Big Fish (3 page)

“About that two-headed lady,” he says with his eyes closed, murmuring, as if falling into a sleep.

“I've
heard
about the two-headed lady,” I say, shaking him gently by the shoulder. “I don't want to hear about her anymore, Dad. Okay?”

“I wasn't going to
tell
you about the two-headed lady, Mr. Smarty-pants,” he says.

“You weren't?”

“I was going to tell you about her sister.”

“She had a
sister?
”

“Hey,” he says, opening his eyes now, getting his second wind. “Would I kid you about something like that?”

The Girl in the River

N
ear the banks of the Blue River was an oak tree where my father used to stop and rest. The tree spread its branches wide, providing shade, and around its base was a soft, cool green moss, on which he would lay his head and sometimes sleep, the river soothing him with its smooth sounds. It's here he came one day, and as he was drifting off into a dream woke to see a beautiful young woman bathing in the river. Her long hair shone like gold itself and curled to her bare shoulders. Her breasts were small and round. Cupping the cool water in her hands, she let it run down her face, her chest, and back into the river.

Edward tried to remain calm. He kept telling himself
, Don't move. If you move an inch she'll see you.
He didn't want to scare her. And, honestly, he had never glimpsed a woman in her natural state before, and wanted to study her a little longer before she left him.

That's when he saw the snake. Cottonmouth, had to be. Making a little break in the water as it glided toward her, its small reptilian head angling for flesh. Hard to believe a snake that size could kill you, but it could. A snake that
size killed Calvin Bryant. It bit him on the ankle and seconds
later he was dead. Calvin Bryant was two times bigger than her.

So there was no real decision to be made. My father reli
ed on instinct and dove head first into the river, hands outstretched, just as the cottonmouth was getting set to place his two small fangs into her small waist. She screamed, of course. A man coming at you, diving into the water—you bet she screamed. And he rose out of the water with th
at snake writhing in his hands, mouth searching for something to lay into, and she screamed again. Finally he was able to wrap the snake up in his shirt. Didn't believe in killing, my dad. He'd take it to a friend who collected snakes.

Here's the scene now, though: a young man and a young woman both standing waist deep in the Blue River with their shirts off, looking at each other. Sun breaking through in places, shining, glinting off the water. But these two mostly in shadow. One studying the other. All quiet except for the nature around them. Hard to talk now because what do you say?
My name is Edward, what's yours?
You don't say that. You say what she said, the moment she was able to speak.

“You saved my life.”

And he had, hadn't he? She was about to get bitten by a poisonous snake and he had saved her. Risked his own life to do it, too. Though neither of them mentioned that. Didn't have to. They both knew it.

“You're brave,” she said.

“No ma'am,” he said, though she couldn't have been much older than he. “I just saw you, and I saw that snake, and I—I jumped.”

“What's your name?”

“Edward,” he said.

“Okay, Edward. From now on this is your place. We'll call it . . . Edward's Grove. The tree, this part of the river, this water, everything. And whenever you're not feeling good or need something to happen, you come down here and just rest, and think about it.”

“Okay,” he said, though he would have said okay to about anything then. Though way above water, his head was swimming. He felt as though he had left this world for a brief time. Hadn't come back yet.

She smiled.

“Now you turn around,” she said, “and I'll get dressed.”

“Okay.”

And he turned around, flushed with an almost intolerable good feeling. So good he could hardly stand it. As though he'd been made over, better, and all new.

He didn't know how long it might take a woman to dress, so he gave her a full five minutes. And when he turned around of course she was gone—vanished. Hadn't heard her go but she was gone. He might have called after her—would've liked to—but he didn't know what to call. Wished he'd asked now, first thing.

The wind blew through the oak tree, and the water ran its course. And she was gone. And in his shirt no snake at all, but a stick. A small brown stick.

It looked like a snake, though—it did. Especially when he threw it in the river and watched it swim away.

His Quiet Charm

T
hey say he had a special charm, a flair for understatement, a knack for a sudden thoughtfulness. He was—shy. Still: sought out, my father, by women. Call it a quiet charm. He was quite handsome, too, though he never let this go to his head. He was a friend to all, and everybody was his friend.

