Fishboy

Shortly Before I turned 18, my dad drove me across the country to begin a college career in fisheries at a less-than-half-rate school in Nebraska, fisheries being a field that at the time I believed was the source of all true knowledge. No matter what the source was, or is, I wasn't having any luck getting into four-year schools, and, not too long before graduation, I received a letter in the mail offering me the opportunity to enroll. I didn't remember applying, actually. But things had not been going well for me at all, and when this school said they wanted me to come and, yes, they did offer classes in fisheries, I thought someone in this world of sorrow had finally been born with good sense and that I'd better go.

I hadn't seen the old man for a long time before our drive because there'd been a night when the girl he'd been sleeping with had showed up on our porch with a suitcase in her hand and nowhere to go. There was a big and very loud row, during which my mother--a woman who honestly hadn't been in her right mind for a long time--was, in spirit at least, wounded mortally. She was doped up on a mixture of Valium and alcohol and this probably should have served to deflect the brunt of the wound; but when she answered the door and that girl started talking, I think something inside her broke. Whatever that string is that holds a person together, it snapped. She came to life for a second and screamed her head off--she made a high-pitched shrieking sound I could hear from my younger brother's room--and then she stopped; she stopped yelling, then stopped talking and wouldn't start again. My dad left us that night and disappeared for a long time. She upped her intake, spending all her time in front of the television or shuffling around the house, holding on to pieces of furniture or my brother's head to keep her self steady. It was heartbreaking, really.

This wasn't the only reason I was troubled that year, or the reason I ended up where I did, but it did tend to complicate things. There were other significant components. I had developed an obsessive preoccupation with a girl at school two years younger than me named Emily Swanson. A significant, I was suffering from an irrational but very real fear of paralysis. I was afraid I might cross the street one day and something crippling would happen--a car would come barreling around the corner, say, and send me into orbit. Maybe something would fall on me--a block of ice from the wing of a plane--and shatter my spine. Or I'd be forced into a situation where it would be the heroic thing to do to throw myself in front of a runaway train to save a girl, always a particular girl, from harm. The train would break from the tracks at a speed of more than 100 miles an hour, and I, close by, would ponder: Should I throw myself in harm's way for her?--when in my imagination I would hold off the train, stopping it for a moment in its tracks to give me more time to decide (I could only hold it off for so long)--Could I save her? Should I save her? When this situation would unfold in my mind, the girl was, 10 times out of 10, Emily Swanson.

My dad and I drove straight through and arrived on a Monday. There wasn't much to the town, just a few stores down the main strip, a bank, a movie theater showing two films that had come and gone from my town months before. No one was around. There was a ghost town feel to the place that unsettled me. My dad smiled and pointed. What he wouldn't give to live in a rustic place like this one. This is how life used to be, Will. You don't see this anymore.

We found my apartment a few blocks away. I'd taken it sight unseen--the basement of a run-down pre-industrial era house. We walked through piles of leaves, down the stairs at the side of the front porch and into what was going to be, from here on in, my new home. I took one look and my heart sank.

"What do you think?" my dad said.

It was essentially one large room with a kitchen against one wall to the right as you walked in, a row of windows facing the kitchen, and a couch and an alcove with a bed to the left. The paint on the walls was peeling and ding)', the tile floor had dips and little holes in it, the low ceiling was made worse by a network of forehead-level pipes, and the kitchen reminded me--down to the huge metal sinks--of the old moldy kitchens where I would wash dishes with the ladies at sixth grade camp.

"It's crap," I said. "It's a piece-of-crap shit hole." I ducked into the bathroom and locked the door behind me, staring at the red painted floor while my dad unloaded the car.

And my dad, who was a good guy, really--a good guy who had become fed (continued on page 100) (continued from page 96) up with his family, with his life, and had decided to make a break for it--spent the next five days fixing up the place. He cleaned and painted the walls and doors. He bought me blankets, tablecloths to cover what scant furniture there was, matching towels and dish sets, rugs to cover the floor, fans to combat the heat, a new bed; he filled the refrigerator with food, redid the wiring, bought three stand-up lamps and handed me 200 bucks to start a bank account. He set up my fish tank, an old 30-gallon number, on a small coffee table that he bought at a department store and used heavy-duty hooks and wires to position a mirror above my bed at an angle so that I could lie on my back and watch the reflection of the tank and close my eyes and fall asleep without moving a muscle.

