I do not know, for Bob, what that something other than how to fish could be.
I can’t imagine Bob doing anything besides fishing for his fish.
The river, without Bob out on it, in Bob’s boat, fishing for fish, the river, it wouldn’t be the same river.
It wouldn’t be the same river that it is when Bob is out on this river fishing for his fish.
The river, without Bob on it, fishing in his boat, the river, it wouldn’t even be a river.
Now that I am imagining this, the river, this is what I believe would happen to it.
The river, if Bob was not out on it, it would turn, first to mud, then to dirt.
And the fish in the river?
The fish would turn to stone.
But that’s not going to happen.
Not to this river.
Not to Bob.
Not to the fish that Bob is fishing this river for.
Bob, when one day Bob finds and fishes out of the river that one fish that will teach him and tell him what to do next, what this fish is going to tell Bob, at least the way that I imagine it happening, is this fish is going to tell Bob to keep on fishing for fish.
And this fish, for saying this, for telling Bob to keep on fishing for fish, the river, it will kiss this fish.
This river, it will throw this fish back.
Back into the river.
Go fish.
Oh, if you teach a man to fish.
The river becomes his home.
The dead man isn’t alone.
There are other men who’ve fallen into, there are others who have drowned in this river that is ours.
There are other men, too, who’ve gone down to the river, who have walked out into the river, and these other men some of the time did not come walking back.
Even Bob can’t walk on water.
Even Bob needs a boat if he wants to cross over to the river’s other side.
Except in the winter.
In the winter, when the river freezes over, Bob can walk across to the river’s other side.
There are people in town who like to sit out in the cold out on the iced over river and fish for fish through the winter’s ice.
In the winter, when the river freezes over, Bob walks out onto the ice by his boat and Bob digs a hole.
Bob digs a hole into the ice.
Through the ice.
Into this hole, Bob fishes.
Up through this hole in the river, Bob fishes up these winter river fish.
Bob fills up his buckets with these fish.
When the fish are fished up out of the river, fished up onto the ice, the fish, with the river still wet on them, they too turn to ice.
In the winter, Bob grows a beard that is white.
Some days, when it’s really cold, it looks as though Bob’s beard has grown six inches in a single day.
Days like these, there are icicles hanging from the hairs of Bob’s winter white beard.
There are other times, though, in the winter, when the ice on the river isn’t thick enough to hold a man the size of Bob up.
Sometimes people fishing through the ice fall through the ice.
Into the river they go.
It’s not the river that does these people in.
It’s the cold of the river.
The heart, in this kind of cold, it freezes up.
Sometimes, the bodies of those who fall through the ice won’t be found until springtime.
In spring the river goes back to being a river again that not even Bob can walk across.
Which is why Bob lives on a boat.
A man on a river needs a boat.
A boat to cross the river in when a man is fishing for fish.
Which is why I bought the dead man’s boat off of the dead man’s wife after his boat was found by those two boys down the way a bit on that other river down in Ohio.
O-hi-o.
Down to Ohio, Bob has never been.
Why go to some other river, down in Ohio, when there is a river right here for Bob to fish?
This is the river where, on the other side of this river, this is where Bob saw and heard the fish that is the fish of all fishes.
There are other fish to fish for in this river.
But in Bob’s boat, in Bob’s eyes, there is only one fish for Bob to fish.
Sometimes, Bob calls out to this fish by name.
Bob calls this fish Brother.
Brother, Bob whispers, out to this fish.
Brother, Bob sings to this fish.
Bob was born brotherless.
I was born to a father who did not know that he was the father of a son.
Which is what brings both Bob and me out onto this river.
Two fishermen.
Two fathers.
One fish.
I never did tell you what name I named the dead man’s boat.
I named it Bob.
Hold on, Bob, I say.
Bob, I say, don’t quit on me now.
Okay, Bob, just a little bit longer.
Good job, Bob, I say.
It’s like I’m talking to my father.
Good, Father, I say, every time we make it back from the river’s other side.
Bob, the boat, it never says anything back.
It just sits, it just floats, here on the river.
Just like Bob.
Bob is sitting on his boat.
Bob’s baits are not in the river’s water.
Bob is, at the moment, just sitting there staring out across the river at what I do not know.
Maybe this is Bob thinking.
What is Bob thinking about?
Fish.
His fish.
What if Bob never finds the fish that he is fishing for?
Is this what Bob is thinking?
Or is Bob thinking this:
That the fish that Bob is fishing for, it is somewhere in the river waiting for Bob to find it.
Bob is an optimist.
If you teach a man how to fish, Bob knows, that man will fish forever.
He will never go hungry again.
Such a man is Bob.
Bob is only hungry for one fish.
The fish that is the fish.
There are fish in the river that are considered eaters.
This fish is not that kind of a fish.
And there are other fish in this river that are the kind of fish that you throw back when you fish them up and into your boat.
Come back when you’re older is what we say to these kinds of fish.
And then there are the fish like the fish that Bob is fishing for.
This kind of fish, I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do with this kind of fish.
To fish this kind of fish up and out of the river, I can only imagine that this might be like coming up to the man who is your father and hearing this father call you his son.
What do you do at a moment like this?
You hold onto it is what you do.
You hold that man in your arms.
You hold your hands onto that fish.
But how long can you hold a fish out of water before this fish starts gasping for breath?
You only get one fish like this.
You only get one father who is your father.
You only get one son if one son is all you’ve got.
There comes a time when you’ve got to let go.
There comes a time when you’ve got to look this fish straight in the eye and then that’s it.
It’s over.
And the river keeps flowing and flowing.
And so Bob goes home.
Bob goes home to his boat that floats on the flowing river.
Bob goes home to the river.
Where Bob fishes for fish.
I go home too.
To be with my son.
I am a father.
My son is a fish.
I like to tell my son stories.