Read Online Filaria by Brent Hayward - Free Book Online

was a misnomer. Not at all like the black, sandy land along the banks of the trickling rivers and streams that cut through Hoffmann City, sharing the same name, this place was a sloped, smooth embankment, made out of the same hard material that the rest of the world’s foundation was made out of. Rimming three sides of Lake Seven, hemming it against the far wall — which could at times be seen from where he sat, misty in the distance — it emanated both a foul smell and a constant churning sound that almost drowned out the susurrus of moans and chatter from the barrios behind Tran so. It was slippery, coated with algae and dark green weeds that had sloshed ashore and rotted, or had been exposed as the waters dropped. At the waterline, stained with mineral deposits, detritus rolled and tumbled in sluggish waves as if trying to escape from the lake. Chunks of wood, foam, spent food paks, spent prayer cards, spent remedy capsules: all rolled ceaselessly on the slick-covered swells, striving to reach up, to overcome the land or at least regain the ground they had lost. Sometimes Tran so watched this motion. Mostly he stared ahead.
    His wife, Minnie sue, was not well.
    Not well at all.
    This morning, however, he allowed himself to consider that he might have reached a point pivotal to his ill fortunes, for upon arriving he had received a sign that he might be commencing a streak luckier than that which he and most of his fellow citizens had been recently hurtling down. Today he had plucked a crab from the waters of Lake Seven. Although the beast’s shell was soft and illformed, the capture guaranteed meat for this evening’s meal. Tran so and Minnie sue would eat the contents of the paks supplied to them by the gods and supplement the bland gel with actual crabmeat . Imagining the taste now, Tran so’s mouth watered.
    Of course, he had to assume that Minnie sue would be awake, able to eat, and that the meat might make her feel a bit better. Even though she had not had a grand mal or broken out in a rash in over a month — and her coughing had subsided — the claws of her ailment still dug deep, ruining her appetite, her waking hours, causing her once-beautiful mouth to say the most horrible, hurtful things to Tran so, things she could not possibly mean.
    Diverting his reveries back to the crab, and to possibilities of better times ahead, Tran so wondered again if the catch could truly be prophetic. Might this be a turning point in life? Was it absurd to allow a moment’s hope?
    He frowned. When Tran so had first lifted the dripping crustacean from the water, it had pleaded, “No kill! Please no kill. No eat, man, big luck! I help. Big luck!”
    But should he believe it? Foolish to trust crustaceans, he knew, but maybe just this once a crab might be telling the truth. If he believed enough?
    The creature struggled feebly in the holding net. Surreptitiously, Tran so watched it, glancing once or twice over his shoulder at the shacks of Hoffmann City, and the few people milling about. No one paid him or the crab any attention. Tran so Phengh kept a knife in a scabbard, at his waist. He used it to defend these rare catches. He also used the knife to clean fish, but had not drawn it, for either reason, in a long time.
    There came an approaching rumble. He looked up. Along the breakwater, atop the slope of the beach — where the water level had once been when Tran so was a kid — trundled a god of dispensing. Stopping at the brink, it watched him from on high. He glared at it. The god nodded, an almost imperceptible motion.
    “Can I help you?” Tran so Phengh asked when it became clear the god was not going to speak first.
    “I merely bid you a good morning, sir. How’s the fishing?”
    “Terrible.”
    The god continued to stare with its tiny, unreadable eyes. “Sorry to hear that. But I see you’ve caught some thing there?” Indicating the disturbance in the water with a short arm, which emerged from beneath its