The bobber sank under the green surface of the pond, and the rod moved in Graydon's hands. He reeled the line in slowly, wondering what kind of fish had been fooled by the flashy lure, but whatever had snagged on the hook didn't move like a fish, or like anything alive. Something dark and round broke the surface, as big as a human head but smooth and shining. Graydon reeled it in the rest of the way and bent over the water to fish it out.
He'd caught a motorcycle helmet, a black one with a star-shaped crack on one side. The line was tangled around the chin strap, and Alton's flashy red-and-yellow lure was gone.
Graydon turned the helmet over and let the water run out of it, into the pond.
Alton had died in a motorcycle accident, had lost control and smashed into a guardrail on a bridge, then gone flying off the bike into the shallow swamp-water below. He'd landed face-down, probably knocked unconscious, and though his head struck a rock in the water, the blow didn't kill him—the helmet had protected his skull. Instead, Alton had died by drowning in two feet of water.
Graydon touched the star-shaped crack, then threw the helmet violently back into the pond. Remembrance was one thing, but pulling up something like that was too morbid by half. The helmet hit the water and floated, open-end-up, like a little plastic boat.
Something broke the surface of the water, mud-brown and slickly shining. It was a catfish, the biggest Graydon had ever seen. Its huge head stayed out of the water for a long moment, teacup-sized black eyes staring at Graydon. Long whiskers sprouted from around its mouth in nasty profusion. The catfish dove under the water again with a flip of its stubby fins, then re-emerged beside the floating helmet, its gaping fish-mouth open wide enough to swallow a basketball.
The fish ate the helmet in one bite, and disappeared beneath the ripples.
Graydon whistled. He'd heard of catfish that big—they were the stuff of Southern rural legend. Huge catfish, decades old, and when they were finally caught and cut open, all sorts of things were found in their bellies. If this fish was big enough to eat a motorcycle helmet ... well. Graydon wasn't going to catch a fish like that with Alton's old rod and reel. There was little chance of catching it at all. That fish was older than him by many years, probably, and had doubtless outwitted scores of better fishermen.
Still, that would be something, wouldn't it? Catching something so big, so old, so wily. Even if he didn't succeed, it would be fun trying.
And just like that, Graydon had a goal for the summer.
* * * *
Here are some things that have been found inside the bellies of large catfish in the American South:
License plates, diamond rings, steel buckets, beer bottles, lugnuts, picture frames, doorknobs, alarm clocks, boots, credit cards, stolen hotel ashtrays, rubber duckies, cowbells, candles, dinner plates, floppy canvas fisherman's hats, spectacles, wallets with money still inside, one-armed Teddy bears, other fish, snapping turtles, spark plugs, toy pistols, hubcaps, wheelbarrow tires, coffee cups, thermoses, roofing shingles, human hands, telephones, and screwdrivers.
Here are some things that have never been found inside the bellies of large catfish in the American South:
Solace. Hope. Lost ideals. True love. Things that smell nice. Glory. Everything you ever dreamed of having, but never received. A reason to go on living.
* * * *
On Friday, the week he started fishing, Graydon drove into Atlanta to have coffee with his oldest and most bewildering friend, Rebekah.
Graydon arrived at the Pelican Café first, and took a table by the windows, beneath an art student's painting of sinister mermaids fencing with human thighbones. He ordered a glass of chardonnay and sipped it, thinking of catfish, mostly, until Rebekah showed up, only fifteen minutes late, her honey-colored hair knotted in a profusion of small and not very tidy braids. She wore white shorts that showed off her legs and a pale-yellow blouse, open at the throat. Graydon had adjusted to the situation with Rebekah long enough ago that he no longer felt a pang at her loveliness, but he still noticed it. They'd grown up together in Pomegranate Grove and dated briefly, in high school, before Rebekah met Lorrie and realized she was a lesbian. After a few bumpy months following that revelation, the two of them had become friends again, though Graydon still had trouble warming up to Lorrie, with her sharp features and her New Age affectations, her astrology and proselytizing vegetarianism.
