The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

  “What’re we going to do with him?” I asked.

  “We’ll get Beriah to put him on ice for us so he’ll keep,” Uncle Burley said. “You can cut slabs of meat off of him as big as steaks, and just as white as snow.”

  When we’d finished looking at the fish Uncle Burley let him back into the water so he could breathe. He jerked his head against the line like a horse jerking against a hitch rein.

  “There’ll be a lot of fine eating on that fish,” Uncle Burley said. “We ought to have a fish fry. We’ll get Big Ellis and Jig and Gander to come down tonight and have a feast. We’ll have to let Beriah in on it too, so he’ll be willing to furnish some ice.”

  As soon as we’d baited the lines we took the fish out of the water again. We tied him to one of the oars and started up the road, carrying him between us, holding him high to keep his tail from dragging.

  “We’ll cook plenty of corn bread,” Uncle Burley said, “and maybe get hold of a watermelon. It’ll be a supper they won’t forget for a while.”

  Beriah was sitting in front of the store again, and when he saw us he came out to meet us. “Lord amercy,” he said. “Look what a fish.”

  “We’re going to use him for bait,” Uncle Burley said. “We’re going to try to catch one big enough to eat.”

  Beriah held the door open for us and we carried the fish inside and stretched him out on the floor in front of the counter.

  “Lord amercy,” Beriah said. “You’ve caught the granddaddy of them all.” He knelt down beside the fish and patted its head as if it were a dog. “You don’t see a fish like this more than once in a lifetime, Burley.”

  When I saw how Beriah admired our fish I was prouder than ever and so was Uncle Burley.

  “Don’t it make your mouth water just to look at him?” Uncle Burley said.

  “There’s some fine eating on him, all right,” Beriah said.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Uncle Burley said. “We’ll clean him and you can put him on ice for us, and then we’ll all get together tonight and have a big fish fry.”

  “Nothing could suit me any better,” Beriah said. “But, Burley, you all don’t want to dress that fish yet. Keep him a while so people can see him.”

  They looked at the fish. Uncle Burley leaned over and picked up the line again and held it, as if he were going to lead the fish out of the store.

  “He’ll spoil.”

  “No, he won’t. We’ll keep him alive. Hell, Burley, you don’t want to treat him like an ordinary fish. People don’t get a chance to see a fish like that every day.”

  Beriah went to the back of the store and opened the cooler. “Bring a couple of those crates,” he said.

  He began to take the bottles out of the cooler and we brought the crates and helped him.

  “Now, what’s the matter with that, Burley? He’ll stay alive a long time in that cold water.”

  “I reckon he will,” Uncle Burley said.

  Beriah picked up the fish. “Lord amercy,” he said.

  We helped him lift the fish into the cooler, and then we stood there looking in.

  “Why, that’s a regular aquarium,” Beriah said. “I just wish it had glass sides on it.”

  Uncle Burley laughed. “Well, we could caulk up the candy counter and put him in that.”

  Beriah and I laughed too, and we looked at the fish again.

  “Well, he looks comfortable enough,” Uncle Burley said. He shut the lid and turned around. “We’ll be seeing you, Beriah.”

  Beriah sat down on the bench beside the cooler. “Aw, stick around a while, Burley.”

  Uncle Burley didn’t say whether he’d stay or not, but I could see that he was relieved when Beriah asked him to. He opened the screen door and started out.

  “When did you all catch him, Burley?”

  Uncle Burley stopped and turned around. “Last night.” He stepped back inside and let the door close behind him.

  “Last night?” Beriah said. “You all caught a fish like that in the dark?”

  “Well,” Uncle Burley said, “it wasn’t a lot of trouble.”

  Beriah kept asking questions; and while Uncle Burley answered them he moved back into the store. He walked to the counter, and to the cooler again, and finally sat down on the bench with Beriah and propped up his feet. He’d tell only as much as Beriah asked for, and then he’d wait for another question.

  “And what did you do then?” Beriah would ask. And when Uncle Burley told him, he’d let his hands drop onto his knees and say, “Well, I’ll swear.”

