The Fish and the Not Fish

by Peter Markus

  WHAT THIS ALL USED TO BE, OR WHERE NOW ALL WE SEE ARE TREES

  On blue bikes the two boys rode. At night. Down the street. In the dark. Side by side. Like this these boys made sounds with their mouths that birds like to make at the break of each day. Caw. Caw. Who. Who. It was their song. They sang as they biked, side by side, in the dark, down the street, to go see what they’d sneaked out to see.

  See the boys go.

  Hear their tune.

  Here they come now.

  They don’t slow down. Not till they get to that place where they’ve come to go to.

  A house.

  A girl.

  Two boys.

  Jane, they call out, in the dark, up to this house. This house is red and made out of brick. Its roof is black. One light burns and shines out at the dark that is the June night.

  It is Jane. She stands where she is, in the door, where she looks out through the dark at two boys whose names to her are You and Him.

  You and Him live in a blue house with a mom and a dad who call both boys by name.

  Jim, they say. John.

  Jim and John are twin boys but they don’t look the same.

  Jim has blue eyes.

  John’s eyes are brown like the dirt.

  There is more to how these boys don’t look the same, but for now this is all that you need to see.

  Two boys.

  Two bikes.

  Blue eyes and brown.

  A house.

  Night.

  A girl.

  Jane.

  Jane lives with an aunt who calls her Sis when she wakes her up to say that it’s time for Jane to wake up.

  Jane would like to sleep by day.

  By the light of day there is too much for Jane to have to look at.

  In the dark of night Jane can look at what she wants her own eyes to see.

  Jane, like Jim, has eyes that are blue.

  Blue as the blue sky is blue. Blue as the sky’s blue is blue. It is blue too.

  That’s how blue Jane’s eyes are blue when Him and You look at them in the blue light of the day.

  At night Jane waits for You and Him to ride by her red house on blue bikes that make the dark turn on and off like a blue light.

  I’m here, Jane says, though she does not have to say it out loud with these words.

  When Jane steps out in the dark, there is a light from her face that this light it shines right out.

  It lights its light on these two boys who Jane calls Him and You.

  These two boys stand up on their bikes.

  Jim and John.

  You and Him.

  Jane steps up and hops up on the seat of one blue bike.

  This night it is Jim’s.

  You, Jane says, to Jim.

  Jim does not say a word back.

  Jim nods.

  But Him says with his mouth, First one to the creek gets a kiss.

  With this, both boys ride on, and the wheels on both bikes hiss and hum like lips pressed tight in the night.

  This night, Him gets to the creek first.

  Kiss me, Him says, to Jane, and he stands up from his bike.

  Jane jumps off of You’s bike. She runs down to the creek. She jumps in the creek’s dark.

  The creek’s dark is made out of dirt.

  Dirt like the eyes that are John’s.

  There is no creek for Jane to get her feet wet with.

  Jane drops down on her hands and knees and Jane takes up in her girl hand a hand full of dirt that she makes like it is creek that she lets splash in and on her girl face.

  The boys watch Jane, the girl that she is, play like this in the dirt.

  In the dark, dirt rains down on Jane’s look up at the sky girl face.

  The moon in the sky makes all of this lit up so that the boys can see it when they look.

  They look.

  They watch Jane look up.

  Kiss me, Jane says, to the boys, to the dirt, to eyes that are both like the dirt of the creek and like the sky that you see by day.

  Him jumps in with Jane first. He got to the creek first. What’s fair is fair is a thing that You and Him both know.

  Him makes his lips like a fish. Waits for the kiss. Shuts his eyes to the dark.

  In the dark Him sees Jane come in close.

  She is like a fish on two legs, born from some place on this earth where the sea used to be but now there is just plain dirt.

  When they kiss, Him hears a sound in his ear like the sound a shell likes to make when it’s washed up on some shore.

  Hmmm, Him thinks, and he makes this word with his mouth, so loud that You too, with his back backed up to some tree, You too can hear it.

  We got to go, You calls out. He kicks at the dirt. Kicks at the tree. Looks at the look on Him’s face.

  He has seen this look more than once in his life and he wants it back on his own face.

  Go where? is what Him wants to know. Him knows he has the look on his face.

  To the bridge, You says, and he gets back on his bike. You Know Who said she might be there.

  You Know Who is a girl that Him and You know from the time they biked out to the road that runs out of town to the town that is next to the town that is theirs and then it dead ends where there are train tracks that run through this town that is next to the town that Him and You and Jane say this town is ours though these are tracks, more rust than they are steel, that have not seen trains run on them in all the years since Him and You and Jane were born to be two boys and a girl here in this town.

  There is in this town a bridge that runs on top of where the creek is and it is here that Him and You and the girl named Jane go to go see if the girl named You Know Who might be there.

  You Know Who has a real name and that real name of hers is Sam.

