graveyard

THE SHINING CLAM

FIFTY YEARS AGO about one in every hundred clams was a special 'shining clam'. Regular clams have a buttery, chalk-colored shell. Shining clams had a cloudy, glittery shell translucent enough to see the mollusk inside. It fit in the palm of one's hand similar to a butter clam. The texture and taste of the meat was between wet seaweed and garden hose. But eating it caused numbness, tingling, sometimes nausea, and hallucinations. Eating it gave people the power to see mermaids. Many, now in retirement homes, claimed to have eaten a piece of one or know someone who had. There is no proof of shining clams ever existing before; not even a fragment of a shell is left, because removing the meat triggered rapid deterioration and disintegration of the shell.

Every year people gather on tidal flats ankle-deep with rakes, digging faithfully, with the hope of finding one; and every year since the last nobody has ever found one.

There is a rumor that someone very rich still keeps a shining clam in a personal aquarium but their identity is unknown.

THE CURSE SONG

THERE ARE MANY STRANGE NOISES HEARD COMING FROM THE OCEAN, and the strangest of them is the conversations of whales. They don't have words like human beings. Instead, whales have phrases and melodies. Whales speak to one another through short ditties and long ballads. These songs are often unique to a species, or unique to a pod, and hearing them often enough sailors can nearly discern one song from another and know what they are saying.

There is one song among these that no one alive has heard. Those who hear it are doomed to meet with an untimely death. Sailors speak of other sailors who, before they died, mentioned being the only one to hear a faraway whale song that was almost human.

The song they hear is described as a deep humming; and the humming is so resonant, so reverberant, that it could have only come from a giant man.

THE THIRTEENTH SURVIVOR

THERE'S A LIGHTHOUSE NOW but back when there wasn't, a ship crashed on those the rocks one foggy night and thirteen people died. Their names and ages are engraved on a rock leaning against the cliff. No one is capable of walking up to it as earthquakes and soil erosion have made it impossible to reach the rock. If visitors stand in the right place and have a pair of binoculars ready then they can sort of see the names. Some of the names are crossed off. People remember when there were fewer names crossed out and there's a theory as to why. The twelfth name was recently crossed after the skull of a John Doe was unearthed in the sand, bleached and worn after many years of saltwater. There are eleven recorded cases in the area of fishing boats and lifeguards rescuing people from the water only to see them vanish without a trace. The final name is a person yet to be rescued.

THE GOOD-FOR-NOTHING

MY GREAT GRANDMA FOUND A GOOD-FOR-NOTHING MAN IN A FISHING NET and I know it's weird but I'm guessing she didn't think so because she married the good-for-nothing and had three kids with him. My family is actually forbidden to say his name so I didn't grow up knowing what his name was. I don't even know if she knew what his name was. All I know is, she was a funky little spinster with a really good clam chowder recipe, and she married a man who was nineteen years her junior. He was so tall they had to stand like several yards away to get him in the wedding photo so the details of his face is blurry. She said he was the handsomest man she had ever clapped eyes on too. He was also very quiet and never said much. My grandpa remembered only one tiny thing about his father and that's that he had really cold, clammy hands.

My grandpa's sister however, remembered more than that. Her parents got married right after they met, so she was born within the first year of their marriage, a marriage that lasted only five years. Her whole life since she insisted to everyone that her father didn't leave, that he wasn't a good-for-nothing, and that he was killed. She vowed never to forget the day.

My grandpa's brother would laugh at her because he seemed to remember 'the day' too.

The day the good-for-nothing left, there was a beached whale with its tail wound up in fishing gear. The town's fishermen speared it to put it out of its misery then excitedly took it apart.

The neighbors presumed that the good-for-nothing left during all the commotion. What twenty-one year old would in his right mind would marry and stay married to a forty-something? As soon as the town economy was secure he didn't feel guilty enough to stick around.

