubber boots with wool liners, and a scarf, paused to sit on a berm at the downhill end of the marina near where his small cabin skiff was securely tied to her finger. He had given up at the bar and, with his usual disregard for formalities, simply slid from his stool tossing his scarf around his neck flourish-like, and quietly left for other elements, the kind he preferred.
His respite did not go unrewarded. The Milky Way's thick band of creamy radiation could be seen through a break in the clouds that were muscleing their way in from the north, proclaiming an aloneness deeper and more palpable than recent memories of camaraderie. His mind drifted elsewhere, to visions of a time in the not too distant past when Life seemed to be making good on Its promise. Prior to this, years ago, he was headed for Hong Kong and parts south of there, for a walkabout, his style; but love, or what passed for it, had had its way. Dreams he hadn't dared believe possible, common expectations for most others, were taking form by some unseen hand. A major redirection had caught hold; he had been ecstatic, but it also had worried him to the bone.
The life he had chosen didn't allow for family and more than passing friends or roots. With his most recent accidental love, parts of his soul unknown to him, and needs he had learned to live without, had risen to the surface of awareness, teasing him into believing. He had felt alive and genuinely happy for the first time in his life, believing, wanting, and knowing how all the pieces could seamlessly come together, if only...
A shiver went through his spine and back wriggling him out of his trance-like absorption. The stars, yes, the stars, he thought, they knew how to keep a man company on a cold winter's night. He pushed from the berm somewhat unsteadily, taking a moment's hesitation to clear his head. The dock was piled two feet high with the recent snowfall; the harbormaster's skeleton crew worked overtime trying to keep it navigable, but, it was next to impossible to maintain twenty four hours a day. The inhabitants of this floating neighborhood were accustomed to occasionally checking on one another; one false slip into the freezing harbor water, when the edges of the fingers and main drags were covered with a thick coating of ice, has killed before. Of course, if no one was around at the time a person fell in, what would be the point?
The fisherman stood his ground taking in the sky and the shadows of shifting snow dancing in the wind under the single road light in front of the harbor office, long since closed for business. When he felt his sea legs return sure and agile, as agile as he could expect this drunken night, he looked towards the top of the sloping ramp that ran from road to dock; the tide was out, it was a good twelve feet vertically to the water. He commenced to take his chances. If he had to, he'd crawl, he'd been there before.
Given the allowed wavering range, a few well-coordinated, good enough anyway, minutes later he was standing on the back deck of his tiny boat tied to the first finger near the bottom of the ramp. The breakwater was right there, not thirty feet away. Perpendicular to the road, massive granite rocks had been stacked like pebbles tossed by a giant, out two hundred yards into the bay, then curving inward towards the mouth of the manmade harbor. Its opening faced the northwest, an unavoidable and unfortunate choice as the prevailing winter wind came from that direction, and tonight it had an attitude about it, angry, fierce, almost hateful, seemingly from another time entirely, when saber-toothed tigers walked this neck of the woods.
The fisherman had two immediate neighbors, one, a sea otter who had chosen to hang out in the general area. They had had many conversations in the early morning hours, after "good morning" and "how are you today" small talk, things might get a bit more sobering. The other was an eagle who perched nearby on a rail, at the head of the ramp, next to the trash dumpster. Many eagles would come into town when the snows had finally worked their way down the mountain slopes to the beaches. Hunting apparently wasn't all that good for them then. He would nod his greeting to the eagle in passing; the eagle never ruffled a feather but only stared, nonchalantly, casually, but with a bit of a standoffish superior air about him. So, he was given his room, his space, like the king of the jungle.
At night these characters were not around; they seemed to know when he would be visited by other spirits. Cabin fever and desperate longings worked to plague and torture him matching the mired blackness of the sky to his ailing soul. Tired and drunk, frazzled to meanness, the fisherman sat in the tiny cabin of the boat, empty save for one bunk and a diesel stove, and began what had almost become an evening ritual and an offering. Collapsing within himself, the burden of having to face other people day in, day out, gently and mercifully dissolved away to be replaced by a bottomless wasteland of detached feelings and images writhing like snakes on fire. He was no longer in charge.
