Peter Markus - The Fish and the Not Fish

On blue bikes the two boys rode. At night. Down the street. In the dark. Side by side. Like this these boys made sounds with their mouths that birds like to make at the break of each day. Caw. Caw. Who. Who. It was their song. They sang as they biked, side by side, in the dark, down the street, to go see what they’d sneaked out to see.

See the boys go.

Hear their tune.

Here they come now.

They don’t slow down. Not till they get to that place where they’ve come to go to.

A house.

A girl.

Two boys.

Jane, they call out, in the dark, up to this house. This house is red and made out of brick. Its roof is black. One light burns and shines out at the dark that is the June night.

It is Jane. She stands where she is, in the door, where she looks out through the dark at two boys whose names to her are You and Him.

You and Him live in a blue house with a mom and a dad who call both boys by name.

Jim, they say. John.

Jim and John are twin boys but they don’t look the same.

Jim has blue eyes.

John’s eyes are brown like the dirt.

There is more to how these boys don’t look the same, but for now this is all that you need to see.

Two boys.

Two bikes.

Blue eyes and brown.

A house.

Night.

A girl.

Jane.

Jane lives with an aunt who calls her Sis when she wakes her up to say that it’s time for Jane to wake up.

Jane would like to sleep by day.

By the light of day there is too much for Jane to have to look at.

In the dark of night Jane can look at what she wants her own eyes to see.

Jane, like Jim, has eyes that are blue.

Blue as the blue sky is blue. Blue as the sky’s blue is blue. It is blue too.

That’s how blue Jane’s eyes are blue when Him and You look at them in the blue light of the day.

At night Jane waits for You and Him to ride by her red house on blue bikes that make the dark turn on and off like a blue light.

I’m here, Jane says, though she does not have to say it out loud with these words.

When Jane steps out in the dark, there is a light from her face that this light it shines right out.

It lights its light on these two boys who Jane calls Him and You.

These two boys stand up on their bikes.

Jim and John.

You and Him.

Jane steps up and hops up on the seat of one blue bike.

This night it is Jim’s.

You, Jane says, to Jim.

Jim does not say a word back.

Jim nods.

But Him says with his mouth, First one to the creek gets a kiss.

With this, both boys ride on, and the wheels on both bikes hiss and hum like lips pressed tight in the night.

This night, Him gets to the creek first.

Kiss me, Him says, to Jane, and he stands up from his bike.

Jane jumps off of You’s bike. She runs down to the creek. She jumps in the creek’s dark.

The creek’s dark is made out of dirt.

Dirt like the eyes that are John’s.

There is no creek for Jane to get her feet wet with.

Jane drops down on her hands and knees and Jane takes up in her girl hand a hand full of dirt that she makes like it is creek that she lets splash in and on her girl face.

The boys watch Jane, the girl that she is, play like this in the dirt.

In the dark, dirt rains down on Jane’s look up at the sky girl face.

The moon in the sky makes all of this lit up so that the boys can see it when they look.

They look.

They watch Jane look up.

Kiss me, Jane says, to the boys, to the dirt, to eyes that are both like the dirt of the creek and like the sky that you see by day.

Him jumps in with Jane first. He got to the creek first. What’s fair is fair is a thing that You and Him both know.

Him makes his lips like a fish. Waits for the kiss. Shuts his eyes to the dark.

In the dark Him sees Jane come in close.

She is like a fish on two legs, born from some place on this earth where the sea used to be but now there is just plain dirt.

When they kiss, Him hears a sound in his ear like the sound a shell likes to make when it’s washed up on some shore.

Hmmm, Him thinks, and he makes this word with his mouth, so loud that You too, with his back backed up to some tree, You too can hear it.

We got to go, You calls out. He kicks at the dirt. Kicks at the tree. Looks at the look on Him’s face.

He has seen this look more than once in his life and he wants it back on his own face.

Go where? is what Him wants to know. Him knows he has the look on his face.

To the bridge, You says, and he gets back on his bike. You Know Who said she might be there.

You Know Who is a girl that Him and You know from the time they biked out to the road that runs out of town to the town that is next to the town that is theirs and then it dead ends where there are train tracks that run through this town that is next to the town that Him and You and Jane say this town is ours though these are tracks, more rust than they are steel, that have not seen trains run on them in all the years since Him and You and Jane were born to be two boys and a girl here in this town.

There is in this town a bridge that runs on top of where the creek is and it is here that Him and You and the girl named Jane go to go see if the girl named You Know Who might be there.

You Know Who has a real name and that real name of hers is Sam.

Sam is not short for a name that is more like a girl’s name. It’s the name that Sam’s dad gave her and called her by from the day that he learned that he was soon to be a dad.

Sam’s dad, whose name is Sam too, thought that what was in that girl who was not yet his wife was a boy who would take his name and make him proud to be a Sam.

Sam, Sam’s dad said, and he laid his hand where he thought Sam was, there in that spot where when Sam’s mom laid down in her bed she used to lay flat as a thin sheet of wood.

When Sam was born a girl and not as a boy, Sam’s dad did what most dads do not.

He turned.

He ran.

He did not come back.

All he left Sam was her name.

You Know Who is Sam’s new name in the eyes and mouth of You and Him.

When Sam first told Him and You what her name was, that day when they first saw her out on the road that runs out of town, Him and You, or Jim and John, what they said to Sam was that Sam did not look like what they thought a Sam should look like, and so they said they’d give her a new name to be known by, but they did not know what new name to call her yet, so they have since called her by the name You Know Who. When Him and You say You Know Who, they both know who they mean. The girl who used to be Sam but is now that girl You Know Who.

You Know Who is not where You and Him thought she might be. When they get to the bridge where they thought that You Know Who might be there, all they see is a bridge with no You Know Who by it. So they go. They go on their bikes to a bridge on the cross side of town where You Know Who lives with a mom and a man named Bob who is not You Know Who’s dad.

You Know Who’s house is a green house with a red door that makes it look like a stuck out tongue on a face if you drew a house with paint that looked like a face. It has a white fence out front that is made out of wood. It leans both ways and is a fence that could not keep a dog in its yard if that is why a fence was put up in front of this house back in the first place.

There is no dog that lives in this house or in the back of this yard here at You Know Who’s house. It’s just You Know Who and You Know Who’s mom whose own name is Pam who live here in this house with a man whose own name is Bob.

This man whose own name is Bob, when he was a kid, he liked to fish, but now in this town there is no place for a kid or for a man like Bob to go down to it to fish.