The True Story of Butterfish

by Nick Earls

  Mark was telling me about a plan, though not coherently. It involved fish, Siamese fighting fish. His shirt snagged on the hedge as he went through, and he stopped to disentangle himself, leaving me standing next to the banana lounge on which I had seen Annaliese lying topless.

  ‘Well, I might be heading back,’ I said. ‘I might see if I can get some coffee into Derek to keep him awake for a while. Get him over the jetlag.’

  ‘No, come in. I’ve got to show you. I’ve told you, now I’ve got to show you.’ He threw a handful of leaves aside and clumped his way up the back steps with me behind him. ‘Hi honey, I’m home,’ he bellowed in a friendly drunk way as the screen door clattered open. He clumped down the corridor, towards Annaliese’s room. ‘I’ve brought your friend Curtis.’

  Annaliese shrieked and her chair rolled forcefully across the floor. ‘Go away. Go away.’ Her door, which had been ajar, slammed shut. ‘Leave me alone. I’ve got really bad cramps.’

  Mark turned, stuck his fingers in his ears and scrunched his eyes shut. ‘Aargh, women’s business.’ He shrugged, as if women were a mystery not worth the trouble of trying to solve. ‘Come and I’ll show you.’

  He opened his door and led me into his room. It smelled fetid and closed up. There was junk all over his desk, and Rammstein and Donnie Darko posters on the walls. He had embraced the archetype, with one notable exception. Near the window was a tank full of bright fish, with veiled tails trailing behind them. They looked like the aquatic equivalent of Bratz dolls.

  ‘Hey girls,’ he said, and the fish seemed to flare up, moving skittishly around the tank and taking on more vivid colours. ‘It’s you. They don’t know you. You might be a threat. And that’s just the girls.’ We walked further in. ‘You can keep up to ten of them in one tank – the females – as long as you have plenty of weed for the non-dominant ones to hide in. Not the same with the boys though. They go crazy.’ The buckled drunken grin told me he liked the prospect of crazy. ‘Fancy goldfish. That’s what Mum reckons they are. She thinks I’ve got about three of them. And over there’s what she doesn’t know.’

  He led me across to the far side of the room. On the floor, on a trolley base that could slip under his bed, were another dozen fish, each in its own small compartment. They whipped around when they saw us, and puffed up and flared.

  ‘That’s the boys. It’s a barracks, a betta barracks.’ The consonants fell over each other on the way out, and he stopped to steady himself. ‘Betta’s the genus name. That’s how you keep the males.’ It was one large tank, with dividers marking out each fish’s territory and keeping them apart. ‘They’d rip each other to bits if you put them all in the one container. Like, totally to bits. There’d be nothing but fin debris.’

  He was impressed by the fury pent up in these small bright fish. Facts started coming out of him. He talked about their labyrinth organ, and how it made them halfway to a lung fish and meant they could survive in a small amount of stagnant water, even the water in a water buffalo’s hoof print. He told me the males made bubble nests when they were happy, and for breeding. One digression stumbled into another, with varying degrees of coherence. He opened a cupboard and showed me his stores of fish food, freeze-dried bloodworm, brine shrimp and a box labelled Hikari Betta Bio-Gold Bites.

  ‘Bloodworm,’ he said vaguely, squishing it around in the unopened packet. ‘They love their bloodworm.’

  I asked him who fed them when he and Annaliese were with their father and he said, ‘Oh, that’s never more than two nights, usually one. He’s, um, disengaged. I think that’s what we call it. I’m oppositional defiant – which covers all kinds of bad shit – and we call him disengaged. Because somehow the word cunt went out of fashion.’ He said it in a tough-guy way, but half choked on the big word and started to go red. He cleared his throat and his voice came back scratchy. There he was, a sneaky fish breeder who could barely swear, boasting about his badness and the label someone had given him. ‘I fast them then, when we’re with him. You’ve got to, anyway. Weekly. Give them the inside of a pea – one each – and then fast them. Constipation’s death to a betta. That’s a quote. I read it somewhere. A website, so, you know...’

  I didn’t know. The idea got stuck. I asked him what he did when he went on holidays with his father. He was gripping the back of his chair and leaning heavily against it. He stared in the direction of the female tank, but probably past it. His mind was off dwelling on some point connected with fish maintenance or trying to catch it as it drifted away in the boozy haze.

