Ode to a Fish Sandwich (7 page)

Winnie muttered under her breath. Heaving out a deep sigh, she began snapping lids onto the plastic containers arrayed across her counter.

“I’m on my way.”

“And Winnie,” Carl added, his voice deepening to a serious tone.

“What else?” she moaned as she turned off the stove and threw the day’s remaining filets out the window to the waiting gang of cats.

The driver grunted sympathetically.

“White Wally saw the truck and made me stop the bus to let him out. He took off down the trail.” There was an audible gulp in the transmission. “The one that leads up to the volcano.”

Winnie smacked her lips together.

“Thanks, Carl.”

Silently pondering this information, she clicked off the phone and slid plywood sheeting over the front window.

~

BURT’S CANE FIELD wanderings started on the fourth anniversary of Delilah’s disappearance, around the same time as Winnie’s romantic episode with the sailor.

She wasn’t sure why the four-year mark had set Burt off, but every year since, his mental condition grew worse as the anniversary approached.

By now, she was accustomed to receiving concerned phone calls about his forays into the cane field. Everyone reasoned that she was the best person to handle his episodes of grief-fueled delirium. She could usually find him and talk him into returning home.

Winnie tapped the counter, ruminating on the bus driver’s phone call.

It wasn’t the information about Burt’s truck that was giving her pause.

It was the news that he’d been followed by the dermatologist—combined with the mental image of the diamond ring hanging around the doctor’s neck.

~

WITH THE DINER closed for the night, Winnie took the children home to the cinderblock house behind the grocery store. After instructing the two older girls to keep watch over their younger brother, she plodded into the woods, as fast as her heavy-set frame could carry her, quickly veering onto a secondary trail that would take her toward the volcano.

Fate had sent her a message.

She just wasn’t sure how to interpret it.

DR. JONES TROMPED THROUGH the cane field, struggling to follow the narrow path through the reeds.

He’d paused near the road to switch from his sandals back to his tennis shoes, but the rough ground was still difficult to navigate. Branches and stalks grabbed at his clothing, scratching through to his skin.

As he reached the middle of the field, he stopped to look up. The dense vegetation now topped out several feet over his head, blocking the late afternoon sun and creating a shadowy underworld beneath. Glancing over his shoulder, he confirmed that the road was no longer visible. He was completely immersed in the cane.

Tightly gripping his umbrella, he crept through the reeds like a timid mouse, his senses attuned to every sight, smell and—most importantly—sound.

Rustling, creaking, and crackling came at him from every angle, as if the field itself were a living creature reacting to the doctor’s movements. He tread as lightly as possible, carefully measuring his footsteps. His was an unwelcome intrusion. At any moment, he feared the beast might suddenly spasm and cough him out.

Moving forward, the doctor gradually became aware of a second set of sounds, rummaging noises that grew increasingly louder as he inched along the path. These belonged to another foreign being traversing the cane field, one far less concerned about disturbing their host.

Up ahead, he spied the tortured figure of Winnie’s estranged husband, thrashing through the reeds like a madman seeking redemption.

~

DR. JONES TRACKED BURT to the edge of the cane field, taking care to maintain a safe distance between them.

Despite their lengthy discussion at the diner’s picnic table, the doctor was unsure how to approach the distraught fisherman or what to make of his current state of angst.

Had Burt’s prolonged grief triggered a mental breakdown—or was this an indication of something else…perhaps tormented guilt?

Regardless, the unhinged maniac ahead of him on the trail was unrecognizable as the man he had spoken with a couple of days before.

~

THE PATH OPENED onto a boulder-strewn meadow that sloped gently upward. Midway across the field, a second trail converged with the one from the cane, creating a wider walkway of tamped down dirt, suggesting that the volcano’s hill saw far more traffic than the doctor had been led to believe.

Certainly, Burt appeared to know the route. Once free of the cane, he took off across the clearing at a headlong sprint.

