Epigenesis

There is the straightening of line across the riffle, the flash of side in the sleepy pool below the fast water and then the swimming down, tugging, snapping, right-angling turns against the leader and yellow line and then the line is slack. The sun of midmorning bounces its light off the broken surface of the creek while Alan Turing curses and cranks his reel, waiting to see if the Letort’s cricket he tied this morning is lost. But on the end of the leader is the cricket and with it is an enormous trout, much larger than the stream should accommodate, much larger than any trout should be, Turing thinks, swallowing hard, much larger than the tug it had less than a minute ago applied against the graphite rod, light pink above its whitish side-floating, all but pushing the leader toward Turing’s neoprened legs. The trout is easily three and a half feet long, but no trout is that long, its mouth working about the fly. A steelhead? It can’t be in this creek. Turing’s muscles quiver with fear and confusion as he once again observes the width and depth of the water, looking upstream and down for another human who might react to the sight and confirm his footing in reality, but there is no one. The fish is at his feet, more of it exposed to air than to water, the opercula covering the gills flowing rhythmically, almost comfortably, thinks Turing, and like lightning striking, the fish says a word, yes, a word. Turing shakes his head, wants to cry, his hands trembling, dropping his rod while his heart stalls, he hears clearly a word, its syllables, it must be a word and the word is epigenesis. A closer approach surprises Turing for the bravery it takes, but yields to him no more understanding and no more words, nor the same word from the animal, which is beginning to huff away its life. He touches the head of the trout to feel the smooth slime that encases it, removes the hook that is so insignificant from its lip, and he wonders how he caught the fish, realizes that the fish wanted to be captured, recalling that the trout swam toward him. Turing pushes the animal back toward the pool, the word still in his head, the weight of the fish hanging up against the rocks. Turing sweats and heaves, staring at the glassy eye that, though directed at him, betrays no gaze of its own, and finally backs the fish into the pool and Turing can see just how deep it is, no bottom to find with his staring. The trout sinks and far down Turing can see the kick of its huge tail and believes it still lives. He stands straight in the stream, sucking in a breath of mountain air as he cries and searches the creekside trees for other eyes, human or other, that might be as confused and fearful as his. Turing makes his way free of the stream with the waddle waders make, wondering why its frigid water has not awakened him, wondering if sane men dream such things, cursing his mind for breaking and spilling nonsense about his cranial floor, but on the bank he sits and knows that he is not asleep, not dreaming, believes he is not hallucinating. A light drizzle begins to fall from clouds he has not noticed approaching, his shadow now disappeared in the gray around him. Turing frees himself from his boots and waders, packs them away, slips on his sneakers, and carries his gear through the maples and rhododendrons and the mile back to his car parked at the roadside.

A pickup speeds by on the wet highway, kicking up a spray, but not much of one, while Turing leans against the back of his car. He opens the trunk, tosses in his wader bag, his vest, and his rod, which he has broken down and slipped into its case. He looks down the road and imagines the Swift Camp Creek joining the Red River, imagines the Red River joining the Ohio, and imagines that water on its way to the Mississippi and to the Gulf of Mexico where big fish are supposed to live, but not like that one, not a trout or a steelhead. Giant fish aren’t supposed to swim in small water, in holes that should not be, deep and invisible until one is over it; he wonders what would have happened had he stepped into it unknowingly. How many people had? But then it seems stupid to curse the creek when the fish had talked, when the fish had so rudely changed his life.

Turing has put away his gear, hung his waders in the garage, and put his fly boxes on the shelf above his tying table. He sits at his desk, hands together, and waits for his wife to return from Louisville. It’s dusk when he hears her car.

Barbara walks past the door of the study, then comes back. “Alan?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you sitting here in the dark?” she wants to know.

“No reason, just sitting.”

“Are you okay? How was fishing?” Barbara puts her packages down by the doorway.

Turing switches on his desk lamp. The light bothers his eyes. “Fishing was decent, Barbara.”

“Catch anything?” She smiles, bends to pick up her things.

“Caught a few.” He looks at his desk. “How was Louisville?”

Barbara pauses. “It was fine, Alan.”

Later, at dinner, Alan pushes the takeout cartons of Chinese food away and looks at Barbara. “Do you believe that people create their own worlds?” he asks.

“What?” her mouth full.

“Nothing.”

“No,” she says, wiping her mouth. “Tell me what you’re talking about. What worlds?”

“What if, say, an animal, say a dog, talked to you, I mean, spoke a word?”

“Yes?”

“What would you think? Would you think you were crazy? Would you reassess your picture of the world?”

