Too Weak to Fish

By Jerry Mack Grubbs

Prologue to a Dream: On April 26th of this year I fell asleep reading a book about Mother Teresa called “The Simple Path.” A particular quote from the book caught my attention. At one time Mother Teresa was chastised for providing too much help to the poor. When she was reminded of the phrase, feed a man a fish and you have fed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a life time, she simply stated, “The people we feed are too weak to fish.” I fell asleep with her comment on my mind . . .

“I wish we had two fishing poles?” she complained. “I’m glad we have two hooks to put on our fishing line. It’s almost the same as having two poles,” I said. “Why can’t we have two poles?” she asked. “Because we have no money to buy another pole,” I answered. “I get tired of just sitting here watching you fish,” she said. “Here, you take the pole and fish for a while and I will just sit and watch you.” “Don’t you ever get tired of looking at me?” she asked. “Not yet,” I said. “What does that mean?” she asked. “It means, not yet.” “You’re going to drive me crazy with that kind of answer.” “I don’t want to drive you crazy but if you go crazy, I will still love you.”

“I wish we had a boat. If we had a boat we could paddle over to those reeds were the big fish hide,” she said. “I’m glad that old fisherman took pity on us and gave us this fishing pole. We have been able to catch enough fish for our needs each day. We are blessed,” I said. “Well, I don’t feel blessed,” came her reply. I just smiled. I knew she was just giving me a hard time. I knew her heart.

“We already have three fish, let’s go swimming,” she said. “It’s only spring and the water will be too cold; besides, we didn’t bring anything to swim in,” I said. “I don’t need anything if you don’t,” she teased. “We are not going swimming,” I said with clinched teeth to slam the door on the subject. “Why do you always have to get your way?” she whined. I didn’t answer her. But I wondered if she felt protected and safe with me or just bullied. I pulled the wire basket from the edge of the water that contained our catch of three fish. She would cook two fish for our dinner and we would share the third for tomorrow’s breakfast before we came back down to the river to fish again. I knew we couldn’t live on fish alone but fish was certainly better than nothing. Fish would have to do until we figured out something to go with it.

She was a good cook but I would have loved her even if she couldn’t cook. Thinking of her cooking, my mind went back to the time before our world turned upside down, money became worthless and the economy was in shambles. When I look at our life now I realize how simple it was before the change. Although it was simple, we were happy then and we are happy now.

After returning from the river we sat in front of our little home and she cleaned the fish while I straightened out the tangled fishing line and sharpened the two hooks against a smooth river stone. I thought of the nights we had gone to bed hungry before the old fisherman came by our home on his way to the river. She took a drink of water out to him and because it was getting late she invited him to have dinner with us. That’s how she was; it didn’t matter that all we had to eat was potatoes and rice. The old fisherman slept on our couch that night and before he left the next morning, he gave us one of his fishing poles. I protested the gift but he insisted, saying that he only carried two poles in case one broke. After he left I saw that he had tied two hooks about six feet apart to the fishing line. It was the next best thing to having two poles. She and I could now catch food at the river.

I rarely think of my life before I met her. And I didn’t want to think about life without her. She had been married before and her husband had died in a fiery accident. She seldom talked about him and when I asked questions, her answers were always short and the message she sent to me was I don’t want to talk about it. So we didn’t talk about him. The way she looked at me and touched me caused any shred of jealously about her former life to flee from my mind like a mouse being chased by a famished cat.

That’s how it was between us that day as we sat in front of our little home and cleaned fish, straightened out fishing lines and sharpened the two hooks for tomorrow. Just before it was time to go in for the evening a man came walking down the road. She reached over and touched my arm but I had already spotted him. He had a severe limp and was struggling to maintain his balance as he walked. She was sitting by my side but just a little back of me so I couldn’t see her expression but I knew what she was going to say before she said it, “Looks like that man could use some help. You suppose he likes fish?” I knew that there would be three fish cooked tonight and a guest would be spending the night on our couch with as much comfort as she could provide.

As the lame man grew close she made a small gasping sound. I turned to look at her but her expression caused me to return my attention to the man coming toward us. That was the first I noticed that he didn’t have any lips and his face and head were covered with scars and skin grafts. There were tiny sprigs of hair scattered here and there on his bald head like patches of weeds in an unkempt garden. He had no ears and one eye lid only partially closed when he blinked. My first thought was that this man needed far more help than just a fish to eat and a comfortable couch to spend a night on. But how could we help, we could barely feed ourselves?

“It’s so good to be home,” he said. Because he had no lips his words came out in a hissing sound but there was no question what he had said. She gasped again but didn’t say a word. He walked past us and started toward the front door and said once again, “It’s so good to be home.” I didn’t know what to say but I knew who he was. He was horribly burned. He was home. This had been their home before his accident. If he was alive then we weren’t legally married. I sat there in a stupor not knowing what to say or do. As he struggled to the door, a part of me wanted to jump up and help him but the other part felt frozen to my chair, not knowing what to do. While my mind was in turmoil my body went into motion and I ran to help him inside.

As he sat down on the edge of the bed I could tell that his feet were hurting so I asked if he would like for me to remove his shoes. He nodded, “Yes.” I knelt down before him and unlaced them. When I pulled off his shoes, the skin on his feet sloughed away also. The sight of his damaged feet caused me to throw up but I held it in my mouth and swallowed it back down. He told me not to worry; his body was rejecting the skin grafts on his feet. I carefully slid my arms under he legs and eased them down on the bed so he could rest.

All this time she stood behind me, watching every thing that took place. It was as though she was unable to speak, needing to assess her life, her future. That’s when it occurred to me that it wasn’t just my life that had changed. She would care for this man for as long as he lived, no matter what. I knew her. She couldn’t squash a bug on the floor but would carry it outside and let it go. She would care for her husband as long as he drew breath in the same tender way she had cared for me.

I couldn’t look at her. I knew if I looked at her I would break down and that wasn’t what she needed right now. I turned to leave and the first words she uttered to me since her husband had come back into her life were, “Will you be taking the fishing pole?” “No, it is as much yours as it is mine. You said this afternoon that you wanted your own pole. Be careful what you wish for.” “You should at least take one of the fishing hooks,” she said. “You keep them both; your husband is too weak to fish. Besides, I still have the rifle.” “But you don’t have any bullets,” she said. It didn’t matter. There was a time when she and I didn’t have a fishing pole and we were happy. There was a time when she invited a stranger to have a meager supper of potatoes and rice and spend the night. And we were happy.

She followed me across the room and as I opened the door to leave, she spoke in a whisper so as not to disturb her resting husband and said, “What do you wish?” Our eyes met as I turned to face her. It was the first time we had looked at each other since her husband had walked back into our lives. “You know the old saying,” I said. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” “You always say that. I hate that saying,” she said. I knew she wanted me to say that I wished he had died in the fire. I had never lied to her and I wouldn’t start now. I reached up and touched her cheek as I said, “What I wish is that we had swam in the river today when you only had eyes for me.” I turned, stepped through the doorway and didn’t look back. Walking down the crumbling asphalt road I avoided the cracks and repeated the phrase, “Step on a crack, break your back, step on a crack, break your back.” Dodging the cracks in the asphalt and saying those words helped me shut out the other feelings trying to peal me like an onion and expose my pain. I didn’t look back. I was afraid she wouldn’t be standing in the doorway with tear filled eyes watching me walk away.