  ‘Hmm? That’s not how he is with holidays. He takes holidays from us, not with us. Disengaged.’ He was mustering up the courage to revisit the word that had made him blush. ‘ We might go on a holiday though. Mum and Liese and me. That could be a risk. I haven’t had them that long though, the bettas. I was hoping we’d get the right kind of new neighbour. Old man Novak wouldn’t have remembered, or done it right. Or kept his mouth shut. We go for weekends to my grand parents at the coast sometimes, but I pea the fish on Friday after school and we’re home by Sunday and they’re good with that.’

  In the next room, Annaliese was typing hard. She would be able to hear voices, but not any of the content. I was being enlisted as an accomplice to the secret fish farm.

  ‘It could all get a bit complicated when I start breeding though. That’s the plan. Breeding.’ He gazed down into the barracks at his boys. ‘The big plan. I need breeding tanks and vinegar eels and brine shrimp eggs. I’m not there yet. But I’ve got a buyer who’ll take them. A shop that’ll take them for five bucks each minimum. Reckons he can sell as many as I can get him.’

  Outside, at the front of the house, a car engine revved as it came closer. There was a squeak from the brakes, and the engine stopped.

  ‘Mum,’ he said, matter-of-factly. He smirked. ‘Now it starts.’

  ‘What about her roster? I thought you said she was on a late.’ I could hear Kate’s feet on the wooden front steps, her key in the lock.

  Mark drifted out of his room, his smirk now a see-sawing smile. ‘Yeah. I must have read it wrong. Sometimes you have to follow the line practically all the way across the page.’

  Kate called out ‘Hello’ as she swung the door open and, as she looked Mark up and down, I noticed again how drunk he was. I’d got used to the sway, the unusual amount of self-disclosure.

  ‘Annaliese,’ she said loudly.

  ‘Leave me alone.’ Annaliese’s voice came out still sounding angry, and she didn’t open her door. ‘I’m doing my homework. I’m having really bad period pain.’

  Mark stuck his fingers in his ears and went ‘La la la.’

  Kate frowned and said, ‘No you aren’t. It’s not...’

  ‘What? Now I have to prove it to you?’

  ‘No, no, sorry.’ Kate backed down. ‘It’s just that I thought ... doesn’t matter.’ She was now giving Mark her attention.

  ‘Special occasion,’ he said, slurring it more than he needed to.

  ‘Derek, Derek from the band, is back and staying at my place.’ I felt obliged to try to broker the best peace I could. ‘And the special occasion is that it’s not every day you meet a dickhead as big as Derek.’

  Mark went ‘Woo’ and punched the air, as if he’d accomplished something. He turned pale, quite abruptly. ‘And now I’m going to the toilet.’

  He crossed the room at an angle, moving quickly and like a worried crab, his right hand coming up to his mouth.

  ‘And you,’ Kate said, sizing me up as if I was a candidate for a TV show called When Good Influences Go Bad, ‘You seem sober.’

  ‘I was out of the house for an hour or so. I had no idea this would happen. Somehow, Derek and Mark found each other. Low-level mayhem ensued. I hadn’t had the chance to talk the special-occasion rule through with Derek.’

  She gave it some thought. ‘I need a cup of tea. We should have a cup of tea.’

  She put her bag down on the sofa and walked with purpose into the kitchen
.

  ‘I think it’ll be okay.’ I couldn’t work out why I’d said it. It would do no good.

  ‘Oh, really?’ She stopped, yanked open the pantry door. ‘Because you’re the expert when it comes to okay in these sorts of matters?’ She pulled out a box of tea bags and held it out for me to choose.

  ‘No, I mean, I think Mark will be okay.’ I pulled a bag out without looking. Another fell on the floor. ‘That can be mine. I mean with other things.’ I lowered my voice. ‘The money. Mark’s money. It’s essentially legitimate, and so is what he plans to do with it.’

  ‘What’s essentially legitimate? Why do you sound like a politician dancing around a big fat lie?’