“Hell, no, I wouldn’t think I was crazy,” Barbara says. “I’d think I was rich. A talking dog, are you kidding? Do you know how much money I could make with a talking dog?” She laughs loudly, reaching for more food. “What’s on top of a house? Ruff,” she barks.

Turing looks out the window at the dark backyard.

“Did I hurt your feelings?” she asks.

“No.”

That night, in the darkness and cold of the room they have shared for twelve years, Barbara halfheartedly leads her husband into lovemaking. He moves with her or for her or because of her, pushing to breach the distance, pushing to make the distance, their orgasms mechanical, standard. Afterward, they lie awake, waiting, just waiting. The light through the window is from the streetlamp, somewhat blue, soft, and lost in the leafless tree limbs just outside.

Turing dreams. He is at a dinner party, across the room his wife is watching him while she talks to a woman in a blue dress and he knows she is talking about him. The food at the party is all the same color and comes by on trays carried by men with no faces. Turing moves through the party looking for someone whose face and name he cannot remember, like a song title, the person is lost in his head and he is becoming anxious. Music comes from somewhere, mechanical and standard, lost in the rhythm of shuffling feet as Turing notices the movement of people in circles, around and around, around the room and around points in space. Turing knows all the faces of the guests and even the faceless waiters. He gets no closer nor farther away from Barbara no matter which way he moves, no matter how fast he moves, and she is talking about him, now to a man in short pants. He takes more of the colorless food and searches for taste, some texture, anything. The emptiness wakes him with a start, his heart racing, his breathing short. He thinks about touching the hand of his wife, but doesn’t.

“A fish spoke to me,” he tells his wife the next morning, watching her tie her running shoes, a foot up on the stool in the kitchen.

“Very nice,” she says.

“No, really, a fish said a word to me.”

She looks at him.

“I’m not joking, Barbara.”

Barbara laughs.

“I’m scared. A fish—a big fish talked to me.”

“And what did this fish say?”

“He said ‘epigenesis.’ I saw its lips move. I heard it.”

“Epigenesis,” she repeats.

Turing nods.

“And you weren’t drinking?”

“No.”

“No drugs?”

“Barbara, I’m serious.” He pauses, leans back against the wall by the door. “Never mind.”

“Fine,” she says, looking at her watch, standing, looking out the window at the road, “I’ll be back in forty minutes.”

He watches her run out of the yard and down the street. She thought he was joking. He guesses that’s better than her believing him to be crazy.

The rain falls harder while Alan Turing sits behind the wheel, switching on the wipers to slap away at the spitting sky, pulling away from the gravel and mud. Turing struggles with remembering his name, recalling lessons from grade school instead, lines of silly poems, word problems of sheep and shingles and there is his name, burned into his mind along with a fish-voice, “epigenesis.” Goddamn the beast, so big, and why hadn’t he brought it home, but instead took pity or obeyed that giant, sad, milk-glass eye?

Alan Turing goes back to the creek, sits on the bank, and looks at the spot where the hole that shouldn’t have been there, was. The water is still, un-moving there. He recalls the day JFK was killed, how when the news came over the loudspeaker his second-grade teacher, Miss Young, had put her hands over her ears and run out of the room; he recalls her slip was showing below her navy skirt. He recalls when he awoke during the night on a family car trip and saw the burning cross of a KKK rally and how his father had stepped on the gas to get them away and how they had to load up on food because there was no place for them to stop and eat on the road; the Temptations were playing on the radio. He remembers how Kathy Wilson had let him touch her pubic hair and had kissed his tongue with hers, then told him they had to stop. He remembers how she hadn’t told Reggie Davis to stop. So went Reggie Davis’s story and Alan Turing, thirteen, believed it.

He tosses a rock into the creek, hoping the trout will show himself. He will not tell this to his wife again. He will not tell anyone that a fish has spoken to him. He will keep it inside his head. He will keep it next to the fact that lately he has not enjoyed sex with his wife. He will keep it next to his fear of escalators. He will keep it next to the fact that he hated the way his uncle hugged him just a little too long.

Another rock breaks the face of the creek and still no trout shows. Turing once had to beat a deer to death with a bat. The animal had been hit by a car and was suffering badly at the side of the road. It was dusk. Alan Turing had no gun. The deer looked at him with big, pathetic eyes and begged for peace. But the animal’s life had been stubborn and it took six swings to end it.

The water in the hole begins to roil. And there on the surface of the water, the light through the boughs reflecting off its smooth sides, is the giant trout, floating up as if dead, one glassy eye aimed at Alan Turing. Alan Turing stands and takes a step, water sloshing over his shoe and ankle as he breaks the face of the stream. Another long step and he is just feet from the fish, his breath catching in his chest as he hears the fish say, “I knew you would come back.”

