A Miracle of Catfish (39 page)

Cortez couldn't remember being any happier in a long time as he stepped up to the next tank. The fish man had picked up a long-handled dip net and he dipped into the swimming mass and lifted a net full of them.

“These are the ones I was telling you would be maybe big enough to eat some this year if you feed em good,” he said. “They grow fast.”

Cortez looked down into the dip net. The fish were squirming against each other and dripping water down onto the planks of the truck bed. The catfish were slick and gray with small black spots on them.

“Will they bite already?” Cortez said. “I mean bite a hook?”

“Hell yes, they'll bite. If you've got some red worms you could catch some this afternoon after we put em in. And they will strictly fin the hell out of you, too.”

“Aw, I know,” Cortez said. “I had one fin me all through the web of my hand right here one time,” he said, and he touched the round scar on his wrinkled hand. He'd never forgotten how bad it hurt.

Tommy Bright turned the net upside down over the tank and started dumping them back into the water. One or two hung, their side fins caught in the nylon mesh. He was trying to shake them loose.

“This is how I usually get finned, trying to get em loose from this dip net,” he said, and he got them loose and closed the lid on the tank and put the dip net away.

“You got fish in all them tanks?” Cortez said.

“I got one spare that's empty,” Tommy Bright said.

“I see,” Cortez said. “It's always good to have a spare, I guess.”

“It sure is,” the fish man said. “Well, if you're ready, you can just get in with me and ride over to the pond if you want to. Which way is it?”

“Right out the driveway and turn left,” Cortez said, pointing.

“Okay then.”

“And here's your money,” Cortez said, pulling the roll of bills out of his pocket and handing it to him. The fish man wiped his hands on his pants before he took it.

“I counted it twice, but you count it again,” Cortez said.

“I'm sure it's all there, Mister Sharp,” the fish man said, and stuck it in his pocket without looking at it much.

They climbed down and Cortez got up into the cab. Tommy Bright climbed in behind the wheel and released the brake and started turning around.

“You got a pretty place here, Mister Sharp,” he said, looking out over the pasture and the hills behind it. Cortez's cows were black dots in the tall green grass. White egrets flew among them and landed on their backs.

“Thank you,” Cortez said.

“I guess you've lived here a long time,” the fish man said.

“I bought this place when I was twenty-five,” Cortez said. “And it looked like shit.”

“It don't now,” Tommy Bright said, and he started up the driveway. “I think I told you I'm losing my place over in Arkansas. I had it twelve years.”

“That's a damn shame,” Cortez said.

“Yes it is,” the fish man said. “It's my own fault. I can't blame it on a soul but me.”

Cortez looked out the window as they drove up the driveway. This fellow seemed like an honest, hardworking man. It was bad to hear that he was losing his place.

“How big a pond does it take to raise them fish?” Cortez said.

“I had fourteen altogether that I used,” Tommy Bright said. “I've got five right behind my trailer that I had built myself and then I had nine more down the road that I leased. They're all different sizes.”

The heifers were all standing at the fence looking at them as they rolled by and the fish man turned his head and looked at them briefly.

“That's as fine a bunch of heifers as I've seen in a while.”

“They fat,” Cortez said. “I'm fixin to turn em in with one of my bulls in a day or two.”

“How many mama cows you run on your place?”

To somebody else Cortez might have answered that it wasn't any of their business. Coming from somebody else it might have seemed like asking how much money he had in the bank. But he liked the fish man, and in truth, he was starting to get a little lonely sometimes, and he was glad for the company. Besides, they were talking about business: the cattle business, the fish business. The fish man wasn't being nosy. He was just talking.

“Aw, I ain't running but twenty head,” Cortez said. “Them's their heifers and I sold my bull calves earlier. I'm seventy-two and that's all I want to fool with now. I used to run about eighty head.”

The fish man pulled up beside Cortez's mailbox and stopped. He was grinning.

