Bob, or Man on Boat

by Peter Markus

  I can picture Bob looking this fish up and down its beautiful fish body, this fish with a song inside it shining out.

  I can picture Bob taking this fish and leaning with this fish over the side of his boat.

  To let this fish go.

  To give this fish back to the river.

  So that Bob can be the Bob that he is.

  So that Bob can continue to fish.

  Go fish.

  But we won’t know until Bob gets this fish.

  Until then, we can only imagine.

  Even I can only guess.

  Guess what?

  There goes Bob now.

  There goes Bob going after that fish.

  I’m going with him.

  I’m going to go after him.

  That man.

  That fish.

  Bob.

  What better gift can a son give to his father than the thing that he is looking most for?

  Bob, I imagine myself saying.

  Father, I might even say.

  I’ve got something I want you to have.

  Bob, I have something I want to give you.

  Like this, this is how I imagine this, I hand over to Bob his fish.

  This fish, when I give it to Bob, it is still alive in my Bob hands.

  In Bob’s hands, this fish, it is something more than just alive.

  This fish, it is living.

  It is like trying to hold in your hands the flowing that is the river.

  This fish, it is too big for it to fit inside a bucket.

  So Bob and I, we carry it together.

  Down to the river.

  Here, at the river’s edge, father and son, we let this fish go.

  We stand and we watch this fish swim away.

  We do not say anything to each other about this fish.

  Then, after a while, we get into Bob’s boat.

  For the first time ever in the life of Bob’s boat, there is in Bob’s boat more than just Bob.

  It is Bob and his son Bob.

  I start the motor.

  Bob steers.

  Like this, Bob and I, we begin again.

  We go out onto the river, for the first time in our lives, father and son, fishing for our fish.

  I want that fish.

  I want to get that fish.

  I want to be able to say to Bob, This fish is your fish.

  So I get into my boat.

  I get into the dead man’s boat.

  I’ve got my bait, whatever it takes.

  Minnows, worms, leeches, slugs.

  There are things made out of metal—lures, spoons, spinners—that are made to look like fish.

  Little fish for the big fish to eat.

  I’ve even got mud to bait my fishing hooks with so that my hooks look just like Bob’s.

  Maybe I can fool the fish in the river into believing that I am Bob.

  Like Bob, to be like Bob, I talk to the fish.

  But unlike Bob, when I open up my mouth to talk to the fish, it is more like I am talking to the river.

  I don’t mind this.

  The river is a good ear to talk to.

  When I talk to the river, the river listens.

  The river never talks back.

  This is my wife talking.

  It’s after midnight, she says.

  She tells me, You said you’d be home before dark.

  You said, she says, that you’d be home in time to tuck Bobby into bed.

  You know what your son said to me tonight?

  I shake my head.

  He said that you said that you’d promised him tonight to tell him a bedtime story.

  My wife says, You know what else he said?

  I don’t say anything.

  He said, Why does Daddy spend more time with the river than he does with us?

  Doesn’t Daddy love us anymore?

  Doesn’t Daddy love us as much as he loves the river?

  This is what your son said to me tonight, she says.

  What did you tell him? I say to this.

  I told him that of course your daddy loves you more than he loves the river.

  I told him that in your daddy’s eyes, if you were a fish you’d be the biggest fish in the river.

  What’d he say to that? I say this to my wife.

  My wife says, You want to know what your son said?

  She says, You sure you want me to tell you what your son said about all of this?

  I nod with my head.

  He said, your son, is what my wife says, that he hates the river.

  He said, your son, that he wished the river would go away.

  I don’t say anything to this.

  I can’t say anything to this.

  I must say something to this.

  That night, I go into my son’s room.

  Only his head is sticking up and out from the covers.

  He looks more like a turtle than he does a fish.

  His eyes, my son’s, do not open up even when I whisper his name.

  Bobby, I say.

  I sit down on the edge of his bed.

  I put my hand on his head.

  His head, he turns it away.

  Is this my son flinching from the touch of his father?

  Sonny boy, I whisper.

  I put my hand on his chest.

  It’s me, Daddy.

  I’m home, I tell him.

  His eyes only halfway open.

  I can see that he can see me even though he isn’t even close to being awake.

  I came home, I tell him, to tell you a bedtime story.

  Are you too tired to hear a story?

  He shakes his head.

  Good, I say.

  Once upon a time, I whisper.

  In a kingdom far away.

  There was a man who lived in a boat on a river.

  And in this river, I say, there lived a fish.

  I stop the story there.

  I don’t say anything else.

  I don’t know what else to say.

  After a little while, my son’s eyes flitter open.

  A fish’s eyes, I should tell you, never close.

  Daddy, he says.

  Did you bring home any fish?

  A couple.

  Can I see the fish? he asks me.

