New Jersey Noir Part 13

GLa.s.s EELS.

BY JEFFREY FORD.

Dividing Creek Between a spreading magnolia and a forest of cattails that ran all the way to the estuary stood Marty's dilapidated studio. The walls were damp, and low-tide stink mixed with turpentine and oils. It was late on a Sat.u.r.day night in early March. They drank beer and pa.s.sed a joint. Len spoke of insomnia, a recent murder out on Money Island, and a buck he'd seen with pitch-black antlers. Marty told about a huge snake on the outside of the studio window and then showed Len his most recent paintings-local landscapes and a series of figures called Haunted High School.

"That chick looks dead," said Len, pointing at a canvas with a pale girl in a cheerleading outfit, smoking a cigarette. In the background loomed an abandoned factory, busted gla.s.s and crumbling brick. A smokestack.

"She's haunted," said Marty. "I gotta sell a couple of these in the next gallery show in Milville on Third Friday. I need enough to fix the roof. We're f.u.c.kin' broke."

"I heard there was a guy in a van buying gla.s.s eels before daybreak in the parking lot behind the burned-out diner on Jones Island Road," said Len.

"The state banned it back in the '90s, didn't they?" Marty asked.

"Yeah, they banned it," Len said and laughed. "I heard one kilogram is going for a thousand dollars. That's two pounds of eel for a grand."

"How many eels is that?"

"You gotta remember," said Len, "they're only two inches long, see-through thin. So you have to do a fair amount of dipping to bring up two pounds, but not enough to call it work."

"Are you saying we should do this?"

"Well, we should do it just once. Think of your roof."

Marty nodded.

"s.h.i.t, I could use the money for my prescriptions," said Len.

"How much can you make in a night?"

"Most guys do about a kilogram and a half to two. Some do a little better. But there are times when a person'll bring in twenty or even more."

"How?"

"They know a spot no one else knows, a certain creek, or gut, or spillway, where salt.w.a.ter and freshwater come together and the gla.s.s eels swarm. And I was thinking today, after I heard that they were going for a grand, that there was a place my father would take me fishing for eels at the end of July. We'd barbecue them."

"How long ago?"

"Thirty years."

"You think we could find it?"

"Nothing changes around here," Len said. "Myrtle's Gut. Down the end of your own block out here. At the marina, we get in a canoe and paddle a little ways and there's a big island of reeds. It's pretty st.u.r.dy to walk on, but the water is everywhere and if you take a wrong step in the dark you could fall in up to your neck. There used to be a trail through the reeds into the middle of the island. Sort of at the center is a spot where this creek comes up from underground and winds its way for three turns, once around a Myrtle bush, on its way out to the Delaware."

"That ain't real," Marty said.

"Yeah," said Len, "that's what it is. A freshwater creek that runs out to the reed island beneath the floor of the bay and then surfaces."

"And the eels that go there swim underground up into the freshwater streams?"

"Eels will do anything they have to do to get where they're going. On their way back out to sea to sp.a.w.n, if a creek dries up, they'll wriggle right across the land. Years ago on a full moon night in August you could club eels pa.s.sing through. It was an event. The guy who owned the best meadow for it had a stand nearby that sold corn dogs and lemonade. Everybody clubbed a couple. There were guys there who'd take your eels and smoke them for you for a half dollar."

"Sounds Lord of the Flies."

"The underground protects them on the way out, so why not on the way in?"

"How do you see them at night when they're so small?"

"They're like tiny ghosts, especially in the moonlight."

"So we go out there in a canoe?"

"We'll need a couple of coolers and some nets, a couple of flashlights."

"I can't run, man. If we get caught, there's no way I can run."

"Forget it, no one's gonna see us. n.o.body gives a s.h.i.t. The last time I saw a cop down here was about a year and a half ago when Mr. Clab's coffin went on a voyage. Remember, they found it on the beach next to the marina?"

"The cop said there was an underground stream beneath the cemetery that washed the box out to the bay."

"You see," said Len, "there's your proof of what I'm saying."

Len and Marty sat on the damp ground beside the spreading myrtle bush at the second bend in the gut. There was a breeze. Between them lay a pair of lit flashlights like a cold campfire. They were dressed warmly with hats, gloves, and scarves. Beside them were coolers and nets. Len took out a joint and said, "We gotta wait for the moon."

"Why?"

"The tide. The moon's gonna rise in about five minutes, nearly full, and in a half hour it'll be a good way up the sky and big as a dinner plate. The eels will come in with the tide."

"It's dark as s.h.i.t out here," said Marty.

"Nice stars, though," said Len. He pa.s.sed the joint.

Marty took a hit and said, "The other night, after you left, it started raining hard. I went up to bed. When I got under the covers Claire's back was to me. I knew she was awake. I told her what you said about the eels, and I told her if something happened where I got caught she would have to bail me out. A few seconds pa.s.sed and, without turning around, she asked, 'How much can you make?' 'Maybe a couple of thousand,' I told her. The rain dripped in. She said, 'Do it.'"

Len laughed. "That's what I call a working marriage." He leaned forward and took the pint from Marty's hand.

"Do you think Matisse ever did this?" asked Marty.

"I don't think Matisse was ever a subst.i.tute teacher."

"The other day they sent me to teach English in a separate school for all the truants and delinquents. They call it the Hawthorne Academy. Jesus, it's the worst. Fights, a couple an hour. Crazy motherf.u.c.ker kids. They're being warehoused by the state until they reach the legal age and can be released into society."

