Peter Markus - Bob, or Man on Boat

He nods his boy head yes.

Daddy, he says.

Yes, buddy boy.

He tells me, You are the fish.

I’m the fish?

His eyes close and go back into that other place.

He is seeing something none of us can see now.

I say to myself, I am the fish.

I whisper those words, I am the fish.

Then I say, again, to my son, Go to sleep.

This is all that I can say to my son for telling me I am a fish.

Daddy, he says, after a little bit of nothing.

What’s up, buddy boy?

I don’t want you to be a fish.

I am a fish.

I am a fish.

That night, I sleep out on the sofa.

I try to sleep but I cannot sleep.

I close my eyes and try counting the fish swimming around inside my head.

There are more fish in my head than there are stars up in the sky.

All night long all I hear is the sound of these words:

I am a fish.

I am a fish.

I am a fish.

This, and the sound of my son’s voice saying to me, his father, I don’t want you to be a fish.

So I take the next few nights of fishing off.

I don’t go out onto the river.

On one of these nights, we go out for dinner.

As a family.

When I order fish and chips, my wife shakes her head.

She says, You and your fish.

For supper on one of these other nights, I fry up some fish fished up out of the river.

My son looks at me from across the table as I am eating up this fish.

I can tell that he is thinking.

He doesn’t say what it is he is thinking about.

When I ask him if the fish tastes good, he says that it’s tasty.

I fry up the fish in lots of butter.

My son likes to watch me fry up the fish.

He likes to watch me clean the fish.

He likes to watch me gut the fish.

The guts of the fish, we do not throw the guts into the garbage.

We do not throw them back into the river the way that Bob does the guts of his fish.

My wife has a garden out back in our backyard.

I dig a hole in the dirt in this garden and we bury the guts back here.

At the end of summer, you should see it: my wife has the biggest, reddest tomatoes that God has ever seen.

That night, my son wakes up in the middle of the night crying from a bad dream.

We run into his room, turn on the light.

It was just a dream, my wife tells him. It wasn’t real.

She pets his head.

I want to know, What was the dream about?

My wife gives me this look that says, What does it matter? It’s just a dream.

I dreamed we were fish, is what my son tells me.

We lived in the river.

Hey, now, I say, that doesn’t sound so bad.

I tell him, I can think of worse places for fish to live.

I want to know, so I ask him, What kind of fish were we?

He shakes his head that he doesn’t know.

Was I a big fish?

He nods his head to tell me yes.

I was a little fish, he says.

And then he says, And you were trying to eat me.

Oh, sweetheart, my wife says to this. I’m sorry, she says.

What I say is, I was trying to eat you?

That’s when I woke up, my boy says.

He says, his bottom lip quivering, But I didn’t want you to eat me.

I wouldn’t want me to eat you either, I say.

I pick him up, give him a big fish hug.

I lick the tears off his face.

You do taste pretty salty, I say.

It hits me one night.

Maybe my son is right.

Maybe I am a fish.

Bob’s fish.

The fish that Bob is out on the river fishing for this fish.

Bob is out on the river right now fishing for this fish.

I know this even though I am not out on the river with him.

I am in bed with my wife.

I am trying to get some sleep.

When I close my eyes, I can see Bob, out on the river, out on his boat, fishing for this fish.

When Bob cooks his fish, he cooks them over an open fire right there on the river’s bank.

Bob eats fish.

That’s all he eats.

Twice a day.

Fish.

And more fish.

There are those in this town who believe that Bob eats the parts of the fish that most of us don’t eat.

The head.

The tail.

The bones.

I don’t know about this.

But I do know this:

That the part of the fish that Bob does eat, even before he cooks up the fish, is the fishes’ eyes.

The fishes’ eyes, when Bob eats them, Bob believes, they help Bob to better see.

Down inside the river.

So that Bob can see like a fish.

There are some people in this town who believe that Bob fishes with nets.

How else can one fishing man catch so many fish? is what these people like to ask.

These people who ask this about Bob, they have never seen Bob fish.

These people who ask this about Bob only see Bob when Bob comes into town with his buckets of fish hanging heavy from his wrists.

These people have only heard the stories that some people in this town like to make up about Bob because these people do not know who Bob really is.

These stories about Bob, they are just stories.

These stories are all lies.

This story that I am right now telling you, about Bob, it is not a lie.

It is true.

This is the true story of Bob.

The story of Bob who lived in a boat on a river.

This man who loved and lived to fish.

When Bob sleeps, out on the river, out on his boat, Bob sleeps sitting up.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if Bob is sleeping, or if Bob is just sitting there in his boat not sleeping.

Bob sleeps when the sun is not sleeping.

Bob sleeps when the fish in the river like to sleep.

My son sleeps with the light on.

This is something new.

Ever since he had that dream where he and I were fish.

That dream where I, his own father, tried to eat him.

The light in his room burns all night long.

At night, when I am out on the river, I can see this light shining out.

It is like a lighthouse light.

This is the light that lets me know, when I’m coming in from the river, that I am almost, that I am coming, that I am going, home.

Going home, for Bob, is going out onto the river.

Home, for Bob, is Bob being out on the river, is Bob being out on his boat.

The moon shining its light down upon the river the moon, it is Bob’s lighthouse.

And the stars in the sky, the stars are the eyes of the fish that Bob has yet to eat.