was after lunch, when things were slow. Only Mr. Buzzy lurked mumbling and burping in the bar, so Leon said he’d hold down the fort. He believed whatever washed ashore couldn’t be good. He expected a calamity nothing less than an asteroid or comet.
The doom patrol is heading our way, he said. I got a nose for these things. You find anything washed up there’ll be trouble. Those parks and wildlife sumbitches are going to be looking for somebody to blame, and it ain’t gonna be me.
Falk and Una walked to the end of the dock, hopped onto the sand beyond the concrete bulkhead, followed the shore. Falk led the way, pushed along by the buffeting wind like a boozy sailor. He was tallish, stooped and gangly, like a young Jimmy Stewart.
He carried his old Nikon with black-and-white film and stopped to take a shot of Una standing under a pier, striped with pillar shadows, her hair wild in the wind, her face moody. The sky was lumpy and mottled gray, the color of stingray bellies. Above them hovered a pair of black buzzards, canting into the wind, gliding, circling back. They flew so low you could see their wrinkled red faces, like winos awakened by barking dogs.
The stiff wind buffeted Falk’s white apron, blew Una’s black hair in her face, filled their skin and ears with the whirling sound, the smell of salty catfish breath. Una made a slight motion, a muffled hiccup. Her hand to her chest.
Ooh, she said. Enchilada burp. When she saw Falk point the camera again she shook her head no, put her hands over her face. Don’t you dare, she said. I look awful.
Are you kidding? You couldn’t look awful if you tried.
Oh, hush.
I mean it, he said.
What do you know? You’re a boy.
Falk squinted into the wind, his camera lowered. He turned around to look at Una, walking backward. They left two trails of footprints in the sand. Hers were like the brush strokes of a master artist. His were wide and ungainly, like the prints of snorkel flippers. He said, It’s not always about glamour shots.
They found the sea monster stranded halfway up the fine white oyster-shell fragments of the shore. From a dozen yards away it didn’t look like much of anything. A curdled raft of cinnamon-speckled sea foam floated against it, making the form beneath the surface appear like a black-and-white fishing skiff sunk in the shallows.
Up close it came into focus. It swelled into an improbable mass of enormous wide-mouthed fish. Big as an elongated VW Beetle, its scales striped with a black-and-white zigzag pattern, enormous black jelly eyes distended and swollen, ragged tail fin the size of a small whale’s. The wide mouth spanned the entire width of its body, some three to four feet, and had decayed into a bleached white strip, as if the enormous fish had coated its lips with zinc oxide.
Falk shot photographs low angle and above, walked out along the Sea Horse fishing pier for a bay-water view. Maybe this is what’s eating all the shrimp, he said.
Una stooped, tucked her skirt against the backs of her knees, looked into its mouth. O dear God, she said. There’s something inside. Something with legs.
Falk moved near, set his camera on the shore. With a piece of driftwood he pried the white-lipped mouth open wider and peered into the shadowy grotto of its gullet.
At first he thought he was seeing a drowned girl. Skeins and swirls of hay-colored hair streamed out of the great fish’s throat. He saw pale skin and what he thought was an ear or an open mouth. Only by bending closer did he realize what was there.
The hell, he said. It’s a horse. A small one. Like a colt or a Shetland pony I guess.
In the fish’s throat the small horse’s head faced nose first, its mane swirling forward, one hoof protruding aslant.
Una turned away. She said she couldn’t look at that. Why did she come down there? What was she thinking? It was horrible, what it was, and there was nothing they could do. I’m leaving, she said. I better get back before Gabriel shows up.
No, said Falk. Please? Just stay a minute? The excitement of it made his voice spike and quaver, struggling to be heard over the wind. See? Everything for a reason. If I was in school I wouldn’t be here to see this.
You’d maybe be learning something.
Ha. That’s a good one. He returned to the shore and leaned in for a close-up of the zebra-striped scales, the ridiculous white-lipped mouth.
You shouldn’t be proud, said Una. Being kicked out of school. It’s a mistake.
Did I say proud? Put your hand right here. I need something for scale.
I won’t touch it.
Who’s asking you to? I just want you close. Is that a sin?
She was smiling then, looking out at the waves, the bleached bones of the pier, sea creature in foreground, rocking in the pulse beat of tide. You, she said.
The bay shoreline was speckled white and gray, deep with tiny pieces of broken oyster and scallop shells. Fine bits of shell covered the flayed skin of the fish. Flies buzzed around its enormous, distended eyes. It smelled gamy. Falk and Una had to pinch their nostrils shut and gulp the air like beached groupers. He guessed the colt had come from the mustang herd on Isla Pelicano, the shelter island across Red Moon Bay. A mustang colt that had somehow drowned. When the huge fish tried to scavenge it, the body became lodged in its throat and killed it.
It was probably desperate because it couldn’t find anything else to eat, said Falk.
I told my cousin Dat the fishing around here is done for, said Una. They should rename it Desolation Bay.
Falk squatted close to the colossal fish and focused on the drowned colt, one dark eye visible in the shadows of the fish’s throat. The sun was off angle for good light, but he squatted to take another photo anyway. The wind died for a moment. Without the rush and tumble of air in their ears, the sound of the lapping waves seemed amplified. A mosquito lit on Falk’s hand as he was focusing the camera.
Don’t move, said Una. She leaned close and swatted the back of his hand, leaving a smear of blood. Oh, it got you.
Falk wiped his hand on the back of his jeans and went back to taking pictures.
You should have that checked out, said Una.
In the last week alone several people in the area had been hospitalized with West Nile virus. Two had died the month before.
Falk scratched the bite and frowned, a puzzled monkey face crossing his pink cheeks, his pale blond fuzz of hair. It’d take more than a mosquito to kill me.
Una reached down and rubbed Falk’s hair. You think? I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if we’re the next to go.
Falk laughed. What a morbid thing to say.
She touched the tip of one stiff spiny zebra fin with the toe of her shoe. It’s true, isn’t it?
Well, I mean, go as in split town or go as in float belly-up?
I don’t know. You make the call.
Falk reached up and squeezed her hand. Myself, I thought we’d be elected something. Prom king and queen. Most likely to appear on the cover of Coastal Living. That kind of thing.
Una squinted at the fish, then turned her face away, letting the wind blow her hair into her eyes. Falk couldn’t see the look she was wearing.
Maybe we should, she said.
FALK AND UNA returned to the Black Tooth, heading into the wind now, a gush of ocean spray dampening their faces. It was early fall or what passed for it in that part of Texas, warm, but they were used to it. The light was still flat and bright, the sky a water-color blue, as of a swimming pool at a motor court. There was a hurricane in the Atlantic again. Mustang County officials had ordered an evacuation in July when one had come close, but it had swerved and hit landfall south of Galveston, so the whole thing seemed a dud. This new one was two thousand miles away and beyond