Amos Fishpie

Amos Fishpie

by

Jeff Byrne

Amos Fishpie could just as easily have been called Amos Who Threw a Pan Full of Hot Bacon Grease on the Guy That Screwed His Wife, because that really happened. Opened his scalp with the edge of the frypan, to boot.  But he wasn't. He was called Amos Fishpie because of the great pies he made from the daily catch of his throw-net.  His wife took off with the guy, though, burn scars and all.  Maybe she preferred a guy who smelled like bacon to a guy who smelled like fish.

So Amos Fishpie found himself alone, with his net and his fish and his headful of recipes.  Not really totally alone, because he had his loyal customers on the strand who found it difficult to go for as long as a week without one of his pies.  It was almost like they had some magic in them that attracted people.  Too bad the wife couldn't see the magic.  Maybe it was the fish.

The bit with the frypan and the wayward wife didn't seem to have a negative impact on Amos' business.  If anything, just the opposite.  Hit a guy with a frypan and they forget you were a cuckold.  Anyway, Amos never lacked for customers.

Every morning Amos went to the tidal flats with his net, casting for fish, picking mollusks and small crabs, basically scrounging in the tide pools like the wading birds and seals he had to compete with for fish and mollusks and crabs.  Nobody could ever figure out how he always came away with something, given the competition for protein.  But every day, by about noontime, his little oven was smelling something great, with his pies of the day baking away over the coals.

After the wife left, Amos was alone because he didn't keep animals around the place.  He had tried both a dog and a cat, with bad results.  The dog, while wonderfully indiscriminate about what he would eat, took to lying in front of the shop snoring loudly and blowing fishgut farts, which annoyed the customers.  And the cat used to watch Amos constantly, like she thought maybe he was a fish, and that unnerved him after awhile, so he had to get rid of the cat too.

One day at low tide, picking winkles and whelks off the rocks for a special-order pie (a well-off customer had requested one for his wife's birthday), Amos noticed a pair of eyes looking at him from behind a rock.  He was used to being looked at by seals and other fish-eating competitors, but these were no black seal eyes.  Bottlegreen they were, uptilted at the edges, clear and piercing.  And they were set in a face unlike any he had ever seen before.  A selkie, he thought, but I didn't know they had green eyes.

- Are you a selkie?

- No, not selkie

- What then?

- Just me. Not magic. Not change shape. 

The bottlegreen eyes, long-lashed, batted at him like Clara Bow.

- Always this way.

- Always?

- Always.  Since baby time. 

Amos stared at her.  At least he thought it was a her.  It looked pretty her-ish, long lashes and a body sculpted by the sea, and Botticelli.  Fish scales and a fish tail.  Woman's breasts, small and sea green.  Not a selkie, though.

- What's your name?

- No name, just me.

- What did your mam call you?

- She call me baby darling. She call me angel child.  What your

  name?

- Amos

- Love you, Amos.

- Love me?

- Love you, Amos. 

- Love me?

- Love you.  Bye now.

Then she slipped off the rock and was gone.

Amos didn't know what to think of all this.  He knew the sea was full of strange things, but he had never imagined that one of those things would be a fish woman who said that she loved him.

Next morning, Amos back on the tidal flats, abalone and mussels and razor clams.  No Baby Darling or Angel Child in sight.  Just the usual competitors.  By afternoon, oven hot, pies in, Amos sitting and looking toward the flats.  No Baby Darling.

A string of days like that.  No Baby Darling who loved him, not for lack of looking.  Amos began to think she had been an hallucination.

And then one day she was back.  Amos was pulling mussels off a rock when he felt eyes on him again.  Bottlegreen they were, again, when he turned and looked.

- Where you been?

- Swimming.  With my people.

- There's more of you?

- Of course. 

She bats those lashes and laughs for the first time - liquid and melodic all at once like a whale's song only about 20 octaves higher.

- Silly Amos, don't know how many baby darling in sea.

- It's just I've never seen one of you before.

- We always here.  You never look right. We always here.  I see you many time.

- How many times?

- Many time.

- How old are you?

Again the melodious laugh, sending goosebumps up his spine from Kundalini's lair to his third eye.  First time he felt like that in a long time.

- Silly Amos. No years like people.  Just always.