  Sam is not short for a name that is more like a girl’s name. It’s the name that Sam’s dad gave her and called her by from the day that he learned that he was soon to be a dad.

  Sam’s dad, whose name is Sam too, thought that what was in that girl who was not yet his wife was a boy who would take his name and make him proud to be a Sam.

  Sam, Sam’s dad said, and he laid his hand where he thought Sam was, there in that spot where when Sam’s mom laid down in her bed she used to lay flat as a thin sheet of wood.

  When Sam was born a girl and not as a boy, Sam’s dad did what most dads do not.

  He turned.

  He ran.

  He did not come back.

  All he left Sam was her name.

  You Know Who is Sam’s new name in the eyes and mouth of You and Him.

  When Sam first told Him and You what her name was, that day when they first saw her out on the road that runs out of town, Him and You, or Jim and John, what they said to Sam was that Sam did not look like what they thought a Sam should look like, and so they said they’d give her a new name to be known by, but they did not know what new name to call her yet, so they have since called her by the name You Know Who. When Him and You say You Know Who, they both know who they mean. The girl who used to be Sam but is now that girl You Know Who.

  You Know Who is not where You and Him thought she might be. When they get to the bridge where they thought that You Know Who might be there, all they see is a bridge with no You Know Who by it. So they go. They go on their bikes to a bridge on the cross side of town where You Know Who lives with a mom and a man named Bob who is not You Know Who’s dad.

  You Know Who’s house is a green house with a red door that makes it look like a stuck out tongue on a face if you drew a house with paint that looked like a face. It has a white fence out front that is made out of wood. It leans both ways and is a fence that could not keep a dog in its yard if that is why a fence was put up in front of this house back in the first place.

  There is no dog that lives in this house or in the back of this yard here at You Know Who’s house. It’s just You Know Who and You Know Who’s mom whose own name is Pam who live here in this
house with a man whose own name is Bob.

  This man whose own name is Bob, when he was a kid, he liked to fish, but now in this town there is no place for a kid or for a man like Bob to go down to it to fish.

  There is just the creek for kids in this town to go down to it to fish though there are no fish that live or swim or would bite a hooked worm here in the creek. There would have to be the flow of a creek in the creek for there to be fish in the creek and where there should be creek in the creek there is just dirt and the dirt is so hard it would be hard to know if there are worms that live down in the dirt that is more like rock when you go at it with your hands if you want to dig it up to see what is down there that lives in this dirt.

  When Him and You get to where You Know Who’s house looks back at them with eyes that are black like there are no eyes for this house to look at them with, what they see is a girl on the porch in a chair in front of a door that is red like a stuck out tongue on a face. When You Know Who sees Him and You pull up on their bikes with that girl Jane on the back of Him’s bike, she sticks her own red tongue out at them.

  You Know Who’s tongue is more pink than it is red and like most tongues if you look at them close what you’ll see is that most tongues are more pink than they are red.

  The same might be said if you took a close up look at Jane. When Him and You take a good look at Jane, they don’t see just plain Jane who is just plain Jane. What they see is Jane the pain and what they like to call her some nights as they bike through this town that is theirs is Jane the Pain, Jane the Pain, they both like to sing out, not just plain Jane since hey, look here: there is more to Jane than just plain Jane might be to eyes that don’t know how to look at Jane up close when the moon’s light or the street’s light is so bright that there is no way else for Him and You to see this girl Jane by. There is just this Jane and in this light she is at times a pain but boys like You and Him would not have it, this Jane, be a way that was not like this.

  What is a pain when it comes to Jane is this: Jane likes to play games with boys like You and Him. Jane likes to make boys like Him and You want the same thing, be it a kiss from Jane’s lips or else to have Jane on the back of their bike to ride with her down to the place in this town where the creek is just a dirt path that runs through two banks of trees with stuck out roots and grass that is as brown as dirt is.

  Jane is mine is what these boys Him and You like to say to the one who is not the boy with Jane on the back of his bike.

  There are nights when You and Him fight.

  For Jane.

  Nights when Him and You make the blood run down red from the tips of a nose that has just been by a balled up fist hit to say in a way that words just can’t, Jane is just and all mine.

  You Know Who jumps on the back of the bike with Jane not on it—on this night this would be Him’s bike that Jane is on—and like this the boys ride through town with the girls with their long girl hair blown back by the wind that the bikes make when Him and You pump their feet back and forth as they bike like this till they stop.

