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As he records me on his phone I wiggle my nub and make up an insane story about a legendary sea serpent, Bob, who swam the seas when the earth was young and hated all humanity for throwing their excrement overboard from their creaky wooden vessels. Bob smashed Viking sailing ships and dragged their warriors to the briny depths where he played with their remains like Barbie dolls, until one day when a ship's cook named Evets, dim from an axe blow to the head as a lad, plunged a hot griddle into the beast's brain through Bob's eye, killing him, and then went back into the kitchen as if nothing had happened and made breakfast for everyone aboard the
Raging Scallop
.

“Wiggle it some more,” Steve directs, and I do. He looks down at his phone. “Huh. Battery's dead.”

“Just as well,” I say, put my shirt back on, plug my earbuds in, and go back to
The Sunny Side.
I flick on the black light and Steve sets down his phone, drawn to the luminous poster like a child with the brain of a moth.

 

THINGS YOU COULD DO WITH A COOL BIONIC ARM

Punch through walls

Bend steel bars

Tear the door off a bank vault

Lift a car overhead

Stop a runaway locomotive

Catch a bullet

Crush diamonds into coal

Arm wrestle the Hulk

Launch projectiles

Fire a grappling hook

Shoot a laser

Hack a computer

Inject an immobilizing serum

Solder gun

Such an arm would probably be the ultimate weapon of a comic-book hero (no doubt dubbed “Armageddon”), and it should also be capable of small, intricate work, like threading circuits on a silicon chip, or etching a coded message on a grain of rice. But the tragic hero would trade it all for his own arm and hand that could feel things, like cold, or a woman's breast.

 

NICENESS

Overnight I dream about people I haven't seen in twenty years, as vivid now as then. All of us are missing an arm and it seems quite normal. We're in line at the school cafeteria and as we move through today's lunch offerings, a wrinkled woman in a hairnet slams one completely random full-sized human arm on each of our trays. Most of these are not a good match. Mine is a short, burly arm with the additional misfortune of being right-handed. My history teacher, Professor Boelts, is there to explain that it belonged to Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson of the British Royal Navy, and if I was displeased by it I need only look across the cafeteria to see Admiral Nelson sneering at my own mismatched appendage as he prepared to face Napoleon. Before we can properly trade arms, I wake up.

All that remains of Steve is a rumpled blanket and dirty socks, which I kick to the middle of the attic and then through the hole leading downstairs, implicit in the pile a sort of reverse welcome mat. I make my way downstairs to find the house is empty.

Outside, Dad sits in the yard in the same hunter-green metal chair I recall from my childhood, now wearing a patina of rust. Leashed to Dad's chair is Ali, basking in the sun. I hadn't realized Dad took him outside to our yard, and now I'm forced to wonder whether he walks him down the stairs like a poodle or carries him like a huge baby.

Somehow undaunted by the presence of a fearsome predator, a squirrel hops over and stands erect, and Dad tosses him a peanut. Spotting me in the sliding doorway, Dad blushes as if I just saw him give a dollar bill to a stripper.

“Where is everybody?”

“Steve took Jackie to the mall. I get the impression he hasn't done that since … probably ever.”

Steve was just dumb enough to believe that he'd won the standoff with a random act of toadying, failing to understand that Jackie had merely holstered her argument to be drawn, blazing, at the slightest confrontation.

“She's smart enough to milk it. Until the next time.”

I don't ask where Mom is, assuming the answer to be the disturbing coin toss between “firehouse” and “yurt.” Instead I settle into a folding lawn chair next to Dad. There are seven chairs out here like snowflakes, no two alike. I take the peanuts from him and attempt to lure a squirrel closer but the squirrel, all spastic sudden motion, only stares at me, meaning I'm a less familiar outdoor figure than Ali. Dad plucks the peanut from me, leans down and holds it out, and the squirrel hops over and takes it directly from his hand.

“Wow. You two could be in a circus.”

The squirrel twirls the nut, end over end, repeatedly, trying to find which identical bulge fits best between its teeth before he grips it there and hops away. Ali just blinks his strange sideways blink, eyelids sliding front to back.

