The Fish and the Not Fish

by Peter Markus

  We’d been told what got told.

  But we knew, too, that there was more for us to know of a place such as the sea than just this.

  The sea was a big place, this we knew, as big as the sky, a place too big for eyes like ours to see it with just one look.

  When we’d close our eyes to see it, what we’d see was a place like the sky, it was as blue as the sky, a blue for boys like us, in our eyes, to swim in.

  It took Bird all day for him to say to us, when he could, what it was that he had to say.

  The sea, Bird said, his skin gone white where the rain had been on it. It is time to go see the sea.

  Bird sang out, so loud this time so Sir too could hear it, It is time to go see the sea.

  When Sir heard Bird say that it was time to go see the sea, Sir turned to us and told us, In your dreams you will see the sea.

  Sir was right.

  That night, each one of us boys, we dreamed we were at the sea. We stood at the sea’s edge and looked out and looked up: at the sky, at the black. The moon in this sky was a fish.

  We fished.

  We caught fish that, when we touched them, when we took out the hooks, they all turned, in our hands, to stars.

  This fire did not burn us.

  But the stars in our hands left their mark.

  We took this as a sign.

  At school, the next day, we each of us held out our hands for each of us to see.

  We each of us said, Last night I had a dream.

  We were boys who did not talk of our dreams.

  We were not boys who made much of the dreams that we dreamed.

  Bird was the one boy of us who did, who dreamed.

  Bird’s dream was, we knew, to fly.

  And so he flew.

  Bird flew to see the sea.

  Bird dreamed this dream for us.

  Bird dreamed this dream with us.

  To the sea, we knew, Bird would take us.

  We just had to find out where he was. Bird was not at school that day. When we looked in all the trees that Bird liked to sit in, Bird was not perched up in the trees where we looked up to find him.

  When we found Bird, where we found Bird, Bird was on the ground with his legs crossed at the knees.

  Bird, we said. Bird.

  We said, We all dreamed the same dream.

  And then one by one we told him the dream.

  We held out our hands so that Bird could see what the stars had left in our hands.

  Bird looked up at us with his bird eyes that liked to look through what they looked at.

  Then Bird held out his hands for us to see.

  In one hand, his left, there was a mark in the shape of a star.

  In his right hand, with an eye shaped like a moon that looked up at us, there was a fish.

  Bird took this fish and put it in his mouth.

  Bird bit the fish head off of this fish.

  Then he held out the rest of this fish for the rest of us to eat it.

  We ate it.

  Bird sang as we ate what we ate.

  Once we ate, we held our mouths in the shape of an O.

  Out of these holes in our heads, no words came out.

  There were just sounds.

  When Bird heard these sounds, Bird stood up from the ground.

  Bird looked at us with this look.

  There was this look that Bird liked to look at us with.

  It was the kind of a look that felt as if Bird could look right through us with this look.

  We wish you could see this look.

  We turned back to see what Bird had just looked at, or what it was Bird had seen when he looked this look right through us.

  There was just the road that ran its way out of our town on its way to end at the sea.

  There was just the dirt of the road with just the dirt of the road on it back there for us to see.

  Bird walked out to the edge of this road.

  Then he turned and walked out on it.

  The sea, Bird sang, is blue by day, but at night the sea turns black.

  VII.

  Where the train tracks crossed this road that ran its way out of town on its way out to the sea, this was where our town came to its end and the rest of the world got its start at.

  Here we stood, all of us boys, and knew that the road ran through us.

  In two rows of four boys in each of our rows, we crossed from our world out to see the next.

  Our names?

  You want us now to give you names?

  There’s Burke and Holt, Welsh and Locke, Clark and Spur and Fisk. That’s eight when you add me to the mix.

  My name’s Link.

  You can call me The Boy Who Lived To Tell This Tale.

  Bird makes us nine.

  We are nine and there are nine of us on this road that runs its way out of our town on its way out to the sea.

  VIII.

  The road that runs its way out of town on its way out to the sea, it is made out of dirt and rock and dirt and rock. When we walk, we make dust. When it rains, we make mud for us to cool our skins with. When it rains, we make mud for us to eat.

  IX.

