Catch & Release

by Blythe Woolston

  “So these frozen babies, they’re like your clones? That is fucked up nine ways from Sunday, Polly.”

  “What’s so fucked up about it?”

  “You could meet some guy and marry him and never know he was your brother. That’s one fucked-up thing, marrying your own clone,” says Odd.

  “I can think of a few reasons why that won’t happen. And they aren’t clones—they are more like brothers and sisters—we’ll be similar, but not exactly alike. Like you and Buck.”

  “I’m nothing like Buck,” says Odd.

  “And those snowflake babies are probably nothing like me,” I say. “They’re just out there, maybe, even though I don’t know where.”

  “My sister Thea’s like that,” says Odd. “She left for Reno three years ago because she was tired of Dad and Buck ragging on her. She was going to learn how to deal poker, but the last time she called she told my mom she was working as a security guard in the Meadowood Mall.”

  “Her plans changed. She just adapted to her new condition,” I say.

  “I miss her sometimes,” says Odd.

  “I don’t miss my brothers and sisters,” I say, “I don’t know how to miss them.”

  “I’m going to bed—I mean, I’m going to car,” says Odd. “You want me to turn on the headlights so you can pitch your tent?”

  “I think I’ll just sleep in the other seat. I’ll come to bed in a while.”

  My eye can see the sky, empty and full of stars. My eye is cryogenically frozen and sees nothing, not even the dark. I am an only child who has lots of brothers and sisters. My mother is in the kitchen back home, wiping the sink until it shines just like she does every night. My mother is an egg donor I have never seen. My mother loves me so much it drives both of us crazy. My mother sold me to pay bills.

  “F is for frozen

  Much colder than snow,

  Seeds of little monsters

  Are waiting to grow.

  “And I did a new one for C,” I say. “Like you said, ‘C is for creatures’ was really not my best work.”

  “C is for cephalopod,

  A nightmare-soaked squid

  In the folds of your brain

  Where it always stays hid.”

  “You know, Polly, I would maybe like not to have monsters in my brain before I go to sleep. Know what I mean? Like, couldn’t you just say goodnight?”

  “Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite . . .”

  “No bugs, Polly. And don’t say one word about snakes while you’re at it. I don’t want snakes in my head.”

  “You’re the one who brought up snakes. What do you want? Unicorns?”

  “Blowjobs are good.”

  “OK. Dream about blowjobs and unicorns.”

  “That’ll work. I think maybe that goth girl is gonna be riding on that unicorn. G’night, Polly.”

  “G’night.”

  G is for Gothasol

  To keep out the light,

  Riding a unicorn:

  You hope she won’t bite.

  Here they put the trees in straitjackets. Here the clouds are stacked like mountains and drag their black shadows over the green fields. This bridge is called the Blue Bridge. It is almost but not quite the color of the sky I can see between the beams of the . . .

  “Fuck!” Odd jerks the steering wheel and moves us away just before the driver’s-side mirror and the curving silver mirrored tank of the semi are in the same place at the same time. “Fuck, Polly! Fuck! Fuck!”

  My hands are tight on the steering wheel now. My eye is trying to see everything dangerous at once. There is no sky. There is cement and metal and huge black tires that could eat D’Elegance whole. The trailer fishtails a little and then it moves in front of us. It is very shiny. The winking cow. Got Milk. No BHT. We are off the bridge. Traffic lights. Merging lanes. Parked cars.

  “Pull over, Polly, now!”

  I do it. Suddenly D’Elegance is parked halfway on a sidewalk, but at least the world isn’t flying at me so fast.

  “I’ll drive now,” says Odd. He isn’t angry. He isn’t even scared anymore. He is just matter-of-fact.

  I nod and fumble with the seat belt.

  “Alrighty then,” says Odd, and he adjusts the rearview mirror before he backs out into a gap in the traffic.

  We stop for gas at the edge of town. I clean every window on D’Elegance twice—dripping sponge, squeegee, dripping sponge, squeegee. I wash the big, square headlamps.

