What If a Fish

by Anika Fajardo

  “You fixed it,” I said. It was broken, and my brother did something to fix it. A whole car. And he didn’t need twenty-five hundred dollars to do it.

  Maybe the tournament wasn’t ever about the money.

  “Next time,” Mama said to him as we all stood around the car, “you tell us where you’re going. Little Eddie and I were worried.”

  “He likes to be called Tito now,” my brother told her.

  “Tito?”

  “Tito.” My brother smiled at me.

  “From ‘Eduardito,’ ” I explained. “That’s what Abuela calls me. Called me.”

  Mama looked at me and then at him and then at me again.

  “I’ll try to remember to call you Tito,” she said, “but you,” she added, turning to Big Eddie, “you can’t drive my car anymore—until you get your license.” She smiled and put her arm around her stepson, catching me between them so I became the filling in a sandwich.

  Then Big Eddie asked, “You want to go fishing, Tito?”

  I nodded so hard, I thought my head would fall off.

  “First, I have something for you,” he said.

  I followed Big Eddie into his room. From his partially unpacked suitcase that still smelled like Abuela’s house—Colombian laundry detergent and lemons and fried plantains—he pulled out the red photo album. He sat on the bed, and a picture, one that hadn’t been tucked into the plastic pages, slipped from the album.

  Big Eddie caught the photo before it hit the floor. He held it out to me. “For you,” he said. “Thought you might like a new copy.”

  Somehow, I already knew which one it was. The same photo Abuela had shown me. The photo I had torn and later dropped into the trash. Papa and my brother and the fish, intact, smiling as if nothing bad had ever happened and never would. The fish’s golf ball eyes stared at me. I didn’t catch a fish like that in Colombia. And I didn’t catch one at the tournament. And maybe that’s okay. Because I definitely caught a brother.

  * * *

  Now, as we walk to the lake, Big Eddie stops at the intersection where Cameron had her accident. Ahead of us, the lake water sparkles in the August sunlight. My brother turns his head to the right, then left, then right again and looks at me with my fishing rods.

  “El pescador,” he says. Since he replaced the radiator in the car, he’s been different. Maybe his grieving fish is back in the water, swimming away. He’s still sad, but not in that silent, mad, scary way. He bought his books and filled out lots of forms for the university program he starts in September. Mama’s going to help him get his driver’s license. And he’s speaking more Spanish to me.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You, the fisherman.” There are no cars in sight, but Big Eddie doesn’t cross right way.

  “Pess-kah-door,” I repeat.

  “Eso,” he says, and pulls the red cooler over the curb.

  When we arrive at the lakeshore, I see that the father and his small child are right where I left them almost two months ago. And the dreadlocks guy with a bucket like the one filled with leeches is there too. The man with the dirty cap has a radio that blares a song about getting down.

  “He’s scaring away the fish,” Big Eddie says after we pass. “Bruto.”

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Brutos. Idiots. You know, people who act stupid, people who don’t deserve your respect.”

  “Brutos,” I whisper to myself. Trying out the word.

  We step on the wooden boards, and our footsteps send little waves out into the lake. In my encyclopedia I read about a guy named Sir Isaac Newton and his laws of motion. The third law says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Like when Liam didn’t answer my texts and then I didn’t send him any more messages. That was the equal and opposite reaction—the silence bouncing back and forth between us.

  After Mama called Liam’s mom back to tell her that Big Eddie and the car were fine, I told her, “Liam hasn’t answered my texts.”

  “Liam and Sarah are busy,” she said, rubbing the notch between her eyebrows. “They’re busy figuring out their new lives in New York.”

  “Can people who don’t talk to each other and don’t see each other still be friends?” I asked.