  We were on our way out of town on the road out of town that runs out and ends up at the sea when we saw Dog. Dog was on the side of the road, on his hands and knees, like a dog would be, though when he saw us he stood up on two legs like a dog on four legs can’t.

  Look, one of us boys said. There’s Dog.

  We looked. We saw.

  Dog.

  So what? one of us said.

  It’s just Dog.

  He’s not one of us.

  We did not, with our hands, wave at Dog for him to come walk out of town with us.

  The one of us who said that Dog was not one of us was right when he said this.

  We all knew this.

  Dog knew this too.

  We looked with our looks back at the road that would run us out of town to see the sea.

  Dog looked with his dog eyes back at the backs of us boys.

  Dog asked, What are you fleas up to?

  We knew we should not tell him, but one of us still did.

  We’re on our way to the sea, this one of us who said it said, though he too, when he said it, knew he should not have said what he did.

  Dog laughed when he heard us say it. The sea? Dog said. There’s no sea for you fleas to see.

  At the end of this road, we all of us then said, all of us at the same time, we said this to this boy Dog.

  We knew, in this, we were right when we said what he did, though none of us had with our own eyes seen it—the sea. And none of us had yet done it: none of us had walked on and on on this road out of town till it ran out at the blue of the sea.

  You won’t make it, Dog said.

  He looked at us with a look that we knew was looked at us to scare us.

  We took this as a dare, for us to make it, when Dog said that we would not make it to the sea.

  Dog said, What will Sir think?

  Sir think?

  We did not think of Sir.

  We did not care.

  We were with Bird.

  We did not know how long it would take us, or what we would do once we got there, or what the sea would do with us. It was just us, with Bird who walked with us, and we were on our way to see, what Bird told us, was ours in this world to see.

  This road runs through fields that are made of dirt and rock and weeds. There are trees, too, with birds up in them, there are trees bunched up to make woods, but a few of these trees, the trunks of these trees, they look more like they’re made out of bone than they do wood. A tree made out of bone, or a bone shaped like a tree? Did Bird see it this way too? Or did Bird see tree and see it as a place to fly up to, a place for him to sit in and rest, a place for him to sit and like a bird sing in the dawn’s new day?

  The moon in the sky, that first full night, it was full and it pulled us, it pulled us to the sea.

  The moon, it wa
s a mouth shaped like an O, a hole in the sky that called out to us, in the dark of the night, The sea, it said. To the sea, it sang out. The sea, the sea, the sea.

  And so it was to the sea that we went.

  We went to see the sea.

  We ate when the sounds from our guts told it was time to eat. We ate dirt and the leaves from trees whose names we did not know. We knelt by the edge of a creek to drink from the cold of its flow. The creek smelled of cow though it could have been the air that had the smell of cow in it. Once we ate and drank we kept on with our walk down this road made of dust and dirt that made its way to where the sea was a thing none of us had seen. We went to see it with Bird who was there to take us to this place that none of us had been. Once in a while one of us would say, Bird, are we there yet? Is this what you mean when you say we are off to see the sea? Bird would turn his head to say what most of us knew—that we’d know we were there when, in fact, we were there, where we’d set out for us to be.

  We slept in the weeds on the side of the road so that no one or no thing could see us. We gazed up at the sky, at the stars in the sky, and made up things that we saw there. We saw a bird in the sky that was made out of stars, it was a bird that Bird said was God. When Bird said that this bird in the sky that was made out of stars was God, we looked at Bird as if he had just said there was no such thing as the sea.

  At dawn we woke up to the sound of a bird with a cry from its beak that made us want to stuff its mouth shut with mud. This bird, we knew, it was close by, hid up in some tree, though we could not in this gray light see it. Is that God, too? one of us said, and we all laughed at the thought, though Bird said, God does not wake us with sound.

  Once we woke up, we stood up out of the weeds and looked up at the sky, then we looked our eyes down the road and took off on foot down it on our way to see the sea.

  We saw rocks and trees, sky and weeds, a dead dog dead on the side of the road with its dead legs stuck up in the air like a chair that some man kicked on its back but this dog had no man or boy to kick it or to call to it by name.

