Bowfin
by Ken Jaworowski
“Man, you gotta check out what’s down in the basement.”
I was about as eager to go into Carl’s basement as I was to drink a can of paint. Truth be told, I never wanted to be in any part of his house, and the thought of venturing beyond the living room was enough to make me feel like I had stepped in something squishy and foul.
Carl’s house always seemed damp inside, no matter the weather. He’s compiled, then lost interest in, a dozen or so collections, from sticky beer cans to dry-rotted magazines, convinced that someday such junk will skyrocket in value and make him rich. Until that day – which, I can assure you, will never arrive – they gather rust and dust, and secrete a stench that mixes with the humid air from the nearby river to lay down a film on every surface inside the place. Sit on the couch and you’ll think you’ve sunk into a wrung sponge.
“This is wild,” he said. “Wait ‘til you see it.”
“Game starts in ten minutes,” I told him, trying to sound like I cared. “Let’s get outta here.”
But Carl had already taken the can of Old Milwaukee from between his legs, gotten up from the recliner and was making way toward the kitchen. A moment later I heard a muffled “C’mon!” as he trod the creaky steps downstairs.
I sighed and rolled my eyes, but yeah, I followed.
In the nearest corner of the basement a florescent bulb flickered before catching hold of a current. Carl had hunched his six-foot-five frame over a wooden worktable. A small aquarium, three-quarters filled with near-brown water, sat on top.
“Give it a second, the water’s cloudy,” he said, several notches lower than he had been upstairs. For Carl to soften his voice for anything was peculiar, and the unfamiliar tone combined with the cool basement air to make the hair on my forearms stand up when he murmured: “It just moved.”
I waited. The water cleared enough in the next half minute to uncloak a shape near the bottom. The shape stirred and I began to step back. I stopped, though, recalling Carl’s fondness for shouting “Pussy!” at anyone hesitant to venture into anything he himself had already braved.
“So what is it?”
Carl peered into the aquarium, mesmerized. The swirls of mud settled a bit more as the dark figure came to a rest.
“Bowfin,” he breathed and bent down closer to the glass.
Less than an hour after we left the basement, Carl and I sat at the bar, watching the game on TV and nursing two-dollar drafts.
“You never caught one before, did ya?” he said, sounding genuinely curious despite having asked me the same question at his house, then again on the drive over.
“Nope. Heard about them, though. Thought they were endangered or extinct or something.”
“It’s crazy-looking, huh?”
“Oh yeah. Definitely,” I answered as I had before and no doubt would again.
After the water cleared I’d looked at the fish in earnest: about 14 inches long, green-brown, sort of a cross between a catfish and an eel. It was thick but sleek, with wary eyes. Its gills pulsed hard and if the bubbles from the air pump weren’t visible I’d have thought there wasn’t enough oxygen in the water.
“It was the weirdest thing. Fought like a bass. But didn’t jump. So I’m thinking, you know, maybe a muskie? But on a worm? And when it was on shore I was like” and here Carl gave a googly eyed look. I felt obliged to smirk, though I’d seen him twist his face like that three times in the past hour and didn’t even find it funny the first time.
I wasn’t much bothered that Carl was pleased with his catch. But his habit of retelling tales always made me feel like something was digging under the skin of my back. I wanted to shrug off his stories, annoyed, but without a response he’d immediately start over, convinced he had earned an enthusiastic reply.
Hanging out with Carl wasn’t fun, nor was I fond of any of the watering holes we went to. Yet warming a seat at a bar was better than heating one alone at home. Besides, when I was by myself, troublesome voices would snicker inside my head, asking smart-ass questions like Just curious – was it your boyhood dream to work with guys like Carl? and Ah, remember the days when you swore you’d never get trapped in this town? Drinking was a way to pass the time, a means to drown – or at least waterlog – those inner voices that never seemed to shut up.
“Then I said: I gotta show this prehistoric-lookin’ thing to Pete,” Carl was relaying yet again. “So I unhooked it, put it in the bucket and got the tank.”
“So you weren’t really sick today?”
Carl sipped his beer and a smile creaked out of the side of his mouth. “Aw, I wasn’t feeling great when I woke up. I felt better later, so I walked down to the river to go fishing. Hell, if I was at work I never would have caught it. Sometimes I wonder about all the great things I could be doing if I didn’t have to go there every day. Think about it.”
I thought about how Carl called in sick nearly once a week and how he used those days to sit on the couch and watch television, beer in hand. I stayed quiet, though – his uncle owned the only real business in town, the warehouse where we worked, and more than a few guys had found themselves out of a job after challenging Carl. I was the only friend he had, if you were generous enough to call us that, but even I didn’t think it smart to piss him off.
“Yeah,” I said, since I had nothing to say. Then after a sip of beer: “When you throwing it back?”
