Bone Yard
Buonanotte. Hullo. Good evening. It’s an hour after sundown. Pairs of guests emerge from their bungalows and head towards the beach. We greet one another, swapping a few words in guests’ native languages, before standardizing to English as the common denominator. Guten nacht, and where in Germany are you from?
Ten feet down the beach, a hand-dug fire pit glow, crackles invitingly. A ring of sticks encircle its perimeter, each skewering a whole fish, a quartet of prawns, a treat from the Andean sea. Oils drip from skewers into the salty sand below, emitting a wonderfully toasted aroma. While our spoken languages differ, our bellies clamor in unison.
The table sits low to the ground, dressed with waxy, green banana leaves as a sort of island tablecloth. Simple candle votives scatter the surface, casting a flickering light across our faces and spread. We’re instructed to “use our fingers”. It’s the best way to separate the meat from the bones, the only way to tackle the feast in front of us.
One guest at the table — a 60 year-old salmon fisherman from British Columbia, Canada — digs in with confidence. He teaches us the best parts of the fish: cheeks and tail. We all gradually abandon manners and forks, using our fingers to grab a chunk of grouper or de-shell a curried prawn.
As the meal slows, the fisherman begins to brag about his amassed “bone yard.” A giant pile of shells, fish bones, and other unidentifiable waste towers next to his plate. It’s an eerie silhoulette in the candlelight. The person with the smallest bone yard pays the bill, he jokes. The group laughs politely, than more gratuitously as his words are translated from one spouse to another. I see a couple of people coyly poke at their own meager bone pile, attempting to re-stack them into a more imposing formation.
A round of Chang beers arrives, and the energy level picks up with new fervor. Prost! Chin chin! Cheers! We toast to the ocean’s bounty, to new friends, to cold beers. In the distance, the coals release a burst of embers before slowly fading out.
Katie