The doctor struggled to keep pace. Each step in elevation brought with it gusts of wind that flapped his loose-fitting pants and shirt. The area was littered with rocks, and he was soon using the umbrella as a walking stick.

As the sun’s slant scaled closer to the horizon, the details of the volcano’s cliff face fell into sharper view. Jagged outcroppings studded the granite wall beneath the lip of the scalloped cone.

Panting, the doctor stopped to catch his breath.

He wasn’t sure why he was following Burt or what he hoped to gain out of this surreal adventure.

But as he turned to look down at the sea, shimmering against the setting sun, he knew one thing for certain.

Forget all the pitying stares and the sympathetic shoulder pats about his botched wedding. He was going to have one heck of a story to tell when he returned to his dermatology clinic.

~

AFTER ANOTHER HALF-HOUR of hiking up the increasingly steep incline, Dr. Jones reached a small plateau tucked into a wash near the volcano’s crater.

He found Burt kneeling in front of a crudely constructed wooden cross. A string of plastic beads hung from the structure’s top post.

The once bright colors of the beads had faded, but the text painted on the cross-post had been recently retouched. The writing identified the deceased to whom the shrine was dedicated: “Delilah.”

The doctor stopped at the edge of the clearing, unsure of what to do next. He held his breath, standing as silently as possible. But his hands were sweaty from the long hike, and the umbrella handle suddenly slipped from his grasp, tumbling loudly to the ground.

Burt looked over his shoulder and smiled, as if he’d been waiting for the doctor to arrive. With a wave of his hand, he motioned for the dermatologist to join him at the shrine.

Tentatively, Dr. Jones approached the cross and knelt to the ground in front of it.

“Listen,” Burt whispered conspiratorially, the whites of his eyes bulging in the gathering darkness. “If you listen, you can hear her.”

After a puzzled sideways glance at the fisherman, the doctor decided to play along. He bent his head and listened with all his might, but the buzzing drone of insects and the whistling of the wind were the only sounds he could identify.

He certainly didn’t hear Winnie’s heavy footsteps creeping up behind him.

WINNIE SLOGGED ACROSS one of the many overgrown cane fields that carpeted the volcano’s lower slopes, still uncertain of how she would proceed if she found Dr. Jones on the mountain with Burt, what means she might employ to take the diamond ring from the chain around the doctor’s neck, or even if she should pursue the gem’s quest at all.

Several times along the trail through the cane-filled jungle, she stopped and considered returning home. In her gut, she knew that it would be better to turn back, leaving the tormented fisherman and the diamond-laden dermatologist to their own devices, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to give up the hunt.

Despite her better judgment, she continued up the steep incline.

“I don’t know why he’s held on to that ring anyway. The thing’s brought him nothing but trouble.”

She thought of all the failures the ring represented for the doctor: the public humiliation of being left at the altar, the reception hall filled with empty seats and spoiled food, and now the awkward solo honeymoon.

She shook her head. She would be doing the doctor a favor if she relieved him of the ring’s wicked karma.

She repeated the advice she’d issued to the doctor the day he showed her the jewel.

“It’s bad luck for him to keep it.”

~

WINNIE WAS SOON sweating profusely. Her feet throbbed, and her chest heaved for air, but her qualms about what lay ahead were diminishing by the step.

The image of the diamond she’d held in her palm earlier that week grew ever larger in her mind, driving out the regular curbs of moral restraint.  

The opportunity was too tantalizing to resist.

She could easily tell the other islanders that she’d found Burt at his regular spot, crouched in a feverish daze before the shrine to his dead wife.

The dermatologist? She would just shrug and say that she hadn’t seen him. She’d figured he must have found his way back to the resort on his own.

Most would conclude that the pasty visitor and his black umbrella had tempted Delilah’s wrathful spirit one too many times and vanished, like her, into the cane.

Winnie reached for the tool belt strapped around her waist and gripped the handle of the butcher knife secured in its fittings.