- Are you immortal?

- Silly Amos.  All things die.  Even sea die.  Waving her lashes.

- Why do you come to see me?

- Love you, Amos.  Always love you.

And then she was gone again.

That night, fire banked low in the redbrick oven, pie dough rising in its ceramic jar.  Amos in his doss bag, no dog snoring at his feet, no cat snoozing behind the oven.  Just the stars and the surf, seals barking, whales singing their love-songs, like every night.

Except tonight he had bottlegreen eyes and waving lashes in his head.  Amos wondered if he would dream about Baby Darling and wasn't certain if he looked forward to that or not.  He dreamed about his wife a fair amount after she left, some happy dreams but mostly not.

Amos didn't dream about either his wife or Baby Darling that night.  And the next morning she was nowhere in sight.

So, a couple of fat porgies and a netful of sardines that came too close to shore, running from the porgies.  Back to the oven.  Gutting, scaling, boning, chopping.  Slapping out the dough, stoking the fire.  Another day of pies.

It never occurred to Amos before that maybe he owed Baby Darling for his success with his net.  She said she wasn't magic, but maybe she was out there chasing fish his way.  After all, she loved him, didn't she?  She said she did.

What Amos couldn't figure out was how he felt about Baby Darling.  How was he supposed to feel about a sea-creature who said she loved him?  Now that he was past the strangeness of it all, it struck him how natural it seemed to see her at the tide pool and talk with her.

Amos never thought much about the miraculous.  At least not beyond the small, day-to-day miracles of life - the tides changing, seals barking, whales singing, yeast turning flour and water into piecrust.  He thought of himself as an ordinary fellow, a practical guy just trying to get by like everyone else.  But now Amos began to wonder about miracles behind the day-to-day, to wonder about the Really Big Things that might lay beyond the world of tidal flats and sardine guts, and stars on a cold night.

Amos never really questioned it before.  How did he end up here?  He always just considered it his job - pie-making ran in the family.  And he enjoyed his work, and his customers.  Shouldn't he want more from life?  He thought he wanted a wife, once upon a time.  He'd learnt better since then.  No, he had to admit that he was content.  Maybe that meant he was not a go-getter (a charge leveled daily by his ex), but so what?  He had a Baby Darling who loved him, loyal customers, and what he felt was a contented life.

Amos never saw Baby Darling again.  Which was kind of disappointing, because she really was lovely, in her fishlike way.  And while Amos hadn't really considered the physical logistics of sex with Baby Darling, that laugh of hers woke him up inside, in a very good way.

So the days passed as they always had.  Fishing in the morning, baking in the afternoon, the stars, seals barking at night, and the whales singing their love-songs.

Then one day an otter showed up at his door.  Sitting there when Amos, net over his shoulder, buckets in each hand, stepped out to start another day.  An otter.  Medium-sized, dark brown, big black eyes.  A male, Amos thought.

- Did Baby Darling send you?

The otter just chortled and groomed his whiskers.

The otter stayed without being asked.  It followed Amos to the flats, and proved to be a genius at finding abalone.  The otter would find one, take it to Amos in his mouth, and drop it at his feet like a dog with a stick.  Amos would say "good otter" and the otter would chortle and go off to find another one.

Amos and the otter became business partners of a sort.  The otter lived on fish heads, didn't fart in front of customers, and was cute enough that customers always wanted to pet him and listen to him chortle.  He might have been a friend of Baby Darling’s or he might have come of his own volition, it didn't matter to Amos.  Amos became fond of the otter, even though he didn't appear to have any choice in the matter. The otter just moved in with him, sleeping in the bottom of Amos' doss bag, where he kept his feet warm.

Amos thought that the otter might be a messenger of some kind from the Really Big Things, some symbolic message that he was supposed to figure out.  He tried to tell the otter his thoughts about the Really Big Things, but the otter would always give himself a bath and then go to sleep.  So Amos desisted with that, and felt that it was probably a good thing.  When he told the otter about Baby Darling's love, however, the otter listened and chortled at the right places like he understood.

So Amos and the otter lived out their days in the unchanging rhythms on the tidal flats, fulfilling their small destinies, secure in the knowledge of Baby Darling's love, happy to engage the world's daily miracles, two small parts of the contented universe.