After five days, he packed up his things into his duffel bag and sat down next to me on the bed. He put his hand on my shoulder and I knew he was about to get at something.

"I'm sorry, Will," he said. "I'm sorry about what happened. It wasn't fair on you boys. It's just--god damn it," he said. "I'm really lonely, Will." And then he started to cry.

I sat and watched in amazement until, after about a minute, he blew his nose into his handkerchief, wiped his eyes and said, in a dejected tone, "Your mother's not well, Will. She's not."

This struck me as a departure. "She's all right," I said.

"No," he said. "She's not. I'm sorry but she's not. She needs help."

"She's fine," I said. "You're the one who's not fine, Dad."

The truth was my mother was far from fine and hadn't been fine for a long time. She had tried, when I was younger, to understand the circumstances of what she felt had always been wrong with her but could never quite put her finger on. She read books. She bought tapes. She sought professionals and listened to them. They took her back to the source. That is to say, she came to understand herself perfectly, and over the next few years she began to sink deeper into pills and alcohol as a means of coping with that understanding. By the time I left for Nebraska, she'd very nearly lost her mind.

"You're the one who needs help, Dad," I said. And then I told him some things I would regret. I told him I didn't care about anything, not about him, not about my mother, not what he did to my apartment or where he slept or how many girls he fucked. I said I didn't care that he had disappeared for so long. I didn't care that he hadn't called, or visited, or checked on us. I said I was glad I hadn't had to see his face. I told him that I really didn't give a crap about any of it and I'd had a shitty time driving to Nebraska with him and I wished he'd disappear again and leave me alone, let me get the hell on with my life. I could tell it hurt him tremendously. He told me he was very sorry I felt that way and then he picked up his bag and left.

When I heard his car drive away, I walked outside, up the stairs onto the front lawn. It was evening and the sun was gone and the stars were beginning to show up for the night. I watched the red taillights get smaller as he drove back down that road, back toward Washington and his apartment by the airport. I watched those lights for as long as I could, but then they went down something and disappeared. I poked at the enormous cold sore that had attached itself to my mouth as we'd driven into town. I cleared my throat a few times. I spit a big loogy onto the grass and walked back downstairs.

I picked up my notepad and wrote: The O.M. started bawling. Drove away back home. Good riddance. I lay on my bed and stared up at my fish tank. My angelfish hovered off to one side, staring out of the glass, making gasping motions with her mouth, and my four remaining goldfish swam awkwardly on the other side. Occasionally one would hover over the ceramic castle, or float near the bottom, a skin's width away from the rocks. This made me feel terrible for some reason. I went into the bathroom and put some Neosporin on the corner of my mouth. I put a large Band-Aid over the whole length of my mouth and looked at myself in the mirror. Then I lay down on my bed again and closed my eyes.

•

Emily Swanson. I had, by the time I left for Nebraska, whacked off for a significant part of the year exclusively to the one picture I had of her, which was on a flier for Ivar's Fish Bar, a reasonably priced fish joint across from the mall, where she worked as a waitress. I had been struck by the photograph and I took it into my room. I think I have it in a box somewhere. She was wearing a white blouse and showing two rows of perfectly straight white teeth. Her blonde hair was up on top of her head, a few strands dangling in front of her face. A dark space beneath her jawline may have been the result of a smudge on the camera lens, though I could never tell conclusively. Welcome to Ivar's, the caption says. How can I help you? I kept it beneath my bed and took it out whenever I felt it necessary.

It probably goes without saying that I wasn't a very popular kid. I'd had a difficult time making connections with people my age, but not from lack of trying. I liked people, or at least, the idea of people. At different times in my high school career I'd been involved with choir, band, weight training club, dance club, math club, Young Republicans, Young Democrats, Students for Kind Relations with Russia, Students Against Exploitation, the American Morality Preservation Society, drama club and others that I can't remember. I spent a lot of time in meetings, and formed the Decatur High School Fisheries Council my senior year, of which I was the only member.

