Filaria - Brent Hayward [21]
TRAN SO, L20
Generations ago, the lake god made multitudes of healthy fish, but now it was sick, like the people, and produced only a few small fish, these being weak, thin, and spotted of flesh. The lake god made even fewer crustaceans. Regardless, every morning, after kissing his feverish wife on the cheek, Tran so Phengh made his way down from the communal shack where the couple lived to his adopted place on the beach, to sit there, rod in hand, spending the daylight hours fishing and staring out over the cluttered, receding waters of Lake Seven.
The ailing god, it was said, lived under the surface, in a large tank. Some citizens believed that this deity — maker of fishes, crabs, and aquatic plants — was actually dying, but Tran so could not imagine how any god could stop living. He could not imagine what might become of society if gods ceased providing altogether.
Semi-reclined, eyes half closed, Tran so Phengh saw a great crescent of the beach, extending away from him, out of sight, in both directions. Mists curled the periphery and gave an illusion of infinity. Before him, on the water, coracles, rafts, poorly made junks, and every other conceivable type of homemade vessel bobbed and creaked and rapped against each other. Some, in those vanished, plentiful times, had been fishing boats. Others, floating homes. Most were now abandoned wrecks. Masts and ribs of sunken vessels poked up from the bottom of the shallows like bones. Flotsam filled gaps between the vessels. Over the years, as the level of the lake had slowly dropped, Tran so often imagined a day that he might walk across the entire lake, to the far wall, without ever once touching water.
He would see the god’s house then, if it existed, and he could knock on the front door.
Calling this place where he sat a beach was a misnomer. Not at all like the black, sandy land along the banks of the trickling rivers and streams that cut through Hoffmann City, sharing the same name, this place was a sloped, smooth embankment, made out of the same hard material that the rest of the world’s foundation was made out of. Rimming three sides of Lake Seven, hemming it against the far wall — which could at times be seen from where he sat, misty in the distance — it emanated both a foul smell and a constant churning sound that almost drowned out the susurrus of moans and chatter from the barrios behind Tran so. It was slippery, coated with algae and dark green weeds that had sloshed ashore and rotted, or had been exposed as the waters dropped. At the waterline, stained with mineral deposits, detritus rolled and tumbled in sluggish waves as if trying to escape from the lake. Chunks of wood, foam, spent food paks, spent prayer cards, spent remedy capsules: all rolled ceaselessly on the slick-covered swells, striving to reach up, to overcome the land or at least regain the ground they had lost. Sometimes Tran so watched this motion. Mostly he stared ahead.
His wife, Minnie sue, was not well.
Not well at all.
This morning, however, he allowed himself to consider that he might have reached a point pivotal to his ill fortunes, for upon arriving he had received a sign that he might be commencing a streak luckier than that which he and most of his fellow citizens had been recently hurtling down. Today he had plucked a crab from the waters of Lake Seven. Although the beast’s shell was soft and illformed, the capture guaranteed meat for this evening’s meal. Tran so and Minnie sue would eat the contents of the paks supplied to them by the gods and supplement the bland gel with actual crabmeat. Imagining the taste now, Tran so’s mouth watered.
Of course, he had to assume that Minnie sue would be awake, able to eat, and that the meat might make her feel a bit better. Even though she had not had a grand mal or broken out in a rash in over a month — and her coughing had subsided