Rebekah apologized for being late—she might as well apologize for being Rebekah, Graydon thought—and spread her things out on the table. Textbooks, a notebook, hi-liters, pens, a cup of coffee, a bottle of beer, all squeezing Graydon onto a tiny edge of the table, with barely room for his wineglass. Rebekah's things always expanded to fill the available space, and her personality did much the same.
"How's life?” Graydon asked.
Rebekah shrugged. “Schoolwise, I'm getting fluent in old English, for what that's worth. Chaucer's never been funnier. The freshmen I'm teaching are functionally illiterate, and the professor I'm TA'ing for is more interested in my T & A than my ideas. Lorrie's gone from vegetarian to vegan, and if I see another bean sprout I'm going to scream. I've been sneaking out to eat cheeseburgers for months now, and I'm getting tired of living a dietary lie. Lorrie says my aura's getting all black and spiky, which I figure can't be good. But mostly I'm too busy to worry about how I'm doing.” She smiled brightly. “You?"
"I've been fishing,” he said, and told her about catching the helmet and seeing the catfish, though he hadn't seen the fish again in the three days since, despite spending hours at the pond each day.
"I've heard of that fish,” Rebekah said. “Dad told me about it. We used to live about a mile from your place, you remember that? At least, I guess it must be the same fish. I'm surprised it's still alive. Dad said people have been trying to catch it since he was a kid. I think trying to catch that fish used to be a major pastime in the grove, but I suppose that kind of thing's gone out of style."
"I blame video games,” Graydon said.
Rebekah ignored him. “The fish even has a name. Guess what it is."
"Mr. Whiskers?"
"Sineater. Except when my Dad told me about it, he started to say ‘Shiteater,’ I think, and then decided to protect my delicate ears from such profanity."
"Shiteater,” Graydon repeated. “That's charming. When I catch him, you can come over, and we'll have a big catfish dinner."
"I'm coming over anyway,” she said. “You're going to let me stay the night next weekend, and I won't take no for an answer. I've got to get away from Lorrie for a while. She won't even eat fish anymore, that used to be our big compromise, but now she says it's ‘morally repugnant.’ She only ever ate salmon anyway, she said everything else was too fishy-tasting. I mean, c'mon, it's fish. What should it taste like?"
"Catfish is pretty bland, I guess,” Graydon said.
"It's not bad, fried with the right spices,” Rebekah said. “So can I come over? You can cook for me, though I don't think you'll be feeding me Shiteater, as appetizing as that sounds. You'd need more than a rod and reel to pull him in anyway."
"I don't know,” Graydon said, thinking of the mess in his house, all Alton's things in the spare bedroom, also thinking of how hard it would be to sleep in the same house all night with Rebekah and not be able to touch her—he hadn't had sex since a bad one-night stand at school in New York. Rebekah knew that, and she must know that he still had feelings for her; he hadn't made it much of a secret. But it sounded like things were going badly with her and Lorrie, and Rebekah and Graydon had been lovers, before, in dim pre-college antiquity, so...
Rebekah snorted. “Come on. Like you're too busy? You've got too much other stuff to do?"
Gradyon didn't answer, didn't let any expression touch his face at all.
"Oh, hey, I'm sorry, Gray,” Rebekah said, reaching across the table to touch his hand. “I didn't mean anything by it, you're getting your head together, figuring out what you want to do, and that's fine."
Graydon nodded, but he didn't think Rebekah believed what she'd just said—for her, life was work, being active, moving forward. She wouldn't be treading water if she were in Graydon's position. Hell, she'd never have let herself get into Graydon's position in the first place, blowing off classes, avoiding advisors, finally being “invited to pursue graduate studies elsewhere,” as he'd been. Rebekah didn't have much patience for self-pity.
"Sure,” he said. “Next Friday?"
