Two-Thousand-Pound Goldfish

by Betsy Byars

  Warren pulled at Weezie’s coat sleeve. She moved her arm away. Her expression was intent. Warren pulled at her sleeve again. Weezie shrugged him off. It was as if she were trying to rid herself of a fly or a mosquito.

  “In a minute,” she said irritably. Into the phone she added quickly, “No, nothing’s wrong, Mom. It’s just Warren. He wants to talk when I’m through. Only let me finish about Grandma. She—”

  The man on the library steps called, “Three minutes are up,” in a nasty voice.

  Warren was gripped by panic. “Weezie!” he cried. His knees had begun to tremble. “Let me have a turn.” He tried to get into the booth with her, but she turned her back and blocked his way.

  “Weezie!” He felt Weezie had gone crazy, like one of those hysterical people who really intends to give up the gun or the telephone and then loses control and can’t. She needed to have cold water thrown in her face or be slapped, neither of which he could manage.

  He reached for the phone. She pulled it out of reach, but not before he got his finger in the cord. “Gimme!” He yanked.

  “Warrrrennnnnnn.”

  As she turned he dived in, and then they were in the phone booth together. Warren’s head was crammed between the side of the booth and Weezie’s shoulder. “Let me—” he began.

  Then he heard a faint voice say, “Weezie, are you there? What’s happening?”

  Warren gasped. It was his mother, the first time he had heard her voice in three years. He stopped struggling.

  “It’s me, Mom,” he yelled, his face turned to the side, shining. “It’s Warren.”

  “Warren.”

  It was like an echo, a word spoken years ago and only now reaching him.

  He struggled to get his head out from under Weezie’s shoulder. “Let me have a turn, Weezie,” he begged, but her hold was as firm as a wrestler’s.

  “Oh, pumpkin.” Now his mother’s voice was as he remembered it. “How are you?”

  He had to swallow before he could speak and then, throat cleared, all he could say was, “I’m fine.”

  The operator cut in and said, “Your three minutes are up.”

  “Wait. Wait. I’ll get more change.” There was a flurry of sounds as his mother begged some people for quarters. With a sigh Weezie released Warren and moved the phone down, holding it between them so they could both hear.

  “There, seventy-five cents.” They heard the coins clang through the machinery. “Kids?”

  “We’re still here,” Weezie said.

  “Warren?”

  “Me too.”

  Then a silence came on both telephones. Warren didn’t want to say anything because he was afraid he might start speaking at the same time as his mother. He waited, turning his eyes from Weezie to the silent phone.

  Finally Weezie broke the silence. “Mom?”

  “I’m here.”

  Warren realized from the way his mother said it that she had started to cry. He wrapped his arms around himself, tucking his hands in his armpits. He was somehow glad that he was not the one holding the phone.

  “Don’t cry, Mom,” Weezie said.

  “I’m not. I think I’m getting a cold. I just wish I could have been there when Mom asked for me, that’s all. I wish I had known. I wish I had been with you at the funeral. I wish …” She was unable to finish.

  “Mom, you could not have done one single thing.”

  “I know, but …”

  She trailed off. Warren knew she was crying again. He looked up at Weezie. Tears were flowing down her cheeks too. Her earrings were trembling.

  “I have to go,” his mother said, her voice far away and fading. He wondered if the connection had gone bad. “I can’t talk anymore.”

  “Don’t hang up yet,” Weezie said. “Listen, Mom, we’re all fine. We’re all right. Don’t worry about us. Don’t cry.”

  “Yes, we’re fine,” Warren chimed in, feeling far away and fading himself.

  “Take care of yourselves.”

  “We will,” Warren said.

  “Don’t hang up. I’m not through. Mom—”

  “Be good. I’ll talk to you soon.” Warren could barely make out the words. It was like the last rushed lines on her postcards. “I’ll write. I love you. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye!” he called.