  We saw cars here and there that honked when they saw us and then sped by us with tails of dust. There was a field filled with corn that was more brown than it was green and the cobs, when we broke them from their stalks, they turned to dust in our hands. We found creeks that looked more like just roads that ran off to where there were woods. When one of us pulled down his pants and said we should see if we could bring the creek back from dirt, we tried but none of us had piss in us to give it.

  Won’t be long now.

  It was Bird who was the one of us to say this.

  What Bird said, we’d come to trust it. It was the way that he said it. It was like Bird knew. Or like he saw what the rest of us could not.

  So we walked on like this to see the sea. We did not stop when night drew down on us. We could not see but we knew what was there: the road that we walked on, the sea we walked on to go see.

  The sea, the sea, the sea.

  X.

  When we got to where the sea was, we stood at its edge and looked out at its dark. The sea, it was like the sky, like the sky had come down to see us. We looked out at the sea’s face and felt its breath blow back on us. We smelled the sea on us. We were in the sea’s mouth, all of us. We were like drops of rain that the sea could eat up.

  Bird told us to close our eyes.

  So we did.

  We breathed in with our mouths till we could taste the sea with our tongues.

  We heard Bird sing, By day the sea is blue, Bird sang, at night the sky turns black.

  When he said what he said, Bird turned once back to look at us, in the dark, and with his arms held out by his sides, Bird walked out and walked out in the dark to the sea.

  The sea, it held Bird up.

  Bird walked on and on like a stone skipped from one side of the sea to the next.

  We turned our heads up and then down to watch Bird walk out when it was Dog who walked up, out of the dark, and Dog was the one who pushed us, one by one, out in this dark.

  This dark we were told by Bird was the sea, it turned out not to be what Bird said that it was.

  Dog took turns and he pushed us, one at a time, out in this dark that was not the sea.

  What was not the sea, what was not the black of the sea by night, was the black that was the night’s sky.

  Each one of us boys, one at a time, we took turns, we fell through this dark, it was a dark that did not catch us, it did not hold us up. The sea that was black, it ate us all right up.

  But not all of us.

  I was the last of us to be pushed by Dog.

  You’re next, Dog said, with a hand at my back. You’re the last one left. It’s time for you, like all the rest, to see the sea as it used to be. It’s time, Dog said, to die.

  You mean fly, I called out, to this boy we called Dog, and then I leaped out to be with the dark.

  It’s true, I fell, this first time I tried to fly, but it was Bird who was there, it was Bird who came, out of this dark, to lift me back up, to give me back to the sky.

  XI.

  That night, we gave each star in the sky a new name for us to call it by. When the moon rose full, out from the black that was the sea, we knew it was ours to name too.

  We called it the fish.

  The fish that walks on the sea.

  XII.

  It was dawn when the blue of the sky blew its cool breath on my face to tell me it was time to wake up.

  I woke up.

  I woke up to a blue that had Bird wrapped up in it.

  The sky, Bird sang, is blue by day.

  At night the sky turns black.

  This is how Bird took flight.

  Bird flew up to see the sun.

  The sun in the sky held Bird up trapped in its light.

  Bird, I said, to bring Bird back.

  Bird. Bird. Bird.

  I sang this word with the hole of my mouth to see if Bird might sing a song back.

  The sun, it shined bright back.

  And the sky made a sound like the sea might make when a stone is dropped down in it.

  XIII.

  When an egg is pushed from its nest, when the egg breaks in half, a bird lifts up its head.

  It opens its eyes, its beak.

  To see. To sing. Its song.

