Fishboy

Beeny retired before the thunder and lightning of indignant virtue. Then all the fishboys struck up a dismal chant of victory. “Yoo-hoo—Custy’s won the day—Beeny’s scair-tit,” going up on the last syllable.

“Have you seen these local fishboys running through their militia drills?” a midshipman asked his mates loudly when the song was done. “I swear it was a right entertainment.”

In the early twentieth century it was noted that the bank messengers and fishboys, waiters and city policemen, still wore mid-Victorian costume as if to display their antique deference or respectability.

“Sometimes, when the sea is tempestoso, the fishboys come into the village through the grotto, and take away… how you say?” The charcoal embers in his eyes glow. “They take away the bad boys.”

She’s going to ask how long fishboys live, anyway, tell me that it isn’t forever.

I remember the tales of children enticed to the floor of the sea by mermaids and fishboys in search of playmates.