  Where and when they stop there is this house at the edge of this town where this town comes to an end and is the start of a new town with a name that is all its own. This house, with no white fence out front in the front of its front yard, it is white and made out of wood. Here in this house there is no one here who lives in it. This house with the glass that is now shut in with wood, it used to have an old man who lived here in it, but it’s been years since this house has had this man who looked out from in it. This man whose name was known by all those in town as Old Man Mans, he has been dead for all of the years since Him and You and You Know Who and that girl named Jane have been boys and girls who call the town that is theirs their own. But still it is well known, by both sets of boys and girls, that this old man, Old Man Mans, he was a mean old man, the kind of a man who liked to spit and kick at his dog. That’s the kind of man that this Old Man Mans was. For some years, more than a few, that old dog that Old Man Mans liked to spit at and kick, it lived on its own, once the old man died, out back in the back of the old man’s house. It, this dog, it had a house of its own, out back in the back of the old man’s house, and this house, that was the dog’s, where the dog it liked to sleep, it too, it was white just like the old man’s house, and it was made out of wood too. It’s true that this dog, it lived on for some years more in the white house out back of the old man’s house. It lived, this dog did, till one night, it’s been told, it ran out to the road that runs out through to where this house sits and it sat out in the road till it got hit by a truck that when it hit it, the man who sat up in the front of this truck, he did not stop or get out or look back once to see what it was that his truck had just hit. It, this truck, it had just hit and it had just killed the dog that once lived in a house of its own out back in the house that used to house in it the man in this town known to most all as the man who liked to spit at and kick at his dog.

  So there are times when You and Him walk out back to the back of this old man’s yard to fight. Here, like this, these two boys face off and here, like this, Him and You, they raise up their fists. Come on, they say. Put up your dukes, one of them will say. Come on, boy, take the first punch. Both of these boys will bob with their boy heads. One of the boys will make the first move. One boy will spit at, then kick at, the dirt. One boy will thumb his thumb to his nose. This is the way these boys say, not with their words, I’m tough.

  Then, like this, they fight. They throw a punch or three or four and stick a thumb in one boy’s eye. You and Him, they do not wince or flinch or make a sound with their boy mouths when they hit like this with their fists. They fight, they spit, they lick at their lips till one of these two boys says, Give up? Give up? Give up what? one boy will say and he’ll hit his own fists bone to bone. Give up, the boy who says these words will say it, the girl who goes by the name Jane. Jane the Pain is how the boys call her when she is not near to them to hear this said. But still the boys fight. They fight till the girls who are with them tell them to stop. When the two girls, Jane and You Know Who who are with them, tell the boys to stop, the girls then turn with their girl heads and look this sharp, hard look at the girl who has just said what it is she has said, and then they stand and stare with their eyes and they too start to fight. They fight like light in a dark sky fights, all flash and flick of the wrists, no fists need to be made for this to be a fight. They fight with the slap of hands hard to hit at a face. They fight with a grip of fist to take hold of a hand filled with hair. When one girl cries out, Give up, it is not to ask it but to say it, as in I give up. Give up what? is what the girl who has a fist of not her own hair in her hand. To this, the girl who says it, who is bent low to the dirt, she makes it known that it is boys which is what she gives up. Boys, she says. Boys. I give up boys. The two boys, Him and You, when they hear this get said, they turn with their heads to face the stars and the moon, they raise up their fists as if to say You, as if to say Him, as if both wish to say, We are not the boys that she means to say when she says it that boys is what it is she gives up.

  Old Man Mans, he was a man well known in this town as an old man who liked to spit at and kick at his dog. He was not not known as a kind kind of man, this old man: not kind to his dog, for sure, or to the kids in this town who at times liked to walk on his yard’s grass. It’s not like this grass was green. This grass, in this old man’s yard, it was dirt brown. It was more dirt, this grass was, than it was grass. Grass like this, it was not the kind of grass that is the kind of grass that is not to be walked on is what I want you to see. But Old Man Mans liked to come and run out of his house with his hands made to be fists and he’d curse and yell at the kids like Him and You who liked to walk on the grass that was the grass that was in the front and the back of his yard. You and Him’s dad liked to tell of the time, way on back when he was just a boy too who lived in this town where out on the edge of it lived Old Man Mans, of the time when he was nine and he stepped with just one foo
t on this old man’s front yard grass and out of this house, which was white back then too (though the wood was not so old and worn), Old Man Mans who was not so old a man back then, he ran out at him, out at You and Him’s dad, out of his house with a gun held out in his hand. Next time you come round here and set one foot in my yard, the old man yelled out at Him and You’s then just a boy dad, I’ll shoot you off it till you turn dead. Him and You’s dad who was just a boy of nine ran and ran as fast as he could run, he likes to tell it, and boys, he says, I did not stop, he says it like this, and he huffs and he huffs, till he ran and ran and ran so fast that he’d run his boy self out of breath. Him and You’d dad, to Him and You, he was just a dad and not some kid that an old man could get mad at, but they laughed and did what they could to try to see it, in their heads, the man they called dad back when he was a boy like them. They could not see this, in their boy heads, their dad as the kind of a boy who had to run till he ran out of breath just to not get shot the day he stepped one foot on the grass that was the yard of that old man who liked to spit at and kick at his dog.