by Peter Markus
But the thing with Bob is this:
You can be fishing the same water as Bob and you won’t catch a single fish.
That’s because Bob is fishing up from the river all of the fish that you can’t catch.
It’s got nothing to do with luck.
It’s got nothing to do with the kind of bait that Bob is fishing with.
It’s got everything to do with Bob and with who Bob is and the fact that Bob does not just live on the river.
Bob lives in the river.
Yes, just like a fish.
It’s true that I’ve seen Bob fish a fish out of the river with just his bare Bob hands.
Sometimes it’s more than just one fish that Bob fishes with his hands out of the river.
It’s true, too, that I have heard Bob sing the fish up into his boat.
It’s not a song that you and I can hear just because we have ears.
But the fish can hear it.
The fish listen to Bob sing when Bob opens up his mouth and sings to them, Fish, oh fish, come here.
I’ve seen fish walk across water to get to where Bob is singing to them this song.
I’ve seen fish leap up at Bob and up into Bob’s boat like fish looking to be kissed.
One day I get home from the river.
What my wife says to me when I come in from the river is, I didn’t marry a fisherman.
She says, Remember, you have a son too.
Ever since you bought that boat, she says.
She does not finish this sentence.
She goes over to where the sink is and she turns on the faucet.
Hot water hisses against two dirty plates.
I am late again for supper.
I see my son sitting in front of the TV.
He is in his underwear.
He’s six.
He is watching a TV show that I do not know the name of.
Hey, buddy boy, I say.
He does not turn toward the sound of his daddy’s voice.
What’s going on, little man? I say.
He doesn’t say anything to this.
Guess what I saw out on the river today?
On the TV there is a clown made out of clay.
I saw this really big ship, I say.
My son looks up at me, away from the TV.
What? he says, though I don’t think he’s heard what I’ve said.
A big ship that sailed here all the way from China.
His eyes widen though I wonder if he knows what and where is China.
What about Bob? my son then says.
I wonder what and how much he knows about Bob.
What about Bob? I say.
Was Bob on the China ship?
No, I say.
I say, Bob was on Bob’s boat.
Then he says, Is Bob going to go to China?
I guess he does know what China is.
I don’t think so, I tell him.
On the TV the clay clown is juggling three clay fish.
Did you catch any fish? he asks.
A couple, I say. Want to see them? One’s got some pretty big teeth on him.
Maybe later, he says.
He turns back to face the TV.
Some nights it’s hard to get my own son to bite.
In bed, that night, my wife says it again.
I didn’t marry a fisherman.
She turns over onto her side.
Her back is to my belly.
Like that, she reaches over and turns out the light.
That night, I have a dream with Bob fishing in it.
In this dream, I am fishing with Bob.
I am fishing in Bob’s boat.
Bob is teaching me how to fish.
He is pointing to places in the river where, he says, there are always more than just one fish for a man to fish up.
Then Bob says to me, Hold out your hands.
So I hold out my hands.
He takes my hands into his own.
He looks down at my hands.
I can tell that he is looking.
I look down at his.
His hands are scaled and webbed.
His hands are fins.
I pull my hands away from Bob.
What’s the matter? Bob asks me. Haven’t you ever shaken hands with a fish?
I shake my head no.
That’s your problem, Bob tells me.
Bob turns, then, and just like that, Bob jumps out of his boat.
Into the river.
Bob swims away.
And I’m left alone, then, floating down the river, here in Bob’s boat.
In the morning, I boat my boat over to Bob’s boat.
Bob is not in it.
I look around for Bob.
Mornings, Bob usually spends cleaning fish.
The sun is on the river.
The sun makes a mist on the top of the river.
Bob, I call out.
My voice is a stone that skips across the river.
I ask a man in a fishing boat if he has seen Bob.
He shakes his head nope.
I go home.
Home, I pick up the phone.
I don’t know what or who I should call. Or what I would say if I had to say it.
That Bob is not in his boat?
That in my dream Bob had become a fish?
That afternoon, I get in my truck and go down the road that goes down to the river.
Down to the river where Bob lives.
I want to see if Bob is back home in his boat.
He is.
Bob’s boat is back to being Bob’s boat.
Bob’s boat, when Bob is not on it, it goes back to being just another boat on the river.
I see Bob hunched over, sitting on a turned-over bucket, gutting the guts out of his fish.
The guts of the fish, Bob throws the guts back into the river.
Bob believes that the guts of the fish, when you give them back to the river, the guts turn back into fish.
There are boats on the river with people on them who do not fish.
The river, to these people on board these boats, it is just a place for them to swim in, it is a place for them to cool down during the heat that is the summer.
