Graves are deeper around the edges, where the shovel heels into the hard topsoil, mulching grass, dirt and scrawl. His grandfather, the man in the hat’s, drove a fish truck for the Mercury Fish Company. Having one leg as he did, he double-clutched with a dowel attached to the skirt of his trousers, shifting gears with his right hand, the left one grappling with the steering wheel. The man in the hat’s father rode along with his father on a crate steeled into the floorboards next to the driver’s seat, his father’s, the man in the hat’s father, pushing the knobs of his knees hard into the dashboard, brads and screws and loose clips of metal cleaving skin from bone. Cods’ tongues and Haddock fins, and airbladders diffuse with seawater, kelp blue with the cold of the ocean floor. The fish truck swerved and coddled through the city streets, fenders cove with dents, the man in the hat’s father holding on for dear life, his knees buckling, the smell of fish, salt and starched shirts assailing his breathing, shallow and pitted, grubbing for a weal of clean air. He never once took his eyes off the road fearing if he did, that his father would careen the fish truck into a lamppost or up and over the sidewalk, taking out a shop window, the wheels spinning like dervishes, fish slather with oil and petrol.
He never did, the man in the hat’s father, like fish, or roe, or fish cakes fried in Crisco. He hated the smell of cog oil and grease, and the high frequency whine of an engine revved out of neutral, and cods’ liver and dashboards with sharp curses in the molding. He disliked truck doors that wouldn’t shut properly, and windows taped over with plastic, and the reek of his father’s sweat, his shirts starched with vinegar and Old Spice. He hated all these things, and more; a hatred that left no room for resolution or forgiveness. He hated having to drive round with his father on a crate in the Mercury fish truck, and the door that wouldn’t shut properly, and the passenger’s side window that was taped up and flapped whenever his father stomped on the gas peddle. But most of all he hated fish, and crustaceans, shrimp and crayfish, and smelts and sardines soused in oil, and the strained look on his father’s face when he over-steered and had to pull hard on the wheel to keep the truck from cobbling and careening and kilting like mad. The man in the hat’s father hated most things, but never once did he complain in public, or dress down his father for being a lousy driver. Not once, not ever.
