Schoharie

                             Schoharie
      (Schoharie first appeared in the September, 2006 issue of All About Writing)




         Tall grass swayed in the breeze as gentle waves of Lake Winnebago settled to sweat out on the rock and sand beneath the crisp, piercing sun.  A pot-bellied man missing teeth, wearing a NASCAR baseball cap, slowly backed an old, dirty, aluminum flat bottomed boat down the public ramp behind his rusted out pick-up.  Gulls squealed and the ducks and geese fled as he meticulously repeated his Saturday morning routine.  After a successful launch he skipped the aluminum craft across the tops of tiny waves sparkling crystal white beneath the sun as he raced his gap-toothed grin to his favorite place to drift through the day, casting and casting.  He slowed the boat and shut off the outboard, his wake catching him, pushing the boat forward in rhythmic lurches.  He tied his tackle to the end of his line grinning at his favorite lure.  Then he cast it as far as he could, his shifting weight caused the boat to wobble side to side.  The lure splashed into the water almost silently, and slowly began its descent deeper into the darkness, drifting farther from the sun, before being reeled up through the warm water to be cast out again.
          Far below the warm sunny surface, in the colder depths toward the dim murky bottom, a cold dark figure moved deliberately, shark-like through the water.  This cold dark figure was a large fish with spike-like teeth and glassy eyes darker than the lake’s bottom.  And this fish was haunted by visions.  They appeared almost like dreams that he could not completely understand.  It made no difference what time of day; scenes would flash through his mind; horrific, brutal, murderous scenes. 
                But this particular day the fish remembered his tortured past all too well.  The fish swam under a log as he saw an enraged man take off his belt and lash out at him.  The memory was so deep he could feel the welts begin to boil up on his arms and back.  He hid under the log until he saw boys taunting him and could feel their fists raining down upon him.  Quickly the fish swam out from under the log trying to evade the visions.  As the fish swam forward, the lake’s floor dropped away.  He hovered there seeing naked women lying in the weed-covered bottom below him.  Their pale, green tinged water-logged bodies were twisted and broken with cavernous empty eye sockets and open jaws bearing missing teeth. 
The fish arched his back and darted off to the safety of thick weeds in shallower water.  There he saw a room full of people cheering and weeping as tiny lights flashed at his orange skin while a fat bald man in black robes with piercing and serious blue eyes pounded a gavel.  That vision quickly faded only to be replaced by the vision of a roach running across a concrete floor past great metal bars.  Fear forced the fish to dart forward as he could almost feel the pain of the simple, sterile and brutal chair he saw. 
                The fish hated these visions, but they kept recurring, torturing him.  He was tired of being beaten by the scenes, especially the one with that chair.  Moreover, the fish understood these things happened to him though he did not know when or how.  With this knowledge fish became angrier with the relentless visions - angry to the point of bitterness.  Tired of trying to flee from them, he arched his back, bared his teeth and charged, trying to catch the images he saw.  But they were always able to stay out of reach.  Further angered and frustrated the fish began searching along the rocks, weeds and logs resting on the dark bottom of the lake, looking for another fish upon which he could unleash his anger.
              Out of chance he glanced toward the surface and saw a school of minnows, their silver sides glittering in the warm water of the summer lake.  He rushed the school.  The minnows instinctively fled, splitting into two groups, quickly swimming in opposite directions.  The fish chased after the group nearest him, but the minnows were able to evade his pike teeth.  Off to the side he saw the flicker of a minnow that had been separated from the school.  The fish’s bloodlust boiled over as he charged the minnow, slapping his sharp teeth down on it.  The fish felt a moment of wicked satisfaction before a sharp pain ripped through the corner of his mouth, tugging him sideways.  Fear flashed through the fish as he instinctively dove toward the darker depths of the lake.  But, the pain in his mouth would not let him flee.  He struggled as hard as he could toward the bottom of the lake, but no matter how hard he swam he continued to be pulled toward the bright warm surface.             
            Finally exhausted, the fish lay on its side atop the water, his white underbelly baking in the sun.  The fish felt soft hooks under his gills pulling him out of the water.  He gasped as he began to drown in the dry air.  He wiggled and slapped his tail in vain as an ugly man, like one in his haunting visions, held him down and ripped the hook from his mouth.  The man held the fish and looked at it.  The fish stared into the man’s vacant blue eyes and found he was no longer scared, he was only angry.  The man showed the fish a toothless smile, and then dropped the fish in a cooler half filled with ice.  The fish gasped and choked in the cold dark container.  And as the fish’s consciousness drifted off, his only thoughts were of eyes and teeth as the angry bitterness seethed through him.
         The toothless man brought the pick-up to a stop in the gravel driveway of his double wide.  A plume of dust followed the truck eventually washing over it like a gentle brown fog.  He took off his cap and wiped the sweat from his sunburned face with his forearm.  Coughing as the dust drifted through the open window of the truck, he put his cap back on, got out, and retrieved his cooler from the bed of the truck.  Grunting and gasping he carried the cooler as quickly as he could to the back door of his mobile home, and let himself into the kitchen.  He dropped the cooler on the floor next to a plastic basket full of unfolded clothes.  The counter was littered with dirty dishes.  He wrinkled his nose at a pungent, sour aroma as he pushed some food-caked dishes out of the way then turned to the chest on the floor.  He lifted the top of the cooler open revealing his fish on ice.  The fish lay on its side staring back with a filmed over eyes and a vicious grin.  The man stared in wonder for a moment admiring the fish, then reached in and pulled the fish out.  The fish was stiff as he carried it to the counter.  He pulled a knife from the drawer and began filleting, discarding the entrails and skin in the overflowing garbage.
         The fish fried in a stick of butter in a skillet on the stove, melding with salt, pepper, and thyme the man had dusted the fillets with.  When the meat flaked with the touch of a fork he transferred it to a plate and sat at the small table in the kitchen cluttered with open and unopened mail.  He took a hefty piece, dripping with butter, and placed it in his mouth.  The butter herbs and spices could not hide the incredible bitterness of the fish.  In fact, the fish was so bitter the man gasped in shock, and the bitter meat fell back into his throat lodging in his trachea.  The man tried to cough but he could not move any air.  He desperately thrashed about trying to dislodge the fish’s grip.  He punched himself in the chest and the stomach, but the fish held its grip on the man’s throat.  His eyes grew wider, bulging from their sockets as his face and lips quickly shaded a dusky blue.  He fell to the floor twitching and writhing, the horrid bitterness of the fish in the back of his throat, eventually becoming still next to the cooler.