Mermaid Hunting
“Just tell me what she looks like and, for fuck’s sake, stop talking about her tits,” Crystal said as she swished her paddle through the dark soup of the river water. She couldn’t tell whether her efforts at rowing made any difference; the bow of the canoe seemed to bob where it pleased.
“Oh, she had red hair,” Bobby said. “And freckles all over. Even her boobs.” He grinned his snaggle-toothed grin from the stern seat behind her.
“Yeah, but what about her tail?” Crystal plunged the paddle in again, both hands taut like she was mixing a batter.
“Long and green,” Bobby said. “Green like a perch, and she was splashing it all around, making a hell lot of noise. She sure wanted our attention. But what’s it matter? You won’t be able to see her until she’s dead. Only horny dudes can see live mermaids. That’s how they get them, draw them in close.”
Crystal scowled into the mosquitoes that swirled through the humid night air, highlighted by the white blare of Bobby’s pocket LED flashlight. “Do you have to have that on the whole time?” she asked. “Won’t it scare her off?”
“It’s how we check for gators,” Bobby said. “The light reflects off their eyes, and they shine back red in the dark. Don’t believe me, I could turn it off. Will be funny when you stick your paddle on a big ol’ gator head.”
“Fine. Keep it on, just help me paddle your canoe. We keep pushing back into this log.”
Four days ago, Bobby had regaled everyone at school about the mermaid he and his uncle saw when they took his Carolina Skiff out on the Hillsborough River. Since then, Bobby was the world-class mermaid expert. It took some of the heat off Crystal, though she still saw snickers aimed her way whenever Bobby brought it up. She was, after all, the “mermaid girl.” She had earned that title the second she stepped into Rivershade High her freshman year with mermaid notebooks, mermaid gel pens, and a mermaid graphic tee. Relics of cheerier grade school years, their highlighter-bright colors brought attention to her like a flickering neon sign that read, “Freak here, please ridicule.”
Bobby claimed he’d caught a picture on his phone and must have shown it to every student and faculty member. No matter how Crystal squinted, all she saw was a dark mass hunched behind yellow reeds and cattails. The boys in class snorted in revelation when he showed them, passing it to each other and commenting on that “mad fish pussy.” Crystal ambushed Bobby on his walk to Gym to bombard him with questions. That was when he proposed she join his personal mermaid hunting expedition, but only if she came in her bikini. Crystal owned one bikini, a faded black-to-brown she’d chosen for its merits of covering most of her bell-bottom ass. She agreed to the terms because Bobby had worded them poorly, allowing her to show with her bikini cloaked under an oversized Rocky Horror hoodie.
“Coming out this late wasn’t the brightest plan,” Crystal said as she squinted into the chirping dark and searched for eyes looking back.
“I grew up on this river,” Bobby said. “I know it like the back of my truck. Don’t worry about them gators. I got my twenty-two long rifle. One shot behind the skull is all it takes, is what my uncle says. A mermaid shot will be even easier.”
He drew the rifle by his side and patted it like it was his foxhound. A dead mermaid was what Bobby had promised. Crystal knew their reason for coming here, but his talk made her squirm on the cramped bow seat. All Bobby wanted was mermaid tail hide he could strip and have his cousin fashion into a fancy pair of boots. All Crystal wanted was one glimpse. It was all she wanted since she was ten going on eleven and on a family trip to Daytona Beach. She had worn a one-piece, black and pink striped swimsuit that day and had no sense to worry what others thought about her body. While she waited for her turn on her brother’s boogie board, she waded into the surf and chased schools of fish the size of her fingers. Something bobbed through the waves and looked back at her. Those eyes didn’t have the sideways roundness of fish, nor the malevolent red gaze of the gators that might lurk beneath the Hillsborough River. They looked like human eyes, rimmed by long, dark lashes that blinked with a strange allure. Crystal swam for them, but they vanished beneath a churning wave crest, and the surf beat her beneath the water. When she resurfaced, the eyes watched from farther off shore. Long, dark hair coiled around them like ink dispersing through the water. She swam for them, but the ocean batted her down again and again. Her older brother had to retrieve her and tug her to a sandbar before she drowned.