And then my dad broke our hearts and left, and I spent a long time unable to see the good in anything. The world became a place filled with blatant sorrow. I stopped attending meetings. I spent a lot of time in my room with my fish, or in my brother's room, watching him play, or on the couch, watching television with my mother. But one day toward die end of that final school year I was walking down the hall after science class when I saw the girl from the Fish Bar flier leaning against the wall, her backpack slung over her left shoulder, waiting to go into history. I recognized her immediately and my heart jumped into my throat. I mean it. My heart leaped into my throat.

I bribed a kid who worked in the office to tell me what her name was, what her story was--she'd been kicked out of St. Mark's for questionable behavior--what classes she had, her hall locker. I changed my routes through campus. I made sure to pass by her locker as often as I could. I spied on her in her classes through the thin strip of window built into the doors, and she always seemed bored. I found that shelived just a few blocks away from me on a cul-de-sac that, in 12 years of living in the same house, I'd never been down. And, after a few days of careful observation, I discovered that she walked home from school.

On a Tuesday, I managed to catch her at a dont walk sign and I offered her a ride home. She looked around and got in. I said hello, and offered her my hand, which she shook. Her hand was very small. I told her a few rudimentary things about my life, true and otherwise, and soon we were outside of her house where, as well as I was able to, I asked her out on a date that she, and I've never understood why, accepted.

I skipped school the next day and drove into Seattle to find a suitable restaurant. I toured eight in the downtown area and finally reserved a table next to a window at a pricey seafood place overlooking the Sound. I washed (continued on page 156) (continued from page 100) my mother's car and had it detailed to the bone. I went into what had been my dad's closet and took out one of the suits he had left behind. I had it pressed. I made my brother and my mother dinner, fixed her a drink and on my way out, I straightened the pillow beneath her head and turned up the volume on the television. "Wish me luck!" I said, and I was off.

Emily walked out before I could get to the door. She was wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt, her hair was held back in a ponytail. She stopped in the driveway, looking concerned.

"I thought we were going roller-skating," she said.

I was a bit overcome, and because of this, I couldn't do anything but stare.

"Will?" she said.

"I figured we might go into the city for dinner."

"I said I go roller-skating on Thursdays," she said. "Are you wearing a suit?"

"What?" I said.

"I told you we were going to meet some people," she said. "Why are you wearing that suit?"

"I already made reservations," I said. "I'll be out 50 bucks if we don't show up.

She made a face, squinting her eyes a little in what was probably confusion. "I guess I should go change," she said, and she turned around and walked back toward the front door. "I really wish you didn't do that."

"Sounds like a plan," I said.

We drove to the restaurant, a few miles an hour under the limit and in the slow lane for safety purposes, and everything went extraordinarily well. We ate and talked about school and the world. I told her my dad was a somewhat godlike patent attorney--whatever that was--and my mother was a freelance marine biologist. I created a world for myself that was more hopeful than the one that was currently developing. I told her I was considering Harvard and Yale but that I hadn't made up my mind yet. While I was talking, I pictured the two of us falling madly in love with each other and raising a litter of happy little kids. They'd have my blue eyes and her pink complexion and absolutely no resemblance to my parents.

Eventually, because there was no way around it, I had to take her home. She thanked me and I burst from the car and walked her up the driveway, and when we were at the door she turned around and--possibly feeling obliged to--patted my shoulder softly with her hand. And then I made a grab for her breast and tried to plant one on her neck, an act that served to fundamentally change our relationship forever.

I went home and slammed the front door loudly. I trudged upstairs and wrote in my notepad, Dinner--exquisite. Grabbed Emily's tit. Blew it. We dig our own holes. I wrote, and attributed the quote to Anonymous. I don't think I knew what it meant. I thought she might eventually come around, but she never did. I thought I could convince her to like me again, but I never did. That night I lay on my bed for a long time staring up at my fish tank, and then I drove around looking for my old man's car.

•

I was coming up with a grand philosophy that I normally believed wholeheartedly, and on my best days, at least halfheartedly. It was that We live in a world built on sorrow. That was the gist of it--it's written that way in my notebook--and I'm not sure exactly how I clarified it, even internally, but I think the whole thing had a lot to do with the way my mother had been deteriorating in the past few years. It made sense to me that she had tapped into something sorrowful and dangerous about the world and wasn't finding her way out of it. I was convinced that I was slowly tapping into it myself.

