The man was difficult to discern from his fishing pole: long, bent, and thin, with a nasty little barb at the end of his body where innocents might stumble on it and get caught.
His name was Walt and he was not a good fisherman, but then again he’d only been at it for six minutes of his entire life starting six minutes ago. And how hard could it be? You put one end in your hands and one in the water and waited for some miserable unfortunate to commit inadvertent suicide. It was a walk in the park.
Not at the moment though. They wouldn’t let him fish in the park; the police officer had been quite clear on that.
The fishing pole jumped and Walt jumped and the fishing pole dove beautifully into the water after wrapping three times around his left leg. After a lot of splashing and shouting and cursing and wailing and at least one shriek the line came in reel by reel and at the end there was a small and somewhat complacent trout in Walt’s palm, wriggling and writhing and mouthing.
He looked at it with great distaste and sniffed.
“You’ll do,” he said. And he took it home in a bag of water, illegally.
***
The fish took some effort to set up. The tank, the filter, the scrubber, the net, the floss, the food, the tie and suit, the teaching bowl, the chalkboard, the dunce hat and corner stool, the textbooks, the spitball launchers, the paddle and the leather strap, the ruler, the whip and the brass knuckles, the forms and the fines and the penalties and the courts and juries and justice systems and jails, the minimum wage, the part-time schedule, the erratic last-minute shifts, the overpriced schooling, the cruel wage market, the overpriced housing, and the lifelong depression all had to be purchased, placed, and sized for the fish’s dimensions.
It watched all of this activity with its wide fishy eyes, gills working furiously as cool water spilled its way through its body and filled it with life.
“You’ll know better soon,” Walt told it. A grim grin slid across his face and out of sight again. “You’ll know better starting now.”
He picked up the chalkboard.
“A,” he began. “B C D E F G H I J L M N O P-”
***
Walt taught the fish letters. They meant shapes that were sounds. Then he taught the fish words, which was letters clumped into meanings. Then he taught the fish language, which was incredible nonsense, just absolute garbage and filth that poured into its ears and made its little fishy jaw drop and dangle in gobsmacked astonishment at the sheer audacity of the utter bullshit that it was hearing.
Walt put the fish in the corner with the dunce cap for swearing and scolded it until it cried.
***
Walt taught the fish lies. He told it that the world was flat and that vaccines were plots by lizard people to cull the human population so they could kill them all with blood magic to resurrect Atlantis with the help of psychic moon communists and kill god with adrenochrome and horse tranquilizers cut with stem cells and JFK.
Then he told it to give him money.
The fish did as it was told, eyes wide and trembling on the verge of vibrating loose from its little fish skeleton.
“Give me more money,” he told it. “You need to give me more money or they will win.”
The fish gave him more money and more after that and then it cried big fishy tears that salted the water to nigh-soupiness.
“Keep giving,” said Walt. “Don’t stop.”
***
Walt taught the fish truths. The hard truths, the bitter truths, the truths that stuck in your mouth and choked you raw and bleeding until you learned to breathe around them, unable to be spit out or swallowed.
“You don’t matter,” he sneered at the fish. “You are replaceable. You owe me everything and without me you’re nothing, so as long as you live under my roof you will obey my rules. Stop looking at me like that and open your ears. There are only winners and only losers and if you’re ever a loser you’re a loser forever. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Work hard and you’ll be rewarded, slack off and you might as well be already dead. Your worth is determined by your career. Save your fun for retirement. Vacations are for slackers and winners, and you don’t look like a winner to me. Boys don’t cry. This isn’t me picking on you this is just tough love and speaking straight truths and hard facts.”
The fish blinked.
“It’s okay if you mix up this stuff with the other stuff,” he told the fish. “It doesn’t matter much. Now don’t forget any of it or you’re a loser.”
***
When Walt was done educating the fish he clothed it. The suit, the tie, the briefcase, the car. Then he gave it a few last words of wisdom.
“Work hard,” he told it. “And remember: if you fuck up it’s your fault and your fault alone and if you ever tell anyone about it or ask for help you’re a loser. Now go out there and give me all your money for putting a roof over your head.”
“I love you father,” said the fish.
“Never say that again if you want my respect,” said Walt. Then he nodded solemnly at the fish once, with a little itty bitty dip of the head like that so it was subtle and not too emotional.
It nodded back, little fish jaw trembling with repressed passion. Then it walked out into the adult world.
Walt smiled to himself and opened up his little book of proverbs. “Another amendment for this year,” he said happily.
Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.
Teach a fish to man, and it feeds you for the rest of its life.