• Home
  • Essays
  • Fiction & Poetry
  • Comics & Art
  • Shrapnel
  • About
Blunderbuss Magazine
Fiction

Beach Bumster

By Ah-reum Han ·

“In the village, ancient baobabs grow pregnant with the bones of holy men and papered prayers, and in the city, small boys beg, tin cans to their elbow.”

It’s almost morning before my father stumbles home from his latest client and takes us to our spot in the mangroves. Swaying ankle-deep in saltwater, he rakes his fingers through the fine black mud, slow, like it’s tangled hair. He’s looking for oysters. “Marie Claires go nuts for this shit, boy,” he slurs, “Makes them want to fuck.”

He thumbs a shell clean and tosses it on shore, where I crack it open with a rock. He’s wearing new jeans, no shirt, flaunting the clean lines of muscle that keep us fed. I tell him I want to be just like him, and he laughs. I tell him I’ll farm, and he calls me a fool. “Fisher or farmer, bumster or priest, the Gambia—she’s a bitch to us all. Just look around.”

The land buckles under the weight of the rains that never came, though we begged. Life lies dormant in this bleached landscape, blank as a page until the first rains pen life from the ground. Yes, we remember the smell of rain at dawn–Inshallah, this year, this year–and afterwards, the hum of dusk, the cool gasp of night.

But meanwhile, students hitchhike to school on truckbeds, eyes closed and dry-mouthed, and, facing east, vendors perform their ablutions in single beads of water, kneading the damp. In the village, ancient baobabs grow pregnant with the bones of holy men and papered prayers, and in the city, small boys beg, tin cans to their elbow. Its contents rattle like dying breath, coins to secure paradise for anyone with spare change.

My father splashes back to me, jeans damp, and he tosses a few broken shells back into the water. “Toubabs always pay big money for love and war,” he says, “Be a soldier, kid.” A bumster by trade, he tells me he knows something of heaven and hell, and the real heaven exists at the bottom of a bottle and on the other side of the ocean with all the lonely white women.
*

Image courtesy Cast a Line.

www.simplesharebuttons.comSHARE THIS POST
FacebookTwittertumblrEmail
Ah-Reum Hanchildhoodfatherflash fictionmangroveoyster
Share Tweet

Ah-reum Han

Ah-reum Han received her MFA in Fiction from George Mason University, where she was the thesis fellow in fiction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, as winner of the Notes from the Field contest, Fugue Journal, as runner up for the prose contest, and Okey-Panky, an Electric Literature publication. Her work has also been shortlisted for The Masters Review and received an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train's Family Matters.

You Might Also Like

  • Fiction

    In the Opposites’ World

  • Fiction

    The History of Bodies

  • Fiction

    Shots in the Dark

Subscribe

Blunderbuss is going print! Subscriptions are available via our Patreon page:

patreon-button.png

Donate

Donate to Blunderbuss and help support up-and-coming writers & artists.

Keep up with Blunderbuss

Follow @BlunderbussMag
Follow on Tumblr
Follow on rss

Latest

  • In the Opposites’ World

  • The History of Bodies

  • Shots in the Dark

  • Rascal House Blues, Pt. IV

  • After Homecoming

Like us on Facebook

Latest Tweets

Tweets by @BlunderbussMag
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Submissions

ABOUT

We are Blunderbuss Magazine, a web magazine of arts, culture, and politics, an ordnance of fire and improvisation. What ties together these essays, stories, poems, photographs, comics, and other bits of aesthetic shrapnel is a common attitude of visceral humanism. We aim for earnest noise. We want to splash in the mud of lived experience, to battle for a radical empathy, and to provide a megaphone to howling assertions of human subjectivity.

MASTHEAD

  • Editor-in-Chief – Travis American
  • Managing – Niral Shah
  • Fiction – Sara Nović
  • Art Director – Yvonne Martinez
  • Poetry – Sam Ross
  • Art – Terence Trouillot
  • Comics – Ellis Rosen
  • Senior – Alex Howe
  • At Large – Kevin T.S. Tang
  • Pictures – Lauren E. Wool
  • Contributing – Meredith Fraser
  • Web – Hayley Thornton-Kennedy

Subscribe & Support

Blunderbuss has made the jump to print! Subscriptions are available via our Patreon page:

patreon-button.png



Donate to Blunderbuss and help support up-and-coming writers & artists:

SEARCH

© 2014 Blunderbuss Magazine. All rights reserved.