When Emily wouldn't talk to me, I resorted to strange manifestations of my sorrow. I began calling her at odd hours and asking her questions about sorrow and ache. I'd ask her if one could be sure of anything, really, in the world. Sometimes I would call and not say anything.

She had my number blocked and I started slipping poems into her locker, poems filled with the most obvious and clichéd love imagery, rhymes with words like parlance and substance, and at the end (after what could be 10 or 12 hand size notebook pages), the last stanzas would inevitably grow darker, the flower would die, the bird would mysteriously fall from the sky or get sucked into a jet's engine, the beautiful fish would flop around without oxygen and die in the throes of melancholy.

A few times I showed up at Ivar's Fish Bar and ordered nothing but water. I'd say that I wished to be served by the young blonde gal from the flier. She would come out and pour my water silently, without looking at me. The third time I did this, I directed some loud and obnoxious comments toward the rest of the restaurant and I was banned for life.

I spent a lot of time sitting with my mother watching television or lying in my room. And then one night, after I'd tucked my brother in, I lay in bed and listened with my hands over my ears to my mother throwing up in the bathroom. I got up, went down into the garage and got my dad's ladder and I carried it three blocks to Emily's cul-de-sac and into the backyard of the house facing hers. I set my ladder up on the back patio and looked through the sliding glass doors where a man and a woman were sitting on their couch with the lights on, watching television. I climbed the ladder, slowly and very softly, and I crawled up the slope of the roof to the top of the V, and then I scooted down the other slope on my backside, inches at a time, until I was at the edge, facing the empty street and Emily's house, and then, carefully, I put my toes against the gutter and stood up. I yelled Emily's name until her light went on. She opened the window and put her head out.

"I'm going to jump!" I said. "I mean it!"

"Don't!" she said. "Don't!" and she left the window. More lights turned on inside. I opened and closed my hands. I cleared my throat and waited. It was an overcast night and I was sweating. In the time between coming up with the idea in my room and actually climbing onto the roof, I'd become very frightened. My legs were shaking--they'd been shaking for a long time. I had a strange feeling in my stomach that was beyond simple fear, something more solid, and I was afraid it would make a sudden lunge and carry me over the edge with it.

People were beginning to come out of their houses and gather in the street. Emily ran out in a pink bathrobe with her parents close behind. I came close to falling off the roof right there.

"What the hell are you doing?" she said. There was something fearful in her voice.

"Nothing," I said. My own voice was shaking like crazy. "You look nice."

"Don't move!" her mother said. "Don't move! Someone's coming to get you down," Emily's mother said. 'Just stay where you are."

"I didn't know it was this high," I said.

I stayed exactly where I was. I waited, and shortly the police came and a fireman climbed up after me and backed me down. It took a long time.

The cops had me sit in their squad car while they talked to Emily and her parents, and then they got in and drove me toward home. I turned around and looked through the rear window as we pulled away and I saw Emily and her parents walk back toward their house, her dad's hand on her back, and then Emily, before going in herself, turned for a second and watched us drive down the street. There was something touching and romantic about that. I put my hand up to the glass, like I'd seen in a movie. It was a movie where a fugitive had been caught after a chase that had lasted thousands of miles, across every ocean in the world, and his girl tore her clothes and wept and fell to the ground as they were driving him away. I turned around in my seat and listened. The cops warned me to stay away from Emily. They said her parents were going a little bit crazy with all of this, her dad especially, and it was time I stopped what I was doing, for everyone's sake.

I warned them about my mother before we got to the door. I said she'd been suffering from a bout of tinnitus and wasn't feeling herself. She probably wouldn't say anything, I said, and she didn't. She sat on the couch while they explained everything, her neck craned back against the cushion, and she stared at the quiet television, sipping from a glass. I sat in a chair and looked from the cops to my mother and back again. I nodded my head to seem agreeable. After they finished, they thanked her for listening, and then they took me outside to the front porch and told me they were going to send someone from an agency to come and see us, but I assured them that everything was fine. "She's not always like this," I said. "She's just not feeling well tonight." And besides, I told them, my dad would be home any minute.

•

A few days later, Emily's mother called and invited my parents and myself over to their house. That afternoon I'd received the letter from the school in Nebraska asking me to come. I was flattered that they wanted me and felt a little bad that I'd have to reject their offer. But for this reason, and Emily's mother's invitation, I was in a definite whistling mood. I put on my dad's suit and slicked my hair back, then walked over.

