Tannery Bay by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781573669078
Publisher: University of Alabama Press

July 15

Once upon a time across the bay from the old fishery and the police station, Auntie Anita stands on the dock behind Gerald’s old juke joint, looking across to the blip of caskets on the police station dock. Next to the dock looms the old fishery with its faded wooden planks and three industrial cranes stretch angled to the sky like brontosaurus necks, rusted pulleys at the top, tattered ropes dangling.

Auntie Anita ain’t been in the fishery or the juke joint since they shut it down. She had wanted to go but couldn’t bring herself to. Last night the woman in waders sat at her kitchen table pointing to the juke joint. Anita shook her head no, but the woman kept pointing.

Here is Anita in this early pink light, turning to walk into the back door of the juke joint. Inside, light beams through the holes in the roof and filters through the cracks of the wooden floor planks until the black of the basement absorbs it. The bar is still intact, and she remembers Gerald behind it with a white towel flung over his left shoulder, pouring his hooch into a row of ten shot glasses.

She sits at the wooden table in front of the bar, in the exact chair she was sitting in when they were about to shut it down for good all those Julys ago. Eight-year-old Otis sat across from her. Gerald was to her right, and eight-year-old Joy sat across from him. They were waiting for Otis and Joy’s parents to come back from across the bay, making one last delivery of hooch to the fishery. They were eating hush puppies and honey for breakfast and playing spades. Otis and Anita were winning, and at that moment, Otis was the loud one and Joy was the quiet one, so Otis was talking shit and slamming the cards down.

Anita said, “Go head, baby! Gerald’s lil punk-ass queen can’t do shit!”

Then Joy slid her card nicely face down like it was an accident, and when Otis flipped the card over, they all saw it was a big joker. Gerald jumped up from the table and high-fived Joy, and Joy stuck her tongue out at Otis, and said, “That’s what you get for talking shit.”

In the middle of Gerald and Joy celebrating, Good Ol Pearl Anne ran through the back door, couldn’t speak, choking on her crying.

Anita and Good Ol Pearl Anne were supposed to make a last run across the bay but they wanted to help Gerald finish cleaning out the juke joint, so Anita’s sister Betty Lee and her old man Woodrow said they’d make the run. They’d done it a few times before. Because this was the last run, they loaded up a lot of cases of hooch onto Pearl Anne’s contraption and let them hang below the boat as usual. The boat sat a little lower because of the weight, and floated a little slower.

On the way to the fishery, Betty Lee and

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