“I wouldn't have believed you's that old, Mr. Sharp. You sure don't look it.”

“Born in nineteen thirty-two,” Cortez said.

“You got any kids?”

“I got a girl lives in Atlanta.”

“That's right. You told me.”

“I had a boy one time. He tripped and fell at the back step with a twenty-two rifle. Was fixing to shoot us a chicken for supper and it shot him through the neck. He wasn't but fourteen.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” the fish man said.

“Aw, that's all right,” Cortez said. “It was a long time ago.”

It wasn't like Cortez to talk about Raif, and especially not to a stranger. But what did it hurt to talk about him? He wasn't asking for sympathy. He wasn't asking anybody to look at what happened to him and see how bad it was. He was just telling him what happened to his boy, why he didn't have him anymore. He didn't tell about the sight of his screaming wife trying to plug the hole in his boy's neck with mud she scooped up from the yard, mud that turned as red as the blood that was spouting out of his neck until it ebbed away and there was no more left. He didn't tell any of that. He didn't tell about the things she screamed up to God or the names she called him. Maybe she didn't go to heaven after all.

Tommy Bright turned left out of the driveway and shifted into second.

“It ain't but a little ways,” Cortez said, and the fish man nodded. Just at the curve, some of the red clay gravel was spilled out into the dirt road and the fish man slowed the truck. From there you could see the new road going down through the shady woods. And beyond that, through the green leaves, a patch of calm dark water. Tommy Bright feathered the brake pedal with his foot and turned the truck down into the hollow.

“I feel bad about making you build me a road,” he said.

“I needed one anyway,” Cortez said.

“It's a mighty good one. They don't give that clay gravel away, do they?”

“Naw they don't,” Cortez said, noticing again how nicely packed it was. They rolled past a couple of the
posted
signs he had nailed to some trees beside the new road.

“You have trouble with people trespassing on your property, Mister Sharp?”

“It's just some kids down the road,” Cortez said.

“Well, I hate to tell you this, since I'm fixing to turn loose three thousand on you, and I'm not trying to tell you your business, but it's been my experience that the quieter you keep it about having these catfish in here, the better off you'll be. I mean unless you don't mind the general public coming down here and catching most of em for you once you get em up to eating size.”

Cortez had already been worried about how to keep people out once the fish started growing. There was no fence up here. Anybody could walk right down through the woods to it. And the kid down the road had seen the fish truck already. He'd probably tell his daddy or his friends. He hated the fish man had asked the kid for directions.

The catfish man steered the truck carefully down the new road and the woods shaded them.

“I'm gonna hang a gate up there at the road,” Cortez said. “I think that'll keep most ever body out.”

The fish man nodded and reached for a lower gear. They were coming out of the woods now and they could see the whole pond and the farmhouse and the barn and the equipment shed and the yard and the fenced pastures below them.

“Yes sir, you're right. A gate and a
posted
sign will keep out an honest man. But it's just like a lock. That's all it'll keep out. I've had more people tell me that after they got some catfish from me and put em in their ponds, folks would come from miles around to sneak in there at night. Run trotlines. I tell you what, I shot a guy with bird shot who kept getting into one of my ponds at night and catching my brood catfish.”

“The hell you did,” Cortez said.

“I had to. He was coming in there at two o'clock in the morning while I was asleep and putting out a throw line and catching fish I'd been raising for four years. Ten-pounders. He ain't been back.”

“I guess not,” Cortez said.

“Now we want to park as close to the pond as we can, Mister Sharp,” the fish man said. He stopped the truck near the shallow end. Then he pulled it on over to the wide graded place and stopped it again there.

“This ought to be fine,” he said. He pushed it up into neutral and
pulled out the hand brake. He reached to another key in the dash and turned it on, then pushed a button beside it, and Cortez heard an outside generator rattle for a few moments while it was starting and then kick on with a steady roar. The fish man put the truck in gear and shut off the ignition.