  ‘Okay, fair point. It’s all legal. He writes for magazines. Pieces on a range of topics. For money.’ It was a trade-off. Put one issue to rest while another took its turn front and centre, show Kate things weren’t all bad. That was the rationale, though it was all about me, really, and Kate walking in to see me as an agent of disarray. ‘And some of the topics are, well, maybe fine. And others of them are a bit more like porn. Or pig killing.’

  She shuddered. There had been no good way to put it. ‘And the okay bit of this would be?’

  ‘He doesn’t kill anything. Or do the porn stuff. And he’s got a great imagination. That could take him a long way.’ Dance, politician, dance. Dance around the big fat lie. ‘And the money’s just for a hobby.’

  She unplugged the kettle, and took it to the sink. ‘A hobby? So, not some money-making venture? That’s not like him.’

  ‘Okay, it’s a hobby that crosses over into a moneymaking venture. Or may do if it works out.’

  ‘Mmm...’ She had her back to me as the kettle filled, but I was no less under scrutiny.

  ‘And it’s possible he may not go to a lot of trouble with the tax paperwork, but other than that it’s all okay. Right up there with cake stalls and garage sales. And that’s all I can say, or it’ll be a complete breach of trust.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘okay,’ perhaps relieved, perhaps not. She was thinking it through, actively wishing porn, pig killing, delinquency and jail out of his future, wanting to mother him out the other side of adolescence to something better. ‘He just ... His father does nothing with him, so this is what happens. There’s nothing acceptably male in his life. And then along comes Derek, and that works out really well.’

  Metres away, behind the half-closed bathroom door, Mark had started heaving his guts up into the toilet.

  ‘Well, maybe when Derek’s gone I could ... do something. Some non-drinking acceptably male thing.’ Annaliese was hiding in her room because of me. Mark had his head in the toilet because of me. It wasn’t much to offer to do something, though I had no idea what it might be.

  Kate looked past me towards the bathroom door. ‘Don’t feel obliged.’ She plugged the kettle in and pushed the switch down. Mark heaved again, and moaned. Kate opened her eyes wide, and shook her head. ‘I might go in there and check up on things. Such a good parent. It can’t all be down to Campbell, can it? One inexplicable tantrum, one too drunk for homework. It’s a great day on Gap Creek Road. Why don’t we all just put Child Safety on speed dial?’

  ‘You’re working on that?’ It was Derek’s voice, a cracked version of it that wasn’t ready to start the day. ‘That’s going to be really good. What are you going to do with it?’

  I was in the studio and Lost in Time, the song sent overnight by Gunnar and Øivind, was playing. I could see their point about getting Annaliese to do backing vocals, but I wasn’t sure now that it was ever going to happen. And that was a story that could not be explained to them by email, or ever.

  ‘Hey, this is me listening to it for the first time.’ I had ideas and I didn’t want to lose them. I was making notes. ‘I might have to give it some more thought. And shut the door or you’ll let the heat in.’

  I heard the door rumble and clunk, my attention still on my notes, and Derek came and sat next to me. For about a minute, he said nothing while I wrote. He swivelled the chair around a couple of times and then stopped and stifled a groan. I put my pencil down. He was, predictably, dishevelled, and in the clothes he had fallen asleep in the previous afternoon. His face was creased and his tan now appeared chemical and unhealthy. He was looking around the studio, seeing what I’d got for myself.

  ‘Hey, fuck, Space Invaders,’ he said, his voice still with a rasp in it, but not the sluggishness of before. ‘I’m going to kick your arse at this the second I’m in the time zone.’

  ‘The time zone? That’d be the place where you don’t drink all those beers, would it?’ If he was going to boast about kicking my arse, I was going to call his hangover what it was.

  ‘What?’ he said, not listening or not understanding. Or not caring.

  He rolled across to the game console on his chair. He gazed down at the glass, his hair hanging in front of his face. I wasn’t certain if he was going to play, sleep or vomit. I picked up my pencil and tried to go back to work.

  He fumbled around, and I heard a switch click and then the familiar blast of electric alien noises that said the machine had come to life. My ideas for the Splades were rapidly losing their clarity, and they disappeared completely as his game began in a clatter of erratic knob work and klutzy firing. It all went wrong fast. He took the aliens out piecemeal and they descended and monstered him.

  ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘It used to last longer, right?’

