Bob, or Man on Boat

Bob, is it really as simple as this?

To this, Bob doesn’t look up.

Bob doesn’t lift his head.

Up from the river.

The way that Bob sees it, the river is all that there is.

Sometimes, when I watch Bob fish, I can’t help but believe that Bob is older than the river is.

That Bob is older than the moon is.

That Bob made the moon so that at night he could better see the river.

So that Bob could better see the fish.

This is what a fish looks like to Bob when Bob looks down inside the river to see a fish.

A fish is a flash of silvery light.

A fish is a sliver of milky moonlight.

A fish is a shooting star.

Bob, make a wish.

Get in the boat, fish, Bob says to the fish.

In the boat, Bob whispers to the river.

Like this, Bob wishes.

Bob’s boat, when Bob makes his wishes, his boat fills up.

With stars.

With moon.

With light.

At night there are other lights that light up the river.

There is the light from the lighthouse light.

There are lights from the houses with the people who live inside them.

There are lights from factories along the river that haven’t yet shut down.

Nights when the moon is full, it is so lit up on the river that Bob in his boat looks like he is glowing from inside him.

As if Bob is made out of light.

But no.

Bob is a man made out of flesh.

Once, when I shook Bob’s hand, there was bone there for me to shake.

I’m Bob, I said, and I stuck out my hand for Bob to take it.

It’s true that Bob hesitated at first, Bob looked at my hand, but then he took it, my hand, the way that a fish might look at a rusty hook before taking it into its mouth.

I’ll take two fish, I said to Bob.

One for me.

One for my father.

Bob gave me a look.

It wasn’t a mean look.

It wasn’t the kind of look that makes you want to turn and run away.

But it was a look that says let’s get this over with.

Bob handed me two fish.

I took them both into one hand.

I stuck out my other hand and waited for Bob to take it.

When Bob took his hand away, I watched Bob turn and walk away, back to the river.

It was like losing a fish right at the side of the boat.

It was like watching a fish spit out the hook and then disappear back into the river.

The big ones, they say, always get away.

Unless you’re Bob.

Bob lives, in his boat, on the river, in a part of our town that is known in our town as Mud Bay.

Some people call it the Black Lagoon.

This is where the river is at its muddiest.

The banks along the river here are muddy too.

There is a dirt road that runs its way down to the river, down to where Bob lives on his boat.

This road is most of the time muddy.

This is a road that, in the mud, cars get stuck in.

Because of this, most people do not use it.

What would they use it for?

To visit Bob?

Bob doesn’t want to see you.

If there was a sign posted somewhere along this road, this sign would say, Keep Out.

Don’t go any further.

This is my river.

Signed, in mud,

Bob.

I know better than to go down this road.

When I go see Bob, I go by boat.

The dead man’s boat.

I wonder if Bob ever dreams about the dead man.

The dead man getting away.

The dead man was not a fish.

Maybe that’s why the dead man got away.

I wonder, too, if Bob knew that the dead man’s name was Henry.

Or did, to people like Bob, the dead man go by Hank?

These are just some of the things I’d like to some day ask Bob.

My mother, if my mother knew what I was up to, would say to me to stay away.

Stay away from the river.

Stay away from Bob.

He isn’t right, is what my mother would say about Bob.

He isn’t all there.

Where, exactly, I would want to ask my mother, is there?

Is there a better place for a man like Bob to be, or for a man like me to be, than on a boat on the river?

Why didn’t you ever tell him? I asked my mother once.

Why, in other words, didn’t you give Bob a chance to be my father?

I was young, my mother said.

She said she was afraid.

Of what?

Of what he would do.

What would he do, did you think?

I was afraid, my mother said, that he’d take you down to the river.

What I wanted to know was, What would be so wrong with that?

In a sack, my mother said, and she looked me straight in the eye.

In a sack tied tight with twine.

In a sack filled up with bricks.

I have a hard time believing what my mother said about the sack.

Maybe because I don’t want to believe it.

Maybe I want to believe that Bob would have been the kind of a father who would have taken me down to the river, not to get rid of me, not to give me back to the river, but to teach me how to fish.

When I see Bob out on the river fishing, what I ask him is, How’s the fishing?

One time all Bob did was bob his head.

Another time Bob said he had a couple.

When Bob says that he’s got a couple, he does not mean just two.

A couple dozen, maybe.

A couple hundred, on a good night.

Sometimes you will see boats on the river bunched up so close to each other that they actually bang together on the drift. Bob’s boat is never one of those boats.

Bob fishes alone.

Bob fishes outside the pack.

Bob fishes the part of the river that nobody else thinks to fish.