  “Look, Little Eddie—Tito,” she said. I watched over her shoulder as she scrolled through the contacts on her phone. “Do you see all those people?” She scrolled through the names faster. “These are people who used to be important to me—important enough that I called them and texted them and emailed them. I sent them letters.” She smiled. “But even though I don’t talk to all of them anymore, we’re still important to each other. Here.” She stopped at the name Amy Franklin. “Amy was in the support group I joined after Papa died. I don’t know what she’s doing now, but she helped me through a rough time. And this one.” Mama showed me a contact that was just a first name and an email address. “Tony was the guy who helped us move. He’s important too. All the people we meet and all the people we know change us,” she said. “Most of them make us better people.”

  Is Liam one of those people? He’s all the way in New York now, but he made me better at video games and better at sticking up for myself and better at being a friend. Maybe even better at being a brother. Then there’s Papa. Eduardo Aguado León. Even though he’s not around anymore, his name is probably in someone’s contact list and they see it every once in a while, and remember him, what he meant to them. I walk toward the end of the dock. Maybe each person has an equal and opposite reaction on another person.

  While my brother drops the tackle box and cooler onto the dock, I lean over the wooden railing, looking for fish. The muskies and crappies and sunnies are down there. All the fish I didn’t catch last week. Each one of them a possibility. Every time something doesn’t happen, it means something else can.

  So many possibilities.

  30

  BIG EDDIE RUMMAGES through the dusty compartments of Papa’s tackle box. He holds up the plastic toy float from the tournament and reads aloud: “ ‘Fourteenth Annual Arne Hopkins Dock Fishing Tournament.’ ” He nestles it back into its compartment. “I’m sorry I missed it.”

  I’m about to tell him it’s okay, to say that I understand, but then something else catches his eye.

  “Isn’t this yours?” he asks.

  Eduardo Aguado León’s bronze medal is in the palm of Big Eddie’s hand. The smiling fish is looking up at us.

  I’m about to reach out for the familiar disc, when I stop, thinking of all the places it’s been over the summer—from a beach in Colombia to a small duplex in Minneapolis to a dock at Lake Mad. I think of the photo of the fish with Papa and Big Eddie when he was little and of Cameron and the plastic float in the tackle box and of Mama in our cozy duplex and Liam far away. “You can have it if you want,” I say. An offering for my big brother.

  Big Eddie turns it over. He rubs his thumb over the letters of Papa’s name. Our name. “Thanks,” he says, and drops it into his own pocket.

  He wipes something out of his eye and then kneels by the tackle box again. Clearing his throat, he runs his fingers through his hair and then paws through the cracked lures shaped like eyeless fish. “These won’t catch anything,” he says. From the depths of the red cooler he brings out one of the containers of leeches that he bought. He drops the container onto the planks of the dock and takes one of the rods from me. “Okay, ready?”

  “Listo,” I say. I grab a bottle from the cooler and take a swig of root beer. “What do we do now?”

  “We fish.” Big Eddie pries open the lid of the container. The leeches squirm in a writhing dance, reminding me of the hat that was a bucket. He reaches in and picks one up between his thumb and forefinger. It wriggles like it thinks something good is about to happen. Then he pierces the leech just behind its head. I look away, squinting into the sun.

  “Hazlo, mi precioso,” Big Eddie mumbles as he swings the poor little skewered leech over the railing and into
the water. He lets out a deep, satisfied breath. “Your turn, Tito.”

  Tito. The sun on my shoulders feels even warmer.

  Big Eddie walks his line to one end of the dock, where the water’s deeper. From where I kneel next to the red cooler, he looks calm and happy. I smile as I lift the lid of the plastic container. I’m ready. The leech is slimy and squishy like mud on a beach, but I say my own version of a prayer as I pierce its flesh. It keeps writhing even after it’s on the hook. I squeeze my eyes shut and then jab the hook through the other end. I know that the bait has to die in order to catch a fish, but I keep my eyes closed anyway.

  They’re still closed when I hear a shuffling on the dock.

  I smell them before I see them. A scent of stale Cheetos and unwashed socks.

  “Look who’s here.” The hoarse whisper comes right at me.