  ‘I think you forgot the key level-one tactic about knocking the aliens out in columns.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’ He was staring down at the screen as the sample game appeared and started playing. ‘It’s the chair that’s the problem. You shouldn’t do it on a chair with castors.’

  ‘Well, you just let me know when you want to kick my arse, okay?’

  It was as if we had found ourselves straight back on tour. I could hear my own smugness, but I couldn’t seem to stop it. All this over a twenty-cent arcade game from the late seventies.

  ‘Mitchell Froom’s place is a bit more settled than this,’ he said, looking at the unruly cables and the boxes I hadn’t yet unpacked. ‘But I guess you’ve just moved in.’

  ‘So, he’s producing your new stuff?’

  He looked non-committal. That meant the answer was almost certainly no. The mere name drop was to put me in my place. Mitchell Froom was a legend, I was the newbie being tried out on the Splades.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s early days. Early days in this new post-band-implosion life.’ He pushed some streaky hair out of his face, and yawned. ‘He’s got a great set-up though. None of that big-studio shit. You get to use, like, the actual kitchen. He’s got great snack food. You could learn a thing or two from Mitchell Froom about snack food. There’s this almond thing...’

  Weariness meant that he lost interest, and let the self-aggrandising anecdote slide. He gave another big yawn, and stretched his arms up in the air. His hands settled on the back of his head. His eyes looked watery.

  ‘And, just like at Mitchell’s place, here you get to use the actual kitchen. In which I could make you some French toast for breakfast, if you happened to be so inclined.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said emphatically. ‘Yes. French toast. Definitely so inclined.’ He stood up, as if his body had new anti-gravity energy already. ‘I knew I was staying here for a reason.’

  My notes were scrawled, I realised. I’d written them too quickly, and didn’t know if they’d make sense when I got back to them. Derek pulled the door open, stepped into the glare with his hand up to his eyes and led the way to the kitchen.

  He sat at the table while I whisked.

  ‘Mmm, it’s that cunning blend of herbs and spices,’ he said rustily, his chin on his hand.

  ‘I think you’ll find that’s KFC. But thank you. Vanilla, cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg, and then a good long soak.’ My Delia Smith side came out of nowhere, flushed out by Derek’s haphazard way of put ting it. Ev
en when he really liked something, he would only half-try when it came to turning it into words. I had never been able to resist correcting him, however prim it made me sound. I lowered the first piece of bread into the egg mixture.

  ‘That Splades stuff...’ He was gazing past me, out the window. ‘You could go well with that. With a bit of luck.’ He swirled his coffee around, picking up foam that had caked to the inside of the cup. ‘I liked the kid next door.’

  ‘You don’t remember the kid next door.’ I turned the bacon, swirled the bread in the mixture.

  ‘Sure I do.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  There was a pause as he gave it serious consideration, his eyes as blank and defocused as a doll’s. ‘You know I’m not a name person. And I’m waking up very slowly.’

  ‘Mark. His name is Mark.’ The bread hit the pan with a sizzle.

  ‘Mmm. French toast.’

  ‘Okay, Homer. We’re only minutes away now.’ I made room for the second piece of bread and dropped it into the pan. ‘You should remember his name because we’ve been invited around there for dinner tonight, unless you have other plans.’ It had been Kate’s idea at a time when Mark’s vomiting was reaching a crescendo, and I would have said yes to anything. ‘Mark was hurling so much when I left yesterday I could have sworn I heard his pancreas hit the bowl.’

  ‘Mmm. Sweetbread.’

  I put the tongs down and laughed. Derek’s creased face smiled.

  ‘The point, Homer, is that havoc was wreaked. Young Markie brought up internal organs, and tonight we’re showing him it doesn’t have to be that way. Try to imagine it – you, sober, substance-free and behaving like a decent human being.’

  ‘Or what? I get time on the naughty step?’ He gave another yawn. ‘Geez, is there no caffeine in this coffee? We’re not starting the substance-free thing now, are we? I can be quite dislikeable substance-free.’ There was a free shot on offer, and this time I was going to be the good host and decline to take it. ‘Do we really have to? Is this, like, locked in?’ I wished it wasn’t. I wished guilt hadn’t got the better of me. It seemed like the worst, most dangerous way to spend an evening, dragging Derek next door to try out his smarm-and-charm routine on a wounded Annaliese and a shitty Kate.