  When Uncle Burley began to tell how we’d fought the fish out in the dark and the rain his voice got tight and excited in spite of all he could do. He sounded like somebody was tickling his feet.

  Before he got it all told Gander Loyd came in.

  “Gander, go look there in the cooler,” Beriah said.

  “What for?”

  “Just go look in it.”

  Uncle Burley straightened up and Beriah rubbed his hands together and patted his feet while Gander opened the lid and looked in.

  “Nice fish,” Gander said. “Who caught him?”

  “Burley and Nathan here.”

  I was glad Beriah included me, but he was about to turn the fish and Uncle Burley and me into some sort of freak show. He’d got to be as proud of the fish as we were and I was sorry we’d let it get out of our hands.

  “How’d you catch him, Burley?” Gander asked.

  “Caught him last night in the dark,” Beriah said. “Ain’t that right, Burley?”

  Uncle Burley nodded, and Beriah began asking him the same questions he’d asked before, making him tell the story again from the beginning.

  He got it all told that time, and after he finished everybody was quiet for a while. Beriah and Uncle Burley had used up all of their talk, and Gander wouldn’t help them any. Now and then Beriah slapped his knees and said, “Uhhhhhhh-uh!”

  After a while Big Ellis’s car pulled up in front of the store and stopped.

  Beriah yawned and stretched. “Customers,” he said. He went behind the counter and set his elbow on the top of the cash register.

  Annie May came in and began ordering groceries. Big Ellis and two other men followed her through the door and walked on back where we were.

  “This is J.D.,” Big Ellis told us, pointing to one of the men. “He’s my brother-in-law. And this other one is William.”

  J.D. and William stepped up and shook hands with Uncle Burley and Gander and me.

  “They work at the same place in Louisville,” Big Ellis said. “This is their vacation.”

  “Well, I’ll declare,” Uncle Burley said.

  Big Ellis sat down on the bench between Uncle Burley and Gander; J.D. and William stood in front of them, shifting their feet and looking around the store.

  Finally Big Ellis said, “J.D. hasn’t been here for thirty years.”

  “I grew up around here,” J.D. said.

  Everybody kept quiet. Uncle Burley was studying J.D.’s face, but I saw that he couldn’t recognize him. Gander had turned his blind side to them and was looking at the toe of his shoe.

  “Yep, this is where I was raised,” J.D. said. He looked at Gander and then at Uncle Burley. “I expect you all remember me.”

  Uncle Burley got embarrassed then and looked away, and so did Big Ellis. I began to feel sorry for J.D. He stood there waiting for somebody to remember him and be glad to see him now that he’d come back home after thirty years. But he was a stranger to us. I knew Big Ellis had relatives who’d moved away, but he never talked about them.

  J.D. looked at Uncle Burley. “You’re Burley Coulter, aren’t you?”

  Uncle Burley nodded.

  “And I remember you had a brother.”

  “That’s his boy there.”

  J.D. turned to me and said, “Is that so? Well, I’ll declare. How’re your folks, son?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  Uncle Burley looked down at his hands for
a minute, and then he said, “Why, I believe I remember you.”

  J.D. nodded. He looked grateful enough to have paid money for that. I knew Uncle Burley was lying, but I was glad for J.D.’s sake.

  “You married Big Ellis’s sister,” Uncle Burley said.

  J.D. nodded again. “That’s right.”

  Uncle Burley laced his fingers around his knees and leaned back. “I was just a boy when you left here.”

  “That’s right, Burley.”

  After that all Uncle Burley had to do was listen. J.D. talked about his boyhood; and told why he’d left home and how he’d got to be a foreman where he worked and was doing well for an old country boy. He told it all to Uncle Burley, looking at him while he talked. Uncle Burley had said he remembered who J.D. was, and J.D. was Uncle Burley’s friend.

  “Burley,” J.D. said, “it don’t seem like more than a few days since I was a boy here, and it’s been half a lifetime. I tell you, time goes in a hurry.”

  “That’s right,” Uncle Burley said.

  Beriah hustled around, waiting on Annie May. He filled a box with groceries and pushed it across the counter, and then we heard him say, “Right there in the cooler, Annie May. Just help yourself.”

