“That one, mommy. I want that one.” The ten-year-old child pointed to one of a small crowd of goldfish swimming in the tank. His mother turned grateful eyes up to the petstore clerk, who was poised over the tank, wielding the fishnet like a silver saber. The net swooped into the tank, and came out victorious; the fish went into a small plastic bag full of water with much less trouble than the mother had expected.
The goldfish had two thin silver streaks by its gills, which at least made it easier to track through the tank. The bag, fish inside, went into the child’s grateful hands. The mother bought a modest-sized tank, an underwater toy or two, and led the child out across the busy parking lot to their car. The tank and toys went into the trunk; the child and fish went into the front seat (the child had only recently been allowed to ride in the front). They made a small but solemn ritual out of getting situated and applying the seat belt, pulled out of the parking lot, and headed for home.
They were at the store because the boy’s mother had promised a small pet (goldfish, guinea pig, etc) for every perfect report card he brought home. He spent the entire term actually doing his homework when he got home (instead of pretending, or writing his name on the paper, or just looking on the internet for answers) and chose a goldfish as his first pet. His mother knew that this trick wouldn’t carry much weight for long, but with any luck it would instill good enough habits at an early enough age. It seemed to be working for now, anyway. True to her word, they went straight to the pet store the moment he brought home his first perfect report card.
On the way home, the boy’s mother reminded him that he was responsible for taking care of it, and if he couldn’t even keep a goldfish alive then he could forget about a guinea pig, let alone a puppy. The boy barely heard his mother as he watched the goldfish wriggle around in the bag, trying to balance its natural instinct to swim against breaching the deadly pocket of air in the top of the bag.
“Are you listening?” she asked the boy. She always seemed to know when he was listening or not. Come to think of it, she always seemed to know everything. That was one reason why he had to really study in order to get the goldfish: he knew from experience that she would know better, and the deal would be off. He really wanted a puppy, of course, but his mother made it clear that they would start small and prove that the boy could take care of a small animal before moving on to a real pet.
When they got home, his mother helped him set up the tank and put it on his desk just in front of the window, so that when the boy was doing his homework both he and the fish would have a nice view. They filled the tank together, since his mother was serious about him taking care of it. He decided to name the fish Bobby.
“How do you like that name, Bobby?” he asked the fish. “That sound good to you?” Bobby wiggled its tail in what the boy took for a yes, and Bobby’s gills opened and closed a few times. The silver highlights on Bobby’s gills caught the light of the sunset beautifully, and the boy was happier than he had expected a fish to make him. Just a few months of keeping this one alive, the boy thought, just a few more good report cards, and that puppy is as good as mine.
It was three days before the boy remembered to feed the fish. That put the fear of Mom into him. He started feeding Bobby every day after that.
It was seven days before the tank started to show signs of fishy residue. It was really a small tank, as tanks go. The boy’s mother had figured this as a medium-risk investment: if the fish survived, she could use it as a home for a few other perfect report cards before having to commit to the guinea pig (god those things were loud) or the eventually unavoidable dog. If the fish died, she could (at her discretion) either let him try again, or sell the tank on ebay. In any case, it didn’t cost more than a Christmas trip to the toy store, and would certainly do the boy more good.
The boy’s mother gently pointed out that cleaning the tank was part of cleaning the fish. She offered to supervise, but not to help him: the rules were clear; he would have to take care of the fish on his own, and this was part of that. Wait until the dog starts having to go out in the middle of the night, she reminded him (groaning internally at the implications). Taking care of a pet meant keeping it clean.
The boy did fine with the tank. First, he put the fish in a small bowl of water. Next, he took a small pail (the one he used for sandcastles at the beach), and got half the water out of the tank. Then he cleaned the inside of the glass using only a washcloth. Finally, he pulled a bit more water until he could lift the mostly empty tank and carry it into the bathroom to empty the dirty water. He added as much clean water from the tub as he thought he could carry to the now clean and empty tank, put it back up on his desk, and started putting water back into it using a bucket and his pail.
His mother watched over all this (mostly to make sure he didn’t do something silly like add soap to the water), carefully refusing to help. Only when he was replacing the tank on his desk did he ask: “Mom, how often do I have to do this?” She told him only once a week, with the mental reservation that she’d be happy if it happened once a month. In any event, she wasn’t going to remind him about it any more: she’d see if he did it on his own.
Fifteen days after his arrival on the boy’s desk, Bobby seemed fairly happy with life. He would swim around his toys, the daylight would highlight the silver lines around his gills, his tank was clean, and he was fairly well-fed. He even grew a little bigger.
Twenty-two days into his tenure on the boy’s desk, Bobby was positively happy about life. He was as big as a healthy goldfish gets, and was large enough that the silver streaks by his gills almost looked like they could be whiskers.
On the twenty-second day of Bobby’s tenure in the tank, the boy’s mother announced they were going to see his grandmother for a week. They always went to visit Grandma for the holidays, and the time was finally here. Bobby loved visiting his grandma; she and grandpa always had great stories and would usually play along with him, at least for a little while, whenever he wanted to pretend things or go outside. They always had time to walk outside in the woods with him, which the boy loved. (His mother loved going on walks with him too, but she rarely had that luxury.) And of course his grandparents always spoiled him with candy and toys.
