My son likes to hear me tell him these stories.
In each story, there is always some kind of a fish.
In each story, there is a man in the story who is fishing for this fish.
This man, I always call him Bob.
The story always ends the same way, with Bob living happily ever after.
After Bob catches his fish.
What my son always says to this is, What happens next?
What does Bob do after he catches the fish?
That’s the part of the story, I tell my son, that I don’t know what happens next.
What do you think happens to Bob next?
Sometimes I ask my son this.
My son says that he thinks that Bob, after he catches the fish, Bob gets eaten by the fish.
Bob gets eaten by the fish? I say.
I say to my son, Is that a happy ending?
My son reminds me that this is what fish do.
Fish eat, he tells me.
Fish eat other fish.
So in my son’s version of this, Bob gets eaten by the fish that he’s been fishing for.
That fish must be a pretty big fish, I say to my son.
It is, he says.
It’s this big, he says, and he stretches his arms out as far as he can get them to stretch.
It’s as big as the river is, he says.
He says that this fish, it’s as big as from where our house is and it goes up all the way to the moon.
That sounds like it’s bigger than a whale is, is what I say to this.
It is, he says.
It’s a moon-fish.
This fish, my son tells me, it swam all the way down from where the moon is.
That’s some fish, I tell him.
I say, That’s some story.
It gets even better, my son says.
Tell me, I say.
What happens next?
What happens next is this.
This fish, this big moon-fish, it has swum down all the way from where the moon is to eat up all the fish.
To eat up all the fishermen.
It won’t stop, it won’t swim back to the moon, until there’s nothing left for this fish to eat.
So maybe I should stay away from the river, I say, if this fish is going to eat up all of the fish.
It won’t be safe to be fishing the river if this fish is going to eat all of us fishing men up.
And what my son then says to this is that he thinks that might not be such a bad idea.
Three days later, I go out on the river.
Out on the river that night, I see Bob’s boat tied up to its dock, but I don’t see Bob sitting up in Bob’s boat.
I do not, at first, think that something’s gone wrong.
I think to myself that maybe Bob has gone into town to pick up some gas to gas up his boat.
But the river, without Bob sitting on it, there’s something big missing from this picture.
That night, I fish more fish out of the river than I have ever fished out of it before.
And I know why.
I know that the fish that I am fishing out of the river are the fish that would be Bob’s.
But because Bob is not fishing the river, I catch more fish that night — there are so many fish piled up on the bottom of my boat — that it’s hard for me to keep count.
That night, I’m up half the night cleaning fish.
The guts, that night, I don’t bury the guts the way I usually do out back in our backyard garden.
I put the guts into two buckets.
In the morning, I go with these two buckets of guts, down to the river, and I throw the guts in.
I think about Bob and how Bob believes that the guts of the fish, when Bob gives them back to the river, the guts turn back into fish.
I think about my son’s story about the moon-fish that is eating up all of the river’s fish.
I think about the river and what would happen, one day, if the river ran out of fish.
I think about Bob again and what would Bob do if the river one day ran out of fish before Bob fished from the river that one fish that he has for so long been fishing for.
I think about Bob’s boat and the way that it looked last night without Bob in it.
It looked just like the dead man’s boat must have looked when those two boys in Ohio first saw it sitting there in the mud on their river’s muddy banks.
So I get in my boat.
I go in my boat down the river to where Bob’s boat is.
Bob’s boat is sitting there, rocking in the wake made by my boat as I motor up to it, to see if there is any sign of Bob.
There is no Bob sitting there in Bob’s boat.
Bob’s boat is just a boat.
What I think now, what I know now, is that there is more than just something big missing from this picture.
There is something wrong with this picture.
The river, it is missing Bob.
The river’s not the same without Bob out on it.
There’s something wrong with this river without Bob fishing for the fish that live down in it.
So I go back upriver, I go into town, and I start asking whoever I see if any of them have seen Bob.
Nope.
Not since last week.
It’s been a while.
I bought some fish from him last Friday but I haven’t seen him since.
This is what the townspeople who know Bob have to tell me about not seeing Bob.
When I go back out onto the river, to ask some of the fishermen and fisherwomen if any of them have seen Bob, they all say the same thing: nope, not since last week, it’s been a while since Bob’s been out on the river.
But let me tell you this, they also tell me.
The fishing around here, it’s never been better.
I got more fish than I can eat, they say.
I hate to say it, one fisherman says this to me, but this river is a better place without Bob on it.
I give this fishing man a look.
I want to take one of my fishing hooks and hook it through his lip.
I want to take an anchor to this man’s head.
I make a fist.
Fish on, this man hollers.
I watch this man set his hooks into the lip of a fish.
This fish, I think, it could be the fish.
It could be Bob’s fish.
I pull away before I get a look at the fish that is about to be fished up into this boat that is not Bob’s.
That night, I can’t sleep.
All night long, I keep picturing Bob, walking along the bottom of the river, looking for this fish.
It’s true that the big fish who live in the river like to be big fish in the river alone.
It is also true that the littler fish who live in the river like to swim together in the river along with other little fish.
This is true, too, about the people who fish for these fish.
There are people who fish the river who like to fish close to where there are other boats fishing for fish.
It’s believed that where there are fishing boats fishing for fish that beneath those boats there must be fish to be fished out of the river and fished up into these boats.
Sometimes, this is true.
But Bob, you will never see Bob’s boat anywhere near any of these bunched-up boats.
Bob is like a big fish out on the river fishing for the fish that, like Bob, this fish likes to be a fish alone.
Bob fishes the parts of the river that other fishermen and other fisherwomen believe are dead.
Bob knows that no part of the river is dead.
In Bob’s eyes, the river, every last piece of the river, it is alive.
It is alive with fish.
It is alive because of fish.
Even the dead man knew this to be true.
Like Bob, the dead man liked to fish alone.
Like Bob, the dead man liked to fish at night.
When the dead man fell out of his boat and into the river, if he’d been fishing close to some of the other boats fishing out on the river that day, the dead man would have probably lived — the dead man would have been saved by some other fisherperson who was close enough to throw the dead man a rope to grab hold of, who was close enough to fish the dead man up and out of the river and then up into his boat.