Somehow, probably because she knew the story of how her parents met, the poor sister connected the tangled whale to her tangled father. She cried for a whole week, 'My daddy! My daddy! They killed my daddy!'

Even as an adult she would argue vehemently with all the family every holiday about it which ended in disowning us for a few months.

My own grandpa would quietly agree that it was a silly notion, but I heard once that he could never watch that one whale movie without tearing up.

THE WORLD MOLLUSK

THE SKY AND THE SEA ARE TWO HALVES OF A GIANT SHELL and the earth on which all plants and animals live is the mollusk in-between.

A long, long time ago the world was always night. The shell was always closed. It was dark except for the light of pearls which shined down from the oceans above, including light from the Biggest Pearl which watched over everything.

The shell opened sometimes and only then was there daylight.

The daylight was the only time anyone ever experienced warmth. Once the shell closed no one knew when they would feel warmth again. Most lived to see one day in their lives. Others lived and died without.

Lam'mieh was afraid that she would die without knowing warmth. She lived in the First Forest with her granddaughter Te'nas. Te'nas knew Lam'mieh's wish and promised her grandmother that she would see the day before she died.

This was a time before everything. There were no boats. This was before there were boats. The only way to travel by water was to swim like the fish do. So Te'nas jumped into the ocean and began swimming.

Te'nas met First Salmon and his tribe along the way, “Hello!”

First Salmon was surprised. “Hello, small klootchman. Why are you here?”

“I'm swimming to the edge of the ocean to open the World Mollusk's shell.”

Almost all the salmon laughed. “You are too small.”

So she turned around and ate almost all the salmon, leaving only the ones who didn't. That is why today all fish look so frightened. Te'nas grew bigger.

Te'nas kept swimming and met First Seal and his to tribe along the way, “Hello!”

First Seal was surprised. “Hello, small klootchman. Why are you here?”

“I'm swimming to the edge of the ocean to open the World Mollusk's shell.”

Most of the seals began to argue with each other over whether or not it was possible.

So Te'nas turned and ate most of the seals who believed she couldn't. That is why today most seals are agreeable except when they aren't and fight each other. Te'nas grew even bigger.

Te'nas kept swimming and was almost there when she met First Whale and his tribe, “Hello!”

First Whale had never seen people before, “Hello and what are you?”

“I am a hunter.” Te'nas said. By now she was just big enough to do anything she wanted. She killed the First Whale and ate him for strength.

She reached the edge of the shell and opened it. Te'nas held it open. Back home Lam'mieh was able to see daylight and feel warmth before she died.

Because of the great distance and the great strength required to open the shell, Te'nas never returned home. Instead she stayed in the ocean eating fish, seals, and whales. She opens the shell and holds it open until she is too tired to hold it up any longer.

The daylight burnt half of Te'nas, while leaving half of her unburnt. Te'nas was the first black and white orca whale. Her children and her children's children uphold her tradition of holding open the World Mollusk's shell.

So if there were no more orcas then there would be no more days.

THE RED TIDE

EVERYTHING THAT LIVES IN THE WATER IS A SPIRIT. The ocean is the spirit world from which life began and to which it returns after death.

When the spirits are angry the ocean bleeds. The life-giving tide becomes a poisonous red. The ocean ceases to nourish. Those who attempt to eat anything from the ocean will sicken and die. Fish and other newly dead lie in the sun to rot.

During a red tide, spirits leave the ocean. They remember how to be people. They remember how to act and dress. They remember who their friends and families were. They remember their murderers.

THE LONG SHADOW

THIS WILL HAPPEN OCCASIONALLY when you are walking alone on the beach. A long, dark shadow will start to grow alongside you and follow you wherever you are going. It doesn't matter what time it is, day or night. It is most unsettling at noon.

The farther you walk, the bigger and more misshapen it becomes. If you turn around you won't catch it. You won't find anything around that can cast a shadow like that. The only way to escape it is to find another person to join your company or to stop walking so it doesn't grow.

