The Bait Knife
The Bait Knife
At closing time the fish house drains to bone. One lamp burns on above the culling board. A bait knife scrapes what daylight left alone, And gulls keep court where nothing is ignored.
The buyers drove off hours ago, well fed. Their ledgers close; their kitchens will be warm. But one old hand still rinses scales and red, As if clean water could forgive the storm.
The tide comes back to everything it can. It lifts the rope, the skiff, the swallowed stake. Yet no returning current mends a man Whose trade requires more loss than he can fake.
The sea pays honest men in cuts and brine. And leaves the polished liars fit to shine.
This one came out of that hour after the useful noise is over, after the buyers are gone, after the joking thins out, when one or two men are still left washing down a table under a bad light. There’s something severe about that moment. Not dramatic. Just plain. Work is finished, but the cost of it is still sitting there in plain view. I wasn’t thinking about fishing as a picturesque thing. I was thinking about the kind of labor that leaves a man alone with what had to be done, and how often the cleanest public stories get built on top of people who go home smelling like the truth.
– Doc