A Miracle of Catfish

by Larry Brown

  “Hello?” Cortez said.

  “Mister Sharp?” a voice said.

  “Yeah. This is him,” Cortez said.

  “Tommy Bright, Mister Sharp,” the fish man said. “How you doing today?”

  “I’m doing good,” Cortez said. “What about you?”

  “I’m doing all right,” Tommy said. “I’m setting up here on the Mississippi River bridge at Memphis. They got all the traffic stopped both ways.”

  Memphis. Cortez hadn’t been up there in a long time. He knew what the bridge over the river looked like, though. How high it was. How muddy the water was and how wide.

  “Aw yeah?” Cortez said.

  “Yeah,” the fish man said. “They got some idiot who’s trying to jump off, I think. Cops everywhere. I thought I’d be there by four but I’ve been sitting here for a half hour already and I thought I’d better call. I’ll be on down there soon as they let me by.”

  “Well,” Cortez said. He thought about the fish on the truck, how many thousands of them there were. “You still got them fish?”

  “Oh, yes sir,” Tommy said. “I still got the fish. I stopped outside of Blytheville and checked em and they’re fine. I ought to be there by five if they let me on through.”

  “Well,” Cortez said. He wished the son of a bitch on the bridge who was thinking about jumping off it would make up his mind and either do it or not so his fish could get on out here and he could feed them.

  “I’ll give you another call when I get rolling again, Mister Sharp,” Tommy Bright said. “Sorry about the delay. I left in plenty of time.”

  “That’s okay,” Cortez said. “You think you know how to get out to my place?”

  “Yes sir, I think so,” the fish man said. “I see a cop waving people through. I’ll talk to you later,” he said, and then the phone went silent.

  “Okay,” Cortez said, and hung up.

  It was five thirty before he rolled into the driveway and Cortez was sitting on the front porch about to have a fit waiting for him. The big red truck rolled to a stop out at the mailbox and then backed up. Cortez waved. The wheels turned toward the driveway and Cortez got up. He could see the fish man inside the cab and then the truck was rolling down toward his front porch. He wished Lucinda could be here to see this. He stepped down from the porch as the truck pulled up and he walked around to the driver’s door. The fish man left it running and it rolled an inch or two until he pulled out the brake and Cortez heard the wheels crunch in the gravel. The fish man got down and shook hands. He’d called again an hour ago, on his way.

  “Mister Sharp?” he said. He had a head full of white hair but he didn’t look that old. Cortez wondered about that. What would turn a man’s hair that white at his age?

  “That’s me,” Cortez said. “Come on up here and set down and rest. You have any trouble finding my place?”

  “A little. But I saw a boy just down the road here at a trailer and stopped and asked him and he knew where you lived.”

  That was the kid with the go-kart. The one he’d yelled at.

  “I can fix you some tea if you want some,” Cortez said. “My daughter left some Diet Cokes over here but I don’t never drink them.”

  “Some tea’d be fine,” the fish man said, so Cortez took him in the house to get him some. Cortez told him he could fix him a sandwich if he wanted one but the fish man said he was all right for now, that he’d gotten a cheeseburger at the Waffle House in Senatobia.

  So they sat on the porch for a few minutes. Just talking. The shiny red truck sitting there running. The sky had evened out into a solid blue hue with some fluffy white clouds drifting in it and they talked about cows and fish and cotton. The fish man said they’d had a lot of rain over in Arkansas. Cortez said it had been so dry here that his corn hadn’t made much corn. The fish man said that the fish would be big enough to eat next year if Cortez fed them through the fall until October and started again in March, or as soon as the water warmed up. It took two weeks to train them to feed. You fed them at night. He finished his tea and set his glass down.

  “You ready to see em?” he said. “I can raise the lids on the tanks if you want to get up on the truck and take a look.”

  “I sure would,” Cortez said, and they went down the steps and over to the truck. Cortez hated he couldn’t feed them in the daytime.

