Aquatic Ape*
Duncan noted the market price of lobsters. Cheap. Too cheap. Poor economic times had brought a halt to the purchase of luxuries like lobster, so the market was glutted with them. Cruise lines had cancelled millions of pounds of orders for the season and were serving cheap farmed shrimp from Asia instead of lobster in their surf and turf. While he waited for his take-out order at Manavilins Fish Shack, he picked up a copy of New England Fisherman to take his mind off his financial woes by reading about others’ woes. Above the general noise of the restaurant, he heard a thickly accented voice rise from a booth.
“I am willing to make a contribution to nature, but nature must be willing to make a contribution to me first! Who is going to pay for me to change my nets?”
Duncan pressed his glasses hard against his face, as if that could block out the words. No matter which way he turned these days, his business problems lay in wait for him. This particular problem was Kendrie Ottejnstein, captain of a 100-ton South African vessel fishing out of Port Ellery for the herring season, and there he sat, trapped by Annuncia, whose physique was as solid as if she’d been poured in a foundry. Kendrie was a fish she’d been trying to land for a long time, and all she had to do to block his exit from his booth was pull up a chair. Aside from her job managing Seacrest’s, she was an organizer for Green Fish, a group that promoted ecologically caught seafood. She was constantly haranguing captains like Kendrie—a paying Seacrest’s client—about conforming to practices that respected the fisheries, such as proper net size to limit bycatch, the inadvertent capture of one species while trying to fish for another. By law, the bycatch—which was almost always dead, and, if not dead, dying—had to be thrown back into the sea. It couldn’t even be given to Duncan to dehydrate at Seacrest's, which was a truly sinful waste of an already depleted resource. Duncan understood the long-term consequences of dirty fishing, but with Seacrest’s on such shaky legs at the moment, this was hardly the time to alienate clients because of it.
“It’s cheaper to pay the fines than to change my nets,” continued Kendrie. “You know how much that costs?”
“Do you know how much it costs not to?” asked Annuncia. She spoke with controlled motions of her hand. “Healthy fisheries are good business, good for everyone. If the fish disappear, so do we.”
“I’ll be here,” he said, his mouth full of coleslaw.
“No, Kendrie, not you.” With this she tapped him on the forehead, and he gave her a serious look of warning. She pushed her chair back with a purposefully grating sound. “You may be clever, Kendrie, but you’re not very smart.”
Duncan hid behind a pillar so Kendrie wouldn’t see him and cancel their contract on the spot. The week before, the captain of a factory trawler left Seacrest’s for a waste processor in Portland to get away from Annuncia’s public attacks. She accused him of scraping the bottom of the ocean floor clean with his trawl, the marine equivalent of clear-cutting rain forest.
“Duncan!” Slocum called from the kitchen. “Put a piece of lemon in your mouth!”
Duncan picked up a wedge from a bowl and stared at it. Manavilins was owned by his buddy Slocum Statler, whose bread and butter was the fry plates, but he dreamed of making a name for himself in gastro-aquatic wonders, as he called them, and flew a pirate’s flag in the kitchen. The calamari calzone wasn’t half bad, if you could get past the disturbing menu notes: Squid are generally recognized to be smarter than dogs. Endangered status: Zero. Because of warming waters, squid have surpassed humans in total biomass on the planet.
“It’s a test,” Slocum said, wiping his hands on his apron as he approached the takeout counter from the kitchen. He had an ancient mariner gleam in his eyes and a full, squared-off beard and walrus mustache, probably in violation of the health code. It made him look like an Old Testament prophet, which made people trust him more than they should. He was wider than Duncan but just as tall, and it was this height that had bound them together in elementary school. They saw life from the same perspective, above the fray and into the future, full of hope. Slocum had kept his dreams, no matter how daft, while Duncan had slipped blindly into the family business. He couldn’t even remember what it was he once wanted to do with his life.
“A test of what?” asked Duncan.
“Lemon juice makes introverts salivate more than extroverts. This is for Clover’s kid’s science project. Open.” He squeezed the lemon on Duncan’s tongue. “Now don’t swallow for a minute.”
Clover was Slocum’s sometimes girlfriend, who wore tight pleather jeans low on her hips, with a huge belt buckle centered on her pelvis. They’d met when she rode through town with her motorcycle gang years ago and have continued happily in this way for years, her coming and going whenever. Right now, she was in New Mexico while her preteen son, Harley, was staying with Slocum above the restaurant. She often left Harley in Port Ellery for months while she was on the road, to give him some stability.
“Time to get with the program, Kendrie,” Annuncia said to the red-faced South African. “You might call yourself a captain, but you don’t know dick about fishing.” With that, she stood up slowly and walked away.
