Chapter 13
Hannah insisted on fishing. Said, "I've got house payments to make, and no money comin' in as ofjuly." Also insisted that I go with her. "When you're feeling up to it again, I want somethin' between us besides distance." Bawdy, hungry tone to her voice.
So I went mullet fishing with Hannah. The logistics were tricky. I didn't want to get on her boat and have to spend the night in Gumbo Limbo. I didn't know if Tomlinson could be counted among Hannah's six lovers or not—she was so damn touchy about her independence I was afraid to ask. Whether he was or whether he wasn't, it would have been too weird, all three of us in the same house together, because Hannah was not a subdued and noiseless bed partner. She had whooped and moaned and made my small bed crash like a tambourine. Later, on the floor, she had thumped the walls with her heels. Same thing, later still, out on the deck.
Those are not sounds to be shared through thin walls with a friend.
Also ... I wasn't entirely sure that I had the energy to help her produce those sounds again. Hannah made love without a hint of self-consciousness. She had one of the most spectacular bodies I had ever seen. But we all have our limits. Hannah had pushed me to mine—then helped baby me along until I had exceeded them.
So, what we decided was, Hannah had access to a little fish house off the southern point of Sulphur Wells, not far from the village of Curlew. Arlis Futch owned the house, though he had all but given it to her. By boat, Curlew was about halfway to Gumbo Limbo, only thirty minutes. I would lash Tomlinson's Zodiac onto my Hewes, then follow her to the fish house and tie my boat there. When we were done fishing, she would take the Zodiac in tow, and I would return to Dinkin's Bay.
She kept saying, "I don't know why you don't just come up and stay with me for a few days. Tommy, he wouldn't mind a bit."
I said, "Tommy will understand," wondering if he would—hoping he wouldn't.
Now it was after ten p.m., and we were in Hannah's boat. She stood forward of the engine well, using the PVC pipe to steer. I stood just behind her, right leg braced against the well for balance. When Hannah was at the controls, balance was required because of the way she veered in and out of islands. When we were behind a lee shore, out of the wind, she would twist the throttle open, and the little skiff would seem to gather buoyancy as it flew us across the mud banks. No moon, no running lights, no spotlight. She ran everything from memory. Said she loved speed, the force of the wind on her face.
"You get scared, just grab my shoulder!"
She had to holler above the engine noise to make herself heard.
I put my chin next to her ear. "If I grab your shoulder, it won't be because I'm scared."
Every now and then, she'd lean against my chest so that I could support the weight of her. Let her hair flap in my face, then reach back and squeeze my thigh. Mostly, though, she concentrated on finding fish.
When we were off Pine Island, just southeast on Mondongo Island, she slowed the boat abruptly. We were in slightly more than two feet of water, and I could see the green bioluminescent tracer-streaks of mullet flushing ahead of us. I had already squatted to grab the gunwale when she yelled, "Hang on!" then gunned the engine while, at the same instant, tossing out an anchor that was connected to the gill net.
The net began to peel out behind us as Hannah made a high-speed circle around the fish. She circled them a second time, then a third, using the bailing can to bang on the deck. The noise would spook the fish into the mesh. Finally, she killed the engine, and switched on a bare twelve-volt light bulb that was suspended from a wooden arm above the icebox. Felt our own wake catch us, rolling the boat, as Hannah said, "That's the fun part. Now I'll put you to work."
Hannah called it picking mullet. It wasn't too bad with both of us aboard. But one person alone? No wonder the woman's body was stripped bare of fat, corded with muscle. The hardest part was wrestling the net over the transom. We stood on opposite sides of the stern, pulling the net hand over hand, piling it in the well. When a mullet came thrashing into the boat, she would twist the fish free of the net and lob it into the icebox. I did the same, trying to mimic her smooth motion. It took a while to get the hang of it.
"You still pooped out, Ford?"
"Me? Fresh as a daisy."
With Hannah, facial expressions were a second language. Clearly, she was dubious. "I'll tell you somethin' I've never told nobody. Running this boat by myself at night makes me horny as hell. The way the engine vibrates? It runs through the wood right up my legs. When we get going again, I wouldn't mind you bending me right over the engine well. While I'm still steering, I mean. Never done that in my life, and I would purely love to. In my mind—when I had the vision of you and me being lovers?— that's what I saw you doing to me."
"Jesus, Hannah, I thought you were talking about fishing. Was I too tired to fish—that's what I thought you meant."
Wild whoop of laughter. "I embarrass you? Well. . . get used to it. I'll never say nothing in front of anybody else, but you—you, I'll tell just how I feel." She was untangling a gaffsail catfish that had spun itself in the net. I watched her rotate the fish's lateral barb, remove the fish cleanly, and toss it overboard. "When I was a little girl," she said, "I used to love to ride on a train, only I almost never got the chance. Now that I'm grown, turns out it's the same with men. If a woman's fussy, if she waits till her body and her mind both tell her it's okay, then not very many trains come along. But when one does . . ." More bawdy laughter.
"A train, huh? I guess I'm flattered."
"Damn straight you should be flattered. Your problem is, you lose your sense of humor when you lose your energy. Not that it didn't take a while. Here—" She reached into the icebox and brought out ajar of her tea. "You drink some of this. It'll fix you right up."
I drank her tea—felt the caffeine jolt. I picked fish and nudged the conversation toward safer topics. A few minutes later, she was telling me, "The way it used to work was, we'd take our mullet in and sell them to Arlis. Sell them in what we call the round, meaning the whole fish. Anytime but December and January—the roe season—he'd pay us maybe forty cents a pound. Not much, and Arlis didn't make much either. But roe season, like now, he'd pay us maybe two bucks a pound, then sell them for maybe two-forty to the big wholesale fish plants in Tampa or Cortez. Freezer trucks would come around and pick them up.
"Up there," she said, "the fish go on a conveyor belt. They got women who cut the roe out of them—they use these ball-pointed knives so they won't nick the sacs—and they grade the roe by color and weight. The big plants, like Sigma and Bell, they'll sell the best roe for maybe twenty-two dollars a pound to exporters. The exporters ship it to the Philippines, or Hong Kong—places like that—where they sell it to wholesalers for maybe eighty or a hundred bucks a pound. You can imagine what it sells for on the street."
Hannah twisted a mullet from the net, held it out and squeezed the flesh around the anal fin. Tiny yellow globules began to ooze out: fish eggs. "We call it red roe, but it's really more like gold. Get it? Not just the color, but what it's worth."
I said, "But now you have a better deal because of Raymond Tullock. Didn't you tell me that?"
She was nodding; collected the mullet roe on her index finger before she tossed the fish into the box. Held the gooey finger out to me. "It's not bad. In Asia, they dry it into little cakes and give it as gifts. During the Chinese New Year, it's like the best gift you can give, 'cause it's supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Puts lead in their pencils. Couldn't hurt you to take a taste."