From the chaos and storm rising above the stillnes of his heart, another creature would be born, a shadow-figure forming from loose ends and unfulfilled dreams draped ceremoniously about his inner spark, layers of yesterdays built up like callouses. To this he would surrender his life force, what he had left of it, feeling his own resolve and stoicism topple and disintegrate into fracture lines of doubt and blame. This shadow, this alien from within, would whisper sabotage, reminding him of what he had lost and would never regain, presenting images of past failures to contemplate.
Shadow: "Damnit, it's not even dark yet and already there's ice on the window. If you crank this stove up any higher, it won't make it, not to morning, that's for sure."
Fisherman: "Leave me alone, would ya. I know I shoulda got some diesel, ten gallons anyway, but I drank the money. So what. Sooooo what! If I'd o' had more bucks, I'd still be there. They're my friends, I can't let them be buyin' all the time.
Shadow: "Yea, well now, ..., you've nothin' to eat and it's gonna be a long fuckin' night."
Fisherman: "Stop it! Just,.... stop it. OK? I'm trying to figure something out here, and you're not helping, giving me shit!
Shadow: "But I'm TIRED of this, I honestly and truly am. You've been doing this... shit, for years now, years of your life. What did Turbo say tonight, 'Your life is passing you by, man.'"
Fisherman: "OK! OK, look ..."
Shadow: "No! YOU look, look at yourself, man. You're not worth a shit anymore; you walked away from God knows how many chances; living in this isolated, redneck, stifling, asshole of a town,...."
Fisherman: "Living? living? Waiting. That's what I'm doing. Bidin' my time. Something good is going to come o' this, I know it, sooner or later, she'll come around, get word to me, somehow; she's not that far away, as long as I just HOLD ON, right here."
Shadow: "Bullshit! She's got your daughter and she's got her boyfriend and all her other friends. Remember how they treated you when you first started hanging out with her, living with her, you, an outsider? Don't forget it! Hold that thought, it's the source of your strength, that rage, that fire, that...."
Fisherman: "What strength? Can't you see I'm burnt the fuck out!? What did I do today? Huh? Unload a van o' groceries for a few dollars, then pissed it away in the bar trying to feel real. I have to get the fuck out of this space, man. I know I'm bangin' my head against the wall, the WALL. She doesn't give a shit if I live or die; she doesn't even know where the hell I am; she could find out, but she won't; it's all set in concrete. And my daughter's gettin' older, every day, without me, without ME! I know..."
Shadow: "Back and forth, up and down, back and forth we go. It was your call. If you had stayed in that town, you know you would've killed someone, or got killed, sooner or later. How would THAT have helped anything, your daughter?"
Fisherman: "I know, I know. But.... I can't do this anymore, I can't stay here, I can't leave, and I can't live like this anymore; I'm just getting meaner and harder, every day."
Shadow: "Survive! You've learned that much these past few years, how to get by on bare minimum. Your daughter is at least, probably, O.K. where she is. What you need to do is get your shit together, boy; take care of number one.
"Do you hear that snow? It's so quiet you can hear it fall flake by flake by flake, layers and layers and layers of snow. There's BEAUTY in that, see it, MAKE yourself see it! Be still now, just another night to get through. Tomorrow, things might be different. Get through. Sleep, get up at dawn, hit the road, see the beauty. And I'll be there when you need me; just don't fuck up anymore!"
After these squabbles the fisherman would sleep fretfully; the shadow triumphantly tearing and rending what fragile repairs his host and creator had fashioned for his weathered spirit that day. The shadow always pretended to offer solid wise advice, handing out its brand of rationality during the day, only to dismantle at night what gains had been made. But not always.
The fisherman had found a light, a candle strength of serene clarity tucked deeply into a corner of those memories of who he had once been. He held it to himself, a special possession only he knew of. And somewhere, on some plane of existence, he sensed its danger, its supine yet coiled ferocity held in check, it made him smile that certain mischievous kind of way. He would not brag of this to the shadow; he was not yet ready to declare his war of liberation.
