Nowhere’s, Arkansas

(the worst story you’ve ever read. The reason why writer’s blocks shouldn’t be knocked over)

To say he was a bad fisherman didn’t really scratch the surface of the time he’d wasted at a sport whose star he had not been born under. The way it worked was this. He was a very poor researcher of good spots. He wouldn’t go where the fishing was excellent. Too much competition. He wouldn’t travel to bodies of water where fish were known to live. That was too easy. For him the world was a place he still wanted to sculpt. Even though there wasn’t a spot left that hadn’t been carved up already. He wanted to pioneer. But there wasn’t a West left for men to still go to.

This was how he’d found himself in nowhere’s Arkansas. The little town had a name, but there was no point mentioning it. It was lost on a map. It was smaller than some people’s graduating Senior classes. And there he was, strolling on a hot spring day, with two poles tall enough to nearly touch the phone wires on the sidewalks and dirt paths he hiked.

It was warm enough to where what I’m about to write could have been a bit of his own imagination taking over the long distance since breakfast. But I’ll let you sort it out.

In the first creek in those parts, the only thing he’d caught other than dozens and dozens of snags was a large ugly white bass. It was so deformed and alone he’d thought it might have been some kind of a horrible wizard that would grant him wishes to throw it back into the swamp. That was the same hole where he’d seen a water toad the size of a dog. And he’d sworn he’d witnessed monkeys jumping through the puddles of the over-rained forest.

In other mucks he’d thrown frog lures at tiny minnows who were all scared away at the landing of objects that dwarfed their own frightened existence. And at the only other waterbed with life in it, he’d actually seen a lot of fish. But there’d been signs posted everywhere about certain types of lures being illegal, and then other yellow triangles for trespassing. Plus the only places you could drop a line to get at the ample sized biters out there was hop-scotched and water-logged with fallen trees, bits of trash, and broken twine-strings from other die-hard fools just like him.

So here he was instead, walking through the people parts, hoping there was a pond that would magically troll with fish and yet be unbeknownst to the citizens of that area. He was ludicrous. His brain was drunk with the pursuits of not giving up.

It was on those walkways though that he found some things that might really have been the greater purpose for him being in those dried up quadrants.

At first he didn’t see the pattern. But while he walked the left side of the sunny road, he kept passing people who shouldn’t have been out at that time of day.

The first fellow was skittish, and almost went into the street to avoid touching his gear as he pardoned his way through. He mumbled something about people needing to watch where they were going, and then a word or two about the length of shadows from fencelines.

The next boy he weaved beside had flipped up his middle finger, singing a tune about minding your business and keeping the store. He fiddled with a box that played music in his ears and kept giving the man a piece of mind through undissipating glances.

At the outset this scraping with mutton-heads didn’t really get to him. He just looked at each person he passed as a reason to rejoice that his life was not as sad as theirs. But by the third fellow he met, he was wondering what was going on in the atmosphere.

This soul was red in the face he was so angry. And he cursed him straight to his nose for not finding proper places to hunt for his carp and his croppie. Neighborhoods were boundaried for a reason, he said, and people ought to crap in their own backyards!

The fisherman had nearly taken a wack at the man, his attack was so brutal, but he didn’t want to add a jail fine to the monies he’d already wasted on licenses, gas tanks and reelrods.

So he kept on bee-lining ahead. That’s when he crossed the complicated lady. She was pretty for those parts. Pretty enough to slow his pace and to wonder about her storybook. But she gave him the worst look of all. He thought she might have spit, but that didn’t seem right. But he was sure she shot lasers and disgust through his innards. And he heard her cluck her tongue and produce a sentence about the town needing better tourists than this.

Three more horrible encounters were had, and finally the man had plum crossed the road.

But it didn’t get a lot easier to deal with over there.

The weather was the same. The flow of traffic was the same. But a different sort of uninvited energy was coming from that flow of the path. On that side of course the people were walking the otherways, towards him. He crossed them. And they crossed him.

Many of them never addressed him at all. But they all had something on their minds and something on their tongues as well. Two girls were talking, when he first encountered that traffick. One said the water towers were filled with sustenance for weeks in advance. The other asked some questions about the teaching pay at the local college. They touched each other friendlily as they talked. And their smiles were too large for their faces.

One man had a beard and three pens in each pocket, and dark rimmed glasses which magnified his eyes. He walked resolutely and named the names of birds as we went by and wrote them in his book and said something like thank you’s as he listed their names in his collection. He kept staring at the clouds as well, and nearly knocked the fisherman off his lane for being unable to notice him.