Summer days, Bob watches these boats and these people speed on by, going to where Bob doesn’t know.
Sometimes these boats, the people on these boats, when they motor on by Bob in his boat, they holler out to Bob for Bob to get out of their way.
Bob doesn’t holler anything back.
Bob doesn’t bother.
Bob isn’t bothered too much by these boats.
Bob knows that, in a couple of years, those boats won’t be out on the river getting in Bob’s way.
Those boats will be put up on trailers, they’ll be stored away in somebody’s backyard garage.
The people who own these stored-away boats, they’ll cover up these boats with tarps to keep them from getting dusty.
Bob knows what keeps a boat from getting dusty.
A boat is like a fish.
When you take a boat out of the river.
It is no longer a boat.
It becomes something else.
A boat is not a boat, Bob knows, unless it’s a boat floating out on the river.
Bob’s boat is always out on the river.
The only time Bob takes his boat out of the water is if Bob has to fix a leak.
Even in winter, when the river turns to ice, Bob keeps his boat out there on the river.
In the winter, the river becomes something else besides a river.
The river becomes a river made out of ice.
In the winter, Bob cuts out chunks from the ice so that he can keep on fishing, even though it’s cold.
Some days it’s so cold out on the river, in the winter, that Bob’s hands turn to ice.
But underneath the ice, the river is still there, it is still forever flowing.
And so are the fish.
&n
bsp; Where the river is the fish will always be.
Where the river is and where the fish are is where you’ll find Bob fishing for fish.
This is something you can count on.
Where the river is.
Up above the fish.
There is Bob.
Here is Bob now.
Bob is sitting on the ice on a bucket that is turned over on the ice so that Bob can sit down on it.
When Bob isn’t sitting on the ice on a bucket, Bob is on his knees kneeling down on the ice.
The ice here is sixteen inches thick.
Ice this thick is thick enough for a man like Bob to jump up and down on it.
This is ice that if Bob had a pickup truck, Bob could drive it out onto this ice.
But Bob does not have a pickup truck to drive out on this ice with.
Bob does not even have a pickup truck for him to drive into town with.
Bob does not need a pickup truck.
The river is Bob’s road.
And a boat is all that Bob needs.
When Bob needs to go into town, to sell his fish, to get gas for his boat, to get whatever else he can’t get from the river—a new pair of boots, maybe, or new laces for his old pair of boots, or maybe to get himself something other than water to drink—
Bob walks.
Up from the river.
Up the muddy road.
Into town.
You can always tell when Bob comes into town.
You can always tell where Bob has walked when Bob comes walking into town.
It’s the mud that gives Bob away.
It’s that trail of muddy boot tracks that begins at the river’s edge and ends in the middle of where town is.
Or else these muddy tracks begin in the middle of where town is and end at the river’s edge.
Down where Bob’s boat is.
It all depends on how you look.
The Bob who walks into town, to sell off his fish, to get gas for his boat, to get whatever else he can’t get from the river—a new pair of boots, et cetera, et cetera:
This Bob is a fish out of water.
There was a time when Bob wasn’t a fish out of water.
There was a time when Bob was just a boy.
There was a time when to Bob, in Bob’s boy eyes, the river was just a river.
But then something happened, to this boy Bob.
Down by the river.
Down in the river.
This boy Bob heard a sound.
This sound, it was coming from the river.
This sound, Bob knew, it was coming from a fish.
The river with this fish in it, it was calling out to Bob his name.
Bob, Bob, is what this sound said.
This fish, and the river it was in, it was like it was singing out to Bob.
Bob could see the river—it was the river—but Bob wanted to see this fish.
Bob wanted to hold this fish in his hands.
Bob wanted this fish.
But no, not just any fish.
This fish that Bob heard that day, this fish, it was a fish with his name on it.
Bob.
Bob knew it, that when he saw it, this fish, he would know it, that this fish was the fish.
And so Bob fished.
Bob fished and he fished for this fished-for fish.
Bob caught hundreds, thousands, of fish that were not the fish that he was fishing for.
Some of these fish were the fish Bob ate.
The fish that Bob did not eat, these were the fish Bob sold when he came into town with his buckets filled up to their brims with fish.
Bob caught more fish out of the river than anyone else who fished the river.
Bob caught so many fish out of the river that runs its way through this dirty river town, there were people in town who believed that Bob was fishing the river clean.
That Bob was fishing the river dry.
That there would come a day when there would be no more fish for us and for Bob to fish.
That we would one day run ourselves out of fish.
Bob knew this was not possible.
As long as there was a river, Bob knew there’d be fish in the river to fish.
And as long as there was a river to fish, Bob believed that one of those fish would be the fish that he was fishing for.