“I’m keeping it! Coolest thing I ever seen.”
I cringed. After seeing it in Carl’s basement, I felt a pang of pity for the bowfin. The emotion was strange, a sort of regret, an embarrassment for a wild thing trying in vain to escape a taming tank.
“You gotta let it go. It’ll die.”
“What’re you, a fish veterinarian or something?”
“You can’t keep it cooped up.”
“You always do that shit. Went away for a year of college like, what? Ten years ago? And you think you’re smarter than...”
“It’s common sense,” I said. “I ain’t smarter than anyone else.”
“I know you ain’t,” he said and flipped a cord of unwashed hair out of his eyes. “You’re stuck in my uncle’s warehouse, like everyone else.”
In the mirror behind the bar I saw myself flinch. Hearing aloud what I’d often muttered to myself in private sounded more insulting than I’d have expected.
We went back to drinking, and I nodded as Carl went on about a flat tire he once changed in the pouring rain, a story he’d told twice in the past month. In my mind, though, I kept going over the words that Carl had spat at me. Of course I knew what I did for a living, but hearing it said to my face – the neat summing up of my entire existence – felt like a real slur. If Carl sensed this, it didn’t stop him from retelling other tales, then again recounting his capture of the bowfin as I drove him home. At his house, Carl got out of my car and walked toward the front door.
“Hey,” I said. He turned, and I looked directly into his glassy eyes, willing his peabrain to sense my seriousness. “Let the bowfin go, okay?”
Carl smirked, raised a hand high and flicked out his middle finger. He haw-hawed, pleased with himself, then spun around off balance.
When I saw that, I liked him less than I ever had before.
And that’s saying something.
When I tell Carl I’ll pick him up, I don’t bother to be on time. I’ll show up late, hoping he’ll come outside to meet me. But he rarely does. I’ll beep, and most nights he’ll push his hand between the stained curtains and wave me to come in and guzzle a few beers so we’ll spend less money at the bar.
When I honked on Saturday night, there was no response. I parked and opened his front door to hear a voice call to me from the basement. I went down to find Carl sitting on a stool in front of the aquarium, beer in hand.
“Check this out!” he said and rapped the glass with the can. The bowfin raced from the bottom, collided into the side of the tank, then settled, resigned. When it didn’t stir again for almost a minute, Carl knocked harder. The fish shot to the top, cleared the water, and smacked so hard against the piece of plywood covering the tank that the brick Carl had lain on top jostled. Carl whooped then shouted “He ain’t happy I caught his ass, is he!”
The bowfin sank to the bottom, its nose raw red from the collisions. Except for the outburst, it looked more sluggish than the day before, as if suffering a hangover. I almost said that to Carl until I realized that such a statement might lead him to pour beer into the tank – “Hair of the dog!” he’d cry. I’d seen him do dumber, crueler things.
“Grab the tank,” I said. I moved to one end and took hold, hoping to create momentum.
“What?”
“C’mon. Let’s walk down to the river and throw him back.”
Carl’s forehead crinkled into a half dozen trenches of anger. “No!”
“Let’s let him go,” I said. “C’mon.” As a point of pride I tried not to let my voice weaken, though Carl’s anger was evident and had been known to change its vent from his mouth to his fists.
“Get away from my tank, you little shit.”
“So you’re just going to keep this fish in your basement?”
“He’s mine. Dude, who put the bug up your ass lately?”
“He’s gotta go back, Carl.”
Carl let out a ha! then said: “He’s got as much chance of getting outta there as you got of growing another inch, you five-foot-five fuckhead.”
If I had any real nerve I would have left then, to hell with Carl, to hell with my job. But I knew what I’d do, since I’d done it all my life – sigh, mutter under my breath, then go on as I’d always gone on. On top of everything else, Carl was dead wrong – I stood five-foot-six and a half.
“You’re an asshole,” I muttered and walked out to my car. He followed and got in the passenger side, playing with the radio as we rode to the bar.
So many nights I’d tell myself to get my life together, to break free of this shithole town. But every time, a couple hours after inspiration arrived, something heavy and lazy would crawl onto its shoulders and weigh it to the ground, and I’d end up doing nothing more than the nothing I’d grown so used to doing. I’d try to find a spur to leave, a pressing, urgent reason to race away and never return, and in the process dig up a dozen excuses to put it off for a little while longer – a lease that couldn’t be broken, or a busy season at work. And slowly, a lot of those little whiles had turned into one very long time.
At the bar, Carl’s voice held a trace of hostility, still irked from my bid to release the bowfin. That didn’t stop him from telling a long story about a guy he once met who claimed to be an agent for the C.I.A. When Carl paused in the same spots he did when he told the tale last week, I inserted the same questions, smirks and huhs I’d added then, too.