  “Mom!” Weezie shouted, but they heard the click, the sound of the broken connection. Weezie hung up the phone as if it had suddenly gotten heavy. “She’s gone,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  They stepped out of the booth and stood for a moment, feeling the chill in the air.

  “It’s about time,” the man said as he brushed past them. “That was over four minutes.” He closed the door behind him, took out his dime.

  “It didn’t seem like four minutes to me,” Warren said. He put his hands in his pockets. He felt the key to their apartment—the first key he had ever been allowed to have. His grandmother had always said, “You don’t need a key. I’m here to let you in,” but Aunt Pepper had a different idea. “We’re all in this together. We’re all equal.” His fingers curled around the piece of metal.

  “Well, you’ve had your first talk with Mom,” Weezie said.

  He took out his key and looked at it. He wondered why there was comfort in a piece of metal that would open a door. “Yes.”

  In the phone booth the man said, “It was an emergency, Marsha. Some kids. I had to hang up.”

  “Let’s sit down for a minute, want to, Weezie? I just don’t feel like going back right now.”

  “All right.”

  They walked to the little park beside the library and sat on the first bench. Warren looked up at the high, arched windows and the stacks of books that gave the illusion of going from the basement to the roof.

  “You know,” Weezie said, “I have never, not once, I have never talked to Mom and felt better when I hung up the phone. Either I feel bad for her or I feel bad for me.”

  “I know,” he answered. Even though he had only had the one conversation, he understood that was the way it would always be.

  “And I never get to say all I want, ask all I want. Tonight I wanted to ask about all those weeks when she was here, right in this city, and she didn’t contact us. I wanted to say, ‘Why?’ ” She shrugged. “Only I didn’t get the chance.”

  “Because she started crying.”

  The leaves were beginning to fall from the park trees, and a sudden gust of wind sent a shower of golden leaves swirling down on them.

  Warren glanced up. He thought he and Weezie would soon be covered with leaves. There were so many. He could almost smell the clean autumn smell of a pile of leaves.

  It was, he thought, like one of those moments in his horror movies when some perfectly natural event of nature occurs: the appearance of a single spider, a single snail, a single rock sliding down a cliff; and then the gradual increase, the single spider becomes a dozen, a hundred, thousands, the rockslide pours down the mountain; and the mayor finally has to say, “Folks, I’ve called you together because our town has a little problem.”

  “I wouldn’t call being buried under a thousand feet of leaves a little problem.”

  The wind stopped, and the last leaves fluttered to the path before them. Warren looked over at his sister. At one time he would have been excited over the thought of a mountain of leaves. At one time he would actually have taken pleasure in a leaf disaster, in seeing in his mind the city grind to a terrible halt.

  No more. He was glad that trouble was over for one evening. He had had enough. It was all he could do to handle everyday problems.

  Weezie turned up her collar. “Are you ready to go?

  He nodded. He got up, and kicking the leaves into a flurry of gold, he followed his sister out of the park.

  “Son, tell the listeners how it feels to see your very own two-thousand-pound goldfish, your little—Do you remember what you called her?”

  “Bubbles.”

  “—to see your litt
le Bubbles killed in front of your very eyes.”

  “It feels awful.”

  “MAYBE I WON’T DAYDREAM quite so much,” Warren said as they walked home. He was thoughtful. “Maybe it isn’t good for me.” He glanced at Weezie to see if she was going to congratulate him on a mature decision, but she was staring straight ahead, lost in thoughts of her own.

  Warren felt as if he had just poked a toe into water to test it, and it was not as cold as he thought it would be. Still, no need to plunge in all at once, he thought.

  “However,” he went on, talking more to himself than to his sister, “I suppose it would be all right for me to finish the one I’m on.”

  “Are you talking about your movies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure, finish the one you’re on. You want me to listen?”