Crystal didn’t connect the dots until she stepped on a soggy newspaper on her walk to school one day. The blurred headline read, “TWO MORE MISSING IN SUSPECTED MERMAID ATTACKS,” and detailed the plight of local fishermen alleged to have been lured to their deaths. An artist’s illustration of a long-haired seductress with clamshells for bras accompanied the article. She had a “come hither” pose, and a net of black shadows expanded from her fingertips as if to ensnare the reader. Crystal tore out the graphic and stuffed it into her jean pocket. That night she dreamt of drifting beneath a swirling ocean surface, into the dark and
the acerbic cold, until a pair of arms with dolphin-slick skin enveloped her and pressed her against a warm breast.
“Oh, fuck me!” Crystal screamed. Something like a black ribbon had poked out of the river water, brushing inches from her hand gripping the paddle. It lifted an arrow-shaped head and stroked away in whipping motions.
“What? What is it?” Bobby propped his rifle to his side. He clanked and jostled the aluminum canoe as he leaned forward. “Gator?”
“No, a snake,” she said. She lowered her voice in shame. “I think it was a water moccasin. It almost touched me.”
Bobby’s answering snickers made his pocket flashlight jiggle up and down against her eyes.
“Just stay out of the water, then,” Bobby said. “You sure are skittish for a ‘mermaid girl.’ Thought you’d be lapping this shit up.”
Crystal decided to ignore him and groped for the paddle, but it skidded off the canoe’s metal rim as if running from her fingertips. It then plopped into the river and twirled in the boat’s wake, quickly fading from their halo of light.
“Oh, shit,” Crystal whispered, stretching for it, but too nervous to dip her fingers into the sloshing water. “Quick, turn us around.”
“What’s that?” Bobby asked, twisting in his seat to see.
“I’m sorry,” Crystal said and pulled back in defeat. “The paddle’s gone.”
“You dumb bitch lost my paddle?” Bobby shifted forward and squatted in the center of the canoe. The play of light over his scowling features cut pieces of shadow out of his face. “Do you know how much this canoe cost? Damn thing was near eight-hundred. Can’t think the paddle will be cheap.”
Crystal shirked from his encroaching form but didn’t look away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But you’re the one who wanted to come out so late. Something about how mermaids look for isolated victims, right? Stop standing—you’ll flip us over next.”
She straightened and jabbed him in the center of his green camouflage tee. She lacked the force to push him, but the physical contact caught him off guard. He flopped to the bottom of the boat in a loud, hollow thud, his legs folded, the shock on his face almost making him look innocent.
“Guess one paddle’s good enough to get back,” he mumbled.
Crystal pulled her phone from the center pocket of her hoodie. No notifications, as usual, but the stark numerals told her it was almost eleven. Since it was a Friday night, she knew her father would be unconscious on the living room sofa within a ring of empty Heinekens. If she was home late, she might be able to sneak in through the broken patio door, but only if Dot didn’t bark, and Dot would bark until she sniffed her out. If she woke her father, the drunken stupor could shift into rage from a single irritation, and her outfit might prove to be enough of a trigger. Her brother would swoop in for the rescue next, turning their cramped living room into a caged shouting match, followed by a lecture on degeneracy the neighbors would have the pleasure of hearing. Crystal was about to ask Bobby how much longer mermaid hunting was supposed to take when he spoke up again.
“I think I know a good way to draw her out,” he said, the bravado returned to his voice.
“What’s that?”
“Mermaids are looking for horny men, right? Let’s make me one.” He seized the bottom of her Rocky Horror hoodie and yanked it up and over her head. Crystal twisted away at the humid breath of air on her exposed belly. Her arms flailed to break free. Bobby giggled at her struggle, a sound like a gleeful string of hiccups. As soon as she pulled the comforting fabric back over her torso, he yanked it up again.
“Quit it,” Crystal said. Her voice sounded like a whine, though her throat choked with alarm.