There are always people around so no one knows what happens if you don't escape.

WHY BIRDS AND FISH ARE ENEMIES

WHEN THE WORLD MOLLUSK WAS YOUNG the world was a noisy place full of song and conversation between birds and fish. This was possible because birds used to live in the ocean. Things were different back then!

Back then, the fish were many and there were more of them then there are now. Fish used to speak and they were the most talkative of all the animals. The air used to rustle with their conversation the way the ocean ripples with their swimming.

Through song and conversation they passed knowledge to each other very quickly. Fish were the most knowledgeable, but they were the least wise. The lives of fish are too fast and too short for them to grow wisdom. So fish were very clever but also foolish.

Things were different back then! Back then, fish were even warm like all the other animals. That's all changed now and this is what happened:

First Man and his wife First Woman were fighting over a large clam. Both wanted to eat it but they had only one. So they dropped the clam instead and went their separate ways to opposite sides of the beach to sulk.

First Fish saw the man alone. Loneliness is strange to a fish so that made him curious. He approached and asked, “What is wrong, man? You look sad.”

But man did not know how to talk. He could not answer the fish.

First Fish pitied him and wanted to help. He gave man a small egg to hold that would pass the ability of speech but instead of holding it, the man ate it, and this is how man inherited speech. Man inherited speech from fish. His voice was deep.

“I am sad and cold!” First Man cried.

First Fish pitied him and wanted to help. He used his knowledge to teach the man how to make a fire. This was a mistake First Fish would later regret. So he and all the other fish would never speak to anyone again. From then on, fish were cold.

First Woman watched as the birds hunted for food. They picked and pried clams open easily with their beaks. It made her very sad to be the only one not eating so she cried.

First Bird approached her, for birds are very talkative, curious, and as foolish as the fish are. “What is wrong, klootchman?”

First Woman could not answer him.

But First Bird wanted to woo her. So he gave her an egg to hold that would pass the ability of speech. In her hunger she ate it instead. This is how women inherited speech from birds. Her voice was high.

“I am sad and hungry!” First Woman cried.

First Bird wanted to impress her so he taught First Woman how to make a spear to help her poke things as with a beak. This he would later regret as birds were then banished from living in the ocean for this transgression. Fish refused to speak with birds; and so the two became enemies.

But that's not all!

After learning to make fire, First Man ran to find First Woman and after learning how to make spears, First Woman ran to find First Man. They apologized to one another and began to share their knowledge.

THE LIFEBOAT

I DROVE FOR THREE HOURS ON A WHIM TO GET TO THAT ONE RESTAURANT for some fish and chips. The sun had just set when I received my to-go order so I was sitting in my car dunking deep fried fillets. The cup of chowder steamed the windshield a little as it sat on the dash. My fingers singed and my tongue burned but it was good.

I tried to work my phone with my palm unsuccessfully. I fumbled with buttons and the volume dial to turn on my car radio with my knuckles. Leaving small grease prints was unavoidable so they were everywhere.

A local channel had the clearest audio. It was a fuzzy phone caller.

”...I spotted a little wooden lifeboat with red-orange seats and oars. It had probably been out there for decades. There was no way to know where it came from.”

The soft, bass-y radio show host cut in.

“Didn't it belong to the crab boat you were looking for?”

The staticky, wind-muffled caller continued.

“No. We were out there looking for a different, more modern vessel that had capsized.

Anyway, I didn't think there would be anyone on it... until the water picked it up and threw it down. I saw what looked like a body.

Someone in my crew shouting they had found the vessel and some of its passengers. Now they're in their cold water immersion suits and an inflatable liferaft. They're the ones we were looking for. I'm clutching the rail trying not to lose my position. I hollered 'hey, I found a little lifeboat' but no one seemed to believe me until the waves brought it towards us.

