Maybe (Maybe Not) (18 page)

If you are dying of thirst, it will prolong your life.

I don’t know why it’s yellow instead of red or blue or green. Two physiologists and a urologist couldn’t tell me. It was too simple a question.

I do know that we all make about two quarts a day and that it’s legal, moral, necessary, and generally OK to do so. If you don’t, you die.

And I repeat. No matter what you were taught—no matter what you think, even after all this—urine really isn’t dirty.

So. Does that mean I’m going to start drinking mine?

No way.

H
ere comes a fish story. A true fish story. There are three very reliable witnesses. They will be embarrassed to confirm these facts, for they are
serious
fishermen—and maybe I’m not.

My main fishing experience consists of stock-tank fishing, Texas style. In a ranch pond primarily used to water cattle, fingerling fish are planted. When you want to have a fish fry, you throw a lighted stick of dynamite out into the pond.
KAFOOM
!! Whatever floats up gets cooked. If you don’t want too many fish, you stick the wire leads of an old hand-crank telephone in the water and crank until you electrocute one or two fish. This is fishing at its efficient best—fast and cheap, with minimal equipment, fuss and bother. Exciting, too.

One summer my friend Willy, his nine-year-old son, David, and Gen, my nine-year-old nephew visiting from Japan, were primed to assault the mighty rainbow trout high in the Cascade Mountains in a remote lake “absolutely full of fish”—a record catch was promised. Would I come? How could I not? I had never been fishing the way gentlemen do it. It was time.

The license I received is still in my scrapbook. I had no idea how official fishing could get. License number 890046566, issued August 3, 1989, at 9:30 A.M. In addition to my address, I had to list my date of birth, citizenship, years of residency in the state, my sex, height, weight, and color of eyes. For seven dollars, I was allowed three consecutive days of fishing. On the dotted line where it states that “I certify, under penalty of law, that the above information is true, and I agree to show license and game to wildlife agent when requested,” I signed my name. I won’t quote the small print on the back of the license, but I don’t think I did or caught or shot or mutilated any of the items listed. Obtaining the license was a sobering experience. Someone told me it’s easier to get a handgun than a fishing license.

By myself I visited a local sporting-goods store, explaining that I knew nothing about fishing but must be properly equipped since I did not want to humiliate
my nephew and dishonor the family name by appearing inept, ignorant, or underequipped.

How the clerk appreciated having somebody like me walk into his store!

How pleased he was to educate and equip me.

How grateful I am that we were only out to catch fish and not kill rhinosceri.

He appreciated me $280 worth. But I felt good going out of that store with my gear. I knew now that only 10 percent of fishing is fishing—the rest is gear. And I felt ready. Let the safari commence. Let the fish beware. Bring on the tenacious trout!

With full camping kit, we four marched into the mountains to the “lake full of fish,” set up our tents, talked of how many fish we could eat, and went to bed.

At the first light of dawn, we crept up on the still waters.

While the three serious fishermen had already cast and recast and cast again, catching naught but weeds, I finally got my line untangled, reluctantly mashed an uncooperative worm around the hook, and gracelessly slopped the baited line into the water.

POW!
A strike! Reeling in, I found a very small fish. How small? “I’ve-never-seen-anyone-catch-a-fish-that-small” small. What do I do with it? “Take the hook out of its mouth and throw it back.”

Tearing the hook out of the gasping mouth of this baby fish was not something I had been told about. What a terrible thing to do to a living creature. Once was enough. I’m thinking maybe if I just cast the line in with no bait on it, I won’t catch anything and won’t have to get into hook-tearing-out-abuse again. Save face. Just pretend to fish.

Second cast.
POW!
Another strike!

I reeled in. A bat. Yes, a b-a-t. A tiny b-a-t, hooked by its wing. I had somehow snagged it in midair and drowned it while dragging it through the water.

“What’s the limit on these?” I asked my fellow fisherfolk, holding the bat for them to consider. The matter was passed down the lake for judgment.

“My uncle caught a bat.”

“A what?”

“Ask your father what to do.”

“Mr. Fulghum caught a bat and wants to know what to do with it.”

“A
what
?”

They gathered around: “We’ve never seen anyone catch a bat.”

They were awed.

And annoyed.

We had not come to fish for bats. This was fooling around.

After tearing the bat loose from the hook, I buried it. And decided that fishing was not part of my karma. Not everyone is supposed to be a fisherman.

Sitting alone over in the campground, I ate my ration of trail gorp, throwing a walnut or two toward the ground squirrels hanging around our campsite. To have something to occupy my time, I took the hook off my line and tied a walnut on the end and cast the bait toward a squirrel. Who promptly swallowed it.
POW!
I had caught a squirrel! Reeling him around the campsite, trying to get him close enough to get the walnut and line out of him, I attracted the attention of my nephew, who passed the latest news down the lake.

“My uncle is fishing for ground squirrels—he just caught one.”

