sharks in the hudson

my three friends and I were walking along the river in the middle of the night in a way that's enough to make you a little queasy--but then you realize that it's OK, and it's so romantic how the park lamps glow at night, especially in balmy weather. We were walking in the darkness so that we could barely see the shape of each other's bodies; and only our voices drifting across to us, ghostly. I could smell the fresh smell of cut grass, the rotting of the dead plants along the water. I always forget how lush New York is; that most of the island was once like this thick green forest too.

we passed dark shadowy men night fishing in a suspended disbelief of the state of the river. i thought of what someone told me: that the Hudson River when you fish things out from the bottom drips soupy and black full of all sorts of menacing unnaturalness. and here it was so dark that you couldn't see anything, so maybe that's why they fished so late. Or maybe just because it was Friday night. They smoked and sang in Spanish and listened to little portable radios, smiling broadly at us and I could see their white flashing teeth.

We drifted down ten feet and then realized one of us was missing.

"Maybe he fell into the river and died, and now we have to drag him up from the bottom, how thoughtless," one of us suggested breathlessly.

"No, he's still here. He's a takes a licking and keeps on ticking type." I said.

"Hey, hey!" he ran after us shouting. We were all instantly ashamed of being annoyed at him for dying. "Someone caught a shark!"

He led us back to one of the fishermen's spots, where a small gray fish flailed in the grass. The men spoke to us in Spanish and reminded me abruptly of my father and my uncles, who all have a mania for fishing when they can do it. I remembered crabbing in San Fransisco and the big clattering rusty crab traps, and driving home with fish barely alive in white wet plastic buckets.

"Quite amazing, it's quite a small fish," my friend said.

We stared, entranced.

Then the fisherman debated whether or not to throw it into the water. Someone said, wouldn't it be cool to carry it home and put it in an aquarium? Right after that the man swooped down gracefully and sliced the shark's head off, red and glistening. The two girls were shocked and danced back nervously.

"Why are you so scared?" a boy chided. "That's where fish come from."

"It's just so...brutal."

"Eating is brutal."

The fishermen chatted a bit and then politely left us to go back to their work. I could smell the shark's blood, mixed in with the smell of salt and rotting things, and followed my friends home back into the blackness