City Fishing

by Steve Rasnic Tem

  “It’s not as if I were …” he tried to say.

  Paul mourned the day and cried in his sleep. He bruised his cruel hands against the walls, and scratched at his cruel face with the broken fingernails.

  All the next day Paul waited by his empty body while Joey called from the distant tunnel he had dug for himself underground, that snaked its way under the yard and curled in on itself deep under the house.

  No one knew him, or recognized his absence, or the minute reduction of cruelties in the world once he had disappeared.

  Around him the concrete rotted, the city pavements grew rancid.

  THE WOMAN ON THE CORNER

  For the second night in a row the motorcycle gang harassed the young pregnant woman. George watched from the window, wanting to help, or call the police, or something, but could not. He kept the lights turned out, smoking a cigarette beside the bedroom window where the hoodlums below could not see him.

  “For God’s sake somebody should call the police,” his wife Margaret said from the bed.

  “I know …” he whispered. As before, the motorcycles were circling the small house on the corner, the men shouting, throwing beer bottles, running their cycles through the flowerbeds. “I know,” he repeated. As before, there was no response from within. A dim light burned somewhere back from the front window; it was the only illumination. The gang tried to reach the light with bottles, rocks and other refuse picked up from the street. They had a clear target; all the window glass had been broken out the first night and hadn’t been replaced. But try as they might, the light continued to burn.

  “Then why don’t you call the police, George?” His wife whined. It made George feel guiltier.

  “I can’t, Margaret. I know I should but I can’t,” he said softly.

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know …” He turned and looked at her. He was glad it was too dark to see the expression on her face. “Could you call the police, Margaret? Can you do it?”

  Margaret remained silent. She couldn’t either, he realized, but the thought brought him no pleasure.

  “I wonder why they don’t break into the house?” George said.

  “Goodness sakes, George! Thank God they haven’t tried!”

  “But why? The house is pretty flimsy. Why wouldn’t they try?”

  “Who cares? Nobody is helping the poor woman; you should be relieved they haven’t tried.”

  “They’re frightened, Margaret. They’re frightened of entering that young woman’s house.”

  “Why should they be?” Margaret said quietly, rolling over onto her stomach. Within seconds George could hear her snores.

  “For the same reason they harass her, I expect,” George said softly to the room.

  He sometimes wondered if perhaps the young woman did not stay the night in the house, or maybe she didn’t live there at all, but merely visited occasionally. But he had seen her move in, or at least it had seemed that way—boxes of dishes and kitchenware and bags full of clothes and old furniture—an elderly couple helping her carry them in. She looked sickly, but perhaps she was just pale from the pregnancy. Her eyes were large, almost exotic-looking.

  The elderly couple did not stay. And although occasionally George saw the young pregnant woman leave once during the day, she always returned before night and did not leave the house after that. George knew; the last two days he had kept a constant watch on the house. But maybe there was a way out the back of the house which was hidden to him.

  A retired Army lieutenant, George spent most of his days at home now. For a time he had tinkered with the idea of going into business with another ex-officer, but when the process of financing the venture dragged on he realized he actually preferred staying at home all day. He had a lot to think about.

  The next morning George was watching as the young pregnant woman left the house with the broken windows. Precisely at eleven, as before. He knew she would be returning at five. Perhaps she had some sort of part-time job, he reasoned, but it was hard to imagine her doing anything in such an advanced state of pregnancy. He could not remember ever having seen a woman so pregnant; with her small bone structure she looked practically grotesque.

  It puzzled him. He could have sworn she was much smaller the day before. But perhaps the light had been bad. It looked now as if she would have a large, healthy child.

  George and Margaret would never have children. Margaret was barren.

  Why should he be thinking about that now? He wasn’t even sure he ever wanted to have children. So many ways for them to go wrong; so many mistakes a parent could make. You could be miserable; you could make them miserable.

