Little Fish

I caught one, Curt.

He caught one. It had seemed so impossible only moments before.

I caught one!

I knew I couldn't do it. Just another thing on the long lists of things I couldn't do, and never would be able to do. Back then, a kid my age didn't know what self-esteem was, and nobody went out of there way to help you if you didn't have any.

But Tony had caught one. We were canoeing, and drinking beer, doing some other things that had us in a state. Somehow I capsized us, and we were both in the water, and there were thousands of tiny little fish.

And we sat there, fully clothed but fully submerged, trying to catch tiny little fish with our bare hands. It was the obvious thing to do. And we must have sat there for an hour, maybe more.

A rudderless seventeen year old Curt Jimenez and his best friend Tony, who at that time still had dreams of marrying, having kids, fixing cars for a living. Being able to afford decent beer, not the piss we were drinking then. He was still breathing, then. There was still life behind his eyes.

So many of those days have disappeared in my memory. Why is that day, that moment, so burned into my brain?

I caught one, Curt.

And once he had that first one, he let it go, and caught another one. And another.

It's easy Curt, like this.

And he tried to show me. Held his cupped hands under the water--like he was scooping out a little to drink--and he waited. And a fish would swim in and in an instant his hands would close, and he would have himself another fish.

It's easy Curt! Like a Venus fly trap! Just gotta be a little quicker!

I remember how angry I got that day. My cigarettes were soaked. It was hot, and getting hotter.

Tony was still my best friend, my only friend, really. But spending time with him wasn't like it used to be. We were still so close, but things were getting more serious. Real life was lingering boldly on both our horizons. And I knew then--knew intensely--that somehow Tony was going to have a good, happy, successful future. And he would grow away from me, I would be abandoned, the world repulsed by my propensity to failure.

I was wrong about Tony's future.

I got one Curt!

Of course he got one. He always got one.