So that Bob can continue to live.
Fish on.
Sometimes, at night, when the fish are slow to bite, Bob looks up from the river and looks up into the sky for stars.
Some nights, Bob sees how many stars in the sky he can count.
One night, Bob counted up to two hundred and twenty-two.
That was a bad night for fishing.
That was a good night for counting stars.
Most nights, the fish start biting before Bob can count up to ten.
On a good night of fishing, on a bad night for counting stars, Bob can fill up his boat with more fish than there are stars up in the sky.
Nights like this, Bob’s boat is no longer just a boat.
It is a constellation of fish.
Out on the river, out where the river runs out and turns into lake, there is a lighthouse out there to light the way for boats to see by.
There is a man out there who works this lighthouse light.
Actually there are three men out there who work this lighthouse light together.
None of their names are Bob.
None of these men live in the lighthouse there at the edge of the river where the river runs out and turns into the lake.
The lake is big, it is bigger than the river is, and there are ships out there that come from places faraway.
Germany.
China.
Russia.
Duluth.
I don’t know how these boats get from over there to over here.
It is a long way.
I would have to look at a map to find this out.
I don’t have a map right now for me to look at.
Oceans are crossed.
Canals.
Locks.
Lakes.
Rivers.
Some of these ships, freighters, they come into the river, in from the lake, loaded down with ore.
Others come carrying coils of steel.
There are men who live on these ships.
There are men who work on these ships.
Just like Bob.
When Bob sees these ships coming in from the lake, cutting upriver through the dredged up channels, he knows enough to steer clear of these ships and these ships’ big wakes.
Boats like Bob’s have been known to turn over in the wakes made by these big ships.
This is not to say that Bob does not fish in the channels made for big ships like these.
These channels are sometimes where the big fish are waiting, and where the fishing is sometimes best.
On nights like these, when the fish are in the channels, Bob goes out there to fish.
There is a light shining out on the front of Bob’s boat.
It is green and red.
There is another light on the back of Bob’s boat too.
This other light is white.
These lights are not lights so that Bob can see where the river is.
Bob knows where the river is.
Bob can see this without these lights for him to see the river by.
These lights are so that Bob can be seen by ships like the big ships who come in from the lake.
The lighthouse men all know Bob’s boat when they look out to see what there is out there at night on the river for them to see.
Sometimes Bob can be seen going out to the lake to fish when he knows the fish are out there waiting.
But even though Bob will go and fish the lake, it’s the river that Bob knows best.
Bob is not a lake man.
Bob is a river man.
But even so, Bob knows the lake better than most.
Bob knows enough about fish to know that when the fish aren’t in the river, the fish are out in the lake.
And so, some nights, Bob in his boat will go, out into the lake.
Nights like those, the man in the lighthouse will light up his light and say to himself, because there’s nobody else there for him to tell this to, Look, there goes Bob.
Bob has been known to sometimes go out into the lake and not come back for days.
Days later, Bob will return to the river with his boat riding low in the river, his boat is so full of fish.
There are limits to how many fish a fisherman can fish out of the river and out of the lake.
There are people on the river whose job it is to count how many fish in a day one fishing man might catch.
Sometimes, on good days, for you to count how many fish there are in the bottom of Bob’s boat would be like asking you to count how many stars there are at night in the nighttime’s sky.
These people, because they know who and what Bob is, because they know that Bob lives on and lives off the river, they look the other way, to the other side of the river, to the other side of the sky, whenever they see Bob’s boat out on the river.
Like the lighthouse men, these men with badges shining on their chest, they say to themselves, There goes Bob.
There goes Bob to fish the fish, they say.
There goes Bob to talk to the fish.
There goes Bob, they say, to whisper whatever he whispers to the fish that he fishes out of the river.
There goes Bob, I say this too. But not just to fish, not just to talk, not just to whisper.
There goes Bob to sing to the fish, to sing them up from the darkness of the river’s bottom.
Once, on a visit to a big city, I saw a man on the street who was talking to himself.
I saw another man, too, there in that same city, who was walking down the same street singing.
I was told, by someone who lived at the time in that same city, that both of these men were nuts.
There are people in our town who believe that Bob, too, is a little bit nuts.
What I say to this is, Who among us in this town of ours is not?
Most of the people who I say this to, when I say this to them, they nod their heads to this yes.
Bob is not any nuttier than anybody else is.
It’s as simple as this: Bob knows what he likes. And Bob does it, what it is that Bob likes best.
Bob follows his heart.
Bob’s heart is a fish.
Sometimes, Bob comes walking into town, lugging with him, hanging from his hands, two buckets filled with fish.
Fish, Bob’s lips whisper.
Fish.
It’s all Bob has to say.
It’s as simple as this.
Fish.
Bob does not have to say it any louder than this.
Fish.
The people in our town who know who Bob is come running up to Bob to buy Bob’s fish.
In our town, Bob is known for catching fish when no other boats are catching fish.
A dollar a fish.
Two dollars a fish.
Fifty cents a fish.
When you buy one of Bob’s fish, you pay Bob whatever it is you think the fish is worth.
It doesn’t take long for Bob to run out of fish.
When Bob’s buckets are dangling empty from his fists, Bob turns and walks away, back to the river.
Back to Bob’s boat.
Sometimes, when Bob is hungry, Bob will wish that he had a fish left in his bucket for him to fry up for himself to eat.
Back in his boat, his belly as empty as his buckets, Bob will head back out onto the river.
To fish for himself more fish.
When I was a boy, I sometimes used to wonder, How can a thing that is made out of metal not sink? It seemed strange to me then that a metal boat would be able to float.
Most things made of metal do not float.
Most things made of metal sink.
Down to the river’s bottom.
Think refrigerators.
Think automobiles.
Think nuts and bolts and screws.
I also used to wonder, back when I was a boy, how it was that Jesus could walk on water.
Every time I tried to walk across the river the river rose up and swallowed me up.