And then there was the elderly fellow in his overalls who talked to himself. You can’t keep records when they do that, John, he said. You’ve got to dwell on their good points. You’ve got to encourage them to keep doing the productive things they’re doing. He nearly whistled a tune from his noseish heavy breathing. But he couldn’t have more delighted himself with the conclusions he was arriving at.

Finally he nearly tripped over a little girl who was walking along picking petals off a very white flower. He loves me, she said. He loves me more. He loves me. He loves me again. She kept messing up the rhyme and throwing the petals happily in the air, rather than straight on to the ground and pursing your lips like you were supposed to at that age when wondering if the boy you liked liked you back.

Finally he ran into two friendly farmers who wanted to buy him lunch, even though they didn’t know him from Adam. And that’s when he decided he didn’t like either side of the road. How was a man ever to land himself a bull-headed catfish of great renown if all you ever got in this town was people blocking your path to the hidden red snapper that no one knew about.

He tried walking in the road for a bit. But he never knew when a bus might come. And it just wasn’t right forsaking the walkways for the places where trucks were supposed to plow and deliver packages.

Finally the man cut away from the roads and went straight perpendicular to follow the canals of burrowed dirt and unmowed grass. It was here that he eventually got into the most ridiculous trouble of all.

Twenty minutes into the straying from the roadways, he wandered upon a coughing noise he couldn’t ascertain. He looked high. He looked low. He looked under things, behind things, around things. And still no culprit. Until finally he went to the edge of the canal. For some reason, he hadn’t even put two and two together before then, and thought about the fact that such man-made trenchways often contain fish, else he would have been fishing, cast upon cast upon cast. But as he peered over the berm he noticed that the water was a bit stale and short in those parts. And down in the mud was a dirty and colorful pelican.

It had a fish in its beak. Its eyes were bloodshot, and the walleye in its mouth was not moving. The bird couldn't decide if it would finish its meal, or cough the swimmer back down into the puddle where he’d found it. But cough and cough with the guppy in its mouth it kept doing.

For some crazy reason, crazier than the fisherman had ever played at before, in his whole life, the angler began to covet the dead catch in the mouth-grip of the heron.

It made no sense. Nobody wants a fish that’s stopped putting up a fight. No one wants a flipper that’s dried and begun its stink. And nobody, not nobody, wants to fight with a predator for the fish in its mouth. Less’n you’re a bear or something. And all of a sudden the fisherman started to think he were something like a bear.

The pelican wasn’t disturbed, not in the least. He looked ready as you need to be to let another critter come right up to you and snatch your lunch from your Tupperware. In fact, the bird straight opened its jaw and begged the fisherman to come right then and gently supplant its hold on the trophy.

And so he did. He threw down his pole, refused the urges to throttle the bird, decided that it would really surrender its guppy, and he gently took hold of the trout.

When it was out of the coughing bird’s mouth, the pelican transformed into another demented fisherman like he.

Who are you, asked the fisherman?

I am you, replied the former pelican.

What do you mean, followed up the fisherman?

I am a man who has turned into a beast because he couldn’t not maintain the work he was given to do.

What work were you given to do, asked the fisherman?

I am a keeper of doors, replied the former pelican. I let men in with their groceries. I dump supplies down certain chutes. I write tallies of numbers to record the people who pass my owner’s establishment.

How did you get here, asked the fisherman?

Same path as you answered the former pelican?

You don’t know how I came, replied the fisherman. You’ve been choking on a flounder for a day and a half, and I pulled in yesterday morning.

I was flying in the heavens up above, replied the pelican. With the fish in my mouth. And I saw you come in. I am no stranger to your ways.

Then tell me, said the fisherman, who did I pass on my way in to you?

At first you walked the left side of the road, replied the birdman. And there you passed your own kind, though you always thought you were smarter and sharper than they. They bothered you with their insolence, their pride, their anger and their hostility. And so you crossed to the other way. But on that side you met with every sort of beaver who travels with the sun upon its back and the gentle breeze in its face. They were too happy for you. Too touched by their creator. And you hated them because they loved their Lord and they loved their souls, more than they loved to worry too much about your escape from reality.

What did I do next then, asked the more and more perturbed and amazed fisherman?

That’s easy, said the mirror of the man. You strayed in to traffick, down the middle road of men, and you feared for your life, knowing that no man can refuse to pick a side, either monster or angel.

And what side have you picked, asked the fisherman?

I am not on the road, replied the former pelican. I have taken a vacation from the path.

Then what are you doing telling me my fortunes and playing with fish in the gutter?

Truly I tell you, said the birdman, if you had not come when you did, I would have choked on my “keeper”. The good Lord sent you to remind me of yourself. And now I can go back to my wife and my kids at home.

And what of me, asked the fisherman?

You are on your own quest, said the birdman. I have told you those things I was to tell you. Your fate is in your own hands.