“Time’s up,” said Slocum, brandishing a flashlight. “Tip your noggin and let’s get a look.” Duncan opened his mouth for inspection, and while his head was bent back, he read the hand-lettered sign tacked over the counter: No trans fats used in cooking. What the sign didn’t say was that Manavilins used lard for frying, and Slocum often claimed he’d use whale blubber if he could get his hands on any. He believed that fat was the secret to the success of the species. Humans were not just the fattest primates, they also had ten times as many fat cells as would be expected in any animal of its size, which, to Slocum, pointed to one obvious conclusion: Humans were descended from aquatic apes. And, he believed, they needed to maintain those fat deposits for when—perhaps not so far in the future—the rising tides of global warming forced Homo sapiens back to the sea.
“Hmm,” Slocum said at last. “No response.” He gave Duncan a worried look, then smiled. “We’ll have to preserve you in a specimen jar and bring you to the science fair—the non-responsive wonder.”
Annuncia appeared at Duncan’s side. She was still in her work clothes. Her red smock, with Seacrest’s embroidered in white on the pocket, strained at the hips and was streaked with black fish powder. Her bushel of dark hair was pulled up under a tight red snood. “Hull-sucking sea worm,” she said, turning back to face Kendrie, who did not look up from his mountain of onion rings. “There are fishermen who make a living fishing, and then there’s an industry that wants to make a killing,” she said even louder. When Kendrie refused to rise to the bait, she picked up her takeout bag. “Don’t look at me like that, Dun’n.”
“We need every customer we can get right now, Annuncia. Don’t single him out for killing off the human race. You’re as subtle as a pile driver.”
“Whale balls. Puddingheads like Kendrie, they’ve got to understand what the stakes are. It’s not like we can go somewhere else when we fuck it all up. This band of temperature, this mix of oxygen—it’s all we can live in, and it all depends on the ocean to keep it stable. Kendrie’s Neanderthal skull can’t compute that saving the ocean means saving his own sorry ass.”
“Can this wait until our business is a little more stable?” Duncan whispered.
“Dun’n, don’t compromise yourself for money.”
“I have nothing left to compromise myself for.”
She looked around the restaurant. “Where’s Wade? He’s giving me a ride home.”
“Here!” Wade, Seacrest's head of maintenance, stepped out of the walk-in cooler behind Slocum. After work, he sometimes ran fish from his cousin’s boat to local restaurants. He wanted to save family fishing boats in the same way that family farms had become a national cause. He was so disgusted with the corporately owned industrial fleet that he frowned on Seacrest’s accepting its fish waste, which was substantial. Between Wade’s local fishing and Annuncia’s green fish, Duncan felt as if the financial health of Seacrest’s was far down on his employees’ lists of priorities.
“We’re leaving, Dun’n,” said Annuncia. “Come on, Wade. See you Monday, boss.”
“Wait.” Wade picked up a Support local fishing bumper sticker from a pile on the counter and handed one to Duncan. “I know you’ll want one of these. To save the fishes.” And with this he slapped his heart.
“Of course,” said Duncan, and he moved to put it in his pocket, but Wade pulled it from his grasp.
“I’ll put it on the truck for you on my way out,” he said. “No problem.”
Duncan cringed. Yes, local boats needed every extra consideration to survive, but so did he. He hoped Kendrie, or any of the other factory boat captains, would not recognize his truck.
When the door closed behind them, he looked around the restaurant, as long and narrow as a shipping container, filled with the comforting warmth of human bodies. Young lovers dipped fried oysters in tartar sauce and brought them to each other’s mouths; children licked ketchup from white paper cups and got it on their noses; married couples eyed dishes sprung from Slocum’s misplaced imagination, smiled, and dared each other to go first. They were happy. Duncan could be happy. He should let Seacrest’s sink or swim on its own. He could not play God; he could not part the sea. And besides, maybe next week business would pick up. He felt light and free at the thought, as if he were floating above his earthly troubles. He smiled as he saw Slocum pack up his order, he smiled as he handed him the credit card, and he kept right on smiling past the point when his card was rejected.
“Sorry,” said Slocum, handing it back to him. “I’m supposed to cut it in half,” he whispered. “But you keep it. Pay me whenever. And wait.” He held up a batter-coated finger and called to a waitress. “Bag up a special for Duncan here.”
Duncan adjusted his glasses as if it had all been a matter of faulty vision. Either an embarrassing silence had swept across the room or he had a case of hysterical deafness. Slocum placed a bag on top of his box. “Pulpo gallego! That’ll cure what ails you.” He put a hand on Duncan’s shoulder. “Call me, my friend, we’ll get you back on course. Remember—a dead calm comes before a new wind.”
Duncan gave him a sickly smile and left. In a time like this, if all his best friend could do was to give him some oily octopus and a maritime platitude for comfort, then the end could not be very far away.
“I am willing to make a contribution to nature, but nature must be willing to make a contribution to me first! Who is going to pay for me to change my nets?”