  He always asks me this.

  My son, he likes to look at the fish.

  He likes to touch the fish.

  This is my son.

  In the morning, I tell him.

  It’s late.

  I tell him, Close your eyes.

  He listens to what I have told him to do.

  My son, he is not a fish.

  Use your imagination, I say, to imagine seeing the fish.

  Then I tell him, Tell me what you see?

  What does the fish look like? I ask him.

  Is it big?

  I can tell that he is looking hard, I can see that he is trying hard, to picture this fish in his head.

  He looks like he’s having a little bit of a hard time finding a fish in his head to see.

  His eyes, I can see, he is squeezing them as tight as he can get them to close up tight.

  It’s okay if you can’t see them, I say.

  I tell him, You’re probably too tired.

  In the morning you can see the fish, I say.

  Go to sleep.

  But then he tells me this:

  I can see the fish.

  I see the fish, he says.

  I see you, too, Daddy, he tells me.

  You see me? I say.

  What about the fish?

  He nods his boy head yes.

  Daddy, he says.

  Yes, buddy boy.

  He tells me, You are the fish.

  I’m the fish?

  His eyes close and go back into that other place.

  He is seeing something none of us can see now.

  I say to myself, I am the fish.

  I whisper those words, I am the fish.

 
Then I say, again, to my son, Go to sleep.

  This is all that I can say to my son for telling me I am a fish.

  Daddy, he says, after a little bit of nothing.

  What’s up, buddy boy?

  I don’t want you to be a fish.

  I am a fish.

  I am a fish.

  That night, I sleep out on the sofa.

  I try to sleep but I cannot sleep.

  I close my eyes and try counting the fish swimming around inside my head.

  There are more fish in my head than there are stars up in the sky.

  All night long all I hear is the sound of these words:

  I am a fish.

  I am a fish.

  I am a fish.

  This, and the sound of my son’s voice saying to me, his father, I don’t want you to be a fish.

  So I take the next few nights of fishing off.

  I don’t go out onto the river.

  On one of these nights, we go out for dinner.

  As a family.

  When I order fish and chips, my wife shakes her head.

  She says, You and your fish.

  For supper on one of these other nights, I fry up some fish fished up out of the river.

  My son looks at me from across the table as I am eating up this fish.

  I can tell that he is thinking.

  He doesn’t say what it is he is thinking about.

  When I ask him if the fish tastes good, he says that it’s tasty.

  I fry up the fish in lots of butter.

  My son likes to watch me fry up the fish.

  He likes to watch me clean the fish.

  He likes to watch me gut the fish.

  The guts of the fish, we do not throw the guts into the garbage.

  We do not throw them back into the river the way that Bob does the guts of his fish.

  My wife has a garden out back in our backyard.

  I dig a hole in the dirt in this garden and we bury the guts back here.

  At the end of summer, you should see it: my wife has the biggest, reddest tomatoes that God has ever seen.

  That night, my son wakes up in the middle of the night crying from a bad dream.

  We run into his room, turn on the light.

  It was just a dream, my wife tells him. It wasn’t real.

  She pets his head.

  I want to know, What was the dream about?

  My wife gives me this look that says, What does it matter? It’s just a dream.

  I dreamed we were fish, is what my son tells me.

  We lived in the river.

  Hey, now, I say, that doesn’t sound so bad.

  I tell him, I can think of worse places for fish to live.

  I want to know, so I ask him, What kind of fish were we?

  He shakes his head that he doesn’t know.

  Was I a big fish?

  He nods his head to tell me yes.

  I was a little fish, he says.

  And then he says, And you were trying to eat me.

  Oh, sweetheart, my wife says to this. I’m sorry, she says.

  What I say is, I was trying to eat you?

  That’s when I woke up, my boy says.

  He says, his bottom lip quivering, But I didn’t want you to eat me.

  I wouldn’t want me to eat you either, I say.

  I pick him up, give him a big fish hug.

  I lick the tears off his face.

  You do taste pretty salty, I say.

  It hits me one night.

  Maybe my son is right.

  Maybe I am a fish.

  Bob’s fish.

  The fish that Bob is out on the river fishing for this fish.

  Bob is out on the river right now fishing for this fish.

  I know this even though I am not out on the river with him.

  I am in bed with my wife.

  I am trying to get some sleep.

  When I close my eyes, I can see Bob, out on the river, out on his boat, fishing for this fish.

  When Bob cooks his fish, he cooks them over an open fire right there on the river’s bank.

  Bob eats fish.

  That’s all he eats.

  Twice a day.

  Fish.

  And more fish.

  There are those in this town who believe that Bob eats the parts of the fish that most of us don’t eat.

  The head.

  The tail.

  The bones.

  I don’t know about this.

