A Bucket of Coins

Yeji Ham

Everyone wanted a bone. Every man sailed to the far east to fish for bones. A single bone was three times more expensive than a mackerel. Everybody was fishing bones but me. I was fine without a bone. C dropped a bucket beside me.

You mind?” he asked. “There’s no table.”

“No,” I said.

He sat down.

“I need to sail out again,” he said.

I nodded and poured liquor into a shot glass.

From his jacket, he took out a check, two hundred dollars.

I drank up.

He wiped his hands on his jeans and smoothed the check.

At six in the morning, the tables around the street vendor were all taken. On each of the five tables, there was a check. On the floor, beside each fisherman, was a closed-lid bucket. In their thick cotton sweaters and jeans, they laughed. The smell of plastic buckets wiped away the rising smell of hot, steaming wheat soup and boiling potatoes. Some of the men carried a whiff of cologne. My waders, boots, gloves, and shirts were soaked, heavy, and smelt of mackerel gills, wriggling squid tentacles and flapping tails of cutlass fish. Their check was stiff. In my pocket was crumpled five dollars.

“You can have the table,” I said.

I put the liquor bottle inside my jacket and zipped it up. C looked down at the floor, stared up at me with wide eyes and handed me my two black plastic bags. Inside, mackerels flopped. I took them and walked away.

That was him, C.

Five months ago, late in the afternoon, his squid fishing boat docked on the Harbor. On the deck, his nets were tangled and thrown down. C kicked them aside, put his whole arm into the fish hold and scooped up a rib cage, femur and humerus. Throwing every squid and fish back into the sea, he smiled. On the dock, several men in GORE-TEX jackets stood watching. When done, C loaded the buckets of bones into their van, and they drove away. That day, C was mailed a check for three hundred fifteen dollars and twelve cents.

I held tightly onto the plastic bags and walked along the empty harbor.

The rest of the street vendors were closed. A blue, plastic vinyl covered each shop. Cooks sold their shops and bought fishing licenses and buckets. Some, for half the price of bones caught or less, joined a boat and worked for the fishermen. Many bought their own boats and sailed out for bones.

Out on the shore, girls and boys took off their shirts and pants. Boys ran across the frozen, sharp sand and jumped into the ocean. Girls walked into the winter ocean, knee-deep.

They stirred the icy water with their small hands. With their bony backs hunched, their eyes scanned under the dark foams. A few feet from them stood a little girl about six years old. She removed her shoes. Staring at the older naked boys and the girls, she pulled down her dress. Her eyes were fixed on the boys disappearing into the dark water and the girls’ thin white bodies shivering. The girl slowly walked towards the water. She hummed and sang: “Sister, I will make you a necklace of bones. Father, I will wash your bucket of bones. Mother, I will bear you bones.”

The girl held a bucket.

I turned around the corner and hurried my steps towards home.

All the men were sailing out now, throwing down their nets, scooping up bones, sending their buckets to the officials, receiving checks and smiling. Five dollars for a single rib and fifteen dollars for femur, pelvis and tibia. I shivered. In my plastic bag, mackerels struggled for their last moment of breath. I hugged the bottle and the trembling but soon-quiet plastic bags.

Father had always been a fisherman. Every day, at four in the morning, he woke up and put on his boots. I wiped my forehead. I was much like him now. My waders were heavier than my own body. The boots and shirts smelt of salt from the ocean and sweat. How I smelt before, I could not remember. How light my feet had been before, I did not know. I unbuckled the belt, pulled down my shoulder strap and hurried up the hill towards home.

Wife stood by the house gate.

I handed her the plastic bags, but she didn’t take them. She looked down at me.

“Did you catch any bones?” she asked.

“No,” I said, and put down the plastic bags beside her.

“Why not?” she asked.

“I just saw Mr. A carrying three buckets,” she said.

“He must know a good location,” I said.

“One hundred fifty dollars,” she said.

“These mackerels are fresh,” I said.

“How much is your mackerel?”

I looked up at her, but she had already slammed the gate. I grabbed the plastic bags, buckled my belt, put back on the shoulder strap, and turned away from home.