  “It’s a big step up,” Tommy Bright said, and he climbed up on the back of the truck first and then extended a hand down to Cortez. Cortez took the hand and felt the strength in the fish man’s arm as he pulled him up. Then he was standing between two banks of stainless steel rectangular tanks. A wood floor between them. Things were humming and bubbling. There were two round canisters marked oxygen strapped to the back. Tommy Bright opened one of the fish tanks and told Cortez to look in. What he saw in there thrilled him. The clean bubbling water was black with tiny catfish, a moving herd. They hovered in the water singly and in masses, and he could see them swimming beneath the rippling water, their little tails waving. Their tiny side fins and their small whiskers. He looked up at the fish man.

  “Is this three thousand in here?” he said.

  Tommy Bright smiled and opened the hatches on two more tanks.

  “Oh no,” he said. “That’s five hundred of your four inch. I’ve got five more tanks with the rest of them and your eight inch. Come on over and look at these, Mister Sharp.”

  Cortez couldn’t remember being any happier in a long time as he stepped up to the next tank. The fish man had picked up a long-handled dip net and he dipped into the swimming mass and lifted a net full of them.

  “These are the ones I was telling you would be maybe big enough to eat some this year if you feed em good,” he said. “They grow fast.”

  Cortez looked down into the dip net. The fish were squirming against each other and dripping water down onto the planks of the truck bed. The catfish were slick and gray with small black spots on them.

  “Will they bite already?” Cortez said. “I mean bite a hook?”

  “Hell yes, they’ll bite. If you’ve got some red worms you could catch some this afternoon after we put em in. And they will strictly fin the hell out of you, too.”

  “Aw, I know,” Cortez said. “I had one fin me all through the web of my hand right here one time,” he said, and he touched the round scar on his wrinkled hand. He’d never forgotten how bad it hurt.

  Tommy Bright turned the net upside down over the tank and started dumping them back into the water. One or two hung, their side fins caught in the nylon mesh. He was trying to shake them loose.

  “This is how I usually get finned, trying to get em loose from this dip net,” he said, and he got them loose and closed the lid on the tank and put the dip net away.

  “You got fish in all them tanks?” Cortez said.

  “I got one spare that’s empty,” Tommy Bright said.

  “I see,” Cortez said. “It’s always good to have a spare, I guess.”

  “It sure is,” the fish man said. “Well, if you’re ready, you can just get in with me and ride over to the pond if you want to. Which way is it?”

  “Right out the driveway and turn left,” Cortez said, pointing.

  “Okay then.”

  “And here’s your money,” Cortez said, pulling the roll of bills out of his pocket and handing it to him. The fish man wiped his hands on his pants before he took it.

  “I counted it twice, but you count it again,” Cortez said.

  “I’m sure it’s all there, Mister Sharp,” the fish man said, and stuck it in his pocket without looking at it much.

  They climbed down and Cortez got up into the cab. Tommy Bright climbed in behind the wheel and released the brake and started turning around.

  “You got a pretty place here, Mister Sharp,” he said, looking out over the pasture and the hills behind it. Cortez’s cows were black dots in the tall green grass. White egrets flew among them and landed on their backs.

  “Thank you,” Cortez sai
d.

  “I guess you’ve lived here a long time,” the fish man said.

  “I bought this place when I was twenty-five,” Cortez said. “And it looked like shit.”

  “It don’t now,” Tommy Bright said, and he started up the driveway. “I think I told you I’m losing my place over in Arkansas. I had it twelve years.”

  “That’s a damn shame,” Cortez said.

  “Yes it is,” the fish man said. “It’s my own fault. I can’t blame it on a soul but me.”

  Cortez looked out the window as they drove up the driveway. This fellow seemed like an honest, hardworking man. It was bad to hear that he was losing his place.

  “How big a pond does it take to raise them fish?” Cortez said.

  “I had fourteen altogether that I used,” Tommy Bright said. “I’ve got five right behind my trailer that I had built myself and then I had nine more down the road that I leased. They’re all different sizes.”

