Walter did not notice this.
He was mesmerized by the breaking waves against the pier pillars, distracted from his anger with Gabriel, how the wave shapes were so geometrical. He saw in these shapes the hand of a gentle and creative God. India had been on a Jesus kick lately. He didn’t know what to make of that, but he feared fervent believers. Too much of that, next thing you know you’re barricaded behind a bullet-riddled crucifix, daring the feds to come in and get you.
After a moment he remembered his thirst and took a sip from his soda can. As he gulped the wasp inside stung his bottom lip. He felt a piercing jab and flung down the can, swiped at his mouth, swatting the pulpy body of the wasp into the waves. He whined in pain and groaned. His right hand began to shake with palsy.
A couple walking down the pier stopped and asked, Are you okay?
Walter nodded. Something stung me I think.
The man said, Ouch.
The woman grimaced. She noticed Walter’s eyes watered and pink. Are you allergic to bee stings? Let me look.
Walter took his hand away and she made a face. Oh, my. It’s starting to swell. You should get that checked out, don’t you think? You might need a shot or something?
Walter dropped his fishing pole and headed toward the motel, holding his mouth in pain, feeling it begin to swell. He half worried he was being punished by a touchy God who knew his angry thoughts, his faithless doubts.
As he was walking he kept his eyes on the water, his face downcast and shamed from the sting. Near the end of the pier he saw something odd beneath the bubbled froth at the waves’ end. He stopped and stared. A new wave’s froth obscured it. Then came a clearing in the swells. There. A huge zebra-striped fish was beached in the shadows by the pier pillars, washed in by high tide. The biggest fish he’d ever seen.
In their hotel room, India was still doing her daily crossword puzzle. She was quite good at it, considering it her mental exercise, and was already halfway finished when Walter walked into the room with lips like little inner tubes. His face was red and blotchy. She called the front desk and asked for directions to the nearest hospital. Gusef was there. He offered to drive them, as it would be faster. He liked this old couple who had just arrived and wanted them to stay the season. He owned the RV park behind the motel and told them it would be perfect, a home away from home.
On the way to the clinic Walter told Gusef about the huge fish. He insisted he’d never seen anything like it before, that it was undoubtedly something remarkable. While waiting at the clinic, Gusef called the Black Tooth Café.
THIS WAS NOT the only Goodnight in Texas. Another town called Goodnight stretched wide its dry and wind-chapped lips in a coyote howl on the Llano Estacado of the Panhandle. It was a tiny one-horse town east of Amarillo and north of the windblasted cliffs of Palo Duro Canyon, near the famous JA Ranch, a million-acre spread founded by Colonel Charles Goodnight in the 1880s. Goodnight by the Sea shared this history, although it was a one-time gig. On an early trip rounding up wild longhorns from the Mexican brushland of South Texas and heading toward the Brazos River area, Goodnight and his men had veered east during a spate of torturously hot weather to hug the coastline, where the wind off the Gulf and the summer rains kept the air cooler.
The land was flat and easy from the saddle. The shadows of turkey vultures marked the herds trail as the birds circled in the cloudy sky or caught the updrafts and floated ahead of the scudding thunderheads. Coyotes skittered at the edges of the herd, occasionally chased away by the bigger wolves. Mosquitoes in the swamps sucked the blood from man and steer. The small town starting to form at the edge of Red Moon Bay grabbed the name of Goodnight, hoping to lure the cowboys back to the coast, for the business. But it didn’t work. Only the name stuck.
Because of the duplicate names, the coastal town was officially Goodnight by the Sea, the seat of Mustang County. Mustang Island and the glitz and hubbub of Corpus Christi lay to the south. Texas being as huge and lanky as it is, Goodnight by the Sea was a good six hundred miles south of Goodnight in the Plains, so there wasn’t much confusion over directions.
The people of Goodnight had lived with the blessings of the sea for many years, for generations. They had grown used to it. They had grown complacent. When the fishing and the shrimping declined, they reasoned it was just bad luck. A lull. A year or two of sea drought. These things come in cycles. That was what they told each other. Next year would be payday. The big kahuna. The drunk-with-money stroll on Easy Street. If they didn’t go broke and toothless in the waiting. If their boats weren’t repossessed. If the puffy pinkfaced vampires at the bank didn’t get their grubby mitts on them, things would work themselves out. They always did.
But this was the year the light of Goodnight was fading. The planet was overheating. In summer the sea turned warm as mustang blood. Rain fell in torrents as if this sunny, windy coast of Texas were the Congo or Borneo. Ditches filled with an algae-green mix of brackish rain and swamp water. Alligators crawled through backyards, beneath rusting swing sets and barracuda wind kites, slept in the shadows of boat trailers. The deep green St. Augustine grass of the lawns grew so fast you could almost see it, feel it squirming beneath your feet like sand crabs. Oleanders bloomed pink and lush as mutated sea anemones. At night people couldn’t sleep from the ungodly chorus of croaking frogs.
The sweetheart Gulf of Mexico turned mythical and suspicious. Bottle-nosed dolphins beached themselves on the oyster-shell shores of Tin Can Point and Humosa Bay. Dead loggerhead turtles washed ashore like huge sand dollars. Huge swarms of mosquitoes filled the sky in gray clouds, and some of Goodnight’s oldest died from West Nile.
Gusef realized a giant fish beached near the Sea Horse could be useful. He decided to call Falk Powell, the high school kid he’d hired a couple weeks before, at the café. Falk was a teenager who would take pictures of people when they weren’t looking, wandering the aisles of Wal-Mart, say, or filling a tank at the Speed-n-Go. People shouted and threatened to kick his ass from one end of town to the next, but that didn’t make him stop.
Falk dried his hands on his smudged apron and answered the ringing phone. Leon the badmood bartender, whose ex-wife was known for wishing death and ruin upon him, advised Falk that if anyone asked, he wasn’t there.
The dim interior of the clapboard seaside café glowed in slow-motion gloom. Beer signs cast green shadows on the walls decorated with mounted trophy marlin and swordfish. At a table nearby Una was folding napkins, sitting as straight as if she were playing an invisible piano. In the soft light of afternoon she was so beautiful one could imagine she must have broken many hearts, men turned into fish and left to swim sadly beneath the pier lights, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.
On the phone Gusef said, These pathetic stinking fisherman are joke. They cannot catch own dick with both hands. You show them. You take your camera and get photo.
Falk said okay, he would check it out. He hung up the phone, got his camera bag from beneath a kitchen table, and told Una the scoop. Why don’t you come along? he asked.
Una arranged the silverware to fold another napkin. I’m supposed to wait here for Gabriel. He should be by soon.
Oh, come on, said Falk. What are you, his servant?
No.
Well then.
You shouldn’t say that.
I did.
You shouldn’t.
Come with me. It won’t be the same without you.
Una finished rolling the silverware, tucking the white cloth dinner napkin just so.
Okay,