Down the hill, on the street, girls hopped and sang: “Sister, I will make you a necklace of bones. Father, I will wash your bucket of bones. Mother, I will bear you bones.”

I grumbled, took out the liquor and gulped it down.

“Did you catch any bones, Fisherman?”

The girls giggled at my waders and winced at its smell of rolling ocean.

“Give us some bones, Fisherman,” the girls said.

I threw down the plastic bags at their feet. Fishes slipped out. Their dead red eyes stared up at the girls. They shrieked and ran away. I grabbed the fishes and put them into the plastic bags.

“D!”

In front of a wide open gate, Mr. A stood. He gestured at me to come. I took the plastic bags and went over. In the yard, Mrs. A smiled at me as she polished a rib and maxilla with her silk handkerchief.

“Coming back from fishing?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Still fishing mackerels?”

He nodded, took out a check and showed it to me. I looked down at the ground.

“Earning good money?” he asked.

“Fishes are fresh,” I said.

Mrs. A scrubbed the bones with soap.

“I heard a kid drowned in the ocean yesterday,” I said.

“Did you know that some bones wash up on the shore?”

Mr. A laughed and pointed at the rattling bones.

“My children brought them from the shore yesterday,” he said. “They are not much, but still, that’s good money right there.”

He stroked the check and put it inside his pocket.

I looked away.

“Maybe I should start going out to the shores,” he laughed.

I turned around and walked away from his house.

My house gate was closed. I looked back at his, wide open.

Mackerels were worthless when alive, and more worthless when dead. Inside the plastic bags, they were losing their blue-silvery colors. No one wanted them. No one smiled when they caught them. No one would pay for them. I tied up the bags and walked down the road, farther away from the harbour and the houses.

Why.

Bones did not thrash. Bones did not breathe or fight against the strong, crashing waves. Bones did not smell like the salty ocean or have any glitters. They stank of plastic. They were smooth like the stiff check. Checks. That was the only reason. The officials paid a large sum of money for them, and all fishermen went out with their buckets. Trampling or throwing away the fishes, they threw down their nets into the ocean for bones. Like coins, bones jingled. If fishes had jingled, men would have put them into their buckets. But dead or alive, fishes never jingled.

Glancing back, I saw the tall office buildings. They stared down at me, down at the houses, the fields and the people. Far behind, on the shore, boys jumped into the ocean that swept away their friend. Girls sang and hummed about bones. Bones, bones, and bones. The whole town rattled with bones.

When I was young, I used to listen for Father’s heavy, wet steps and his rustling plastic bags. He always brought home more than four bags. He brought the fishes alive so that he could teach me their names, and when I turned nine, he began teaching me how to open their bellies in one smooth knife stroke. Then one day, his ship docked on the harbor full with fat flounders, squids, clams and mackerels, but Father was nowhere. Father’s fellow fishermen sold the fishes and the boat and gave me four hundred twenty dollars and one cent. The fishermen took one hundred dollars for the work they did.

I looked up. I had come to the far end of the town, the cliff.

Below me were the white waves trying to climb up. They crashed onto the rocks, heaving and screaming. I almost wanted to give them my hands. The white foams gurgled. Far beyond, on the ocean, there were dozens of fishing boats. The waves pulled and pushed away from the boats. To the cliff, a gust of wind carried the sounds of clattering buckets and the bones. The ocean cried.

I walked towards Father’s small gravestone.

“Brother,”

I looked up.

B was standing by the grave.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I come here often now,” he said.

Beside the grave was a large bouquet of white lilies wrapped around a gold paper. The gravestone was bright grey, polished and smelling of bleach. B stood in his jeans and in clean, white-collared shirts. My waders, boots, shirts. I took a few steps back.

“That’s good of you,” I said.

“These days, a lot of things have been easier,” he said.

I put down the plastic bags and the half-empty liquor bottle on the gravestone.

“Are you still fishing mackerels?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“You should fish for bones.”

“Don’t.”

“Does your wife know?”

“I bring money and fishes home every day.”

“How about your son and daughter?”

“What about them?”

“Is that enough? Fishes?” he asked.

“They are fine,” I said.