The following morning he awoke to a crystal light display visible through his plastic window, refracting through the ice encrusted stays and booms of the boats nearby. True enough, the stove had run out some time during the long night, thin tendrils of ice were already beginning to grow, fungus-like, across that part of the cabin ceiling directly above his bunk. His one amenity, an electric clock plugged in from a dock extension cord, read 7:45. Time to go.
Getting dressed was no problem; he had never undressed, except for taking off his rubber boots which now were as hard as stiff leather. He stepped outside onto the back deck to take his morning piss into the harbor water. Bright sunshine on hardened snow and the dry purity of the air almost brought tears to his eyes. At the base of the breakwater, rested the otter, busy cleaning its fur, seemingly oblivious to his presence. You could cut the stillness into chunks and chew it.
For no good reason he shouted as loud as he could, "GOOD MORNING, EVERYBODY!" The eagle, perched on the railing at the top of the gangway with his back to him, turned his head slightly, disdainfully, then straightened in a blink; that was all, no ruffling of feathers, please. This act of disregard did not go unseen by the fisherman. The otter, for his part, languidly slid into the almost frozen harbor water and sensuously undulated toward the other end of the dock.
Shadow: "See now, what was the point of that?"
Fisherman: After a quick bout with a sudden deep dive into the everpresent well of darkness and depression, he rebelled and said quietly, "fuck you."
He charged up the gangway to the road and the eagle. As he walked by, the eagle turned a questioning look, but the fisherman ignored him feigning aloofness. The road was a good three hundred yards long running adjacent the marina to the bottom of the main road. He was headed for the main drag and the Alaskan Bar for morning coffee and informal introductions to the assemblage of actors materializing on designated stools. Coffee and a place to get warm, single-minded now, yes, the shadow was right about some things.
The problem with a life of waiting is that you never arrive, and opportunities tend to pass on by, like rings on a merry-go-round never reached for. The phone at the far end of the bar rang at 8:01. It was fairly busy already, not unusual in a community like this, the bars are the social centers and information marketplaces. After a few moments of private chatter, the bartender lady announced that Misses Frank's car was buried under a mountain of snow in her apartment building parking lot. Could someone please go help her? The fisherman knew this older woman on the other end of the phone, he had spent many a night at her place eating dinner, watching television, taking a much needed shower, tastes of domesticity; she was a friend and a surrogate mom. He nodded acquiescence to the barkeep, finished his coffee in a gulp, and with an air of a missionary on a quest, strode out into the bright morning light.
At this hour in the morning there's not a lot of people on the streets in the dead of winter in a town whose main thoroughfare is only two blocks long. In the midst of a casual complacency and quiet inspection of the changes wrought in the surrounding landscape by the previous day's snow storm, he was suddenly brought into relief against this background, his composure no longer large enough to contain his presence, like the result of stepping onto the thin surface of a frozen puddle.
The fisherman's spine twitched and his upper back tensed, his legs momentarily turning to water. He had long since been able to tell the difference between a cold-caused muscle spasm and this shadow warning. He had been spotted first by an enemy. In recent history, the fisherman and this predator had decided there could be no mutual acceptance, no reconcil- iation, no peace. The fisherman continued walking; to react now to face the predator would reveal vulnerability, he had been caught off-guard. He heard a door open, scraping as it did against the frozen sidewalk. After a long two seconds, the door scraped shut behind him. No reflections on this game would come; they refused to even be manufactured; it was the way it was and it seemed to be part of the fabric of life, at least this part.
The lightness he had felt on awakening returned when he got to the parking lot, scene of several buried autos. The snow removal crew, they called themselves that, consisting of three old farts with a front-end loader and a pick-up truck, had ingeniously postponed unemployment by constructing an impressive four foot high berm across the entrance, and exit, to the parking lot. Misses Frank was already in her car warming it up, radio going; she had a gruff way of assuming there would be no problem, no matter what, that was rather infectious in a pleasant way. A shovel leaned against where the back of the car should be, and the red handle of a window scraper stuck out from the snow-covered roof. The sun shone brightly, the previous evening's heavy clouds had completely dissipated. Fitting, thought the fisherman, for he had awakened with a plan.
