Peter Markus - Bob, or Man on Boat

Then he says, Is Bob going to go to China?

I guess he does know what China is.

I don’t think so, I tell him.

On the TV the clay clown is juggling three clay fish.

Did you catch any fish? he asks.

A couple, I say. Want to see them? One’s got some pretty big teeth on him.

Maybe later, he says.

He turns back to face the TV.

Some nights it’s hard to get my own son to bite.

In bed, that night, my wife says it again.

I didn’t marry a fisherman.

She turns over onto her side.

Her back is to my belly.

Like that, she reaches over and turns out the light.

That night, I have a dream with Bob fishing in it.

In this dream, I am fishing with Bob.

I am fishing in Bob’s boat.

Bob is teaching me how to fish.

He is pointing to places in the river where, he says, there are always more than just one fish for a man to fish up.

Then Bob says to me, Hold out your hands.

So I hold out my hands.

He takes my hands into his own.

He looks down at my hands.

I can tell that he is looking.

I look down at his.

His hands are scaled and webbed.

His hands are fins.

I pull my hands away from Bob.

What’s the matter? Bob asks me. Haven’t you ever shaken hands with a fish?

I shake my head no.

That’s your problem, Bob tells me.

Bob turns, then, and just like that, Bob jumps out of his boat.

Into the river.

Bob swims away.

And I’m left alone, then, floating down the river, here in Bob’s boat.

In the morning, I boat my boat over to Bob’s boat.

Bob is not in it.

I look around for Bob.

Mornings, Bob usually spends cleaning fish.

The sun is on the river.

The sun makes a mist on the top of the river.

Bob, I call out.

My voice is a stone that skips across the river.

I ask a man in a fishing boat if he has seen Bob.

He shakes his head nope.

I go home.

Home, I pick up the phone.

I don’t know what or who I should call. Or what I would say if I had to say it.

That Bob is not in his boat?

That in my dream Bob had become a fish?

That afternoon, I get in my truck and go down the road that goes down to the river.

Down to the river where Bob lives.

I want to see if Bob is back home in his boat.

He is.

Bob’s boat is back to being Bob’s boat.

Bob’s boat, when Bob is not on it, it goes back to being just another boat on the river.

I see Bob hunched over, sitting on a turned-over bucket, gutting the guts out of his fish.

The guts of the fish, Bob throws the guts back into the river.

Bob believes that the guts of the fish, when you give them back to the river, the guts turn back into fish.

There are boats on the river with people on them who do not fish.

The river, to these people on board these boats, it is just a place for them to swim in, it is a place for them to cool down during the heat that is the summer.

Summer days, Bob watches these boats and these people speed on by, going to where Bob doesn’t know.

Sometimes these boats, the people on these boats, when they motor on by Bob in his boat, they holler out to Bob for Bob to get out of their way.

Bob doesn’t holler anything back.

Bob doesn’t bother.

Bob isn’t bothered too much by these boats.

Bob knows that, in a couple of years, those boats won’t be out on the river getting in Bob’s way.

Those boats will be put up on trailers, they’ll be stored away in somebody’s backyard garage.

The people who own these stored-away boats, they’ll cover up these boats with tarps to keep them from getting dusty.

Bob knows what keeps a boat from getting dusty.

A boat is like a fish.

When you take a boat out of the river.

It is no longer a boat.

It becomes something else.

A boat is not a boat, Bob knows, unless it’s a boat floating out on the river.

Bob’s boat is always out on the river.

The only time Bob takes his boat out of the water is if Bob has to fix a leak.

Even in winter, when the river turns to ice, Bob keeps his boat out there on the river.

In the winter, the river becomes something else besides a river.

The river becomes a river made out of ice.

In the winter, Bob cuts out chunks from the ice so that he can keep on fishing, even though it’s cold.

Some days it’s so cold out on the river, in the winter, that Bob’s hands turn to ice.

But underneath the ice, the river is still there, it is still forever flowing.

And so are the fish.

Where the river is the fish will always be.

Where the river is and where the fish are is where you’ll find Bob fishing for fish.

This is something you can count on.

Where the river is.

Up above the fish.

There is Bob.

Here is Bob now.

Bob is sitting on the ice on a bucket that is turned over on the ice so that Bob can sit down on it.

When Bob isn’t sitting on the ice on a bucket, Bob is on his knees kneeling down on the ice.

The ice here is sixteen inches thick.

Ice this thick is thick enough for a man like Bob to jump up and down on it.

This is ice that if Bob had a pickup truck, Bob could drive it out onto this ice.

But Bob does not have a pickup truck to drive out on this ice with.

Bob does not even have a pickup truck for him to drive into town with.

Bob does not need a pickup truck.

The river is Bob’s road.

And a boat is all that Bob needs.

When Bob needs to go into town, to sell his fish, to get gas for his boat, to get whatever else he can’t get from the river — a new pair of boots, maybe, or new laces for his old pair of boots, or maybe to get himself something other than water to drink—

Bob walks.

Up from the river.

Up the muddy road.

Into town.

You can always tell when Bob comes into town.

You can always tell where Bob has walked when Bob comes walking into town.

It’s the mud that gives Bob away.

It’s that trail of muddy boot tracks that begins at the river’s edge and ends in the middle of where town is.

Or else these muddy tracks begin in the middle of where town is and end at the river’s edge.

Down where Bob’s boat is.

It all depends on how you look.

The Bob who walks into town, to sell off his fish, to get gas for his boat, to get whatever else he can’t get from the river — a new pair of boots, et cetera, et cetera:

This Bob is a fish out of water.

There was a time when Bob wasn’t a fish out of water.