Nelson and Me

Grandpa talked to his shark.

I lived with him for three years after my parents separated and could not decide which one loved me enough to house and feed me. It didn’t help my debilitating anxiety when I woke up in the middle of the night to hear grandpa calling, “Elsie, Elsie.” Except he wasn’t calling me. No, he was speaking with ‘Nelson,’ the shark. That’s Nelson as in Admiral Nelson, as in the admiral who got shot right before he actually achieved something. Fitting. Sometimes, they would talk for hours, but only when grandpa thought he was alone. Grandpa wasn’t flat out crazy. It’s not like he would chat with Nelson about what Nelson was doing or what Nelson wanted. Grandpa would reminisce about happier days: stories about grandma, or his old buddies from the Navy, or mom when she was young. Nelson would just hang there—for a shark, he was an excellent listener. But I think, after years of struggle, grandpa forgot how to have those conversations with actual people. He certainly never had them with me.

The one story he would share, and I mean share with anyone and everyone, was the tale of how Nelson came to be suspended from the vaulted ceiling of grandpa’s living room. At some point in his thirties (the exact age changed with every retelling), he and a few of the aforementioned Navy guys went on an ocean fishing trip to Florida. Things were going swimmingly (pun required), until a combination of a strong fish and some choppy seas knocked one of them overboard. The guy was fine, climbed right back into the boat, but after a hearty laugh, grandpa berated the dude for not bringing the lost rod and tackle back with him. It wasn’t too deep where they were and grandpa was a strong swimmer, so he took recovery into his own hands. Diving down, he said it was like a nature documentary. Fish, invisible from the surface, burst into view, spinning around him like a silver tornado. Amid the beauty, he cursed and congratulated the swarm for evading their empty ice box all day. Then the scaly curtain parted, revealing Nelson, all eleven feet of tiger shark death-machine. Now, I’ve heard somewhere that sharks can’t stop swimming, but grandpa swore that Nelson just hovered there, staring at him from the other side of the hole in the fish wall. Man and beast locked eyes. Each waited for the other to make the first move, to decide if the meeting turned violent. (Can you tell I think grandpa had a knack for embellishment?) Apparently, Nelson lunged first. Grandpa had a knife strapped to his belt in case they needed to cut a line or flay a fish. Well, as Nelson torpedoed forward, grandpa drew his knife and managed to dodge the ring of teeth. Grandpa got one good slash into Nelson’s sandpapery flank before the shark wheeled around for another pass. It was like bullfighting: charge and evade, charge and evade, all while grandpa wore Nelson down, one cut at a time. At this point in the story, grandpa always gloated that the shark never bit him; although, Nelson wasn’t so lucky. After the shark was clearly defeated, grandpa, fueled by adrenaline and bloodlust, sunk his own teeth as far as they would go into Nelson’s dorsal fin. It didn’t break the skin, but if you got up on a ladder, you could see the little grooves from grandpa’s spiteful nip. Nelson was a goner. Grandpa finished him with a coup-de-grace and returned to the surface. His buddies were awfully afraid. They saw the blood but wouldn’t risk whatever horrible fate had befallen grandpa. Grandpa called them “sissies”—that day, he displayed enough machismo for the boatload of them.

Nelson made up for their lack of success on that fishing trip, and after his duel, grandpa had little strength or interest in returning to lesser prey. With one man on watch in case the gore drew in more sharks, the rest of the boys strapped Nelson to the boat like a pontoon. He was far too large to be hoisted out of the water. Right there in town was a taxidermist who specialized in mounting fish. Of course, the man worked mostly in medium-sized tuna or the occasional swordfish. Never had he been tasked with such a sea monster. Nelson’s underside was intact, but his top half was an absolute tangle of cuts and the occasional tooth mark. The taxidermist tried his best, but he could never remedy Nelson’s back wounds. Grandpa liked the idea of seeing the scars he inflicted, but at some point in the mounting process, Nelson’s back stopped looking sharky. That’s why he hung so close to the ceiling. Nevertheless, Nelson stalked visitors to grandpa’s living room for fifty years, waiting for his moment to strike.

Was I ever afraid of Nelson? No, not that I can remember. Maybe when I first saw him, when I was an infant, but never since. I think that’s probably the case with a lot of grandparents’ homes: there is always something strange or out of place—an antique doll, a gloomy basement, maybe one of the grandparents themselves—but it just seems normal, part of the institution. It’s always been there, so you don’t question its existence. It’s like asking why are there leaves on trees, or sharks in the ocean? There is an answer, but in the end, that answer really doesn’t change much.

Don’t get me wrong, Nelson was startling, especially if you had not been forewarned. When I was young, I had friends run screaming from grandpa’s house. One girl’s mother was so traumatized on behalf of her daughter that I was only ever allowed to see the girl in the safety of her home turf. It didn’t get better with age either. During high school and my stint at grandpa’s, I brought a boy home. Grandpa was gone for some reason; I had plans… You can’t get to my room without passing by the living room. The boy got one look at Nelson and went pale, freezing on the spot. I tried to tell him not to worry about it, that we’d go up stairs and have some fun. Oddly enough, he said it was cool, but he refused my offer. Instead, he wanted to stay in the living room to watch some TV. It wasn’t until later that I realized his thought process: if the freaky, taxidermied shark was what we showed to the public, who knows what horrors awaited him in my private chambers. So, we sat on the couch, ostensibly watching some sitcom trash. I tried to snuggle up close, salvage some sense of romance. I don’t think he noticed, me or the television. The entire time, his eyes were glued to grandpa’s shark. He was afraid, but rather than hide or distract himself with my advances, he refused to let Nelson out of his sight, just in case the dead fish decided to strike when his back was turned. In retrospect, he may have had a point.

The boy was nice enough to give it a try, but after one, thirty-minute episode, he was out of there. He faked getting an important text from his parents and excused himself, walking backward out of the house, gaze still fixed on Nelson. He had no interest in me after that, wouldn’t even look at me as we passed in the hall at school. I heard through the grapevine a few days later that the dude and his friends had agreed to a moratorium on dating “shark girl.” Whatever, I didn’t need their help in struggling to find dates.

After high school, I moved out. I went to college, got an apartment and a job. To tell you the truth, I didn’t visit much. I had had enough of thinking that grandpa was trying to talk to me. His shark messed with my head and I wanted it out of my life. Silly me. Nelson always got the last laugh.

I picked up the phone on a Tuesday before work. Dad was on the line—strange, grandpa was mom’s father. There had been an accident, an earthquake to be precise. Grandpa was in the hospital. He must have been kvetching with that damn shark about the house shaking when the lines holding Nelson snapped. It wasn’t until later that a neighbor came to check on grandpa and found him trapped beneath the weight of eleven feet of embalmed fish. They rushed grandpa to the hospital—the EMT’s even had to help lift Nelson off the poor old man. Then I got the call, then I learned grandpa’s condition was deteriorating fast.

I never got to see him again. By the time I could drive down, he was gone. I read the death certificate: crushed bones, a torn lung, and lacerations… maybe the cuts were from glass broken during the quake, or maybe from wooden ceiling splinters raining down as Nelson broke free; but in my heart, I know where those cuts came from. I don’t need to perform an autopsy to know somewhere, probably on his back, there’s a crescent moon of stab wounds. It took him a lifetime to complete the duel. In the end, Nelson finally got his bite.

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