The Many by Wyl Menmuir

Author:Wyl Menmuir
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Salt Publishing Limited
Published: 2016-06-20T13:40:44+00:00

11

Ethan

AFTER THE CATCH, no one, not even the other crews, had asked Ethan about his excursion beyond the container ships, as if they did not really want to know the answer. Their celebrations that night had been strained with all that was unsaid. No one wanted to talk about the fish themselves, though the catch warranted discussion, nor the circumstances in which they had come to be landed.

‘Catch is a catch,’ a few of them had said, and others around had nodded in agreement, as though that was all that needed to be said on the matter. Timothy, on the other hand, was discussed in detail. Ethan had noticed the stories about the newcomer had started to transform, to transfigure somehow into fictions of redemption, and the more beer that was drunk, the wilder the stories of his influence became. But of the Great Hope passing outside the fleet’s boundary lines, Clem was the only one who came close to asking.

‘Lucky catch,’ he had said. This was after most of the others had gone home and the two men surveyed the beach that was littered with the cans and bottles of their impromptu party. ‘Wouldn’t want to interrogate it too closely though, for anyone’s sake.’

Clem had stood up from his seat by the wheelhouse and pushed his hands into his jacket pocket, perhaps waiting for Ethan to comment or perhaps waiting for his words to sink in. In place of an answer, Ethan had proffered Clem another beer from the crate by which he was sitting, and Clem had shaken his head and walked off up the beach, leaving Ethan alone in the dark, two hours before the sun threatened the horizon.

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