  “Well, this movie’s about a two-thousand-pound goldfish that’s down in the sewer.” He paused. Weezie was looking at him blankly. “You know, the sewer, under the city. The goldfish got so big from a chemical called XX-109 that was being dumped into the sewer.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well anyway, at this point it has just been learned that the goldfish is responsible for the deaths of five innocent people—no, six. Two sewer workers and—”

  Warren broke off as he remembered that Weezie herself had been the third victim. “And some other people,” he finished lamely.

  “Go on.”

  “Oh, never mind. It’ll be quicker if I tell it to myself.” Suddenly he actually wanted to get it over with. He could never remember feeling like this before.

  “I don’t mind listening.”

  “No.”

  Suddenly it occurred to Warren that his movies were best when he wasn’t sharing them with another person. He couldn’t bear looks of boredom. He didn’t think he could stand to go into a theater full of people watching, say, Goldfish!, and see them looking at his work of art as indifferently as Weezie.

  Well, he wasn’t bored. Things were popping in the sewer. A group of policemen and soldiers were making their way inside. They were armed with rifles, bazookas, and flares. Walkie-talkies were crackling with messages.

  Far below, in the dark-green water which reflected the searchlights, Bubbles sensed that the sewer had been invaded. The vibrations that came to her through the trembling water were bad, and she did not rise to the surface to investigate. She remained in the deepest recess of the sewer, a huge, golden shadow, her lidless eyes watching, waiting.

  The soldiers were marching side by side with the policemen. The tramping of their boots echoed along the walls. Suddenly their way was blocked by a small boy with dark glasses on his head.

  Warren did not usually take roles in his own movies, but this—his last—would be an exception. And this time he would be the hero. He squared his shoulders beneath his jacket.

  He would stand bravely in front of the men, holding out his thin arms, blocking the way, looking even smaller in the harsh lights.

  “Step out of the way, son.”

  “But it’s Bubbles. It’s my goldfish. You can’t kill her!”

  “Out of the way.”

  “You can’t kill her. You can’t. I won’t let you!” But his tiny boyish arms would be useless against grown men and guns. He would be thrust aside.

  As the men tramped past his crumpled body, moving deeper into the sewer, a reporter would kneel and ask, “Now, what’s all this about, son? The goldfish is yours, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, I flushed her down the toilet one Tuesday last year and—”

  “Son, millions of people flushed goldfish down the toilet last year. My own mother—”

  “And now,” he would go on, interrupting, “even though she has been changed into a two-thousand-pound mutant by a material called XX-109, she is still my goldfish. I would know her anywhere. It’s the eyes.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this young boy is the owner of the goldfish which the soldiers and policemen are going to attempt to annihilate.”

  “They can’t kill her. They can’t! It’s not her fault. It’s the XX-109.”

  “Son, tell the listeners how it feels to see your very own two-thousand-pound goldfish, your little—Do you remember what you called her?”

  “Bubbles.”

  “—to see your little Bubbles killed in front of your very eyes.”

  “It feels awful.”

  “Go ahead and cry—here, this way, toward the camera. All the viewers are with you. They’ve all had goldfish. They know what it’s like to flush one down the toilet. If there’s anything we can do—well, I know the folks out there would like to help, and—”

  “There may be one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Well, sir, I’ve been thinking about it, and I believe that if every single person in this city flushed their toilets at, say, ten o’clock, well, I believe the sewer would be flooded with water—”

  “I get it! The floodgates would be forced open, and Bubbles would be washed out to sea!”

  “Yes, where she could live the rest of her life in peace and harmony.”

  “It might work. Sam, get a camera out by the floodgates, just in case. This is a long shot, but … Folks, do you want to save Bubbles, this boy’s two-thousand-pound goldfish? Do you want to prevent Bubbles from being shot like a dog? If you do, I’m asking each and every one of you to get up out of your chairs right now and to go to your bathrooms. Don’t say, ‘I’ll get up during the commercial.’ Don’t say, ‘I’ll do it in a minute.’ That may be too late.

