Big Fish

by Daniel Wallace

  “You mean, I could become a farmer?”

  “Yes,” my father said. “You could.”

  And this is exactly what happened. Karl became the biggest farmer in Ashland, but my father’s legend became even bigger. It was said he could charm anyone, just by walking through the room. It was said he was blessed with a special power. But my father was humble, and he said it wasn’t that at all. He just liked people, and people liked him. It was that simple, he said.

  In Which He Goes Fishing

  Then came the flood, but what can I add to what has already been written? Rain, waves of rain, unceasing. Streams became rivers, rivers lakes, and all the lakes, growing beyond their banks, became one. Somehow, Ashland—most of it—was spared. The felicitous congruence of a mountain range, some say, parting the waters around the town. True, one corner of Ashland, houses and all, are still at the bottom of what is now called—appropriately if not very imaginatively—Big Lake, and the ghosts of those who died in the flood can still be heard on a summer night. But what is most remarkable about the lake is the catfish. Catfish as big as a man, they say—some bigger. Take your leg off if you swim too deep. Leg and more sometimes, if you don’t watch out.

  Only a fool or a hero would try to catch a fish that size, and my father, well—I guess he was a little of both.

  He went by himself one morning at dawn and took a boat out toward the middle, deepest part of Big Lake. For bait? A mouse, deceased, found in the corncrib. He hooked it up and let her fly. It took a good five minutes to hit bottom, then he brought her up slow. Soon he got a strike. The strike took the mouse, the hook, everything. So he tried again. A bigger hook this time, stronger line, more sumptuous-looking dead mouse, and cast. The water was beginning to roil about now, roil and bubble and wave, as if the spirit of the lake was rising. Edward just kept fishing, just fishing. Maybe that was a bad idea, though, seeing how things were getting very unlakelike now. And scary. Maybe he’d reel in his little mouse and row on home. Okay then. Only, as he reels he notices the line’s not moving so much as he is. Forward. And the faster he reels, the faster he moves. What he should do, he knows, is simple: let go of the pole. Let it go! Throw it in and kiss it good-bye. Who knows what’s on the other end of that line, pulling him? But he can’t throw it in. Can’t do it. His hands in fact feel like they’re a part of the pole itself. So he does the second best thing and stops reeling, but the second best thing doesn’t work either: he keeps moving forward, Edward does, and fast, faster than before. This is no log then, is it? He’s being pulled by a thing, a living thing—a catfish. Dolphinlike, he watches as it arcs out of the water, catching a ray from the sun as it does, beautiful, monstrous, scary—six, seven feet long?—and taking Edward with it now as it submerges, popping him right out of his boat and pulling him under and down, deep into the watery graveyard of Big Lake itself. And there he sees the homes and the farms, the fields and the roads, that small corner of Ashland that was covered over in the flood. And he sees the people, too: there’s Homer Kittridge and his wife, Marla. There’s Vern Talbot and Carol Smith. Homer’s taking a bucket full of feed to his horses, and Carol’s talking to Marla about corn. Vern’s working on the tractor. Beneath fathoms and fathoms of a shadowy green water they move as if in slow motion, and when they talk little bubbles leave their lips and rise to the surface. As the catfish carries Edward swiftly by, Homer smiles and begins to wave—Edward knew Homer—but can’t quite finish the gesture before they’re gone again, fish and man, up and suddenly out of the water, where Edward is thrown, poleless now, to shore.

  He never told anybody about this. He couldn’t. Because who’d believe him? Questioned about loss of pole and boat, Edward said he fell asleep dreaming on the banks of Big Lake and they just . . . drifted away.

  The Day He Left Ashland

  And so it was, in roughly just this way, that Edward Bloom became a man. He was healthy, and strong, and loved by his parents. He was also a high school graduate. In the verdant fields of Ashland he ran with his companions, and with gusto he ate and drank. It was life spent as if in a dream. Only one morning he woke and knew in his heart that he must go, and he told his mother and his father, and they didn’t try to stop him. But they looked at each other with foreboding, because they knew there was but one road out of Ashland, and to leave by it meant passing through the place that had no name. Those who were meant to leave Ashland passed through this place unharmed, but those who weren’t stayed there forever, unable to go forward or move back. And so they said good-bye to their son knowing they might never see him again, and he the same.

