Guernica by Dave Boling Page A

impossible for him to return to sleep after these attacks, always knowing that within a short time he would have to
     leave his bed and face a reality that was only marginally less grotesque than his nightmares. More troubling to him than the
     smell rising from the hold, where hundreds of fish slithered in their mutual slime, were the undulating waters that unsettled
     him the moment the Egun On sailed past San Nicolas Island, only minutes outside the Lekeitio harbor walls.
    On rough days, as the boat rose to the crest of each wave, Miguel was thrust off his heels for an instant of weightlessness,
     only to be cast back down with knee-buckling force when the boat bottomed into a trough. Most fishermen learn to absorb the
     motion with their legs, like riders on horse back, and for several hours after they return to land they seem to walk in a
     bobbing fashion, compensating for a motion that the ground does not make. It never came to Miguel, though, and within the
     first half hour on the boat, he would lean over the transom and repeatedly bow, like a pump handle, to disgorge his breakfast
     into the turbulent Bay of Biscay.
    “Don’t look at the waves or the deck,” his father told him. “Keep your eyes on the horizon.”
    But the horizon danced and tilted on gimbals.
    “Pray to Saint Erasmus,” Dodo said, having tried to help his brother by asking the priest for the name of the patron saint
     of those with stomach disorders.
    “Saint Erasmus, please help me,” Miguel often started, but sometimes he could not finish that brief prayer before having to
     race to the transom. Miguel’s lone relief from suffering came from the lemon drops his father gave him. The candies didn’t
     stop his vomiting, but they gave his bile a more tolerable citrus flavor as it surged toward the sea.
    Miguel felt a distressing sameness to it all. When he looked at his father’s hands, with the trails of white burns from lines
     and nets, and red scars from knife slips, and barnacle-like patches dried on the skin from the salt winds, he doubted that
     any physical feature revealed more about a person’s work than did the hands of a fisherman.
    To be so disturbed by it all left Miguel feeling like a traitor to his name and his race.
    “No such thing as a seasick Basque,” Dodo would say. “That’s like a brave Spaniard or an intelligent Portuguese—doesn’t happen.”
    Miguel was proud of his family’s heritage as seamen, his father’s daily dedication, and Dodo’s ability to work without tiring,
     without freezing, without regurgitating, all the while singing and joking and executing pranks on everybody else on the boat.
    Even his mother’s connection to the business inspired him. At two A.M. each day, the town weatherman would scan the darkened
     horizon and sniff the winds to decide if the seas would be fair enough to safely send the fishing fleet to work. Sometimes
     a small committee of retirees would convene to offer opinions. They had little upon which to base their forecasts other than
     the time of year, the clouds, and what ever meteorological value came from licking one’s finger and holding it pensively to
     the wind. When a consensus was reached, it was passed to the callers, who would trundle through the damp darkness to the residences
     of the crews and sing out, “In the name of God, arise!”
    Miguel’s mother, Estrella Navarro, was a caller. Her strong voice bounced off the housefronts and the pavement of the lanes,
     which were so narrow that only three could walk abreast. Her “arise” was sung in a pleasant vibrato that inspired awakening.
     Miguel was often conscious before the call anyway, disentangling from the octopus in his bed.
    It was hardly a secret that Miguel was not destined for a future as a sea captain. One morning the contractions of his stomach
     hit with such force he was unable to reach the gunwales in time. To vomit on his father’s decks would be an unforgivable violation.
     Miguel