  He looked at us and winked. And we watched her walk to the cooler and open it.

  “Ouch!” she said, and slammed the lid down.

  Beriah’s belly shook with laughter, but he kept his face straight.

  “What’s the matter, mam?”

  Annie May backed out into the middle of the floor. “A stinking catfish!” she said.

  As soon as they heard her say catfish, Big Ellis and J.D. and William went to the cooler and looked in. Uncle Burley and Gander and I got up and followed them. And then Beriah came, forgetting all about Annie May.

  “Who caught that one?” Big Ellis asked.

  “Burley and Nathan,” Beriah said.

  “You might know it would be Burley’s,” Annie May said. But when she saw that nobody was going to pay any more attention to her she picked up her box of groceries and started to the door. “I’m going home,” she said. “If you all don’t want to come now, you can walk.”

  “Well,” Big Ellis said. He never looked up when she slammed the door.

  “That’s a pretty good fish,” William said, “for a river fish.”

  “That’s about as good a fish as you’ll ever see caught,” Beriah said.

  William ignored him. “Of course now, you can catch them plenty bigger than that in the ocean.” And he began telling us that he’d lived near the ocean once and used to go fishing clear out of sight of land. I figured he was going to tell how he’d caught a bigger fish than we had, and I didn’t want to hear it; but he finally noticed that nobody had turned away from the cooler to listen to him. He slowed down then; and Beriah horned in and started telling how Uncle Burley and I had caught our fish.

  Beriah stretched the truth in some places and added to it in others. Every time he got beyond the facts he’d say, “Ain’t that right, Burley? Ain’t I telling them just what you told me?”

  Uncle Burley only nodded his head, without looking at anybody. It seemed to me that if he talked much longer Beriah would believe he’d caught the fish himself. William walked around the store, looking at the merchandise, being as uninterested in our story as we’d been in his.

  The door opened and shut quietly; when we turned around there was Mushmouth Montgomery wandering up to the counter. Looking as much like Chicken Little as he did, and so lonesome-faced and grieved, it was as if a corpse or a ghost had come in. All of us stood still for a minute, and then Beriah closed the cooler and hurried behind the counter.

  “What can I do for you, Mushmouth?”

  Uncle Burley went back to the bench, and Big Ellis and Gander and I went with him. Mushmouth’s coming made the fish seem unimportant—­as out of place there as it would have been at a funeral. We kept quiet, each one dreading the chance that one of the others might mention it.

  Mushmouth bought smoking tobacco and a candy bar. We watched him walk toward the door, hoping he’d leave. But he sat down by himself in the front of the store and began to eat the candy. J.D. and William leaned against the cooler, waiting for one of us to say something.

  Beriah stayed at the counter, shuffling through a handful of bills. Once in a while he’d thumb one out and look at it, then shake his head and lay it on top of the cash register.

  Finally J.D. lost his patience and walked up to Mushmouth. “Say,” he said, “you ought to see what a fish Burley’s caught. I imagine it’s as fine a fish as was ever caught in this river.” He said it proudly, as if he and Uncle Burley had been friends all their lives.

  Uncle Burley got up and headed for the door. “Well, I reckon we’ll get on back.”

  I went with him, trying not to seem in a hurry, past Mushmouth and out to the road. It was the middle of the morning and the sun had turned warm.

  “Boy, we’ve let it all turn into talk,” Uncle Burley said.

  Big Ellis called to us; and we stopped and waited while he and J.D. and William caught up with us.

  “It’s too solemn to stay at the store,” Big Ellis said, “as long as Mushmouth’s there.”

  “That Mushmouth’s a one-man funeral procession,” Uncle Burley said.

  We walked to the shack and sat on the porch in the shade.

  Big Ellis got Uncle Burley to tell him where we’d caught the fish; and then he wanted to know what size hooks we’d used and what kind of bait. William started in again to tell how he’d fished in the ocean. But Big Ellis had catfish on his mind, and William didn’t get any farther than he had before.