  The morning of the day he left was a bright one, but as he made his way toward the place that had no name the day grew dark, and the skies lowered, and a thick fog embraced him. Soon he arrived at a place much like Ashland itself, though different in important ways. On Main Street there was a bank, Cole’s Pharmacy, the Christian Bookstore, Talbot’s Five and Dime, Prickett’s Place, Fine Jewels and Watches, the Good Food Cafe, a pool hall, a movie theater, an empty lot, a hardware store, and a grocery store, too, shelves stocked with items predating his birth. Some of the same stores were on Main Street in Ashland, but here they were empty and dark, and the windows were cracked, and the owners stared dully from the empty doorways. But they smiled when they saw my father. They smiled and waved. A customer! they thought. There was also a whorehouse on Main Street, right at the end there, but it wasn’t like a whorehouse in the city. It was just a house where a whore lived.

  As he wandered into town the people there ran to meet him, and they stared at his handsome hands.

  Leaving? they asked him. Leaving Ashland?

  They were a strange lot. One man had a shrunken arm. His right hand hung from his elbow, and the arm above the elbow was withered. His hand just peeked out of his sleeve, like a cat’s head peeking out of a paper bag. One summer years ago he had been riding in a car with his arm stretched out the window, feeling the wind. But the car was running too close to the side of the road, and instead of the wind he felt the sudden sting of a telephone pole. Every bone in his lower arm was broken. His hand hung there now, useless, getting smaller and smaller with time. He welcomed my father with a smile.

  Then there was a woman, in her mid-fifties about, who in almost every respect was perfectly normal. But this was the way with these people: in so many respects they were normal, there was just that one thing, that one terrible thing. Several years ago she’d come home from work to find her husband hanging from a water pipe in the basement. Suffered a stroke seeing him there, and as a consequence the left side of her face had been forever frozen: her lips sloped downward in the exaggerated form of a frown, the flesh around her eye sagging. She couldn’t move that side of her face at all, and so when she spoke only one side of her mouth opened, and her voice sounded trapped deep inside her throat. Words climbed her throat painfully in order to escape. She had tried to leave Ashland after these things happened, but this was as far as she got.

  And there were still others simply born the way they were, whose births had been the first, and worst, accidents. There was a hydrocephalic named Bert; he worked as a sweeper. Everywhere he went he carried a broom. He was the whore’s son, and a problem to the men of this place: most of them had been to see the whore, and any one of them could have been the boy’s father. As far as she was concerned, they all were. She had never wanted to be a whore. The town had needed one, she had been forced into the position, and over the years she became bitter. Especially after the birth of her son, she began to hate her customers. He was a great joy but a greater burden. He had no memory to speak of. He would often ask her, “Where’s my daddy?” and she would aimlessly point out the window at the first man she saw. “There’s your daddy,” she’d tell him. He’d run outside and throw his arms around the man’s neck. The next day he’d remember nothing about it, though, and he’d ask her, “Where’s my daddy?” and he’d get another one, just like that.

  Finally, my father met a man named
Willie. He had been sitting on a bench and stood when Edward walked up, as if he’d been waiting for him. The edges of his lips were dried and cracked. His hair was gray and bristly and his eyes were small and black. He’d lost three of his fingers (two on one hand, one on the other), and he was old. He was so old that he seemed to have gone as far forward in time as a human possibly could, and, as he was still alive, had started the trip backward. He was shrinking. He was becoming small like a baby. He moved slowly, as though he were walking knee-deep through water, and he looked at my father with a grim smile.

  “Welcome to our town,” he said to him, in a friendly if somewhat tired way. “Mind if I show you around?”

  “I can’t stay,” my father said. “I’m just passing through.”