The spark and tangible sensation of family feeling, of feeling needed, was a balm to him. It made him feel whole, for awhile, until that awful yet familiar undertow would drain him, like a plug being pulled, and there he'd be, attempting to resist disintegration, shoring-up memories of his former identity.
He cleared the car methodically, wanting to do a thorough job. Bending low, he pushed from the rear, groping for position in the booby- trapped crystaline landscape while the lady spun the wheel, exhaust blackening the snow; he got nowhere. He stood to take a breather and contemplate the situation while the wheel continued to spin. "Push!" misses Frank ordered, eyeing him through her side mirror. He conceded, like the good boy that he was.
At some critical point, under the fisherman's left boot, the illusion of control once again became manifest. His feet went south and there he was on his face. A flush of annoyance washed through his veins, the shadow saw an advantage whispering, 'you caused that yourself, don't analyze it, it's just another metaphor.' He ignored this reprimand and thought, 'synchronicity,' what the hell does that have to do with anything? Misses Frank was yelling taunts interspersed with reminders that she was in a hurry, and could he please snap it up!
Lying on his back, quite comfortable, really, the fisherman crossed his arms and laughed until the very air around him warmed a good ten degrees. Everything within his sphere of vision twisted and stretched, pulling in his direction as though he were a gravity well, a vortex drinking it in, no longer fighting to keep it out, growing larger and larger as he consumed spacetine itself. Misses Frank sipped coffee, adjusted the radio, and waited impatiently for the spell to pass.
Standing next to her, he smiled deeply into her eyes. He told her to step on the pedal and not let off until he gave the word, then returned to the rear. He seized the bumper from underneath with both hands, lifting and pushing simultaneously; he strained forward, leaning into the trunk. Misses Frank said nothing; she had recognizd that look in his eyes and thought it best to keep her mouth shut if she wanted to get out of there.
He shook the little car until it broke free of its ice moorings; fourty feet beyond lay the great berm, yet to be conquered. The shadow made an attempt to take charge; not with whispers of admonition or advice, but as that depressing damp sensation, that falling feeling in the pit of the soul, an awareness of nothing, exile and oblivion. But the fisherman denied it a home. He had dreamed a plan while he slept, a dream he remembered, and a strategy, awaking that morning with what he believed to be the seed of the shadow's overthrow germinating within. For a moment, the briefest tick of a clock, he detached himself from the landscape. He stretched his soul out; he sailed; he floated; he swooped.
They hit the berm doing about ten, the snow had been pressed into the density of a sand dune, the fisherman jostled, coerced, pushed, leveraged, and cursed the little car to the top. It couldn't be allowed to settle in; that would be curtains. He felt a pause, a flicker of hesitation tugging at his coat sleeve like a wraith wanting in the snow. The fisherman held the car like it was a wild dog. It wants to kill me, he thought, this car wants to turn on me and rip my throat out. He pushed up and out; it hovered, fragile, uncertain, then, subdued, the growling beast came to a rest in the street.
Misses Frank said nothing; the fisherman said nothing; she handed him five bucks for a morning shot, and off she went down the road. The shadow was disturbed and displeased but saw it had no chance, it sensed danger too, but of a different sort than the fisherman.
Two in the morning, the stove giving no quarter, the fisherman lay sprawled caesar-like across his winterized bunk holding his hands out to warm them. His recent explosion of temper in the bar earlier that evening had awakened deep running memories. Yes, he had once been that real, that tough, that strong, that sure, and probably still was, he told himself. He liked the feel of it, the clarity of it, the fearlessness, the control. But he remained suspicious. There was something to protect now besides his pride and peace of mind. A syrupy stillnes filled the warm cabin; outside, snow, smoothing all the jagged edges of the world, drifted into preordained place flake by flake by bloody flake. He sensed the shadow pushing on his nerves.
Fisherman: "I don't need you tonight, you have nothing to say."
