RED SKY - by Z Coyle

red sky

by Z Coyle

It was a poor day for fishing. The water was nearly too choppy for the little tin boat, a thin gray rain was obscuring the horizon, and Cap had just reeled in a corpse. Heaving on the line he had assumed it was a particularly lethargic halibut, but now a body floated just beneath the surface, its mottled face puffy, long hair flexing with the swells. The hook was sunk deep into an empty eye socket. Cap leaned over the side, tilting his head left and right, then fetched the gaff.

It came aboard shedding water and smelling of rotting fish and, oddly, figs. Its clothes were similar to Cap’s own: Grundens, a flannel shirt, one rubber boot and one woolen sock. A fisherman, then. Or fisherperson. Its exposed hands and face had been nibbled on– most of the nose was gone, along with four or five fingers. Cap crouched beside the corpse and arranged it into proper coffin position, arms crossed across its chest. The flesh was pervasively cold even through his thick rubber gloves.

“Rest now,” he said.

“Thank you,” the corpse replied. “I really didn’t like it down there.”

“No,” Cap said after a long moment, off-balance, defaulting to long-lived manners. “No, I imagine I wouldn’t either.”

“It was super dark,” the corpse continued. “And cold.” Its voice was muted and papery, like tuning into a long-distance radio.

“Yes,” Cap said. There was a moment of silence. “Forgive me, but you are dead, correct?” He asked.

“Of course,” the corpse said, then stuck out a purple, bloated tongue in a parody of a dead body.

“Ah. And…how was it that you died?” Cap asked.

“That’s all you care about?” returned the corpse. “Anyone can die in any way, you know. It’s not a reflection at all of how they lived.”

“Oh, my apologies,” said Cap, cursing himself for being so inconsiderate.

“You were fishing, right? Hit your quota yet?” the corpse asked.

“I don’t think– no, not so far,” Cap replied, thrown off. “It’s still early.”

“Oh, go on then,” the corpse said encouragingly. “I’ll be here. Just don’t drop any fish on me and we’re good.”

“Well, alright then,” Cap said, and dropped a line. Swells rhythmically hit the metal hull. A gaggle of nearby seagulls conversed in caws. Cap’s ballcap kept the rain out of his face, and his layers made the cold weather almost cozy.

“Read any good books lately?” asked the corpse.

“I’m not a good reader. Haven’t read much at all since high school, even,” Cap replied. Then, as an afterthought, “Yourself?”

“Big reader, yeah, but that’ll all be boring if you’re not a fan. Got any good stories?”

Cap thought about it. His best stories were about buddies who had narrowly escaped death, which seemed insensitive considering his audience. “Naw,” he finally admitted. “But I’ve got a feeling you’ve got at least one good one.”

“Oh, you mean, like, how I died or whatever,” the corpse said tiredly.

Cap had meant exactly that. “Aw damn, I shouldn’t have–”

“No, it’s fine. It’s just embarrassing is all.” It had gone quieter, its voice hard to pick out from the static rain against metal. Cap reeled up an empty hook, replaced the bait, and let it back down.

“You know,” he offered once he felt the weight hit the ocean floor, “when I was young I worked on a logging barge. We had to walk on top of the log piles, these towering mounds of logs– halfway to heaven my buddy always said– and we were supposed to push the logs down in manageable amounts. Now, I was brand new to the job, and what I didn’t realize was that I was supposed to be strapped into a harness-type situation.”

The corpse gave a gurgle-gasp. “You didn’t see how everybody else was? Seriously?”

Cap smiled a little. “I was seventeen, kid, I didn’t notice a whole lot. Now I’m up there and I take a stumble, and my foot hooks onto a log and brings a whole avalanche down. I slam into the deck, then a whole load of logs crash down right on top of me, but the first few get propped against the engine house and create a sort of barrier, see? So I’m stuck in this little tent of logs, and my buddies all think I’m dead, and I have to wiggle my way out of this little gap to shut ‘em all up. Now that would be a pretty damn silly way to die, don’t you think?”

“That would be pretty metal, actually,” said the corpse. “Old-school. Logging accident. Like those dudes who fell into the cement when they were building dams.”

Cap shook his head. “Back then, kid, that was just another ridiculous way to die. There’s plenty of ‘em, trust me. Most deaths are pretty goddamn goofy.”

“Like in a cartoon,” the corpse supplied. “I bet people have actually been killed by falling pianos or anvils at least once.”

“I bet,” agreed Cap. He laid back on the cushioned bench and blinked up at the gray sky. The tip of the fishing pole betrayed not even a nibble.

“It’s just that… I’m not new at this,” the corpse said at last. “I’ve fished my whole life, since birth, practically. But it was my first season crabbing. I thought I would know how to do it. But I was really bad. Like, really really bad. Like, ‘you’re slowing down the whole operation’ bad. And nobody liked me, obviously, because I made all their jobs way harder, and when I got my foot tangled in a rope and went over…”

“That’s a rough way to go,” Cap said, when it seemed like the corpse was done. “I’m sorry.”

“Man overboard. I cut through the rope and I came up for air, and I thought I’d done it, that I’d live, but man…” it gave a gurgling, wheezing sigh. “The boat never turned around.”

Cap sat with that a while, anger for the boat’s captain cresting in waves. “That’s on them, kid,” he said once he could unclench his jaw enough to speak. “That’s on them.”

“Yeah, I guess,” it replied.

“I would’ve turned around,” Cap said. “If I was your captain. I would have turned the whole thing around, no question. No matter how bad a crewmate you were. You’re a good kid, you know that? A damn good kid. And you didn’t deserve that.”

The corpse didn’t reply. Cap wasn’t sure what was supposed to come next, what else to say.

“You want to fish?” he finally asked.

“Sure,” the corpse replied, its voice a little stronger now, and Cap kneeled next to the body, threading his fishing pole through its remaining fingers. He rested his hands over top of the kid’s and together they let down the line.