  The next night cats surrounded the pregnant woman’s house. Hungry cats. Angry cats. A horde of them, of every kind and size. He had never seen anything like it. It wasn’t quite dark yet; the pregnant woman had been home only a short time. Again, George stood back from the window, but tonight he felt a growing agitation. The cats seemed so violent, much angrier than the bikers. They were just cats, he reminded himself. Just cats. But he had to wonder what they were looking for? Food? Maybe some small, dead thing.

  They raged as if they were wounded, or—George remembered seeing just such a thing when he had been a teenager on his father’s farm—like animals burning up in a barn. The horses had sounded almost like hoarse cats, screaming cats, their voices impossibly high with the pain and terror.

  George’s father had died in that fire, trying to save the animals. George had been frightened, unable to go anywhere near. He often wondered if he had really tried. It was like phoning the police, just a phone call to help the lone pregnant woman. But for some reason he could not.

  That left him alone with his mother, and years of nagging and underhanded little remarks and hinted accusations. Even though he often thought she was right, he grew to hate her.

  He blinked once and twice, momentarily disoriented. Fire! Flickering before his eyes, mesmerizing him. Bile rose into his throat. He could smell the burning meat.

  George stood in the window and looked down fearfully. The cats were screaming. Porch lights were on all over the neighborhood. There was no fire.

  “For God’s sake, George,” Margaret said from under the covers. “Call the police.”

  But George could not move. He felt strangely excited. “It’s just cats, Margaret. Cats on fire.” But she did not hear him. She was already asleep.

  When the pregnant woman was leaving her house the next morning—exactly at eleven, George noted again—he was prepared to stop her, to ask her why the motorcycle gang and the cats were bothering her, to demand why she hadn’t called the police, to complain—he now realized—about what this was doing to him.

  He halted halfway across the street. She seemed larger, much larger than before. Her lower belly hung down misshapen.

  He had never seen such a thing before. She was grotesque. It reminded him of … but no, he wouldn’t think about it. He turned around slowly and walked back to his yard, into his house, and down into the basement study. A full bottle of Scotch lay in the bottom left-hand drawer, if Margaret hadn’t found it and tossed it out.

  She hadn’t. He poured himself a drink.

  He wondered about the young woman next door. What was she like? He poured himself another drink. He needed … to know something about her. How could he approach her? He drank for the rest of the afternoon.

  George was sitting out on the porch when the pregnant woman returned. He had thought about it all afternoon and had finally figured out an excuse for approaching her. He stood up quickly and started across the lawn. He stepped in front of her just before she started up her own walk.

  “Excuse me, Ma’am.” He was grinning, he suddenly realized, rather foolishly. “I just noticed your screen door. It’s broken …” He looked at her for encouragement, but she gave him none. She stared at him blankly. “I’d like to help; I … think I can fix it.”

  She looked at him for an uncomfortable length of time. H
e wondered if she were in some sort of trance, caused by her pregnancy maybe—he didn’t know much about that sort of thing, but her eyes were so dark, so different, he couldn’t really tell.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said in a crisp voice. It sounded to George as if she were unfamiliar with English, using it with the utmost care. Or that she was being very careful in what she was saying to him. “But tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow.” Then she left him standing there.

  It was quiet at the pregnant woman’s house that night. George stood in the dark by the window and waited. Waited for hours. The dim light continued to burn within the house; but no one seemed to be around.

  Lazy good for nothing! I wish you’d never been born! George lit up a cigarette and stared at the glowing tip. He could imagine the shape of a horse in the white ash, a horse’s corpse in the white ash. And stuck to the neck, melded to the roasted horsehide, a man’s hand.

  Your mother’s just like your grandmother, my mother. Regular witch! Hell, all women are like that, son. Best get used to it. But that was the way his father used to kid him. The old man had broken out into a grin after he said that, and they’d laughed together. He knew his father liked women. But even then George had sensed some tension behind it, some awkwardness. Some fear.