  “That’s what they all say,” Willie said as he took my father by the arm, and together they began to walk.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “what’s your hurry? You should at least have a look at all we have to offer. Here we have a store, a nice little store, and here—over here,” he said, “we have a place to go if you want to shoot the pool. Billiards, you know. You might like that.”

  “Thank you,” Edward said, because he did not want to anger this Willie, or any of the others who were watching them. Already they had attracted a small crowd of three or four people who were following them through the otherwise empty streets, keeping their distance but leering in a wanting kind of way. “Thank you very much.”

  Willie’s grip grew stronger still as he showed him the pharmacy, and the Christian Bookstore, and then, winking slyly, the house where the whore lived.

  “She’s sweet, too,” Willie said. And then, as if remembering something he hadn’t meant to, said, “Sometimes.”

  The sky was darker now, and a light rain began to fall. Willie looked up and let the water fall into his eyes. My father wiped his face and grimaced.

  “We have our share of rain,” Willie said, “but you get used to it.”

  “Everything here seems sort of . . . damp,” my father said.

  Willie cut him a glance.

  “You get used to it,” he said. “That’s what this place is all about, Edward. Getting used to things.”

  “It’s not what I want,” he said.

  “That, too,” he said. “You get used to that, too.”

  They walked on in silence through the fog that gathered around their feet, through the rain that fell softly on their heads and shoulders, through the dusklike morning of this strange town. People gathered on the corners to watch them pass, some of them joining the contingent that followed. Edward caught the gaze of a gaunt man in a ragged black suit, and recognized him. It was Norther Winslow, the poet. He had left Ashland just a few years ago to go to Paris, to write. He stood looking at Edward and almost smiled, but then Edward caught sight of his right hand, which was missing two of its fingers, and Norther’s face turned pallid, and clutching his hand to his chest he disappeared around a corner. People had put a lot of hope in Norther.

  “Sure,” Willie said, seeing what had just happened. “People like you come through here all the time.”

  “What do you mean?” my father said.

  “Normal people,” Willie said, which seemed to leave a bad taste. He spit. “Normal people and their plans. This rain, this dampness—it’s a kind of residue. The residue of a dream. Of a lot of dreams, actually. Mine and his and yours.”

  “Not mine,” Edward said.

  “No,” Willie said. “Not yet.”

  And it was then they saw the dog. It moved as an indefinite black shape through the fog until its figure emerged before them. There were spots of white on its chest and brown around its toes, but the rest of it was black. It had short, bristly hair, and seemed to be of no specific breed—a generic dog, with pieces of many dogs inside it. It was coming toward them, slowly but directly, not even stopping to smell a hydrant or a pole, not wandering, but walking. This dog was going somewhere. This dog had a destination: my father.

  “What’s this?” Edward said.

  Willie smiled.

  “A dog,” Willie said. “Comes to check everybody out sooner or later, usually sooner. He’s a kind of gatekeeper, if you know what I mean.”

  “No,” my father said. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You will,” Willie said. “You will. Call him,” he said.

  “Call? What’s his name?”

  “No name. He never belonged to anybody so he never got a name. Just call him Dog.”

  “Dog.”

  “That’s right: Dog.”

  So my father kneeled and clapped his hands and tried to look friendly.

  “Here Dog! C’mere buddy! Here boy. Come on!”

  And Dog, who had been walking a long, straight line, froze, and stared at my father for a long time—a long time for a dog, anyway. Half a minute. The hair on his back stood ridged. His eyes locked on my father’s eyes. He opened his mouth and showed him his teeth and the ferocious pinkness of his gums. He was about ten feet away and growling wildly.

  “Maybe I should get out of his way,” he said. “I don’t think he’s taking to me so well.”

  “Stick out your hand,” Willie said.

  My father said, “What?”

  Dog’s growl came on stronger then.

  “Stick out your hand and let him smell it.”

  “Willie, I don’t think—”

  “Stick out your hand,” he said.