The bartender asked if we wanted another round, just like he’d asked the previous night. As the clock moved past midnight, the jukebox played a tune I’d danced to at my senior prom, a time when I was sure that the world would soon open up and offer me so many adventures that I wouldn’t even be able to count them all amid the excitement.
Carl came in an hour late on Monday. I wandered over to his section for a part that no one had ordered, listened to him moan about how much he hated end-of-the-month inventory, then, as I was about to step away, said “How’s that bowfin?”
“Huh? Oh. Put a worm in there, he didn’t even look at it. Took me 10 minutes to go out and find that worm this morning. Ungrateful bitch.”
I forced half a laugh and followed with a work question to cover the fact that I couldn’t stop wondering about the fish. On Sunday morning I’d dropped by the library to read up on bowfins and research the question of how long one could live in an imbecile’s basement. The answer: not long.
On Tuesday I told myself not to ask again, but the work was slow and Carl was going off on the humid weather when I went over to his section, so I fashioned a nonchalant approach.
“Yeah, it’s been hot. Cooler down by the river though. Want to go fishing, hang out with some beers later?”
Carl didn’t take the bait. He droned on about how it was so steamy he was thinking of digging a hole in his yard, lining it with plastic sheets and filling it with water.
“Think of how excellent that’d be. Make it four foot deep, couple feet wide, use the hose. Stand in there, drink beer, relax outside.”
“Go ahead and do it,” I said. “You’d be like that fish in your tank. Heh.”
“Yeah, I’d be as lazy. The thing just sits there. Almost cracked the glass knocking on it, he hardly even looks at ya.”
“Ah, throw him back then,” I said, surprised at the effort it took not to sound concerned or, well, pleading. So much effort that I stopped talking right there.
“Anyhow, this hole idea might be good,” Carl continued. “Know anyone who got a backhoe? Could dig it in five seconds...”
Throughout the week my mind continued to wander to the fish. I couldn’t count the number of times I pictured it cramped in the ten-gallon tank. Forget about the bowfin, you idiot, the voices nagged from inside my head. It’s a fish. It’s a stupid fish. But minutes after I agreed, my thoughts would return.
And I didn’t know why it all seemed so sad.
On Thursday, I told Carl I’d pick him up to watch the game at the bar that night. I arrived early and went inside his house.
“Grab a beer,” he said.
“That bowfin still downstairs?”
“What’s left of him,” Carl said.
I stopped, chilled. “He dead?”
“Ought to be. Just sits there. Swims around once an hour, if that.”
I went into the basement to find the bowfin resting at the bottom of the water, lilting a bit to one side. Two gray worm corpses lay there uneaten. I touched the side of the tank then went back upstairs.
“Carl, that thing’s gonna die. C’mon, you gotta let it go.”
“Drink your beer and quit bitchin’.”
“I looked it up in a book. Those things are rare around here, that’s why no one ever catches one. They’re in this family of fish that’s like a hundred million years old, that’s why it’s so strange looking. You ain’t even supposed to keep it. It’s endangered.”
“If I hooked it wrong and it died, what would be the difference? Or if I ate it the day I caught it? If it dies, good. Prick tried to bite me when I put a worm in there yesterday.”
“I’m lettin’ it go,” I said, and though I knew I couldn’t be serious, I knew I almost was.
“Carry that tank up the stairs and I’ll dropkick your short ass right back.”
“You’re gonna have to.”
“Be ready to fall down the stairs, a broken tank all over you and a fish floppin’ on the floor.”
I tried to reason with Carl while he sneered, exposing his near-yellow teeth and accusing me of being jealous that I hadn’t caught the fish myself. With every point I tried to make his responses became just like his stories: pointless, repetitive, worthless. After a minute his reasoning system ground in one gear, leading him to answer everything with “Keep talkin’.” His certainty made argument impossible, and I grew so red with fury that I feared a vein would burst somewhere deep in the meat of my brain.
As I left the house and drove with Carl to the bar, the voices kept asking what did it matter, this fish? Was it worth losing my job over? They grew even louder when they realized I was forming a plan that was unsafe as well as just plain insane. But I answered them that you don’t always have the luxury of choosing what you care about. Sometimes it chooses you.
At the bar I drained more and more beers, oblivious to most everything until Carl piped in with: “You’re totally in outer space dude. Sitting there, head up your ass like you always is.” He burped, then corrected, “are.”
I said nothing, silently cursing Carl for all he was worth, which wasn’t much.
“You wanna know why I ain’t letting it go?” he said, as if we’d be talking about the bowfin all night. “Because you want it so bad. Hintin’ around at work, making it look like you ain’t askin’ when you really are. Think you can bullshit me?”
“Carl, let me level with you. Let it go. It might not even survive past tonight.”
“Then I’ll bring it into work in a bag. You can bury it. What do you say to that, Pete?”