I explained, when I got to the house, that my parents had been unexpectedly called a way on business but that they sent their regards, and Emily's mother led me to a chair in their large living room. She stood leaning against one wall and I sat on the chair facing Emily's dad, running my finger over my eyebrows nervously. The house was a palace, high ceilings and paintings of little kids on the walls.

"Well?" he said.

"It's nice to be here, sir," I said, looking around. "So this is what it looks like from the inside."

"Why don't you tell me why you won't leave my daughter alone," he said.

"Excuse me?" I said.

"You heard me."

"I do leave her alone."

"I'm afraid you've got that wrong there, pal," he said. He seemed much larger than he had two nights before. He was losing his hair in the front and it made him look mean. I noticed his hands were clenched like he had bottle caps in them and was trying to imbed them in his palms. I did that quite a bit, myself.

"I'm afraid I don't understand," I said.

"I don't know where your parents are, but let me tell you something," he said. "I want to make it clear to you that this is your last warning. If you come within 10 feet of her, I'll call the police. Quit calling, stop writing her letters and stop all your little fucking pranks. You're going to get yourself killed," he said. "Take that however you want."

I thought this one over while I rubbed my eyebrow. I was confused about the direction the conversation had taken. I wondered if Emily was upstairs. Her mother came and sat down next to her husband and leaned toward me. Her arms were crossed in front of her stomach and they pushed up her breasts. She had the same green eyes as Emily, the same color cheeks.

"Will," she said. "You're not acting normal."

"I am acting normal," I said.

"No," she said. "You're not."

"I am," I said.

"No. You're not."

"This is just a bit off putting, Mrs. Swanson," I said. "I have to admit, I thought we were going to talk about something different."

"Will," she said. "Listen. You have to stop harassing Emily."

I looked at Emily's dad. He was leaning back stiffly into the couch. "I'll certainly give it some thought," I said.

"You're a sick little fuck," he said.

"Frank," his wife said.

"You don't have to insult me, Frank," I said.

But Frank was riled up. He opened his hands wide. He leaned forward and pointed a finger at me. "Look, you little faggot," he said, but he didn't finish. He got up suddenly and went into the other room. He walked over to the bar against one wall, and began pouring himself a drink.

I looked at Emily's mother for a second. She was looking into the other room, where her husband was. She seemed concerned about him for some reason. I looked at him, too.

"She's sleeping with Steve Yeiser, you know," I said. "They do all sorts of sick things together. I'm just telling you."

The glass dropped. Her dad came running at me. I saw it coming too late and by the time I did see it, I tried to brace myself against the couch cushion. I tried to turn away from it, but by then he had reeled back and knocked me across the side of my face. There was a pop and the world went blue. I rolled off the couch and onto the floor. I held my jaw in my hand. There was a loud, high-pitched ringing sound, and I blinked my eyes to keep from losing consciousness. I may have, actually, for a second or two. Then I was on my back, looking up at the ceiling. My soul was about to leave my body; I could taste it in my mouth. I put my finger to my lips and it came back red. Two people were yelling at each other. I made a noise in my chest and in my throat, the sound of confusion.

Emily's mother was kneeling over me.

"God, he's bleeding," she said. "Get a towel!"

"What?"

"Frank! Get him a towel! For Christ's sake!"

"I'm leaving," he said. And he left.

Something strange was happening and I began to panic. My muscles contracted, my body stiffened, my arms stuck to my sides. "I can't move," I said. "I can't move!" I coughed into the carpet, rocking back and forth on my side. Things felt like they were tearing. I couldn't move and I kept yelling that I couldn't and Emily's mother kept yelling at me that I was fine.

"You can move!" she said.

"I can't!" I said.

"Yes, you can!"

"I can't!" and I couldn't.

Of course, after a few seconds, I could. She gave me a bag of frozen peas to put on my face. I kept saying that I didn't know what had gotten into Frank. I stressed that I had just been sitting there peacefully, minding my own business. I wondered what my own dad was doing. I hadn't seen him in a long time. I wondered if Emily had heard all the commotion. Her mother helped me to her car, I put an arm over her thin shoulder for balance, and she drove toward my house.