We recovered the lifeboat and, there was a naked woman in that lifeboat! Alive. She was drenched, cold to the touch, like a drowned corpse. She wasn't shivering at all though. I took her temperature, but I don't remember what it was... I checked her pulse, her blood pressure, her pupils. Everything was fine.

She pooled. She trailed water when we took her into the cabin. I tried to dry her but she wouldn't dry. I give her a blanket and she soaks it, sopping wet from the top of her head to her chin, all the way down to the floor...”

“Did she come from the crab boat? Did anybody know or recognize her?”

“You know... that was the first thing we asked everyone but nobody knew her and we tried to talk to her but she couldn't say anything. She's staring at nothing, and here I'm thinking we have a victim of some kind of trauma but then I notice she's actually staring at one of my crew.

He's busy doing something but he looks around and he catches her looking at him. He almost trips too. I say 'buddy, are you okay you want some dramamine'. The puddle on the floor slides into his boots. We're being tossed by the ocean. I thought he was having a rough time of it. He looked sick.

Then it hits me. This guy, his girlfriend drowned in a boating accident, but then she's sitting right there.”

“Did they say anything to each other?”

“Well... I don't know. It happened so fast I'm not sure. He turns around and runs. He runs out of the cabin. She gets up and she follows him. I follow her. The blanket blows into the doorway. When I step foot out there they're gone.”

“They disappear?”

“I'm hugging the railing. The rescue boat isn't that big. I search the deck. I know they could've been easily thrown overboard. But I would've been able to see him. He was wearing a life jacket.

We had a helicopter come out looking for him for hours. They didn't find him or the woman. Nobody remembered what she looked like so it's like I'm crazy. I imagined it. Or it was a coincidence that she looked familiar to me...”

“So she was a ghost?”

“I think so. I thought it was weird though because we still have the lifeboat we found her in. It's sitting on the beach by our station. So it happened.”

My eyes watered so I turned the radio off. The street lamps were coming on so I rolled down the rain-speckled window and looked out. Down there, in the dark, I saw the shadow of a row boat tied to the lifeguard station. I threw my car into reverse and peeled out of the lot.

THE CATCH

NANOOK WAS A RETIRED OLD MAN WITH A LOT OF TIME ON HIS HANDS but although he wanted something to do, he was also very lazy.

Somehow fishing came to mind. So he bought a second hand fishing rod and tacklebox one day then the next day ambled alone up the dock. He embarked on a little aluminum skiff out into the bay; baited his hook, cast his line, and waited. After a while the breeze felt so soft and comfortable, the sun was warm, and his bones felt so heavy that he fell asleep.

He jerked awake to the sound of something disturbing his rod. Sleepily he began reeling it in. The line pulled taut, the rod bent, and he felt the lively vibration of something struggling to get free. Then! Splish-splash! Just like that he caught a fish.

A rockfish popped out of the water and into the boat. It shook and flip-flopped, mouth agape, gills twitching for the last shreds of water sliding off its body.

Nanook leaned over and held it down with his massive bear paw, a dry, knobbly-knuckled hand, as he carefully removed the hook. The fish's teary eye expressed so much terror that he felt it necessary to apologize.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Off you go!” He said gruffly.

Nanook gently released the fish right back into the bay.

“Well, that was exciting.”

It was only eleven o'clock in the morning but his belly grumbled. Feeling like catching something was more work than he expected, he opened his cooler and unwrapped a cheese, lettuce, and tomato sandwich on marbled rye. As he was eating, he noticed there was a little fish swimming around by his boat.

Not expecting anything to come of it, he tore a mayo-covered piece of the sandwich and tossed it into the water. The fish swam up and ate it. He recognized it was the rockfish from earlier. He didn't even think fish liked sandwiches.

“That's enough for today.”

It took him almost an hour to eat the rest of his sandwich, herring egg salad, and flask of hot coffee. He was about pack up to return home when he noticed his line was in the water. The reel was whizzing.

“This better not be that same fish.”

But whatever he had hooked was deep underwater. The line went out very far and was very slack. He reeled something in and it wasn't a fish.