  The heifers were all standing at the fence looking at them as they rolled by and the fish man turned his head and looked at them briefly.

  “That’s as fine a bunch of heifers as I’ve seen in a while.”

  “They fat,” Cortez said. “I’m fixin to turn em in with one of my bulls in a day or two.”

  “How many mama cows you run on your place?”

  To somebody else Cortez might have answered that it wasn’t any of their business. Coming from somebody else it might have seemed like asking how much money he had in the bank. But he liked the fish man, and in truth, he was starting to get a little lonely sometimes, and he was glad for the company. Besides, they were talking about business: the cattle business, the fish business. The fish man wasn’t being nosy. He was just talking.

  “Aw, I ain’t running but twenty head,” Cortez said. “Them’s their heifers and I sold my bull calves earlier. I’m seventy-two and that’s all I want to fool with now. I used to run about eighty head.”

  The fish man pulled up beside Cortez’s mailbox and stopped. He was grinning.

  “I wouldn’t have believed you’s that old, Mr. Sharp. You sure don’t look it.”

  “Born in nineteen thirty-two,” Cortez said.

  “You got any kids?”

  “I got a girl lives in Atlanta.”

  “That’s right. You told me.”

  “I had a boy one time. He tripped and fell at the back step with a twenty-two rifle. Was fixing to shoot us a chicken for supper and it shot him through the neck. He wasn’t but fourteen.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the fish man said.

  “Aw, that’s all right,” Cortez said. “It was a long time ago.”

  It wasn’t like Cortez to talk about Raif, and especially not to a stranger. But what did it hurt to talk about him? He wasn’t asking for sympathy. He wasn’t asking anybody to look at what happened to him and see how bad it was. He was just telling him what happened to his boy, why he didn’t have him anymore. He didn’t tell about the sight of his screaming wife trying to plug the hole in his boy’s neck with mud she scooped up from the yard, mud that turned as red as the blood that was spouting out of his neck until it ebbed away and there was no more left. He didn’t tell any of that. He didn’t tell about the things she screamed up to God or the names she called him. Maybe she didn’t go to heaven after all.

  Tommy Bright turned left out of the driveway and shifted into second.

  “It ain’t but a little ways,” Cortez said, and the fish man nodded. Just at the curve, some of the red clay gravel was spilled out into the dirt road and the fish man slowed the truck. From there you could see the new road going down through the shady woods. And beyond that, through the green leaves, a patch of calm dark water. Tommy Bright feathered the brake pedal with his foot and turned the truck down into the hollow.

  “I feel bad about making you build me a road,” he said.

  “I needed one anyway,” Cortez said.

  “It’s a mighty good one. They don’t give that clay gravel away, do they?”

  “Naw they don’t,” Cortez said, noticing again how nicely packed it was. They rolled past a couple of the posted signs he had nailed to some trees beside the new road.

  “You have trouble with people trespassing on your property, Mister Sharp?”

  “It’s just some kids down the road,” Cortez said.

  “Well, I hate to tell you this, since I’m fixing to turn loose three thousand on you, and I’m not trying to tell you your business, but it’s been my experience that the quieter you keep it about having these catfish in here, the better off you’ll be. I mean unless you don’t mind the general public coming down here and catching most of em for you once you get em up to eating size.”

  Cortez had already been worried about how to keep people out once the fish started growing. There was no fence up here. Anybody could walk right down through the woods to it. And the kid down the road had seen the fish truck already. He’d probably tell his daddy or his friends. He hated the fish man had asked the kid for directions.

  The catfish man steered the truck carefully down the new road and the woods shaded them.

  “I’m gonna hang a gate up there at the road,” Cortez said. “I think that’ll keep most ever body out.”

  The fish man nodded and reached for a lower gear. They were coming out of the woods now and they could see the whole pond and the farmhouse and the barn and the equipment shed and the yard and the fenced pastures below them.

