Fish

Fish

            Squatting at the pond’s edge, he held a small fishnet in his hand. He could smell the familiar slight dankness from the net’s previous use. It was nostalgic, brought back memories. He pictured all the fish he’d caught, the ones that now sat in the large assortment of various-sized tanks scattered about his home.
            His friends spent loads of money on fish. Why do that when you could come to this pond and catch them for free? He never could understand it. Most of them had grown up with him, and they’d all come to this huge pond all the time when they were kids. Free fish. A kid’s dream.
            But now they spent big money on fish as if they’d forgotten all those money-saving netting expeditions in small kid times.
            The main reason why he liked this pond was the abundance. It was the place to go for fish because kids from the university dorms, when they graduated, would bring all their fish here and dump them. This was the reason why there were so many different kinds of fish. His favorites were the various species of gouramis. They were particularly pensive-appearing fish, floating there in a kind of suspended animation, often for hours without moving, their wide, dark eyes and distant stares making it seem as though they were thinking hard. Problem solving.
            If only they could. If only these thoughtful fish with their combined mental exertion could solve everything that ails us.
            “Hey.” A voice broke his meditation on the ponderings of gouramis. It was another older man with his red fishnet and bucket.
            “How’s it,” he said, returning the man’s greeting.
            “I see you and me get the same idea,” the man said. “Why waste money when we can scoop up all the college kids’ fish.”
            “Yes,” he said. “I don’t know why more people don’t come here and do the same thing.”
            “Us guys use to come catch here all the time when we was kids,” the man said. “You look like you prob’ly did too, yeah?”
            “Yeah, all the time,” he said. “It was a great way to spend the morning and save our money. Me and my friends would catch the bus over here. We’d swim in here and then catch a few. At least once a month.”
            “Right, right,” said the man. “I live right here in Mōi‘ili‘ili. Just down the street. Been living there all my life. I would come almost every day. Me and my pops after he got off work.”
            “Wow, you must have had a lot of tanks.”
            “No, no, not really. Me and him use to catch and then go sell ‘um to the fish stores. Funny, yeah? We was prob’ly selling lotta the same fish to them that the stores went sell to all the college kids.”
            “Yeah, that is funny,” he said. “Do you still do that?”
            “Nah, too much humbug, that. Now days, I catch ‘um for my grandkids. I get plenty, so gotta keep catching some. They all like raising ‘um. I taught them all how to set up tanks and take care the fish.”
            “Do you have any tanks of your own?”
            “Nah, thas too much humbug, too, now. I too old for keep up. Mo’ better anyway to give ‘um to the grandkids. They take care and I can just enjoy the fish when I visit them. How about you? You get lotta tanks?”
            “Plenty,” he said. “and I know what you mean about maintenance. I have so many, it’s like a full-time job. But I can’t get rid of them. Raising fish is like a part of me. After all these years, it’s almost like they’re my children and my grandchildren.”
            “How many you get?”
            He thought for a second. “Ah maybe twelve, fourteen, something like that.”
            “Ho, brah,” the man said, laughing. “You don’t know how many grandkids you get? Christmas shopping must be scary.”
            “Oh, no, I meant tanks. I thought you were asking about tanks.”
            “Oh oh oh. No, how many grandkids.”
            He paused and thought about something else. “Ah, none. I don’t have any kids either.”
            “Whoa, the bachelor life. I envy you, bruddah. I canna tell you how many times I thought about what it would be like to be single. Sometimes I think it would be great.”
            “Ah, yeah, I don’t know how great that would be. Sometimes I wish –”
            “Gotcha,” the man said, doing a quick dip into the water.
            He looked over to see what the man has caught. “What is that? Some kind of moon?”
            “Yeah, a red one. My grandkids all like the color.”
            “But don’t they breed like crazy?”
            “Yeah, they do. Get more and more tanks. More and more red moons. But this one, he brings it over to me, is special, see?”
            The man held the net flattened out in his palm. “You see the blue streak? Different kind, that. It’s almost like it’s a cross with some kinda tetra.”
            “Yes, wow, that is different. I haven’t seen any like that before.”
            “Yeah, not too many like this,” the man said. “Gotta be selective.”
            He headed back to his bucket. “Well, see you around.”
            This surprised him. “What? That’s all? You only wanted one fish?”
            Laughing, the man picked up his bucket. “Yeah,” he said. “Gotta be choosy, like I said. Too many tanks, and my kids complain about how I’m bringing home too much fish for my grandkids. Gotta go for the special ones.”
            And with that he headed off. “See you around, bruddah. No think too hard.”
            What an odd thing to say.
            He watched the old man disappear. One thing good about gouramis was that they didn’t breed in captivity. At least not in the smaller confines of smaller tanks. Moons, he’d never wanted them. They were as bad as guppies. A few turn into way too many. Like Jesus with the fishes and loaves.
            All of a sudden, he was tired. It was a good thing he didn’t have to catch the bus like the old days. He’d never come back here. Too much trouble.
            It was great to be able to drive. If he’d been catching fish at this pond when he became old enough to drive, he’d probably have been overrun by fish tanks back then. His parents would have gone nuts.
            Emptying the water in his bucket, he headed for his car. Maybe, it would be better to stop bringing fish home. With no grandchildren, with no children even, who would take care of all of the fish? Whoever had to clean out his house when he died, they’d have to figure out what to do with all of them.
            He pictured someone trying to sell them to the fish stores they came from. Or even bringing them to this pond and putting them back in for that old man to take to his grandchildren.
            To bring them back here. It would be like reversing time. “That would be great,” he said aloud to no one. “If I could turn back the hands of time.”
            The old song popped into his mind. Man, how his friends wasted their money. And how he saved his. He was a smart man. But for what?
            He’d not, he realized, been smart enough to plan for the future of his fish. That was a problem he’d either have to solve now by returning them all to this pond for people like the guy he’d met to bring to his grandchildren, or he’d have to try to sell them to the pet stores that had sold them sometime in the past.
            But it wasn’t going back in time. That was an illusion. It was only a pattern repeating itself. Everything was always moving on.
            He sat for a while and listened to the engine hum.  He laughed.  I’m a fish, he thought, then stepped on the gas and headed forward.

* * *

Note: This is my rough draft for Saturday 01.13.24.