It was an internet service provider CD tangled in an old fishing line, a broken net, with a coat hanger, six pack rings, a balloon, and another coat hanger. It was mucky and disgusting. He couldn't bring himself to drop it or throw it back in the water, so he laid it out in the boat by his feet.

Nanook dipped his hands into the ocean for a quick rinse and the rockfish jumped into his chest. Nanook jumped too. The boat was wobbling and bobbing.

When he got a hold of the fish it stopped struggling.

“What are you choking on?”

It wasn't a chunk of cheese, but a plastic bottle cap.

Nanook dug it out of the rockfish's mouth and tossed the cap into the pile. The rockfish slipped out of his hands and tumbled back into the ocean.

Wiping his hands on his jeans, Nanook turned and was about to pull up the anchor when he noticed there was something shadowy just under the surface. He reached down and the back of his hand brushed against a clump of gillnet curled around the chain. He sheared the knots with a pocketknife but found bundles and bundles of near-invisible nylon mesh hiding in the murk.

Nanook stared at the floating debris questioning himself what he should do with it.

“Fuck.”

He began pulling in clumps by the fistfuls.

“Fucking shit!”

Soon he had an itchy armful of trash covering his lap and he could see that there was more connected to it in the water, like a nasty spaghetti, but instead of sauce it was garbage soup.

Nanook's hands became stained and black with some kind of filmy grease as he pulled more and more old fishing gear into the skiff. He dragged in a sloppy mess of tangled fishing lines and rusted hooks. On each hook there were CDs, all by the same internet provider, in factory condition.

“Ah, fuck! Fuck me!!”

He heaved and hauled a wet ball of fraying rope and netting out of the ocean. It contained smashed milk jugs, deflated mylar birthday balloons, soda liters, and a dirty vinyl tablecloth. Party cups and frosted lids, clear plastic straws and bags, spilled into the skiff.

Nanook pulled and pulled. Everything he found, he added to the dripping slough until the pile was as tall as he was, and higher, and higher.

It strained his back and welted his fingers but he kept pulling. The pile almost buried the skiff completely. The old man soon resigned to taking off his boots, his coat, and lowering himself into the ocean to make more room on the skiff for more garbage.

Loopy, itchy rolls and rusted coils of old trot lines and braided lines were yanked out of the water and added to the pile. Loose bottle caps and crispy plastic wrappers of all kinds and all colors regurgitated by the depths were collected by hand and tucked in.

The weight of the massive catch reached the maximum capacity of the skiff and was perilously close to exceed.

Nanook fished out and pulled up the last thread of monofilament. It came with another CD and then another hundred meters of twisted fishing net.

The maximum capacity exceeded three times.

The propeller and anchor were totally freed but the skiff's hull was barely visible above water. He wasn't able to use it so he swam around to the bow and began pulling it himself towards the land.

He kept his chin up as much as possible, afraid that otherwise he might get invisible plastic caught in his nose and mouth. Paddling for a while, he and the skiff hardly closed any distance. Nanook uttered one final curse, sputtering.

“Cocksucker!”

Clean, salty ocean filled his mouth as a wave came and took off the top half of the pile. The smack of the water stunned Nanook.

When the old man recovered, he found himself staring at a large, dark whale coming towards him with its maw wide open. It swallowed Nanook, the skiff, and the enormous pile.

Inside the whale, there was garbage. Nanook felt around for skin and flesh but only found plastic.

It was a whale made out of garbage. Its tongue was grocery bags and cigarette filters. Its teeth were bottle caps. The roof of its mouth were sails, soiled tarp, and broken barrels held together by mesh.

The whale swam to the dock and hurled itself over the marina. Garbage scattered across the parking lot, across windshields, and tables in the outside eating area.

Nanook emerged from the pile with his coat and shoes as onlookers swarmed around it.

“Somebody should do something about this,” he said.

And then Nanook went home.