The Life of Hope (39 page)

I can’t give any accurate record of how long we battled—at any rate, it was long enough for the moon to disappear and the sun to take full and radiant reign of the world, long enough for Louis to make two complete circuits of the lake.

And then Louis could take no more, and he slowed, and began to teeter, and stumbled, and then Louis Hope collapsed gently to the ground.

And I pulled once more, a final, desperate pull as my body gave up the ghost.

When I came to—or did I come to?—Ol’ Mossback was lying
beside me, exhausted, breathing as hard as I was.

Ol’ Mossback said, “Fuck. I can’t believe it.”

I lay on my back and looked at the sky. I was too tired for conversation, but I asked, more out of politeness than anything else, “Can’t believe what?”

“I can’t believe I really went for that silly-looking thing—which, incidentally, is still stuck in my mouth, do you mind?”

I rolled over and looked at Mossback’s maw. “Nicely lip-hooked,” I said. The Hoper dangled down, seeming to gleam brighter for victory.

“ ‘Nicely lip-hooked,’ ” mimicked Mossback.

I reached over—“No biting now”—and pulled out the lure. “The Hoper!”

“Dumb name,” muttered Ol’ Mossback.

“The
Hope
-er.”

“So you said.”

“Name doesn’t ring a bell?”

“Oh! I get it.”

“As in Joseph Benton Hope. It might interest you to know that right over there is a direct descendant, kind of.” I gesticulated toward the slumbering naked giant.

“Who? Louis?”

“How the hell do you know Louis?”

“Everyone knows Louis,” said Mossback. He flipped a bit, moving a few inches closer to the lake. “It’s been a slice, pally. Now, if you don’t mind, I can only breathe this air for so long.” Mossback began to flip more quickly. I more-or-less tackled him, and we lay together on the rocks.

“Not so fast,” I whispered. “I caught you.”

“Ha. I let myself get caught, just for a change of pace.”

“A likely story, fish-face. I caught you, fair and square.”

“So? You can’t eat me or anything. I’m chock-a-block full of mercury and other assorted industrial pollutants.”

“I’m going to have Edgar stuff you.”

“Oh, please. How undignified.”

“Then I’m going to hang you up on my wall.”

“You can’t stuff me. I don’t—” Mossback coughed, or the fishy equivalent. His gill-plates shook convulsively. “I don’t want to turn mystical on you, but what would Jonathon Whitecrow
say? His spirit is in the lake, etcetera, etcetera.”

“I will not be dissuaded. Catching you is the best thing I’ve ever done.”

“But … but … I don’t deserve to die.”

“So what? No one deserves to die. Did Joseph Benton Hope deserve to die?”

Mossback flipped for no good reason, like an epileptic. His breathing was becoming extremely labored. “Sure he did,” Ol’ Mossback gasped.

“Why? What was his big crime? I mean, all that fornicating and stuff doesn’t really amount to diddley-squat, does it?”

“His crime was …” Ol’ Mossback stopped talking abruptly. His operculum began to fan at a dizzying clip, and for an instant the fish’s body went stiff as wood. “His crime was indifference,” Mossback managed to say. “It’s the only real crime there is. Hope did not give a …”

“Hope did not give a what?”

“Fuck.” Mossback’s eyes went empty. He no longer seemed like a mythical, silver-tongued fish. He seemed like a cumbersome beast, hardened with pain, robbed of the water that was his subsistence.

Louis Hope woke up at that moment and crawled over to us. He gazed sadly at the monster.

“I done it, Louis-baby,” I said proudly. “I caught Ol’ Mossback.”

Louis reached forward an enormous index finger and prodded the fish. The silver body jerked briefly.

“That’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” I told Louis.

Louis prodded Ol’ Mossback again, with no effect. The air smelled of death. Louis Hope cocked his head and stared at me.

“You’re quite right,” I said. “It’s the
second
best thing I’ve ever done.”

