This story is part of a new web feature: the calendar Pinup Series. We'll be bringing you great new work online each month. —The Eds. Survived By
by Matthew Baker
I’m down at the wharf, scrubbing guano and black algae and dried wrack with a shit-stained mop, when Trino comes rattling down the docks on his bicycle, shouting something about how they’ve found a body. His back tire is bent; he’s wobbling through the dockhands like it’s his first time on a bike; he looks like a maniac. And so he trips off his bike and I drag him behind a stack of crates, which clatter a little as the butterfly fish flop around inside, making a big show of the fact that they’re drowning. And I say, what’s this about a body, you said they found a body. And Trino says, not a body. Somebody. I sit down on an overturned barrel. Shit, I say. Somebody? When. Just now, Trino says, they’re already on the way, should be back anytime. Who, I say. Did they say who it was. No, Trino says. They weren’t saying. All I know is the somebody was alone.
I need you to cover for me, I say. No, no way, Trino says, no way, not a chance, I’ve got my own job to do, a box of squid waiting for me at the end of the wharf, if I don’t deliver the squid, I don’t get paid. Come on, I say, I’ve got to tell old Touya, before someone else does. Which is what I call my mother, old Touya, except to her face. No, Trino says, no no no no no, and I say, just like an hour, it’ll be nothing, I’ll even deliver your squid on the way. And Trino’s still saying no, but he’s already smiling, he thinks it’s funny, us swapping lives for the afternoon. He loves that sort of shit—we both knew he’d do it as soon as I started asking. And so he strips out of his tattered shorts, and I wiggle out of my coveralls and give him my hat and my shoes, and I jam the brim of my hat low over his face, and hand him my mop, and send him marching out after the guano. I shimmy into his shorts, which are a size too small, and hop onto his bike, and this time it’s me wobbling down the docks, cranking along in my bare feet, and all of the dockhands looking at me like, where the fuck do you think you’re going?
Which where I’m going is to the carton factory, you fucking ragpickers, so go fuck a fucking corpse, although I don’t actually say any of that. The dockhands all think I’m lazy just because I’m skinny and can’t grow more than six or seven whiskers and come from the slums, but, fuck them, they don’t do shit down at the docks other than sneak sips of whiskey and slip off to the warehouse to play dice whenever they can, and maybe I come from the slums, but where they’re from isn’t far from it.
Anyway: I strap the crate of squid to the back of Trino’s bike and then pump off into town, pretending I’m on my way to the market to deliver the squid like I’m supposed to, but as soon as I cross the footbridge I swing up toward the slums, which are slumped across the side of the mountain like the body of something beautiful that got tired and then laid down and died, and now’s just rotting, its bones poking out in places, smelling like death some days, other days, worse. I pass Cameroon and her sister, splitting a mango on their stoop, and I shout, did you hear about the boat? Cameroon shouts, what about it? My father? But I’m already out of sight, kicking my way up the hill, weaving through taxis and stray dogs.
And then of course Trino’s piece of shit bike falls apart, the chain drops off and I skid into a dumpling stall and knock over a pot of bubbling oil and the crate tips off the bike and spills Trino’s squid all out into the gutter. And the man behind the dumpling stall is yelling at me and coming at me with a broom, and I scoop up what I can of the squid and run the bike off down an alley, stopping to catch my breath behind a tea shop, poking at the pink lumps on my stomach and shoulders where I got splashed by the oil. Then I hit each of the squid against the wall, trying to knock off as much of the pebbles and dirt and street grime as I can, but then I think: OK, fuck the squid. So I hide Trino’s bike at the end of the alley behind a statue of somebody’s god, where I’m pretty sure nobody’s going to see it, and then I hike the rest of the way to the factory on foot.
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