GRANNY BLACKFISH
A WOMAN STRICKEN BY ILLNESS DIED AND LEFT BEHIND HER WIDOWER JAMES, A FIFTY YEAR OLD MAN, AND SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD SON CHARLES WHO WAS THEIR ONLY CHILD. With no mother to rein his actions, the boy grew prone to drinking, gambling, and other bad habits. Eventually, the crux of his addictions led to a fatal crescendo at the bar. He got into a fight with the wrong man and died. The man and his friends were sailors who stopped in town to resupply. They left in a hurry as though offended. Eyewitnesses said it was an accident, that it was only a rough tumble, that Charles broke his neck in falling.
James believed their story until they left him alone with the body. While washing blood and broken glass bits away, he found a slim wound hidden in the armpit that could only have come from a knife. “That sly, dirty seadog!” The poor widower cried. And he ran out only to catch a glimpse of their ship as it sailed over the horizon. He fell to his knees in anguish, pounding the sand with his fists. “I worked hard all my life and my wife died. I tried to be a good father and now my son is dead. I would give anything for vengeance.”
The dry rumpled sand beneath him suddenly became smooth and damp. Heavy foot steps, and a soft crunch of something puncturing ground captured his attention. James looked up to see a large, old woman using a harpoon for a walking cane. “Who are you?”
“Why, James! It's me, your own grandmother. Don't you recognize me?” Suddenly she looked and sounded very familiar. “Is something wrong?”
Nodding, James wiped his teary eyes on his sleeve. “My son was killed and now his murderer sails away. I don't know how to avenge him.”
“Why, you only need to ask me nicely! Your old Granny Blackfish!” She embraced him.
A great and terrible urge to sob violently welled up inside him and he clutched her robes to weep but no tears fell. He felt all his grief disappear. “Granny Blackfish! Granny Blackfish, teach me how to find a man,” the poor widower asked.
“You must wait for twenty years for the murderer to come back here,” Granny Blackfish answered. In the meantime, bury your son next to his mother. Eat, drink, fish, throw your scraps into the ocean as if nothing ever happened.”
She disappeared and the sand beneath him dried, but his clothes were wet as though he'd been walking in the surf.
James did everything she told him to. For twenty years, he waited, and lived as though he never had a son who was murdered. Most of the people in town forgot he ever had a son. He was by then, a very old fisherman who came to the pub sometimes, who offered to help at the restaurants in exchange for cooked meals, and who threw buckets of scraps off his boat twice a day. No one even saw the whales that came to feed off of the bits and entrails he had saved from cleaning the town's fish and cockles.
Finally the day came when an all too familiar ship dropped anchor in the harbor and the whole crew, including the murderer who was now a captain, aged but still recognizable, landed. James could hear them talking and carousing for hours. They even walked past him without so much as glance while he was sitting at the market shucking oysters. Not even when the sight of the murder made him drop his knife and knock over his bucket. They were a very merry bunch, still able-bodied and strong while he was bent-backed and feeble. He wanted very much to stab the man with his blunt shucking knife but too many of the ship's crewmen were around and could easily stop him if he tried. He shook too fiercely with anger to do any work so excused himself for the day. The time passed, and all he could do was sit at home in agony, but he knew that the ship would soon pull anchor with its crew.
When James couldn't bear his suffocating anger any longer he visited the beach.
The sand beneath his worn boots turned to grainy muck. Granny Blackfish appeared, and at once he grasped her cold hands. His anger was gone and so he was able to breathe again. “Granny Blackfish! Granny Blackfish, teach me how to catch a man,” the poor widower asked.
“Hire him. He'll stay longer and go wherever you command him to go as long as you pay him generously,” she answered. “Pay him with your life's savings for a whale.”
She disappeared again and James hobbled through the sand, back to his house, where he gathered all his money. During the years the town's fishing industry boomed and even the smallest ventures were lucrative. He had earned more than enough to sustain himself just by helping others cleaning and preserving fish.
Everyone was so surprised to see that the old man had so much money that they were not taken aback by his order to hunt a whale. It so happened that there were still whales that time of year swimming along the coast, hunting, and getting fat off of salmon.
James paid them and promised them the other half of the sum when they delivered. They were lied to, of course, since he gave them everything he had at the beginning.
In the morning they waited on the shore with nets and harpoons at the ready. They set out in boats when they spotted flukes in the water.
James stood on the shore to watch them. It was his deepest desire, that the murderer and every man out there with him would perish. As he stood there the sand underneath him eroded away, pulled by water, and Granny Blackfish appeared. She stabbed the soft, wet sand with her cane.
“Granny Blackfish! Granny Blackfish, teach me how to kill men,” the poor widower asked.
“There are many ways to kill men,” she answered. “You can take away their joy, their time, or their freedom. What will it be?”
“Their freedom.” As soon as he decided, his hatred was gone, and he regretted it.
As soon as she vanished there arose a great cry from the sailors in the distance. The ocean suddenly boiled and all the boats tipped over, spilling each man into the water where he floundered about helplessly. The whales swarmed around them, biting off their hands, feet, and legs. When they were rescued by local fisherman most of them were half-dead and their captain, the murderer himself, fell sick when his wounds festered and became blind. Each man became a pauper after their earnings were spent on doctors and could not leave the town. When they sought for reparations from the old man James, they found him dead, and tore up his home only to find out that he was penniless.