The Shape of Immortality

Hunter Choate

On windy days the river chop reflects white like crumpled foil. In the calm it’s an Impressionist sky. At night, it is an indigo shimmer and a gentle lapping between jungle sounds.
…..There is a legend of a giant fish that lives in this river. All the villagers know the story. Its scales are an overlap of hammered gold. Its eyes are pigeon-blood rubies. This fish has the power to grant immortality to anyone who catches it.
…..Some doubt the existence of this fish, obscured as it is by shadowy lore and murky depths, but not the youngest of all the fishermen. This boy of twelve witnessed the fish’s blurry outline deep beneath the water, as large as his boat. Then it neared the surface and rolled, a gilded glimmer that gave way to a belly like a vein of white opal in the muddy water. Droplets sprayed the boy as the fish flexed its tail and slapped the surface before disappearing again.
…..The boy dreams of catching this fish as he loads his small boat with nets and supplies for the day. Beneath a dappling of dawn-light and leaf shadow, the river knocks against the boat’s aluminum hull. Dead leaves float blackly on small puddles inside. He unmoors and climbs inside and hears a girl’s voice cry out his name and then fall silent.
…..It’s the girl he loves from afar, with her sad dark eyes and their thick lashes. He believes her eyes mourn for all loss, that they could understand a fatherless fisher-boy in a way other eyes could not. The boy wishes he could tell her this. That he could hold her close and whisper it into her ear and somehow backlight those eyes with a subtle joy. But the boy is still just a boy and he falls mute with adolescent fear.
…..He simply raises a hand in acknowledgement. She does the same, a flash of pale palm and outstretched fingers. The boy imagines a light traveling between their hands. It hums and brightens and connects them until she lowers her hand, blinking it out.
…..The boy eases the small outboard motor into the water and cranks it. With each heave, the motor growls and belches black smoke that burns at his lungs. A thin diesel film collects behind the boat, swirling the water with blues and yellows and purples like peacock feathers. On the fifth pull the engine finally sputters to life. As he speeds away, he watches the girl huddle near the shore, her silhouette a small animal waiting timidly to drink.
…..He throws his cast net over the portside of the boat. Tension snags the filament from between his teeth as lead weights spread the net in the air. It plops against the water in a white splash outline and vanishes, pulling the haul line taught. Once he’s sure the net has touched the river floor, he retrieves it hand-over-hand, water beading on the damp nylon rope. He empties the net of small silvery fish that flick and glitter the floor with discarded scales.
…..He thinks of the magical fish, its aureate interlace of shingles. Perhaps they too hold special powers, the alchemy to heal the sick or bring good fortune to those who touch them. And if not magic, then he could sell them. He imagines a new roof for his mother and a school for the village. He dreams of the girl, the two of them overseeing a feast, clean and perfumed; her eyes collect his sadness while they dine from the scales as if they were golden plates.
…..The inverted V of the bow bounces and smacks against the current with splashes of froth as the boat races towards deep water. Wind whips tears from his eyes. His arm rattles and tingles from throttling the motor. The sun is high overhead and the tops of the trees lining the riverbank swarm with light. The boy spots the first of his orange jugs bobbing in the water and slows the boat to check it.
…..He hauls a small catfish from the water. It’s snagged on the third of the many hooks connected to the jug. The rest are picked clean of bait. The boy steps on the fish and works the hook. The fish’s mouth yawns and closes in a series of mute screams. The boy baits the empty hooks and hopes for better luck at his other jugs. He needs a bigger catch to slake the hunger of his brothers and sisters.
……The boy checks four more jugs, all of their hooks empty. He remembers the last time he went fishing with his father. He thinks of his father’s face grayed by a slant of shadow from his red baseball cap. Their catch was plentiful that day, and as his father stood over two large river catfish, he rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It is good to be a fisherman,” his father said. “We know the secrets of the water and we feed the people. These are important things.” His father squeezed his shoulder and shook it gently. “One day you will be a great fisherman.”
…..The last of the jugs is missing. The boat circles the area, crashing into its own wake with a series of tremendous claps. The boy cuts off the engine and the hull rocks in the waves, water slapping and sloshing over the gunwale and into the boat. He thinks of his meager catch. The river is angry and unforgiving as it jostles him about. He is no great fisherman this day.
…..Off in the distance, he spies a speck of orange rising and falling in the swell. The jug disappears beneath the water before springing back to the surface twenty feet downriver. The boy squints and shades his eyes with his hand. He watches as his missing jug continues to travel in this manner.
…..By the fourth reappearance, the boat is in pursuit, the motor full-throttled, trailing a long ruffle of lace behind. As he slows in approach, the boy sees the magical fish, its gilt form languid beneath the water, its ruby eyes big as his head. And the boy imagines a life without end.
…..He reaches out and runs his hand along the heavy plastic jug, fingering at the pools of water in its scuffs and gouges. The fish is far too large to bring aboard, so the boy decides he’ll need to tie the jug to the boat and tow it to shore; there he might better reckon the powers and fate of his catch. But as he stands to gather his rope, the fish dives, a flicker of yellow and orange followed by a percolation of bubbles as it plunges the jug down into the depths.
…..Minutes pass as the boy scans the river for signs of the fish. As he’s about to return home with another tale to add to the legend, the jug leaps from the water, striking the stern with a hollow thud before ricocheting into the river. The boy scampers to the back of the boat, his feet squeaking along the way. The jug floats on the surface, but the fish is gone, shaken free of the hooks.
…..A giant fish scale teeters up through the cloudy water, pulsing with light like a golden star, until it finds the surface. It mirrors a ray at the boy’s sternum and begins to sink. As if tugged, the boy jumps in after it, chasing its fluttering descent. The water is cool and silken against his skin. His feet pump behind him, propelling him below. His fingers stretch for the scale, and he feels the silence of the river press against him.
…..As he touches the glimmering tile, pinches it between thumb and forefinger, the fish rockets up towards him. An opalescent ring outlines the cave of its rushing mouth. Strips of pink flesh and scrimshawed bone ribbing flash by, and the boy passes beyond the dilation of the gullet and into the belly of the fish.
…..Inside, all is darkness. The boy floats atop a viscous fluid that churns and echoes in the cavernous space. As he attempts to swim, the boy realizes that the fluid is dissolving him, disintegrating him at the edges, one molecule at a time. There is no pain, and instead of fear, he concentrates on the feeling. He imagines himself spreading outward, flattening into a membrane that coats the inside of the fish and stretches out from its mouth like a giant bubble that eventually bursts into tendrils that continue to stretch and grow until they circle the earth.
…..And as the last two particles of him split apart, he glides through the water, peering out from ruby eyes. The river rushes through his gills, a resolve, a flame of amber flesh in the shallows, the shape of the girl he loves from afar.

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→EMPRISE 16