They say he was funny, even then. They say he knew a few good jokes. Not in large groups, where he'd keep to himself, but get him alone—as many female Ashlanders apparently tried to do!—and he could really make you laugh. They say you could hear them laughing into the night, my father and these sweet young girls, hear their laughter echoing through town in the night, on his front porch, swinging. Laughter was the sound of choice to sleep by in Ashland. That's the way it was, back then.

How He Tamed the Giant

M
y father's youthful exploits were many, and the stories told even to this day are beyond counting. But perhaps his most formidable task was facing Karl, the Giant, for in doing so he was risking his very life. Karl was as tall as any two men, as wide as any three, and as strong as any ten. His face and arms bore the scars of a life lived brutally, a life closer to that of animals than of men. And such was his demeanor. They say Karl was born of woman like any mortal, but it became clear soon enough that a mistake had been made. He was just too huge. His mother would buy him clothes in the morning, and by afternoon the seams would tear, so fast was his body growing. At night he'd go to sleep in a bed made to his size by a woodsman, and by morning his feet would be hanging over the edge. And he was eating constantly! It didn't matter how much food she bought or produced from her own fields: her cupboards were always bare by nightfall, and still he complained of an empty stomach. His great fist pounded the table for more food—“Now!” he screamed. “Mother, now!” After fourteen years of this she could no longer stand it, and one day while Karl's face was buried in a side of venison she packed her bags and left by the backdoor, never to return; her absence went unnoticed until the food was gone. Then he became bitter and angry and—most of all—hungry.

This is when he came to Ashland. At night, while the townsfolk slept, Karl crept through the yards and gardens in search of food. In the beginning, he took only what they grew there; morning would come and the people of Ashland would find whole cornfields ravaged, their apple trees bare, the water tower dry. No one knew what to do. Karl, having grown too large for it, had moved from his home into the mountains surrounding town. Who cared to face him in such terrain? And what would they do, these people, before the ghastly monstrosity Karl had become?

This pillaging went on for some time, until one day half a dozen dogs came up missing. It seemed the very life of the town was threatened. Something had to be done—but what?

My father came up with a plan. It was dangerous, but there seemed to be nothing else to do, and with the blessing of the town one fine summer morning father set out on his way. He headed for the mountains, where he knew of a cave. This is where he thought Karl lived.

The cave was hidden behind a stand of pine and a great pile of stones, and my father knew of it from having rescued a young girl who had wandered into its depths many years ago. He stood before the cave and shouted.

“Karl!”

He heard his voice come back to him in an echo.

“Show yourself! I know you're in there. I have come with a message from our town.”

Moments passed in the silence of the deep woods before my father heard a rustling, and a tremor seemed to move the earth itself. Then from the darkness of the cave rose Karl. He was bigger even than my father had dared to dream. And oh, but his was a grisly visage! Covered in cuts and bruises from living in the wild—and being so hungry at
times that he didn't wait for his food to die, and sometimes his food fought back. His black hair was long and full of grease, his thick and tangled beard full of food as well as the soft and spineless crawly bugs that dined there on his crumbs.

When he saw my father he began to laugh.

“What is it
you
want, little person?” he said with a terrible grin.

“You must stop coming into Ashland for your food,” my father said. “Our farmers are losing their crops, and the children miss their dogs.”

“What? And
you
intend to stop me?” he said, his voice booming through the valleys, no doubt all the way back to Ashland itself. “Why, I could
snap
you in my hands like a branch off a tree!”

And to demonstrate he grabbed the branch of a nearby pine and ground it to dust in his fingers.

“Why,” he went on, “I could eat you and be done with you in a moment! I could!”

“And that is why I have come,” my father said.

Karl's face twitched then, either from confusion or from one of the bugs that had crawled from his beard and up his cheek.

“What do you mean, that's why you've come?”

“For you to eat me,” he said. “I am the first sacrifice.”

“The first . . . sacrifice?”

“To you, O great Karl! We submit to your power. In order to save the many, we realize we must sacrifice a few. That makes me—what?—lunch?”

Karl seemed confounded by my father's words. He shook his head to clear it, and a dozen creeping bugs flew from his beard and fell to the ground. His body began to shake, and for a moment he appeared about to fall, and had to right himself by leaning against the mountain wall.

It was as if he had been struck by a weapon of some kind. It was as if he had been wounded in battle.

“I . . . ” he said quite softly, even sadly. “I don't want to eat you.”

“You don't?” my father said, greatly relieved.

