Turning (Outside Fishtown) CJ Giroux

TURNING (OUTSIDE FISHTOWN)

CJ Giroux

With his flannel sleeve rolled past the elbow, my grandfather moves his submerged arm like a pendulum to push water through gills. Too small, too small, he says.

He teaches me to remove the hook, throw him back. I bungle the job: tear the cheek, drop the fish. It swims towards the river’s brown-green depths, and my grandfather chuckles, yep, sometimes that’s the way it goes. Now, I picture the steel j jutting from its mouth—a greaser with a cigarette tilted between his lips. I imagine drops of blood sinking in the water like rubies unstrung, turning as they fall but then…

My grandfather’s knife catches me, the late afternoon light as it keens through air, flesh, fluids. He works outside the tin shed on the small rise that marks the end of their plot. A good haul, he smiles. Thinking of dinner, we debate frying vs. baking, as eggs ooze from the biggest salmon, a little early for the season. He talks of the saltiness of caviar, but these, he points, will be buried, like the burnt remains of a religious offering, in the empty beds that held neon lights of July chard, the bleached tassels of peaches and cream corn in August. He teaches of bone, the softness of cartilage and silt, the hungry soil.

I retreat to my grandmother’s side, the flowerbeds that guard the house. Her alto voice rings clean and clear: ’Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free….

Kneeling to begin the fall chores, she drives the rusting bulb planter down, twists the circular blade, shakes free the earthen plug. I ask about the feelings, dreams of animals, flowers. Silence fills the space between us.

Tilting her head, turning to study the neighbor’s rowed beehives, my grandmother begins with a sigh; she remembers their three-legged Irish setter who ran in his sleep, the feral calico with the ragged ear, the purple clematis struggling to climb the drainspout.

As I place in each hole the beginnings of daffodils, she reminds me of fates, cause and effect, and to point each tip up; she claims the fall sun, coming cold are spindles, that love comes with pain, that we must do our share.

She then covers these sleeping beauties with soil; she offers them, me a smile, pat, prayer. Burning leaves fill the air, so too the bitterness of mums, the last of the French marigolds when she brushes a gloved hand over their ruffled heads.

My grandfather joins us, spade in hand, to turn over this dark earth, lift their prize dahlias, white, maroon, ‘til by turning, turning, he sings in his deep tenor, we come round right. This, too, he says, is the way it goes.