  Big Ellis said he knew where there was a fish nearly as big as the one we’d caught, and he and J.D. started planning how Uncle Burley could catch that one. William walked over to the edge of the porch and sat down by himself. It looked like he’d never get a chance to tell his story, and I could see that it was beginning to sour on him. He and J.D. had both been strangers when they’d come to the store, but now that J.D. thought Uncle Burley remembered him he’d changed sides. William had been left out. I wished Uncle Burley would pay some attention to him, but he was fed up with all the talk about fish. Big Ellis and J.D. spoke to him and he listened, staring past them at the river.

  Jig Pendleton came in sight, rowing his boat down toward the store, and Big Ellis called, “Come up, Jig.”

  Jig waved and pulled in to the bank. When he came up on the porch he nodded his head to us and sat down.

  “We haven’t seen much of you, Jig,” Uncle Burley said.

  “I haven’t been getting out much, Burley. But I’ve noticed you and the boy fishing.”

  Big Ellis introduced J.D. and William. William only looked at Jig and said hello, but J.D. got up and shook hands.

  “I used to live here once,” he said. “I expect you remember me.”

  “Not a single sparrow falls without He knows about it,” Jig said. “No sir, I don’t remember you. But that don’t make any difference.”

  J.D. looked puzzled, but then he said, “Yes sir,” and sat down again.

  William stared at Jig for a minute and began laughing.

  “What’s funny?” Uncle Burley asked him.

  William looked at Uncle Burley and then down at the ground. “Nothing,” he said.

  “You all had any luck fishing?” Jig asked.

  “Burley caught one as long as from here to the door,” Big Ellis said.

  It was about ten feet from where Big Ellis was sitting to the door. Uncle Burley winked at me, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Burley, if you caught one that big I’m glad you caught it,” Jig said.

  William got up all of a sudden and started off the porch. “Hell,” he said, “I’ll show you all how to catch fish.”

  We watched him go up the path toward the road.

  “He’s kind of odd,” Big Ellis said, “ain’t he, J.D.?”

  “Kind of odd,” J.D. said.
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  Before long William came back, carrying a paper sack in his hand.

  “Where you been?” J.D. asked him.

  “To the store,” William said.

  He put the sack on the porch and took out a half stick of dynamite with a piece of fuse already set in it. He started down the bank, carrying the dynamite by the fuse, holding it away from him as if he were carrying a live wildcat by the tail. Before anybody could say anything to stop him he lit the fuse and flung the dynamite into the river.

  After the explosion we sat there, watching the dead fish float up to the surface.

  William turned toward us and grinned, without looking at any of us as if he grinned at the empty house. He was already ashamed of what he’d done, but he wasn’t going to back down.

  “How’s that for fish?” he asked.

  Big Ellis said, “Burley, do you want some of them fish?”

  “No,” Uncle Burley said. “Help yourselves.”

  Big Ellis asked to borrow our boat, and he and J.D. and William rowed out to pick up the fish.

  “Jig,” Uncle Burley said, “they’ve got enough fishes to feed a multitude.”

  Jig shook his head. “It’s unblessed, Burley, and no loaves.”

  “Maybe they’ll blow up a bakery,” Uncle Burley said.

  When they’d gathered the fish and strung them they came up the bank again. Big Ellis went by the porch without stopping; J.D. and William followed him, neither of them looking at us.

  “Thanks, Burley,” Big Ellis called back.

  Uncle Burley raised his hand. “Don’t mention it.”

  After they’d gone Jig said, “That kind of doings is what ruins fishing, Burley.”

  “It don’t help any.”

  I looked in the sack that William had left on the porch and there was another half stick of dynamite and a fuse. I held it up for Uncle Burley to see.

  “Well,” he said, “it’s good bait.”

  Jig left then, and Uncle Burley and I went inside and fixed dinner.

  In the afternoon we were sitting on the porch again, talking and letting our dinner settle, when we heard a car stop out on the road and the door open and slam. We went around the house to see if somebody else was coming to visit us. Before long we saw a tall, heavy-set man walking down the path through the trees. Uncle Burley touched my arm and whispered that he was the game warden.