Reboot

Oliver liked to fish, so I jokingly made him fisheries technician. Complete with a hat I’d made from leaves. The “head fisher hat”. He wore it all the time.

While Stan, François and I sat on the beach resting after a hard morning’s work unloading the boats and mulling over our next move, we watched Oliver as he worked the beach.

“What is he doing?” I asked Stan.

“He’s fishing,” he answered. “Like you asked him to.”

“On the beach?”

“He’s looking for crabs.”

“I didn’t think he’d actually do it. I was being fasechesh.. fachich.. I was joking.”

“I know, but it was good, you did good there. He likes to have a project and you gave him a good one.” He smiled at me and patted my shoulder before heading off.

I raised my eyebrows in wonder and I went back to watching Oliver who wandered endlessly along the shore after the outgoing tide, hunting and learning. He took to his new task seriously and soon devised intricate ways for finding all sorts of seafood. I helped him make spears with hooks at the ends and we caught a multitude of delicious fish together. He’d stand and wait without moving until he could spear us some lunch, he’d try various types of bait, nets and traps; and then he got creative.

“There is plenty of food, Robert. Mollusks, oysters, clams, mussels, seaweed can all be eaten, though some care is needed to make sure they aren’t poisonous, which they can be in certain conditions and at certain times. If they’re hard to dislodge or open, then they’re generally ok to eat. If they come off easily or open easily then it most likely means they are diseased, so avoid. I will mix the fish with various dried algae and experiment. OK?”

“Um…ok.” Of course that meant that we were his guinea pigs.

“Always cook everything,” he said. This isn’t time for sushi. Why risk food poisoning now, right?”

“Of course. Gotta kill them parasites.” I nodded. We simply could not deal with any type of food intoxication right now. We were walking on rocks, looking for any sign of shellfish after the tide went out. I poked around with my foot; he used a stick.

“Some types of fish have poisonous barbs. We have to be careful with that too ok? Sea snakes are normally extremely venomous. But we can eat them if we are careful, yes?” He looked like a kindergarten teacher when he was preaching like this. Stern but friendly.

“You’re making traps?” I asked him after seeing a bunch of boxes all over the beach.

“Yes, I used what I could salvage to create the traps, and we had plenty of hooks. At low tide I look for worms and small shrimp to use as bait. Though almost anything could be used as bait. The fish here, they jump at anything.”

We were walking on the beach as he proudly described his toys to me.

“And what’s that?” I pointed to a dam that he’d made.

“It is a tide pool.”

“What’s a tide pool?”

“It is a pool that fills with the incoming tide, it traps animals when it recedes like small fish, shrimp, crabs, clams, mussels, barnacles, snails, urchins, anemones, nudibranchs, starfish, and sea cucumbers. Plants such as algae, seaweed, and kelp also grow there. All we have to do is walk by after the tide has gone out and pick out what we want.” He smiled broadly.

“How do you know so much about this?”

“I used to live on a beach. My grandfather was a big man fisherman.”

“How do you check to see if the food is poisonous?” I asked.

“I conduct tests.”

“Tests?”

“Yes, to see if the food is poisonous, I begin by rubbing it over the back of my hands and then I wait for some minutes to see if there is any kind of reaction. If nothing happens, then I try the food a little bit against my tongue. And finally is to put a piece in my mouth and hold it there for a while before I take it out again. If nothing happens, then eat a bit. I could still die, but it is highly unlikely. This is how our ancestors did it. Must be patient though. Slow and sure.”

“No kidding. Promise you’ll be careful ok? It would be stupid to lose you for licking a fish after surviving a nuclear war.”

“Yes it would, Robert. Thank you for caring.” He smiled.

_________________

In the darkness, I thought of the people I left behind. It couldn’t be helped. Everyone did it. I often heard people crying at night. Muffled weeping. The dark brought a veil of sadness on us that could only be lifted by sleep or toil. Work chased it away so we kept busy.

My mother and father, my brother Eric and Marie, my sister. My friends. All gone.