Duncan pressed his glasses hard against his face, as if that could block out the words. No matter which way he turned these days, his business problems lay in wait for him. This particular problem was Kendrie Ottejnstein, captain of a 100-ton South African vessel fishing out of Port Ellery for the herring season, and there he sat, trapped by Annuncia, whose physique was as solid as if she’d been poured in a foundry. Kendrie was a fish she’d been trying to land for a long time, and all she had to do to block his exit from his booth was pull up a chair. Aside from her job managing Seacrest’s, she was an organizer for Green Fish, a group that promoted ecologically caught seafood. She was constantly haranguing captains like Kendrie—a paying Seacrest’s client—about conforming to practices that respected the fisheries, such as proper net size to limit bycatch, the inadvertent capture of one species while trying to fish for another. By law, the bycatch—which was almost always dead, and, if not dead, dying—had to be thrown back into the sea. It couldn’t even be given to Duncan to dehydrate at Seacrest's, which was a truly sinful waste of an already depleted resource. Duncan understood the long-term consequences of dirty fishing, but with Seacrest’s on such shaky legs at the moment, this was hardly the time to alienate clients because of it.
“It’s cheaper to pay the fines than to change my nets,” continued Kendrie. “You know how much that costs?”
“Do you know how much it costs not to?” asked Annuncia. She spoke with controlled motions of her hand. “Healthy fisheries are good business, good for everyone. If the fish disappear, so do we.”
“I’ll be here,” he said, his mouth full of coleslaw.
“No, Kendrie, not you.” With this she tapped him on the forehead, and he gave her a serious look of warning. She pushed her chair back with a purposefully grating sound. “You may be clever, Kendrie, but you’re not very smart.”
Duncan hid behind a pillar so Kendrie wouldn’t see him and cancel their contract on the spot. The week before, the captain of a factory trawler left Seacrest’s for a waste processor in Portland to get away from Annuncia’s public attacks. She accused him of scraping the bottom of the ocean floor clean with his trawl, the marine equivalent of clear-cutting rain forest.
“Duncan!” Slocum called from the kitchen. “Put a piece of lemon in your mouth!”
Duncan picked up a wedge from a bowl and stared at it. Manavilins was owned by his buddy Slocum Statler, whose bread and butter was the fry plates, but he dreamed of making a name for himself in gastro-aquatic wonders, as he called them, and flew a pirate’s flag in the kitchen. The calamari calzone wasn’t half bad, if you could get past the disturbing menu notes: Squid are generally recognized to be smarter than dogs. Endangered status: Zero. Because of warming waters, squid have surpassed humans in total biomass on the planet.
“It’s a test,” Slocum said, wiping his hands on his apron as he approached the takeout counter from the kitchen. He had an ancient mariner gleam in his eyes and a full, squared-off beard and walrus mustache, probably in violation of the health code. It made him look like an Old Testament prophet, which made people trust him more than they should. He was wider than Duncan but just as tall, and it was this height that had bound them together in elementary school. They saw life from the same perspective, above the fray and into the future, full of hope. Slocum had kept his dreams, no matter how daft, while Duncan had slipped blindly into the family business. He couldn’t even remember what it was he once wanted to do with his life.
“A test of what?” asked Duncan.
“Lemon juice makes introverts salivate more than extroverts. This is for Clover’s kid’s science project. Open.” He squeezed the lemon on Duncan’s tongue. “Now don’t swallow for a minute.”
Clover was Slocum’s sometimes girlfriend, who wore tight pleather jeans low on her hips, with a huge belt buckle centered on her pelvis. They’d met when she rode through town with her motorcycle gang years ago and have continued happily in this way for years, her coming and going whenever. Right now, she was in New Mexico while her preteen son, Harley, was staying with Slocum above the restaurant. She often left Harley in Port Ellery for months while she was on the road, to give him some stability.
“Time to get with the program, Kendrie,” Annuncia said to the red-faced South African. “You might call yourself a captain, but you don’t know dick about fishing.” With that, she stood up slowly and walked away.
“Time’s up,” said Slocum, brandishing a flashlight. “Tip your noggin and let’s get a look.” Duncan opened his mouth for inspection, and while his head was bent back, he read the hand-lettered sign tacked over the counter: No trans fats used in cooking. What the sign didn’t say was that Manavilins used lard for frying, and Slocum often claimed he’d use whale blubber if he could get his hands on any. He believed that fat was the secret to the success of the species. Humans were not just the fattest primates, they also had ten times as many fat cells as would be expected in any animal of its size, which, to Slocum, pointed to one obvious conclusion: Humans were descended from aquatic apes. And, he believed, they needed to maintain those fat deposits for when—perhaps not so far in the future—the rising tides of global warming forced Homo sapiens back to the sea.