“Your mother thinks we should talk.”

“We are talking. Mission accomplished!”

“Remember that kid you used to play high school lacrosse with?”

“Artie Miller? We were best friends for, like, a whole summer. What a stud. Great athlete, girls loved him, funny kid.”

“I remember he was very impressed with himself. A show-off. Liked attention. And a mean kid: you had a birthday party, we took you and a bunch of kids bowling, and he made fun of that kid from across the street, Joel.”

“Everyone made fun of Joel.”

“You didn't. That's my point. You worshipped this kid Artie, and I was scared to death you were going to try to be like him.”

“Mom wanted you to talk to me about Artie?”

He watches the squirrel shred the shell to get at the peanut inside.

“I'm less concerned than your mother. All I ever wanted for you was to be nice. It was more important to me than you being popular, or good at sports, or having girls fall all over you.”

“I wouldn't have minded a few girls falling all over me.”

“You did okay. A handsome boy—your mother's genes there, thank God—girls liked you, even if you didn't notice. More important, you turned out nice. Taught kids, made friends, built a good life. I can't remember what you wanted to be when you grew up—”

“Pretty sure it was a guy with two arms.”

Dad sighs. The squirrel watches us, equally exasperated.

“Weber got his first good night's sleep in a long time the other night.”

“Because he got hammered.”

“Because you wouldn't let Steve wake him up. Even if it meant that,” he nods at my bandaged tattoo. Dad produces another nut, and the squirrel stands erect as a commuter packed into a crowded subway. “We're all worried about you. After what happened … you've been kind of a jerk.” I admit, that hurts a little. But then he looks at me and smiles. “Somehow, the events of the other night have me less worried.”

“Artie may be gone, but I have a sea serpent named Bob.”

“Bad things don't only happen all at once. They also happen slowly, over time. The career that sputtered, the health that deteriorated over the years … the love that just … dissipates.” Both squirrel and I stare at Dad, speechless. “Feed the squirrel.” He's suddenly said enough and places the peanut between my fingers. “Slowly…”

“All right, but if he bites me and I get gangrene, you explain it to Jackie.”

The squirrel approaches cautiously, favoring Dad. It jumps up on the plastic lawn chair next to me, and I lean in slowly with the nut. It stretches its head out to reach, and I give it plenty of leeway—the safe distance of a long, three-nutted shell between us. The squirrel leans in, slowly gripping the shell between its teeth … it reaches up with its front paw to grasp it, and when its nails graze my finger, I instinctively jerk my whole arm back, but it has a grip on the nut with its teeth and the squirrel goes flying and the chair it was on tumbles, and I fall over backward. Ali lunges at me on the ground and Dad pulls him back by the leash, and we're all frozen in place for a moment. Then the squirrel collects himself, grabs the nut, and is gone up a tree while I'm still struggling to right myself. Suddenly Dad is laughing harder than I've seen him laugh since
Blazing Saddles.

“You okay?” he finally gasps.

“This is why I avoid wildlife.”

“I just pissed myself. I'm going inside to change. Get dressed. Let's see if we can't talk Michelle into bending the rules for a late breakfast.”

And with that, he answers at least one of my questions, scooping up Ali in both arms and carrying him inside.

 

FISH

One fish, two fish, red fish … dead fish? The Illinois Center for Ichthyological Conservation—or as I like to call it, “Ick Ick!”—is studying the vanishing freshwater fish species of Illinois's rivers. Specifically, the blue paddle-snout sturgeon, a bottom-feeding sucker. I know, that sounds like an insult! But the real insult has been done by a combination of local dam projects and river pollution that has reduced Acipenser pseudoboscis to an endangered species.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service budgets hundreds of millions of dollars annually to protect endangered fish species … but in order to save them, Ick Ick first has to count them, which is easier to do during mating season when they migrate to warmer, shallower waters to spawn under the watchful eye of local fish counters. Hey, fish, get a room! This is Sunny Lee, with
The Sunny Side.