  Odd stands and watches. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t see the point. I just don’t know how else to apologize to the car. I put D’Elegance in harm’s way. She’s been good to me, and I shouldn’t have treated her like that.

  Odd’s side of the world is made of cliffs. My side of the world is made of river. Both sides of the world are dotted in the distance with white towers and the pinwheel blades of wind turbines.

  The radio is on and I’m half listening to it, “. . . very large mountain lion sitting in a tree in the backyard . . . dispatched the cougar without injury to any humans or pets in the area . . . probably means that the cougar was destroyed . . . my wife has told to me quit admitting when I make mistakes . . . I am not anti-yard sale . . . an underground economy . . .that’s not derogatory . . . in 1910 William Howard Taft signed the White Slave Traffic Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for immoral purposes . . .”

  “Why exactly am I transporting you across state lines, Polly?”

  Sometimes the best thing to say to Odd is to punch him, so I do.

  “Bridge of the Gods, Polly. Guy at the gas station said to make sure to see the Bridge of the Gods. Said if you run on it, there’s an optical illusion and the bridge disappears. Said it works best if a person gets in the right frame of mind.”

  This is why we are sitting in a parking lot, staring at the impressive pile of cement needed to defy gravity and hold up a two-lane bridge across the Columbia River. It’s Odd’s plan. We are fulfilling step one: get in the right frame of mind. His prescription, as it turns out, is part of the plan. And the last little bit of the vodka in the red aluminum flask. Also helpful.

  There is a mural painted on the cement. A picture of the once-upon-a-time Bridge of the Gods, which was a natural bridge that reached from Oregon to Washington—at least, that’s what the mural shows. The rock bridge fell down, and now there is this replacement bridge made of metal and cement.

  “Come on Polly, let’s go take a look,” says Odd, and he climbs out to D’Elegance like closer inspection of the faded, scabby painting is worth it. I follow because maybe it is. Can’t get disappointed if I don’t give it a try.

  They say there was a land bridge and humans followed the wooly mammoths over from Siberia, so I suppose it’s possible that there could have been a stone arch that reached all the way across this river. I got my doubts. I always have my doubts.

  “Hey Polly, it’s Lewis and Clark,” Odd has gone round to one of the side of the cement wall. When I follow him, I see them. Lewis and Clark. There are standing on top of a pile of transportation options—steamboats, trains, a car—which is kind of funny since they didn’t have access to any of that when they hauled their sorry asses to the Pacific and back. Maybe the paint is just faded, but they look like statues instead of people. It’s all about the heroic pose. Odd can spend more time staring than I can, so I wander around to the other side. This side is devoted to wildlife. Eagle, bear, wolf, mountain lion with crazy eyes: it’s a stack of predators with nothing to eat.

  “Where’s the fish?” I ask. “Did you see fish? There are no fish in this picture.”

  “Relax, Polly. You’ll get your fish. Next stop after this is the dam and the fish hatchery,” says Odd, “Besides, I got a feeling we might see Troutzilla himself once we get out onto the bridge.”

  “How’d he get here all the way from Butte?” I’m feeling a little fuzzy-headed and cotton-mouthed.

  “Not Troutzilla the monster—Troutzilla the god.
Stands to reason a person might see Troutzilla the god from the Bridge of the Gods,” says Odd, “And also, there’s the optical illusion.” With that, he heads out of the parking lot toward the bridge. I don’t want to follow. I’m not liking the idea of walking across this bridge. If I face the oncoming traffic the cars will be passing on my blind side. If I walk with my back to the traffic, cars will be coming up behind me. There is no way I can feel safe.

  There is a tollbooth. I don’t even go close enough to hear how much it costs, but Odd is waving his arms like he does when he’s being friendly with strangers.

  “Come on, Polly!”

  When he calls, I duck my head down and slink past the toll station like a dog.