“A
what
?”

And here they came in a cloud of dust and disbelief.

It was a long ride home. I, having degraded the fishing trip with unwarranted frivolity, kept my mouth shut. And they, having caught nothing—
nothing
—not a bite—were in no mood to talk. It didn’t help when I said we should stop at the “U-Ketch-Em Trout Pond and RV Campground” to make up for our failure.

We should have brought some dynamite.

I
n art class, we had a monthlong session every spring called “People Parts.” Teams of three students would rotate turns being artists and model—one sitting still and the other two sitting up close, concentrating on drawing one physical feature at a time. Looking carefully—one item per day—eye, nose, ear, thumb, lip, eyebrow, tooth, hair, and elbow. We moved on to collar, button, jewelry, belt buckle, shoelace, and big toe.

This exercise was a prelude to drawing portraits. It eased the students over a mental hill when they found they could draw small parts with competence. Drawing a whole person all at once became a less intimidating task.

The models were always reluctant. Adolescents are painfully self-conscious.

Close scrutiny made my students most uncomfortable.

“I don’t want to be drawn.”

“Why?”

“I’m ugly.”

“They’ll draw my pimples.”

“My teeth have braces, and I look awful.”

“I hate my nose—I don’t want to think about it.”

However, for the sake of art and the fear of not getting a good grade, the students usually went along. Faces were the big problem. After we got beyond the face, we cruised along. Hands were OK. As were elbows—most had never really considered an elbow—theirs or anyone else’s. Raw knees were funny—and knees with faces painted on them, hilarious. The back sides of knees were interesting—hard to see your own.

Toes were trouble. Girls were very anxious about exposing their feet. Taking shoes and socks off in a classroom somehow seemed a little risqué. The girls thought their feet were ugly—and, frankly, many were. Already at sixteen, fashion had done its awful work: Their toes were bunioned and deformed; their heels were scarred and callused. To an artist, interesting—to a girl, embarrassing—to a boy, repulsive. On the other hand, while boys’ feet were easier to look at, too often the smell was too strong to keep students concentrated on drawing for long. Suspending prejudice is the hardest part of drawing.

The “People Parts” project came to a mutinous halt one May day when I suggested we draw navels.

It was, after all, a school-picnic day, and the students were in shorts, T-shirts, halter tops, and even bathing suits, since an all-school water fight was a feature of the picnic. Many navels were already apparent.

Besides, we had never considered navels before. Neither I nor they had ever seen a detailed drawing of a navel. Now we were talking creativity, or so it seemed to me.

And we were also talking rebellion. No way! Students blushed. Hands covered exposed navels. “Nobody’s looking at my navel. Not even me.”

“This is a sick idea—what will my mother think if I come home with a drawing of my navel and stick it on the refrigerator?”

I thought his mother might be pleased that he remembered his connection to her, but his mind was made up. No.

And that was that. No volunteers.

I had ventured over into weirdness beyond toleration. And the students weren’t the only opposition. In the faculty room, I raised the issue and asked a colleague, “Would you be upset if I asked to see your navel so I could draw it?”

The usually noisy faculty room was suddenly silent.

After some nervous laughs and a few smart remarks, the subject was clearly tabled as being irrelevant, stupid, and “just a bit personal, don’t you think?”

What is it with navels? What do you think of yours?

If we were to take a picture of yours and put it up on a wall mixed in with the pictures of the belly buttons of a hundred other people, could you identify yours?

I asked my doctor.

Even she was a little perturbed. And no, she wouldn’t show me hers.

She did say that once the umbilical scar had healed properly during the first months after birth, medical science was done with it. There are no known diseases of the navel, and it has no part in sex or waste disposal. Doctors never check it, even during the most complete physical exam. On rare occasions, after abdominal surgery or injury, or to tidy up a really ugly one, cosmetic plastic surgery is performed on a navel, but that’s about it.

“Could it be surgically removed?” I asked.

In all her years of medical education and practice as a doctor, this question had not arisen. “Wouldn’t that offend your mother?” she asked.

“That’s kind of what I had in mind.”

In the interest of education and the scientific method, the next time I was alone taking a bath, I got a hand mirror and contemplated my navel.

It’s the mark of mortality.

Considering its implications is like considering my own death.

I’m not sure I believe what I know.

Here’s this common scar. This unambiguous mark of mammalian creatureness—evidence that I am part of the great evolutionary chain of being that stretches back and back millions of years.

Here’s this undistinguished archaic reminder that life comes from life—people are made inside people and are cut free to become persons.

The battle scar of the struggle for existence itself.

The people’s purple heart.

There is a Yiddish blessing used by Jews to acknowledge this commonality.

“A gezund dir in pupik
.” An easygoing blessing.

It means “Good health to your belly button.”

There is an earthy, unblinking candor here.

A wry, ridiculous, all-encompassing wish that you should be in wonderful condition from the very center of your being. So be it, Amen.