I got on to my knees and slid my arms under Mossback. Somehow I managed to climb to my feet, the creature’s enormous weight straining at my exhausted muscles. Mossback’s tailfin quivered almost imperceptibly. “Gangway.” Louis Hope obediently stepped out of my way, and I rushed into Lookout Lake. The water was enormously cold, the bottom slippy and coated with green slime. “Wake up, Mossback!” I screamed. I twisted
my trunk sideways and then swung around, moving the huge fish in a semicircle, hoping to force water through the gills. Mossback remained inert. “Come on, Big Guy,” I said to him. I made another pass. “Please.” I lifted my eyes heavenward and said a simpler, more heartfelt, “Please.” Holding Mossback out and away from my body, I ran ten or twelve feet forward. The bottom fell away. There was a frantic moment as I sought to regain my footing, and then I ran back the other way. Ol’ Mossback was seeming to weigh more and more, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could carry him.

On the shoreline Louis Hope was excitedly turning himself around in lopsided circles. Louis was always doing that, spinning circles, so I paid scant attention. Then it occurred to me that there was a unique sense of urgency, and I stopped briefly to watch.

“Do!” Louis bellowed at me.

“Aha! Gotcha, Louis-baby!” I held Mossback and began turning circles. I could feel the water flow around us. I turned faster, so fast that I was soon dizzy. “Mossback,” I said aloud, “you’d better revive pretty soon, because I’m going to …”

Ol’ Mossback came alive in a glorious instant. He slapped the water with his tailfin, noble and insolent. Ol’ Mossback disappeared.

“… pass out,” I said, and I did.

On a day hot as tea we elected to go through the hills to the lake. All of us went, and we had no need of clothing there, and we went into the water, all of us young men and women, naked as we were made. As a child I’d lived by the sea, and it was a terrible one, full of whitecaps and waves, forever swallowing men and ships, throwing death upon the
shore. The world was a cruel thing then. But in our lake there was Grace, and we drank of it, and covered ourselves in it, and splashed each others’ bodies with it. And soon the night fell, though we’d had no notion of its coming, and even the night was gentle. The night was splashed with stars, the sky more light than blackness. We lay on the grass and touched hands. I knew then that it was right, that the world was not cruel. We rolled into each others’ arms and I heard Our Lord whisper, “Yes.”

This child has my toes. There are no other resemblances to me (mind you, the child doesn’t resemble the mother either, except for the manner in which it squidges together all of its facial features and looks supremely pissed off at Creation; for that matter, the child doesn’t really resemble a member of the human species, and I often suspect my wife of infidelity with an inhabitant of the Dogstar Sirius), but it has my toes. Poor thing. Friends have pointed out that my feet set a new standard of pediatric ugliness, the main factor being my toes. God apparently ran out of complete sets when he was making me, and had to make do with ten leftover odds and ends, even though some were designed for dwarves, others for giants. One would think my feet would therefore be unique in the universe, but this here child has an identical pair.

Presently, and momentarily, the child is asleep, entrusted to my care. I am at the homestead. In the fridge are two bottles of expressed milk, and in the child’s diaper is a lot of green shit. While the child slumbers, I thought I’d just finish this book,
The Life of Hope
. But first, I have to make sure that the Dogstar baby with my toes is still breathing.

All is well and good.

Today, by the way, is my thirty-first birthday. This evening we’re having a small party—the Bernies, Edgar the axe-murderer (only now I know him as Eddie Dekeyser, mayor of Hope) and Edgar’s wife, Myrt, who does indeed say that things are “a little dear.” She also says that food is “scrumpdeli-itious” and a host of other cutisms, but when you ask for Myrt’s support on an issue, if it is forthcoming at all (she can be very contrary) it usually comes forth as “Fuckin’ A.” I’ve had a word with her about watching the language when around the child.

I won’t get drunk on my birthday. I haven’t had a drink since Louis Hope fished me out of Lookout. I was delirious and babbling incoherently, or so they tell me. Edgar introduced me to his fellowship, AA, and whenever I feel the urge to become intoxicated I turn to him for guidance. Edgar usually raises a huge fist and gestures menacingly. Whatever works, I say.

The child is squirming now, emitting a strange series of beeps, which I think are a transmission back to the dogstar. I’m going to plug in the pacifier. This is not perfect parenting, I know, (and if any of you tell on me, you’re dogfood) but this book needs finishing.