Shadow: After a time, "You were doing the right thing, in fact, I helped you."
Fisherman: "Hah! Helped me? No,... I'm sorry, I was backing myself this time, you missed that, didn't you? That was me, all me."
Shadow: "Your putting yourself under a lot of stress over this, are you sure it's worth it?"
Fisherman: "I don't want myself anymore, don't ya get it? It's history, man, it is no more, if it ever was."
Shadow: "You're giving up; you've worked so hard to understand where you went wrong, you can't give all that time and energy up, YOU remember who you used to be, that power, that dynamism. There's a pattern,..."
Fisherman: "OK, I see where you're going. Maybe I did have some of the old stuff tonight, like when I used to walk the streets of Philly, struttin' my stuff, but that was a different time, a different me,..."
Shadow: "The two become one, the two hands of God, yin and yang, the root and the tree, synthesis on a higher dimension from which the past will fall into its proper configuration. Another molting, another shedding of a used-up life. You must detach from all tethers with the self, with the sense of self, plug in, once again, to the earth, to the source of all that is, and is you."
Fisherman: "I've heard all this before; the rantings of a loser hanging onto a hodgepodge of old worn-out street-level metaphysics. It's all bullshit. A person's still gotta get up and take out the garbage."
Shadow: "But at least it can be YOUR garbage."
Five months later he stood, somewhat unsteadily, the usual causes, at night on a narrow stretch of gravelly beach, a hundred yards from an Aleut village bar on the island of Akun, almost a thousand miles from where he now called home, and a zillion miles from a life he once knew. He had just returned from a trip to the Pribiloff Islands, the weather and the fishing had been good so, his sense of disconsolation had cause elsewhere.
Since he started this venture two months previous, the shadow had not made its presence known. He had not given it cause, part of his grand scheme. His loose ends had peaked; he had had time on his cabin skiff that past winter to sort things out and establish boundaries. What he had no control over had to go. He had become a willing member of the fishing village he now called home; that was a definite plus. The candle-sized light he had discovered burning deep had emerged and expanded to brighten the cavern, establishing a boundary of its own, territorial rights of ancient and longstanding propriety. It didn't feel to the fisherman that he owned the light, but it was what he was, of that he was now certain.
In this land of ever smoldering volcanoes and treacherous tide rips, there was a beauty, a fierce, demanding kind of beauty, that helped to cauterize and soothe the rift that had been festering in his soul these past five years. He could be the explorer again, the anthropologist, the archeologist, the historian, the philosopher, the poet, the pirate, the rogue. Allowing the shadow to have its way, the hook had been set, or so he believed.
In his recent travels around the islands, he had passed by abandoned villages; buildings, weather beaten, damaged and mistreated by the wind; larger edifices caved in and rotting, walls propping one another up; rusted out, stripped-clean machinery; a church door soundlessly flapping in the wind; stoic tetimonials, not memorials; people had lived there, families sharing a myth, partly borrowed but mostly all their own.
Directly behind where he was now standing was the one-car wide dirt road that led from the village edge, the village itself having only walkways strung along the beach, to the cannery near the head of the bay; and just a few feet further was the gravel and scrub grass covered hill undulating its way to the ridge of a high knoll. The mountains encircled the bay horseshoe-like, its volcano was at the far head and off a bit to the other side. On a sunny day the ash was dramatically visible, covering maybe three or four hundred meters below the edge of the crater, snow and ice covered the rest of the way almost to the blue silty water. The crater fumed its everpresence, altering perspective, a hot spot on the planet's crust, its offering table. Watching the local children play put another twist on the kaleidoscope, one that was heartily disapproved of by the shadow.
The tide had come in closer to the road forcing him to back up. A chill filled the steady breeze from the mouth of the tiny bay opening to the ocean side. The fisherman sat down, collapsing, exhausted, onto a large chunk of moss-covered granite embedded in the ground where the road met the beach. The comings and goings of skiffs ferrying bar folk distracted his attention; the panarama of his mind presented itself, he leaned into it, he was weary. He brooked no interruptions and suffered no fools.