  I open my eyes and turn around. Of course. Mason and Ivan Schmidt. Beyond them, the guy’s radio at the other end of the dock blasts a commercial for some insurance company. The jingle is one of those tunes that gets stuck in your head. I glance at Big Eddie. He’s moving his line in and out of the water and doesn’t seem to have heard them. When I stand up, rod in one hand and container of leeches in the other, the Schmidt brothers are so close that I can see the pimples on their faces and the veins on their pale hands. Ivan Schmidt steps even closer.

  “It’s the spic.”

  The word is a dagger.

  Across the lake two dogs are having a barking match. Each yelp is louder and more frantic than the last. Big Eddie still doesn’t turn around, and the Schmidt boys haven’t noticed him either.

  “Hey, wetback,” Mason Schmidt sneers. “Didn’t we tell you to go back to your country?”

  And then all the sounds of the summer day cut away. My ears ring with the silence. My face feels warm, as if instead of Minnesota’s August heat, the Caribbean sun were beating down on me. A breeze blows like a night wind in Cartagena. Something in the air reminds me of the aguamala that looks like nothing but can definitely sting.

  “Shut up,” I say.

  Time slows down as Mason moves toward me.

  Then, as if Colombia’s magic has followed me home, I swear I feel an arm around me like a half hug. Slowly, like I’m moving through water, I look to the right, where Big Eddie still taunts the fish. It’s not him. I look to the left. No one. Now I feel the arm shift to a hand on my shoulder, gentle and frail. It squeezes with surprising force as if to say, You are a strong boy. A strong Colombian boy.

  “Shut up,” I say again. It’s like my voice—loud and deep and so angry—doesn’t belong to me.

  Both Schmidt brothers laugh, and Ivan shoves me.

  A roar rushes in my ears like a plane taking off. My Colombian blood boils and churns. The muscles in my arms and legs and feet tense. My face is hot, burning like a fire. This is it. I’ve had it. The weight on my shoulder is firm and comforting, and I am stronger and braver and more powerful than I have ever been before.

  As Ivan makes contact with my chest a second time, I yell, “Quit messing with me! If you touch me again, you’ll be sorry.”

  “Oh yeah?” Mason taunts.

  I’m still holding my rod in one hand and the container in the other. The pressure on my shoulder increases comfortingly. I look into the eyes of Ivan Schmidt and see hatred and fear, both mixed together. Mason pulls his hand back as if preparing to hit me too.

  And then, without my really knowing it, I am reaching up, standing on my toes, making myself as tall as possible, and, smooth as an ocean wave crested on the shore, I am dumping the contents of the still-open bait container onto them. The leeches that don’t get caught in their hair and in their shirts and in the crooks of their elbows fall to the dock, and some slip between the boards to become fish food. Only a couple of brave leeches have managed to attach themselves to the pale flesh of the brothers. Both boys are screaming now, jumping, hopping. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the guy with the radio watching us. The fisherman with dreadlocks chuckles at the sight of the dancing and squirming teenagers.

  “You know what?” I say, calmly setting the empty container down at my feet. The pressure on my shoulder lifts little by little, like someone backing away, letting me be on my own. “You guys are a couple of—”

  What are they? Cretins? Dirtbags? Scum?

  Racists. Ignoramuses.

  The weight of the arm around me is gone now.

  I know what they are: they’re jerks.

  “You guys are a couple of brutos!” I shout even as the Schmidt brothers squirm and yell curse words.

  Down the dock from me, Big Eddie pulls his line out of the water and looks at the scene like he just woke up from a dream. His eyes widen at the sight of the leech-covered bullies. “¿Qué pasó?”

  And I realize I’m not on my own. I’ve never been on my own. Mama, Abuela, Big Eddie.

  “In case you were wondering,” I say, “this is my brother.”

  It only takes a moment for the Schmidt boys to scan Big Eddie, from his slick black hair to the shadow of a beard on his chin to his long pointy shoes. I don’t know if they remember him from that day on the playground, but he’s a lot taller than he was then. Each one of his shoes could fit all four of their feet, and his arms are tree trunks compared to their skinny biceps.