In rereading these pages I was bothered by a little loose end—no doubt you the reader will be bothered by any number of them, but this is the only one that got to me. Jonathon White-crow, while on his death-bed, quoted something to me. It sounded familiar then, and now I know why—it was used by poor, doomed Isaiah Hope to stand at the head of his novel
The Fish
. The passage states:

When asked to whom this statement was attributed, Jonathon answered, “Just some asshole.” Now, it would be easy to simply dismiss this as flippancy on Whitecrow’s part (it would be just like him to be flippant on his death-bed), but having given it some thought, I’ve decided that Jonathon meant for me to realize
that the author was just that, an
asshole
. Was, indeed, by way of being the high muck-a-muck asshole, for sure the state and/or regional champion. And that region was, coincidentally, synchronistically, Joe Hope’s old stomping grounds, Massachusetts, home of the dark Merrimack.

Let me tell you about this asshole, and let it stand as my tribute to Jonathon Whitecrow.

Like most assholes, this one was funny-looking. His nose was long and bulbous, his eyes darkly hooded, so that he resembled a doleful bloodhound. He was a little asshole, and he dressed funny. He dressed like a mortician, except that he was such a consummate asshole that he could never keep buttons, collar-stays, etc., organized, and his clothes were always too large, so that the effect was far more clownish than somber. Like a lot of assholes, this one had a name that was hard to say—most people tried to render it with a French pronunciation, others anglicized it, but few did it correctly.

This asshole behaved weirdly, naturally, and was much interested in things like literature, poetry and philosophy. He hung around with an older, faggy writer named Ralph, which didn’t enhance his standing in the community. But above and beyond all this superficiality, what branded him forever a champion asshole was this particular stunt: he burned down a forest.

The forest-burning was, of course, purely accidental. He and a friend had been practising the Art of the Angle and caught some fish, and they decided to cook them right then and there, so they built a fire, roasted their shorelunch, had their fill and then wandered away without properly extinguishing the flames. It could have happened to anybody. No one was killed in the fire, but one has to understand how dependent the townspeople would have been on the forest; it provided shelter, fuel and the raw material for everything else. Their’s was a wood-oriented society, that’s for sure, so you can see why burning down one entire forest was viewed as monumental, supreme assholishness. As he walked through the streets of Concord I’m sure he was pointed at continually, and the whisper would be everywhere in the air—“There’s the asshole who burned down the forest.”

Our asshole was sorry but unrepentant, and his subsequent
behavior showed no evidence of improvement. Not long afterward he moved away from the town and lived beside a pond for two years. Had he been anyone else, people might have granted him a kind of aesthetic nobility and applauded this action, but what with him being an asshole people just shrugged and thought that it was a dumb thing to do. And all the time he was there, he wrote and wrote and wrote, and the book was published years later and a few people read it and liked it, and the asshole died at a fairly young age, forty-five, and there you have it.

I guess it’s fairly obvious that I’ve employed a Sunday school story-telling technique, as in, “He was an itinerant preacher, dressed in cheap rags and dusty from his journey” so I’ll just out and tell you that the asshole was Henry David Thoreau (who, when last spotted between these covers, had the misfortune to be stuck on a train with the Reverend Doctor Ian John Robert McDougall, Barrister and Solicitor). If this seems somehow an anticlimax (if you said, “Oh,
him
” or worse, “Who?”) then let me indulge in a small bit of didacticism. Thoreau (accented on the first syllable) wrote an essay
On Civil Disobedience
, which influenced Gandhi, who in turn influenced Martin Luther King, etc., etc., and if in your opinion these guys did nothing, so be it, but me, I say that thanks to such men we at least have a fighting chance, and H. D. Thoreau started the whole ball rolling.

And he was an asshole.

So, and I believe that this is what Jonathon Whitecrow was getting at, never be cowed by your own assholishness. Never think, hell, I’m just an asshole, what does it matter? I’m going to tell the wife this, because she often feels small and insignificant and, logically, she has every reason to. I’m going to tell her, be proud, we’re assholes! We have a long and illustrious history. Our child shall be raised as an Asshole, and the heritage shall not die!