Cold Fish

    The carcasses of dead fish dotted the hardpack every few feet. Their silver scales shone against the dark sand in the late afternoon light. The warm, spring air of early May was thick with the smell of lake water and putrefying fish. 

    Charles squinted out across the sunlit water and absentmindedly poked a stick into the empty eye socket of a brown trout. The flies congregating there stirred, and then settled back down unwilling to give up their meal. 

    Beside him, Mal looked up and down the beach at all the fish, and wondered what was so wrong with Lake Erie that this happened every spring. He said, “So what are you going to do in Pittsburgh?”

    Charles pushed the stick deeper into the fish’s skull, lifted it, and flung it from the end of the stick out into the water. Sand blew back and pelted his face. Coughing, he turned his back to the wind, spit, and wiped his face on his sleeve while Mal laughed. 

    When he was done, he turned back to the lake and threw in the stick. “I already have a job lined up at a Barnes and Noble. I start training in two weeks. And I already got my acceptance letter from U Pitt, so barring an act of god, I’ll start there in the fall.”

    Mal picked up a piece of driftwood and stabbed a pointed end into the pale belly of another eyeless fish corpse. When the skin broke, some of the intestines slid out into the sand. “You worried?”

    “Nah.” Charles waved a hand in dismissal. “I’m like, fuck it, dude, you know? Jackie and I have a place, so I’ll have a roof over my head. I’ll work and take classes, she’ll get her PhD first, and I’ll get mine the year after. Then whatever happens, happens.”

    They turned and walked farther down the beach in silence. Mal walked head-down, looking for beach glass. Charles found a new stick and stabbed at the fish. A large log had washed up on the beach, and Charles jumped up on it, dropped the stick, and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He closed his eyes and let the wind off the water blow his hair back.

    Mal looked behind them at their footprints in the sand. He took a deep breath and then turned to Charles. “Look man, there’s something I have to tell you.”

    The tone of his friend’s voice made him open his eyes and look down. Mal looked away out over the water. “What’s up?”

    “Remember the night of Rob’s party when I had to go pick up the pizza because their driver quit? And Jackie said she would go with me?”

    Charles nodded. His face was calm, but he felt his chest tightening.

    “She told me she knew you cheated on her with Christa. When I asked if she was okay, she said she was over it, and then … she asked me if I would fuck her.”

    “Oh shit. Fuck. Don’t tell me this shit now.” Charles jumped down, picked up a rock the size of a baseball and threw it in a high arc that ended in the lake. “Don’t fucking tell me, man.”

    “I have to, man. You’re going to live with her, and probably end up marrying her. She looked at your text messages. That’s how she found out.”

    “So. Did you fuck her?”

    Mal had tears in his eyes. “Yeah man. Yeah, we fucked.”

    Charles walked briskly up to Mal and shoved him. “You fucking cunt.”

    Mal fell backward, landing on his ass in the rock littered sand. Charles kicked him in the stomach and then fell on him with fists jabbing. Mal barely had time to get his arms up. Charles pinned him with his knees, and punched all the harder, screaming and spitting into his shielding hands and face. He tasted blood. He knew his lower lip was split and swelling. He could no longer open his left eye.

    When he finally stopped, Charles sat back looking at his throbbing fists. Mal took the opportunity to lash out with a sneakered foot, and heard the moist crack as his friend’s nose broke. Blood poured down over Charles’s lips and chin, spattering his shirt, but he just nodded and sat there watching it, crying and spitting into the sand.

    After a few minutes in silence, the friends stood and looked at each other with alien eyes. Charles took off his shirt, crumpled it in one hand, and held it to his nose. Mal went to the water, found a flat, cold, fist-sized rock, and pressed it to his left eye.

    Then, in silence, with the sun sinking behind them into the polluted water and its dying fish, they made their way back up the beach to the parking lot, and whatever lay beyond.