AUSTIN TREAT

Deadlifting

Helicopters flew over Portland Harbor. It was late. A warm summer night in July; and full of flies. The bugs attacked the day’s catch and were swatted away by swollen hands. Rubber boots pounded up gangways onto shore. All but one boat emptied for the night. Its crew, two weathered Americans, carried a body wrapped in blue tarp from cold storage.

The first mate tripped on his boots. He lost his grip and dropped the torso. Its neck snapped.

“Careful, man! Christ,” the captain hissed.

“That’s my bad,” replied the first mate, wiping his hands on a pair of overalls.

“Bend with your knees, not your back,” said the captain.

His first mate nodded, mindful of his form, and dropped into a squat. They counted to three in silence, nodded their heads to mark each second, and hauled the corpse up again. They carried it to the stern.

Peace of cake, thought his first mate. Just like at the gym: deadlifting.

The old fisherman, on the other hand, wasn’t as strong as he used to be. In the same motion it took to chuck the body overboard, splash, he fell against the gunwale, exhausted. He stared at the black water until his first mate came over and put an enormous black hand on his shoulder.

“Come on, Pat,” he said. “Let’s get a beer.”

Pat looked across the river. Skyscrapers lined the waterfront. Luxury apartments with infinity pools on the top floor. Behind all the pomp and glamor, the fine dining; beneath the casinos and nightclubs; beneath the smooth pavement and European sports cars; lived the uneven cobblestones of the Old Port. The same streets Pat and his buddies bar-crawled through every birthday, when bars were bars and not pubs; the same city where he got his first job as a deckhand on a rickety old trawler out of Portland Harbor, when seafaring people never worried about corporate vessels run by AI overfishing their spots, before the East India Company planted their flag, and claimed Maine as a colony. Pat’s life was fishing, and he wouldn’t let a ship captained by a computer take his job. Not when he still had gas in the tank.

He lowered his eyes to the water again, took a deep breath, listened to the tide hit the shore. The Atlantic never failed him. She always spoke the truth.

Back in the day, Pat could make a living wage off the sea. He didn’t have to dump bodies in the ocean for extra money. 

“Pat?” said his first mate.

Pat looked up and smiled. “Yeah, Josh, let’s go.”

There were plenty of bodies left to grab. The streets were full of them.

Austin Treat‘s short fiction appears in Dark Yonder, Flash Fiction Magazine, Storm Cellar, and UCLA’s Westwind magazine, among others. Deadlifting (2024) is a scene from his unpublished novella, What Fell From the Pagoda Tree. To read more of his stories, please visit austintreat.com. He lives and teaches English in southern Maine.