Much Fish Village

an excerpt from "Much Fish Village " by Ben Wolfson

Fiction

Sponsored by Mark Ari

Excerpt from Much Fish Village

            Macrol, the God of Water Creation, recreated Much Fish Village into an ocean and Sala, God of the FireRock, recreated the ocean into a great desert.
            The ocean consumed my father till his death. His room had dig site maps, measured carefully to scale, that covered each wooden wall and most of the floor space. Within the margins was his small scripted handwriting detailing every drop of water we found; his descriptions of expectation were in each note upon each well symbol. Next to his cot lied a shovel dented at its point and coated with rust and sand; I was wary to move it from its final resting place. There were stacks of journals in the corner of the room. Most lay knocked over and echoed in circles about being closer and closer to the ocean. He wrote, “We dig along small brooks that trickle from the ocean itself.”
            I was not allowed in his room and it wasn’t a spoken prohibition but in the way he entombed himself. He’d shut his heavy door as soon as he went in and if I knocked, he’d bellow “What” as if I woke him. Our communication came in strange ways or rather timed messages. When it was time for dinner, I did not disturb him, but I’d often leave the plate at his door. Sometimes the tray sat at his door untouched and at other times the chicken was stripped to the bone.
            I find it strange to be in this room. As a boy, I’d often wonder what lied behind it, but with manhood I accepted what always was. I sit here writing, now awake, surrounded by my father’s sorrow and anger. I will go to the village as a vagabond and leave this house, but my father’s ghost in this room pushes my hand, gnaws at me to write this story.
            My father and I lived in the desert at the outskirts of the village. The desert’s legacy (one of them) is that no one has dared or desired to cross it and if they did the far off mountain range would stop their journey. In the stories told sparked life (or is it madness) into the desert. My father heard since youth that Macrol’s ocean blesses and Sala’s desert curses. His wife, my mother, died in childbirth having me. It was the first year of their marriage. I know nothing of her other than the two facts my father mentioned once; she died having me and it was only the first year of their marriage. His own family died by violence; what violence I do not know. As one traveler told me at a well, “Much Fish Village is not a place to rest one’s feet when the sun sets.” Like many other facts, like my extended families deaths and what happens at night at a village I was prohibited from visiting, they were not elaborated on. My father with no family, except me his son, locked himself behind a door. I appeared as a ghost myself in his house and as I floated behind him in the desert.
            Still, he had one thing that was not haunting (at least at the honeymoon outset) and to him a reality and that was the ocean. In the early mornings, my father jumped out of bed with a shovel in hand and stomped around the house to gather the rest of his supplies. Eventually, maybe reluctantly, I’d wake up and help my father gather supplies. He’d ask where his canteen was, but not directly to me, just to himself, and I’d say, as if the air was answering him, that it was already on his belt and he’d reply with oh of course it is. My father never asked me to go with him on his trips to find the ocean, but I went on my own and my father said nothing when I asked every morning to come along. Maybe the mornings, for years, were all the same or the world was recreated anew in the mornings. He never forgot about the ocean.
            He always had his shovel in hand. He slept with it next to him in bed and was covered in sand because of it. In the books I’ve read on adventures (and what else is a boy to do when he has nothing but well water and thirsty travelers with gifts?) great explorers always had a staff or rod or sword to guide them forward. My father had his shovel. He’d use it to point as an extension of himself. He’d hold it in one hand and do another activity with his free hand, as if it was his mighty lance. It was his weapon of sorts; he battled the sand. As we dug, and the sand would fall in and the desert was endless, I asked my father how we could possibly find the ocean and he didn’t say anything.
            The work wasn’t easy, but we made our fortune from it. The days of not finding water I felt in my cracked brown toes and in my leather heels. I’d often have cut feet from a mixture of the sand, my sweat, and following my father all day. We lived for beer and chicken on those dry days; we came up with nothing but my father was satisfied with work itself. Then there were days that we struck water and oh those were good days. I’d be down in the hole and water trickled like cut blood from the ground. At that moment, every time, I believed we mined small drops of Macrol’s life. I’d yell and my father dropped down a bucket, I’d scoop out some water mixed with sand and lift it back up to him. He’d taste the water, stare at it awhile. He’d take off his wide brim hat, wipe his brow. Finally, he’d say, “This isn’t the ocean, but an offshoot.” He said that line on time, every time. I was never sure what my father expected, maybe an explosion of water or for fish to fly into the sky flopping off roofs. He’d want to move on, find another hole, maybe closer to the mountains he’d think out loud, but I insisted we do something with the water. He looked towards the mountains and without really listening to his own voice asked do what with it. A well; let’s finish this well. Ah, yes, of course, and he handed the bucket down to me and I shifted rocks and sand out of the water and I built rocks into the walls and closed up the well with wood. My father loved hard work, so eventually he’d snap out of his daze and yell, “Be careful, be careful, or the rocks will fall in on you. Here, let me show you.” Then I’d be on top handing him stones and buckets while he’d finish the well at a faster pace. This story happened, more or less, every single time we started and completed a well.