Now the world was veiled in blue and it was blurry. The lights in the houses seemed to pulsate rapidly. I could hear them moving, a high-pitched whir, and I wondered if the crack in the jaw Frank had given me had somehow scrambled my frequencies. Some of these lights emitted a faint but constant beeping sound that I could hear from the passenger seat.

"Can you hear that?" I asked.

"I should probably talk to your mother," Emily's mother said.

I didn't think this sounded like a good idea.

"She's asleep," I said. "I'll tell her about it tomorrow. We probably won't sue."

We didn't have peas, so I took a bag of corn from our freezer and iced my jaw on the bed. My angelfish floated quietly in her corner of the tank. The feeder fish swam around and bumped into each other. The bruise on my chin had turned into an almost breathtakingly beautiful swirl of blue and gray, but it was killing me. I closed my eyes.

Noise from the street woke me up, glass breaking and a series of thuds. I lay still for a second and then I got up and ran to the window. A man jumped into a big white car in the middle of the street and quickly drove away. I stuck my head out and tried to see the license plate, but he was driving too fast. He went around the corner and was gone.

I grabbed my notebook, put on my jacket and went downstairs. The television was on with the volume turned up loud. My mother was passed out on the couch. Her mouth was open and she was snoring. She looked uncomfortable. I put my hand up to my jaw. It ached.

My little brother put his head over the railing and looked down onto the living room.

"What is it?" he asked.

I looked up. "Nothing bad happened," I said. "Go back to bed."

"I heard something."

"It was just the wind. Go get in bed."

"Is Mom all right?"

"She's fine," I said.

I turned the volume down and went outside and walked out to the car. I looked at my house and at the houses down the block. Most of them were dark at this time of night. I looked at the sky, at the grass. I looked everywhere except in the direction of my mother's car. I didn't want to look at it until the last possible moment, but pretty soon I had my hands against it and was forced to.

There were shards of glass and red plastic on the ground. Both rear lights had been knocked out. I wrote this in my notepad: Both rear lights out. Have been shattered. I went around to the front, running my hand over the top. Top damaged, I wrote. Looks as if someone took heavy object and swung with grt. force. Paint and frame damage. Headlights out. Windshld and other mnr. structure damage.

After I had made my assessment, I walked back into the house and then straight into the garage, where I picked up the first blunt instrument I could find, which was a shovel. I walked outside to the car, to the passenger door, and I swung the shovel as hard as I could. A terrible metallic sound fled down the street, through the rows of houses, and when I looked, the door was dented so totally I'd never again get it open.

I went inside and put a blanket over my mother and took her glass and put it in the dishwasher. I turned off the television and all the lights downstairs. I listened to her sleep for a while. Then I went up into my room and on a piece of notebook paper I wrote a letter to the school in Nebraska, asking if they offered classes in fisheries. I told them I sincerely hoped that they did and that I would be waiting eagerly, on the edge of my seat, for their reply.

•

A few weeks later I graduated. I spent the summer mowing lawns around the neighborhood. My dad called one night and apologized for not making it to my ceremony. I hadn't gone myself, but I didn't tell him that. He said he was proud I'd been accepted into the school in Nebraska and that he'd be honored to drive me there. Since I hadn't yet figured how I was going to get there, I told him I could cancel my plans and go with him instead, under the condition that he'd make sure my mother and my brother were taken care of and given regular meals.

One of the original five goldfish in my tank died around this time. There'd been no warning signs. They had all seemed to be living normal and satisfactory lives. I found him dried out and bug-eyed on the carpet below the tank--for some reason he'd jumped ship. I put him in a plastic film container and my brother and I held a service in the backyard. I said a few words and then we buried him about six inches beneath the beauty bark.

After a week of steady icing, my bruise had gone away, but I had continued cold compresses for a few more days in case of long-term damage beneath the surface. I kept my mother's car parked on the side of the house and rarely drove it. Still, I washed it every Tuesday. I made sure the house was always clean and in good shape in case--although I never for a second believed it might happen--Emily might stop by one of these nights.

But she didn't and pretty soon it was time to go. The morning of our departure, I walked my brother to Winchell's and bought him breakfast. I told him everything I'd learned about the world, which wasn't much. People might let you down, I said, but don't let it worry you. You're not crazy, I told him. You're not even close to crazy.