  Sometimes it had seemed his mother was just a worn-out, emotionally drained woman who had lost her husband, and this made her irritable, made her strike out at the world which had treated her so badly. George remembered realizing that many times as he was growing up, and that was certainly his feeling now. But he used to forget it soon enough, he remembered, when she was on his back again.

  George’s grandmother hadn’t attended the funeral. A year later, when he’d asked her about it, she’d sat there rocking a long time, silent, foreboding. When she finally opened her mouth George for the first time realized just how old she really was. Her voice cracked and fragmented more with every word. “Hell … he … de … served it … boy … born to it … he was.” Then she gasped, and George realized with a jolt that that was her way of laughing. “Knew … the day … he’s born … he’d die.”

  There was a slight glimmer in the darkness near the pregnant woman’s house. Then another glimmer joined the first. Then a third.

  One at a time and in small groups, coyotes approached the house. George stared. Their eyes were bright in the darkness.

  There had been news stories for almost a year about coyotes coming down out of the hills and scavenging through people’s garbage, or dragging away pets, squirrels, rabbits, dead or alive. He had caught one in the act himself: last summer, a coyote dragging away the carcass of a small dog right below his bedroom window, the coyote’s head twisting upwards, eyes gleaming at him. There had actually been one case in which someone’s baby had been killed by a coyote, dragged out of the parents’ backyard and up the hillside. He remembered the news stories: the hysterical mother being pestered by the reporter, a montage of coyotes roaming the suburban streets at dawn.

  What were they after here? So many of them. George thought about the unborn child and began to panic. He stared out the window. The coyotes were snarling, apparently having caught a scent of … He started to turn, to call the police, or race down the stairs to help the young woman, but could not. Margaret was asleep in the bed behind him, but he found he could not even wake her. He was disgusted with himself. He couldn’t move; he didn’t want to miss anything.

  They were gathered at the young woman’s porch now, closing in. One of them was beginning to mount the front steps. George held his breath. The weeds by the front step were dry and brittle. The place was a firetrap. How could she live there? Just one spark … the house would go up in minutes. He imagined in some detail the fire spreading into the front room, catching the old rags and clothes no doubt piled in corners with garbage and old newspapers. The peeling wallpaper would catch and race the fire to the ceiling, the rotting beams, and the roof’s dry and cracked shingles. No one would get out. Everything alive would flame up and burn and would be dead matter before anyone could help.

  He blinked. But there were no flames, he reminded himself. Just coyotes closing in on the porch. Seeking meat, something living. Scenting death. And he could not move.

  Suddenly the pregnant woman was on the porch. George hadn’t even seen her come out. She stared at the assembly but did not speak. George wet his suddenly dry lips. She was larger, much larger still. She looked to have enormous lumps under her maternity dress. She looked more obese than pregnant.

  The coyote walking up the steps paused for a moment, and then stepped back, descending over the dry weeds. A few others drifted away. One by one they retreated, and the pregnant woman said nothing. She just stood there with a calm that unnerved George. He knew he had to talk to her.

  The next morning George sat and waited nervously on his front porch. He had decided to wait for the woman to come out of her house. After all, she had said he could fix her front door today, although she hadn’t given him a time. He would stop her on the sidewalk, and suggest that now was a good time. But he didn’t know exactly what words he would say. He prayed they would somehow come to him. He had a story to tell.

  His mother had finally kicked George out. Join the service! she’d screamed, her face dark and twisted. She sat in the stained burgundy chair, her large upper body pushed forward painfully. Make a man outta you! Go fight some war; that’ll teach you what things’re really about!

  He had left, and done what she demanded. It still rather pleased him that he had survived the combat, as if he had pulled one over on her. Except for one incident, he had been fairly comfortable, in fact. Only later did it occur to him that throughout history women had given birth to sons only to send them to war, and death.

