Peter Markus: The Fish and the Not Fish

One day the boys in our town took some fur from some things that we found run down dead on the side of the road, this road that runs its way through and out of our town, and we stuck this fur with dirt and mud so that it stuck to the skin on Bird’s back. The fur, we thought, would make Bird look more like a bird and less like a boy and this would help him to fly. We took dirt and mud and mixed in the fur with it — black and white and brown, all mixed to make a shade like the sky at dawn when the birds like to wake up and sing — till it stuck to the skin on Bird’s back. The fur, it did, it made Bird look more like a bird than he did when he did not have fur stuck with mud and dirt to the skin on his back. Some of us boys said, so that Bird could not hear it, that Bird looked more like a dog — a dead dog run down on the side of a road — than he did like a bird, but if you want to know the truth, what Bird looked most of all like was like a boy who had the fur of some dead things stuck, with mud and with dirt, to the skin on the back of his boy back.

One day Bird came to school with twigs and leaves and bits of bark stuck to the clothes on his back. It looked as if he’d had a fight with a tree and the tree was what won out.

The next day Bird came to school wet from head to foot as if he got caught in the rain.

It had not rained for three weeks, not a drop. The grass in our town had all turned to dirt.

Sir gave Bird a rag that was used to wipe the black slate that Sir wrote on in chalk all of those things that boys like us did not need to know and then Sir told Bird who the past two days had been late for school to dry his head and his hands off. Bird took it, the rag, and held it in his hand. What we thought was rain dripped off of Bird’s head and back and pooled there at his bare feet.

The sea, the sea, the sea, the sea.

This was the word and the sound that Bird made with his mouth, more than just once, though he said it so low Sir could not hear it.

Where, do tell, are your shoes? Sir said this to Bird when he saw what we saw too.

This school, Sir said to Bird, it is not some barn. I’m not here to teach you how to milk cows.

A few of us laughed when Sir said what he did. Those of us who did not laugh gave those who did looks.

The sea, the sea, Bird said, to make it now six times that Bird had said these sea words, though once more Sir did not hear it.

The rest of us in class did not know what to make of what or why Bird said what he did.

What did Bird mean when he said what he said: The sea, the sea, the sea.

What did boys like us know of that place called the sea? The sea was not the kind of a place that boys like us had been to see.

The road out of town, we’d been told, by Sir and by men like Sir who were here to teach us those things that we did not need to know, if you took it as far as it will go, we got told, it ends up at the sea.

That much we knew.

We’d been told what got told.

But we knew, too, that there was more for us to know of a place such as the sea than just this.

The sea was a big place, this we knew, as big as the sky, a place too big for eyes like ours to see it with just one look.

When we’d close our eyes to see it, what we’d see was a place like the sky, it was as blue as the sky, a blue for boys like us, in our eyes, to swim in.

It took Bird all day for him to say to us, when he could, what it was that he had to say.

The sea, Bird said, his skin gone white where the rain had been on it. It is time to go see the sea.

Bird sang out, so loud this time so Sir too could hear it, It is time to go see the sea.

When Sir heard Bird say that it was time to go see the sea, Sir turned to us and told us, In your dreams you will see the sea.

Sir was right.

That night, each one of us boys, we dreamed we were at the sea. We stood at the sea’s edge and looked out and looked up: at the sky, at the black. The moon in this sky was a fish.

We fished.

We caught fish that, when we touched them, when we took out the hooks, they all turned, in our hands, to stars.

This fire did not burn us.

But the stars in our hands left their mark.

We took this as a sign.

At school, the next day, we each of us held out our hands for each of us to see.

We each of us said, Last night I had a dream.

We were boys who did not talk of our dreams.

We were not boys who made much of the dreams that we dreamed.

Bird was the one boy of us who did, who dreamed.

Bird’s dream was, we knew, to fly.

And so he flew.

Bird flew to see the sea.

Bird dreamed this dream for us.

Bird dreamed this dream with us.

To the sea, we knew, Bird would take us.

We just had to find out where he was. Bird was not at school that day. When we looked in all the trees that Bird liked to sit in, Bird was not perched up in the trees where we looked up to find him.

When we found Bird, where we found Bird, Bird was on the ground with his legs crossed at the knees.

Bird, we said. Bird.

We said, We all dreamed the same dream.

And then one by one we told him the dream.

We held out our hands so that Bird could see what the stars had left in our hands.

Bird looked up at us with his bird eyes that liked to look through what they looked at.

Then Bird held out his hands for us to see.

In one hand, his left, there was a mark in the shape of a star.

In his right hand, with an eye shaped like a moon that looked up at us, there was a fish.

Bird took this fish and put it in his mouth.

Bird bit the fish head off of this fish.

Then he held out the rest of this fish for the rest of us to eat it.

We ate it.

Bird sang as we ate what we ate.

Once we ate, we held our mouths in the shape of an O.

Out of these holes in our heads, no words came out.

There were just sounds.

When Bird heard these sounds, Bird stood up from the ground.

Bird looked at us with this look.

There was this look that Bird liked to look at us with.

It was the kind of a look that felt as if Bird could look right through us with this look.

We wish you could see this look.

We turned back to see what Bird had just looked at, or what it was Bird had seen when he looked this look right through us.

There was just the road that ran its way out of our town on its way to end at the sea.

There was just the dirt of the road with just the dirt of the road on it back there for us to see.

Bird walked out to the edge of this road.

Then he turned and walked out on it.

The sea, Bird sang, is blue by day, but at night the sea turns black.

Where the train tracks crossed this road that ran its way out of town on its way out to the sea, this was where our town came to its end and the rest of the world got its start at.

Here we stood, all of us boys, and knew that the road ran through us.

In two rows of four boys in each of our rows, we crossed from our world out to see the next.

Our names?

You want us now to give you names?

There’s Burke and Holt, Welsh and Locke, Clark and Spur and Fisk. That’s eight when you add me to the mix.

My name’s Link.

You can call me The Boy Who Lived To Tell This Tale.

Bird makes us nine.

We are nine and there are nine of us on this road that runs its way out of our town on its way out to the sea.

The road that runs its way out of town on its way out to the sea, it is made out of dirt and rock and dirt and rock. When we walk, we make dust. When it rains, we make mud for us to cool our skins with. When it rains, we make mud for us to eat.