The Old Man And The Sea Monster
By Shane Alexander Greenhough
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Shane Alexander Greenhough
Robert
Dukes leaned back into his deck chair to begin what had, in recent
months, become an all-day routine – a packet of Lay’s sour
cream & onion rested
in his lap.
The fishing would still have been good in these parts,
were it not for that damnable sea monster. A grumble rose in his
throat at the thought.
He let his eyes glide along the water’s
surface.
He shoved a too-large crisp into his mouth.
He
crunched.
He sighed.
“What are you waiting for, Pa?” asked Charlie, the Owens’ boy. He sat, his feet dangling over the edge of the wooden pier out back of Robert’s house, looking up at the old man watching the lake.
Charlie
liked Robert. He was like a grouchier Popeye - a curmudgeonly sailor
or a weathered fisherman. No, not a fisherman – a sailor for sure.
Charlie remembered a comment his dad had made about how old Mister
Dukes had once referred to a fishing rod as, “just a damned
inconvenient way to catch dinner.”
Definitely not a fisherman
then.
“I’ve told you a thousand times, boy. I’m waiting for the sea monster.”
Charlie looked out over the river, crinkles of concentration lining his brow, his green eyes intent.
“Is there really a sea monster in the river?” he asked, not an ounce of irony in his voice.
“Of course there is. Can you tell me why else I’d be waiting for it?”
A waft of air blew in and washed over the pair leaving in its wake long, slow ripples on the water’s surface – the scent of rotting fish hung on the hairs of their nostrils.
“What does it looking like? The sea monster, I mean.”
“How should I know? I’ve never seen it.”
“So how do you know it’s there?”
“The fish,” said Robert, “there’s no more fish in the lake. The monster ate them all.”
This made perfect sense. Charlie himself had often partaken in the time-honoured Christmas Eve vigil of the adolescent. He always drifted off before the jolly one had arrived, but without fail his stocking would be stuffed with goodies the next morning – proof positive that old Saint Nick had been and gone.
The monster was the anti-Santa.
He nodded sagely and uttered the “ah,” of understanding.
****
“Maybe it’s a mutant shark?” offered Charlie excitedly six months later.
Mister Dukes was yet again sat on his deck chair watching the lake. Waiting.
Crumpled silver balls of eroded foil lay scattered about him on the pier. His right hand was buried in a packet of tomato sauce-flavoured Simba chips and his white-knuckled left held an open beer.
“A shark? In the river?”
“A mutant shark.”
Robert
scoffed. Imagine
that, a
shark in the river. Hah! Ridiculous.
“No,
that’s just silly,” he said, “It’s definitely a monster.”
They sat in silence for a time, the old man focused on the unbroken surface of the water, the boy’s attention wandering farther afield.
“What’s that?”
Charlie’s eyes were caught and pulled from the polished slate of the Autumn lake, across to the shore.
“Hmm? Oh, that’s my old boat.”
“Oh.”
“Yep, I used to ride her out into the middle of the lake and spend all day there. Was a time, I remember, this lake provided for every meal.”
“Until the monster ate all the fish?”
The boat’s nose was buried in moulded folds of mossy mud. Its hull still rested in the water, surrounded by a glossy sheen. The outboard motor had long since been eaten by rust and aged neglect. Empty bottles of beer littered its floor, and an upended and lidless jerrycan lay nearby.
Charlie
raised his eyebrows at the stick of dynamite which had rolled into a
corner of the boat’s floor, just outside of cursory sight. That was
certainly not a damned inconvenient way to catch dinner.
He noted
it, but said nothing. He’d always liked the old man, after all.
“Tha’s right,” muttered Robert, “damned sea monster.”
####
A question about environmentalism, perhaps? Was the Sea Monster in the lake real, or was the old man looking for esoterica to explain a question whose answer was clear-as-day in front of him the whole time? Do we do the same every day? Is the green movement little more than the equivalent of looking into the lake, expecting to find a sea monster?