The beach is black beneath the new moon. By the light of a flickering Bic my lover and I follow a white trail through the ambrosia. We lie in the cool sand and listen to boats grunt in and out of the river’s mouth, the hush of their breathy wakes.
It’s nine o’clock. The grunion will run within the hour. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of silhouettes gather against the barely distinguishable horizon, the twinkle of distant cruise ships.
In the first waves of high tide, the metallic flash of a single body, a dozen, then suddenly the beach, like liquid silver, shimmers in the beams of so many flashlights. The night rings with laughter and shouts—the chatter of countless tongues. Children, up to their chests in the Pacific, clutch shirtfulls; men and women, young and old, kneel in the froth, a slick fish in each hand—some with a third clamped between their thighs.
Within minutes, the long line of white 5-gallon buckets overflows with captives. Some slip free and wriggle back toward receding waves. Others gasp under bodies, suffocating in air.
Hands Only the law says, but forty, one hundred, five hundred grunion at once are swept into nets and slugged up the beach toward waiting pickups. Few of the egg-heavy females have time to bury their tails in the sand and even fewer males, it seems, manage to arc around them before being plucked like turnips and tossed in a writhing pile. A young man digs a deep hole with both hands. From this well he fills several bags.
where once were grunion
saltwater
and a few tumbling stones
No comments:
Post a Comment