Amelia Gray - Museum of the Weird

The tortoise dug in with his claws, pulled himself into the seat and turned around to face the hare, crushing the flowers taped to his back in the process. His breathing was laborious. “I hear you are dying,” the tortoise said.

That’s a delicate way to put it, thought the hare. “Indeed I am,” he said. “They gave me eight weeks to live a year ago, and I beat the odds.”

The tortoise nodded.

Asshole, thought the hare. “I was real outspoken about it for a while,” he said. “I got into the paper. The thing was, I was just taking multivitamins and running every day, then I did a whole-body cleanse every two weeks.” He stretched his legs and felt the diminished muscle tone.

“The odds caught up,” said the tortoise. With his big eyes, he did seem a little doleful. Then again, he always did. He clearly hadn’t cleaned his shell before the visit and smelled like a distant scummy pond. Talk about a sanitary environment, the hare thought.

The hare pressed on. “Everybody’s got to go sometime,” he said. “You’ll go. Maybe you’ll get the cancer and die next year. I can’t imagine you’d have too much trouble succumbing to the odds, as it were. No offense to you, but it takes some serious mental acuity.”

“I’m not sure,” the tortoise said, “that tortoises can get the cancer.” He was trying unsuccessfully to reach around his massive shell to the flowers. He plucked one petal off in his claw and brought it close to his eye, frowning. Perhaps he wanted to eat it.

“Don’t worry about the flowers,” said the hare. “I saw them when you came in. They were very nice Easter lilies. Daylilies are my favorite but they’re a bit rare, a bit hard to find. You might find a daylily in a soup if you look in the right place. You’d have to travel across the ocean but you might just find it in China. Can you imagine it? A flower in a soup. Believe it or not, and I suggest you believe it.”

The tortoise sighed. “Friend,” he said.

The hare looked at the place where the night nurse had shaved his fur to insert the IV needle. The skin was puckered and red in the shaved place. “I guess you win,” the hare said.

“There never was a race,” said the tortoise. His shell wobbled a little as he scooted the chair forward and leaned precariously over to touch the hare’s paw with the flat portion of his beak. The hare could feel the warm air streaming from the tortoise’s nostrils, the cool air rushing in. The hare closed his eyes and pretended to sleep until the tortoise left. He breathed evenly with noise of the machine hooked up to his body. The night nurse came and went. It was a very long wait indeed.

Dale was married to a paring knife and Howard was married to a bag of frozen tilapia. Each had fallen into their respective arrangements having decided independently that there was no greater match for them in life.

When anyone asked Dale if he had dated actual women before making the decision to marry a paring knife, he would look at that person with such incredulity that the stranger would feel as if they had been rude to inquire. Dale did love his paring knife. They had their problems, like any couple.

Obviously, Howard admitted, a bag of frozen tilapia was different in many ways from a woman, though in many ways it was the same.

* * *

Howard arrived early to Dale’s apartment and found the man finishing breakfast. The paring knife was propped up against a book on the table and Dale’s galoshes were next to the door.

“Morning,” Dale said. “Coffee?”

Howard accepted a cup and waited at the table. “Warm out,” he said. He liked to keep talking to a minimum until they got on the water.

“I know it,” Dale said from the other room. “We went on a walk and watched the sun rise across the field. Sweat right through my shirt.”

The paring knife was stuck into its usual cork. Howard felt that keeping it out on display was a little silly. When he brought his portable cooler out with him and people asked questions, he said he was a diabetic and needed special medicine. He didn’t bother making people understand his personal life. That’s why it was called a personal life, Howard figured.

Dale emerged from the back room with his baitcaster. “Sorry for the late start,” he said, pulling a six-pack of beer from the fridge.

“No problem.”

“You make sandwiches?”

“They’re in the cooler.”

Dale nodded. “I had some problems down at the DMV,” he said. “They installed a security checker, and everyone was all up in arms about me bringing in a weapon. I was holding up the line, I had to talk to some supervisor. After all that, I didn’t even have the right identification.”

Howard grunted.

Dale fit the baitcaster on its rod. “Can’t let that kind of treatment go. It’s a concept of self-respect. If people can’t treat with respect, what are we supposed to do? As a civilization. You know what I’m saying?”

“Sure.”

“All I’m asking for is what’s fair for me and my family. This country has long flagged on the equal rights front and this is another card in the deck.”

“People might think it’s strange, is all,” Howard said. “It’s none of their business.”

Dale picked up the paring knife and placed it cork-down in his breast pocket. “It’s not their problem,” he said. “That’s what it is.”

“It’s not your problem, either,” Howard said, picking up the six-pack. “Let’s get out there.”

* * *

The two fisherman sat all morning without a single bite. It was a few hours in before they got to talking.

“Explain women,” Dale said.

They enjoyed having these theoretical discussions, though they were both married and each secretly felt he understood women well enough.

Howard leaned his shins against the cooler as he spoke. “We’re fishermen who don’t eat fish,” he said. “We catch fish, but we enjoy pointing out interesting things about their fins and scales.”

“Remember that trout I caught with the two mouths?”

“That trout was mutated.”

“It only ate with one of those mouths,” Dale said. “I cut it up later and that second mouth was a vestigial situation.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Dale looked out at the quiet pond. He liked to avoid misunderstandings. “We don’t eat fish,” he said.

“We are interested in fish, but we don’t eat fish.”

It felt like the kind of morning where men end up making decisions, Dale figured. He was using his old baitcast reel, the Rick Clunn model. He had a lot of respect for Rick Clunn, a professional angler who seemed to keep his life in order with more ease than the average man. He was determined to practice his fan cast that morning, sending the line out like the arm of a clock in an attempt to cover as much water as possible with each cast. The line kept falling slack and Dale eased back into his old overhand. Howard was dozing under his cap, head bowed.

Dale considered Rick Clunn’s idea that angling is an art form, and that his own artistic growth faltered until he recognized it as such. Rick Clunn felt that the highest level of his aspiration as an angler was to help a select few touch perfection in that which they most enjoyed. Rick Clunn felt that the world’s troubles were caused by everyone else mucking up the works with details and greed.

Dale, for his part, felt that the world’s troubles were caused by simple misunderstandings. From sprawling wars to domestic disputes, any problem could be easily drawn down to something happening and a person or group of people getting the wrong idea.

The theory was cemented in his mind every time he brought his paring knife with him to church.