That one of those fish would be the fish that called out to him his name.
Bob.
Bob also knew that it was possible, too, that the fish that he was fishing for, it was possible that somebody else who was fishing the river might one day catch this fish too.
This worried Bob more than anything else.
To think that his fish could end up in somebody else’s boat, or in somebody else’s hands, in some other fishing man’s bucket.
Bob did not want to think about this.
Bob could not think about this.
But, of course, Bob did.
It was all that Bob could think about.
It was this that kept Bob fishing.
It was this that kept Bob living, on a boat, on the river, fishing for this fish.
The river, when you see pictures of it that have been taken from a plane, it looks like an S, or a snake—no, it’s more like a worm, or nightcrawler, which is what a lot of the fisher folks who fish on the river like to bait their fishing hooks with.
Worms, Bob knows, will catch you some fish.
So will minnows.
Shiners.
So will leeches.
Slugs.
But Bob knows, too, that none of these baits work as good as what Bob baits his fishing hooks with.
Mud.
Nothing works as good as mud does.
Mud is the bait that Bob likes best.
Sometimes, though, Bob wonders if maybe that one fish that he is fishing for, that maybe this fish is looking for something else.
Something other than mud.
Something other than minnows and worms.
Something other than leeches and slugs.
Sometimes Bob wonders that maybe this fish that he is fishing for, maybe it’s a fish that’s looking for a bait that no fisherman has ever fished the river with.
Nights like those, Bob takes one of his fishing hooks and he sticks it into his finger.
Bob presses down on this hook into his finger until blood comes rivering out.
Maybe this fish that Bob is fishing for, maybe it wants more from Bob than just plain mud.
Maybe mud, to this fish, isn’t enough.
Maybe what this fish wants from Bob is the blood that flows, like a river, on the inside of Bob’s body.
The blood from Bob’s fingers hasn’t caught this fish yet.
But neither has mud.
Neither has worms and minnows, leeches and slugs.
Some nights Bob doesn’t know what to think about this.
He tries to think of something else to bait his hooks with.
Bob has even tried using fish eyes for bait.
Some of these fish eyes look like moons.
Some of these fish eyes have a light shining out from inside them that Bob hopes might catch the eye of the fish that he is fishing the river for.
So far none of the fish that Bob has fished from out of the river have been the fish that he is fishing for.
You’d think that Bob would get tired of this.
You’d think that maybe Bob would throw up his hands, or throw in the boat, and just give up his fishing for this fish.
Those who think that this is possible with Bob, they don’t really know Bob.
What I want to know is this:
What is Bob going to do that day when he fishes up from the river this fish?
That day is going to come.
This fish, it’ll one day be, out of the river, up from the river, fished up.
Bob is going to be the one to do it.
What we don’t know is when Bob is going to do it.
What we als
o don’t know is this:
What is Bob going to do once he fishes, up from the river, this fish?
I imagine Bob will keep on doing what Bob has always been doing.
I can’t imagine Bob anywhere else but where Bob is.
In a boat.
On a river.
Is a man.
Is a fish is a fish is a fish.
But what if this fish that Bob is fishing for, what if some other fisherman or some other fisherwoman fishes it out of the river first?
How would Bob even know that this fish was in somebody else’s boat, that this fish was in somebody else’s hands?
Bob would know it.
It would be like if, for the rest of us one morning, the sun did not up out of the river rise up.
There would be, for Bob, something missing from the river.
A light.
No.
A sound.
No.
A fish.
There are some fishermen in our town and some fisherwomen in our town who know that Bob is fishing for this fish.
Sometimes one or another of these fishermen and fisherwomen will come to Bob’s boat holding up in their hands a fish.
Is this the fish? some of them will say to Bob.
Others will say to Bob, Bob, I think this is your fish.
To these fisherpeople, Bob will look up.
Bob will lift his head.
Bob will give these fish that these fishermen and fisherwomen are holding up a listen, a look.
That’s all it takes is a quick lift of the head from Bob for Bob to see, for Bob to hear, that the fish that he is fishing for, it is still out there, somewhere in the river, waiting for Bob to fish this fish up, up out of the river and up into his boat.
I don’t know what Bob will do with this fish once he gets it.
I don’t think he’ll eat it.
You can eat any old fish.
But this fish.
This fish will be a keeper.
Some fishermen and some fisherwomen, when they get a fish that is too big to eat, these people will sometimes get these fish mounted and will hang these fish up on a wall on the inside of their house.
Bob hasn’t got any walls to hang his fish on.
When Bob gets his fish, I think I know what Bob is going to do with it.
I can picture Bob now, lifting up this fish.