“They need bones.”

“They don’t need anything.”

“Give them what they want.”

“They don’t want anything.”

“The officials doubled the price. They are being extremely generous with us. If you start fishing for bones, you could come here often, as much as you like. Your family would be so happy.”

“They are happy,” I said.

“I can give you some of my bones.”

“I don’t want them. I don’t need them.”

B stared at me with his blank face.

“I couldn’t be here without the bones,” he said.

“I’m fine without the bones.”

B looked down at the plastic bags and the bottle.

“Brother, don’t you think Father deserves more than those?”

The plastic bags rustled and the bottle knocked down.

“Can you give Father more than those?”

I kicked the bouquet of white lilies.

“What do you want to say?”

He stared down at me with his unmoving, narrow eyes. B put his hands in his jeans and stepped forward.

“I saw your son today,” he said.

“What about my son?”

“He was on the shore,” he said.

I pulled back, almost stepping on the grave and the plastic bags.

“Your wife, daughter and son were all there.”

B never moved his eyes from mine.

“They were looking for bones.”

He walked past me.

“I have to go. I’m sailing out late tonight.”

His cologne strangled the dense smell of mackerels and sweat.

“You can join my boat if you’d like.”

“Go.”

“Well, think about it,” he said.

As he walked away, I kept my eyes on the grave.

On the grave, trampled petals of lilies lay scattered like the boys and girls in the ocean. The lily petals swept away. The grave held the heavy weight of the plastic bags. The bottle rolled, clattering, and fell on the ground. I put the bottle back on the grave. It knocked down again, rolled and fell on the ground. I put five dollars on the grave, but like the lily petals and the boys and the girls, they were swept away. Following the bills flying in the air, my eyes landed on the tall, white offices with all of their lights turned on. I picked up the plastic bags. The heavy weight pulled down my arms. The acrid odor rose up. Wincing, I tossed the bags aside, picked up the bottle and drank all its liquor.

A year after Father’s disappearance, a skull had drifted onto a shore.

I wanted to be like him. Like him, I wanted to come back home with four plastic bags of cutlass fish, flounders, clams and squids and show how they thrashed, how they smelt of the salty water and how they carried the sound of crashing waves to my son and daughter.

I could see her though.

Her shriveled nipples and her flat bosom facing the gust of ocean wind. Her lips tight and her eyes wide, she’d walk on the sharp sand. With her right hand holding her son’s hand and her left hand holding her daughter’s hand, she’d stare long at the dark swallowing ocean. Listening to the buckets banging in the small hands of her children, she’d take a step forward. Her teeth clattering and her whole body shaking, she’d push her children to stand behind her. Walking against the wind, she’d tell them never to let go of her hands. The naked woman, my wife, and the boy, my son, and the girl, my daughter, would then jump into the water for bones.

Why.

The question did not jingle. It never did. It never will.

I picked up the plastic bags.

“Sister, give me your necklace of bones.”

I tore them open.

“Father, give me your bucket of bones.”

I poured out the mackerels onto the grave.

“Mother, bear me bones.”

The dead five mackerels looked up at me.

“Fisherman, give me your bones.”

With my fingers, I tore open the mackerels’ bellies and ripped out their backbones. Throwing their flesh aside, with my hands soaked deep in red blood, I wondered if these bones would be enough.

***

The boat swayed and crashed against the raging waves. The nets drew in and poured white sacrum, radius, patella and tarsals into the fish holds. With bare hands, I tossed mackerels, squids and flounders back into the sea. I scooped up and dumped pelvis, mandible, and ribs into buckets. One bone dropped and crashed on the floor. It was chipped. I picked up the white, human skull, perhaps my Father’s, threw it into the bucket and closed its lid.

 

© 2018 Yeji Ham

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Yeji Ham is a Canadian writer of South Korean origin. She received her B. A. in Creative Writing from University of British Columbia (2014) and M.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University (2016). At Brown, a part of her short story collection was awarded the Frances Mason Harris’ 26 Prizes in Fiction. Her works have appeared in The Broome Street Review and No Tokens Journal. Currently, she is working on her next project, a novel about the space of Korea.