“Oh, come on,” Bobby said. “We had a deal, didn’t we?”
Crystal broke free again and tucked her legs to her body. She stretched the polyester-cotton blend thin over her knees in a protective shell. “And you promised a mermaid. I only came for her, not for you. It’s not like that.”
“You’re saying you really don’t want it at all?” The boat rocked and clunked as Bobby leaned into her. He rushed his words as if eager to get them out before she could stop them. “How about we just make out, then? You don’t know if you’ll like it if you don’t try. It’s no big deal. People will think stuff happened anyway, you coming out here with me and all. And really, it’ll only be good for you. Might stop some of the talk and all.”
She could smell the stale dip on his breath. At her back was only the hard aluminum rim of the canoe, followed by a drop into dark, slime-coated water.
“Do you really want to be a dyke your whole life? Come on, Crystal. Show me a mermaid.”
As he leaned in, his rifle clattered against the floor of the canoe. Crystal reached for it, a motion Bobby interpreted as consent or surrender. He pressed his lips to hers, his tongue poked out and searched for an opening. Crystal could barely feel it. She felt like she was drifting under the tow of a heavy tide, submerged as the waves hissed over her head. From somewhere there came music. There came a deep thrum, like a throaty alto singer. It pierced her with a cold, soporific loneliness. In that moment when Bobby pressed her back and pried her knees apart, she could imagine a future where she forgot the point of hiding, where she maybe wore her hair cropped short without fear of the names slung at her from traffic off Nineteen, where she only had to speak with her family in terse courtesy phone calls because she could afford her own apartment, where she wore tank tops and rainbow wristbands to public places like Walmart or the laundromat. Even in that future, the disdainful glances and sidesteps of strangers hurt; she couldn’t imagine a future where they didn’t. Her hand found the trigger of Bobby’s rifle, her finger pulled. Bobby’s arms flopped at the crack of his gun going off. The sound split Crystal’s skull open and spewed lightning down her spine. She hadn’t shot him, but it had shocked the Salt Life cap cleanly off his head. He stumbled to his feet and tipped over the edge. The splash swallowed him in an instant, him and the LED flashlight.
“Bobby?” Crystal called against her ringing ears. She waited for him to breach the surface, but he never did. When she leaned over, she saw the wavering glow of the flashlight beneath the water. Pairs of luminescent red eyes drifted across the surface, twinned reflections as red streaks across the ripples. She saw the outlines of their jagged tails as they stroked. A few furious splashes, then they vanished in a blip of white against the black currents. The flashlight flickered out of existence. Only the sparse ambient light reflected from a cloudy night sky remained.
Alone, she waited in the canoe and looked to the shore she couldn’t make out. The buzzing flocks of insects and yapping of lurking toads felt like jeers from a watching crowd. A light returned to the river, rippling across the currents in turquoise strings. The top of a head poked through, a pair of eyes with fluttering black lashes. It was her, Crystal knew. Geography be damned, she knew it was the same face she’d chased as a fearless preteen fighting and losing against the ocean. The rest of the head surfaced, smiling plump lips and fanged canines, then a torso. Crystal had always seen mermaids as wearing giant clamshells or hugging starfish for bras, but her breasts were bare, buoyant with dark pointing nipples. Water rolled down her skin in twisting rivulets. She stretched her arms for Crystal.
Crystal dangled her feet over the edge of the canoe, feeling her weight shift forward. The river lapped at her bare legs in playful bobs. She took a deep breath and let go. The waters rushed her body, chill fingers prodding her parts into numbness. She sank straight down, but her feet found no slimy riverbank. When she forced her eyes open, she saw through her streams of bubbles that the mermaid drifted near, her beckoning posture frozen in place like a submerged statue. The music played. The music was everywhere.
Come with me and be seen. Come along with the tarpon sighs and otter cackles. Come into the inner folds of the earth where the waters open her secrets. Sing to the strumming of crawfish claws on sheening shells. Breathe in the silt and shadow that seeps through every crevice, that touches all and forgives.