  Slowly, my father stuck out his hand. Dog came to it with his slow steps, his low snarl, his jaws set to snap. But as the tip of his nose rubbed against my father’s knuckles he whined, and Dog licked my father’s whole hand. Dog’s tail wagged. My father’s heart: beating.

  Willie looked on in sadness and defeat, as if he had been betrayed.

  “Does this mean I can go?” my father asked, standing, while the dog rubbed against his legs.

  “Not yet,” Willie said, grabbing my father again, the grip of his hand pinching deep into the muscle. “You’ll want a cup of coffee before you go.”

  THE GOOD FOOD CAFE was one big room lined with green vinyl booths and gold-speckled Formica tables. There were paper placemats on the tables and thin silver spoons and forks, encrusted with dried food. There was a dimness inside, a thick grayness, and though almost every table was occupied, there seemed to be no real life here, none of the anxious expectancy of a hunger about to be sated. But when Willie and my father came in they all looked up and smiled, as though their meal had just arrived.

  Willie and my father sat at a table and without even asking were brought two cups of coffee by a silent waitress. Deep black steaming pools. Willie stared into his cup and shook his head.

  “You think you’ve got it made, don’t you, son?” Willie smiled as he brought the coffee to his lips. “Think you’re a real big fish. But you’re not the first we’ve seen. Look at Jimmy Edwards over there. Big football star. Good student. He wanted to be a businessman in the city, make his fortune, whatnot. Never made it out of here, though. Didn’t have the intestinal fortitude, you know.” He leaned over and whispered. “That dog got his left index finger.”

  My father looked and saw it was true. Jimmy moved his hand slowly off the table, and stuck it in his pocket, and turned away. My father looked at the others, who were looking at him, and saw that it was the same with everybody. Nobody could claim all their fingers, and some could only boast a few. My father looked at Willie, about to ask him why. But it was as if Willie could read his mind.

  “The number of times they tried to go,” he said. “Either out of here or back to where they came from. That dog,” he said, looking at his own hand, “don’t play games.”

  Then, slowly, as if drawn there by a sound only they could hear, the people sitting at the tables around him stood and walked to the edge of his booth, where they looked at him and smiled. Some of their names he remembered from his childhood in Ashland. Cedric Fowlkes, Sally Dumas, Ben Lightfoot. But they were different now. He coul
d almost see through them, seemed like, but then something happened and he couldn’t, as if they were coming in and out of focus.

  He looked beyond them to the door of the cafe, where Dog sat. Dog sat there staring in, unmoving, and my father rubbed his hands together, wondering what he was waiting on, and if he had missed his chance to get by Dog before and the next time maybe he wouldn’t be so lucky.

  A woman named Rosemary Wilcox stood by the booth. She had fallen in love with a man from the city and tried to run off with him, but only he had made it out. Her eyes were dark and sunken into what was once a pretty face. She remembered my father from when he was little, and told him how nice it was to see him again, so big and tall and handsome.

  The crowd around the booth grew larger, and moved in closer, and my father found he couldn’t move. There was no space for it. Crowding up close beside him at the edge of the booth was a man older even than Willie. He was like pet­rified life. His skin had dried and grown tight around his bones, and his veins were blue and as cold-looking as a frozen river.

  “I—I wouldn’t trust that dog,” the man said slowly. “I just wouldn’t take the chance, son. He didn’t get you before but you never know about the next time. S’unpredictable. So sit tight,” he said, “and tell us all about the world you want to go to, and the things you want to find there.”

  And the old man closed his eyes, and so did Willie, and so did they all, all of them wanting to hear about the bright world my father knew was waiting for him just around the bend, on the other side of this dark place. And so he told them, and when he finished they all thanked him and smiled.

  And the old man said, “That was nice.”

  “Can we do it again tomorrow?” someone said.

  “Let’s do it again tomorrow,” another whispered.

  “It’s good to have you,” a man said to my father. “Good to have you here.”

  “I know a real nice girl,” Rosemary said. “Pretty, too. Looks like me a little bit. I’d be happy to get you two together, if you know what I mean.”