            We only came home when the sun went down or if a sandstorm flared up. Our house, our shack, built of the same wood that covered the wells, stood at the beginning of the desert and my father’s bedroom window showed the expanse of the rolling sand and the small dots of wells. He must have watched those dots with unease as the sun rose every damned morning because I doubt he slept much seeing them increase as the years went on. My father was falling apart with sand; he’d take off his hat and sand floated around him in orbits and his work boots contained sand islands. There was no escaping the sand; it covered our skin and fused to our pores. Our sweat would zigzag against it. Our dinner of chicken tasted of sand and our water was grained. I seemed to contain it though and never gave it much thought as it was my life. My father though, when he moved, I saw sand flutter from his shoulders and at times I wondered if he was flying away with the four winds.
            The rare times my father came out of his room for dinner were in silence. We had crunchy chicken every night; no sauce, cooked on a fire and sometimes burnt. We’d scrape our metal knives against metal plates and I’d look up at my father the entire time, but he looked down at his plate. He’d eventually say, again on cue, “I’m sure we’ll find something tomorrow.” I’d say, “Yes, I’m sure.” I never dreamed of finding an ocean, but I hoped my father would find something, but the more wells we setup, the more forlorn his face; near death all the impressions, desolations, left him a clay mask. When dinner was over, he’d pick up his shovel, almost as a reaffirmation, and lock the door to his room.
            This lasted all during my childhood and into adulthood, but like the recreated world itself, it finally broke down.   My father didn’t come out of his room in the mornings; at first I feared he died in his sleep. He called from his door when he heard me and said I should go out. Reluctantly, I went to work and it was easy enough to find a boy in the desert who would be willing to pull up the bucket while I was in the hole. I came back at night and his door was still locked. I told him the dig went well, and he said that sounds fine and then dead, sandy air. I licked my lips and asked if he was ok, he said yes, and I felt the flakes of sand hit my face from the door. I leaned on the door with my hand, the wood holding me up and not myself, and I asked if I could come in to see him and he said, no, he was going to sleep. I listened to him and went to sleep as well.
            Some mornings he was up again, but slower. He dragged his shovel, susurrated, held his pushed out face when he sat. It took us a good part of the morning to leave because he kept picking up things and putting them back down. I did not urge him, but watched and thought that maybe this is his process of finally putting the ocean to rest. I was foolishly right and wrong in my observation as I was soon to learn. When we went out, I was in the hole and he drew up the bucket with clumsy arms. He was slow with giving the bucket back; he stared into it, touched the water, rolled the sand between his fingers. We’d often go back early and he’d lock himself in his room the entire day.
            He called out one night and told me to come in. He lied on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, and told me that he’d been writing a story about where the ocean could be. If we were drilling water from Macrol’s fingertips, then the source must be father up, near the head. What is the head of Much Fish Village? The mountains, the rocks. The further we dug north, the more water we saw, he said, and the ocean, it makes sense, must be there. He hacked, held his chest, for a long time after saying that and I noticed that sand floated around the room. I tried to hold his hand, but he pulled away or maybe his hand fell through mine, and said he had a story, the head, I must know.
            Macrol, the God of Water Creation, one day, gave the ocean to a young man. This young man was happy because of it; so happy he couldn’t help but dance and sing randomly in the day. He of course never though about life past the ocean. For example, he’d be fishing on the ocean and break into song and dance before he could finish pulling in the fish. What could be further from such a thing than the ocean though? He was never hungry, because even if he didn’t catch a fish, he could just reach into the ocean and pull out his fill. He had a lovely wife, who enjoyed his dancing and singing all day long and his tender touches. The man pulled her from the ocean and upon seeing her, he loved her. Then one day, his wife was pregnant. His wife birthed Sala, God of the FireRock; her body during labor poured out a desert from her mouth, ear, and vagina. He emerged on a wave of sand, killed the man’s wife and even after death she continued to gush sand until it covered the entire world, hiding the ocean. The father, longing for those days of the ocean, did not sing or dance anymore, but dug everyday to find again what he lost. He never found it though.

      He expired shortly after he told me this. I was afraid to touch him for fear of him turning to sand.