  There’s no sidewalk. We’ll be sharing the lane with loaded trucks and speeding cars—and bicycles, oh, sure, just throw bicycles into the mix. A train is coming. It crosses under the road. I can’t hear; I can’t see. Perfect hell. Odd paid money to walk me straight into perfect hell.

  Then it gets worse.

  The pavement ends. The bridge is nothing but metal mesh and air. I take a couple of steps and then, “I can’t do this!” I turn back.

  Before I get away, Odd catches up, grabs my hand, and says, “Come on, Polly. It’s great. I promise.”

  “It’s not fun, Odd. I’m scared. I think I’m going to throw up. You go . . . check it out.”

  “It won’t be fun without you,” says Odd.

  “That’s dumb,” I say.

  “It might be dumb, but it’s true.” He’s giving me the full-on sad puppy.

  “It makes me dizzy when I look down.”

  “Don’t look down.”

  “If I don’t look down, I can’t see if I’m safe from traffic. There’s no way this is going to work,” I say.

  “You just hold my hand, and I’ll do all the watching. You can look at my back or you can shut your eyes. Once you get out there a ways, you’ll see. It’s worth it,” says Odd. He still hasn’t let go of my hand. When he pulls me gently toward the bridge, I follow. After a hundred steps, I open my eye and look down. I can see birds flying under my feet, but I do not see Troutzilla. I see Odd. He’s smiling.

  “You want to visit the dam or the hatchery?” asks the security guard on duty.

  “Um, I thought they were both here,” says Odd.

  “They are, but you go that way for the hatchery and this way for the dam.” The guard points. The road to the dam is blocked with a yellow-and-black-striped traffic gate. “You’re free to visit the dam,” says the guard, “But there is a security check and some areas are restricted.”

  I wonder if this guy and his gate could stop a terrorist. Or a pirate.

  “I just want to see some fish,” I say.

  “Alrighty then, hatchery it is,” says Odd.

  When I check my phone, I have a message from my dad, “Call odds brother.”

  “Im on it all good,” I tell Dad.

  I delete thirty-three messages from Mom.

  We didn’t come at the right time to see the live spawning activity, but there is a looping video of fish porn in the big white building. All salmon die after spawning, says the film, but they are humanely euthanized prior to the artificial spawning process. The fish are bigger than my arm, silver and limp, when they are removed from the anesthetic tank. They are stunned with electroshocks. Electrocution kills the pain, I guess. Is it more humane than whacking them with a rock? It’s tidier, anyway. Human hands grasp and bend the males and the milt pours out, streams of rich milk into a bucket. Human hands slit the girl fish right up the tender white underbelly and empty out the eggs. The valuable eggs. Then they toss the empty silver bodies onto a rolling steel conveyor. They will not be wasted. They will become food. Note that. That makes it all OK.

  The blood of the mothers needs to be washed off the eggs to prevent contamination.

  None of this troubles Odd in the least. He’s not even watching the film. He’s pushing buttons on an interactive map and watching the rivers light up, red, orange, and green.

  Once upon a time, the fish followed the smell of the river to the place they were born. That was once upon a time. Now they journey to the ocean and then they return to . . . To what? To a white plastic bucket? To a hatchery like this one? They return to spawn and to die, because that is what they do. They spawn and they die. That is what we all do. You can dress it up in a romance novel cover with moonlight shining on muscles and folds of flowing pink silk, but spawn and die, that’s what we do. That is what we all do.

  There are pools full of rainbow trout. A handful of fish-food pellets costs a quarter. Odd is amusing himself by making fish bump into each other. It’s not hard; there are so many fish and the pool is so small. The rainbows hone in on the pellets and slither over each other in a rush. I take a picture of Odd beside the trout ponds. I could push a few buttons and send it to Buck. He’d have absolute proof that his little brother is safe and happy this very moment. He could stop worrying, if he’s worrying. I don’t push any buttons. It might be the right thing to do, but Buck’s happiness is not my problem. And Odd’s happiness? It does belong to me, at least just a little bit.