I put my hand on his shoulder and told him he was the man of the house now, which meant he was going to have to take care of the old lady. He accepted this task with as much solemnity and tact as could be expected from an eight-year-old. He nodded his little head and took smaller bites from his doughnut.

My dad showed up at the house in the afternoon, and he and my brother loaded the car. I wandered around the living room picking up various things from various tables and inspecting them, and then I sat down across from my mother.

"I guess this is it," I said. I stood and stretched my arms above my head, then sat down again. "I don't have to go."

Then my mother did something uncustomary. She made a gesture that I would think about a lot from then on. She closed her lips tight and tilted her head. She ran her hand to the top of her head and took a handful of hair between her fingers and squeezed hard. She looked at me then, and there was something sorrowful, heartbroken and searching in her expression. That is to say, she was asking me--she wasn't saying anything--but she was asking me how things could have turned out the way they had, how what should have been a pleasant life could have taken so many unfortunate turns, and it's occurring to me now--I almost shouldn't say it--that it has been difficult for me to love anyone more than I loved her right then.

I stopped going to class after the second day. Fisheries 101, I found, was not the true source of all knowledge. The professor was interested in discussing ecosystems, water resources and pollution, river management, molecular genetics, marine environment, stock separation techniques and so forth. He was not interested, as far as I could tell, in answering the essential questions: why fish swim in schools, for example, or how they swim or breathe at all.

This was terribly disappointing. I stayed in bed the entire third day and didn't leave the basement. I started spending my time in the student center drinking Cokes and playing pinball and video games, watching people bowl on the three-lane alley. One night I fell in with a group of cowboys who had come from an even smaller Nebraska town to take jobs in the school cafeteria, which was located in the same building. They needed an extra man for bowling and one of them asked me if I wanted to play. I said I did. I sat at the scorer's table and every time my partner would even glance a pin, I would congratulate him on a masterful throw and try to give him high fives. Afterward they all got in a car and left me in the parking lot to walk home in the dark.

Later, I was sitting at my kitchen table drinking a pop. People were yelling and laughing in the street outside. I went out, walked up the steps and over to the front porch and sat down. I put my head on my arms. I felt, I might have said, bound by sorrow. I missed my mother and my brother and my old man. I missed Emily. I went back down inside and took the Fish Bar flier out from under the bed and then I took my notepad and decided to call her. I would ask her to' come to Nebraska and live with me. I would beg her to come. I would apologize for the terrible things I'd done. I would tell her I was in love with her. I would tell her my heart was breaking. I would get on my knees and tell her I was falling apart. I would say I couldn't live without her and she would tell me--I hoped she would tell me--that she'd been waiting for a long time to hear me say it like that, that she would be on the first plane in the morning.

She answered after the first ring. The television was going in the background. A crowd was laughing about something.

"Please don't hang up," I said.

"Not this again," she said.

"No," I said. "I'm not going to do anything."

"I'm getting my dad," she said.

"I'm not gonna do anything!"

"Please just leave me alone."

"Your dad punched me in the face," I said. I don't know why I mentioned this, other than she wasn't reacting to my call in the way that I'd expected.

"I'm hanging up," she said.

"Let me ask you a question!"

"I'm hanging up. Goodbye."

"That's funny," I said. "That's a joke, right?"

"You need help," she said, and then she hung up.

"I do need help," I said. "I know it."

I put on my shoes and splashed my face with water. I put a fresh Band-Aid on my cold sore. Then I walked out into the darkness. I wandered toward the fields outside of town and down a series of narrow roads. I didn't know where I was going, but I thought for some reason that what I needed to do was walk, or maybe that I needed to start walking.

I whistled, but just listening hurt my heart. I kept walking, and in rural towns, those roads can turn around on you and you find yourself devoid of direction, and if you have never been good with direction in the first place, you can find yourself in a lot of trouble, which, after the third hour of wandering, I was ready to admit.

Clouds had come and covered the stars; they had, it seemed, removed the sky. I'd walked out into the darkness and gotten lost in it. I was alone in Nebraska. I wasn't studying fish. I wasn't going to class. I had no one who knew me by name.