  “Brutos!” I spit out the word like a missile, rolling the r perfectly just like Big Eddie did. I take a deep breath. “Don’t you mess with me again!”

  A millisecond later they’re running, still pulling leeches off each other. “You guys are crazy!” they shout as they stumble off the dock.

  31

  AT LAST I HOLD my fishing rod over the dock’s railing. The Schmidt boys are gone, but my hands are still shaking. Big Eddie thinks they won’t be bothering me again. He says bullies look for weakness and that I’m definitely not weak. Then we laugh again at the thought of the two of them covered in leeches. I look into the water where my little leech will lure in a big fish.

  The radio at the other end of the dock is playing something quiet now, maybe a love song. A duck lands along the shore with a noisy splash.

  And then there’s a tug.

  “I feel something!”

  “Already?” My brother leans his rod in a notch in the dock’s railing and comes to look.

  Another tug. An equal and opposite reaction.

  Big Eddie helps pull in a good-size perch—about seven inches, he says. The fish flops on the wooden slats. “Nice,” he says.

  I caught a fish. A real, live fish.

  My brother takes hold of the fish in one hand and pries the hook out. The eyes are black and frightened-looking. Blood stains the fish’s mouth. The sight makes me glad we didn’t catch any fish at the tournament. Me and Cameron weren’t ready for this much violence.

  “Good work,” Big Eddie says, admiring the little fish.

  I feel about as tall as a tree. I pull the second container of leeches out of the cooler and cast my line back into the water after baiting the hook. Without closing my eyes this time.

  “Big Eddie?”

  He grunts. He’s moving his line again, trying to make it look delicious to some fish.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  He squints into the water and then across the lake.

  “That picture? Of you and our dad and that fish? Do you really not remember going fishing?”

  The question lands with a thud like a soccer ball against bricks. I’m afraid it’ll bounce back, unanswered.

  But Big Eddie asks, “Do you know why Papa loved fishing?”

  “Because he loved fish?”

  “No.” Big Eddie jiggles his rod. “Fishing isn’t about fish.”

  “It isn’t?” I jiggle my own rod, even though I’m not sure if I’m doing it right.

  “When I was five years old, I was supposed to take a bus with my mother to visit her friend in Santa Marta. I begged to stay home. I wanted Papa to take me fishing instead. I told Mami that I wanted
to go fishing, not be in some hot and sweaty bus. She laughed and told me to catch her some fish for dinner. So we fished for her.

  “We were on a boat like the one I rented in Cartagena. That one was yellow. When my line jerked, I was so little that Papa had to help me hold it. We both pulled and cranked. The fish was bigger than me.” As he speaks, I can see the fish in the photograph, its huge eyes and teeth. The broad smile on my brother’s five-year-old face, wider than any I’ve ever seen on him. “The guide filleted it for us so we could bring it home. We would eat like kings.”

  There’s another tug on my line, but I ignore it.

  “We didn’t know until later that the bus crashed. Two of them. They slid down the mountainside. We were catching the biggest fish you ever saw, while Mami was dying.”

  Big Eddie is quiet. The radio blasts a song about rolling, and my insides roll too. I don’t know what I was doing at the moment Papa died. Was I doing something wonderful? I was only four. Probably back in preschool or maybe with Liam and his mom. I know I wasn’t at the hospital. I didn’t see him take his last breath.

  “Colombia is strange like that. One terrible thing and one amazing thing. Both things at once,” Big Eddie says, reeling in his line and then casting again.

  Is seeing a ghost a bad thing? Is a hat turning into leeches a good thing? Is Abuela’s death after we took her to the beach a bad thing? Or is that all backward?

  “Papa said she would have been glad. Not that it made me feel any better. He said she would be glad that we were happy.”

  Maybe everything has a good and bad side, like heads or tails, and it doesn’t really matter which is which.