by Terry Reed
Then I stopped short, with this fantastic idea to wave to all the cars or something, in the manner you might to a bunch of horses in a corral, as if you knew for a fact the barn was burning and were imploring the horses to get out of there while the going was good.
But then I didn’t do that. I thought if I did, it would be proof I was having a breakdown.
I got so worried about going crazy and having a breakdown I began pretending instead it was just some sort of game, to find the meaning of things. I tried to pretend it was just a dumb game. Like a dumb game show, the type of game show where you win a car if you pick the right door, except I was making it so that the car that could reveal its meaning, root and all and all in all, would win.
Then I realized that this game show wouldn’t even work, because the way I had set it up, the contestants were also the prizes. I thought I was going crazy.
Besides, deep down, I was fairly sure this wasn’t any game I was playing. No matter how worried I got about going crazy, I just couldn’t convince myself it was a game. So I decided that even if I went crazy, at least I wouldn’t make finding the meaning to things just a dumb game.
So I started pacing again. There was the white Mercury, in the middle, and the Buicks, blank as anything, remote and unrevealing as only the blue Buick can be. They weren’t pricey pink Cadillacs, after all. They weren’t showy silver Jaguars. They weren’t basic black Fords or flashy red Porsches or tinny green Chevrolets. They were solid, dull, incomprehensible, intractable, unyielding blue Buicks. A conspicuous display of nothing I knew of.
And then I just stopped and stared at the Mercury. And then I was almost sure I wasn’t going crazy anymore. I stood there very still, worried if I moved a muscle, the meaning would go, because it seemed very fragile, this meaning, very delicate, like a flower. Then I figured at least I knew what the Mercury was supposed to mean. It meant memory. My grandfather. How things stood for things.
Grandfather had been clean and kindly looking, just like his car. He had been old, just like his car. I guess he had been just like his car. Mr. Carter had driven an old Ford, and he had been black and probably poor, but the two men didn’t seem too different at all. Grandfather had had his snappy way of talking, calling his car a Dream Machine and you a Hot Ticket, and Mr. Carter had had his saxophone, so maybe it was something about the delightful sounds they made that made them seem similar. That would mean something, to a child.
That’s when you knew it was good to have a grandfather’s Dream Machine parked in the four-car garage. It was as if the car had survived death itself, and had come back to sit there, stubbornly symbolizing something.
I went and sat in the Dream Machine, flicked on the headlights and turned the ivory steering wheel, practicing. I decided that when I had my permit, this is the only car I would drive. I sat there for a long time, thinking of everything I was fairly sure I knew, up until now, trying to concentrate, in honor of Mr. Carter and all.
Then I fell asleep, and then Rey McDowell was there.
“I saw lights,” he said, tapping on the windshield.
I opened up, and he climbed in.
He pressed the headlights off. “You’ll run your battery down.” Then he kissed me again, a lot this time, as if we were parked somewhere.
Kissed my lips. I think I’ll go inside and take a look at them now.
WOMANHOOD
I have to admit it was almost fine for a while, being out at sunrise with the water so pure and smooth beneath the hull of the speeding boat.
I leaned out and reached my hand to touch the spray, trying to commit to memory certain things that can easily slip your mind about the water, like how it feels on your hand, and how vast it is, and how, with its billions of drops, it’s still made out of parts and isn’t one single thing, which is so easy to forget, at least I forget it all the time.
But then we rode way out beyond the sand bar, and when The General cut the engine and hurled the anchor overboard, the boat began to roll erratically, both side to side, and front to stern. This wasn’t how we anchored with my father in a sailboat. Dad found a smooth cove or a harbor, and then he would drop anchor over the bow, slowly back up to secure it, and then we would just rock a little bit, which you didn’t even notice after a while. But then I remembered: we were here to kill fish.
“He’s making us bait our own hooks,” Mickey said, basking in her deck chair in her black bathing suit. She got up and went over and stared into the bucket of squirming, pumping, muscling live bait. “Unbelievable.”
