Fish Out of Water (From a Series of Sketches) -- by Russell Block

For the steamed pettifogger, like his ocher drab, a brownish derby, a brown jacket, and only muddier pants, the glaze was ocher in the eye, the skin about all flaky. A mouth clapped up as a clam, he stands. Blown about by wind, were there any, Phillip, a lank compatriot begs before the squat curmudgeon. A sudden lash issued by guppy of a man sets the derby aslant. All the long proportions of Phil, terrified, collapse into a cower more distant. From the pocket of the oil coat, there, without any plastic or wax, a mackerel sandwich, one mackerel blanketed in slices, unfolds. From the tail side first, the lolling head, though dead, writhes as though the eating and chewing was the mackerel’s own death throws. Phil stands, quick to stoop when glared at. “Sir, my eyes are cast away from you. Please, take the folding of my hands for what they mean. Grant me what my gesture asks.” Phillip thus crawls toward the steamed fellow in his oil coat. There, in a state of constant anxiety, he taps at the crumbs and licks them greedily off his fingers. Sniffing around, one precious morsel, one drenched with just the least bit of mackerel oil, just in reach, is reached for; and at the exposed sock of the brown leather boot at the toe, the hand extended escapes a sudden kick. Phillip hops away. At his extremest contraction, withdrawn around his own haunches, which he hugs, the anxious shudders throughout Phil never seem to escape an upper-bound the bend of his hunched spine makes. The diffident stevedore, or ex-stevedore, however proud he was to once be with the union, from down at the crumbs to boulder top way-up measures tall as the cowering Phillip does. Phil still respects his old mentor. The distance between them is equal to the size of them both. The distance between them keeps the skinny addict safe from the other’s outbursts. The cement factory around them continues its business. Pipes and conveyor belts deliver their purveyances to the next pipe or conveyor belt. For the steamed pettifogger, the day is growing tired, and with a swig, he falls backwards over the pylon, his snoring then beginning up once again.