  THE MAN AND THE NOT MAN

  First there is the boy and then there is the not boy. The not boy has eyes that are blue and hair that is long and not black. The boy’s eyes are not blue and his hair that is brown like dirt is cut so close to the top of his head that it is stiff when you run your hand on the top of it to feel it. You can’t see or feel the ears of the not boy. The ears of the not boy are there, trust us on this, but they are ears that are hid by the hair that hangs down, half the way down, the back that is the not boy’s. The boy, not like the not boy, has ears that stick out like shrunk up hands that are cupped up and out from the sides of his boy head so that he can hear what gets said in a room where this boy is not in it when a man and a not man are back in this room with the door shut tight but not too tight and there are words in this room and there are not words in this room that move back and forth from the not man’s mouth and from the man’s mouth and these words bang and shake back and forth from the ears of the man to the not seen ears that are the not man’s. This house with this room that is in it with the door closed shut tight like it is on nights like this, it is not a house where the doors of these rooms do not get kicked at and slammed at and hit at with clenched up fists, where the floors do not get stomped on by the boots of the man or by the socked feet that are the not man’s. The black boots that are the man’s have dried up mud caked up hard up on the backs of their heels. When the man walks in through the back door of this house and walks in through the house with mud caked hard to a crust up and on the back heels and up too on the toes of his boots, the not man tells the man to stop, then the not man turns back to face the sound that the man makes when he walks
in the house and then with this the not man twists and shakes a not man fist: take off those mud caked boots is what the not man shouts. The man who walks in like this in through this house like this has ears not hid by dark man hair but he keeps on with this walk in through this house as if he does not hear the not man sounds that the not man makes when the not man shakes and twists her fist like this to get this man to stop. The not man makes a not man hand take the shape of a balled up fist and shakes it mad and mad twice more like a not man can be made to be mad at a man who walks in through the house with mud caked dry on his boots, but here the man just looks and looks right through these not man sounds and it does not look like the man sees what it is that the not man wants him to do or see or hear. What the man sees when he looks as if he does not hear what it is that the not man wants him to do or to see or to hear, he turns and he looks out through the square of glass in this room that looks out on the sky and the no leaf trees that make this house feel too small for the two of them or for the four of them to all of them live here in it. When the man like this feels small, he can’t help but think back to those days back when he, like the boy that is his and who he gave to this boy his name (which, like his, is Jim), the boy that this Jim man used to be used to spend his back then Jim days in a boy world that did not need a not boy to be with him in it. But the boy here who is like this man Jim (this boy who is a Jim too) and the not boy who has the same first name as the not man whose not boy name is Jane, the boy and the not boy live in a world that is theirs, Jim’s and Jane’s, to share and to live in this house with the man and the not man here in it. This boy Jim and this not boy Jane share a room in this house and a bed that is meant to hold not two, not a boy and a not boy, but just a boy or just a not boy, just the one and not the two, just a Jim or a Jane but not the both, or at least not both at the same time. The boy and the not boy share too the same last name that makes it known to all that they meet that they come from the same man and from the same not man and that they all live in the same small house and they, too, like two birds in a nest, once shared a room in the house made by the not man for all the days when the boy and the not boy were not yet born to be in this world. All this time, days and days and nights and nights, the not man did not know that there were two of what was in her for the man and the not man to have to name. The not man did not know that there were two till the day not one, not just a boy, not just a not boy, but both a boy and a not boy came out of the room that for all of those months was a room that the not man held and kept the door closed tight on those nights in the dark when the man came home in the dark with a voice that made sounds out of words that did not make sense when the man did what he could do to make the not man make room for both the man and the not man there in the warmth of that bed. Those were nights when the man breathed his bad man breath in the not man’s face and made the not man cough and choke and pinch tight her not man face and shake back and forth her not man hands in front of the man’s dark face as if the man was not a man made out of bone and flesh but was a cloud made out of black smoke. Oh no you don’t, who do you think you are, these were the kinds of words that the not man liked to say to keep this man and his bad man breath out of her not man bed and face. And once the not man made out of these sounds a door to keep the man and his breath out from where it came from, and once the man could see that his bad man breath could not break down this door to let him come in from out of the smoke and from out of the cold that the man had brought in with him when he walked in through the back door of the house, it did not take long for the man to give up with his breath that he breathed in the not man’s face and to give up his breath to sleep in that place on the floor where the floor did not creak when he’d lay down on it. And once the man fell to sleep in this place where the floor did not creak when he lay down on it, the not man in her bed would hold the boy and the not boy close up to her, and there, cupped in the hard palms of her not man hands, she would rub to warmth the skinned walls of her house, and when the not man closed her eyes to see the face of what she could not see, what she saw was a lone tree with a hole in its trunk and with a bird up there in it that cried out to her by name.