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Virgil Suarez

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Pescador

For weeks he returned trom the docks empty-handed, the boy fisherman, but then one day he caught the biggest pirarucu anyone had ever seen in the village, and that day, with the fish on his back, its giant gill strapped around his head and forehead, he carried it slowly, its weight so definite against the arc of his back, and the children mocked him by wearing their silver-glitter fish masks and calling him names. They tried to get near the fish, to touch it, but its rough scales stood out so sharp they didn’t dare. Once he made it up the steep hill homeward, he threw the fish on a tree slab, gutted it, scaled it, and cut it, parcelled it out for all the family members, those near, and those far. With the knife he scratched on the slab the new record for the largest fish, and everyone would know he’d caught it, everyone, and ultimately that meant more to him than the chunks his mother would cook with rice or cassava, and while everyone ate around a candle-lit table, he’d lean back proud, eyes skyward, thin arms crossed over his chest, and dream of that first tug, how the cork went under fast, then how the fish pulled so hard the boy thought he’d go under, boat and all, and this jungle world would forever disappear, taking with it all that had come before and all that came after.

 

Pirarucu is an amazonian species of the largest fresh water fish in the world. They are being depleted quickly.

Page(s) 141

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