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Fish
Sauce
(Contributed by Trevor Ranges)
Part
2
The
shark floated within an enormous glass tank; it's bloated,
macerated body a sickly, jaundiced yellow, and its deadly
cold eyes now milky white. The liquid within the tank
was cloudy and yellow as well. As my eyes had adjusted
to the light, my nose followed suit and I recognized
the distinctively fetid and biting smell: formaldehyde.
Bertha told me her plan: "After we drain the tank we
gotta git this sucker onto the workbench. There we'll
gut it, making sure to save all the innards in these
here pails, dice it up, mix it with whatever spices
we can muster up to mask the pre-serves, and then fill
up them jars over there." As I was still in shock from
the sight of the shark, her preposterous plan flew right
over my head. Bertha brought me back to my senses with
a resounding slap and a few words of encouragement:
"bust a move, Numnuts!" With those words we launched
ourselves into fish sauce fame.
People were so hungry they were willing to buy just
about anything. It didn't hurt business that the mixture
of preservatives and locally gathered herbs and fungi
had a pleasantly inebriating effect; the depression
was long and hard, and most folks needed an escape.
Demand for Bertha's Famous Fish Sauce was immediate
and unwavering.
Of course the shark itself, guts, brains, gills and
all, was dispensed of rather quickly. Fortunately those
initial sales bought us a boat and a cannery at rock
bottom prices and we were able to substitute the ingredients
accordingly. Once prohibition was repealed, we cut back
on the hooch; a contract with the military during the
World War finalized the transition to an established,
well-oiled and well-known business.
Bertha's Famous Fish Sauce became a household name;
Bertha herself became an even better known face. Plastered
on the side of every bottle was a picture of Bertha
all dolled up in Sunday's finest; her massive grinning
face plastered with gobs of meretricious make-up. Beneath
her photo were the words "Holy Hammerhead! This is great
fish sauce!"
Due to the popularity of the fish sauce that phrase
got pretty popular too: "Hoooooly Hammerhead!!!" people
were oft heard to exclaim. Of course you are aware that's
the origin of the name of our mascot at the school here
too: Harbors Port Hammerheads! Bertha and I sure had
a blast at all those football games. We were gen-u-ine
celebrities.
But Bertha was never satisfied. She was on the floor
of the cannery night and day; she was a real hands-on
kinda woman. She lumbered up and down the floor, spewing
orders from her malodorous maw; dribble oozing over
her ample chins; spittle frothing from the corners of
her cracked, parched, protruding lips. "Put some elbow
grease into it!" she'd holler down onto the cannery
floor. She really rode those boys night and day and
never seemed to be content with the work she or anyone
else was doing.
"I got a bug up my butt as sure as Shirley" she confided
to me one day, "I just don't think I can hack it anymore."
I told her I thought she could use a holiday, "Take
a sail down the coast; blow off some steam." And for
a few a weeks after she was gone everyone figured that's
just what she did. But then, as you know, she never
came back.
Until now.
Fissssssssssshhhhhsauuuuce…
Hearing that whisper now as a walk the waterside, I
begin to regret coming back here. The fog has crept
closer now; thick as pea soup and the pier groans presciently,
as though it knows what skulks in the mysterious beyond.
I chuckle, shrugging off my irrational foreboding, and
start to resume my walk along the boardwalk, when suddenly
I feel the weight of heavy steps mimicking my own. I
stop.
FIIISSSSSHHHHHSAAAUUUUUCEEE….
The words are disquietingly louder this time; the tone
is unsettlingly more real. I hasten my step into the
mist, soon lost, suffocating on my own guilt. For 50
years I have reaped the rewards of fish sauce fame.
I have been the sole owner and proprietor since I rid
myself of that cantankerous creature. Of course no one
ever saw her again; no one ever knew what happened to
the hammerhead either…and now, as the shadow nears me
in the murky dusk, I realize that I too shall never
be heard or seen again. Or will I…
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