"Haunted High School," said Len. He pointed into the sky. "Here comes the moon."

"Nice," said Marty.

They sat quietly for a long while, listening to the flow of the gut and the wind moving over the marshland. Len lit a cigarette and said, "I saw a guy in town this afternoon. I think I remember him from 'Nam."

"Oh lordy, no Vietnam stories. Show some mercy."

"I'll just tell you the short version," said Len.

"Never short enough. When do the eels show up?"

"Listen, I saw this guy, Vietcong. We never learned what his real name was but everybody on both sides called him Uncle Fun. I was shown black-and-white photos of him. We were sent into the tunnels with an express mission to execute this guy. The tunnels were mind-blowing, mazes of warrens, three, four floors, couches, kids, b.o.o.by traps. He was a f.u.c.king entertainer, like a nightclub act, only he played the Vietcong tunnel systems instead of Vegas. He told jokes and sang songs. For some reason they wanted us to cancel his contract asap."

"You're a one-man blizzard of bulls.h.i.t," said Marty.

"f.u.c.k you. Intel said that at the end of every performance he laughed like Woody Woodp.e.c.k.e.r."

"What was he doing downtown this afternoon, trying out new material in the parking lot of City Liquors? You been taking your pills?"

"s.h.i.t, they're here," said Len. "Grab a net."

The moon shone down on the bend in the gut and the water bubbled and glowed with the reflection of thousands of gla.s.s eels. Len and Marty scooped up dripping nets of them like shovelfuls of silver.

"Do we need to put water in the coolers to keep them alive?" asked Marty.

"Are you kidding? They're tough as h.e.l.l. They'll keep for hours just like they are."

"The black eyes creep me out."

"A gla.s.s eel the size of a person would be the Holy Ghost."

Marty drove his old Impala. Len was in the pa.s.senger seat. The nets were in the back, the coolers in the trunk. They headed north, away from the marina, past Marty's house, and turned at the cemetery onto a road that went over a wooden bridge. It led to a narrow lane lined with oak and pine. The deer looked up, their eyes glowing in the headlights.

"You know that giant tree up at the end of the road here, where you make the turn? The one with the neon-orange pentagram on it? Star with a circle around it. What's that all about?" asked Marty.

"That's Wiccan, I think. Nature witches. They've been here for a long, long time. They mark the important crossroads."

"Witches?"

"I've run into a few. You hear stories about spells and s.h.i.t, but I never witnessed any of that. They just seem like sketchy hippies."

"Me and Claire call it the Devil Tree. Which way am I going here?"

"You want to make a left. Then, in a quarter of a mile, make a right. I hope the buyer's there again."

"How much do you think we've got?"

"I'd say about eight grand. Maybe more."

"Jeez."

"These eels have never been successfully bred in captivity," said Len. "When it comes to eels you can only take."

"You trying to make me feel guilty?"

"Yeah, but f.u.c.k it, we need the cash. The parking lot of the old diner is up here on the right just past these cattails."

Behind the burned-out sh.e.l.l of Jaqui's All-Night Diner, in a parking lot long gone to weeds, Len and Marty stood before the open back doors of a large van. Inside was a lantern that gave a dim light. Behind the lantern, a teenage girl sitting on a crate aimed a shotgun at them.

"We'll see what you have," said a heavyset man to their right. He wore a tweed suit jacket and had a pistol tucked into the waist of his jeans. Before him on a makeshift wooden platform was a large antique balance scale, one end a fine net, the other a flat plate holding four-kilogram cylinders of lead.

"Snorri," called the buyer, and a huge guy with a crew cut, wearing a shoulder holster, appeared from around the side of the van. "Pour these gentlemen's eels, I have to weigh them."

Snorri lifted the first cooler and carefully poured out the eels into the net of the scale. The weighing took awhile. Every time the scale moved it creaked. The wind blew strong and whipped the reeds that surrounded the parking lot. The girl with the shotgun yawned and checked for messages on her phone.

"That's the last of them," said the buyer, clapping his hands. "One more calculation, though. I subtract for the water the eels have on them. I only pay for eels, not water." He laid three small white gull feathers on the flat plate of the scale and leaned over to read the difference. "You have a little more than nine kilograms here. I can give you eight thousand."

"I heard it was a thousand a kilogram," said Len.

"One hears what one wants," said the buyer.

"I know from a reliable source that last night you were paying a grand."

"Supply and demand," said the buyer.

"Explain it," said Len.

"Eight grand or I can have Snorri explain it to you in no uncertain terms."

The girl in the van laughed.

"We'll take the eight grand," said Marty. "Chill out," he said to Len. "We're talking eight grand for an hour and a half of fishing."

"Okay," said Len.

Snorri stepped back, taking the gun from its holster. The buyer leaned into the van and stuffed eight stacks of banded hundreds into a yellow plastic grocery bag. He handed the bag to Marty. "Check it."

Marty held the bag open and counted the stacks in a whisper. He reached in and felt the money. He lifted the bag and smelled it. "Thanks," he said.

"An hour and a half," said the buyer. "That's very fast for what you brought in."

"We don't mess around," said Len.

"Where were you?"

"Over west," said Len, "in the woods by the bay south of Greenwich."

"Can you be more specific?"

"Have Snorri explain it to you," said Len, and laughed on his way back to the Impala.

They got in the car. Marty backed out past the remains of the diner and onto the road. "Why'd you have to be such an a.s.shole with the guy? I thought they were gonna shoot us in the back with every step I took."