She had grown fond of White Wally, despite his eccentricities, but their short-lived camaraderie was no match for the allure of the glittering diamond hanging around his neck—and the wealth for which she could exchange it.

It was a ruthless impulse she had indulged once before.

Her muttered words thudded through the darkening forest.

“With Delilah.”

~

PAUSING TO CATCH her breath, Winnie thought back to the night, roughly twelve years ago, when she’d found herself on a similar mission, climbing this same trail—carrying the same knife.

There were parallels, too, in the underlying motive.

The younger Winnie had set her sights on her ideal mate, a burly fisherman who could provide much needed structure and stability for both her and her fatherless daughter.

The only problem was that Burt was already married.

For the single mother, recently employed to help out at Delilah’s Beachside Diner, that was a simple impediment to remove.

~

WIPING THE SWEAT from her brow, Winnie stared into the swaying reeds by the trail, remembering how she’d lured Delilah up the side of the volcano.

The plan had started with a simple fish sandwich.

First, Winnie had prepared a seared filet for her boss to sample. It was an early prototype of the now classic version, but even in its pre-optimization stages, the result was a mouthwatering piece of fish.

The key, Winnie had whispered so that only Delilah could hear, was an island spice derived from a rare plant that grew high above the cane fields, cultivated by the French settlers who occupied the island for a short span during the colonial days.

Winnie described the plant in great detail, including its leaves, the tiny dried peppers that clung to its stems, and, most important, where to find it, at the top of the trail that cut through the cane field near the resort.

Delilah asked if she could get more of the spice to use in the diner fulltime, but Winnie shook her head. Her body shuddered with pretended fear. She had heard the tales about the volcano and the haunted cane fields that surrounded its base. She had no intention of hiking up to the area where the plant grew.

“You won’t catch me anywhere near the place,” Winnie had vowed solemnly.

It was an effective ruse, one that played directly into Delilah’s biggest insecurity: her cooking.

Determined to harvest a stash of the elusive herb for use in the diner, Delilah asked Winnie to take over the counter for the evening.

With a discreet smile, Winnie had watched her employer scurry off down the road into the afternoon sunset. Storm clouds had begun to circle the volcano’s summit, ensuring there would be an evening downpour—the perfect means by which to wash away the evidence of her contemplated crime.

After closing the diner, Winnie circled behind the grocery store to the trail through the trees behind what was then Bert and Delilah’s cinderblock house.

Once she found the designated spot, all she had to do was wait.

The other woman never saw it coming. A swift blow to the head knocked her unconscious. Winnie’s trusty cleaver did the rest.

The body was quickly carved into a dozen or so segments. It was a gruesome job, but, in the end, not that much different from carving up a fish or a chicken, tasks she’d done all her life.

The evening downpour carried away the blood, diluting it into the dozens of guts and ravines across the island that filled with water during stormy weather. The rest of the body required a little more work.

Winnie buried the larger bones near the volcano’s crater. The smaller ones, she distributed the along the trail, sprinkling bits and pieces into the thick reeds. The fattier chunks of flesh, she minced and tossed into the sea from the edge of the boulder pile outside the diner.

It was a successful dismemberment. No one ever identified any of the scattered body parts as being human, much less belonging to Delilah.

Such a shame the whole scheme had been for naught.

Winnie glanced down at her plump figure, worn from over a decade of working in the diner. Living Delilah’s life had been far tougher than she’d expected.

As for Burt, Winnie never would have believed that possession of the item she’d so desperately sought would turn it into a pillar of salt. The having of her prize negated all passion for it, her desire for the man deadened by the means of his acquisition.  

She didn’t expect to have the same problem with the doctor’s diamond ring.

~

REENERGIZED, WINNIE RESUMED her climb up the trail.

A few minutes later, she neared the shrine where Burt routinely went during his emotionally distraught episodes. Gauging by the voices she heard up ahead, she would soon have the fisherman and the doctor in sight.

She’d kill them both if she had to, but she didn’t anticipate any difficulties from Burt, particularly in his delirious condition.