Bob, or Man on Boat

by Peter Markus

It was these words, whoever it was who said them, that taught Bob how to fish.

  To be and to be a fish.

  I once saw Bob, at dawn, standing up in his boat, facing where the sun was rising, and what Bob was doing, it looked like to me, it sounded like to me, was he was screaming, though what he was saying, what he was hollering, this I could not hear.

  When I told this to a friend in town who is no stranger to Bob, what he said was that Bob was yelling at the sun, that he was telling it to stay where it was, for it to go away, because Bob didn’t want the night, and the night’s fishing, to come to an end.

  The moon, that early morning, that late night, it was full and glowing in the sky.

  It must’ve been a night of pretty good fishing, was what my friend pointed out, if Bob didn’t want it to end.

  The sun, to Bob, it didn’t listen.

  The sun is not a fish.

  The fish, unlike the sun, listen to Bob.

  When the fish hear Bob singing to them, singing to them through the darkness of the river, the fish can’t help but take a bite: of Bob’s song, of the bait that Bob is fishing with.

  Sometimes, Bob takes his fishing hook and Bob digs out the eye of a fish to use this fish’s eye for bait.

  Most of the time, though, Bob baits his hooks with mud.

  Bob is a mud man.

  Some men who fish for fish fish with minnows or worms.

  We call these fishing men worm men and minnow men.

  We call this kind of bait live bait.

  But live bait never lives long.

  Live bait usually dies before it’s eaten.

  Which is why Bob fishes with mud.

  Let me tell you a little bit about a man named Joe.

  Joe, like Bob, is a man who lives off the river too.

  Joe is a bait man.

  Joe sells live bait.

  Minnows and worms, leeches and crawdads.

  The only kind of bait that Joe does not sell is mud.

  If you ask Joe why doesn’t he sell mud, Joe will ask you, Who do you know who fishes with mud?

  I don’t tell Joe about Bob and Bob’s mud.

  Mud is Bob’s secret.

  Until now.

  This is something else that Bob does to catch more fish than the next fishing man who is fishing the same river as Bob.

  Bob likes to spit in the river.

  Bob likes to piss in the river.

  For luck.

  Some nights, the moon is a dead man dragging his hand across the skin that is the river’s.

  One night, Bob snagged into something on the bottom of the river.

  Bob spent fifteen minutes trying to work this snag loose.

  This snag, it would not come loose.

  After fifteen minutes, Bob was ready to cut his line when the snag finally came loose.

  What Bob had snagged, what Bob had dragged his hooks into, there at the bottom of the river, was a man.

  This man was dead.

  Like Bob, this man was what we like to call, here in our river town, a river man.

  This river man, most of us in town, we’d heard the story, how he fell out of his boat, into the river, some time the summer before.

  It was now spring.

  It was the wake from one of the big shipping ships that did it, that tipped it over, this dead man’s boat.

  Some say that the dead man fell out of his boat, into the river, while he was doing what he had heard Bob liked to do for luck.

  The dead man, before he was dead, he was a fishing man on a fishing boat who was pissing in the river.

  Picture this man, this river man, leaning out over the side of his boat.

  One hand on his rod.

  His other hand holding himself steady.

  Fishing for a little luck.

  The dead man floated away, down the river, before Bob could fish him up into his boat.

  The dead man got away.

  Back to the river’s bottom.

  The fish in this river, when they meet up with Bob, they aren’t so lucky.

  When Bob gets his hooks into the mouths of these dirty river fish, these fish are soon to be dead.

  When Bob cleans his fish, when he guts these fish, when Bob cuts off these fishes’ heads, sometimes these fish are still alive when Bob cuts the meat from the bone.

  Sometimes, when Bob tosses the fish bones back into the river, to give this part of the fish back to the river, sometimes what is left of the fish will sometimes swim away.

  It’s like the fish live.

  For the river.

  It’s like the fish live on.

  Even when they are dead.

  The dead man lives too.

  In the river is where the dead man lives on.

  Even though he is dead.

  Memory is a river.

  Bob knew who the dead man was.

  Bob knew which boat on the river was the dead man’s boat even before the dead man was dead.

  The dead man was a man who tried to sometimes talk to Bob, to get Bob to tell him how the fishing was, and what were the fish hitting.

  These were the kinds of question people always liked to ask of Bob.

  Sometimes Bob would lift up his head, up from the river, and sometimes he would nod.

  Once in a while, Bob would whisper some color.

  But most of the time Bob would not.

  You were lucky if you got Bob to look up from the river.

  The river, Bob only liked to talk to it.

  To the river Bob told it all his secrets.

  The dead man’s boat, like Bob’s, it was made out of metal.

  When the dead man fell out of his boat, the dead man’s boat floated away.

  The river took it away.

  Down the river.

  Out into the lake.

  It ended up in a place Bob had never been.