On the twenty-seventh day, they packed up the car and drove the hundred or so miles to the boy’s grandparents.
On the twenty-eighth day, the tank was nothing but glass shards and an unexpectedly leaky dining room ceiling.
The wolf had just escaped drowning, and was thirsty for air. It took in huge gulps of air, through both its nose and tongue. This happened every time the wolf woke up. Every single time.
The wolf was ravenous. It felt like it had been eating nothing but leaves for a month. The wolf was also disoriented: it was always disoriented when it woke up. On top of everything else, the wolf was running. The wolf was usually in full flight by the time it had control of its consciousness: half-remembered dreams of drowning in the cool night air were so common that even as a wolf it recognized the dreams as familiar. The wolf always woke up to the sound of its own paws padding the ground as fast as they could move. For some reason, it felt exceptionally good to be running. The wolf felt like it also hadn’t been able to run for a long time.
The wolf ran until it was tired; delighting in its fatigue and reveling in the magical taste of the air on its tongue. It had been running near trees, and apparently near a brook. As hungry as the wolf was, it had no idea where it would find food, until it heard a noise in the brook. The wolf gradually got its breathing under control and padded as silently as it could to the bank of the stream and looked down.
The wolf heard the fish before he smelled it. Without a thought or a pause, it snatched the fish out of the water into its jaws and devoured it ravenously. The fish was the color of the moon on the water, that blessed and wonderful circle in the sky. The wolf ate until there was nothing left, then sat back on its haunches and released a soul-satisfying howl. Every animal within a hundred yards felt both its body and blood freeze. The wolf loved knowing that it struck terror into anything that crossed its path. The wolf was ruthless, and the wolf was happy.
The wolf looked into the brook to see if there was more food. The only thing the wolf saw was a wolf: itself, of course, with its silver whiskers and amber-brown fur. For all that the it felt hungry, it didn’t look especially gaunt. In fact, if anything, the wolf seemed well-fed. It was still hungry though. The fish it had just eaten helped enormously, but the wolf was still very hungry. It looked in the water again, feeling the same strange feeling it did every time it woke up. It always woke up hungry, and it always woke up running, and it always woke up near the water. It never understood why all this was, but then again it was a wolf. Introspection wasn’t its strong suit.
The wolf ran and ran. For some reason that it couldn’t know, it was careful to stay near the water. It couldn’t know why, but it felt a strange pull every time it ran too far away. It limited the wolf’s prospects for eating; it didn’t see any other wolves nearby for hunting in packs, and its wolf-blood was running far too fast for it to effectively hunt by stealth. From time to time it would nose its way back to the water to try to catch another fish, but the first one was the only one it could manage. It ran and ran until the stream became a pool, which turned out to be the beginning of a large pond.
Presently the wolf saw the sky get lighter. It grew more and more tired, and as it ran alongside what was now a small lake, it dropped to the ground. Its forepaws were firmly on the shore, but its rear paws remained in the shallow end of the lake. It was very tired: it had been running almost nonstop the entire night. Its breathing was coming in ragged, shallow breaths: it almost felt like it was drowning in the air. Its paws were in pain, and it wriggled its way backwards slightly to get more into the water. Breathing was very difficult now, and the wolf didn’t realize that it was still moving backwards into the lake.
The wolf slept the sleep of the exhausted.
“That one, mommy. There it is.” As it had just over a month ago, the ten-year-old child pointed to another goldfish in the tank. His mother looked at it suspiciously, then looked at clerk, who was leading the pair towards the hamster section. The mother’s eyebrows furrowed, then relaxed. I’m being foolish, she thought. These things are what, five bucks apiece? That’s not worth a half hour of the clerk’s time, much less a B&E. The mother gave up and figured that it was just a coincidence that this fish looked exactly the same as the last one.
“It looks just like Bobby, doesn’t it, Mommy?” insisted the child. The mother agreed that it did, and hoped it wouldn’t come to the same end as the last fish. The water damage to the house wasn’t drastic, but it wasn’t fun to fix, either, and that was it for the goldfish project.
Still, the boy had brought home his good grades, and a deal was still a deal. Although it cost a little more, and was more of a challenge to keep alive, the mother decided that whatever broke the tank and vanished the fish wasn’t going to happen again in her house if she could help it.
They gathered the hamster and its new cage (at this rate, she may as well just get the damn puppy, she thought) and went to the front of the store. The mother, still thinking, asked the clerk: “Where do you get your goldfish from, anyway?”
“Well, mostly we buy them,” the clerk answered. “But we do have a deal with some of the local fishermen who fish in the lake nearby: if someone catches goldfish or baitfish in the lake, they can bring it in for a small exchange. Usually they’ll exchange ’em for dog treats, or something. It’s not worth a special trip, but for those who come here anyway, it’s a nice way of converting a useless catch into something worthwhile.”
The mother nodded. “Just asking. Thank you,” she added, as they made their way out to the car for the Seat Belt Ritual, and the drive home.
The fish would have wondered what it was doing back in the pet store, but it wasn’t given to wondering, or memory, or much else: after all, it was still only a fish.
Moth to the Flame 