  The woman came out of her house. George got up from his chair and then stopped suddenly, as if struck, and stared at her as she walked down her sidewalk to wherever it was she went every day. George could see that she had grown still larger, and the bulges beneath her dress gave her an even more deformed appearance. Her face looked skeletal, as if the baby were robbing her of nutrients. But if he waited much longer, he would miss his opportunity.

  My god, he thought, as it seemed the woman’s dress was moving from within, and yet there wasn’t the slightest breeze. He forced himself across his lawn, across the street. He raised his hand and mouthed a greeting. She turned and stared at him with those dark, strange eyes.

  The woman sat awkwardly in a straight-back chair on the porch while George worked on her screen door. He had brought along the Scotch for courage. She didn’t seem to mind. He pulled a hammer out of his toolbox. He had bought the tools and a workbench when he left the service, but this was the first time he had used any of them.

  He didn’t know how to get into what he needed to tell her—to ask her. So he chatted small talk for a time, although she said nothing, except for an occasional yes or no, as if to encourage him. For some reason this didn’t surprise him. In fact, it helped a bit. It made the transition into his story less frightening.

  “You know, I was in the war. And this thing happened, and I’ve always wanted to tell somebody about it. And, Ma’am, I guess you’re the right one to tell. Happened just before my discharge. Actually there wasn’t really that much of interest that happened to me during the war. Few of my buddies got wounded, but that’s about all. I didn’t do much and I didn’t see much over there. Lots of guys saw all this action, got their buddies killed on ’em, but not me. Hell, spent most of my time drinking.” Unsteadily he reached into his toolbox and grabbed the Scotch. He poured his glass full, watching it go in. Then he sat again by the door, stiffly, as if he were arthritic, or had a bad back, although he was in perfect health, better than anyone he knew. He looked at the woman out of the corners of his eyes, just to make sure she hadn’t fallen asleep. She was staring at him, her face expressionless. He felt awkward again.

  “We had been watching this hut for several days. There was a pregnant Vietnamese
girl inside. Somebody back at Command seemed to think this was some sort of way station for the Cong. I couldn’t see it myself; she looked just like any teenager to me, her man probably killed or missing. She came out once a day, that was all, to pull some water out of a well. Five minutes, that was all, and then she went back inside.

  “It was a terrible place, Ma’am. Terrible. Like death itself. Hers was the only hut left in the village; the rest had been burned to the ground. Cong or our own boys, I have no idea. There were still a couple of burnt bodies out there, but she just left them lying there. Let ’em rot, she did. I couldn’t understand it. We watched her day after day, going out for that five minutes to draw water. We waited all that time for some sign of the Cong. Nothing, Ma’am. Nothing. Just that poor little pregnant girl, getting bigger all the time.

  “And that’s what started bothering me, see? She was noticeably bigger each day. Impossibly bigger, you know? By inches! And soon there were all these … lumps, I guess you’d call them.”

  George poured himself another drink and tilted the glass back at a steep angle. He opened his eyes slightly so that he could look at her, sure that his last, certainly transparent description would bring some reaction. But she continued to stare at him, her face unmoving.

  He wiped off his mouth and began again. “Then one day, one real hot day, we thought we heard a sound from that hut. A moaning or a cry, a scuffle; we didn’t know what. You see, it was so hot, Ma’am. A couple of us figured it must be one of the Cong, so the company moved out.”

  George stopped and looked at her. Still no reaction. He continued, barely able to keep the growing frustration and anger out of his voice.

  “We got in there, into that hut, Ma’am, and there wasn’t any baby, nothing at all. The girl wasn’t pregnant anymore; she’d lost almost all of the size and weight. And there was a dead body, a stinking corpse, Ma’am, already decomposing on the ground in front of her. I figured it might be her husband, or Cong, but hell, the face was too far gone to tell what he might have looked like. She’d been living with that corpse for days, at least, in that heat! And she just sat there near its head, not saying nothing!