I’d already done that, stared in the bait bucket. Now I was staring at The General. You couldn’t see his eyes behind his Ray·Bans, but you could see his jaw was set all solid and his mouth all clamped down. He made a motion to get up from our chairs. There was clearly going to be a fish lesson now.
“Okay, girls. Line up and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
Nobody did it. Line up, that is. I stood up, though. I mean I had to, he wasn’t my father.
“Come on over here, Boy.” That’s what he called me, for short. Ever since I was six years old.
The General thrust his hand into the bait bucket and I watched in horror as he inserted a fishhook into the back of a shrimp. “Baiting builds character, girls.”
I thought I had built enough character just to get on the boat at five AM, but all I said was “Yes, sir.” He nodded too, and I took a tiny step closer.
He reached for my arm and slapped a wet shrimp in my palm. I closed my hand around it; it slimed out of my fingers and dropped to the deck. The General picked it up and slapped it back in my hand. “Now hook it decisively, Boy, right down the spine. Or they’ll steal it from you. That’s the first thing to know. Fish steal.”
Lesson number one: fish steal.
I baited the hook.
I probably shouldn’t have, it probably hurt the shrimp, it was probably going to kill the shrimp, not to mention the fish that would eat it and thus eat the hook, but I did as I was told. I suppose, I wouldn’t have done it if it were a slightly larger animal. Like a lion or something. I suppose The General wouldn’t have either. That’s when I realized: the world was not fair. But all I did about it was do it. And then all I said was, “There.”
The General inspected my hook. “Go deeper next time.”
“Yes, sir.” I liked calling him “sir,” don’t ask me why. It’s what we had in common. I liked calling him “sir,” and he liked calling me “Boy.” And of course, we had Mickey Knight, his daughter and only child.
Now it was Mickey’s turn. She stood up, grabbed the rod, and stabbed the shrimp’s spine quickly, going way deep. Then she sat down again, holding the rod at an insolent angle, looking tan, beautiful, and royally bored.
“Hey,” I said, watching the shrimp squirm in agony on the end of her line. “That was good.”
“Unbelievable,” she sighed.
“Come, Boy.” The General took me astern and gave me a private lesson in casting, which Mickey, of course, had already had. The whole point of it was to hold onto the rod the whole time and not go with your instincts and throw it into the water along with the line. The General had me do it over and over, until he said, “Not bad.”
And then we went fishing. And then, nothing happened. I didn’t catch fish. Nobody did. I’d heard this very thing about fishing, that it takes annoying amounts of valuable time.
Finally I looked at The General to see what was wrong. But he was busy tending his six different rods, which he’d placed in gleaming stainless-steel brackets along what’s called the gunwale, I think. But maybe that’s what it’s called on a sailboat. I was wondering it, I really was, but The General was so busy not catching fish, I didn’t want to interrupt and ask.
It was some boat we were on, now that I had all kinds of time to look around. It was sleek and shiny and had techy things that whirred and clicked everywhere. There was a chair facing out at the water where you sat for big fish, if you were that far advanced. It had a seat be
lt, because without it, a big fish could pull you right overboard and catch you. Back home, The General had things like twin high-gloss Jaguars parked in his garage. Unlike my father, I guess he liked things that looked fresh out of the box. My father didn’t like his things until they were broken in, and he liked them even better when they were all beaten up and way worn down.
It seemed hours before they actually got started, but when the fish finally started coming, The General was quite entertaining to watch. At least now you could guess why they called him The General. He went running from rod to rod as if dodging transparent bullets and winning invisible wars. Each newly captured fish was like a trophy or medal to him, which he held at eye level and admired. Then he tired of it quickly, threw it in a bin, and went back into action, capturing more.