*   *   *

We pull up to the Four Corners just as
The Sunny Side
concludes and I snap off the radio so Sunny's silky voice will be the one that resonates in my head. Coffee and syrup flow at the Four Corners along with a stream of conversation between Dad and Mr. Weber, which I punctuate occasionally with an agreeable grunt. As stoned as I am it takes a while to figure out that they're talking about me, and I find myself in accidental agreement with their assessment that it's time I get some sort of job.

“A man needs to keep busy,” Dad observes calmly.

“Idle hand does the devil's work.” I shovel a glob of buttered belgian battered breakfast into my maw.

Don't they know how
busy
my life has become? I work harder in my first hour awake than these two do all day, starting with the shower: first, I have to take the shampoo bottle in my hand, open it with my teeth, and pour an unseen amount of goo on my head before setting the bottle upright and struggling to cap it. One hand has to struggle to reach the places the other hand used to wash. Despite having about 15 percent less skin surface to dry, toweling off with one hand is twice as slow.

“We understand returning to your teaching job might be uncomfortable.”

“Especially when it comes time to bang a pair of erasers together.” I stir my coffee with a strip of bacon.

Brushing my teeth starts with setting my toothbrush down on the sink counter and squeezing toothpaste onto it, which usually entails knocking the toothbrush sideways, so what I'm sticking in my mouth isn't just minty freshness but a clod of sink germs. (Flossing is out of the question.) Blow-drying my hair is impossible, so I keep it short and brush it carefully in the direction I hope it to dry in, which it mostly doesn't.

“We have some thoughts, but of course we'd like to hear yours,” Mr. Weber coaxes me.

“That would make you telepaths.” I drown a stomach full of waffles in coffee.

I have to dress sitting down so I don't lose my balance, rolling left and right on butt cheeks to pull on underwear and inching each foot into a sock. Jeans were a lot easier to zip up and button with the fingers of two hands working in concert; instead I'm reduced to sweatpants. Wriggling into a T-shirt is relatively easy, but button-down shirts are out of the question for now. Even sunglasses are hard: I hold one stem and tug the other out with my mouth, a poor substitute for another set of fingers. Needless to say, all my footwear is laceless.

In short, the burden of the one-armed keeps me plenty fucking busy.

“What do you want to do, Aaron?” Mr. Weber, without benefit of telepathy, asks.

“I thought I'd try my hand at NASCAR.”

“You know what you have?” Mr. Weber is about to tell me.

“One less arm than average?”

“Inertia. You're at rest so you stay at rest. Because if you set yourself in motion, you're afraid your life would move in ways you can't control.”

“How much control does anyone have, really? If we did, we'd all be astronauts or movie stars or billionaire industrialists. Not that I see myself being great at any of those…”

“Even the lowest plebe on a ship can do a job. Do you know that on whaling vessels there was a deckhand who was lowered overboard on a ‘monkey line' into a dead whale's head to scoop out oil with a bucket?”

“‘Whale Ship Monkey Boy' isn't a strong pitch, Mr. Weber.”

They continue to discuss my limited local options, which in their estimation include telemarketing, customer service (also by phone), social work (really?), any clerical job in local government, and maybe even counselor to the newly disabled. (“He's not ready,” Dad declares of this last one, and I can't disagree.)

I assess my job prospects differently: horror film extra, hollow-armed smuggler, some clerical job that requires only the repetitive use of a handstamp, cleaning the stripper pole between dancers, senator from Hawaii, and, because I have unique experience, crash-test dummy.

That's when Mr. Weber mentions that he's very plugged in to a federally funded local conservation effort to count fish.

“You're shitting me,” Dad and I say in unison.

 

THINGS I KNOW ABOUT FISH AND CONSERVATION

 

COUNTERINTUITIVE

The counting of fish has been made necessary by the collapse of the local fish population, the cause of which is debatable: while some blame warmer oceans, overfishing, and pollution, others point to the proliferation of the dams that kill millions of fish as they attempt to swim upriver to spawn, only to bash themselves against a concrete barrier instead. As any hockey player could tell you, it's harder to score after repeated blows to the head, rendering future offspring unlikely.