  But I do know this:

  That the part of the fish that Bob does eat, even before he cooks up the fish, is the fishes’ eyes.

  The fishes’ eyes, when Bob eats them, Bob believes, they help Bob to better see.

  Down inside the river.

  So that Bob can see like a fish.

  There are some people in this town who believe that Bob fishes with nets.

  How else can one fishing man catch so many fish? is what these people like to ask.

  These people who ask this about Bob, they have never seen Bob fish.

  These people who ask this about Bob only see Bob when Bob comes into town with his buckets of fish hanging heavy from his wrists.

  These people have only heard the stories that some people in this town like to make up about Bob because these people do not know who Bob really is.

  These stories about Bob, they are just stories.

  These stories are all lies.

  This story that I am right now telling you, about Bob, it is not a lie.

  It is true.

  This is the true story of Bob.

  The story of Bob who lived in a boat on a river.

  This man who loved and lived to fish.

  When Bob sleeps, out on the river, out on his boat, Bob sleeps sitting up.

  Sometimes it’s hard to tell if Bob is sleeping, or if Bob is just sitting there in his boat not sleeping.

  Bob sleeps when the sun is not sleeping.

  Bob sleeps when the fish in the river like to sleep.

  My son sleeps with the light on.

  This is something new.

  Ever since he had that dream where he and I were fish.

  That dream where I, his own father, tried to eat him.

  The light in his room burns all night long.

  At night, when I am out on the river, I can see this light shining out.

  It is like a lighthouse light.

  This is the light that lets me know, when I’m coming in from the river, that I am almost, that I am coming, that I am going, home.

  Going home, for Bob, is going out onto the river.

  Home, for Bob, is Bob being out on the river, is Bob being out on his boat.

  The moon shining its light down upon the river the moon, it is Bob’s lighthouse.

  And the stars in the sky, the stars are the eyes of the fish that Bob has yet to eat.

  The big fish eat the little fish.

  This is the way of the river.

  Once, when I was out on the river fishing, I reeled in a fish that was too small for me to keep.

  It was too small to eat.

  I was reeling in this little fish when this bigger fish, it came up and took the littler fish into its mouth.

  I reeled in this bigger fish up and into my boat.

  When I stuck my thumb into this bigger fish’s mouth, to unhook the fishing hook, this littler fish, I could see, it had not been swallowed all the way down into this bigger fish’s belly.

  This littler fish, it was still alive inside this bigger fish’s mouth.

  So I did with this littler fish what I would have done with this fish even if this bigger fish had not tried to eat it.

  I threw this littler fish back.

  Into the river.

  This bigger fish, this fish that had tried to eat this littler fish, I threw it into my bucket.

  I took this bigger fish home.

  Where I cleaned this fish.

  Where I cooked this fish.

  Where I at
e this fish.

  This fish, I wanted to teach it a lesson.

  There are some people in town who do not think we should eat the fish out of the river.

  These people believe that the fish in the river, that if you eat these fish, you will get sick, that you could even die from eating these fish.

  I do not believe this.

  Look at Bob.

  Bob eats fish every day.

  Bob eats fish every day, twice a day.

  Bob isn’t sick.

  Bob isn’t dead.

  Bob is more alive than any other man I know.

  Bob does what he loves.

  Bob fishes.

  Look at Bob go.

  There goes Bob now going back out onto the river.

  Bob’s boat is like a metal fish that swims out over the top of the river looking for fish for Bob to fish.

  Now, it is raining.

  No, it is more than just raining.

  The sky is a river that has spilled out over its banks.

  In the rain, the river is just a river without any boats out on it.

  Except for Bob’s.

  Bob is out on the river.

  Bob is standing up in his boat out on the river in the falling down rain.

  Bob is lifting his head up to the falling rain so that the rain hits hard against his face.

  And now, it is not only raining.

  Now, it is thundering.

  Yes, it is lightning now.

  Bob is the tallest thing out on the flatness that is the river.

  If it is possible for a man to be wetter than a fish, then this man is Bob.

  This is that kind of a rain.

  Bob is that kind of a man.

  This rain, it is a river rivering down.

  In this rain, Bob is not just a man, out on a river, out in the rain, fishing for fish.

  Bob is a fish.

  This is the story of a fish fishing for another fish.

  When Bob fishes the river, fishing for fish, he is fishing for more than fish.

  There are some fishermen and fisherwomen in town who fish so that they can talk about fishing for fish.

  These fisherpeople fish so that one of these days they’ll be able to tell you a fish story about the big fish that got away.

  Bob does not fish so that Bob can tell that kind of a story.

  Sometimes, though, what I do think is this:

  That Bob is fishing for the fish that, when Bob fishes this fish up and out of the river, this will be the one fish that will teach Bob something other than how to fish.

  I do not know, for Bob, what that something other than how to fish could be.