  A sign explains that the white spots on some of the fish are patches of fungal infection. The trout will be fine, says the sign. The water in the pond is medicated. All the water flows to the river, I guess, then to the ocean. When I look closely at the trout, I see fins that are ragged and rotten.

  There is a little white house with a flight of stairs down into a room with big windows that look out underwater. It isn’t an aquarium. It isn’t a tank. There is a pond outside the windows that’s deep and big enough for a ten-footlong fish to roam around in. Herman the Sturgeon comes and goes, gliding past the windows and then away, into the green murk of the water.

  He has company in there. There are other sturgeon, puny ones, not much bigger than me. Three big rainbows swim in place by one of the windows. There must be a current there that they keep pace with, swimming constantly, going nowhere. And there is another trout, a hunchback. The front end looks normal, but the tail end points down instead of straight back. It is able to swim. It has coping skills and strategies for its unusual condition.

  Herman is the star, though. He is a monster. He meets the qualifications. Size? Check. Ugly? Check. He looks armor-plated, but he has a vulnerability—a monster always has a vulnerability. When he slides by on the other side of the glass, I can see into his gills where little red balloons full of blood cluster like horrible berries. There’s a taped narration on infinite loop . . . Herman’s kind shared the planet with dinosaurs in the Jurassic . . . they are threatened with global extinction . . . a single female can produce half a million eggs in a single season and it’s not enough . . . they can’t fight their way past the dams to spawning grounds.

  A monster floats by on the other side of the window. He has a gummy, old-man mouth and four white, whiskery barbels to feel around for rotting food on the bottom of the pool. I lean my forehead on the cold glass and another monster floats reflected in the window. It’s me. I want to bang my bony head on the glass, but it would never break. And what if it did? I couldn’t save what’s on the other side. I don’t have the strength of an angel. I can’t lift a four-hundred-pound fish. I can’t move the Bonneville Dam. Maybe I want the monster on the other side to save me.

  Odd stood in line for ice cream, and now we are sitting on a curb by some roses. Bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers.

  A few years ago all the honeybees were dying. Nobody understood it and it was a crisis, because if the bees disappear then all kinds of human food will disappear, like the peaches in my ice cream. There will be no more peaches if there are no more bees. But I don’t know what happened. Maybe the bees stopped dying. Maybe they are still dying and we are moving closer every moment to a world without peaches. That seems more likely, that the bees are still dying, but the TV news turned its eye to a new place. That’s the job of the news, to be new. So maybe the bees are s
till dying by hundreds and thousands, but what is new is sea turtles smothered in burning-hot crude oil or polar bears drowning because there is no ice. It’s always something. And dead bees aren’t very photogenic.

  “Hey, Polly, Earth to Polly. Report,” says Odd.

  “I’m just thinking about peaches,” I say.

  “Yep! Good ice cream,” says Odd, and he holds the cone out like a wineglass. I touch mine against his. “To Meriwether Lewis,” says Odd, “who slept here in this exact spot, according to the sign.”

  “Do you think it’s true?” I ask.

  Odd shrugs. “It’s cool to think about. Bet it looked different then.” There’s an interstate highway on one side and a giant dam blocking the river on the other. Odd’s right. Things may have changed.

  “Thomas Jefferson liked ice cream,” says Odd, like that makes a difference.

  Honeybees may be buzzing toward extinction. Thomas Jefferson made ice cream. The story is different for each of us.

  On the way out of the hatchery, we pass Smokey Bear. He is standing by a fountain, handing out stickers to little kids. One little girl doesn’t want anything to do with him. She hides her face against her dad’s leg, wraps her arms around and won’t come unstuck. Finally, the dad gives up and starts walking toward the parking lot. Hanging on her dad’s leg turns into a game, and she starts laughing.

  When there is a gap in the kid-and-sticker action, I get close and ask, “Is someplace close where I can fish? Trout, I mean, with a fly rod, no boat.”

  “I wish I’d known the answer to that one before I jumped at this job,” says Smokey Bear. “I’ve seen some little ones at the bottom of the falls—Multnomah—but it’s not worth it.”