...where they shortly find
themselves packed into mass graves, crammed closer to one another than barracuda teeth, billeted together by the thirties in low rectilinear tins, stacks
of ten, three deep, eyes unblinking in the dark with only foul-smelling oil and their fellows as company.

A sardine who makes it to Slanty’s conveyer belt has had it rough already. First, you’ve got the whole drowning thing. Add to that the horror of disorientation—the sky is absolutely terrifying to a fish.

An ingenious suction device removes any remaining viscera, and you and the rest of your little silverdart chums are flumed down the line to your stamped, numbered, and bar-coded cell, stuffed alongside whomever is nearest until the tin is full. You’re squirted with noxious oil serving as food coloring and preservative,
and then the lid goes on.

And then you wait, perfectly preserved. You might wait forever, subject to the vagaries of a capricious and cruelly ironic fate.

For example: One can only assume thousands of sardine cans have been purchased through the years by sailors, and brought aboard merchant ships.

It only stands to reason, then, that a few, a very few, of these tins must have slipped accidentally overboard, or their ship sunk beneath the waves, thirty sardines returned to their natural home without ever knowing it, all hoping through long preserved centuries, all waiting for the turn of the key, blinding light, mastication, oblivion.

All this goes through Boyd Ligneclaire’s head as he slices the fish at the conveyor and sluices them down the chute, then uses a plastic suction snoot to whisk the entrails to parts unseen. His fingers work brainlessly, while his mind roams the deep sea.

He’s decided his work will begin with an epic tour-de-force written from the point of view of a sardine—from egg to can and then (herein lies the genius) *beyond the can,* into the great deceased with twenty-nine of his closest friends.

Think of the titles, then think of the poems.

“Apse Street Blues.”
“Neon Chapel in Daylight.”
“Self-Portrait in the Blade of a Cannery Knife.”

Boyd slices and suctions Boyd slices and suctions Boyd slices and suctions.

He rarely misses a fish. Nimble.

Those dexterous digits have kept him employed at Slanty’s through grim layoffs, and this same dextrosity landed him his other paid gig—part-time, by far more lucrative, and brokered by Donk: information-gathering, spying, even the occasional burglary.

Boyd prefers the burglary. High-end merchandise, highly technical thefts, no tracks left, no evidence created. In quick, out quick. The occasional picking of a particular prosperous pocket.

The job at the cannery keeps the authorities from sniffing out the secret job, while the secret job keeps him flush. But his third occupation keeps him sane, sets him apart. Occupation number three is writer.

Yes, the litterateur of Loony Island, the keeper of its flame, the immortalizer of its story, air father, the artistic sheen of the word made real in the flesh of the cranium, ah! It’s occupation number three he lives for. It’s his inner glory. It’s his secret strength.

He’s shit at it.

This is Donk’s opinion, and as Donk’s one of Loony Island’s few readers, it should be Donk’s opinion Boyd most values; however, in matters literary, Boyd remains unflappable. Donk expounds, but Boyd’s expression alters little, and his confidence not at all. There’s no arguing with Boyd.

There’s no *not* arguing with him, either, at least for Donk.

"You’ve written three pages in your whole life.”

“Well.” Boyd, leaning against a wall, striking what he hopes is a devil-may-care pose. “Three pages, yes. But. Three *perfect* pages.”

“They’re junk.”

“You have an imperfect understanding of my intent.”

“I’d hate to think I had anything approaching understanding of your mind.”

“Someday, you’ll sing a different tune. I’ll join a writer’s colony and make contacts.”

The whistle sounds, ending the night shift. Boyd hits the locker room, exchanges fish-sloppy dungarees for civvies—aged jeans, white tee, leather jacket—and piles out the back exit with all the other cats, pondering rhyme schemes.

—Iambic? Iambic is classic; it has its appeal, but iambic is so military in its cadence, so rigid, so daDAdaDAdaDAdaDA-yadda-yadda-yadda.

Iambic is railroad tracks, the speed limit, the Farmer’s Almanac, poetry’s good citizen. Iambic pays its bills on time. Iambic turns all the clocks back for Daylight Saving Time. Iambic will make a solid husband, but it ain’t going to get laid on spring break. You may as well go with rhymed couplets while you’re at it.

