Peter Markus - Bob, or Man on Boat

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 ate 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.

I can’t imagine Bob doing anything besides fishing for his fish.

The river, without Bob out on it, in Bob’s boat, fishing for fish, the river, it wouldn’t be the same river.

It wouldn’t be the same river that it is when Bob is out on this river fishing for his fish.

The river, without Bob on it, fishing in his boat, the river, it wouldn’t even be a river.

Now that I am imagining this, the river, this is what I believe would happen to it.

The river, if Bob was not out on it, it would turn, first to mud, then to dirt.

And the fish in the river?

The fish would turn to stone.

But that’s not going to happen.

Not to this river.

Not to Bob.

Not to the fish that Bob is fishing this river for.

Bob, when one day Bob finds and fishes out of the river that one fish that will teach him and tell him what to do next, what this fish is going to tell Bob, at least the way that I imagine it happening, is this fish is going to tell Bob to keep on fishing for fish.

And this fish, for saying this, for telling Bob to keep on fishing for fish, the river, it will kiss this fish.

This river, it will throw this fish back.

Back into the river.

Go fish.

Oh, if you teach a man to fish.

The river becomes his home.

The dead man isn’t alone.

There are other men who’ve fallen into, there are others who have drowned in this river that is ours.

There are other men, too, who’ve gone down to the river, who have walked out into the river, and these other men some of the time did not come walking back.

Even Bob can’t walk on water.

Even Bob needs a boat if he wants to cross over to the river’s other side.

Except in the winter.

In the winter, when the river freezes over, Bob can walk across to the river’s other side.

There are people in town who like to sit out in the cold out on the iced over river and fish for fish through the winter’s ice.

In the winter, when the river freezes over, Bob walks out onto the ice by his boat and Bob digs a hole.

Bob digs a hole into the ice.

Through the ice.

Into this hole, Bob fishes.

Up through this hole in the river, Bob fishes up these winter river fish.

Bob fills up his buckets with these fish.

When the fish are fished up out of the river, fished up onto the ice, the fish, with the river still wet on them, they too turn to ice.

In the winter, Bob grows a beard that is white.

Some days, when it’s really cold, it looks as though Bob’s beard has grown six inches in a single day.

Days like these, there are icicles hanging from the hairs of Bob’s winter white beard.

There are other times, though, in the winter, when the ice on the river isn’t thick enough to hold a man the size of Bob up.

Sometimes people fishing through the ice fall through the ice.

Into the river they go.

It’s not the river that does these people in.

It’s the cold of the river.

The heart, in this kind of cold, it freezes up.

Sometimes, the bodies of those who fall through the ice won’t be found until springtime.

In spring the river goes back to being a river again that not even Bob can walk across.

Which is why Bob lives on a boat.

A man on a river needs a boat.

A boat to cross the river in when a man is fishing for fish.

Which is why I bought the dead man’s boat off of the dead man’s wife after his boat was found by those two boys down the way a bit on that other river down in Ohio.