My father had tried fishing once, off the sailboat, so we could have fish for lunch that day. He wasn’t too good at it, though. We ended up having taco chips. Now, watching The General speed-sort his fish into individual bins, the yellowtails, the grouper, the snappers, I began to wonder if there was something lacking in my father for not catching fish. It seemed The General’s ability to slay fish somehow embodied the very meaning of success. Even if I didn’t adore the senseless murder involved, it did make my father’s fishing seem pretty sad.
I looked over at Mickey and it was like father, like daughter. Already, she had her own bin of fish. She didn’t seem too crazy about it, though. Every once in a while she’d say, “Okay, I’ve got one,” but then she didn’t act as if it were any Big Deal. She’d just reel each new fish in and unhook it, looking at it as if she already knew it, and wasn’t too thrilled about seeing it back so soon. But she was doing it. At least she knew she could if she tried.
I started to not like the way I was beginning to feel about fish. Because I was beginning to want to kill them too. But they were too smart to let me. I was doing exactly what Mickey and her father were doing: baiting the hook with the live shrimp, then casting the line without throwing the rod. But the fish just took my bait and swam away. By the way, fish steal. I’m not saying they don’t deserve to, but they’re not above it, is all. Anyway, it was beginning to seem like some kind of family problem, not to be able to outsmart a fish. At home, unlike at The General’s houses, we didn’t have one fish on our walls.
The sun was now fire, cooking the chub in the pails, which now reeked. The boat had never stopped pitching side to side, front to stern.
I was using something else for bait now, something called chum, which at least was already chopped up, already dead. The General’s fish had eaten all the live bait, except for a few prize shrimp, which he gallantly offered to me and which I politely declined.
But the fish didn’t want my chum either. They snubbed my line altogether now, perhaps insulted by this chopped-up, dead chub, which The General said was “just a member of the Carp Family, Boy.” When he said that, I felt sorry for the Carp Family, whoever they were.
“You don’t have the heart for it,” The General said.
Hey, I knew what “heart” meant, because of Matt. Heart was the thing great boxers had, what kept them going when they had nothing else left. Or soldiers. In the vocabulary of violence, or was it in fact the vocabulary of success, or merely the vocabulary of sport, but in any vocabulary at all, wasn’t “heart” distinguished from “killer instinct”?
“It’s your attitude,” said Mickey, counting dead fish. “I’ve never seen anyone catch no fish. Not on this boat. Right, Dad?”
Complaining of third-degree burns, I fixed my baited rod into one of those fancy clamps on what I think’s called the gunwale, leaving my line in the water, just in case.
There were three berths below. I chose the V-berth and lay down. I really felt woozy and weak. I wondered whether I should try to make it to the head, or just stick my head through the porthole and throw up.
But then, don’t ask me why, maybe it was sunstroke or something, but I started crying instead. I began to think it was really sad how the one time he tried to catch a fish, off the sailboat, with the crude rod he just rigged up from things on the boat and the bread we had in the galley for bait, that that one time he tried, my father didn’t catch one fish. That he’d just had the idea that he would catch a fish and thought that the idea would catch one. That struck me as so sad, so innocent now. Fathers could kill you with their sad innocence.
But I, innocently, had thought my father would catch a fish that day too. I sat there in the cockpit with him and hoped to God it would happen, and every time the line jerked my heart leapt up and I hoped it was a fish.
But when Dad laughed and gave up, I didn’t cry. And I knew now that if he had really wanted to catch a fish he could have just gone and bought a good rod and some live shrimp and then he would have had what he needed to do it. He could have persisted. He could have learned. But maybe he was unconvinced about the very idea. Maybe he reasoned, what would it bring, in the end? So you get a great fish, a trophy to hang on your wall. Would it be worth it, for the dodgy thing you had to do?
Then, just at that moment, I wished more than anything I could go home, see my father, and maybe even bring him something, like a nice fish.
