Fish Story

The full moon was reflected in the pond, and as I approached, the bullfrogs stopped their drumming. Only a dull croaking—almost a purr, now—was coming from the package I carried at the end of the rope. I could hear the sounds of the party up on the hill, but down by the pond, with the moon’s gold eye cold upon it, I heard only silence. I lowered the giant fish head into the warm water and watched as it sank quickly down below the moon. I was frightened—I had not seen Jack’s mother, and I worried that, like a witch, she might be out there somewhere, intent upon getting me—and I was worried about Jack’s whereabouts, too.

Sixty-seven dollars was a lot of money back then, and I doubted that any fish, however large, was worth it. It seemed that my father had done Jack’s family a good deed of sorts, but that no good was coming of it; I guessed too that that depended upon how the party went. Still, I felt that my father should have held out for the $67, and then invested it in something other than festivity.

The fish’s head was still croaking, and the dry gasping made a stream of bubbles that trailed up to the surface as the head sank. For a little while, even after it was gone, I could still hear the raspy croaking—duller now, and much fainter, coming from far beneath the water. Like the child I was, I had the thought that maybe the fish was relieved now; that maybe the water felt good on its gills, and on what was left of its body.

I set about washing the saw. Bits of flesh floated off the blade and across the top of the water, and pale minnows rose and nibbled at them. After I had the blade cleaned, I sat for a while and listened for the croaking, but could hear nothing, and was relieved—though sometimes, for many years afterward, I would dream that the great fish had survived; that it had regenerated a new body to match the giant head, and that it still lurked in that pond, savage, betrayed, wounded.

I sat there quietly, and soon the crickets became accustomed to my presence and began chirping again, and then the bullfrogs began to drum again, and a peace filled back in over the pond, like a scar healing, or like grass growing bright and green across a charred landscape. Of course the world has changed—everyone’s has—but why?

Back in the woods, chuck-will’s-widows began calling once more, and I sat there and listened to the sounds of the party up on the hill. Someone had brought fiddles, which they were beginning to play, and the sound was sweet, in no way in accordance with the earlier events of the evening.

Fireflies floated through the woods and across the meadow. I could smell meat cooking and knew that the giant fish had been laid to rest above the coals. I sat there and rested and listened to the pleasant night-bird sounds.

The lanterns up on the hill were making a gold dome of light in the darkness—it looked like an umbrella—and after a while I turned and went back up to the light and to the noise of the party.

In gutting and cleaning the fish, before skewering it on an iron rod to roast, the partygoers had cut open its stomach to see what it had been eating, as catfish of that size were notorious for living at the bottom of the deepest lakes and rivers and eating anything that fell to the bottom. And they had found interesting things in this one’s stomach, including a small gold pocket watch, fairly well preserved though with the engraving worn away so that all they could see on the inside face was the year, 1898.

The partygoers decided that, in honor of having the barbecue, my father should receive the treasure from the fish’s stomach (which produced, also, a can opener, a slimy tennis shoe, some baling wire, and a good-sized soft-shelled turtle, still alive, which clambered out of its leathery entrapment and, with webbed feet, long claws, and frantically outstretched neck, scuttled its way blindly down toward the stock tank—knowing instinctively where water and safety lay, and where, I supposed, it later found the catfish’s bulky head and began feasting on it).

Jack’s father scowled and lodged a protest—his wife was still not in attendance—but the rest of the partygoers laughed and said no, the fish belonged to my father, and that unless the watch had belonged to Jack’s father before the fish had swallowed it, he was shit out of luck. They laughed and congratulated my father, as if he had won a prize of some sort, or had even made some wise investment, rather than simply having gotten lucky.

In subsequent days my father would take the watch apart and clean it piece by piece and then spend the better part of a month, in the hot middle part of the day, reassembling it, after drying the individual pieces in the bright September light. He would get the watch working again, and would give it to my mother, who had not been in attendance at the party; and for long years, he did not tell her where it came from—this gift from the belly of some beast from far below.

That night, he merely smiled and thanked the men who’d given him the slimy watch, and slipped it into his pocket.

The party went on a long time. I slept for a while in the cab of our truck. When I awoke, Jack’s mother had rejoined the party. She was no less drunk than before, and I watched as she went over to where the fish’s skin was hanging on a dried, withered mesquite branch meant for the fire. The skin was still wet and shiny. The woman turned her back to the bonfire and lifted that branch with the skin draped over it, and began dancing slowly with the branch, which, we saw now, had outstretched arms like a person, and which, with the fish skin wrapped around it, appeared to be a man wearing a black-silver jacket.

In that same detached and distanced state of drunkenness—drunk with sorrow, I imagined, that the big fish had slipped through their hands, and that their possible fortune had been lost—Jack’s mother remained utterly absorbed in her dance. Slowly, the fiddles stopped playing, one by one, so that I could hear only the crackling of the fire, and I could see her doing her fish dance, with one arm raised over her head and dust plumes rising from her shuffling feet, and then people were edging in front of me, a wall of people, so that I could see nothing.

>I still have that watch today. I don’t use it, but keep it instead locked away in my drawer, as the fish once kept it locked away in its belly, secret, hidden. It’s just a talisman, just an idea, now. But for a little while, once and then again, resurrected, it was a vital thing, functioning in the world, with flecks of memory—not its own, but that of others—attendant to it, attaching to it like barnacles. I take it out and look at it once every few years, and sometimes wonder at the unseen and unknown and undeclared things that are always leaving us, constantly leaving us, little bit by little bit and breath by breath. Of how sometimes—not often—we wake up gasping, wondering at their going away.