  Buckstown, Ohio.

  On the riverbank of a town that, like ours, is a town that used to make steel.

  Two boys, brothers, were the ones who found it, the dead man’s boat.

  These two brothers didn’t know it, at the time, that the boat belonged to a man who was dead.

  These boys, brothers, they didn’t tell their mother or father about the dead man’s boat.

  These brothers used the dead man’s boat, to fish in, all of that summer and into the fall.

  They fished.

  And fished.

  They kept on fishing.

  It was a good summer of fishing for these two boys.

  It wasn’t until the winter that these boys finally decided to tell their father about the boat.

  When the father of these boys saw the boat, he saw that this boat, it was not a boat from the waters of Ohio.

  There are letters on boats, there are numbers on boats, that will tell you that a boat is from someplace else.

  This father made his sons give up this boat.

  The father of these two boys, he picked up the phone. He did some talking into it.

  He took two men with badges on their chests down to the river to take a look at this boat.

  The men with badges took the boat from there.

  They took the boat and found out who this boat belonged to.

  It was the boat, they soon found out, of a man who went out fishing one day and then, this man, he did not come back.

  This man was the dead man.

  The two men with badges on their chest took the boat and gave the boat back to where and to who the boat belonged to.

  The dead man’s wife.

  But the dead man’s wife, she did not want this boat to be given back to her.

  This boat, the dead man’s boat, it now belongs to me.

  I bought it.

  The dead man’s wife, for the dead man’s boat, she gave me a good deal.

  What do I want with this boat? the dead man’s wife asked me.

  She said to me, What am I going to do with this boat?

  This boat, she said, it doesn’t
mean a thing to me.

  I just stood there nodding with my head.

  How much? I said, after a while.

  The dead man’s wife held out her hands and said a number that I knew was better than fair.

  I nodded my head some more.

  Then I fished my hand down into my trouser pocket.

  I gave the dead man’s wife twenty dollars over the number that she said.

  Thank you, she said.

  When I left with the dead man’s boat, I told her I was sorry.

  For what? she said.

  He’s the one, she said, who should be sorry.

  She looked off towards the river.

  All the time out on that river, she said.

  All the time fishing for fish.

  Do you fish? she asked me this.

  No, I said.

  What you want this boat for then? was what she wanted to be told.

  I want to learn how, I told her.

  I told her, I want to fish.

  The dead man’s wife looked me right in the eye then and asked me was I a married man.

  Do you have a wife? she asked. Do you have kids?

  No, I’m not, I told her. I don’t.

  I didn’t want her to know that I did, that I do.

  My wife, too, I didn’t want her to know about me going out and buying the dead man’s boat.

  She would have said it was a bad idea.

  Nuts is the word that she would have said.

  What, do you want to end up like your father?

  Do you really want to be like Bob?

  I don’t know what I would have said to this.

  That’s a good thing, the dead man’s wife told me when I told her that I did not have a wife.

  A married man has got no business being out on that river, she said.

  If it wasn’t for that river, she said.

  She said, My Henry wouldn’t be dead.

  I didn’t say anything to this.

  I didn’t say anything though what I was thinking was that it wasn’t the river’s fault.

  You can’t blame the river.

  It’s the river, is what I wished I had said.

  It’s the river that kept Henry and men like Henry, men like Bob, a man like me even—

  It’s the river that keeps us alive.

  The dead man drowned, as bad luck would have it, because he did not know how to swim.

  I did not say this to the dead man’s wife though I was thinking it the night I bought the dead man’s boat.

  I bought it for a song.

  What I wish I had said, that night, to the dead man’s wife, was that the dead man fell out of his boat, into the river, not because he was standing up in his boat, not because he was pissing in the river, but that it was the moon’s fault, it was not the river’s fault, that the truth of that night is this: that the dead man was leaning out over the side of his boat because he was trying to kiss the moon’s reflection on the river: that the moon, that night, it was a fish floating in the sky, and when the dead man saw it bobbing by the side of his boat, the moon, it looked close enough to touch.

  And so he reached out to touch it.

  He reached out with his hand to touch this fish.

  When he reached out to touch it, the moon, it shattered into a billion pieces. Each broken piece became a star.

  So why did I go out and buy the dead man’s boat?

  I bought the dead man’s boat so that I could get closer to Bob.

  So I could get to better know who Bob is.

  What I know is this: Bob is my father.

  I know, even though Bob doesn’t, that I am Bob’s son.

  How else can I say this?

  Bob, I wish I could say.

  Father, I wish I would say.

  Teach me how to fish.

  To fish, to catch a fish, this is what you need.

  A boat.

  A river.

  Fish.

  Something to fish with.

  Some bait.

  A net to net the big fish with.

  But what about patience?

  Bob, is it really as simple as this?

  To this, Bob doesn’t look up.

  Bob doesn’t lift his head.