• • •
I dried my eyes on the end of my tee shirt. Then I started crying again, because once you find one thing to cry about, like fish, they start coming in schools. I started crying for all the fish that had died that day, the way they gawked at you while they were dying, so flabbergasted at your senselessness they couldn’t even blink their eyes. But then I kept crying, probably beyond any sincere pity I could have possibly felt for fish. Maybe I was having that breakdown, but I knew I had to be quiet about it, because Mickey and her father were right up on deck.
Then my sorrow for fish turned to sorrow over war, poverty, and the fact that Mary Parker’s father was a bus driver. That just seemed so sad, so innocent, somehow. To drive a bus. To simply and honorably just get people where they’re supposed to go. I started thinking of that, and of all the bus drivers all over the world, in countries that were packed with buses and packed with people in the buses, and then I couldn’t stop.
“Boyce!”
It was Mickey’s voice. I stopped crying immediately, I mean I had to, you could never explain crying over all the bus drivers at this late date, and I pretended I was asleep.
“Come up here right now!” I rubbed my eyes and saw Mickey rocking above me in what I think’s called the companion way.
“Guess what? There’s a fish or something on your line.”
Really? A fish or something?
“Step lively, Boy! Or he’ll get away!”
“So are you coming?”
Up on deck, The General was already handling my rod. But he turned it over to me immediately, so I could reel in my own catch.
“Keep it up, up like this,” The General said, “without any slack, or it will snatch the bait and swim away.”
I did that, I did just as he said.
“Turn the reel, slowly, slow, steady …”
I did it. Then there was a tug, a pull, a brief fight at the end. And then the fish flew out of the water.
I saw my fish, and I already knew I had done something right.
“Take the line. Grab it in the middle and pull it in and over here.”
I did it, and the most astounding fish hung flapping in the air.
It wasn’t just that I had somehow caught the fish, it was the fish I’d somehow caught. It was small, not very long at all, it was inflated like a balloon in the middle, and elegantly pointed at the head and tail. And it was beautiful. Not just beautiful like a fish: shimmery, incandescent, sleek. It was beautiful just like a girl.
Mickey said, “It’s like, wearing makeup?”
It’s true. The fish was that glamorous. She had an electric blue body, rounds of rouge for cheeks, and, arching outrageously over the eyes and down the back, two streaks of shocking yellow, which it wore in a kind of flip, like it was hair. H
er eyes were wide and open, rimmed in black, and her mouth. Her mouth was almost an insult of irony, a joke of duplicity, because her lips were shaped and sensual, puckered into a full-blown, deep-pink, drop-dead kiss.
The General deftly took it off the hook, placed it on the deck, and we all knelt down, more than admiring it.
From the moment it had made its dramatic entrance onto the boat it was obvious to all of us that we were dealing with something superior. Unlike her predecessors, she did not appear hysterical. She flapped only serenely, primly even, as if she were still swimming, or expected to be soon. If she knew she was going to die, she was far too dignified to let on. Instead she projected a certain noble patience, perhaps with human nature, as if she had been in death traps before, and knew from experience that no man had the heart to go through with it.
“It put up a good fight,” The General said. “For such a small fish.”
“What is she, Dad?”
“Some kind of an angelfish, I’d guess, shallow water, but I’ll have to look her up.” And he dashed below to get his fish book and dashed back up again.
“It’s too small to eat,” Mickey said, doting over my fish, adoring it, trying to cup it in her hands.
“My one fish, and we have to throw it back,” I said, nervously looking at The General to make sure.
“You could keep this one and have it mounted,” The General said, paging fast through his fish book. “It’s legal. Or about.” He must have already mentally measured my fish. “It would look awfully good on your dad’s library wall.”
“But is it big enough to kill?” I asked.
But it was too late, I had already thought of my father. The fact is, I could keep this fish. I could just break the law. I could have it stuffed like The General’s fish, and bring it home to my father for what didn’t happen on the sailboat that day. Except would my father ever remember the fish he never caught? Would he have any recollection of how I had hoped for him the time we sat in the cockpit together? He’d probably just look it over with great interest like any other present and say, “Ah.”