* * * *
Salmon aren't much like catfish. Salmon are beautiful, insofar as fish can be beautiful, with silver scales and graceful bodies. Catfish are ugly, whiskered, mud-colored, slow. Salmon are wiser than other fish, wiser than many people, wiser than some bears. Catfish are not wise, but they are wily. Salmon, it is said, eat hazelnuts. Catfish eat shit and garbage and dead things. Salmon are patient as gods, only hurrying to spawn. Catfish are patient as death, only hurrying to feed. The flesh of salmon is delicious. The flesh of catfish is bland as rainwater. Salmon sometimes grant wishes, when that seems the wise course. Catfish can grant wishes, too, but different wishes, for different reasons.
Salmon know more than catfish, but catfish remember everything.
* * * *
That weekend, Graydon studied how to catch giant catfish. It was surprisingly uncomplicated, at least in theory, according to the books and websites he consulted, but the definition of “giant” seemed to be thirty or forty pounds, which he thought was far smaller than Shiteater. He looked further, and discovered that the largest catfish ever caught in the U.S. had come from a pond in Tennessee, and weighed one hundred and eleven pounds. Graydon had no idea how big Shiteater was, but he suspected it was bigger than that. The record-breaking fish had been caught with deep-sea tackle, but one trip to a sporting goods store showed Graydon that he couldn't afford that kind of equipment, not with the dregs of his student loans running out.
Still, Graydon was hardly an expert on catfish, so perhaps he'd overestimated Shiteater's size. Starting Monday he tried the recommended approaches for catching giant catfish from the shore, setting multiple poles and lines on the bank, with hooks set at various depths. He tried different baits, from small fish to rotten chicken and beef, but none of it worked, and the bait came out again sodden but untouched, and there was no sign of the big fish at all, not even a ripple.
Graydon didn't catch anything, as if there were no other fish in the pond at all, which he supposed was possible. Shiteater could have eaten them all. By Wednesday Graydon had given up on catching the monster, already bored and frustrated by the effort. It had been hubris to think he could catch such a monster, just one more instance of his reach exceeding his grasp.
On Thursday he sat on the bank with his dead brother's fishing rod jammed into the mud, line in the water, staring at the sky. The fishing rod was almost a formality now, just a prop, set-dressing. It justified his sitting by the water, in the shade, listening to the willow's drooping branches sway in the breeze.
The rod fell into the water. The bobber was submerged—had Shiteater bitten the hook and pulled in the rod? Graydon splashed into the pond, up to his knees, going after the rod, which was already floating away.
He reached for the rod ... and something passed before him, brushing against his legs. He looked down, and there was Shiteater, far bigger than one hundred and eleven pounds, as big around as a barrel. Shiteater took the fishing rod into its mouth, like a dog picking up a thrown stick, and dove with it, disappearing.
Graydon stared down into the water for a moment, then shouted and slapped at the water angrily. “You fucking fish! Bring that back!” Shit-eater ignored food, it ignored everything, but it tried to eat his brother's fishing rod? What kind of beast was this?
Graydon slogged out of the water and sat, dripping, beneath the willow tree, thinking dark thoughts about fishing with dynamite, or about blasting Shiteater with a shotgun, but he didn't have dynamite, or any guns at all.
Something drifted on the surface of the water, eddying gradually toward the bank, until it floated just offshore in front of the willow. Graydon leaned forward to look at it.
It was a dreamcatcher, a wooden hoop threaded with string and hung with wet feathers. Alton had given one of those to Graydon years and years ago, after a trip he'd taken to an Indian reservation in the Southwest. Graydon had lost it in one of his many moves, and he'd missed it, a little. Graydon reached into the water and lifted the floating dreamcatcher out.
It was the same. The same snapped threads, the same gray-and-white feathers, the same size, everything. It was the dreamcatcher he'd lost, the one Alton had given him, he'd almost swear to it.
Graydon looked at the pond for a while. He'd baited his hook, that first day, with one of Alton's lures. He lost the lure, but found a motorcycle helmet. Now he'd lost Alton's fishing rod, and found a dreamcatcher.
The thoughts that occurred to him were ridiculous.