  Up from the river.

  The way that Bob sees it, the river is all that there is.

  Sometimes, when I watch Bob fish, I can’t help but believe that Bob is older than the river is.

  That Bob is older than the moon is.

  That Bob made the moon so that at night he could better see the river.

  So that Bob could better see the fish.

  This is what a fish looks like to Bob when Bob looks down inside the river to see a fish.

  A fish is a flash of silvery light.

  A fish is a sliver of milky moonlight.

  A fish is a shooting star.

  Bob, make a wish.

  Get in the boat, fish, Bob says to the fish.

  In the boat, Bob whispers to the river.

  Like this, Bob wishes.

  Bob’s boat, when Bob makes his wishes, his boat fills up.

  With stars.

  With moon.

  With light.

  At night there are other lights that light up the river.

  There is the light from the lighthouse light.

  There are lights from the houses with the people who live inside them.

  There are lights from factories along the river that haven’t yet shut down.

  Nights when the moon is full, it is so lit up on the river that Bob in his boat looks like he is glowing from inside him.

  As if Bob is made out of light.

  But no.

  Bob is a man made out of flesh.

  Once, when I shook Bob’s hand, there was bone there for me to shake.

  I’m Bob, I said, and I stuck out my hand for Bob to take it.

  It’s true that Bob hesitated at first, Bob looked at my hand, but then he took it, my hand, the way that a fish might look at a rusty hook before taking it into its mouth.

  I’ll take two fish, I said to Bob.

  One for me.

  One for my father.

  Bob gave me a look.

  It wasn’t a mean look.

  It wasn’t the kind of look that makes you want to turn and run away.

  But it was a look that says let’s get this over with.

  Bob handed me two fish.

  I took them both into one hand.

  I stuck out my other hand and waited for Bob to take it.

  When Bob took his hand away, I watched Bob turn and walk away, back to the river.

  It was like losing a fish right at the side of the boat.

  It was like watching a fish spit out the hook and then disappear back into the river.

  The big ones, they say, always get away.

  Unless you’re Bob.

  Bob lives, in his boat, on the river, in a part of our town that is known in our town as Mud Bay.

  Some people call it the Black Lagoon.

  This is where the river is at its muddiest.

  The banks along the river here are muddy too.

  There is a dirt road that runs its way down to the river, down to where Bob lives on his boat.

  This road is most of the time muddy.

  This is a road that, in the mud, cars get stuck in.

  Because of this, most people do not use it.

  What would they use it for?

  To visit Bob?

  Bob doesn’t want to see you.

  If there was a sign posted somewhere along this road, this sign would say, Keep Out.

  Don’t go any further.

  This is my river.

  Signed, in mud,

  Bob.

  I know better than to go down this road.

  When I go see Bob, I go by boat.

  The dead man’s boat.

  I wonder if Bob ever dreams about the dead man.

  The dead man getting away.

  The dead man wa
s not a fish.

  Maybe that’s why the dead man got away.

  I wonder, too, if Bob knew that the dead man’s name was Henry.

  Or did, to people like Bob, the dead man go by Hank?

  These are just some of the things I’d like to some day ask Bob.

  My mother, if my mother knew what I was up to, would say to me to stay away.

  Stay away from the river.

  Stay away from Bob.

  He isn’t right, is what my mother would say about Bob.

  He isn’t all there.

  Where, exactly, I would want to ask my mother, is there?

  Is there a better place for a man like Bob to be, or for a man like me to be, than on a boat on the river?

  Why didn’t you ever tell him? I asked my mother once.

  Why, in other words, didn’t you give Bob a chance to be my father?

  I was young, my mother said.

  She said she was afraid.

  Of what?

  Of what he would do.

  What would he do, did you think?

  I was afraid, my mother said, that he’d take you down to the river.

  What I wanted to know was, What would be so wrong with that?

  In a sack, my mother said, and she looked me straight in the eye.

  In a sack tied tight with twine.

  In a sack filled up with bricks.

  I have a hard time believing what my mother said about the sack.

  Maybe because I don’t want to believe it.

  Maybe I want to believe that Bob would have been the kind of a father who would have taken me down to the river, not to get rid of me, not to give me back to the river, but to teach me how to fish.

  When I see Bob out on the river fishing, what I ask him is, How’s the fishing?

  One time all Bob did was bob his head.

  Another time Bob said he had a couple.

  When Bob says that he’s got a couple, he does not mean just two.

  A couple dozen, maybe.

  A couple hundred, on a good night.

  Sometimes you will see boats on the river bunched up so close to each other that they actually bang together on the drift. Bob’s boat is never one of those boats.

  Bob fishes alone.

  Bob fishes outside the pack.

  Bob fishes the part of the river that nobody else thinks to fish.

  I am not the first fisherman to follow Bob around the river to find out how and where Bob fishes.