  “I’m starting the countdown, folks. It’s five minutes to ten. If you have more than one bathroom, get a neighbor to come over and flush with you. Let’s all get in those bathrooms. Put down your knitting. Put down your newspapers. Close your refrigerator door. You can eat later.

  “It’s four minutes to ten. I’m asking every single person within the sound of my voice to help us. This is an emergency. I’m asking you to call a neighbor, call in a pedestrian off the street. Open your windows, yell, ‘Flush at ten o’clock,’ to the people in the streets below.

  “It’s now three minutes to ten. Parents, call up your kids. Kids, call your parents. If your husband’s at work, give him a call. Secretaries, tell your bosses. You bus drivers, stop your buses and let your fares go find rest rooms.

  “It’s now two minutes to ten. Every single one of you ought to now be within reach of a commode. Every single one of you ought to be reaching out your hand, grabbing a flusher. Don’t jump the gun now. I don’t want to hear any toilets pre-flushing.

  “It’s one minute to ten. Just one minute to go, folks. Let’s count together. Twenty-nine seconds … twenty-eight. Remember, we need every single one of you. This little boy is counting on you. Bubbles is counting on you. Nineteen … eighteen … seventeen. Folks, don’t let an innocent goldfish pay for the crimes of society. Twelve … eleven … ten. Get ready, everybody. Count with me. Let’s hear it! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! One! Flush!”

  An enormous spate of water would roar into the sewer, carried by every pipe in the county. The policemen and soldiers would come running out.

  “It’s flooding!”

  “The sewer’s a wall of water!”

  “The floodgates are bursting!”

  “Run for high ground!”

  And as people scattered, it would happen. Like water crashing through a dam, an enormous wave would gush down the spillway, sending foam as high as buildings, crashing through the waterway, a green wave so awesome people miles away would hear its boom and wonder.

  And just under the crest of the enormous wave could be seen, for a fleeting second, a flash of gold, the swirl of a long, graceful fantail, the fleeting wisp of a golden veil, the curve of an unlidded eye.

  And then the wave would empty into the sea with a roar, creating more waves that would shake boats and rattle docks and circle back and crash against the rocky shore.
r />   And then silence.

  “We’ll never be troubled by a two-thousand-pound goldfish again.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “WELL, I GUESS SHE’S gone,” the chief of police would say as he watched the receding water. “Bubbles is on her own now.”

  “It’s a big ocean, Chief. I reckon there’s room for all God’s creatures.”

  “We’ll never be troubled by a two-thousand-pound goldfish again.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  And then the reporter would turn back to the boy. “Son, tell the folks how it feels to save the life of your very own two-thousand-pound goldfish.”

  “It feels great! And I’d like to thank all the thousands of people who helped. It was their flushing that really saved Bubbles.”

  “That’s right. Bubbles owes her life to the fine men and women of this city. And, I might add, to the fine plumbing.

  “Well, folks, that’s all for now. This is Rick Watson for WMTV, saying, so long, folks, and thanks for flushing.”

  The camera would travel back into the sewer to get a final shot of the excited crowd, framed in the archway of the entrance. The water would be rising again in the sewer, and, outside, the sounds of the shouts and glad cries would grow fainter as the music swelled—an entire orchestra of strings. And then, at that moment, rolling up onto the screen in huge, orange, oriental-looking letters, would come—

  THE END

  Warren sighed with total satisfaction. He glanced at his sister. What a wonderful movie to end on, he thought. He wished now he had told it to Weezie. He had not known it was going to be such a masterpiece.

  He stumbled slightly and reached out for Weezie’s arm to keep from falling.

  “You all right?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said quickly.

  The reason he had stumbled was because in the depth of the sewer—hidden from the reporter and the chief of police, and the people—clinging to the long green slime of the sewer wall, shining, glistening, was one huge, perfect, golden egg.