I drained my beer and stood up. “I say, you’re a shithead, Carl.”
A spark of anger flickered in his eyes, but before it could gain any strength he smirked and waved to the bartender for another round.
I said: “I’m leaving, so if you want a ride...”
“Forget that beer, Tommy,” Carl called out and stood. “I’m going home. Gotta feed my fish.”
Carl laughed. I loathed him for it.
On Friday, Carl showed up two hours late for work, complaining of a bad back.
“I’ll trade ya problems,” I told him. “Alternator went on my car this morning. Had to walk here.”
“Hate alternators. I ever tell you about the time mine busted down in Millersburg?” Carl yakked on, and I realized my car keys were still in my pocket. I wasn’t worried he would see them – Carl was as perceptive as a dead squirrel and had no reason to suspect I was lying – yet I’d still have to be careful.
I begged off at the usual lunchtime, announcing loudly that I had some cataloging to do and that I’d take my break later. At one o’clock I nonchalantly strolled out of the warehouse, then went around the corner, dashed to my car and sped to Carl’s house.
The absurdity that I could get killed over a half-dead fish never escaped me. Carl owned a gun or three, and while I didn’t expect him to go home, there was long precedent of him leaving work early.
I got to his house, and as I stood in front of the door the voices in my head screamed, calling me an idiot, asking me what did it matter about a damn fish, was it worth the only job I could get in this town, Carl might find out, this was really, really stupid.
They were still yelling as I heaved back my foot and put it through Carl’s front door.
The cheap wood splintered, sending the door swinging inside. Half a minute later I was down the stairs and into the basement. The bowfin rested on the bottom of the tank, unmoving. Its color had faded from green to gray, and its eyes were cloudy. After what seemed a full minute, a gill drew a breath.
“Hold on, buddy,” I said.
My plan had been to stage a break-in, and take the tank and the television. When I returned to work I’d ask Carl to drive me home, dismissing any suspicion he might have that I’d been the culprit. But already that half-ass scheme was botched. A footprint from my size eight marked the door, and as I ripped the air pump from the aquarium, I realized my running car was in plain view of anyone in the area. I’d worry those worries later. I was here now, the plan was in motion, and by my watch there were thirty-three minutes to walk the 200-yard dirt footpath to the river, return, then get back to the warehouse.
I lifted the tank and stumbled. Water waved over the side, covering my shirt in the foul-smelling brack. Now I’d have to go to my apartment to get another shirt, further delaying my return to work.
I got to the front door and began the trek to the riverbank. After 30 yards I stopped and rested the tank against my knee. More than half of the putrid water had splashed out, most of it over my pants, and my throat burned like I’d gulped a quart of straight whiskey. Another 30 yards, then another rest, then on.
So let me get this straight, the voices asked. You’ll release this fish right where Carl caught it. Supposed it hangs around, setting itself up to be hooked again?
I turned 90 degrees and walked downriver. I’d let it go a hundred yards further away, below a set of weak rapids that would put it far out of Carl’s lazy range.
The tank was now only about a quarter filled, and the terrain became rougher. I trod through a field, nearly tripping in a gopher hole, then ripped my pants on a crop of brambles. I looked at the cool river in the distance, then to the fish.
“Soon,” I huffed through a wheeze. “Soon, buddy.”
Another ten minutes and we were at the riverbank. And then in the water. Ankle deep. Knee. Waist. My feet sank into the muddy bottom.
I lowered the tank slowly and water spilled over the top. A moment later it was underwater, yet still the bowfin remained inside.
“Free, buddy,” I whispered.
The bowfin rose out of the tank. It was no longer confined, yet it stayed within where its boundaries had been. I let the tank go and watched the fish. When the bowfin didn’t move I reached for it, gently, and felt a fin brush my palm before the fish flicked its tail once, twice.
Then it disappeared into the deep.
I laughed out loud and leaned back far enough so that my hair touched the water, feeling like one of the Born Agains who use the river a few miles up for their Baptism Sundays. I emptied the tank and carried it along the riverbank and back to Carl’s house, sloshing wet footprints through his living room and toward the basement.
I stopped and stood at the top the steps for a long time, holding that tank. All the while the voices grew louder, screaming what are you doing, are you nuts, he’ll kill you, if that breaks you’ll be out of a job, out of this town, out of…!
And that’s when I raised the empty tank over my head and sent it crashing down the steps into Carl’s basement, shattering into a thousand pieces.
Those voices sure shut up then.
Copyright © 2009 Ken Jaworowski. Published on Wednesday, 5 August 2009. The permanent link for this story is http://angler.donavanhall.net/03/?n=6.
Ken Jaworowski is an editor at The New York Times. As a playwright, his work has been produced on stages in New York and London. His one-act "One to the Head, One to the Heart" appears in Issue 2 of A Cappella Zoo magazine.
