Adam Johnson - Parasites Like Us

Ahead, only one shadow sat exposed to the elements, and this was Farley Crow Weather, whom I’d known off and on nearly all my life, and who’d recently helped me settle my stepmother’s estate. There are only two things you need to know about Farley.

The first is that, in general, he is impervious to cold. It was a different story for me. The wind buffed my scalp to brass, then stropped my ears sharp. Walking amid the scramble of blowing snow, I dropped my head, observing that it was cold enough to freeze the ice clear and colorless — there was enough morning light now to illuminate clouds of lake algae glinting under the surface.

There used to be a fish out here called a white sauger, though they always looked pinkish to me. They loved the light and took little interest in people — if you walked clear patches of ice like this on a cold afternoon, you’d see their moony humps cruising the underside of the ice, occasionally stopping to pick at bits of food trapped in the crags beneath your feet. It was a dopey sort of fish, slow-moving, with fat cheeks and small lips, and when I was about eleven, a couple of jokers discovered that by lowering giant red lights through the ice they could net sauger by the bushel. In one season, they cleaned the lake out, and I haven’t heard of one since.

I was endlessly fascinated by this nightly scene, and I confess I wasn’t thinking about the fates of fish. Each night, after dinner, I’d bundle up and climb the flood levees to watch these fellows work. They coordinated all variety of pulleys and cords before lowering an immense assembly into the dark water, while I waited for the moment they hit the power.

I suppose there was a reason I was drawn to this sight. I was antsy for adulthood to begin. I hoped that when it did I would be dependent on no one, that the weak half of me — the half that needed, that felt something was always missing, that feared anything good could end, without notice or reason — would simply calve away. So I believed my father when he said my body would one day change, and after that, it was only a matter of following instincts. Life was something to squirm through until, easily and suddenly, a switch was thrown and a light came on. Sitting on a winter levee, I was never surprised by this moment. Instead, it felt both ancient and familiar: the entire lake would ignite a luminescent red, deep and glowing, crusted like lava, and it felt like proof of the primal scenes my science books had promised, as if I were witnessing the original cooling of the earth.

Farley hailed me. He was sitting on an upturned five-gallon bucket with an official fishing-derby entrant number pinned to his sleeve. There was an extra bucket sitting there. I’d brought my own bucket, and I wondered if he was expecting company.

“Hey, where ya been?” Farley asked in that accent of his. “Fish’re up.”

“Took the scenic route,” I told him. “How was your big date?”

“What, the other night? I don’t know what I was thinking, taking a court-appointed psychologist to dinner. That morning, when I had her on the stand, I thought we had some chemistry. I thought she was giving me more than testimony. But I spent half the night answering questions about my mother, and all I got in return was a dream interpretation.”

We sat side by side, staring at six holes, the derby limit, spread out before us. Each hole had a tilt-up reel that would raise a little flag when a fish was on the line. Every few minutes, someone would have to get up and ladle new ice out of the holes.

“You told her your dreams, on a first date?”

Farley shrugged. Below the promontory of his crew cut, his face was composed of subtle plateaus, capable of evoking a great range of emotion that you rarely saw. It wasn’t stoicism, but an acknowledgment that most of what people said was unimportant, and this endeared him to me. And, from time to time, amid some chitchat, the planes of his face would suddenly soften, and you’d realize you’d just said something that mattered.

“Just the fish dream. I guess it wasn’t even a date, was how it turned out.”

Farley said this, then got up to clean holes. He scooped out the ice chips and dumped them on the icy mounds that formed next to each hole. It sounds like a routine chore, but Farley had his method. First, he’d place his feet wide and bend down, so his face was near the hole. He’d scoop, then peer deep into the water, scoop, then peer, as if he were removing a veil of less transparent water, skimming off the curds of the physical world, so he could behold a sweeter one below. This brings me to the second thing you need to know about Farley:

He believed the king of all fish lived at the bottom of our lake. This fish was small and either golden or orange, depending on the dream. It could speak, was full of wisdom, and would tell you your secret story, as long as you asked its permission before catching it. I didn’t quite know what to make of all this. It wasn’t a Native American thing, as far as I could tell. Farley said that when he was a boy his mother used to tell him the story of this fish, and after she left he started dreaming of it. I admit I like the idea that we have secret stories, that they might be revealed if we’re patient and polite. I asked Farley once, if we were living in another town, fishing on another lake, would his golden fish live there? After thinking about it, Farley said probably.

Farley moved to scoop out another hole, and I pulled my thermos out of the bucket. Unscrewing the metal lid made a dry squeak with each twist, sort of a haspy sound. Before I had it off, the crickets in Farley’s bait bucket were answering. They were inside a folded paper takeout carton, the kind with the wire handle you get at Chinese places, and for a moment, I played my thermos lid like an instrument, listening to them sing.

“Out of curiosity,” I said, “I was wondering, the other day, what are the laws on killing animals? You know about that stuff?”

Farley looked at me, scooping. “Well. It’s illegal to harm a companion animal, though technically they’re still property.”

“What about over at Hormel?”

Farley came and sat down. “You can’t cause intentional suffering to any animal, even livestock, though a violation at Hormel would be USDA jurisdiction, rather than a criminal infraction.”

“But you can kill livestock, legally?” I asked, filling a plastic cup of coffee for Farley, the metal one for myself.

“Sure.”

“What about someone else’s livestock?”

Now Farley eyed me with interest. “I’d have to look it up,” he said. “Could be theft, could be rustling, I suppose.”

I took a sip of coffee and set it down, trying to seem off the cuff.

“Let’s say the pig just got sick, no one knows how it died.”

“What pig?”

“Any pig, a hypothetical pig.”

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Farley asked.

“What about hunting?”

“Hunting livestock? For sport?”

“Forget that. Let’s say a wildcat, a big puma, comes and kills the pig.”

Farley nodded. “That could be an act of God.”

“Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s say there’s a wild man, and he’s from a land far away, and he doesn’t know our laws, and—”

Farley lifted his hand. “And you were just curious if this strange traveler could legally murder a hypothetical pig? This ‘wild man’ wouldn’t be a student of yours, would he?”

I got up to scoop ice.

“What’s he gone and done now?”

“Nothing,” I said. I waved the scooper. “What?”

“You fool.” Farley said, “That kid has all of you smoked, your whole university. You’re gonna give him a Ph.D. in camping. My grandfather was living the Old Way even when I was a kid. And he didn’t smell, eh? You know I caught your boy Eggers drinking out of a hose once, right there on the courthouse lawn. My paw-paw didn’t drink from any hose.”