The road forked and I stopped. The hills rolled away from the fences on either side. Two rows of radio towers stood off in the distance on the horizon, red lights blinking in separate rhythms. The Milky Way stretched behind them like a thin, tired cloud, like the rim of a great big bowl. It was an enormous universe. The wind was picking up. I was tired. My feet hurt. My shirt was wet. My jaw ached. I stared at the towers, at the lights. I watched them blink. And then I had a vision.

In the vision, I looked down on myself as if a camera were suspended above my head. It started with a shot of the inside of my ear and then it slowly pulled back and I saw my cheek and the side of my face and my closed eyes and my hair and my neck, and soon I could see most of my body, myself, curled up on the side of a road with my head resting on my hands like someone either dead or asleep. My jeans were rolled up past my knees and my legs were bare. And as the camera pulled back farther, higher, I saw a car--a mid-Eighties sedan, I think--idling quietly on the road beside me with its headlights on. Then the vision was over and I was left with the lights on the tower blinking in rhythm again.

I didn't see any other option than to lie down. I curled up on my side in a patch of cool grass next to the road and put my head on my hands. I stayed there, eyes closed, listening, and waited.

Soon I heard a car approach and stop next to me. I felt two people come and stand next to me, one on each side. One of them bent down and said something in my ear that I didn't understand, and then softly, gently, removed my arms and my nose. The other pulled off my ears, then unzipped my pants and pulled off my dick. They bent down on either side of me and spoke into my ears, or what had been my ears--the holes that were there. They each said something that I didn't understand with voices I didn't understand, and my eyes filled and I started crying, because I knew something, or my heart knew something--or the answer to something, and when you know the answer, it hurts terribly.

They got back in the car and another door opened and someone got out. He walked over. He crouched down next to me. I kept crying and didn't think to stop. He spoke words, and pulled my legs off.

I could feel my skin harden and emit a mucous membrane that covered up every hole; where my nostrils had been, the holes that were my ears, every opening but my mouth. My lungs tightened in my chest and shriveled up. I started gagging, my throat constricted and I coughed my lungs up out of my mouth. I flopped in the grass, slowly at first, not breathing, and then, with every second, more and more furiously, more violently and painfully, the sky and what was in it a blurry mess above my head, and I knew, I absolutely knew, that unless someone came and got me to water soon--within seconds--I would die.

A door closed and the car drove away. Soon I lay still. The ground was hard underneath me. Something wet fell on my face. The sky opened, spread rain all over the ground.

Maybe not. But I remember clearly that it took a little while to recognize that I was there, somewhere, in between.

•

I'd like to say that I sucked it up, that I made the best of a bad situation and went back to class and got my degree in fisheries, that my mother came out of her funk and joined a choir and filled the church every Sunday morning with glorious praise. I'd like to say that my dad moved back in and built a sunroom, and that everything turned out all right. I'd like to say these things, but they wouldn't be true. My mother, in fact, never came around, and the old man lives across the country and I haven't spoken to him in a long time. From what my brother tells me, he's doing well.

But the other evening, I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a beer, and I looked out the back window and the sun was almost down, the sky was blue and pink and there was my wife, a beautiful woman, walking up and down the patio in her jogging suit, skimming the pool. She ran the skimmer over the top, struggling a bit, collecting leaves and pine needles from the surface, and then she lifted that long unwieldy pole and, almost gracefully, dumped the net into the trashcan. She seemed to know that she was being watched; she tensed a little, looked up and back at the house, lowered her head and saw me, across the pool, on the other side of the window. She smiled, rolled her eyes, brushed her hair out of her face and went back to skimming.

My mind felt very light and I lifted my hands from the table. I felt a strong tingling sensation in my legs. The floor began to shake and it occurred to me in that moment that if a runaway train were right then breaking from its tracks at a speed of more than 100 miles an hour, was headed for my wife while she stood there skimming the pool, dumping the basket, running it over the surface again; if the train were coming for her right then--and I knew she wouldn't see it--while I might wait a second or two longer than I should, when the shadow was to fall across her face, I knew that I would stand up. I would leap from my chair and burst through the door. I would run to her and push her aside. And I would tell her, if there was time, of course, and I could find the words, I'm always glad to help.

Runners-up in the 2001 contest are Joshua Furst (also of Iowa Writer's Workshop) for "Mercy Fuck," Emily Raboteau (of New York University) for "Bernie and Me" and Jess Row (of the University of Michigan) for "The Train to Lo Wu."