“You’re real. I thought I had gone mad,” Alan Turing says. “My wife thinks I’m crazy.”

“You’re not happy,” the fish says.

Alan Turing shakes his head. “The world has changed. My wife has changed. And I’m afraid I’ve stayed the same.” He looked upstream and then down. “I told her about you this morning and she thought I was joking.”

“Take me home with you,” the fish says.

“How?”

“Just put me in your car.”

So, Alan Turing wraps his arms around the big fish, the slime of its sides staining his shirt, and he hauls it to the bank, pausing and resting there and then starting up the trail. The fish is silent on the trail, its gills heaving just under Alan Turing’s chin, the opercula opening and closing, flashing red. At the trailhead, Alan Turing pauses, reconsidering, looking back over his tracks in the direction of the creek and the fish flops in his arms, says, “Put me in the car.”

The trout fills the passenger seat. Its head presses against the armrest of the door. Its tail brushes against Alan Turing’s thigh. Its eye is pointed toward the roof.

“Tell me about your wife,” the trout says.

Alan Turing drives with both hands on the steering wheel, leaning slightly forward. His fingers are stiffening from the work of driving and so he reaches over to turn on the heat.

“What are you doing?” the trout asks.

“I’m turning on the heat.”

“Leave it off.”

Alan Turing does. “My wife is very smart,” he says. He doesn’t look at the fish while he speaks. “She’s intense and I sometimes wonder what she sees in me.” Alan Turing smiles sadly. “Lately, I’ve been distant and, I guess, not very responsive. I don’t know why. Anyway, I became distant and she became distant and the whole thing just kind of snowballed. I’ve been working a lot lately. But that’s not really it. I mean, it hasn’t been work. I’ve been—how can I put it—lost, sick, stupid. I’m simply not happy with life.” Alan Turing glances at the trout. The fish looks bored. “I know it sounds dumb. Midlife shit and all that. But now I’m afraid I’ve pushed Barbara far enough away that she’s looking for someone else.”

The trout seems to struggle with a breath, flops its tail against the fabric of Alan Turing’s trousers.

“We still have sex, but that’s all it is, I think. Sex. It feels so empty. It never felt like I had to search for the feeling before. I’m so scared. We don’t even argue. We’re just creating a gentle, uncrossable distance. And then I get mad and I want to tell her to go away.” Alan Turing is crying. “It’s life, too, you know. It’s this day-to-day stuff. I don’t know why I do anything. I do my research, but it’s for shit. I read the news and it goes in one eye and out the other. I haven’t heard a good joke in years. And my wife is sleeping with someone else and still fucking me.”

The fish says nothing.

Alan Turing pulls into his driveway and turns off his car’s engine. He gives the trout a look and says, “Wait here.” He gets out and walks across the yard, the grass of the lawn he hates so much feeling soft and moist under his feet. His hands are shaking. He enters the house and stands inside the foyer. He calls out for his wife. “Barbara!” There is an urgency in his voice that he hears, that at some other time he might seek to control, but not at this moment. “Barbara!”

Barbara comes down the stairs. She is wearing a robe, a towel wrapped around her head. “What is it?”

“Why do we do this?” Alan Turing asks.

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything’s wrong, Barbara. Look at us. Look at us.”

Barbara clutches her robe closed.

“Yeah, close up. Heaven forbid I should see you naked in the light. It might lead to lovemaking instead of fucking.”

“Alan,” she complains.

Alan Turing is pacing. He stops and stares at her. “What’s happened to us? To everything?” Inside his head, reality seems far away and unreachable. “Come outside with me. I want to show you something.”

“I’m not dressed.”

“It doesn’t matter. Come on. Come on!”

Barbara flinches.

“Come on,” Alan Turing says more gently.

“Alan, you’re scaring me.”

“I’m scared, too.”

“What do you want to show me?” she asks.

“Just come with me. Please?”

Barbara nods and steps through the door he is holding open for her. She follows him across the yard. He leads her to his car in the driveway. He turns and watches her look across the street for neighbors.

At the car, he looks in and the big trout is not there. There is a very little minnow dead on the passenger seat of his car. He feels near to fainting and turns, squares his shoulders to Barbara.

“What is it?” she says.

Alan Turing looks at his wife’s eyes, tries to hold them, tries to memorize them. He looks at her lips and her ears and her nose. He touches her hair.

“What is it, Alan?”

He says, “I love you.”