  “Yes sir, you’re right. A gate and a posted sign will keep out an honest man. But it’s just like a lock. That’s all it’ll keep out. I’ve had more people tell me that after they got some catfish from me and put em in their ponds, folks would come from miles around to sneak in there at night. Run trotlines. I tell you what, I shot a guy with bird shot who kept getting into one of my ponds at night and catching my brood catfish.”

  “The hell you did,” Cortez said.

  “I had to. He was coming in there at two o’clock in the morning while I was asleep and putting out a throw line and catching fish I’d been raising for four years. Ten-pounders. He ain’t been back.”

  “I guess not,” Cortez said.

  “Now we want to park as close to the pond as we can, Mister Sharp,” the fish man said. He stopped the truck near the shallow end. Then he pulled it on over to the wide graded place and stopped it again there.

  “This ought to be fine,” he said. He pushed it up into neutral and pulled out the hand brake. He reached to another key in the dash and turned it on, then pushed a button beside it, and Cortez heard an outside generator rattle for a few moments while it was starting and then kick on with a steady roar. The fish man put the truck in gear and shut off the ignition.

  “Okay,” he said, and opened his door.

  Cortez opened his and stepped down and shut the door behind him. It was still pretty hot and he couldn’t see any breeze blowing through the leaves of the trees. He heard the other door slam and then the fish man walked over to him.

  “You sure got a good view from up here,” he said, and turned his head to look down on Cortez’s place. He looked at the pile of tree trunks that were already overgrown with weeds and tall grass.

  “That the trees he took out?” he said.

  “Yeah,” Cortez said. “I’ve been wanting to build a pond up here for years. I had this natural hollow here already. And he dug it out some more when he was building his levee.”

  “It’s a fine pond,” Tommy Bright said. “Say it’s about halfway full?”

  “It’s over my head, I know,” Cortez said. “I may build me a boat dock right over here before it fills up all the way.”

  “That’d be nice,” the fish man said. He went over to a side compartment on the truck and reached in for a rolled-up rubber apron that he slipped over his head and started tying around his back. It hung down below his knees in front. He slipped his leather boots off and set them on the ground beside the back wheels and got a pair of white rubber boots from the com
partment and put them on.

  “One thing about messing with fish,” he said. “You always know you’re gonna get wet. And I usually bring some dry clothes with me and ran clean off and forgot em this trip.”

  Cortez nodded and stood there watching him. He wished it would rain some more and fill the pond on up whether he got a boat dock built or not.

  “Can I help you with anything?” Cortez said.

  Tommy Bright opened another compartment door and took out a stack of five-gallon plastic buckets. He set them on the ground and pulled out some gloves and put them on.

  “Yes sir, if you don’t mind, once I get some of em in these buckets, you can start turning em loose for me. Now they’ve been in this cold water for about seven or eight hours and it’s probably colder than your pond water, so they need to get acclimated.”

  He set the stack of buckets on the back of the truck and then he climbed up.

  “You need me up there to help you?” Cortez said.

  “No sir, I’m fine,” the fish man said, and reached for the dip net again. “It’ll go easier if I just hand em down to you.”

  He raised the lid on the first tank and then took two of the buckets from the stack. He set one on the floor close to him and with the other one he dipped water from the tank into it.

  “I ain’t gonna need this water no more,” he said. He set a few more buckets from the stack on the floor and kept pouring water into them.

  “Is that just plain water?” Cortez said. He thought it might be some kind of special water.

  “It’s Arkansas spring water,” Tommy Bright said, and kept working. “It’s the cleanest water I can find. Now what we’ll do, Mr. Sharp, I’ll get you three or four buckets ready and then you can take em right to the bank of the pond. Pour some of that cold water out and then just take the bucket and ease it down in the pond and let some of that pond water run in there. Then set it up on the bank and do the next one. And let em swim around in that bucket for about five minutes and then just pour the whole thing in. It’s just so it won’t shock em.”