“Okay,” he said, and opened his door.

Cortez opened his and stepped down and shut the door behind him. It was still pretty hot and he couldn't see any breeze blowing through the leaves of the trees. He heard the other door slam and then the fish man walked over to him.

“You sure got a good view from up here,” he said, and turned his head to look down on Cortez's place. He looked at the pile of tree trunks that were already overgrown with weeds and tall grass.

“That the trees he took out?” he said.

“Yeah,” Cortez said. “I've been wanting to build a pond up here for years. I had this natural hollow here already. And he dug it out some more when he was building his levee.”

“It's a fine pond,” Tommy Bright said. “Say it's about halfway full?”

“It's over my head, I know,” Cortez said. “I may build me a boat dock right over here before it fills up all the way.”

“That'd be nice,” the fish man said. He went over to a side compartment on the truck and reached in for a rolled-up rubber apron that he slipped over his head and started tying around his back. It hung down below his knees in front. He slipped his leather boots off and set them on the ground beside the back wheels and got a pair of white rubber boots from the compartment and put them on.

“One thing about messing with fish,” he said. “You always know you're gonna get wet. And I usually bring some dry clothes with me and ran clean off and forgot em this trip.”

Cortez nodded and stood there watching him. He wished it would rain some more and fill the pond on up whether he got a boat dock built or not.

“Can I help you with anything?” Cortez said.

Tommy Bright opened another compartment door and took out a stack of five-gallon plastic buckets. He set them on the ground and pulled out some gloves and put them on.

“Yes sir, if you don't mind, once I get some of em in these buckets, you can start turning em loose for me. Now they've been in this cold water for about seven or eight hours and it's probably colder than your pond water, so they need to get acclimated.”

He set the stack of buckets on the back of the truck and then he climbed up.

“You need me up there to help you?” Cortez said.

“No sir, I'm fine,” the fish man said, and reached for the dip net again. “It'll go easier if I just hand em down to you.”

He raised the lid on the first tank and then took two of the buckets from the stack. He set one on the floor close to him and with the other one he dipped water from the tank into it.

“I ain't gonna need this water no more,” he said. He set a few more buckets from the stack on the floor and kept pouring water into them.

“Is that just plain water?” Cortez said. He thought it might be some kind of special water.

“It's Arkansas spring water,” Tommy Bright said, and kept working. “It's the cleanest water I can find. Now what we'll do, Mr. Sharp, I'll get you three or four buckets ready and then you can take em right to the bank of the pond. Pour some of that cold water out and then just take the bucket and ease it down in the pond and let some of that pond water run in there. Then set it up on the bank and do the next one. And let em swim around in that bucket for about five minutes and then just pour the whole thing in. It's just so it won't shock em.”

“Are they all still alive?” Cortez said.

“I ain't seen a dead one yet.”

That was good. He was going to get everything he'd paid for. He wondered if maybe the fish man might like a good tomato sandwich after they got through putting the fish in.

When Tommy Bright had five buckets full of water he started dipping up little catfish and putting them in the buckets.

“It ain't gonna take that long,” he said. “Usually I have to count em when I'm somewhere like the Co-op in Oxford. But I counted these when they were just hatched and I know how many there are. You probably got about thirty-three hundred fish. I always tried to be generous to my customers whenever I counted fish. Some die.”

“I appreciate it,” Cortez said. “I'll be glad to pay you for them extra fish.”

“My treat, Mister Sharp,” the fish man said.

Tommy Bright kept dipping fish and Cortez stood there and watched him. He couldn't help but think about what a good job the fish man had, getting to mess with fish all the time. He wished he could go see his place, his fish operation in Arkansas. But didn't he say the bank was foreclosing next week? It was a damn shame. Hell. He'd give him a whole bag of tomatoes. He could take them back to Arkansas with him. Maybe his wife liked a good tomato sandwich. He'd noticed the fish man's wedding ring. He could see him sweating under the sun.