But, on the other hand, they were testable.
Graydon went back to the house, and came back a bit later, carrying some of the things Alton had left behind.
* * * *
There are myths about salmon, but catfish don't warrant much more than folklore. Some say that catfish bite well when it thunders, or that they're easy to catch when it rains; that catfish will bite a hook dipped in motor oil, or that you'll be lucky fishing for them if your pockets are turned inside out. If an owl hoots in the daylight, the catfish are easy to catch.
All of those beliefs are true. But some of them confuse cause and effect.
* * * *
By nightfall, Graydon had thrown almost all of Alton's possessions into the pond, and received an equal number of things in return. Throwing in Alton's class ring brought back one of his brother's running shoes, his initials written in permanent marker on the inside of the tongue. Throwing in freshman algebra class notes brought back a sparkling geode Alton had used as a bookend, though Graydon had to fish that out with a net after Shiteater swam repeatedly over the spot where it rested, like Flipper the dolphin from that old TV show, trying to explain something to the stupid humans. Shiteater ate almost everything Graydon threw him. Graydon intentionally threw in a few things with no connection to Alton—a used paperback he'd picked up at a yard sale for a dime, a salt shaker that came with the house, a handful of change. Shiteater ignored those things, and nothing came back in return. After an hour of casting in and receiving back, Graydon sat by a pile of returned objects, all of them things lost years before.
"Did you eat my brother, you fuck?” Graydon asked, but knew it was absurd. Alton had died in a body of water that was little more than a creek, miles from here. The connection between his brother and Shiteater was stranger than that, more complicated, more mysterious. Perhaps it would prove too mysterious for Graydon to understand. When it grew dark, Graydon started to gather the objects Shiteater had given him, or allowed the pond to give him, or whatever. But why would he want to keep those things? They were just lost things, some with a charge of sentimental value, most lacking even that. Graydon began tossing the objects into the water, as he'd thrown back the helmet that first day, and Shiteater rose up again and swallowed it all, wolfing the things down as quickly as Graydon could throw them in.
It was hard to tell in the dark, but Shiteater seemed larger than he had been before. Nothing new came floating out of the pond after Graydon finished throwing everything in, and Shiteater didn't break the surface of the black water again once he finished eating. Graydon kept only the dreamcatcher—he suspected he might need it, as nightmares seemed inevitable—and trudged back to his house, thinking.
* * * *
In psychoanalysis, “fishing” refers to a process whereby subconscious thoughts, feelings, and motivations are drawn up randomly, without any attempt to order or explain them until later. The process is poorly named, since it is more like dredging or using a drag-net than the precise efforts of an angler—it pulls up everything, garbage and treasure alike. It's a technique that
only a catfish could love.
A good fisherman, on the other hand, knows just what sort of bait to use, and where to cast his line.
* * * *
Graydon woke early on Friday morning and decided to continue his experiments.
He threw in one of his mother's good china cups and received a small jar, labeled with a piece of masking tape, that contained the gallstones she'd had surgically removed when Graydon was fifteen. He remembered visiting her in the hospital, remembered her telling him that the doctors were going to give her the gallstones, how she planned to throw them into the ocean next time they went to the coast. She was already starting to lose it, then, her mind beginning its slow unraveling, but it had seemed like simple eccentricity in those days, not the full-blown dementia it would become.
Graydon looked at the jar for a while. This was a valuable discovery. This meant the fish didn't have anything to do with Alton, not specifically. Graydon threw the gallstones back into the water. Shiteater was—was—
He didn't know what Shiteater was. Something to do with the dead, maybe. Or memory, or loss, or grief, or hope, or closure. Graydon couldn't figure it out. It wasn't like in stories, where things were neatly explained, where the mystery had a function, however obscure, where the operations of the supernatural could be explained. This was something else. Something magical, but incomprehensible, which was perhaps the nature of real magic. But Graydon couldn't ignore it, couldn't turn his back and go on living, forget about the pond, and the creature that lived in it.
Asimov's SF, August 2005 Page 17