The night before, when out at sea coming in, he had dreamed of a sculpture of a double mobius sphere being offered to him by no less than Isaac Newton. Sir Isaac had presented it as the true-to-life topological model depicting the nature and structure of the Universe. There was a conference going on of grave historical magnitude with a guest list from different eras and backgrounds. He was able to visualize what was said, it would take shape with each new idea, in colors, geometrically interpreted like drawing lines and curves in empty space, directly in front of the particular speaker. Each hologram was sensuous and irresistibly beautiful to gaze upon, the process depicted was so easy to understand, so simple; he could see the impossibly contorted sphere hovering between him and Sir Isaac. When he awoke his mind forced itself through some three dimensional prism to a space and time where double mobius spheres do not exist. And then it vanished.
He was living a paradox, and making it work, only he didn't know, or wasn't sure, precisely how the end game was going to play out. Unknowable creatures had oozed themselves through a breach in the walls of his ad hoc identity; psychic aspects, functions of receptive apparati, realms of imagination holding forth; particulars in a profusion of universals appeared from nowhere. This had not been expected; what then was this light within that he cherished and nurtured?
Suddenly he felt an almost overpowering desire to go home, to his little skiff, to ruminate some more, to get drunk and forget what he had started. The shadow is not the devil, of that he was convinced, but nonetheless he was beginning to believe that his plan to outsmart it could very well backfire. He had anticipated fishing the Aleutian chain for two months, tops. He belonged there, he felt, it suited his temperament. There were no complications, each day's duty was simple and self-evident. It was easy to get lost in the moment, to forget about the rest of the world, its inexorable drive to self-destruct, its pettyness and pride in enduring misery, its story. That's what the shadow brought him, in echoes down the centuries, despair in humanity. Where was that spark, that spirit?
Coming out of winter, the fisherman had made a deal with the shadow: in exchange for concentrating only on survival, they would join forces. It had been prompted by an incident of mutual trespass. He had found it necessary to step inside his skin again, the shadow had given him the strength. He saw a weakness in that revelation, the shadow had to relinquish control. Afterward he was determined to confront the shadow and spring his plan.
Shadow: "Why don't you go back to the bar, your crewmates are still there, time to get loose, you deserve it."
Fisherman: "Who are you, really?"
Shadow: "Who am I? Jesus, man, I'm YOU! You're split, not in two but in three."
Fisherman: "Three?
Shadow: "You're really fuckin' stupid, man. You got the whole thing upside down, as usual. I knew what you were up to, last winter, trying to outfox the fox. Yea, I was afraid, damn right! But it wasn't because of your asshole plan to take the power from me, as if you could take wetness from water, I was afraid you'd kill yourself, then there'd be no chance. I'm tired of baby-sitting"
Fisherman: "Wait a second now. You're not that fire in my belly, and you're not the love I have for my daughter I never see, and you're not the way I used to be, and..."
Shadow: "Ha ha ha..."
Fisherman: "Stop it!"
Shadow "You'll never be the way-you-used-to-be, bub. That's all gone and done with. You're out here on the edge now, that's where life starts, where yesterdays end, no tomorrows, no sorrows, no holding on, no letting go, it's right in front of your face, get out of your own way, drop the bullshit, and let me be!"
He lurched to his feet. Twisting his body first towards the bar, then the other way, towards the boat moored at the far end of the cannery, a good ten minute walk. His hands were stuffed deeply into his pants pockets against the chill off the water. The bay lapped at his boots. From the direction of the bar, a skiff roared by not fifty yards out, standing room only. The cannery was lit up like downtown somewhere. At the village end of the road were the lights of the bar and a few cabins beyond. Where he was, standing on a thin line between the beach and the dirt road, was utter darkness.
"I am here," he said softly, staring down at the encroaching sea. "I am here and I am alive." But the card house tumbled, falling to scatter and take flight like a flock of crows. To be alone is to be on your own, truly on your own, came into his mind unbidden. He accepted the night, and the shadow crept into the vacuum, bringing with it a fire that had been burning for all time, waiting for the moment.