Bob, or Man on Boat

I believe that Bob is here.

Bob is there.

Somewhere.

On the river.

In a boat.

There lives a man.

There fishes a man.

Bob.

Even though I do not see Bob.

I know that Bob is here.

I keep on fishing.

Go fish.

To fish.

To fish the fish that is more than a fish.

We fish.

We are fishing.

We fished.

We kept on fishing.

We fished until there was nothing left to fish.

Once upon a time there was a river.

Once upon a time there was a fish.

Once upon a time there lived a man.

Once upon a time there lived a fish.

The man who lights the lighthouse light tells me that he dreamt a dream last night about Bob.

What was the dream about? I ask.

In my dream, the lighthouse man says, Bob was a fish.

Bob was walking across the water.

He was heading out towards the lake.

So I go out onto the lake.

I don’t stop until I cross into the waters of Ohio.

When I cross into the waters of Ohio, I come across two boys fishing a river called the Maumee.

I ask these two boys if they happened to come across a man who looked like he might be named Bob.

They ask me have I checked the mud.

The mud? I say.

I say, What would a man named Bob be doing there?

The mud, one boy says, is where the river ends.

Mud, the other boy says, is where something other than water begins.

I nod my head.

Then I give these two boys a look.

These two boys look like boys but what they are, I can see, is they are more than just boys.

These boys, they are brothers.

There is, I know, a difference.

I take back that look.

I turn back towards the lake.

Good luck, the one brother says.

Then the other brother spits.

He spits into the river.

He spits into the river for luck.

I’ll take whatever good luck I can get.

The lake is big.

On the lake, after Ohio, comes New York.

Below New York, on the lake, is Pennsylvania.

Bob could be anywhere or he could be nowhere in between.

I go in my boat back to where my looking for Bob began.

I head back to where Bob is a man who lives in a boat on a river.

On a river, in a boat, fished a man.

Call us Bob.

It rains.

It rained.

It is raining.

Rain, and then more rain.

When it rains, it rains a river.

In the rain, the river becomes more than a river.

The river, in the rain, becomes a lake.

In the rain, on the lake, it is hard for me to see.

In the sky there is a star that sailors use to find which way is north.

I don’t know which star is which.

I do not know which way is north or which way is south.

I get lost.

I end up running out of gas.

I drift until night turns to day.

There are more stars than there are heartbeats.

I tell myself, This is what heaven must be like.

I don’t know why I think this but I do.

That night, in the rain, with my boat drifting on an easterly drift, I drift off to sleep.

I dream about Bob.

In this dream, Bob pulls up to my boat in his boat.

Bob tells me to come aboard.

I do as Bob says.

When I come aboard Bob’s boat, Bob’s boat, it starts to sink.

We are up to our knees sinking.

Bob, I say to Bob.

Abandon ship.

I do as I say.

I swim over to where my boat is.

My boat, it is a boat that is not sinking.

I climb up into my boat.

Over here, I say to Bob.

I throw Bob a rope.

In my hands, the rope turns to light.

Bob lets the rope go past him.

Then Bob waves and walks away.

Across the river, Bob walks.

On top of the water, I watch Bob walk.

Like this, Bob is walking.

Back to the other side.

Bob walks and he walks and he keeps on walking.

Bob keeps on walking until Bob is nothing but a sound.

Bob is nothing but the sound that the river sometimes makes when a stone is skipped across it.

I go home because I don’t know where else to go.

I haven’t been home in days, in nights.

I’ve been out on the river, these days and nights, looking for Bob.

I tell this to my son who asks me where have I been.

My son says he thought his daddy was dead.

He says that his mother told him that the river took Daddy away.

Just like the river took Bob, I say, to myself.

I’m not gone, I say so to my son.

I say, Daddy’s right here.

Don’t go back on the river, my boy says to me then.

I tell my boy I won’t.

This, I can tell you, is a lie.

In the morning, first thing, I go out on the river.

I go out looking for Bob.

Let me tell you too.

This is a fish story that does not end.

This is the story of Bob.

Remember his hands.

His knuckles are rivers.

The skin on his hands, fish-scale covered, it looks like they’ve been dipped in stars.