“Hmm,” Slocum said at last. “No response.” He gave Duncan a worried look, then smiled. “We’ll have to preserve you in a specimen jar and bring you to the science fair—the non-responsive wonder.”
Annuncia appeared at Duncan’s side. She was still in her work clothes. Her red smock, with Seacrest’s embroidered in white on the pocket, strained at the hips and was streaked with black fish powder. Her bushel of dark hair was pulled up under a tight red snood. “Hull-sucking sea worm,” she said, turning back to face Kendrie, who did not look up from his mountain of onion rings. “There are fishermen who make a living fishing, and then there’s an industry that wants to make a killing,” she said even louder. When Kendrie refused to rise to the bait, she picked up her takeout bag. “Don’t look at me like that, Dun’n.”
“We need every customer we can get right now, Annuncia. Don’t single him out for killing off the human race. You’re as subtle as a pile driver.”
“Whale balls. Puddingheads like Kendrie, they’ve got to understand what the stakes are. It’s not like we can go somewhere else when we fuck it all up. This band of temperature, this mix of oxygen—it’s all we can live in, and it all depends on the ocean to keep it stable. Kendrie’s Neanderthal skull can’t compute that saving the ocean means saving his own sorry ass.”
“Can this wait until our business is a little more stable?” Duncan whispered.
“Dun’n, don’t compromise yourself for money.”
“I have nothing left to compromise myself for.”
She looked around the restaurant. “Where’s Wade? He’s giving me a ride home.”
“Here!” Wade, Seacrest's head of maintenance, stepped out of the walk-in cooler behind Slocum. After work, he sometimes ran fish from his cousin’s boat to local restaurants. He wanted to save family fishing boats in the same way that family farms had become a national cause. He was so disgusted with the corporately owned industrial fleet that he frowned on Seacrest’s accepting its fish waste, which was substantial. Between Wade’s local fishing and Annuncia’s green fish, Duncan felt as if the financial health of Seacrest’s was far down on his employees’ lists of priorities.
“We’re leaving, Dun’n,” said Annuncia. “Come on, Wade. See you Monday, boss.”
“Wait.” Wade picked up a Support local fishing bumper sticker from a pile on the counter and handed one to Duncan. “I know you’ll want one of these. To save the fishes.” And with this he slapped his heart.
“Of course,” said Duncan, and he moved to put it in his pocket, but Wade pulled it from his grasp.
“I’ll put it on the truck for you on my way out,” he said. “No problem.”
Duncan cringed. Yes, local boats needed every extra consideration to survive, but so did he. He hoped Kendrie, or any of the other factory boat captains, would not recognize his truck.
When the door closed behind them, he looked around the restaurant, as long and narrow as a shipping container, filled with the comforting warmth of human bodies. Young lovers dipped fried oysters in tartar sauce and brought them to each other’s mouths; children licked ketchup from white paper cups and got it on their noses; married couples eyed dishes sprung from Slocum’s misplaced imagination, smiled, and dared each other to go first. They were happy. Duncan could be happy. He should let Seacrest’s sink or swim on its own. He could not play God; he could not part the sea. And besides, maybe next week business would pick up. He felt light and free at the thought, as if he were floating above his earthly troubles. He smiled as he saw Slocum pack up his order, he smiled as he handed him the credit card, and he kept right on smiling past the point when his card was rejected.
“Sorry,” said Slocum, handing it back to him. “I’m supposed to cut it in half,” he whispered. “But you keep it. Pay me whenever. And wait.” He held up a batter-coated finger and called to a waitress. “Bag up a special for Duncan here.”
Duncan adjusted his glasses as if it had all been a matter of faulty vision. Either an embarrassing silence had swept across the room or he had a case of hysterical deafness. Slocum placed a bag on top of his box. “Pulpo gallego! That’ll cure what ails you.” He put a hand on Duncan’s shoulder. “Call me, my friend, we’ll get you back on course. Remember—a dead calm comes before a new wind.”
Duncan gave him a sickly smile and left. In a time like this, if all his best friend could do was to give him some oily octopus and a maritime platitude for comfort, then the end could not be very far away.
JoeAnn Hart is the author of Stamford ’76: A True Story of Murder, Corruption, Race, and Feminism in the 1970s (University of Iowa Press, April, 2019), a true crime memoir. Her novels are Float (Ashland Creek Press, 2013) a dark comedy about plastics in the ocean, and Addled (Little, Brown, 2007) a social satire. Her short fiction and essays have been published in a wide range of literary magazines and anthologies, including Orion, The Hopper, Prairie Schooner, The Sonora Review, The Woven Tale, Black Lives Have Always Mattered, and others. Her work, which also includes articles, essays, and drama, often explores the relationship between humans and their environments.
*"Aquatic Ape" was excerpted from Float (Ashland Creek Press, 2013).
*"Aquatic Ape" was excerpted from Float (Ashland Creek Press, 2013).