“No,” Karl said. “I don't want to eat anybody,” and a giant tear rolled down his beaten face. “I just get so
hungry,
” he said. “My mother used to cook the most wonderful meals, but then she left, and I didn't know what to do. The dogs—I'm sorry about the dogs. I'm sorry about everything.”

“I understand,” my father said.

“I don't know what to do now,” Karl said. “Look at me—I'm huge! I have to eat to live. But I'm all on my own now, and I don't know how to—”

“Cook,” my father said. “Grow food. Tend animals.”

“Exactly,” Karl said. “I suppose I should just wander into the back of this cave and never come out. I've caused you too much trouble.”

“We could teach you,” my father said.

It took Karl a moment to understand my father's words.

“Teach me what?”

“To cook, grow food. There are acres and acres of fields here.”

“You mean, I could become a farmer?”

“Yes,” my father said. “You could.”

And this is exactly what happened. Karl became the biggest farmer in Ashland, but my father's legend became even bigger. It was said he could charm anyone, just by walking through the room. It was said he was blessed with a special power. But my father was humble, and he said it wasn't that at all. He just liked people, and people liked him. It was that simple, he said.

In Which He Goes Fishing

T
hen came the flood, but what can I add to what has already been written? Rain, waves of rain, unceasing. Streams became rivers, rivers lakes, and all the lakes, growing beyond their banks, became one. Somehow, Ashland—most of it—was spared. The felicitous congruence of a mountain range, some say, parting the waters around the town. True, one corner of Ashland, houses and all, are still at the bottom of what is now called—appropriately if not very imaginatively—Big Lake, and the ghosts of those who died in the flood can still be heard on a summer night. But what is most remarkable about the lake is the catfish. Catfish as big as a man, they say—some bigger. Take your leg off if you swim too deep. Leg and more sometimes, if you don't watch out.

Only a fool or a hero would try to catch a fish that size, and my father, well—I guess he was a little of both.

He went by himself one morning at dawn and took
a boat out toward the middle, deepest part of Big Lake. For bait? A mouse, deceased, found in the corncrib. He hooked it up and let her fly. It took a good five minutes to hit bottom, then he brought her up slow. Soon he got a strike. The strike took the mouse, the hook, everything. So he tried again. A bigger hook this time, stronger line, more sumptuous-looking dead mouse, and cast. The water was beginning to roil about now, roil and bubble and wave, as if the spirit of the lake was rising. Edward just kept fishing, just fishing. Mayb
e that was a bad idea, though, seeing how things were getting very unlakelike now. And scary. Maybe he'd reel in his little mouse and row on home. Okay then. Only, as he reels he notices the line's not moving so much as he is. Forward. And the faster he reels, the faster he moves. What he should do, he knows, is simple: let go of the pole. Let it go! Throw it in and kiss it good-bye. Who knows what's on the other end of that line, pulling him? But he can't throw it in. Can't do it. His hands in fact feel like they're a part of the pole itself. So he does the second best thing and stops reeling, but the second best
thing doesn't work either: he keeps moving forward, Edward
does, and fast, faster than before. This is no log then, is it? He's being pulled by a thing, a living thing—a catfish. Dolphinlike, he watches as it arcs out of the water, catching a ray from the sun as it does, beautiful, monstrous, scary—six, seven feet long?—and taking Edward with it now as it submerges, popping him right out of his boat and pulling him under and down, deep into the watery graveyard of Big Lake itself. And there he sees the homes and the farms, the fields and the roads, that small corner of Ashland that was covered over in the flood. And he sees the people, too: there's Homer Kittridge and his wife, Marla. There's Vern Talbot and Carol Smith. Homer's taking a bucket full of feed to his horses, and Carol's talking to Marla about corn. Vern's working on the tractor. Beneath fathoms and fathoms of a shadowy green water they move as if in slow motion, and when they talk little bubbles leave their lips and rise to the surface. As the catfish carries Edward swiftly by, Homer smiles and begins to wave—Edward knew Homer—but can't quite finish the gesture before they're gone again, fish and man, up and suddenly out of the water, where Edward is thrown, poleless now, to shore.

He never told anybody about this. He couldn't. Because who'd believe him? Questioned about loss of pole and boat, Edward said he fell asleep dreaming on the banks of Big Lake and they just . . . drifted away.