An afternoon of eel fishing. Uncle Harry hooked four, reeled them in, and yanked them into the boat. I held the wiffle ball bat and smacked at them without looking. I felt the plastic make contact with their rubbery bodies, and listened to Uncle Harry grunt with exertion as he gripped the rod.
The last one got tangled up in the line. A big knot. Uncle Harry cut the line at the rod's base with a knife as thick as my thumb. The eel smiled up at me with pinprick eyes that were all pupils. Uncle Harry balled the eel and string and blood and eyes up in his hands and threw them overboard. As it sank into the dark, I felt the eel watching me.
I sat on the rotted out seat with the hole in the middle while Uncle Harry sculled us back. Water sloshed out of the eel bucket with each grunt. The blood on the metal boat bottom streaked like rust, and crushed cans floated atop the bloody sea.
Three eels, Uncle Harry said, but just one would fill your belly. He grunted with laughter. I pinned my bat between the boat and bucket as water splashed onto my feet. My grunt was not quite a laugh—more like its nephew. Uncle Harry couldn't tell the difference with the contents of the cans pumping through him.
Water splashed over the lip of the boat, and the cans kissed my ankles, filled with nothing but bloody love. Uncle Harry grunted and grunted as the shore reached its fingers out to us. I tried to forget the big knot settling on the mud down below. But, somewhere down there, I knew the eel was still smiling up.
Madison Ellingsworth is a writer and ceramicist based in Portland, Maine. She has work forthcoming in several magazines, including Salt Hill Journal and Milk Candy Review. Her chapbook, Seven Stories, was published by Sand and Gravel Press in March 2026. More of Madison can be found at madisonellingsworth.com.
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