Boyd preens a moment, fires up a smoke.

Cutting across shuttered factory yards, ducking through the well-known gaps in fences, working through acrobatic rhyme schemes, trapezoidal metaphors—Come on now, Boyd, let’s grab this poem by the balls, do it in an ABBCBAACBCABDDDDDCDDDDA, something like that. They’ll never see it coming.

Pulls out a battered notebook, jots: *rhyme scheme; grab balls.*

Suddenly it strikes him—iambic rhymed couplets, hmm…might they not be...*perfect?* So jejune, so out-of-fashion, might they not have come back around to be considered *avant?* The least-expected thing? *Sui generis?* Yes! Hoe. Lee. Shit. "Wheatgrass Tea" won’t know what to daDAdaDAdaDAdaDAdaDO with itself! He claps his hands together once, Eureka!—pulls out the notebook, jots: *couplets; hoe lee shit*—then freezes.

Someone is standing nearby, staring at him.

Professionally stealthy, Boyd is unused to being seen, and certainly unused to being seen *first,* in the creeping morning dark no less. The stranger makes no movement, no sound, no acknowledgment; he simply stands and watches Boyd and blows smoke. Unnerving as hell; Boyd’s nape hair stands up. How to proceed? Run? Saunter past? Say “Howdy”?

The stranger speaks, very clearly.

“Boyd,” he says.

“Do I know you?” Boyd asks—and oh mama, are his hackles prickly now. Something in this fellow’s voice is...deep. Not low, but *deep.* It holds more secrets than an ocean trench.

“Do you know me?” the stranger replies. “Interesting question. No. I’d have to say you don’t. But clearly I know you.”

“I’m just checking in.” He puffs, expels a wreath of smoke. “I’ve been ‘checking in’ on all sorts of people. But I haven’t yet stopped by to see you, old friend. I’ve mainly been dealing with Gordy, and believe me, Gordy’s a handful. An *armful*. It’s kind of odd for me to see you like this—here, now—though I don’t expect you to understand.”

“I don’t understand anything you’ve said so far, to be honest with you,” Boyd says, edging back, getting ready to run.

“You’re not going to run,” the stranger remarks.

“Of course not,” Boyd freezes again, gives what he hopes is a devil-may-care-and-not-at-all-hysterical laugh. “Why would I run?”

“Because you think I might hurt you. But I won’t.”

“I’d feel more confident about that if I knew your business.”

The stranger says nothing for a while, then: “Curiosity. The itch of ages, the prime addiction, the killer of...” He stops and chuckles. “Hm. Probably the wrong idiom."

I suppose I’d better tell you some things that might help. First, tell Julius he’s got to make his move soon with the flickering man. He’s got hours, not days. Second, you really ought to come check out what I’m standing on. You won’t be sorry.”

“Who *are* you?”

The stranger says what might be a word, or might be a name, and then, as if from a vertical crease running from the top of his head to his pelvis, the Deep Man folds himself in half, then again, then again, reducing himself by halves until there’s nothing there anymore. It’s the damnedest thing.

Boyd stands breathing until his pulse reaches normal and his pelt smooths down. Then he gives a low whistle, his brain on-tilt and humming, desperately trying to catalogue the experience.

Boyd wanders over to where the guy had been, searching for mirrors that might have been used to effect the trick. There was something about that guy. He was…he was…Boyd searches for the word.

Vivid? Yes. He was vivid. Even in silhouette, he was more present, more particular, more finely attuned somehow, than anything else Boyd’s ever seen. As though he’d been provided an extra measure of reality; as though he’d been sketched with a finer-tipped pen, drawn by a surer hand.

Boyd looks down at his own self, which seems real enough. It had been only in comparison with the stranger that he’d felt diminished—Oh yes, there’s a story in this, if there’s opportunity to tell it…tell Julius…hours not days…you know, you *should* tell Julius…stop over at the Neon in the evening at his barbecue, catch him after he gets back from his rounds…and then he, he *folded?* God, what a spookshow.

Landrude...That’s a name? Maybe a...title? You’ll have to look it up in the dictionary.